What are the memories of men? How many can they be? Where are they? Who can tell them? What can they tell? Why is it worth talking about? How can they be found out? Should they be preserved? Where are they hiding? Memories are also called remembrance, they can be stored not only on the paper page, with images and symbols, but also in bits & bytes, on the digital page, which then becomes dynamic. MEDIUM is the ideal place.

Memories

Amelia and I will remember in days the memory of our wedding on August 3, 1972. It was a Thursday. Our first fifty years of marriage, celebrated in the Cathedral of Amalfi by Father Alfonso Arpino, my mother’s brother, together with Mons. Riccardo Arpino, concelebrant for the occasion.To make 50 years, half a century, it takes 600 months, 2608.93 weeks, 18.262.5 days, 26.298.000 minutes. This is the space we call time, provided we know what this space is made of.

Amelia and I

The word “time” is undoubtedly one of the most used and mysterious words in all languages. Yet its use does not explain its meaning. The word is referred to in countless contexts. The many possible synonyms make me lose myself in a forest of meanings that take me far away, but I will never be able to return to the decisive station, the one of departure: that Thursday fifty years ago at 18.00. The only thing I remember well is that there was a storm in the morning. Then came the clear.

A Mystery  Word

Saint Augustine wrote in his “Confessions”: “What is time? If no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to anyone who asks me, I don’t know   anymore." Enlightening statement.Time exists. How else would we fix our watches? Time organizes our universe both mentally and physically. Do you think it would be our world if things were always the same and there was no time to change them. The question we must rather ask ourselves is whether time is really necessary. Perhaps the questions I ask myself are too difficult and someone will say, with an easy joke, that I am wasting time. Maybe.

Time Exists

If I think about that day, I relive something and see someone still in the present, but I know well that absence dominates. All I have left is the image of a place that is still present, I miss that time that appears to be lost and I delude myself to find it again, remembering.The past and the future are real. Not everyone agrees on this point. Intuitively we can say that “now”, this particular moment, is real, while the past has somehow been “fixed”, plastered, and exists only in books, documents, papers, photos, voices recorded in vanished faces. and disappeared.

The Past & The Future

The future in this image at the exit of the Church, after the ceremony, does not yet exist because it has not yet taken place. But physics teaches us that every moment, in the form of an event in both the past and the future, implies a present moment. A difficult fact to admit in our everyday life, but it is so. Although we may not be aware of what is happening around us at all times, we live in a reality of four dimensions: length, height, depth, in a “continuum” which is time. This wedding photo is both past and future in their reality. Our reality that we are celebrating.

A "Continuum"

Each of us perceives the sense of time in a different way. This is true in both a biological and a physical sense. For Newton, time was universal and common to all. Then Einstein came and explained that instead time for a person is closely related to his moving in space and to the force of gravity. From a psychological and biological point of view, the time measured by atomic clocks is not as important as that measured by our internal rhythms and the amount of memory that accumulates in each of us. Everything happens differently, it depends on who we are, on what happens to us.

Newton & Einstein

As we get older we find that time passes much faster than before. And the writer knows it well. If I ask Amelia, what she remembers of that day, I discover that her memories are not mine, her time is different from mine, as is her past in this shared present that yesterday was the future.We live in the past. Each of our actions before it is received by our brain takes an amount of time to be registered and recognized. To be precise 80 milliseconds. If I touch the tip of my nose or that of my foot, it will take longer to feel the action in my brain.

As We Get Older ...

Our conscious experience takes longer to assemble the sequence of actions. The perception of the moment, of now, can therefore be said to have already passed. Therefore, we live in the past. The distance between the things that happen and their perception is about 80 milliseconds. Science says it with its instruments, but our brains, Amelia’s and Antonio’s, relive the distance of this time-space in a completely different way. A surreal coexistence has made the past become the future and we continue to relive it in the present always in a different way.

We Live In The Past

Our memory is not always reliable. When we remember an event that happened in the past, our brain uses a technique very similar to imagining the future. The process is not like playing a video, but rather like staging a text. If the text is wrong for any reason, you may have a distorted memory similar to the real one. For this reason, visual evidence is very questionable and subjective and not always convergent in a court of law. You will never find two people who see a thing in the same way.

Our Memory

Whenever Amelia tells the events of her journey to get to the Cathedral of Amalfi on time she adds something not said, not remembered, not felt then, but recognized or found today. Is such a thing possible? But, then, does memory deceive us, deceive us or even recreate what never happened?Consciousness depends on knowing how to manipulate time. Many cognitive abilities are important for consciousness and are not yet well known to us. It is clear, however, that the ability to manipulate time and its possibilities is a crucial aspect of the problem.

