If AI becomes conscious, how would we treat it? Animals may hold a clue. Our beliefs about AI consciousness may depend less on evidence and more on self-interest. Continue
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The rise of AI also threatens a traditional view of what makes humans special. Many philosophers down the centuries—from Aristotle and Aquinas to Descartes and Kant—argue that what makes us unique is our ability to reason. We are the animal rationale, as the scholastics put... Continue
Oregon State University researchers have developed a new family of advanced materials that convert water into energy-producing hydrogen using only sunlight, offering a potential clean-energy alternative to solar panels and concentrated solar energy solutions. The approach requires no outside power source beyond sunlight and no... Continue
Greed: The Most Overlooked Mental Health Problem. One compulsion has no wall. No hormone tells the brain it has accumulated enough, and no fortune is ever too large. That compulsion is the unconstrained pursuit of wealth, and psychiatry has almost nothing to say about it. Continue
The provocative new theory that could explain aging and disease: Could disruptions in the flow of energy through mitochondria cause everything from type 2 diabetes to Alzheimer’s? Chronic diseases we treat as separate failures of separate organs may share one deeper problem: cells struggling to... Continue
Trump Administration Tells Appeals Court Gray Wolves No Longer Need Federal Protection. Government attorneys argued that the earlier rulings never changed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s judgment that wolves are no longer endangered and belong under state management. Conservation lawyers countered that the agency... Continue
A bigger paycheck tends to come with personality changes, according to a large-scale analysis of psychology research. Increases in income tend to be followed by small increases in reliability and emotional resilience, alongside decreases in sociability and interpersonal warmth. Continue
A New Database Outs Clergy With Sexual Abuse Allegations. Protestant Accountability contains public records documenting over 2,700 church workers who either committed sexual abuse or mishandled related investigations while holding institutional authority. The database covers church staff broadly, from associate pastors and worship leaders to... Continue
The food industry’s high-protein drive is sadly not all part of a public health plan to fix a hidden diet deficiency in society. In fact, while many of us (including half of Americans) are aiming to increase our daily protein intake, most of us are... Continue