Sól > Recent Status Updates

L'homme qui, par l'étude, acquiert une juste connaissance des choses s'élève et s'enrichit, alors que l'ignorant reste pauvre et de basse condition.

"What is it about the ancients, Pinker asks at one point, 'that they couldn't leave us an interesting corpse without resorting to foul play?

There is an obvious response to this: doesn't it rather depend on which corpse you consider interesting in the first place?

...encore aujourd'hui, au cours de mes nuits d'insomnie, j'entends souvent la voix à l'accent parisien celui des rues en pente me dire: " Alors, vous trouvez votre bonheur?"

The lateral and axial resolution of an LSFM apparatus are limited by the detection and illumination optics, respectively

Must a society suppress homicide to accomplish genocide?

...groups with highly hostile interactions with neighbors tend to have minimal internal conflict. Or, to spin this another way, groups with high levels of internal conflict are too distracted to focus hostility on the Others.

"The group is more arrogant, hypocritical, self-centered and more ruthless in the pursuit of its ends than the individual."

Squid are not great swimmers com-pared with sailfish (maximum speed: sixty-eight miles per hour). But they're damn good for something whose great-great-grandparents were mollusks.

This is so wrong - foolishly pick a poor family to be born into...

... malnutrition impairs brain development

...I think there was evolutionary selection for delayed frontal cortex maturation.

Obviously, the adolescent years are not just about organising baker sales to fight global warming

Despite all our limitations, however, I have to say we have come a remarkably long way. We are the first species on our planet that has taken evolution into its own hands. No longer are we selected by our natural environment, we shape the environment to our own needs. Whether we are any good at this is another question.

The most reasonable explanation of consciousness, it seems to me, is that it's related to the way some systems-like brains-process information. We don't know exactly how to define this process, but this almost certainly means that consciousness isn't binary.

...much of the supposed weirdness of quantum mechanics just comes from forcing it into everyday language.

To me, quantum mechanics is the prime example for what can go wrong with using intuitive language for abstract math.

I am very much a math person, and personally I don't see the need to translate math into everyday language. Abstract mathematical structures, I think, are best dealt with on their own terms. They don't need to be interpreted, and they don't need to make intuitive sense. They don't have to be "like" anything else because in most cases, they are not. The whole reason we use this math is that there isn't anything else

A good scientific theory is one that allows us to calculate the results of many observations from few assumptions.

It is a curious fact that mathematics is "unreasonably effective" in the natural sciences, as Eugene Wigner put it so unforgettably.

Et là, on ne peut que rejoindre Schopenhauer quand il assène :

[...] c'est la possibilité objective qui détermine les choses (y compris la volonté) : mais cette possibilité réside en dehors du domaine de la conscience, dans le monde objectif, auquel le motif et l'homme lui-même appartiennent.

Quelle intuition géniale, tout est dit!

Le naïf de Schopenhauer, cet homme circonspect, est naturellement persuadé que sa volonté ne dépend que de sa conscience quand il affirme : « [...] ce que je veux, c'est moi qui le veux. »

...Schopenhauer... écrivait ainsi :

La vie oscille, comme un pendule, de droite à gauche, de la souffrance à l'ennui.

"La liberté est une illusion... Nos actions sont initiées par des processus mentaux inconscients bien avant que nous devenions conscients de notre intention d'agir."

Ne serions-nous, nous, personnes pensantes, que des poupées dont les fils seraient tirés par un cerveau qui n'en ferait qu'à sa tête ?

L'ultime difficulté, et pas la moindre, serait de prouver que l'intention consciente d'agir est effectivement requise pour assurer le comportement.

Croyances et idéologies sont les ennemies absolues de la méthode scientifique, laquelle se doit, par nature et par fonction, d'explorer de manière indépendante, grâce aux outils complémentaires de l'expérimentation et de la théorie, les phénomènes de la nature.

...one of the main reasons the early microscopists managed to see unstained biological material was because of the aberrations in their optical components, which introduced a pseudo-phase contrast effect. Paradoxically, as lens design improved, the objects became harder and harder to see. Phase contrast optics reintroduced this contrast in a con-trolled way.

". In more recent versions, the headpiece includes a miniaturized objective lens for optical coupling, relaying the light to and from the optical fiber" as it was 26 years ago. To collect some light from highly scattered medium FFS...

And... 5 years later... ".., the idea of using fiber optics for miniaturized neuroimaging devices was implemented and extended to other imaging modalities (Engelbrecht et al., 2008; Liu et al., 2013)."

"In a fiber optic-adapted system, an optical-fiber bundle is employed to transmit the illumination and detected light signals (either fluorescence or reflectance) to and from a conventional bench-top microscopy system. In early versions of this approach, the optical fibers were in direct contact with the brain tissue without the use of any lens (Ferezou et al., 2006)." Bullshit

Toute conception de la dignité est néces-sairement une conception relationnelle, au sens où il n'y a pas de dignité possible sans immédia-tement supposer un certain type de relations avec autrui, à savoir des relations dignes. Penser la question de la dignité hors du paradigme relation-nel se révèle vite improductif si l'on veut dépas-ser le statut symbolique de celle-ci et l'investir de façon plus matérielle.