Does Memory Deceive Us?

Land animals, unlike those of water, manage to possess a very broad visual trend in order to have enough time to choose from a range of actions and decide for the best. Consciousness would not be possible without the ability to imagine another time. But how many humans know they have a conscience? Did Amelia and I know that we would have to find the way and the way to build a new time for us, in a space as new and mysterious as it is unexplored and dangerous? The space of these fifty years is an almost metaphysical testimony.

A Metaphysical Testimony

The clutter increases as time passes. The difference between the past and the future, memory, aging, randomness and free will, rests on the fact that the universe is constantly evolving from order to disorder. Entropy is constantly increasing in the opinion of physicists. There are many ways of being disordered, the condition of which provides for a high entropy, compared to the order which has a low entropy. The increase in the latter, therefore, is completely natural. But to understand the low entropy of past times, we need to go back to the Big Bang.

Back To The Big Bang

Scientists have not yet been able to give an answer to why entropy was low at that time and how this increase affects memory and its randomness. Fifty years later, after our Big Bang, I would not be able to assess whether the entropy of our coexistence has been elevated or reduced, whether we have proceeded from order to disorder or vice versa.Complexity comes and goes. Unlike those who consider themselves creationists, most people have no problem evaluating the difference between “order” and “disorder”, that is, between low and high entropy.

Complexity

This entropy increases but the complexity is ephemeral, volatile, increases and decreases intricately, not without surprise. The work done by complex structures is to increase entropy as in the case of the origin of life. But we are far from understanding this truly unique phenomenon. I can say one thing certain in any case, and that is this half century of life lived in common has shown that experiencing complexity is the great challenge of those who decide to choose marriage and live in a condition of “order” imposed by a law, not only of nature, but also of law.

An Experience 

Aging can be reversed. We all age and this is part of the race towards ever-increasing disorder. But it is only the universe as the whole that must increase in entropy, not just each of its components. If we reverse the arrow of time in a living organism, we make a technological challenge but not a physical impossibility. We are making progress on new fronts such as stem cells, yeast and even mice and human muscle tissue. Someone thinks of eternal life, which is not imminent, but sooner or later something will happen. Many dare to believe and hope for it. But to do what? I then ask myself.

The Arrow Of Time

Personally, I would like to have the opportunity to start all over again. I don’t know what Amelia would do if she could reverse the arrow of time and go back to that day fifty years ago. To tell the truth, I can’t say either. A return to the past? Perhaps the future is better than daring the arrow.The average time of a life is made up of one billion heartbeats. Both simple and complex organisms die. It is sad to say but it is a necessary part of the picture of the human condition: life pushes the new, eliminating the old.

Life Pushes The New

There is a simple scale of values ​​in this sense and it concerns the body’s metabolism.To make fifty years of married life it takes two billion beats to challenge time and space together towards the spiritual metabolism.

A Spiritual Metabolism

What are the memories of men? How many can they be? Where are they? Who can tell them? What can they tell? Why is it worth talking about? How can they be found out? Should they be preserved? Where…

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

health

Health

problemsolving

Problem Solving

timemanagement

Time Management

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

Half century. Fifty years of marriage

Meats and meat substitutes<ul><li>beef</li><li>deli meats</li><li>game</li><li>lamb</li><li>organ meats</li><li>pork</li><li>poultry</li><li>sausages</li><li>tempeh</li><li>tofu, extra firm.</li></ul>Meats are perfect for keto. You can have beef, pork, lamb, wild game, and poultry of all kinds. Soy products like tofu and tempeh also work. You can also have deli meats like sausages and cold cuts. Choose items with no added sugars, starches, or breading to keep your carbs low.

Meat, poultry and substitutes

Keto-friendly fish and seafood<ul><li>anchovies</li><li>crab</li><li>fish of all types</li><li>lobster</li><li>shrimp</li><li>squid</li><li>tuna.</li></ul>Most fish and shellfish are keto-friendly. Fatty fishes such as salmon, sardines, mackerel, and herring are excellent choices, as are mild white fishes such as cod, halibut, and trout. Choose fish and seafood without added sugars or breading to keep your carbs low.

