07 NOV 2014 by ideonexus
Bandwidth Explains Fermi's Paradox
"We uploaded via the router," Amber says, and looks confused for a moment. "There's a network on the other side of it. We were told it was FTL, instantaneous, but I'm not so sure now. I think it's something more complicated, like a lightspeed network, parts of which are threaded through wormholes that make it look FTL from our perspective. Anyway, Matrioshka brains, the end product of a technological singularity – they're bandwidth-limited. Sooner or later the posthuman descendants evolve E...Folksonomies: speculation futurism
Folksonomies: speculation futurism
24 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
Imagination Builds On Our Experiences
...you can’t have a storage space that is
filled to the brim with boxes. How would
you ever come inside? Where would you
pull out the boxes to find what you need?
How would you even see what boxes
were available and where they might be
found? You need space. You need light.
You need to be able to access your attic’s
contents, to walk inside and look around
and see what is what.
And within that space, there is freedom.
You can temporarily place there all of the
observations you’ve gathe...Folksonomies: knowledge imagination
Folksonomies: knowledge imagination
It works within the confines of what we know and how we can work with that knowledge.
23 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
You Can Choose Your Memories
In the earliest days of research, memory
was thought to be populated with socalled
engrams, memory traces that were
localized in specific parts of the brain. To
locate one such engram—for the memory
of a maze—psychologist Karl Lashley
taught rats to run through a labyrinth. He
then cut out various parts of their brain
tissue and put them right back into the
maze. Though the rats’ motor function
declined and some had to hobble or crawl
their way woozily through the twists and
turns, the ...Folksonomies: memory mindfulness
Folksonomies: memory mindfulness
We can cognitively choose what memories will be stored longterm and which to let go, but we normally operate on autopilot, allowing novelties into our longterm memory-space.