Editor's note:
Old readers of "Intellectuals" may understand that artificial intelligence researcher Zhang Zheng likes to read popular science works. Today, he brought 4 articles from the "American Best Science and Nature Annual Collection" 2018", "These articles not only talk about science, but also about the scientists behind it."
Written by | Zhang Zheng
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Among the many series of books, "America's Best Science and Nature Annual Collection" has always been my favorite, and I have been chasing it for more than ten years. These articles not only talk about science, but also about the scientists behind it. Science may be cold, but scientists must not be cold; not only are they not cold, you will also find that they are often very "working" people.
This collection is selected from scientific reports in major journals including the New Yorker every year, and then selects an editor to carefully edit it. The editors are all well-known big shots, such as Dawkins (Richard Dawkins), Steve Pinker, etc. Siddhartha Mukherjee, the author of the good book "Gene", is familiar with and won several grand prizes. She is the editor in charge of "Gene" in 2013 and the editor in charge of "2018". Sam Kean is a professional science writer.
But buying this set has always been troublesome. I can only look for it when I go to the United States on a business trip. Sometimes I can’t hold it in, so I have to ask my colleagues to take care of it. Last year, I unexpectedly discovered that the Kindle version began to be released, and I was overjoyed.
I chose some articles that I found interesting to talk about. In fact, my own impression is not important. What is important is that everyone can read good articles - I will attach a link after the short comment. Apart from one article, dozens of articles are available online.
The first two articles talk about big science, and also talk about more essential or more tangled issues than big science - father and son inheritance. The last two articles in
talk about "people" that we have never explained clearly. If you can't explain it clearly, you have to say that as a practitioner in the field of AI, I can't do it without thinking.
Part 1: Father and Son Inheritance in Big Science
Pleistocene Park
Original link: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/pleistocene-park/517779/
The first pair of father and son scientists Zimov, from the fighting nation. The masterpiece of my father Sergey is to boldly predict the biggest threat of global warming in the future. Hit it in Siberia : Once the permafrost melts, it is equivalent to opening the prison door that locks the big demon, and the threat far exceeds the total carbon dioxide emissions of all continents of North America.
His solution is very strange, building large parks in Siberia and the Arctic Circle, allowing the lush and breeding grassland to reflect solar thermal energy and slow down the melting speed. In order to achieve this goal, he had to revive mammoths, because these behemoths are natural enemies of big trees, and big trees are natural enemies of grasslands. Here, the genetics giant George Church, who has transformed more than 30 pairs of elephants in his lab at Harvard University.
Why does the step of planting grass and removing trees need to awaken such advanced black technology in mammoth? The article does not explain it. Feeling a little willful.
The Starship or the Canoe
Original link: https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/summer-2017-adaptation/starship-or-canoe-where-will-our-future-adaptations-be
Dyson Everyone is relatively familiar with the father and son. They are all building "ships". Old Dyson's goal is the vast starry sky, and little Dyson is the vast...the sea. This pair of legends that are completely different, the author of this article wrote a biography of the same name for them fifty years ago.
Father Freeman, since he published his first paper at the age of five, and now in his 90s, has always been a "beacon" figure in the physics community and is also a popular science writer who loves poetry. In the laboratory, he took everyone to disassemble the automatic beverage machine and observe how the Coca-Cola jar fell out, because the large spacecraft he designed would be like a hardworking hen, "laying eggs" all the way, spitting and exploding more than 2,000 atomic bombs in his huge belly, and spending 150 years to "fight" himself to Mars.
Interestingly, he believes that the future of mankind is not to colonize a new earth. I guess he never thought of dragging the old earth to drift in space. He believes that hope lies in the countless small comets scattered between the star belts. Each of these "communities" may be as big as Manhattans, but with water, as long as there is water and sunshine, life can continue.
This father has one thing in common, he doesn’t have much nostalgia for the earth, and he looks like “If you play badly, let’s restart it.” Old Zimov doesn't care about letting humans rewind, and returns to the glacier period 30,000 years ago in one breath; Old Dyson looks at the universe all his life, but would rather live a small comet.
What happened between two father and son is very different.
Sergey ran to the university where his son was and captured him back to Siberia. Nikita took over the baton and took over the big park, but she was always a little unwilling to do it. She muttered in private that the old man was too "selfish" and that he didn't want his daughter to continue doing it anyway.
Freeman's son George looked at the starry sky a few times and turned around and fell in love with the sea and canoe. When I was a teenager, I had many conflicts with my dad, and I became rebellious and made rapid progress. I was a stunt. I stopped studying in college, so I repaired boats for people barefoot during the day and slept on big trees on the deserted island at night.
But George still needs to grow up, mature, grow old, and return. Fortunately, he has a different talent and is a child who grew up in the compound of Princeton Advanced Research Institute. He is familiar with the big guys. In addition to making high-tech canoes, he has become a science historian (his book "Turing's Church" also has a four-star high score on Amazon).
When reading stories on earth, Dyson and his son are more flesh and blood, and have a kind of thick and humor after seeing through them. Author Kenneth Brower is not an ordinary person, with his own heritage and years of close relationship with Dyson and his son. Why do you see through
?
