NEWS ON WHO AND WHAT WE ARE

 

https://flip.it/-ZPRXV

THE WASHINGTON POST

Google’s AI passed a famous test — and showed how the test is broken

The Turing test has long been a benchmark for machine intelligence. But what it really measures is deception.    Analysis by Will Oremus, Staff writer                                    June 17, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

THIS ITEM ASKS THAT YOU RE-CONSIDER WHO AND WHAT YOU ARE, AND WHAT THE TURING TEST ACTUALLY TESTS -SR

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A Dyson Sphere Could Help Humankind Live Forever. So We Found Out How to Build One. This sci-fi megastructure has captivated big thinkers for decades. A leading expert in astrobiology tells us how to construct one., BY DIRK SCHULZE-MAKUCH, JUN 17, 2022

https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a40230192/dyson-sphere-immortality/

THIS ITEM ASKS THAT YOU RE-CONSIDER WHO AND WHAT YOU ARE, AND WHY SOME PEOPLE ARE OBSESSED WITH IMMORTALITY, AN IMPOSSIBLE IDEA AND A DELUSIONARY WISH-SR

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Solar storms may cause up to 5500 heart-related deaths in a given year https://flip.it/jx888z

In an approximate 11-year cycle, the sun blasts out charged particles and magnetised plasma that can distort Earth’s magnetic field, which may disrupt our body clock and ultimately affect the heart. Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2324402-solar-storms-may-cause-up-to-5500-heart-related-deaths-in-a-given-year/#ixzz7WTzGgY2z

FINE TUNED UNIVERSE?  MORE AND MORE EVIDENCE FOR RANDOM TUNING, WHICH MAY HELP EXPLAIN THE NEXT ITEM-SR

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https://www.axios.com/2022/06/17/belief-god-low-gallup-poll

The number of Americans who believe in God has dropped to the lowest level in the 78 years Gallup has asked the question, per a poll out Friday.

Driving the news: 81% of U.S. adults say they believe in God — down 6 points from 2017.

• Belief in God dropped the most among young adults and liberals and Democrats, with these groups showing a drop of 10 or more percentage points compared to an average of polls from 2013 to 2017, Gallup found.

More than 90% of Americans believed in God between 1944 and 2011.

• Conservatives and married adults experienced very little change in beliefs and other subgroups, including education level and ages, experienced but a modest decline.

By the numbers: 62% of liberals, 68% of young adults and 72% of Democrats say they believe in God. These groups experienced the largest declines in beliefs, Gallup notes.

• Belief in God is highest among political conservatives, with 94% saying they believe in God, and Republicans, with 92% saying so.

Between the lines: While the percentage of Americans who believe in God is down over the last five years — and down even more when compared to the last several decades — a majority of Americans still believe in God, Gallup found.

Apr 7, 2021 - Politics & Policy

America is losing its religion

Bryan Walsh, author of Axios Future

New surveys show Americans' membership in communities of worship has declined sharply in recent years, with less than 50% of the country belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque.

Why it matters: The accelerating trend towards a more secular America represents a fundamental change in the national character, one that will have major ramifications for politics and even social cohesion.

By the numbers: A Gallup poll released last week found just 47% of Americans reported belonging to a house of worship, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% as recently as 1999.

• The shift away from organized religion is a 21st century phenomenon. U.S. religious membership was 73% when Gallup first measured it in 1937, and stayed above 70% for the next six decades.

Context: The decline in membership is primarily driven by a sharp rise in the "nones" — Americans who express no religious preference.

• The percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion rose from 8% between 1998 and 2000 to 21% over the past three years, while the percentage of nones who do not belong to a house of worship has risen as well.

The big picture: The story of a more secular America is chiefly — though not entirely — one of generational change.

• Membership in houses of worship is correlates with age, with the oldest Americans much more likely to be church members than younger adults.

• But while church membership is lower among younger generations, the dropoff is particularly stark among millennials and Gen Z, who are about 30 percentage points lower than Americans born before 1946, compared to 8 points and 16 points respectively for baby boomers and Gen X.

• Children who grow up without organized religion are less likely to join houses of worship when they become adults, so it stands to reason that the secularization trend will only continue in the future, barring major demographic or cultural changes.

Yes, but: Generational replacement — the idea that society-wide changes in values between the young and the old can be attributed to their different circumstances growing up — doesn't tell the entire story.

• Even the oldest Americans have seen a slight rise in the percentage of nones, while 20% of Gen Xers report no religious affiliation, up from 11% in 1999.

