Category: Society
-
Is consciousness more important than intelligence? Work. Humans. Doing nothing.
Until today, high intelligence always went hand-in-hand with a developed consciousness. Only conscious beings could perform tasks that required a lot of intelligence, such as playing chess, driving cars, diagnosing diseases or writing articles. However, today we are developing new types of non-conscious intelligence that can perform these tasks far better than humans. This raises a…
-
Universal translator. Useless.
Skype users will soon be able to conduct voice and video calls supported by a near-real time translation technology. And while it can't yet guarantee that no fine detail will be lost in translation, Microsoft's new idea for its video chat platform surely feels like something straight out of science fiction. No longer will our hopes…
-
e-Justice. Not!
The great e-commerce boom has had an unexpected side effect – the rise of digital courts. eBay has long relied on its Resolution Centre to solve petty disagreements between buyers and sellers, and the model has become surprisingly popular among others who do business online. So much so, in fact, that one Swedish company has…
-
Human culture. Ape's culture. Human stupidity.
The ability to build up knowledge over generations, called cumulative culture, has given humankind language and technology. While it was thought to be limited to humans until now, researchers have recently found that baboons are also capable of cumulative culture. (1) We believe culture is about language and technology. But this is not culture. Apes…
-
Science philanthropists. Religion priests. Non religion.
Charles T. Munger has been known for many things over his decades-long career, including longtime business partner of Warren E. Buffett; successful investor and lawyer; and plain-spoken commentator with a wide following. Now Mr. Munger, 90, can add another title to that list: deep-pocketed benefactor to the field of theoretical physics. He has donated $65…
You must be logged in to post a comment.