h+ Magazine

We generally do not want to fight or harm our friends, because we know them, feel kinship and understanding. We need to understand that everything we are, everything we experience, our very identities and our experiential universes are simply that which we are processing and generating in our minds. As we learn to understand these foundations of Being our civilization matures.

Our knowledge of how the human brain works is rapidly increasing and some people will use that knowledge to enhance their minds – to make themselves more intelligent, to feel permanently happy or to choose different aspirations. This will challenge the existing political order in many ways: Hyper-intelligent people will find it easy to dominate their relatively dim fellows.

An overview of science news from the last week, and some older news items of interest. Includes news on nanotechnology, regenerative medicine, stem cells, and metamaterials.

As computers begin to reach a human level of intelligence, some consideration must be given as to their concept of ethics. Appropriately aligning moral values will mean the difference between a contributing member of society and a sociopath.

We may have evolved to our current state of intelligence and no further on account of the onset of various maladaptive functional impairments. If this is the case we need to seriously look more deeply into this, especially at the dawn of bona fide cognitive enhancement.

Creatine is quickly becoming one of my favorite supplements, and not just because of the way it helps me in the gym. It’s been shown that creatine can also be used as a nootropic and as a way to stave off potential neurodegeneration.

Recently, scientists at USC implanted a memory enhancing chip into rats. By recording the transfer of signals between hippocampal regions (CA3 to CA1), scientists were able to bypass the normal neural connections mice use to encode long term memory. The chip, when activated, allowed the rats to remember how to perform a task despite being drugged to forget how to perform that task. Although the technology is still very early in it testing phase, the scientists hope to apply the same principle to individuals with Alzheimer’s disease or stroke, where memory is often affected.

Sexual selection is a good way to model the evolution of information technology. It yields bioluminescence – the most common communication strategy on the planet – chirping insects, singing birds, Peacocks fanning their feathers, singing whales, speaking humans, and humans with internet access. These are all techniques of information production, transformation or evaluation.

For thousands of years, humans have strived to move beyond the limits of their own minds through education, philosophy and meditation. Cognitive neuroscientists like myself are trying to turn such aspirations into reality by applying knowledge of neuroplasticity and cognition to cognitive training programs. Millions of people use their income to buy cognitive training games. This trend will continue as new discoveries foster the development of improved training programs, and the implementation of these programs will eventually cause a significant impact in society and education.

At a recent TED Conference, a dinner was organized by the Edge Foundation, a think tank and nonprofit that celebrates big ideas. The theme of the evening was the “New Age of Wonder,” and the discussion drew comparisons to the Romantic Age, the period between 1770 and 1830 when science and art were friends. It was a time when astronomers and poets were in some ways indistinguishable, as artists were inspired by science’s intoxicating sense of awe and wonder. Somewhere down the line, however, these two worlds became disjointed.

Ben Goertzel converses with Hugo de Garis on his transhumanist argument for the reality of a Creator.