Philosophy Wire: Dying… Being born!

Neuroscientists have identified a brain circuit critical for learning to make decisions that require evaluating the cost or reward of an action. They showed this circuit is negatively affected by aging and in Huntington's disease. [1] I have learned so many things. I have lived my life. Oh, I am tired now. I want to get some rest. I want to stand still and smell the roses. I want to lie down. Close my eyes and feel the breeze. Weird. I feel the explosion. I feel alive. I feel happy and full with terror. (Oh, dear. Why now?) Right now that I forgot everything. Right now that I feel empty. I can sense the cosmos in me! I have learned nothing! God bless me. I want to learn everything!

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Philosophy Wire: Wise…

Humans are born with a part of the brain that is prewired to be receptive to seeing words and letters, setting the stage at birth for people to learn how to read, a new study suggests. Analyzing brain scans of newborns, researchers found that this part of the brain -- called the 'visual word form area' (VWFA) -- is connected to the language network of the brain. [1] Born with Logos. Ready to read and speak words. For us to understand the cosmos. For the cosmos to understand us. And yet, our existence was manifested within silence. And yet, our being is engulfed into nothingness. Look around. There is nothing to see. Except the things that you do. Speak not. Isn't it strange how wise you feel?

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Philosophy Wire: Time travel. Paradoxes. Deranged logic.

Paradox-free time travel is theoretically possible, according to the mathematical modelling of an undergraduate student. [1] Humans. Always trying to get rid of the paradoxes. And yet, life is full of them. How can Being be without the Irrational? How can wisdom exist without the craziness? In a world with no meaning, how can you search for it unless you are truly crazy? In a world of nothingness how can you seek anything, unless completely deranged? Travel through time. With no paradoxes created. Is there anything more paradoxical than that? Look. It is you. Travelled through time. To speak. (Be honest. Don’t be afraid.) In a world filled with silence, the greatest paradox of them all is what you experience each day. (Can you listen to what I said yesterday?)

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Philosophy Wire: Solitary…

A study found solitary activities like fishing, hunting or exploring outside are key to building strong bonds between children and nature. [1] Stand alone. It is the only way to discover nothing. And in the midst of everything. Listen to yourself whispering inside the void of existence…

(“I am not alone”)

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Philosophy Wire: Flies. Humans. Cosmos.

Humans and flies employ very similar mechanisms for brain development and function. [1] Flies and humans. Same. And yet so different. Humans writing. Flies buzzing. We try to understand the cosmos. All the flies do, is to disturb us.

Petty flies!
Behold!
I am the creator!

The conqueror of the universe.
I understand myself!
At the end.
I even managed to fly!

But the flies…
Never manage to…
Oh, no!

Why is that fly bothering me while I write?!?

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Philosophy Wire: Learn! Un-Learn! Teach!

Rice University computer scientists have overcome a major obstacle in the burgeoning artificial intelligence industry by showing it is possible to speed up deep learning technology without specialized acceleration hardware like graphics processing units (GPUs). Rice researchers created a cost-saving alternative to GPU, an algorithm called "sub-linear deep learning engine" (SLIDE) that uses general purpose central processing units (CPUs) without specialized acceleration hardware. [1] Learn! But what is there to learn?! We are not wise because of what we add to our knowledge. We are wise because we forget and we unlearn. Because we discard whatever the world has taught us. So that we can teach him… Stop watching the river… For the river is already watching you…

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Philosophy Wire: Mature…

Photo by Spyridon Kakos @ Pexels

Early life experiences biologically and functionally mature the brain. Experiences early in life have an impact on the brain's biological and functional development, shows a new study by a team of neuroscientists. [1] How could it be any other way? We change. We mature. At the end we die. When are we most wise? Is it the child that governs your life? Or the old man sitting silently? Humans. Always seeking answers in false dichotomies. Neither the kid nor the old man are the key. Look around. See. The kid is laughing. The old man is crying. Both looking at the river passing by…

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Philosophy Wire: Sick. Healthy. Irrelevant questions. Irrelevant answers…

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A study has shown few differences in the profiles of genes that influence cognition between people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and the general population. This surprising finding could provide new insights into therapies designed to improve cognition. [1] Healthy people. Sick people. And beyond them, a cosmos which doesn’t care who lives or dies. Is it a hard cosmos? Or are we just irrelevant? Are we unable to find answers? Or is it that our questions are unconnected to the answers we seek? People being born. People dying. And kids playing. It is a weird world. Only until we stop believing that we are not…

Laugh.

