They began as strangers playing chess in Central Park. Frank was a scholar of South Asian textiles, known to friends as a guy who will lend a hand. Lincoln was homeless, living on a sidewalk on 59th Street. Paul was an older man living alone, in an apartment across the street from the Dakota, one of New York’s storied addresses.They formed the kind of casual friendships that can happen over a chessboard.Last year, when Frank realized that he had not seen Paul around in a while, he started asking people whatever happened to him. No one knew. So one day in September, he went to Paul’s apartment to check up on him, not knowing what to expect. He opened the door, and the smell that came out would have killed a herd of elephants. Paul, 87, was incoherent and ragged, and the place was filled with rotting food and rat feces. For the three men — Frank Ames, Paul Trahan and Lincoln Cyrus — that day last September began an unlikely chain of events that would ultimately save one life, maybe two. (via the New York Times)
Experiments on worms show that learning and memories can be transferred
In the 1960s, an eccentric behavioral psychologist named James McConnell convinced the scientific establishment that planarian worms, like Pavlov’s dogs, could be classically conditioned — and that memories of this training could be transferred from worm to worm through cannibalism. These bizarre findings were replicated by other scientists. Now, 60 years later, the worms have stopped learning, and nobody knows why. If a planarian is chopped in half, both halves will regrow into a new worm — the tail will grow a new head, and the head will grow a new tail. McConnell started beheading his trained planarians. The worms that grew back from the severed heads behaved as the originals had, associating light with a shock — a result he expected, given the preservation of their brains. What surprised McConnell was that the worms that regenerated from headless tails remembered, too. This meant that whatever form the worms’ memories took, they weren’t the exclusive purview of the brain. (via Quanta)
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Hamza Doost is 6-foot-3, with a chubby, bearded face, black hair, and an ankle monitor. For the past year, the 21-year-old has been confined to his father’s home in Hayward, an East Bay suburb. He’s allowed a computer, but the government tracks every keystroke. Curiously — given the circumstances — he’s allowed one cryptocurrency account. Not long ago, he sat for a photo wearing a cheerful Hawaiian print shirt, surrounded by gleeful friends aboard a luxurious private jet. According to federal prosecutors, Doost was a key figure in a sophisticated crime ring known as “SE Enterprise,” responsible for what was the largest single private theft of cryptocurrency in U.S. history: a $246 million heist pulled off not with guns or elaborate technical exploits but with phone calls and psychological pressure directed at one early bitcoin investor in Washington, D.C., who made the mistake of trusting the group. (via the SF Standard)
Archeologists found the longest runic carving in North America in a small Ontario town
In 2017, a windthrown tree on a property near Wawa, Ontario, uprooted and exposed a section of bedrock. Avelino Pablo Cruz, an agricultural crew supervisor working nearby, took a break and noticed strange markings carved into the newly exposed rock. He reported them to the landowner. It would be years before anyone understood what he had found. The markings turned out to be 255 runic characters arranged in 15 lines — the longest runic inscription yet documented in North America and the only known runic inscription in the world reproducing the Lord’s Prayer. A second panel nearby depicts what appears to be a Scandinavian-style longship carrying 16 figures. The Wawa inscription may sound at first like evidence of a Norse visit to Ontario but it is rather a Modern Swedish version of the Lord’s Prayer, written in futhark characters, a runic script used in northern Europe and Scandinavia. (via Discover)
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As regular readers will know, I’ve written a lot about the topic of AI and consciousness (too much for some perhaps!) because I find it fascinating, in much the same way that I find the issue of whether AI is dangerous or not fascinating – something I’ve also written about a number of times. And the main reason both of these topics are so interesting is that even the so-called experts, the people who built the fundamental underpinnings of these technologies, can’t seem to agree. On the subject of AI danger, for example, Geoffrey Hinton – the University of Toronto professor who was one of the main architects of neural networks – says that we are in deep trouble. His former colleague Yoshua Bengio agrees. But Yann LeCun – the former head of AI at Meta, who also worked on these technologies – says that this is ridiculous, and that current AIs are no more intelligent than the average cat. Timnit Gebru, a pioneering AI scientist formerly with Google (as Hinton was at one time) says they are just “stochastic parrots.“
On the consciousness question, discussions are inevitably filled with categorical statements. Those who think AI couldn’t possibly be conscious are convinced that the people who think it can be (or possibly already is) are idiots who are subject to “chatbot psychosis” or “AI derangement syndrome.” Others are convinced that there’s plenty of evidence that AIs are conscious – as Nobel Prize-winning biologist Richard Dawkins declared in a recent essay. It’s difficult to say when this debate began, but I think a good starting point is the essay from former Google ethicist Blake Lemoine in 2022, who argued that Google’s AI was either conscious or so close that it didn’t matter (he was ridiculed and then fired). To be fair, the anti-AI-consciousness side seems a lot more categorical than the pro – Anthropic cofounders Dario Amodei and Jack Clark haven’t said whether they think Claude is conscious, but they have left the door open to it (which seems to infuriate the anti-consciousness side as much as if they said it was).