Fish and seafood

Eggs are delicious, portable, and vegetarian-friendly. Try them boiled, fried in butter, or in an omelet for a quick, inexpensive meal. Enjoy eggs as often as you’d like because when you avoid carbs, you don’t have to avoid dietary cholesterol.Ways to eat eggs<ul><li>boiled, hard or soft</li><li>fried</li><li>in quiches or frittatas</li><li>omelets</li><li>poached</li><li>scrambled.</li></ul>

Eggs

Best keto vegetables<ul><li>cauliflower</li><li>avocado</li><li>broccoli</li><li>cabbage</li><li>zucchini</li><li>spinach</li><li>asparagus</li><li>kale</li><li>green beans</li><li>brussels sprouts.</li></ul>Enjoy unlimited non-starchy vegetables such as leafy greens and crunchy salad veggies such as cucumber, celery, and radishes. Other favorites include cauliflower, cabbage, avocado, broccoli, and zucchini. Fresh or frozen, most vegetables that grow above-ground are keto-friendly. You can even eat a vegetarian keto diet.

Keto-friendly vegetables

Best keto fruits and berries<ul><li>blackberries</li><li>coconut</li><li>lemons</li><li>limes</li><li>raspberries</li><li>strawberries.</li></ul>Most tart fruits, such as berries, lemons, and limes are fine if you keep the serving size small. The same is true for melons because of their high water content. But almost all other fruit contains too much sugar. A small scoop of fresh berries served with real whipped cream and shaved dark chocolate makes a lush, delicious keto dessert.

Fruit and berries

Best keto nuts and seeds<ul><li>almonds</li><li>Brazil nuts</li><li>hazelnuts</li><li>macadamia nuts</li><li>peanuts</li><li>pecans</li><li>pine nuts</li><li>walnuts.</li></ul>Many nuts and seeds are low in carbs. Don’t eat too many! Start with just a few or up to ¼ cup (about 25 grams) for a snack. And the kind of nut you choose matters. Some nuts, such as cashews, are much higher in carbs than others, such as pecans or macadamia nuts. You can also enjoy pumpkin, sunflower, and other seeds on keto.

Nuts and seeds

Cheese, butter, and cream can all be part of a keto diet. Greek yogurt, in particular, makes for a protein-rich breakfast with few carbs. Avoid flavored low-fat yogurt that is often full of added sugar.Avoid drinking milk as the milk sugar quickly adds up (one glass = 15 grams of carbs). However, you can use it sparingly — a tablespoon or so — in your coffee. Also, regularly snacking on cheese when you’re not hungry is a common mistake that can slow down weight loss.

Cheese and full-fat dairy

Don’t fear fat. It can help you feel fuller longer. Most of your fat should come with protein-rich foods like meat, poultry, fish, and eggs. But you can also cook with olive oil, top your veggies with cheese, and add dressings to salads. Rich sauces — think Bearnaise sauce, garlic butter, and mayo — can also be part of a keto diet, but if you are trying to lose weight, use only enough to make your meals enjoyable.

Fats and sauces

<ul><li>Avoid sodas, candy, sports drinks, cookies, biscuits, desserts, cakes, pastries, sweetened yogurts, ice cream, and breakfast cereals.</li><li>Most fruit has too much sugar for keto. Mangoes, grapes, and bananas have an entire day’s worth of carbs in a one-cup (about 200 gram) serving.</li><li>Even savory products, such as ketchup, pasta sauce, and salad dressings often contain sugar. Read labels carefully to avoid these.</li><li>Natural sweeteners, such as honey, maple syrup, and agave are sugars. There are dozens of names for sugar. Try to avoid it, regardless of the name.</li></ul>

Avoid sugary food

All starches turn into sugar when digested. Starchy foods to avoid include bread, tortillas, pasta, rice, couscous, potatoes, French fries, chips, crisps, bagels, crackers, legumes (most dried beans), cereal, porridge, oatmeal, and muesli. Even whole grains and grain-like foods such as quinoa are just other forms of starch.There are many delicious substitutes for these foods that work on a keto diet. Try them out and you may not miss the carbs:<ul><li>Keto breads</li><li>Keto “pasta”</li><li>Keto “rice”</li><li>Keto porridge.</li></ul>

Avoid starchy food

Keto cookies, chocolate bars, and similar products are usually highly processed. Although they may contain less sugar and flour than their high-carb counterparts, they provide little nutritional value and may cause carb cravings. Overall, they can slow down weight loss progress.Ideally, avoid or limit them and go for nutrient-dense whole foods instead.