And everything will instantly stop being funny…

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Philosophy Wire: Collective wisdom. Your wisdom.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2023-01-15]: In 1906, Francis Galton was at a country fair where attendees had the opportunity to guess the weight of a dead ox. Galton took the guesses of 787 fair-goers and found that the average guess was only one pound off of the correct weight -- even when individual guesses were off base. [1] Ask me. And I will lie to you. Ask the cosmos. And you will listen to the truth. Are you ready to accept the truth? Are you ready to accept you? Ask me. And I will tell you the truth. Only if you know it already…

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Philosophy Wire: Hidden data… Dark sun…

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Researchers have discovered a new method for turning nearly any object into a data storage unit. This makes it possible to save extensive data in, say, shirt buttons, water bottles or even the lenses of glasses, and then retrieve it years later. The technique also allows users to hide information and store it for later generations. It uses DNA as the storage medium. [1] It is easy to store data in everything. Because everything is data. From the button of your shirt to the hair on your head, everything contains information and is information on its own. Look at that sun. Carrying all the information you need. Dreams and shattered hopes. Cries and loving words. Agony and despair. Hope and anticipation. It will fade away. And only then will you understand that it was not the sun shining. But your tears and your agony. Through the ages, the cosmos is full of nothingness. Full of silence speaking wisdom through its stillness. Reflected on blood. Reflected on dirt. Reflected on the void of space. No, nothing can store information. But everything can hide it. Look at that Sun. You must burn your eyes staring at it. To appreciate its darkness…

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Philosophy Wire: New languages. Logos. Children. Silence.

Photo by Spiros Kakos

How did the almost 6,000 languages of the world come into being? Researchers have tried to simulate the process of developing a new communication system in an experiment -- with surprising results: even preschool children can spontaneously develop communication systems that exhibit core properties of natural language. [1] There you are. Logos out of children. Language out of nothing. We admire the creation of new languages. But it is something so common that even kindergarten children can perform. No, we do not grow wiser as we get older. We just deteriorate into existence. What Is cannot speak. What Is should not be. Don’t listen to me. Listen to your children crying in despair. While their parents are teaching them how to speak…

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Philosophy Wire: Polite robots… Desperate humans…

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New members of online communities are more likely to stick around if they're welcomed by fellow members - but Nickerson and his team found that new Wikipedia users who interacted with advisor- and protector-bots were significantly more likely to become long-term contributors than those greeted by humans. That remained true even when the bots were contacting users to point out errors or delete their contributions, as long as the bots were cordial and clear about their reasons. [1] All we want is love. And kindness. And even when it is not there, we will invent it. And we will see through this rough cosmos at its true potential. And we will find love where there is only void. And we will see death where all we saw was the terror of life…

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Philosophy Wire: Having fun!

Lab rats play hide-and-seek for the fun of it, new study shows. [1] But why limit the study to games? The whole life is a game. A joke. Something to laugh at. Don’t get me wrong. With jokes one says the most serious things, as Oscar Wilde said (or was he joking?). Wise men never feared of death. Not because they did not understand its significance. But because they felt there were more important things transcending existence. Remember Velimirovic! We came into this forest without ever knowing why. And we fear of getting out. Come on. Play in the wilderness. In a world full of cries and tears, how could you not laugh?

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Philosophy Wire: Plants. Consciousness. Death.

