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Glimpsing the Meta-Intelligence of the Future
We humans are those simple individual life forms that are beginning to bring technology into our bodies, whether it’s the cell phone or eventually brain/computer interface.
We on planet Earth are creating a meta-intelligence. Life began on this planet about 3.5 billion years ago with what was called prokaryotic life. It was a very simple life form. It was DNA inside of a cell - no organs, no brain containing cellular subcomponents. What happened was that simple life became eukaryotic life, a more advanced single-cell life form, and then that ended up becoming a multi-cellular life form and eventually until it became you and I, an organism of 10 trillion cells with organs and tissues.
The same thing is happening in our world today. We humans are those simple individual life forms that are beginning to bring technology into our bodies, whether it’s the cell phone or eventually brain/computer interface.
Now it will ultimately allow us to link together into what I think of as the meta-intelligence of the future where I’ll begin to have full cognitive knowledge and search will be something instantaneous. I’ll think about it and know what’s going on. But more so, I’ll have knowledge of what a sunrise looks like right now in Japan and what people are feeling in other parts of the world.
The benefit thereof is to create a level of total human consciousness that’s never been understood before in a way that I hope will give us a great deal of unity as a species and really give us a level of abundance in the world. Abundance in terms of knowledge and equality and we won’t have the bottom billion anymore.
In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think's studio.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
Imagine learning empathy at school. Global Oneness Project does just that.
To create wiser adults, add empathy to the school curriculum.
A still from the film "We Became Fragments" by Luisa Conlon , Lacy Roberts and Hanna Miller, part of the Global Oneness Project library.
- Stories are at the heart of learning, writes Cleary Vaughan-Lee, Executive Director for the Global Oneness Project. They have always challenged us to think beyond ourselves, expanding our experience and revealing deep truths.
- Vaughan-Lee explains 6 ways that storytelling can foster empathy and deliver powerful learning experiences.
- Global Oneness Project is a free library of stories—containing short documentaries, photo essays, and essays—that each contain a companion lesson plan and learning activities for students so they can expand their experience of the world.
Four philosophers who realized they were completely wrong about things
Philosophers like to present their works as if everything before it was wrong. Sometimes, they even say they have ended the need for more philosophy. So, what happens when somebody realizes they were mistaken?
Sometimes philosophers are wrong and admitting that you could be wrong is a big part of being a real philosopher. While most philosophers make minor adjustments to their arguments to correct for mistakes, others make large shifts in their thinking. Here, we have four philosophers who went back on what they said earlier in often radical ways.
The history of using the Insurrection Act against Americans
Numerous U.S. Presidents invoked the Insurrection Act to to quell race and labor riots.
The army during riots in Washington, DC, after the assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., April 1968.
- U.S. Presidents have invoked the Insurrection Act on numerous occasions.
- The controversial law gives the President some power to bring in troops to police the American people.
- The Act has been used mainly to restore order following race and labor riots.
Facebook finally adds option to delete old posts in batches
Got any embarrassing old posts collecting dust on your profile? Facebook wants to help you delete them.
- The feature is called Manage Activity, and it's currently available through mobile and Facebook Lite.
- Manage Activity lets users sort old content by filters like date and posts involving specific people.
- Some companies now use AI-powered background checking services that scrape social media profiles for problematic content.
New simulations show how supermassive black holes form
Researchers from Japan add a new wrinkle to a popular theory and set the stage for the formation of monstrous black holes.
