sent2null space

Science!!! "Earlier this year, a synthetic dairy start-up called Muufri (pronounced “Moo-free") was founded by two bioengineers in California - Perumal Gandhi and Ryan Pandya. They’re working on perfecting an artificial cow's milk made from a special variety of yeast that has been genetically engineered to produce milk proteins. Nicknamed an ‘out-of-body udder’, this system is designed to produce milk that retains the taste and health benefits of real milk, setting it apart from soy, rice, and almond milk varieties. Because as nice as soy-based ice-cream can be, it will never match the popularity of regular milk-based ice-cream, but what if Muufri ice-cream can get the taste just right? "If we want the world to change its diet from a product that isn't sustainable to something that is, it has to be identical [to], or better than, the original product," Gandhi told Linda Qui at National Geographic. "The world will not switch from milk from a cow to t...

The Simple Dynamic Cognition Cycle flow diagram above is topologically identical to this one: I published with an earlier post on the Salience theory of dynamic cognition and consciousness but this one shows the multiple feedback lines from the salience node as all left facing. The only one that is right facing feeds to Action.  This is important because it shows that Salience evaluations directly modulate Action while also bypassing action for continued Sensation , some times a prediction is incorrect and is bypassed for continued approximation of stored memory with new sensation in the Comparison node which takes feedback from salience itself (emotional and autonomic). I posit that cognition (the mind) happens between Sensation and Salience nodes and some times bubbles up Action, the "self" and consciousness are emergent reflections of this sea of comparisons in real time. When we sleep the outer red flow arrows from salience to action are minimally tri...

The latest noise in the AIosphere particularly from the sector of people who call themselves  transhumanists is much shock and confusion over Elon Musk's statement at a recent MIT conference that he feels that AI done wrong could lead to an existential crisis. He said: " “With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon . In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like yeah he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn’t work out. “ If you've been reading my blog you know I've been sounding this alarm for at least 5 years but the opprobrium coming at Musk from transhumanists is particularly hilarious. Some are calling him a luddite and questioning his statement because in their view he doesn't know anything about AI (I'd listen to Elon before even considering views on the matter from yet another "futurist".) Why I care about this subject... In this article at H+ an anonymous author even goes so...

The Fermi Paradox has been a puzzling question for 50 years now and many answers have been given as to why it is that it seems that we are alone in the silence of a Galaxy teeming with not just stars but stars with billion of planets that can support life like our own. In the past I've explained that the likely possibility is that we are one of a few species evolved sufficiently in intelligence to be able to ponder and soon engage the task of physically leaving our solar system. A great filter exists which has made it incredibly difficult for life forms to evolve to our present level until this time in galactic history. This idea mirrors the Universal concept of anthropomorphism which states that we exist at all because if the Universal constants were any different we simply wouldn't and that there is no actual "fine tuning" to the Universe. I propose the same is true about Galactic evolution and that we may be among the first set of civilizations that have s...