Is there a relationship between longevity and happiness?
Blue Zones? Five places around the world where people live the longest, healthiest lives.
• Today.com > “5 tips for living to 100 from a top longevity researcher” by Stephanie Thurrott (Sept 8, 2023) – Dan Buettner, who has been studying people who live the longest for 20 years, shares their secrets.
Continue reading Longevity and happiness? – Blue Zones
Gerontology and Geriatrics
If we build them, will they be accepted? The Simpsons S31:E12 does not satirize issues about privacy and personal information – just butt wiping. [1] Might co-design and co-production of care robots improve acceptance? [2]
The crew
A team of international researchers, a model of robot acceptance, a small cross-sectional study across Japan, Ireland, and Finland.
The challenge
“Although care robots are being developed and improved at a rapid pace, their social acceptance has been limited.”
Continue reading Robots don’t wipe butts – future of elder care?
Contention arises easily from personality conflict. Sometimes such conflict is framed as that between different values. Yet, what strikes me more & more is that the problem is not unalike values, but that those values are applied only to one’s tribe. As noted in this article, “small tent” value systems – people loyal to their tribe, “and very unloyal to other tribes.”
In his latest Plaintext newsletter, Steven Levy recounts his conversation earlier this summer with legendary artificial intelligence researcher Geoffrey Hinton, “after he [Hinton] had some time to reflect on his post-Google life and mission” – in his “new career as a philosopher.”
Continue reading Will androids be less tribal?
Lucid dreams. Had any? I’ve experienced some. What causes them? Is there any research? How does that compare to what’s portrayed in movies? An android future?
• Scientific American > “Are You a Lucid Dreamer?” by Gary Stix, Jeffery DelViscio (July 24, 2023) – An interview with sleep expert Isabelle Arnulf, head of the Sleep Disorders Clinic, Pitié Salpêtrière University Hospital, Paris.
Continue reading Do androids dream lucidly?
Of all things, the tenuous (but persistent) “potential of nonhuman origin” for UFOs has bridged polarized politics. “Come together, yeah.“
• BBC > “UFOs and aliens bring a divided US Congress together” by Kayla Epstein (July 26, 2023) – Investigating UFOs, now known to many as UAPs, has become a rare bipartisan issue in Congress.
Continue reading One nation – the UFO effect
In a milieu of polarization, an era of claims to supremacy – “and nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong” – perhaps complexity can moderate pride. Complexity that resonates like a prayer.
There’s the wider stage of complexity – from the atomic to the cosmic scale. Ecosystems. Culture. But there’s the complexity right in our skulls. Our brain.
• Dictionary.com > Humbling > “causing a person to feel less proud, especially through awe, admiration, or gratitude.”
The incredible complexity of our global ecosystem … at so many levels …
Well, then there’s “better living through chemistry” … the plastic ocean, plastic in our food chain, and PFAS in our tap water (and blood).
Here’s one of many articles in the news cycle this week prompted by a recent study from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) – which “analyzed water collected from over 700 taps and kitchen faucets in homes, offices and schools across the country.”
Continue reading The future of forever chemistry
MORE LESSONS … (from gerbil poems)
these beasts at the end of my desk,
these gerbils, my living phylacteries,
busy themselves in front of me, as if to say,
“what is there more than eat, work, sleep, and sex?
what is this talk of symbols in decay?”
midstream
I
we are suddenly
one that needs care.
germinating in a culture,
located within a history,
of lives living midstream,
even as we do
Can space travel – at least orbiting the Earth – cause cognitive shifts? Really be transformative – have lasting impact? [1]
Generally, studies note variability in the experience. And not all astronauts experience the overview effect.
(Wiki) Author [“space philosopher”] Frank White, who in the 1980s coined the term overview effect after interviewing many astronauts, …
Yaden et al. observed that cultural differences, including differences in religious and social identity, affect the ways in which the effect is experienced and interpreted. Expressions range from the religious, to the “vaguely spiritual”, to the naturalistic, to calls to social duty.
Wiki even notes that there’s some research on whether immersive virtual reality simulations might “induce the overview effect in earthbound participants.”
This Big Think article is a personal perspective by astronaut Ron Garan.
Continue reading The overview effect