Details: Whatever their religious practices, Americans are increasingly rejecting many of the moral precepts found in most major religions.

• A 2017 Gallup poll found a significant majority of Americans believe practices like birth control, divorce, extramarital sex, gay and lesbian relations are all morally acceptable.

• In a piece last year for Foreign Affairs, the political scientist Ronald F. Inglehart argued that as birthrates have dropped thanks in part to contraception and falling infant mortality, modern societies have become less observant "because they no longer need to uphold the kinds of gender and sexual norms that the major world religions have instilled for centuries."

The catch: Just because conventional religious practice is on the decline doesn't mean Americans will have no need to fill what the journalist Murtaza Hussain calls the country's "God-shaped hole."

• While the earlier phases of the civil rights movement were built on the strength of the Black church, today many young people are flocking to campaigns like Black Lives Matter that aren't religious in nature, but often adopt the language of religion, spirituality and justice.

• "Political debates over what America is supposed to mean have taken on the character of theological disputations," Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a recent Atlantic essay. "This is what religion without religion looks like."

What's next: As religion decreasingly becomes something Americans practice, it may instead become another identity, subsumed into the ongoing culture wars.

• The trend may also shake up the electorate. The journalist Matt Yglesias noted that when a white person switches from being Christian to non-affiliated, they are more likely to become a Democrat, "but when a Black person makes the same switch, the correlation goes in the other direction."

• That could help explain the fairly secular Donald Trump having partial success in increasing the GOP's share of the non-white vote in 2020.

The bottom line: The U.S. remains an unusually religious country, with more than seven in 10 Americans still affiliating with some organized religion, according to the Gallup poll.

But conventional religion's power is on the wane, and it might take a miracle for that to change.     https://flip.it/FfKnXI

READERS CAN LOOK FORWARD TO MY BOOK, RAIDERS OF THE LAST ILLUSIONS; BEYOND ATHEISM AND THEISM-WHY RELIGION IS REAL BUT GOD IS NOT

WHICH I EXPECT TO BE PUBLISHED IN 2023-SR

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https://flip.it/-n.qKG

THE CONVERSATION

We don’t know whether most medical treatments work, and we know even less about whether they cause harm – new study

Published: June 17, 2022 6.18am EDT

Author

Jeremy Howick

Professor and Director of the Stoneygate Centre for Excellence in Empathic Healthcare, University of Leicester

Only one in 20 medical treatments have high-quality evidence to support their benefits, according to a recent study. The study also found that harms of treatments are measured much more rarely (a third as much) as benefits.

A GOOD REASON TO LEARN HOW TO READ THE STATISTICS IN MEDICAL REPORTS-YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE DOCTOR TO DO THIS-SR

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THE WELL 

Will we download our minds into new bodies? 

According to author and entrepreneur Steven Kotler, at some point this century, we will confront the prospect of immortality, with

Steven Kotler

At some point this century, we will confront the prospect of immortality, says award-winning journalist Steven Kotler. After our bodies die, it will be possible to upload our minds into a computer, and then download them into another body. The implications for humanity are difficult to fathom.

MORE IMMORTALITY BULLSHIT!  IT'S WAY PAST TIME FOR OUR PATHETIC SPECIES TO GROW UP AND EMBRACE REALITY NOT WISHES AND HOPES-SR

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https://flip.it/z-8onn

Researchers make breakthrough discovery in the ability to move things with our minds

[June 13, 2022: Yaobiao Li, Light Publishing Center, Changchun Institute of Optics] 

... shows that people use brainwave control to manipulate electromagnetic waves, which can be extended in some illustrative scenarios, such as attention monitoring, reconfigurable antenna, fatigue monitoring, etc. (CREDIT: Ruichao Zhu, Jiafu Wang, Tianshuo Qiu, Yajuan Han, Xinmin Fu, Yuzhi Shi, Xingsi Liu, Tonghao Liu, Zhongtao Zhang, Zuntian Chu, Cheng-Wei Qiu, Shaobo Qu).

THERE'S SOME IMPORTANT STUFF GOING ON HERE BUT DON'T LET IT LEAD YOU DOWN A PRIMROSE PATH YOU THINK LEADS TO LITERALLY MOVING THINGS WITH YOUR "MIND." GILBERT RYLE, REMEMBER PIONEERED THE IDEA THAT THE MIND IS JUST WHAT THE BODY DOES-SR