Limit special keto or low carb products

Drink water, coffee, tea, or the occasional glass of wine. For other ideas, choose from these:<ul><li>Water is the number one option. Have it right out of the tap or add flavor with a slice of cucumber or a couple of berries. </li><li>Coffee has no carbs. If you must have it sweetened, replace the sugar with a non-caloric sweetener. A small amount of milk or cream can be used. </li><li>Tea – Black, green, Orange Pekoe, mint, or herbal – most teas are carb-free.</li><li>Diet soda is good choice for some, but not for others. You might find diet soda is a helpful way to stop drinking sugary sodas. </li><li>Bone broth is full of nutrients a<warningtag>nd electrolytes. </warningtag></li></ul>

Drinks

<ul><li>Dry wine (red, rosé, and white) and champagne are keto-friendly in limited amounts. Wines that are typically low in carbs are merlot, pinot noir, cabernet, sauvignon blanc, pinot grigio, and chardonnay. </li><li>Distilled spirits, such as whisky, tequila, brandy, and vodka, have zero carbs.</li><li>Low-carb beer can be a good option. Beer usually has too many carbs for keto, but a few super low-carb beers do exist.</li><li>Keep in mind that the more alcohol you drink, the harder it is to lose weight because your body has to burn off alcohol calories first.</li></ul>

Alcoholic drinks

food

Food

exerciseandfitness

Exercise & Fitness

The Ketogenic Diet

All you need to know about what to eat and what to avoid on a keto diet.

Not sure what foods to eat on a keto diet? Enjoy our simple food list and visual guides, showing you what to eat and avoid on keto. For example, keto vegetables, fruits, snacks, alcohol, fats & sauces.

Keto Diet Foods: What to Eat and Avoid – Diet Doctor

Ostriches can't fly, but no birds can match their speed on land. <ul><li>Ostriches are the fastest running birds in the world!</li><li>Scientists have seen ostriches run continuously at speeds of 30-37 mph and sprint up to 43 mph. </li><li>With their long, strong legs ostriches can cover more than 10 feet in a single stride.</li></ul>

Do ostriches fly?

We’ve answered some of the most-searched questions about ostriches to get you better acquainted with these big, flightless birds.

How Fast is an Ostrich? And More Fun Facts

It turns out though that hair and fur are chemically indistinguishable, both made up of keratin. The argument that is often cited as to why there must be a difference is that human hair will just keep growing forever, while most animal “fur” stops at a set length.

Is hair fur?

There is No Difference Between Fur and Hair

A few years back, a government science agency did a poll to try to understand the public’s perceptions of the work they funded. One of the biggest surprises was how people felt about public funding for “basic research.” Most people felt the government should not be spending tax money on “basic research” at all. Instead, those funds should go into “advanced research”. The results showed a clear gap between what scientists mean by basic research, and what almost everyone else thinks it means.

Non-Scientists Misunderstand What Basic Research Is

For scientists, basic research really means fundamental research. But to understand its meaning even better, we need to contrast the idea of “basic” with that of “applied.” There is no immediate application for the fruits of basic research. They will not immediately become a gizmo in our next car or a molecule in our next medicine. Instead, the point of basic research is something far less tangible: pure understanding. That is why scientists call it fundamental. The goal is to understand some aspect of a subject at its most essential level.

Basic Research = Fundamental Research 

The history of scientific research is full of helpful examples. In 1905, for instance, Albert Einstein published his epoch-making paper on the theory of special relativity, which focused on the most basic concepts physics uses to understand everything: matter, motion, and energy. The versions of those concepts that still prevailed at that time had been developed a few hundred years earlier by Isaac Newton.

Basic Research Examples

Einstein saw how limited were Newton’s descriptions of these fundamental players in physics. The relationships Newtonian physics described between, say, energy and motion (i.e., velocity) did not tell the whole story. Einstein developed a more basic, more fundamental understanding of such relationships, and in the process, he gave physics new equations like E = mc2 .Einstein’s basic research changed the world forever. A list of the actual downstream applications from his paper would easily be as long as 2 ft. and would include everything from radiation therapy to hyper-accurate GPS satellites.

Basic Research Changes The World Forever

When Einstein was working on this paper, he was not thinking about how these formulas would be applied to any particular industry, or to the medical field. He was no doubt aware that his ideas would find such applications. They were too important not to become the foundation for new machines and new techniques that would affect everyday life. But applications were just not what he was doing or why he was doing it.

Basic Research Is After Pure Understanding

The Einstein example shows that basic research is, indeed, very advanced. In fact, it is the most advanced of all the kinds of research out there, because it pushes at the frontiers of knowledge. In today’s world, such basic research takes many forms. In cosmology, it is about understanding the first few instants after the big bang. In biology, it is about understanding how life uses information to carry out its most basic tasks. In cognitive science, it is about understanding how the brain sorts its many inputs into what is relevant and what is not.

The Fringes And The Frontiers

The most important point about basic research is that it is almost always the key to cutting-edge applied research. All of the specific applied research that led to the zillions of technological marvels we encounter every day began with someone asking a very basic question, applied to nothing.What we call “basic research” is actually the most cutting-edge. It underpins knowledge, and without it, technology does not come into being.

