Intelligent people have 'unnatural' preferences and values that are novel in human evolution

Physorg.com article link

"More intelligent people are significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.

The study, published in the March 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Social Psychology Quarterly, advances a new theory to explain why people form particular preferences and values. The theory suggests that more intelligent people are more likely than less intelligent people to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values, but intelligence does not correlate with preferences and values that are old enough to have been shaped by evolution over millions of years."

"Evolutionarily novel" preferences and values are those that humans are not biologically designed to have and our ancestors probably did not possess. In contrast, those that our ancestors had for millions of years are "evolutionarily familiar."

"General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions," says Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science. "As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognize and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles.

An earlier study by Kanazawa found that more intelligent individuals were more nocturnal, waking up and staying up later than less intelligent individuals. Because our ancestors lacked artificial light, they tended to wake up shortly before dawn and go to sleep shortly after dusk. Being nocturnal is evolutionarily novel.

In the current study, Kanazawa argues that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends, and being liberal, caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers they never meet or interact with, is evolutionarily novel. So more intelligent children may be more likely to grow up to be liberals."


I dont care if you're liberal, conservative, Christian, Muslim or a damn rock at the bottom of a river. This article states that progressive social growth is BASED on going against mainstream ideals regarding more common social structures. I see a complete lack of rational thought in our culture and world. It makes me ill that the majority of people are robotic and driven by instincts based on power and control games, without ever considering individuality based on compassion.

If we are to ever see some sort of better world, then it will take ego-driven human behaviors to be looked upon as a negative in our world. But instead, these behaviors are worshiped and way too common. These behaviors oppress, kill, torture and lead to an overall hellish existence for those perceived as "lower". I'm not talking about acting different, I'm talking about being different. Turning against petty social games, hurtful "mating" rituals and fear-driven behaviors that oppress those who wish to live a peaceful and meaningful life. These behaviors satisfy selfish instincts that have been proven to be a negative evolutionary growth path in our world. Count me out, because I refuse to ignore the intelligence that nature has given me. - Toby

Life beyond our universe?

Physicists explore the possibility of life in universes with laws different from our own - Physorg.com link

"Whether life exists elsewhere in our universe is a longstanding mystery. But for some scientists, there?s another interesting question: could there be life in a universe significantly different from our own?

A definitive answer is impossible, since we have no way of directly studying other universes. But cosmologists speculate that a multitude of other universes exist, each with its own laws of physics. Recently physicists at MIT have shown that in theory, alternate universes could be quite congenial to life, even if their physical laws are very different from our own."

West Brain, East Brain

Newsweek - What a Difference Culture Makes

"...Still, scientists have been surprised at how deeply culture—the language we speak, the values we absorb—shapes the brain, and are rethinking findings derived from studies of Westerners. To take one recent example, a region behind the forehead called the medial prefrontal cortex supposedly represents the self: it is active when we ("we" being the Americans in the study) think of our own identity and traits. But with Chinese volunteers, the results were strikingly different. The "me" circuit hummed not only when they thought whether a particular adjective described themselves, but also when they considered whether it described their mother. The Westerners showed no such overlap between self and mom. Depending whether one lives in a culture that views the self as autonomous and unique or as connected to and part of a larger whole, this neural circuit takes on quite different functions."


I can't keep up
Can't keep up
Can't keep up
Out of step with the world - Minor Threat.


There's an oriented public who's magnetic force does pull
But away from the potential of the individual - Bad Religion

I thought this was pretty awesome...

The Illusion of Time in the Reality of Our Life

Ralph Abraham Professor of Mathematics and Chaos Theory.

Maya: The world as a virtual reality

Richard L. Thompson is a mathematician, who received his Ph.D. in probability theory and statistical mechanics from Cornell University in 1974. He went on to do research in quantum physics and mathematical biology at the State University of New York at Binghamton, Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, and the La Jolla Institute in San Diego. He has written over 25 academic papers, scripts for several video productions, and several books on science and philosophy including: Mechanistic and Nonmechanistic Science, Vedic Cosmography and Astronomy, and Mysteries of the Sacred Universe. He also has a number of published works in the field of mathematical biology including the textbook Computer Simulations of Self-Organization in Biological Systems with N. S. Goel.

www.simulatedworlds.com

"In the world of modern science, consciousness is reduced to a fading epiphenomenon, left over after the brain has been physically explained. It seems to arise when matter is suitably organized, but scientists and philosophers have been unable to explain why complex organization should produce anything beyond complex physical behavior. Yet consciousness won't go away.

One possibility is that, instead of being produced by matter, consciousness is a separate element, added to physical systems. This can be modeled using the idea of a virtual reality, in which a human subject enters a computer-simulated world through a sensory interface. In this book, virtual reality is used as a metaphor for our situation as conscious beings. The basic theme is that what we can imagine doing in a virtual reality system may actually be happening in nature on a vastly greater scale. Nature may be like a computer simulation interfaced with conscious observer / participant .

This groundbreaking book shows how conscious beings could interact with a physically realistic virtual world. It shows how both paranormal phenomena and religious experiences can be reconciled in a natural way with the laws of physics, and it sheds light on paradoxes of time, on life beyond the body, and on cosmic and terrestrial evolution. In a sweeping synthesis, the ideas and data of modern science are used to illuminate the ancient theme of consciousness in a world of illusion."

http://www.simulatedworlds.com/main.html

Researchers demonstrate mosquito laser in action

In the video below, you can watch what happens to a mosquito at the instant it's zapped by a laser, all in slow-motion. Nathan Myhrvold’s company, Intellectual Ventures, has been developing the mosquito laser since 2008. Myhrvold recently demonstrated the device at the annual TED conference in Long Beach, Calif.

