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David Pearce and Andrés Gómez Emilsson Chat About the Nature of Reality

Along the way, they discuss the early days of David’s HedWeb, the Abolitionist Project, the Three Supers of Transhumanism (Superhappiness, Superintelligence, and Superlongevity), philosophy and history of science, the nature of intelligence, field theories of consciousness, anesthesia, empathogens, anti-tolerance drugs, and much more.

Some of the key essays discussed:

Utopian Pharmacology — “Mental Health in the Third Millennium — MDMA and Beyond” — https://mdma.net/

Future Opioids: The Quest for a Drug-Free Society — https://www.opioids.com/

The Biointelligence Explosion — “How recursively self-improving organic robots will modify their own source code and bootstrap our way to full-spectrum superintelligence” — https://www.biointelligence-explosion.com/

How a single protein could unlock age-related vision loss

Research led by Sanford Burnham Prebys professor Francesca Marassi, Ph.D., is helping to reveal the molecular secrets of macular degeneration, which causes almost 90% of all age-related vision loss.

The study, published recently in the Biophysical Journal, describes the flexible structure of a key blood protein involved in macular degeneration and other age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and atherosclerosis.

“Proteins in the blood are under constant and changing pressure because of the different ways blood flows throughout the body,” says Marassi. “For example, blood flows more slowly through small blood vessels in the eyes compared to larger arteries around the heart. Blood proteins need to be able to respond to these changes, and this study gives us fundamental truths about how they adapt to their environment, which is critical to targeting those proteins for future treatments.”

Researchers Demonstrate Brainwave Synchronization Without Physical Presence

Researchers demonstrated that the brains of people playing an online game together were synchronized without physical presence.

Online gaming and other types of online social interaction have become increasingly popular during the COVID pandemic. This trend is likely to continue due to increased remote working and investments in social technology.

Previous research has shown that people’s brains activate in a similar and simultaneous way during social interaction. Such inter-brain neural synchronization has been associated with empathy and cooperation in face-to-face situations. However, its role in online, remote interaction has remained unknown.

David Chalmers on Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy

David Chalmers, Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at NYU, joins us to discuss his newest book Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy.

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Virtual reality as genuine reality.
–Why VR is compatible with the good life.
–Why we can never know whether we’re in a simulation.
–Consciousness in virtual realities.
–The ethics of simulated beings.

You can find the page for the podcast here: https://futureoflife.org/2022/01/26/david-chalmers-on-realit…hilosophy/

Listen to the audio version of this episode here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/david-chalmers-on-real…0549092329

Check out David’s book and website here: http://consc.net/

Using graph-powered analytics to keep track of ESG in the real world

Were you unable to attend Transform 2022? Check out all of the summit sessions in our on-demand library now! Watch here.

Editorial Disclosure: The author of this article has a business relationship with James Phare, CEO and founder of Neural Alpha.

What does sustainability actually mean for organizations? Can it be measured, and if yes, how so? Often, these are obvious questions with less-than-obvious answers, even for sustainability and environmental, social and governance (ESG) professionals like James Phare.

Deadly brain tumors destroyed in mice with revolutionary new therapy

Glioblastoma is one of the most aggressive types of brain cancer known to man. For many, the chance of survival is often low. However, a new type of brain tumor therapy could help change things for the better. The therapy, which relies on destroying the “power source” of the cancer, has shown considerable success in mice. The scientists are hopeful it will work the same in humans.

The new therapy hopes to destroy the “power source” of glioblastoma tumors. A new study led by Israeli scientists shows that glioblastoma relies on specific brain cells to fuel the growth of its tumors. As a result, scientists began to look at ways to treat cancer by removing those cells instead. The new brain tumor therapy could completely starve out the cancer cells, allowing patients to enter remission.

Normally doctors would use chemotherapy to target the tumors directly. However, by removing brain cells called Astrocytes, scientists found they could starve out glioblastoma tumors in mice. Further, the tumors remained gone for as long as the astrocytes were repressed. And, even when they stopped suppressing, Dr. Lior Mayo, lead author on the study, says that 85 percent of mice stayed in remission.

Playlist Psychology created by @Nicholi

If anyone has a tiktok you are welcome to follow me or if you want to view some videos I created a Playlist. Just click on the links:

Psychology:

Robert Sapolsky: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRP33D38/

Neuroscience: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRP3P9kC/

Neurological Disorders: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRP3vBs9/

LSD and the Brain: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRP3g1nG/


Time: Do the past, present, and future exist all at once?

Everything we do as living organisms is dependent, in some capacity, on time. The concept is so complex that scientists still argue whether it exists or if it is an illusion.

In this video, astrophysicist Michelle Thaller, science educator Bill Nye, author James Gleick, and neuroscientist Dean Buonomano discuss how the human brain perceives of the passage of time, the idea in theoretical physics of time as a fourth dimension, and the theory that space and time are interwoven.

Thaller illustrates Einstein’s theory of relativity, Buonomano outlines eternalism, and all the experts touch on issues of perception, definition, and experience.

How Axolotls Regrow Their Brains After Injury

In a new study published in Science, researchers have used single-nucleus sequencing (sNuc-Seq) to characterize the cell populations of the axolotl forebrain, an aquatic salamander that can regenerate brain tissue post-injury.

Axolotls – a translational model

The brain is a complex organ, comprising billions of cells and neuronal connections that form intricate networks. Understanding which cells are actively engaged in neurological processes – and which genes underpin this activity – can help us to decipher this complexity. It is only recently that advances in single-cell sequencing have made such research possible, providing insights on the molecular signatures of thousands of individual cells.

Apple Researchers Develop NeuMan: A Novel Computer Vision Framework that can Generate Neural Human Radiance Field from a Single Video

Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) were first developed, greatly enhancing the quality of new vision synthesis. It was first suggested as a way to rebuild a static picture using a series of posed photographs. However, it has been swiftly expanded to include dynamic and uncalibrated scenarios. With the assistance of sizable controlled datasets, recent work additionally concentrate on animating these human radiance field models, thereby broadening the application domain of radiance-field-based modeling to provide augmented reality experiences. In this study, They are focused on the case when just one video is given. They aim to rebuild the human and static scene models and enable unique posture rendering of the person without the need for pricey multi-camera setups or manual annotations.

Neural Actor can create inventive human poses, but it needs several films. Even with the most recent improvements in NeRF techniques, this is far from a simple task. The NeRF models must be trained using many cameras, constant lighting and exposure, transparent backgrounds, and precise human geometry. According to the table below, HyperNeRF cannot be controlled by human postures but instead creates a dynamic scene based on a single video. ST-NeRF uses many cameras to rebuild each person using a time-dependent NeRF model, although the editing is only done to change the bounding box. HumanNeRF creates a human model from a single video with masks that have been carefully annotated; however, it does not demonstrate generalization to novel postures.

With a model trained on a single video, Vid2Actor can produce new human poses, but it cannot model the surroundings. They solve these issues by proposing NeuMan, a system that can create unique human stances and novel viewpoints while reconstructing the person and the scene from a single in-the-wild video. Figure 1’s high-quality pose-driven rendering is made possible by NeuMan, a cutting-edge framework for training NeRF models for both the human and the scene. They first estimate the camera poses, the sparse scene model, the depth maps, the human stance, the human form, and the human masks from a moving camera’s video.