Kenneth escaped: Do you remember the female teacher who died in the air crash of the Challenge spacecraft? It was almost him who sat in that seat.
pixabay.com
Part 2: Human Machine and Cold-Blooded Baby
A Science of the Soul
Science on the Soul
Original source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/daniel-dennetts-science-of-the-soul. Image source: newhumanist.org.uk
Lala has read some books by Daniel Dennett and has also seen several videos of his speeches. Dennett is like a sturdy old farmer, wearing small glasses, full of energy and fast speaking.
Texas old farmers are not ordinary. One of the important highlights of this article is to push this master of philosophy , , flesh and blood to us, to see how the son of this intelligence officer (spy) transformed from a Harvard art student, sculptor, amateur jazz pianist to a master of philosophy, and how he could support himself in the ground, repair tiles and fish in the lake, live a good life with half a lifetime of paradise and frequent guests.
and Dawkins, who are the "Four Atheist Swordsmen", and Dennett, who is the "Four Atheist Swordsmen", are indifferent to the piety and dedication when leading the hymn.
Back to philosophy - In this era, what is the use of philosophy?
In fact, the current philosophical issues should be more urgent - almost seventy years after Nietzsche shouted "God is dead", AI comes to power, and the spotlight is about to refocus. Where is the position of human beings? The problem with
has always been there. But the scenes have changed, and the tools have also changed, requiring brain science, computer science, and artificial intelligence. At least Dennett thinks so (and so do I).
I was taking an introduction to computer classes at NYU, and I also used a simple Turing machine developed by him and his colleagues at Tufts University to do classroom exercises for my classmates. No matter how complicated a program is, you can just mix it with three instructions. Amazing?
If you want to understand contemporary philosophy, you can't avoid Dennet. He is the leader of physicalism and represents half of the country. A few points can be summarized in his views. First, people are just human flesh machines; second, nothing is unique to humans, including consciousness, and the difference is only in "grayscale".
Dennett's favorite word is "sort of".For example, there is a tangled "zombie" problem in the philosophy world: How do I know that you (or your cat and dog) are not a zombie - they all seem right, but they are not the same "calculation" process as me at all? Dennett believes that this question is meaningless, as long as the "fruits" hanging on the tree of life are "a little bit".
This has led to the fortification of Dennett and his other half of the philosophical community for decades. In the article, he has a wonderful duel with his arch-rival, dualistic general, and professor of philosophy at New York University. The duel is luxurious. It is placed on the private yacht of a fund boss in Russian , allowing a group of philosophical graduate students who are still undecided to vote with their feet after the two bigwigs debate to decide who loses and who wins.
result, Dennett lost slightly.
The key assumption of physicalism is that the first-person self-experience and the third-person anatomical perspective are not contradictory. If physicalism is simple and crude, then dualism is even more suspicious. There is no problem in distinguishing between metaphysical and metaphysical, but it is almost witchcraft to believe that human inner consciousness, presence, aesthetics, and other metaphysical universes in the void can "invigorate true energy".
At NYU, there is an amateur professor philosophy club. In fact, it is just a few philosophy and brain science professors who find opportunities to drink and chat. I have spent several discussions and read a book by Chalmers, but I can't praise it.
Is science too young, or is it too young for young people?
When Your Child Is a Psychopath
When your child is a psychopath
Original source: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/when-your-child-is-a-psychopath/524502/
What is a "people", "ordinary people" is better defined: define extremists, it is equivalent to finding the boundary. Once you slide the coordinates, you can find yourself.
is very extreme. For example, there is a type that is born as a cold-blooded baby with a lower heartbeat than ordinary people. After a few months, it starts to fall in love with abuse. Whether it is a doll, cat, dog, or younger brother and sister, all kinds of outrageous means are used to make "people" outrageous. They turn a blind eye to the fear of the abused (or killed) object, have no empathy, and cannot be the same. They play with the heartbeat. The treatment of cold-blooded babies is useless, only rewards...
Diversity is a gift from nature, don't think the existence of cold-blooded babies is unreasonable. If the universe suddenly falls into a bad guy, you have to rely on these natural killers, otherwise the human genes may be cut off. I won’t mention this.
is a few cured cold-blooded babies in the article. After adulthood, although they are born without empathy, they have long trained to behave purely based on conditioned reflexes, even if the brain functional blocks involved are different. If you are not a relative, you cannot judge; as a relative, there is a dummy shaking around you at all times.
In other words, the "zombies" that philosophers do thought experiments are real in real life. In situations where empathy is needed, their reactions are the same, but the "calculation" process is indeed different!
Dennett can bypass the "zombie" problem, but artificial intelligence cannot. For example, emotional judgment is a type of task in the AI world. Putting aside technical details, the practice is no different from Bapu Ruofu's training dogs. This road continues to be dark, and it is also a zombie after it is finished.
Author Profile
Author Zhang Zheng is the dean of the Shanghai AI Research Institute of AWS (Amazon Cloud Service) and a professor of computer science at New York University in Shanghai. She is on academic leave.
This article was first published on the WeChat public account "BetterRead", and "Intellectuals" was authorized by the author to reproduce.
plate making and editing | Pipiyu
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