What is Consciousness?

This is a really cool slideshow on human consciousness by Stuart Hameroff, a physician and consciousness researcher at the University of Arizona Medical Center.

Click here for link

I think therefore I confuse myself alot. - Toby

Reality Shifts

Reality Shifters

"Time shifting is a relatively new term which describes the ancient phenomenon observed by shamans, yogis, and other spiritual adepts capable of accessing, experiencing and influencing events in the past, present, and future. Time shifts are reality shifts in which the dimension of reality we know as "time" undergoes some kind of observable transformation. Time shifts appear to us in such a way that we can observe them in the form of time loops, time travel, time slowing down, and retrocausality'.


Paper on the topic of Retrocausality by physicist Dr. Fred Alan Wolf:

THE TIMING OF CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE: A CAUSALITY-VIOLATING, TWO-VALUED, TRANSACTIONAL INTERPRETATION OF SUBJECTIVE ANTEDATING AND SPATIAL-TEMPORAL PROJECTION

"Quantum systems in the time interval between two events, so-called two-time observables (TTO), are known to behave in a manner quite differently from expectations based on initial value quantum mechanics. According to the transactional interpretation (TI) of quantum physics, wave functions can be pictured as offer and echo waves—the offer wave passing from an initial event, i, to a future event, a, and the echo wave, the complex conjugate of the offer wave, passing from a back in time toward i. TTO and the TI have been used to explain certain quantum physical temporal anomalies, such as non-locality, contrafactuality, and future-to-present causation as explicitly shown in Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment. Experimental evidence involving neurological functioning and subjective awareness indicates the presence of the same anomalies.

Here I propose a model based on TTO and the TI wherein two neural events are ultimately responsible for backwards-through-time wave function collapse in the intervening spacetime interval. After providing a simple argument showing how quantum physics applies to neurological functioning and a simple demonstration of how the TI and TTO explain the delayed choice paradox, I propose that such pairs of causality-violating events must occur in the brain in order that a single experience in consciousness take place in the observer accompanied by a single change in the observed quantum system.

Using this proposition I offer a quantum physical resolution—similar to that of the delayed choice experiment—of the "delay-and-antedating" hypothesis/paradox put forward by Libet et al to explain certain temporal anomalies associated with a delay time, D, required for passive perception experienced by experimental subjects including the blocking of sensory awareness normally experienced at time t by a cortical signal at later time t+fD (0< f£ 1) and the reversal in time of the sensory awareness of the events corresponding to cortical and peripheral stimuli.

The model may be a first step towards the development of a quantum physical theory of subjective awareness and suggests that biological systems evolve and continue to function in accordance with TTO and consequently a causality-violating, two-valued, TI of quantum mechanics. The model successfully predicts and explains Libet’s temporal anomalies and makes a new prediction about the timings of passive bodily sensory experiences and imagined or phantom sensory experiences. The predictions of the model are compared with experimental data indicating agreement."

Intersting article about Anti-depressants

Studies suggest that the popular drugs are no more effective than a placebo. In fact, they may be worse. - Click here for full article

"As more and more scientists who study depression and the drugs that treat it are concluding, that suggests that antidepressants are basically expensive Tic Tacs.

Hence the moral dilemma. The placebo effect—that is, a medical benefit you get from an inert pill or other sham treatment—rests on the holy trinity of belief, expectation, and hope."

Mandelbrot to Mandelbulb - 3D Infinity

Yet again, my mind is blown. - Toby

Magnapinna squid

New Research Rejects Theory of 'Primordial Soup' as the Origin of Life

New Research Rejects 80-Year Theory of 'Primordial Soup' as the Origin of Life

"For 80 years it has been accepted that early life began in a 'primordial soup' of organic molecules before evolving out of the oceans millions of years later. Today the 'soup' theory has been over turned in a pioneering paper in BioEssays which claims it was the Earth's chemical energy, from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, which kick-started early life".

Quantum Mechanics at Work in Photosynthesis

Scientists find quantum mechanics at work in photosynthesis

"This and other recent discoveries have captured the attention of researchers for several reasons," says Scholes. "First, it means that quantum mechanical probability laws can prevail over the classical laws of kinetics in this complex biological system, even at normal temperatures. The energy can thereby flow efficiently by -- counter intuitively -- traversing several alternative paths through the antenna proteins simultaneously. It also raises some other potentially fascinating questions, such as, have these organisms developed quantum-mechanical strategies for light-harvesting to gain an evolutionary advantage? It suggests that algae knew about quantum mechanics nearly two billion years before humans," says Scholes."

This is simply staggering. - Toby

Jumbo Squid Invade California Waters

Predatory jumbo flying squid invade California waters

Hubble Sights Strange Object Traveling at 11,000 MPH

Suspected Asteroid Collision Leaves Odd X-Pattern of Trailing Debris

"February 2, 2010: Something awfully curious is happening 100 million miles from Earth in the asteroid belt. There's a newly discovered object that superficially looks like a comet but lives among the asteroids. The distinction? Comets swoop along elliptical orbits close in to the Sun and grow long gaseous and dusty tails, as ices near the surface turn into vapor and release dust. But asteroids are mostly in circular orbits in the asteroid belt and are not normally expected to be "volatile."

The mystery object was discovered on January 6, 2010, by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) sky survey. The object appears so unusual in ground-based telescopic images that discretionary time on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope was used to take a close-up look. The observations show a bizarre X-pattern of filamentary structures near the point-like nucleus of the object and trailing streamers of dust. This complex structure suggests the object is not a comet but instead the product of a head-on collision between two asteroids traveling five times faster than a rifle bullet. Astronomers have long thought that the asteroid belt is being ground down through collisions, but such a smashup has never before been seen." - Hubblesite.com