< You spoke a moment ago as if you believed that human beings had actually acheived intelligence.>

< Clearly they have.>

…

< Self-delusion. Even at their best, they never, as individuals, rise above the level of manual laborers. Who among them has the time to become intelligent?>

< Not one.>

< They never know anything. They don’t have enough years in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all. And yet they think they understand. From earliest childhood, they delude themselves into thinking they comprehend the world, while all that’s really going on is that they’ve got some primitive assumptions and prejudices. As they get older they learn a more elevated vocabulary in which to express their mindless pseudo-knowledge and bully other people into accepting their prejudices as if they were truth, but it all amounts to the same thing. Individually, human beings are all dolts.>

< While collectively…>

< Collectively, they’re a collection of dolts. But in all their scurrying around and pretending to be wise, throwing out idiotic half-understood theories about this and that, one or two of them will come up with some idea that is just a little bit closer to the truth than what was already known. And in a sort of fumbling trial and error, about half the time the truth actually rises to the top and becomes accepted by people who still don’t understand it, who simply adopt it as a new prejudice to be trusted blindly until the next dolt accidentally comes up with an improvement.>

< So you’re saying that no one is ever individually intelligent, and groups are even stupider than individuals – and yet by keeping so many fools engaged in pretending to be intelligent, they still come up with some of the same results that an intelligent species would come up with.>

< Exactly.>

< If they’re so stupid and we’re so intelligent, why do we only have one hive, which thrives here because a human being carried us? And why have you been so utterly dependent on them for every technical and scientific advance you make?>

< Maybe intelligence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.>

< Maybe we’re the fools, for thinking we know things. Maybe humans are the only ones who can deal with the fact that nothing can ever be known at all.>

Related posts:

1. Awesome Human-Computer Interface Video Demonstrations

BIG BANG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Related posts:

1. Outside the Box
2. Breathturn by Hammock

An artist's depiction of a phosphene

When I was a young child, I used to love to close my eyes and rub them because it made a bunch of cool patterns appear. It turns out, the patterns of light you see when you rub your closed eyes hard are called phosphenes. Cool!

From Wikipedia:

The most common phosphenes are pressure phosphenes, caused by rubbing the closed eyes. They have been known since antiquity, and described by the Greeks. The pressure mechanically stimulates the cells of the retina. Experiences include a darkening of the visual field that moves against the rubbing, a diffused colored patch that also moves against the rubbing, a scintillating and ever-changing and deforming light grid with occasional dark spots (like a crumpling fly-spotted flyscreen), and a sparse field of intense blue points of light. Pressure phosphenes can persist briefly after the rubbing stops and the eyes are opened, allowing the phosphenes to be seen on the visual scene.

I betcha’ if I was one of the kids in this study, I wouldn’t have eaten the marshmallow.

After watching these two videos, I thanked my parents for teaching me the value of patience. But most of all, I thanked them for not giving me everything I wanted, right when I wanted it as a kid.

If you’re reading this, guys — thanks!

Update (1 hour later): I was just perusing Hacker News and I stumbled upon an article criticizing the Marshmallow Test, and for interesting reasons too. Check it out: The Marshmallow Test – They Got It Wrong.

Since it is Sunday, let’s have a genetically photoshopped egg with a handy integrated eggholder. Not sure if these should be mass produced (if possible): Too painful for the chicken.

via Egg improvements – Next Nature.

Imaginary advertisement for genetically engineered hybrid hyperfruits featuring an ‘limwi’, ‘kiwange’ and a ’strawblackberry’. Imagine a taste of things to come. Makes you want to kiss the future. Created for the Freaking News photoshop contest.

via NextNature.net – Exploring the Nature caused by People..

Related posts:

1. Egg improvements
2. Your Baby Is Smarter Than You Think

Adults focus on objects that will be most useful to them. But . . . children play with the objects that will teach them the most. In our study, 4-year-olds imagined new possibilities based on just a little data. Adults rely more on what they already know. Babies aren’t trying to learn one particular skill or set of facts; instead, they are drawn to anything new, unexpected or informative.

Part of the explanation for these differing approaches can be found in the brain. The young brain is remarkably plastic and flexible. Brains work because neurons are connected to one another, allowing them to communicate. Baby brains have many more neural connections than adult brains. But they are much less efficient. Over time, we prune away the connections we don’t use, and the remaining ones become faster and more automatic. Moreover, the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that controls the directed, planned, focused kind of intelligence, is exceptionally late to mature, and may not take its final shape until our early 20s.

In fact, our mature brain seems to be programmed by our childhood experiences — we plan based on what we’ve learned as children. Very young children imagine and explore a vast array of possibilities. As they grow older and absorb more evidence, certain possibilities become much more likely and more useful. They then make decisions based on this selective information and become increasingly reluctant to give those ideas up and try something new. Computer scientists talk about the difference between exploring and exploiting — a system will learn more if it explores many possibilities, but it will be more effective if it simply acts on the most likely one. Babies explore; adults exploit.

via Op-Ed Contributor – Your Baby Is Smarter Than You Think – NYTimes.com.

My parents are always bugging me about my sleeping habits.

Throughout high school, I routinely stayed up past midnight working on my homework, websites, or just reading articles and listening/watching podcasts.

Despite my best efforts to sleep early, it was all too easy to find justification for staying up just one more hour. I would stumble upon some cool video or article, have an idea for a website feature — and that always took priority over sleep.

Take tonight for instance. I’m posting this message at 5:00AM. And you know what the best part is? I have psuedo-scientific evidence to prove that my night-owl habits are actually good for me.

I stumbled upon this short piece in the January 2009 issue of Wired Magazine, which proves that being a night-owl is AWESOME, and good for you too:

1 // You may need more sleep than you think.
Research by Henry Ford Hospital Sleep Disorders Center found that people who slept eight hours and then claimed they were “well rested” actually performed better and were more alert if they slept another two hours. That figures. Until the invention of the lightbulb (damn you, Edison!), the average person slumbered 10 hours a night.

2 // Night owls are more creative.
Artists, writers, and coders typically fire on all cylinders by crashing near dawn and awakening at the crack of noon. In one study, “evening people” almost universally slam-dunked a standardized creativity test. Their early-bird brethren struggled for passing scores.

3 // Rising early is stressful.
The stress hormone cortisol peaks in your blood around 7 am. So if you get up then, you may experience tension. Grab some extra Zs! You’ll wake up feeling less like Bert, more like Ernie.

P.S. Mom and Dad: if you’re reading this, then you should know I am totally, completely, absolutely kidding about this article… you know I would never, never, never, stay up so late at night… right?