Among the many categorical statements about AI consciousness, one of the most recent and most noteworthy – at least in terms of the amount of coverage it got – is the recent piece in The Atlantic from science-fiction author Ted Chiang (he wrote a story that became the movie Arrival). Chiang’s point is obvious from the title: “No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious.” Pretty definitive, Ted! To even discuss the question of AI consciousness is “absurd,” he says. And what is this based on? Is it his background in machine intelligence or the philosophy of consciousness, or perhaps his training in biological systems? It is not. From what I can tell, his conclusions seem to be based on what the kids like to call “vibes.” Should we seriously consider the possibility that Claude, or any large language model, might be conscious and capable of receiving moral instruction, Chiang asks? “No. Absolutely not,” he replies. He continues:
If we give an LLM a prompt that reads “The following is a conversation between Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan,” it will generate a coherent dialogue between the two historical figures. But no matter how detailed the responses are, no matter how vividly they recount their respective historical accomplishments, we would never conclude that the LLM has conjured up digital re-creations of Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan, nor would we suggest that the historical figures are conscious despite being disembodied and are happily conversing in a language that neither actually spoke. In reality, they are just characters in a piece of speculative fiction.
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Back in 1984, when Erin was 13, her life seemed perfect. Her father, John H. McCann III, was successful, charming, and funny. Erin and her younger sister, Meredith, who was ten, lived in a Tudor-style mansion in a wealthy suburb of Pittsburgh. There was a swimming pool in their backyard, along with a zip line, a tree house, and a playhouse from FAO Schwarz that looked like a log cabin. Then, one September morning, the doorbell rang. When Meredith opened the front door, two men in suits asked if her parents were home. Leah came downstairs and told the men that she would be right back to speak with them after dropping Meredith at school. By the time Erin and Meredith got home that afternoon, their mother had left town. Leah told her daughters that they wouldn’t be going back to Fox Chapel—not after the weekend, not ever. They would all disappear and start a new life elsewhere, under new names. (via The Atavist)
A Brazilian court has ordered the restoration of Henry Ford’s ghost town in the Amazon
A court in the northern Brazilian state of Pará has ruled that both federal and local officials must act to restore and preserve Fordlandia, a city established nearly a century ago by U.S. industrialist Henry Ford deep in the Amazon rainforest. Fordlandia, now a ghost town and a district of the city of Aveiro, was built in 1927 in Pará by the Ford Motor Co. as a rubber-tapping metropolis intended to secure a steady supply of natural rubber for tires. Designed to resemble an idyllic American suburb, it was once the third-largest settlement in the Amazon region. However, disease ravaged the rubber tree plantations, leading to the city’s abandonment. In 1945, the Brazilian government acquired the site. In 2015, Brazil’s federal prosecutors’ office in Pará sued the country’s Iphan architectural heritage agency and the city of Aveiro for failing to preserve Fordlandia. They also demanded that authorities grant the city protected status. (via AP News)
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Loren Krytzer walked into the California auction room broke and unemployed. Seventy-seven seconds later, he walked out a millionaire — all thanks to a blanket. His life changed forever when he discovered that a forgotten old family heirloom, a Navajo blanket from the 1800s that had been sitting in his closet for seven years, was actually worth $1.5 million. And just in time, too. He had been scraping by, living in a shack on the edge of California’s Liona Valley, and had lost a leg after a near-fatal car accident. He inherited the blanket initially because no one in his family realized its value, either. When his grandmother died, he had gone to her house to collect the books she had promised him. The last bag in the house held two blankets passed down from his great-grandmother: a softer Hudson’s Bay blanket and the Navajo blanket his grandmother once laid out on the porch when her cat was having kittens. (via CNBC)
The US military has been sending cryptographic keys via the GPS satellite system
The U.S. military has likely been quietly broadcasting codes for its global encryption network using public GPS for nearly 20 years, turning each satellite into a hidden “numbers station,” according to Steven Murdoch, an information security expert, who detailed his findings in a new published article in a security journal. That means every device that uses GPS has been receiving hidden government information for years, and nobody outside the military knew it until now. Murdoch, a professor of security engineering and head of the Information Security Research Group at University College London, presented evidence that a 176-bit GPS sequence labelled “Subframe 4, Page 17” is encrypted material from the Pentagon’s Over-the-Air Distribution (OTAD) network, which delivers cryptographic keys to military personnel. (via 404 Media)
