Friday Thinking is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.
Many thanks to those who enjoy this. ☺
In the 21st Century curiosity is what skills the cat -
for life of skillful means .
Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.
Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.
The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment -
computational ecology -
may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence.
To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference.
‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’
“Be careful what you ‘insta-google-tweet-face’”
Woody Harrelson - Triple 9
Content
Quotes:
Kim Stanley Robinson on inventing plausible utopias
Articles:
Yes, more and more young adults are living with their parents – but is that necessarily bad?
Singapore Has An Innovative New Way To Design Its Buildings
Fresh Off Her Nobel Prize Win, Jennifer Doudna Predicts What’s Next for CRISPR
Fecal Transfer from Moms to Babies After C-Section: Trial Results
Sludge-powered bacteria generate more electricity, faster
World first study shows that some microorganisms can bend the rules of evolution
Stacking and twisting graphene unlocks a rare form of magnetism
If recycling plastics isn’t making sense, remake the plastics
How your browser can make your online life a little more private
even from a predictive processing perspective, staying locally within the bounds of the expected is only one part of a much more complex story. For those very same predictive brains were designed to drive mobile, inquisitive creatures like ourselves. Such creatures must productively surf the waves of their own uncertainty. To do so, they probe and sample the world in ways that aim to reveal just where the key uncertainties lie, so that by future actions they can resolve them and move on. They seek new information, and they engage in complex rituals such as art and science whose role (we’ll argue) is in part at least to safely reveal and stress-test their own deepest assumptions.
Creatures like us, it seems, have added some brand-new layers to our relationship with the space of our own predictions, errors and uncertainties, turning that space into a kind of concrete arena that affords deeper and more challenging explorations than those undertaken by most other living organisms. We have discovered ways of turning our own best models (including our self-model) into objects apt for explicit questioning.
The examined human life reflects, we suggest, a new kind of relationship with our own expectations and uncertainty. Yet it is one that we have somehow constructed within the inviolable bounds of a biologically bedrock drive to minimise long-term prediction error. How is this neat trick possible?
Unexpected uncertainty arises when – for example – an environmental change causes us to become uncertain about our own generative model. Volatility is subtly different: it names a situation in which the frequency of changes in the environmental contingencies are themselves rapidly changing. Volatility is thus the most potentially anxiety-provoking species of uncertainty. It is uncertainty about the space of uncertainty itself.
When confronted with unexpected uncertainty, our brain reacts by increasing its learning rate
The many ways that we can fall prey to our own predictive brains correspond to the various ways in which we can become trapped by our own estimations of the reliability of different predictions.
The value of uncertainty
Perhaps the most extraordinary transformation took place in Japan. The rebuilding of the Japanese economy after the war, under the direct control of the occupying US forces, involved a dramatic redistribution of wealth and influence away from ruling elites, in particular landowners and the bureaucratic and military elites responsible for Japanese expansionism. The US occupiers, under the unlikely direction of General Douglas MacArthur, levied eye-watering taxes such as 70 per cent on the largest fortunes, and expropriated absentee landlords. The biggest family-owned industrial conglomerates were dismantled and senior management fired. Meanwhile, the war more or less wiped out wealth held in stocks and corporate shares. Labour reforms boosted union membership leading to higher wages and enhanced job security. The purpose behind these reforms was clear: to uproot the concentration of wealth and power around a reactionary elite…
Democratic capitalism redressed the balance between the brutal inequalities of early industrial capitalism and the need for social consent to secure political stability. It rested on three broad pillars: a redistributive welfare state that provided economic security while narrowing income gaps between rich and poor, corporatist dialogue between employers and the labour force, and highly regulated capital markets. Aspects of this form of capitalism sometimes existed in nondemocratic societies too. But as a basic set of socioeconomic institutions it was most associated with the democratic form of government in which competitive elections and representative political parties incorporated citizen demands into policymaking.
The increased role for government in distributing the fruits of economic growth meant that inequality and poverty fell to unprecedented levels. Taxes became far more progressive. In the 1950s, top marginal rates of income tax exceeded 90 per cent in Italy, the UK and the US. Unemployment benefits, pensions and family allowances expanded to provide secure incomes to households all across the income distribution. By taxing the rich and transferring money to the poor and middle-income groups, welfare states substantially reduced material hardship and ensured economic gains reached the least fortunate. The government also became a major employer, offering well-paid jobs with good working conditions and pension rights in the public administration and services such as the police, healthcare and education. All these measures meant that growth in living standards was spread across income groups.