Asking A Very Basic Question, Applied To Nothing

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

Everything should be done as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

A lesson on basic research that doubles as a reminder on the impact of words. “Basic research” is not “base-level”, but actually the most cutting-edge. It underpins knowledge, and without it, technology does not come into being.

What we call "basic research" is the most cutting-edge. It underpins knowledge, and without it, technology does not come into being.

philosophy

Philosophy

What Einstein Did Was “Basic Research”. Wait, What?

Industrially processed vegetable (seed) oils are ubiquitous in the supermarket. These oils were meant to replace animal fats and improve the health of America when they were introduced during the second half of the 20th century.
Consuming vegetable oil instead of animal fat was the best way to reduce blood cholesterol levels, which was at the time, understood to be a major cause of heart disease. But decades later, obesity and chronic disease rates continue to rise. In fact, the introduction of industrial vegetable oils to the food supply correlates very well with the rise in obesity rates.

The Vegetable Oil Takeover

Most other industrial vegetable oils were introduced around the 1960s, although soybean oil came earlier in the 1930s. These oils were big hits since they were:
<ul>
<li>Cheaper to produce and could utilize plant by-products</li>
<li>Convenient for industrial and home cooking</li>
<li>“Heart healthy” according to current nutritional knowledge.</li>
</ul>
Thanks to their affordability and ease of use, vegetable oils became popular ingredients in processed and fast food.

Vegetable Oil Becomes Mainstream From The 1960s Onwards

<ul><li>Vegetable oils contain high amounts of PUFA (polyunsaturated fatty acids, good fats)which are susceptible to degradation when exposed to heat (even cooking), light, and oxygen. These types of oils can go rancid quickly if improperly stored.</li><li>Vegetable oils are often stored in plastic bottles, which further increases light exposure. Plastic bottles contain bisphenol-A (BPA) and similar compounds. These compounds are endocrine disruptors and can cause damage to the reproductive and metabolic health of exposed individuals. BPA is fat-soluble and could easily leech into oils bottled in plastic.</li></ul>

Why We Should NOT Consume Vegetable Oils

<ul>
<li>Vegetable oils are well understood to reduce circulating low-density lipoprotein (LDL) concentrations which are associated with heart disease.</li>
<li>However, replacing saturated fats with PUFA (good fats) doesn’t seem to improve heart disease outcomes in human studies. The problem could be that LA (linoleic acid, omega-6 fatty acid, and an essential nutrient) in vegetable oil is too easily oxidized and in turn oxidizes lipids in LDL particles.</li>
<li>We have to keep in mind though that LA is an essential fatty acid and we do require a certain amount of it for maintaining a NORMAL inflammatory response.</li>
</ul>

Why We SHOULD Consume Vegetable Oils

Animal fats are very stable through storage and cooking due to the high saturated fat content which lack of carbon-carbon double bonds in their structure. This indicates that cooking with animal fat could reduce the number of harmful lipids ingested with a meal which would reduce the burden of oxidative stress.Animal fats have also been consumed by humans for millions of years. Yet, obesity rates only began to rise during the last century when vegetable oils started being consumed.

Animal Fats Are Stable To Storage

Why do animal fats keep popping up as a factor contributing to health in traditional cultures? It could be that animal fats are carriers of fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, E, and K2.Animal fats also contain some unique lipid species that are not found in plants. In fact, looking at individual fatty acids in specific foods is likely going to become an important area of study in nutritional sciences to better understand the biological effects of specific fatty acids.

Animal Fats And Fat Soluble Vitamins

<ul><li>Consuming high amounts of saturated fats which are usually present in animal fat can increase serum LDL, which by current dogma, is a risk factor for heart disease. This has likely been the major argument against saturated fat consumption over the last few decades.</li><li>Another argument against saturated fat consumption is concerning the lipid composition of cell membranes. Unsaturated fats are largely responsible for maintaining membrane fluidity so there is concern that a diet high in animal fats could displace unsaturated fats on the cell membrane with saturated fats and this could be damaging f<warningtag>or the cell.</warningtag><warningtag> As it turns out, this is likely a false pretense.</warningtag><warningtag> </warningtag></li></ul>

Why We SHOULD NOT Consume Animal Fats

It has to be said that there are real issues with current standards in animal production that impact both the quality of the meat (and fat), and the environment. These problems will not be easily solved but the recent demand for higher quality meat has paved the way for producers to start raising livestock by means that are much more environmentally friendly.

The Environmental Discussion

Industrially processed vegetable (seed) oils are ubiquitous in the supermarket. These bright gold-yellow oils are often sold in large plastic bottles and include canola, cottonseed, corn, safflower…

Are Vegetable Oils Really Healthier Than Animal Fats?

