Monthly Archives: March 2019

Open Thread 124.5

This is the twice-weekly hidden open thread. You can also talk at the SSC subreddit or the SSC Discord server.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 955 Comments

Two Wolves And A Sheep

Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. “Mutton” takes the popular vote, but “grass” wins in the Electoral College. The wolves wish they hadn’t all moved into the same few trendy coastal cities. Democracy … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 240 Comments

Partial Retraction Of Post On Animal Value And Neural Number

[EDIT: This partial retraction has been updated and itself partially retracted, see here] Commenter Tibbar used Mechanical Turk to replicate my survey on how people thought about the moral weights of animals. After getting 263 responses (to my 50), he … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 41 Comments

Open Thread 124.25

This is the twice-weekly hidden open thread. You can also talk at the SSC subreddit or the SSC Discord server.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 1,109 Comments

[PARTIALLY RETRACTED] Cortical Neuron Number Matches Intuitive Perceptions Of Moral Value Across Animals

[EDIT: No longer confident in this post, see here.] Yesterday’s post reviewed research showing that animals’ intelligence seemed correlated with their number of cortical neurons. If this is true, we could use it to create an absolute scale that puts … Continue reading

Neurons And Intelligence: A Birdbrained Perspective

Elephants have bigger brains than humans, so why aren’t they smarter than we are? The classic answer has been to play down absolute brain size in favor of brain size relative to body. Sometimes people justify this as “it takes … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 139 Comments

OT124: Opentatonic Thread

This is the bi-weekly visible open thread (there are also hidden open threads twice a week you can reach through the Open Thread tab on the top of the page). Post about anything you want, but please try to avoid … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 1,066 Comments

Translating Predictive Coding Into Perceptual Control

Wired wrote a good article about Karl Friston, the neuroscientist whose works I’ve puzzled over here before. Raviv writes: Friston’s free energy principle says that all life…is driven by the same universal imperative…to act in ways that reduce the gulf … Continue reading

Open Thread 123.75

This is the twice-weekly hidden open thread. You can also talk at the SSC subreddit or the SSC Discord server.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 762 Comments

Book Review: Inventing The Future

I. They say “don’t judge a book by its cover”. So in case you were withholding judgment: yes, this bright red book covered with left-wing slogans is, in fact, communist. Inventing The Future isn’t technically Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams’ … Continue reading