Thirty glorious years
The phrase comes from the English critic Raymond Williams. I think his point was that we have basic biological feelings just as animals, that are the same for all of us at all times, but in any given moment, for any individual, we interpret these basic animal feelings by way of language—we give the feelings names, and these come from a particular language and a culture too, and so they are different in different times and places and languages, and the differences can be seen later on as being quite significant. So each culture and moment has its own particular structure of feeling, based on their language and what’s happening in the world at that time.
no one can predict the future that will really come to pass, so don’t even try to do that.
Think of your postulated futures as hopes and fears, typically, with your hopes being utopian, your fears dystopian. Go ahead and imagine a lot of them, and see how you feel about them, and what you think is realistic in them, in terms of suggesting things you can do now to make a better future for yourself and everyone else.
Don’t get too impressed by any one technology or ideology—we all suffer from a bit of monocausotaxophilia, the love of single causes that explain everything, but reality isn’t really like that, so you have to take a lot of factors into account, and realize they will mix in unexpected ways in your head as in the world.
Kim Stanley Robinson on inventing plausible utopias
The Covid-Apocalypse has revealed a lot about many of the myths underlying the neoliberal economic paradigm - this is another strong signal about the inevitable requirement of - Universal Basic Income. The 7 min video is well worth the view.
Opposition to a Universal Basic Income lies in how we think about the relationship between work and one's right to live.
Study after study seems to show us that direct cash transfers do indeed work. The problem lies in convincing people that they are deserving of the money.
We’ve had numerous trials of direct cash transfers. At this point, we know that people constantly use the money for what they need. Even more so do we know that they benefit not only recipients but local communities as a whole.
Still, we face resistance in actually implementing them. That lies far more in existing stereotypical beliefs of how we perceive the relationship between work and life.
McLuhan noted that the message of the media is not its content - but its impact - this is a signal of the nature of the times - digital environment-in-austerity-economic-frameworks? Or a retrieval from the past
Yes, more and more young adults are living with their parents – but is that necessarily bad?
When the Pew Research Center recently reported that the proportion of 18-to-29-year-old Americans who live with their parents has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, perhaps you saw some of the breathless headlines hyping how it’s higher than at any time since the Great Depression.
From my perspective, the real story here is less alarming than you might think. And it’s actually quite a bit more interesting than the sound bite summary.
Yes, a lot of emerging adults are now living with their parents. But this is part of a larger, longer trend, with the percentage going up only modestly since COVID-19 hit. Furthermore, having grown kids still at home is not likely to do you, or them, any permanent harm. In fact, until very recently, it’s been the way adults have typically lived throughout history. Even now, it’s a common practice in most of the world.
Drawing on the federal government’s monthly Current Population Survey, the Pew Report showed that 52% of 18-to-29-year-olds are currently living with their parents, up from 47% in February. The increase was mostly among the younger emerging adults – ages 18 to 24 – and was primarily due to their coming home from colleges that shut down or to their having lost their jobs.
This must view 6 min video signals an emerging architectural and urban design paradigm.
Singapore Has An Innovative New Way To Design Its Buildings
Singapore has engaged a new approach to construction called biophilic design. It means architects embrace nature in their design, bringing nature into the city, replacing columns, walls and neon with trees, leaves and insects. Biophilic design turns cities into engines of environmental wellbeing with benefits not just for nature but the human beings that live there too.
This signals the ongoing progress in the domestication of DNA - and more.
Declared as one of the most important discoveries of the 21st century, CRISPR is faster, cheaper, and more accurate than previous gene-editing systems and has since become ubiquitous in labs around the world.
This is the thing about CRISPR: There’s so many different ways that it can be deployed.
Fresh Off Her Nobel Prize Win, Jennifer Doudna Predicts What’s Next for CRISPR
The new Nobel laureate chats with ‘Future Human’ about what her gene-editing companies are up to.
Doudna, PhD, of the University of California, Berkeley, and Emmanuelle Charpentier, PhD, of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, share the award for the discovery of the gene-editing technology CRISPR. The two biochemists began collaborating in 2011 and just a year later published a groundbreaking paper on CRISPR, which has revolutionized our ability to edit genes.
