Thinking Meat round-up
June 24th, 2010 by Mary
Here are some interesting items that have crossed my radar lately.
- Subjective information: This article from Seed Magazine may be relevant to a recent comment about the difficulty of answering personality test questions. The article examines the role of self-reported data of all kinds in science. People are asked about various aspects of their own behavior, but how accurate are their answers?
- Chimp warfare: Nicholas Wade reports on war-like behavior among chimps at Ngogo, in Kibale National Park in Uganda. A recent paper on ten years of observations concludes that a group of chimps engaged in aggression to expand its territory.
- A voluntary end to humans? Bioethicist Peter Singer has written an essay about the morality of bringing children into the world. Many people hesitate to have children whose lives they have reason to believe will be unusually painful or difficult. Singer points out that even a normal healthy life typically involves considerable pain as well as pleasure, and asks why we should go on reproducing at all. The reader responses are full of interesting takes on parenthood, the value of life, and the future of the planet.
- Atheist posthumans: This essay provides a completely different view of the (post)human future, suggesting that posthumans will probably be atheists and furthermore that this would be a desirable development. I’m not sure I see super-intelligent posthumans in the future any time soon, but the discussion of atheism is interesting.
