Not science as such but . . .

[Icarus]

My PC has touchscreen ability. I do not use it at all because I prefer the keyboard or mouse. Call me old fashioned (and stubborn).

Touchscreen operation of an automobile is not consistent with the desire to improve safe operation.  The touchscreen is a marketing gimmick that most  of us probably  buy into. A switch operated by a knob or button is a damned sight more durable and reliable. My headlight switch or my windshield wiper does not require me to take my eyes of the road.

 

[Dark Lightning]

I despise that my "All-In-One" PC has the touch screen capability. It has whacked up a couple of site visits in the past. Not here, but elsewhere. I am looking to potentially replace my '16 econobox, but I am certainly not going to buy into that touch screen tech. I'm looking for something old and "dumb" that doesn't rat me out to the manufacturer. The dealer put a flyer in my car at the last service visit, saying that they want to buy it. It's pretty much a cream puff, but for little bits on the paint. 31k miles in 10 years. I'll entertain the thought and may talk to them, but if it seems too much like "Grand Theft Auto" on the offer amount, I'll laugh and walk away. My real concern is that if something breaks, i's $1k for pretty much any repair. The plastic cover got busted off my "shark fin" antenna, and it cost me almost $600 in parts and labor. I can't kneel, and have a bad back. The headliner has to come down to access the wiring and mounting hardware. Nocando.

[billy rubin]

i dtive late model peterbilts in which the entire dash display is digital. the temptation of function creep is so strong among the designers  that im constantly having to reconfiguring the dsshboard dispkay so thay i can monitor essrntial functions. the display changes formst by itself whether i eant it to or not.

one of the biggest problems are controls on the steering wheel. they are inaccessible whenever the wheel is not centered, which is always for the low speed stuff i do

[Icarus]

The propensity to outsmart ourselves seems to be a human trait.

Confucious say: We are prisoners of our own perceptions



He also said: woman who fly airplane upside down have crack up

[Icarus]

I was trying to make that naughty joke into a very small type size. It went the wrong way. Sorry 'bout that.

[Dark Lightning]

And it's HAIRY crackup, anyway. 

[Icarus]

The lord works in mysterious ways.  He/she/it makes strange critters........

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/golden-orb-identified-alaska-national-oceanic-atmospheric-association/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

[Recusant]

Yeah I remember the mysterious golden orb. Cool that they've identified it. Thanks for the link Icarus!

[Dark Lightning]

We still have discoveries close to home. Given the thin skin of water on this planet, it still never ceases to amaze.

#friggin insomnia

[Recusant]

Proposed: Copernican principle of consciousness. More philosophy than science, but perhaps science adjacent.

"Consciousness likely not unique to earthlings, paper says" | UC Riverside News

Does consciousness depend on flesh and blood?

The answer is almost certainly no, according to Eric Schwitzgebel, a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside.

In a new working paper, Schwitzgebel and Jeremy Pober, a former UCR graduate student who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lisbon, assert that consciousness is likely possible in life forms made of much different stuff. Think of the five-limbed alien with a rock-like exterior in the recent blockbuster movie "Project Hail Mary."

Schwitzgebel and Pober do not attempt to define consciousness. Instead, they proceed from the premise that it's a real and recognizable phenomenon, and pose a narrower question: Must it be tied to the biology found on Earth?

The paper comes at a time when the prospect of conscious artificial intelligence looms large, fueling utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares. The authors, who touch just briefly on the matter, do not take a firm position either way — and, in fact, diverge in their views. But the arguments they advance leave open the possibility that AI could be conscious, though perhaps not in its current form.

At the heart of the paper's argument is the philosophical notion of "substrate flexibility." As the authors explain it, a "target property," such as being a cup, is substrate flexible if it can be achieved with different kinds of materials. A cup is substrate flexible; it can be made with glass, plastic, or many other substances. Similarly, a book can be printed on paper or stored electronically, and a records can be encoded on vinyl or on compact discs.

Consciousness, Schwitzgebel and Pober argue, is also substrate flexible.

"The universe may contain minds stranger than we can imagine," Schwitzgebel said.

The observable part of the universe contains about 1 trillion galaxies. Planets are common, and the great majority have environments quite different than Earth's, astronomers believe.

For the purposes of their argument, Schwitzgebel and Pober estimate that at least 1,000 behaviorally sophisticated, extraterrestrial civilizations have existed at some point in the cosmos. It's a conservative estimate, they say, noting that "one recent survey found median scientific estimates over one civilization per galaxy at some point in that galaxy's lifetime."

[. . .]

The authors' key argument turns on the Copernican tradition in astronomy. The Renaissance polymath Nicolaus Copernicus and his heirs made a humbling series of discoveries: Earth is not the center of the solar system, the solar system is not the center of the galaxy, and the Milky Way is not the center of the universe. In other words, humanity occupies a less exceptional position in the cosmos than once imagined.

Schwitzgebel and Pober extend this lesson to consciousness: To wit, it probably isn't special.

Assuming there are many behaviorally sophisticated species in the universe with different biological structures, the authors argue that it would amount to a form of "terrocentrism"— unjustified treatment of Earth life as uniquely privileged — to believe consciousness belongs only to organisms like us. The authors coin a phrase, "the Copernican principle of consciousness," to describe this idea.

They don't claim, however, that every advanced life form must be conscious. Rather, they argue that if consciousness exists among behaviorally sophisticated beings, it would be strange to think that only organisms sharing our biochemical architecture could possess it.

[Continues . . .]

The paper is open access:

"Substrate Flexibility and the Copernican Principle of Consciousness" | University of Lisbon

Abstract:

We present a novel argument for the substrate flexibility of consciousness – that is, for the idea that conscious experiences can arise in a variety of different types of physical media, not just in biological animals as they currently exist on Earth.

Some recent critiques of standard arguments for the substrate flexibility of consciousness (e.g., Cao 2022; Block 2025; Seth forthcoming) have emphasized that humanlike consciousness might require our specific biological substrate. However, such critiques are too narrowly focused to address the issue of consciousness in entities whose experience may be very different from ours, for example alien life forms or future AI systems designed along unfamiliar lines.

Given that it's likely that functionally complex, behaviorally sophisticated entities have arisen or will arise many times in the observable universe, in diverse substrates, we argue that it would be a violation of a principle of Copernican mediocrity to hold that among these diverse entities, only we, or only we and a small proportion of others who share our substrate, are conscious.