Short for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, CRISPR is actually a naturally occurring bacterial immune system. When viruses attack bacteria, bacteria in turn grab snippets of genetic material from their viral invaders and incorporate these bits into their own DNA. This helps bacteria recognize viruses later on and thwart future invaders. Bacteria do this by producing an RNA molecule that acts as a guide, which cuts up the viral genome.
diseases that are caused by single genes or genetic mutations. A great example, and we’ve already seen early results from one trial, is for sickle cell disease. But I think going forward, we’ll see opportunities to use CRISPR for other kinds of blood disorders, genetic diseases of the eye, and then, maybe in the longer term, cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy, which are also genetic diseases.
I think we’re going to see everything from high-throughput laboratory tests that require robotic equipment and experts to point-of-care tests that can be run in a research lab, a doctor’s office, or an emergency room.
We’ve so much going on in the field. I think one interesting possibility is that we’ll see CRISPR being used not to edit genomes, or at least not to make permanent changes to genomes, but instead to regulate them, to control levels of human proteins that are produced from different genes. This is a newer way of using the CRISPR technology. I think it has a lot of potential to allow control of cells that doesn’t require actual permanent chemical changes being made to the DNA.
Agriculture is the other area where it’s going to be impactful. We’re already seeing a lot of use of CRISPR in making plants that have genetic changes that can enable things like better crop yield, resistance to drought, higher levels of nutritional value, things like that. I think that’s really exciting, and there’s clearly a lot more to be done there. That’s likely to be the area where we’ll see a broader impact in the near term.
The benefits of CRISPR will inevitably extend to the understanding of our microbial biomes. This is a good signal of how microbial transplants will likely be beneficial for treating and maybe curing illnesses and diseases.
Fecal Transfer from Moms to Babies After C-Section: Trial Results
Tiny doses of maternal poo mixed with breast milk and given to Cesarean-born infants makes their gut microbiota resemble those of babies born vaginally.
The composition of gut microbes in babies born via Cesarean section tends to differ from those in babies born vaginally, prompting speculation that this may have long-term health consequences. To enrich for beneficial bugs in babies’ bellies after C-section, researchers have performed mom-to-infant microbial transplants, described today (October 1) in Cell. In a clinical trial in which seven Cesarean-delivered babies were fed tiny amounts of their mothers’ fecal material, it was found that the babies’ guts became colonized with the sorts of bacteria normally present in infants delivered vaginally. While the procedure produced no ill effects in the infants, there are no data on whether it has any benefits to the baby, and experts warn it may be dangerous for mothers to attempt such a treatment themselves.
“This is a very well-balanced, important, and clinically relevant contribution to the field, with really nice, clear-cut conclusions,” says gut microbe researcher Tine Rask Licht of the Technical University of Denmark who was not involved in the research. “They have very nice data . . . [showing that] with fecal transfer they get a pattern of microbial development which is much more similar to that of children born vaginally.”
Epidemiological evidence indicates there may also be later life consequences to missing out on this bacterial baptism, as some call it. A recent study showed that Cesarean-born kids have a higher likelihood of developing immune disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and celiac disease. The growing prevalence of Cesarean deliveries makes these potential repercussions an increasing concern.
This is another weak signal about energy production, domesticating DNA and an emerging metabolic (circular) economy.
Sludge-powered bacteria generate more electricity, faster
Changing the surface chemistry of electrodes leads to the preferential growth of a novel electroactive bacterium that could support improved energy-neutral wastewater treatment.
To grow, electroactive bacteria break down organic compounds by transferring electrons to solid-state substrates outside their cells. Scientists have utilized this process to drive devices, such as microbial electrochemical systems, where the bacteria grow as a film on an electrode, breaking down the organic compounds in wastewater and transferring the resultant electrons to the electrode.
Scientists are now looking for ways to improve this process so it produces hydrogen gas at a negatively charged cathode electrode, which can then be converted to electricity to power wastewater treatment plants. This needs electroactive bacteria that efficiently transfer electrons to a positively charged anode electrode that do not use hydrogen for their growth.
This is a nice confirming signal of how horizontal gene transfer (hgt) - creates different rules regarding evolution - and help explain that the development of antibiotic resistance is more complex than the normal understanding of evolution would suggest.
"However, when scientists check environments without antibiotics, for example, forests or estuaries, antibiotic resistance genes can still be detected."