The large size of the human brain is what makes us (arguably) the most intelligent creatures on Earth, but new research surprisingly reveals our brains may have been slowly shrinking from about 3,000 years ago. Are we getting less smart? Scientists aren’t ready to declare that yet, but have found a possible answer for the brain size mystery by studying ants and the use of collective intelligence in their social organizations.

Smaller Brain = Less Intelligence?

Researchers have found that for much of human evolutionary history our brains kept growing. In fact, if you count from our last shared ancestors with chimpanzees six million years ago, the human brain size almost quadrupled. This happened thanks in part to the improving diet and nutrition of early humans. Cro Magnons, the Homo sapiens that had the largest brains in history were alive from 20,000 to 30,000 years ago. But as the recent study from scientists at Dartmouth and Boston Universities points out, around 3,000 years ago, our brains began to diminish.

The Size Of Our Brain Through History

Previous research estimated that, over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human brain went from 1,500 cubic centimeters (cc) to 1,350 cc — shrinking by about 150 cc, or 10% (the size of a tennis ball, as commentators have pointed out.) “Most people are aware that humans have unusually large brains—significantly larger than predicted from our body size. In our deep evolutionary history, human brain size dramatically increased,” said the new study’s other co-author James Traniello, of Boston University. “The reduction in human brain size was unexpected.”

Our Brain Was Always Growing And Growing. And Then It Stopped. 

The big question of course is, “Why is our evolution going in reverse?” The interdisciplinary research team, which included a biological anthropologist, a behavioral ecologist and an evolutionary neurobiologist, write in the study that their dating techniques do not “support hypotheses concerning brain size reduction as a by-product of body size reduction, a result of a shift to an agricultural diet, or a consequence of self-domestication.”

Why Did Our Brains Start Shrinking? Here’s Why They Did Not. 

The scientists believe that the reason we don’t need the same size brains lies in the creation of our social systems, which favor distributed gathering and sharing of knowledge and information while offering advantages in “group-level decision-making.” Since brains use a lot of energy, being able to draw upon the knowledge gathered within a larger society would require less individual brain energy to be expended in order to store and process information. Thus a smaller brain would be able to do the job just as well.

So, Why Did Our Brains Start Shrinking?

Interestingly, the researchers also suggest that the advent of writing around 5,000 years ago likely had a pronounced effect on the “neural architectures” of individual human brains by increasing the power of group cognition. Decision-making by an increasingly interconnected group could have led to “adaptive group responses exceeding the cognitive accuracy and speed of individual decisions and had a fitness consequence.” This could have led to the human brain size decrease “as a consequence of metabolic cost savings.”

But What Was The Start Of It All?

Unexpectedly, the researchers arrived at their conclusions by studying ants. As the scientists write in their paper, “Humans live in social groups in which multiple brains contribute to the emergence of collective intelligence.” While understanding the historical forces affecting brain evolution in humans is a complex undertaking, with only the fossil record to use for evidence, the researchers looked at ant communities.

And What Brought About That Idea?

“The remarkable ecological diversity of ants and their species richness encompasses forms convergent in aspects of human sociality, including large group size, agrarian life histories, division of labor, and collective cognition,” explain the scientists in the study. The range of social systems in ant societies allowed them to test out hypotheses and come up with insights that provide a general look at how selective forces can affect brain size.

Ant Sociality And Human Sociality

The research team focused specifically on creating computational models that represent patterns of worker-ant brain size and energy use, looking at groups of Oecophylla weaver ants, Atta leafcutter ants, and the common garden ant Formica. What they found is that collective intelligence and division of labor had an effect on the variation in brain sizes. In a group with shareable knowledge and individual specialization in particular tasks, brains were likely to adapt for the sake of efficiency, consequently diminishing in size.

Division Of Labour Affects Brain Size

“Ant and human societies are very different and have taken different routes in social evolution,” Traniello shared. “Nevertheless, ants also share with humans important aspects of social life such as group decision-making and division of labor, as well as the production of their own food (agriculture). These similarities can broadly inform us of the factors that may influence changes in human brain size.”

Ants Are Not Humans, Of Course

A review of the book in The American Journal of Sociology read: “After many years” observation of the behaviour of ants, the author has written a popular book attempting to show how ant societies function, how they solve many of the ‘social problems’ confronting man - war, reproduction, sustenance, pressure groups, security, democracy, and totalitarianism. In addition, one finds a tracing of the rise of the ants as a race, their diversification, their struggles for dominance, their tastes for odors, forms, and textures, their modes of ‘gossip’ and memories.”

