May 6, 2013
Deception in animals is the giving of information by one animal to another, of the same or different species, in a way that propagates beliefs that are not true. Deception in animals does not automatically imply conscious mind, but can occur at different levels. Mimicry and camouflage enable animals to appear to be other than they are.
Prey animals may appear as predators, or vice versa; both predators and prey may be hard to see (crypsis), or may be mistaken for other objects (mimesis). In Batesian mimicry, harmless animals may appear to be distasteful or poisonous. In automimicry, animals may have eyespots in less important parts of the body than the head, helping to distract attack and increase the chance of survival.
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May 3, 2013
The Eureka effect, also known as the ‘aha! effect,’ refers to the common human experience of suddenly understanding a previously incomprehensible problem or concept. The Eureka effect is named after the myth that the Greek polymath Archimedes, having discovered how to measure the volume of an irregular object, leaped out of a public bath, and ran home naked shouting ‘eureka’ (‘I found it’). Archimedes was asked by the local king to detect whether a crown was pure gold, or if the goldsmith had added silver.
During his trip to the public bath, he noticed that water is displaced when his body sinks into the bath, and that the volume of water displaced equals the volume of the body immersed in the water. This means that he can measure the density of the crown, and compare it to a bar of pure gold. This story is thought to be a myth, because it was first mentioned by the Roman writer Vitruvius nearly 200 years later, and because the method described by Vitruvius would have been inaccurate.
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May 1, 2013
An intuition pump is a thought experiment structured to elicit intuitive answers about a problem. The term was coined by Daniel Dennett. In ‘Consciousness Explained,’ he uses the term pejoratively to describe John Searle’s ‘Chinese room’ thought experiment, characterizing it as designed to elicit intuitive but incorrect answers by formulating the description in such a way that important implications of the experiment would be difficult to imagine and tend to be ignored.
Searle’s experiment supposes that there is a program that gives a computer the ability to carry on an intelligent conversation in written Chinese. If the program is given to someone who speaks only English to execute the instructions of the program by hand, then in theory, the English speaker would also be able to carry on a conversation in written Chinese. However, the English speaker would not be able to understand the conversation.
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April 29, 2013
The Red Delicious is a clone of apple cultigen, now comprising more than 50 cultivars, that was recognized in Madison County, Iowa in 1880. As new cultivars with improved color and earlier harvestability have replaced the original cultivar in commercial orchards, the taste and texture of the harvested commodity have deteriorated, and many customers have begun to reject the Red Delicious at markets.
Apple expert, Roger Yepsen notes some of the Red’s less desirable qualities: ‘The skin is thick and bitter and has to be chewed vigorously… this apple ranks close to the bottom when cooked… sold year round, so shop with skepticism. Delicious retains its cheerful good looks long after its flavor has departed.’
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April 25, 2013
Evidence of absence is evidence of any kind that suggests something is missing or that it does not exist. For example, suppose a baker never fails to put newly finished pies on her windowsill; therefore, if there is no pie on the windowsill, no newly finished pies exist.
Per the traditional aphorism, ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,’ positive evidence of this kind is distinct from a lack of evidence or ignorance of that which should have been found already, had it existed. In this regard American philosopher Irving Copi writes: ‘In some circumstances it can be safely assumed that if a certain event had occurred, evidence of it could be discovered by qualified investigators. In such circumstances it is perfectly reasonable to take the absence of proof of its occurrence as positive proof of its non-occurrence.
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April 25, 2013
The Wizards Project was a research project at the University of California, San Francisco led by psychologists Paul Ekman and Maureen O’Sullivan that studied the ability of people to detect lies. O’Sullivan spent more than 20 years studying the science of lying and deceit.
The project was originally named the ‘Diogenes Project,’ after the Diogenes, the Greek philosopher who would look into people’s faces using a lamp, claiming to be looking for an honest man. The project defined a ‘Truth Wizard’ as a person identified who can identify deception with accuracy of at least 80%, whereas the average person rates around 50%. No Truth Wizard was 100% accurate.
