Researchers have created the first complete description of early embryo development, accounting for every single cell in the embryo. This ‘virtual embryo’ will help to answer how the different cell types in an organism can originate from a single egg cell. (1)
Analyzing life, cell by cell.
Atom by atom.
Until we reach zero.
One by one.
And see nothingness inside everything…
Oh, look!
What a beautiful baby!
(Are you dead?)
In a recently released edition of the Journal of Field Archaeology, Brown Assistant Professor of Anthropology Parker VanValkenburgh and several colleagues detailed new research they conducted in the former Inca Empire in South America using drones, satellite imagery and proprietary online databases. Their results demonstrate that big data can provide archaeologists with a sweeping, big-picture view of the subjects they study on the ground — prompting new insights and new historical questions.
Using the data they collected, VanValkenburgh, Wernke and Saito created a comprehensive map of every known Spanish-founded colonial settlement, or reducción, stretching from Ecuador to Chile, allowing those who study the region to understand the ebb and flow of social life on a multi-country scale. (1)
People moving around. Like ants. Big Data will reveal things and details. Analysis will show patterns and will reveal motives. But it will never reveal anything for the baker who wakes up in the morning to bake bread. It will not show anything about the children playing in the dirt. Big Data will not show anything about a man dying and his wife crying next to him.
Big Data can show everything.
But at the same time they show nothing.
Why care about revealing new information for past civilizations? Will we be wiser if we know patterns which were not even consciously known even to the people at that era? Civilizations are not built on data, patterns or systems analysis. They are built on cries and laugher. They are built on blood and despair.
And Big Data will never show anything for these things.
Take a good look at the laptop running the analysis.
So clean.
So silent.
But do not be fooled by its tiny size.
It kills whole civilizations in seconds.
And as researchers laugh in excitement.
Beyond the buzz of the hard drive…
Thousands die in agony a thousand years ago…
Hundreds of thousands of volunteers have helped to overturn almost a century of galaxy classification, in a new study using data from the longstanding Galaxy Zoo project. The new investigation uses classifications of over 6000 galaxies to reveal that ‘well known’ correlations between different features are not found in this large and complete sample. (1)
By encoding their specialized knowledge into a computer game, researchers enabled citizen scientists to successfully design synthetic proteins for the first time. (2)
Science was once upon a time something for the elite few. Now it is a matter of everyone. Science was once upon a time related to wisdom. Now it is related to date analysis. Science was once upon a time part of our belief in God. Now we just believe in us. We used to be part of God. Knowing everything by bring part of it. Now we observe the million pieces we have created. At the end we will know everything. But not everything that there is. But everything that we want them to be. For we are not actually observing anything. But we have set up mirrors. To observe our selves… Through the looking glass…
Small tiny people…
Classifying galaxies…
A groundbreaking experiment in physics has for the first time provided a precise measurement of a force between electrons and protons called the weak nuclear force. The value 0.0719 (give or take 0.0045) won’t mean much to most of us, but the way they did it makes way for some exciting possibilities for pushing physics beyond the scope of the Standard Model. (1)
We want to measure things in order to believe them. But it is only the truly blessed who believe things without measuring them.
The cosmos is not in numbers.
The essence of the cosmos lies in the irrationality of the numbers’ existence itself. Nothing in the universe is measurable, besides the things which do not belong in it. Only ghosts need tangible “data” for them to exist. Everything else just Is…
Look at π. It does not exist.
And yet, it governs everything…
A man draws circles on the ground.
He will never be able to measure its circumference.
And yet… Here it is…
(the circle, not the man)
How do our personalities develop? What do we come with and what is built from our experiences? Once developed, how does personality work? These questions have been steeped in controversy for almost as long as psychology has existed.
In an article in Psychological Review, Carol Dweck tackles these issues. She proposes that our personalities develop around basic needs, and she begins by documenting the three basic psychological needs we all come with: the need to predict our world, the need to build competence to act on our world, and, because we are social beings, the need for acceptance from others. (She also shows how new needs emerge later from combinations of these basic needs.)
Infants arrive highly prepared to meet these needs – they are brilliant, voracious learners on the lookout for need-relevant information. Then, as infants try to meet their needs, something important happens. They start building beliefs about their world and their role in it: Is the world good or bad, safe or dangerous? Can I act on my world to meet my needs? These beliefs, plus the emotions and action tendencies that are stored with them, are termed “BEATs”. They represent the accumulated experiences people have had trying to meet their needs, and they play a key role in personality – both the invisible and the visible parts of personality. (1)
A seemingly elegant theory.
But imagine you are being thrown into an unknown forest.
Waking up among big tall trees. Listening to the silence.
Afraid of the darkness.
What would be your first thought?
How to predict? How to act? How to become… accepted?
Or the simple and raw questions… Where am I? Who am I?
It is easy to get lost in the forest.
If you only look at the millions of trees.
We have lost our ability to ask the right questions.
Because we ask too many…