The researchers found that antibiotic resistance genes can spread into populations that are not experiencing selection with antibiotic, and that, even though these genes were at low levels, they prepared the population for future challenges with antibiotic.
"This could explain why antibiotic resistance evolves so quickly in hospitals," Dr. McDonald said.
World first study shows that some microorganisms can bend the rules of evolution
The dominant thinking in evolution focuses on inheritance between parent and offspring – or 'vertical gene transfer (VGT)'.
But now scientists are paying more attention to 'horizontal gene transfer (HGT)': the transmission of DNA other than from parent to offspring, as this transfer can tell us about the evolution of a number of other organisms such as bacteria. It can also help us to better understand antibiotic resistance.
In a world first, Monash University scientists have discovered that HGT can bend the rules of evolution.
The discovery is outlined in a study published today in PNAS, which was led by ARC Future Fellow Dr. Mike McDonald and Ph.D. candidate Laura Woods, both from the Monash University School of Biological Sciences.
This is a weak signal of emerging new forms of matter and electronics using graphene - discovered in the 21st Century.
Stacking and twisting graphene unlocks a rare form of magnetism
Since the discovery of graphene more than 15 years ago, researchers have been in a global race to unlock its unique properties. Not only is graphene—a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon arranged in a hexagonal lattice—the strongest, thinnest material known to man, it is also an excellent conductor of heat and electricity.
Now, a team of researchers at Columbia University and the University of Washington has discovered that a variety of exotic electronic states, including a rare form of magnetism, can arise in a three-layer graphene structure.
The findings appear in an article published Oct. 12 in Nature Physics.
Another weak signal of the inevitable need for a metabolic (upcycling) economy. It also signals that simply banning plastics doesn’t solve the problem of waste - it simply shifts it to something else.
Compared to traditional heating, the microwave heating released over 10 times as much hydrogen from the plastic, leaving very little other than pure carbon and some iron carbide behind. Better yet, the carbon was almost entirely in the form of carbon nanotubes, a product with significant value.
If recycling plastics isn’t making sense, remake the plastics
New catalytic approaches convert plastic into liquid fuels, nanotubes.
A few years back, it looked like plastic recycling was set to become a key part of a sustainable future. Then, the price of fossil fuels plunged, making it cheaper to manufacture new plastics. Then China essentially stopped importing recycled plastics for use in manufacturing. With that, the bottom dropped out of plastic recycling, and the best thing you could say for most plastics is that they sequestered the carbon they were made of.
The absence of a market for recycled plastics, however, has also inspired researchers to look at other ways of using them. Two papers this week have looked into processes that enable "upcycling," or converting the plastics into materials that can be more valuable than the freshly made plastics themselves.
Here’s an account of different browsers in terms of the privacy they enable.
How your browser can make your online life a little more private
A new browser setting will do what Do Not Track didn’t, but you could switch to a more private browser right now.
Data privacy laws are still a work in progress, but one major improvement is coming: Global Privacy Control, which — assuming everything works out — will let you automatically opt out of having your data sold or shared at every website you visit. For now, it doesn’t do much, but it is available if you want to add it to your browser. If nothing else, the recent launch of the new specification is a great opportunity to check out your browser’s privacy options — and your browser options in general.
Trackers hidden on the vast majority of websites collect as much information about us as possible and try to link that data to our actions online as well as off, typically to send us targeted ads. The idea behind Global Privacy Control would be to place a setting on your browser that tells every site you visit that you don’t want your data to be sold or shared with anyone else, and websites would have to respect your wishes. While some browsers have built-in tools (or available extensions) meant to stop tracking in the first place, they aren’t always effective, and they can’t do anything once your data is collected. And while laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) give users the right to request that businesses not sell their data, those users have to make that request of every site they visit, a process that is too time-consuming for most people. With Global Privacy Control, that request would be automatic, relayed as soon as you visit the site, and, if you’re in a location where it’s legally required — like California — websites would have to abide by your request.
If a browser extension that tells websites your privacy preferences sounds familiar, that’s because something like this has been tried before. Do Not Track, introduced in 2010, was an attempt by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to institute a sort of digital equivalent to the Do Not Call list: a browser extension or setting that tells websites you visit that you don’t want to be tracked. The problem with Do Not Track was that websites weren’t legally required to comply with it, so very few of them did.
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