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April 24, 2013
The Relativity of Wrong is a 1988 essay collection by Isaac Asimov, which takes its title from the most ambitious essay it contains. Like most of the essays Asimov wrote for ‘F&SF Magazine,’ each one in ‘The Relativity of Wrong’ begins with an autobiographical anecdote which serves to set the tone.
Several of the essays form a sequence explaining the discovery and uses of isotopes; the introductory passages in these essays recount Asimov’s not particularly pleasant personal relationship with physical chemist Harold C. Urey, whom he met at Columbia University.
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April 24, 2013
The phrase not even wrong is generally attributed to theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who was known for his colorful objections to incorrect or sloppy thinking. Rudolf Peierls writes that ‘a friend showed Pauli the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli’s views. Pauli remarked sadly, ‘It is not even wrong.” Peierls remarks that quite a few apocryphal stories of this kind have been circulated and mentions that he listed only the ones personally vouched by him. He also quotes another example when Pauli replied to Lev Landau: ‘What you said was so confused that one could not tell whether it was nonsense or not.’
It has come to be used to describe any argument that purports to be scientific but fails at some fundamental level, usually in that it cannot be falsified (i.e., tested with the possibility of being rejected) by experiment or cannot be used to make predictions about the natural world. ‘Not even wrong’ has also been used by Peter Woit to mean proposed scientific theories that are well-meaning and based on current scientific knowledge, but can neither be used for prediction nor falsified. He has applied the phrase to aspects of string theory in physics on the grounds that, although mathematically elegant, it does not currently provide predictions or tests.
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April 22, 2013
In philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, cognitive closure is the proposition that human minds are constitutionally incapable of solving certain perennial philosophical problems.
Neurobiologist Owen Flanagan calls this position ‘anti-constructive naturalism’ or the ‘new mysterianism’ and the primary advocate of the hypothesis, Colin McGinn, calls it ‘transcendental naturalism’ because it acknowledges the possibility that solutions might fall within the grasp of an intelligent non-human of some kind. According to McGinn, such philosophical questions include the mind-body problem, identity of the self, foundations of meaning, free will, and knowledge, both a priori and empirical.
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April 22, 2013
Rust is a type of corrosion (the breakdown of materials due to reactions with their surroundings). Normally, when a material corrodes it becomes weaker, however some forms of high temperature corrosion can lead to the formation of protective compacted oxide layer glazes. Iron corrosion is called rusting.
When exposed to air or water for a long time, iron slowly decomposes into other chemicals, because of a reaction with oxygen molecules (air and water contain oxygen). Many other metals undergo equivalent corrosion, but the resulting oxides are not commonly called rust.
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April 18, 2013
Cephalopod [sef-uh-luh-pod] intelligence has an important comparative aspect in the understanding of intelligence because it relies on a nervous system fundamentally different from that of vertebrates. The cephalopod class of molluscs, particularly the Coleoidea subclass (cuttlefish, squid and octopuses), are considered the most intelligent invertebrates and an important example of advanced cognitive evolution in animals.
The scope of cephalopod intelligence is controversial, complicated by the challenges of studying these elusive and fundamentally different creatures. Classical conditioning of cephalopods has been reported, and a study in 1992 concluded that octopuses practice observational learning. However, the latter idea is strongly disputed, and doubt has been shed on some other reported capabilities as well. In any case, impressive spatial learning capacity, navigational abilities, and predatory techniques remain beyond question.
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April 17, 2013
The Yerkes–Dodson law is an empirical relationship between arousal and performance, originally developed by psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson in 1908. The law dictates that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only up to a point. When levels of arousal become too high, performance decreases. The process is often illustrated graphically as a curvilinear, inverted U-shaped curve which increases and then decreases with higher levels of arousal.
Research has found that different tasks require different levels of arousal for optimal performance. For example, difficult or intellectually demanding tasks may require a lower level of arousal (to facilitate concentration), whereas tasks demanding stamina or persistence may be performed better with higher levels of arousal (to increase motivation).
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