In 1946, Dr. Caryl P. Haskins Wrote “Of Ants and Men”

As the author of “Of Ants and Men” himself remarked in 1946, the question is how far can we compare these ant societies with our own without becoming hopelessly involved in a bog of anthropomorphism? In other words, he goes on to reflect, can we legitimately “go to the ant” without reading into our findings many things that really do not exist? While this new research doesn’t have definitive answers, the new modeling is a fascinating step forward in getting closer to a fuller picture of our evolutionary transformation.

“Go To The Ant”

A successful team is a group of many hands and one mind.

The human brain shrank in size about 3,000 years ago. Scientists may have found an explanation by studying ants.

Scientists may have found an explanation for the surprising decrease in human brain size about 3,000 years ago by studying ants.

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

Can Collective Intelligence Be the Reason Why Human Brains Are Shrinking?

In February 1943, Erwin Schrödinger, quantum physicist and Nobel laureate (sharing his prize with Paul Dirac and Werner Heisenberg), gave a series of lectures at Trinity College Dublin, which later turned into his book “What is life? ” This work has been highly influential for a generation of molecular biologists such as Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of DNA.

“What Is Life”?

Less known perhaps is the fact that during his whole life Schrödinger was an ardent reader of philosophy from the East and West. From the 1950s on, when Schrödinger ceased to activelywork on the physics of his time, he focused more on wider philosophical and ethical issues related to science. Back then, his conferences always ended with what he jokingly called the “second Schrödinger equation”: “Atman = Brahman”, the Indian doctrine of identity .

Atman Is Brahman

In 1925, just a few months before Schrödinger discovered the most basic equation of quantum mechanics, he wrote down the first sketches of the ideas that he would later develop more thoroughly in “Mind and Matter”. Already then, his thoughts on technical matters were inspired by what he took to be greater metaphysical (religious) questions. Early on, Schrödinger expressed the conviction that metaphysics does not come after physics, but inevitably precedes it. Metaphysics is not a deductive affair but a speculative one.

“Mind And Matter”

One such speculative assumption (which can neither be proven nor disproven) is the one that there exists an external (mind-independent) world. Another one is the assumption that there exist separate minds. For both claims, we cannot get any empirical evidence: how could we step out of our own experience to check them? But both create insurmountable problems. The first creates the problem of how to think about the relation between these two types of realities (mind-matter). Why does it appear (according to our best science) that we live in a purely physical world devoid of qualities?

The Mind-Matter Problem

The second speculative assumption creates the problem of how to think about the relation between different minds (mind-mind). Why and how are we different from each other? Schrödinger believed that there is an elegant way to dissolve both of these problems by starting with an alternative metaphysical assumption. He did not endorse traditional Western views that go under the names of reductive materialism and subjective idealism, but he found inspiration in non-Western, particularly Indian philosophies.

The Mind-Mind Problem

The “second Schrödinger equation” refers to an old staple of Indian philosophy according to which the self (“Atman”) is identical to the ultimate reality of the universe (“Brahman”), which forms a central part of the teachings of the Advaita Vedânta. Schrödinger was quick to add that this “self” must not be conflated with the individual self but rather refers to a cosmic, universal entity of which individual selves are mere aspects.

Schrödinger’s “Second Equation”

A metaphor that Schrödinger liked to invoke to illustrate this idea is the one of a crystal that creates a multitude of colors (individual selves) by refracting light (the cosmic self that is equal to the essence of the universe). We are all but aspects of one single mind that forms the essence of reality. He also referred to this as the doctrine of identity. Accordingly, a non-dual form of consciousness, which must not be conflated with any of its single aspects, grounds the refutation of the (merely apparent) distinction into separate selves that inhabit a single world.

The Spectrum Metaphor Of The One Mind

Schrödinger drew remarkable consequences from this. For example, he believed that any man is the same as any other man that lived before him. In his early essay “Seek for the Road”, he writes about looking into the mountains before him. Thousands of years ago, other men similarly enjoyed this view. But why should one assume that oneself is distinct from these previous men? Is there any scientific fact that could distinguish your experience from another man’s? What makes you you and not someone else?

There Aren’t Separate Selves That Inhabit A Single World 

Similarly, as John Wheeler once assumed that there is really only one electron in the universe, Schrödinger assumed that there really is only one mind. Schrödinger thought this is supported by “the empirical fact that consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world.”

There Really Is One Mind

In the contemporary scientific study of consciousness, many scholars try to circumvent the question of how and why matter gives rise to conscious experience by asking why there seems to be a hard problem in the first place (when there is in fact none): consciousness is an illusionary story that some physical systems equipped with brains tell themselves. While Schrödinger was far from accepting an illusionary stance about the reality of consciousness, in a very similar vein he asks why it seems as if there were a multiplicity of minds, where there is just one mind (the “Atman=Brahman”).