If a tree falls, and no one's there to hear it, does it feel pain and loneliness? No, experts argue in an opinion article publishing in the journal Trends in Plant Science. They draw this conclusion from recent research which explores the evolution of consciousness through comparative studies of simple and complex animal brains. [1] Consciousness. So proud we are off having it. And yet, the greatest wisdom stems from the ability of man to let go and think unconsciously. Inside a forest. Along beautiful plants. Acknowledging that it doesn't matter. And with humbleness in front of the unconscious plants. Die smiling… See. You are still alive! Can you smell the Jasmine?

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Philosophy Wire: Genes from nothing… Nothingness full of something…

One key question in evolutionary biology is how novel genes arise and develop. Researchers now show how new genes and functions that are advantageous to bacteria can be selected from random DNA sequences. [1]

Genes from nowhere.
Humans from nothing.
Existence from the void of emptiness.
No, the world is not miraculous.
We just need to change the definition of nothing to something…

We hate nothing. And even though we constantly use it to refer to the cosmos and our self, we never truly believed in it. The nothing we believe in is a life giving nothingness. The void we refer to is a void giving birth to universes.

We hate nothing. For we are everything.
And even in our darkest times…
While still being blinded by sunlight…
We can still recall the Moon…
And with closed eyes. We still dream of sleepless nights…

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Philosophy Wire: Unremarkable… Wise…

A surgeon might never feel the need to ask an AI for advice, much less allow it to make a clinical decision for them, researchers say. But an AI might guide decisions if it were embedded in the decision-making routines already used by the clinical team, providing AI-generated predictions and evaluations as part of the overall mix of information. It's an approach they call ''Unremarkable AI.'' [1] One day what is remarkable will be unremarkable. One day, the unremarkable will astonish us. In a universe of life, everything dies. In a cosmos without nothing, eventually anything can be. In a cosmos full of knowledge, wisdom is remarkable. To those who can only see through its lenses. Look at the calm sea. There is nothing there to see. Except the whole cosmos…

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Philosophy Wire: Source of language… Silence… Wisdom…

Origin of Sino-Tibetan language family revealed by new research. [1] We try to find the source of languages in other languages. But what we blatantly ignore, is that the source of the first language was silence… Logos has its foundations in the void of the irrational… Standing in the midst of existence… This is the great secret that Logos whispers us… Do you dare to listen? Between the trees, a voiceless wind whispers the secret… “There is no secret”…

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Philosophy Wire: AI. Through the mirror.

Can artificial intelligence (AI) help us understand how the brain understands language? Can neuroscience help us understand why AI and neural networks are effective at predicting human perception? Researchers have described the results of experiments that used artificial neural networks to predict with greater accuracy than ever before how different areas in the brain respond to specific words. The work employed a type of recurrent neural network called long short-term memory (LSTM) that includes in its calculations the relationships of each word to what came before to better preserve context. [1]

We believe that AI can predict our behavior.

But this is possible only because it is us who think like computers, not computers who can understand how we think. For true wisdom has nothing to do with understanding. But with acceptance of your inability to understand anything.

Watching the cosmos.

No one can truly understand you.
And you can understand nothing.
You are the cosmos.
And the cosmos is you.
You will never understand it.
Because you love that cosmos.

See yourself in the mirror.
Smiling.
Can you cry?

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Philosophy Wire: No noise… No words… Just listen…

Researchers have demonstrated it's possible to silence noise using an open, ring-like structure, created to mathematically perfect specifications, for cutting out sounds while maintaining airflow. [1] Air flowing through your lungs. Going out to form words. Words forming meaning. But there is sound in the words you utter. For they are words of the mind. Meant to be heard by the heart. Inside a cosmos engulfed in silence. Silence broken only by the sound of a lonely man. Sitting alone under a tree. Trying to listen…

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Philosophy Wire: Measuring wisdom…

Researchers report that persons with schizophrenia scored lower on a wisdom assessment than non-psychiatric comparison participants, but that there was considerable variability in levels of wisdom, and those with higher scores displayed fewer psychotic symptoms. [1] Humans. Measuring everything. By measures they invented. Based on things they know. Trying to understand what they never will. Wanting to touch the untouchable. But without ever letting go. Humans. Measuring wisdom. How unwise…

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