There Only *Seems* To Be A Multiplicity Of Minds. Why?

The existence of many separate minds is an illusionary story that confused individuals would tell themselves. Thinking otherwise leads to the false belief that we are in some sense fundamentally isolated, rather than realizing that we are always connected with other beings (and ultimately also with what we now call non-living matter). Unlike in the hard problem case, there is no empirical evidence to suggest our initial belief is real.

We Only *Seem* To Be Fundamentally Isolated. Why?

An important characteristic of the way Schrödinger approached metaphysical and philosophical teachings was his prudence to uphold a rational and scientific methodology. The “doctrine of identity” cannot be adopted uncritically. We need to incorporate the doctrine into our best science, not throw our best science overboard. In other words, we should adopt a new metaphysics but keep with the scientific method.

Adopt Metaphysics While Keeping With The Scientific Method

Our scientific theories need “a bit of blood transfusion from Eastern thought … [but] transfusions always need great precaution to prevent clotting. We do not wish to lose the logical precision that our scientific thought has reached, and that is unparalleled anywhere at any epoch.”

What Schrödinger sought, what he would have appreciated the most, is a scientific approach to studying consciousness with mathematical precision. An important constraint following from the doctrine of identity for any such theory of consciousness would be that it, in its very basic structure, acknowledges that individual conscious beings are (i) aspects of a higher, unifying agent (rather than being disconnected individuals), and (ii) that the entire collection of such beings constitutes the ultimate nature of reality (rather than being just one among many things-electrons, rocks, or brains.)

Aspects And Constituents

Schrödinger desired a radically monist-theory that acknowledges the reality of consciousness. Given the current theoretical landscape in the study of consciousness, the “theory of conscious agents” seems to fit best with these requirements. It aims for a precise, crisp formulation of what consciousness does, and it proposes that any combination of two or more conscious agents is itself another agent.

The Theory Of Conscious Agents

The theory also seems to be compatible with the idea that the entire collection of agents constitutes the nature of reality, though this requires the theory to come up with a model of how the physical world can arise (and be nothing apart) from this collection.How could this be so? Schrödinger relied on a couple of arguments that have been raised previously in philosophy (e.g. by Kant) but his position boils down to this: what we call the physical world is the result of a process that Schrödinger called “objectivation”, i.e. the transformation of the one self-world (Atman=Brahman).

The Physical World And The One-Self World

Objectivation’s result is something that can be readily conceptualized and objectively studied, hence something that is fully void of subjective qualities. In the theory of conscious agents this amounts to the creation of “interfaces”. Such interfaces simplify what is going on in order to allow you to act efficiently. Good interfaces hide complexity. They do not let you see reality as it is but only as it is useful to you. What you call the “physical world” is merely a highly-simplified representation of non-dual consciousness.

Objectivation And Interfaces

This physical world also appears to harbor a multitude of subjects directed at it. It is the very same process of objectivation, which led to the false impression of an autonomous physical world, that also leads to the fallacy of assuming different forms of consciousness inhabiting different bodies. The quick fix of adding mental properties to a non-mental world would not be able to really solve the problems mentioned earlier. Do we need to label them with a tag saying “individual x”? But then, why are you you and not someone else? How to combine one set of subjects into a higher one?

The False Impression Of An Autonomous “Physical World”

But those problems can be circumvented by never giving in to the metaphysical assumption of the existence of one physical world that is opposed to many separated selves in the first place. According to the theory of conscious agents, the idea of fundamentally separated selves is a useful fiction that arises only if we conflate what we see on the interface with the true reality of non-dual consciousness.

The Idea Of Separate Selves Is (A Useful) Fiction

The theory of conscious agents proposes an interesting answer to Schrödinger’s questions. Why does it appear that we are living in a physical world without qualities? Why and how are we different from each other? Because the dynamics of conscious agents results in the creation of interfaces that hide the true character of reality. We are the same, yet we can appear as different.

Good Interfaces Hide And Simplify

From one perspective all agents combine into a single one which equals a (single) world. From a different perspective, this single agent is equal to a network of distinct agents that all inhabit their own worlds. Which perspective we choose, depends on what we want to explain.

Perspective Is Everything

“The total number of minds in the universe is one.”
— Erwin Schrödinger

Most assume that matter is fundamental, and that consciousness arises out of the complexity of matter. But Nobel Prize winning quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger does not share that assumption. For him, the universe contains a single mind, writes Robert Prentner and Donald D. Hoffman.

Schrödinger And The Conscious Universe

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