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Scientists are catching up to what parents and other caregivers have been reporting for many years: When some people with autism spectrum disorders experience an infection that sparks a fever, their autism-related symptoms seem to improve. With a pair of new grants from The Marcus Foundation, scientists at MIT and Harvard hope to explain how this happens in an effort to eventually develop therapies that mimic the “fever effect” to similarly improve symptoms. “Although it isn’t actually triggered by the fever, per se, the ‘fever effect’ is real, and it provides us with an opportunity to develop therapies to mitigate symptoms of autism spectrum disorders,” says neuroscientist Gloria Choi, associate professor in the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and affiliate of The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. The Marcus Foundation has been involved in autism work for over 30 years. (via MIT)
Johnny Appleseed was an entrepeneur who owned thousands of acres of land
There are some verified facts about John Chapman: he seems to have had no fixed address, wore second-hand clothes and often slept outdoors. However, this nomad only looked like a pauper – in fact, he was a successful entrepreneur. In Ohio, land companies would sometimes grant wilderness tracts to homesteaders on the condition that they sow orchards. Chapman’s business model was to start planting in anticipation of the homesteaders’ arrival. He strategically established nurseries and partnered with local caretakers who would look after the trees, often selling them on Chapman’s behalf long after he had left town. Johnny Appleseed’s apparent poverty was a personal choice: he had 1,200 acres across three states to his name when he died. What’s more, the apples his trees bore were not destined for cobblers and pies but for alcoholic cider and the harder liquor known as applejack, a kind of apple brandy. (via the WSJ)
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A Nepali climbing guide thought to have died on Mount Everest has been found crawling down to Base Camp, six days after he was last seen alive. Dawa Sherpa was last seen above Camp 3, at around 24,600ft, while coming down the mountain after summiting. Hopes for his survival were slim as the air at that altitude is thin – but on Thursday, a cleaning crew spotted the experienced climber, who had frostbite on his hands but appeared to be in good health, sliding slowly down. Five people have died so far in this year’s climbing, three of them Nepalis who were involved in the Everest preparations. Dawa Sherpa – also known as Hillary Dawa Sherpa after famed mountaineer Edmund Hillary – was “slowly sliding through” the Khumbu Icefall toward Base Camp when he was found, Pemba Sherpa said. “As far as I know, no one has survived alone at that altitude on Everest so far. This is a miracle to have survived for six days.” (via the BBC)
Former homeless dropout and professional gambler is an internationally renowned artist
As a child growing up in Kentucky in the sixties, George Widener exhibited exceptional arithmetical skills. He was also a compulsive drawer with a photographic memory and an interest in machines. He joined the US military at 18 to work in intelligence, based in West Germany, using his pattern recognition skills to analyse photos from the Stasi and the KGB. He says that he left the military because of his poor social skills and enrolled at the University of Texas to study engineering. But his mind was so full of numbers and dates that he was unable to cope with the course. He ended up living in hostels and on the streets. Eventually he was put in hospital and diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. One way he has channelled his arithmetical ability is in gambling. He has learned how to count cards, a system of winning at blackjack by memorising cards and calculating their values. Another way he coped with his condition was by combining his interest in dates with his drawing. (via The Guardian)
Famous architect Antoni Gaudi died because he was mistaken for a beggar
Born in Spain in 1852, architect Antoni Gaudí became famous for working at the forefront of Catalan Modernism. In 1883, Gaudí began designing Sagrada Família, the Roman Catholic basilica in Barcelona associated with his name. Gaudí didn’t marry or have children, instead focusing steadfastly on his work. He engaged in extreme fasting, shunned meat and alcohol, and reportedly ate only lettuce dipped in milk for a typical lunch. After several of his close friends died in the early 1910s, he threw himself further into his work. He moved into his workshop inside the Sagrada Família, and his hygiene habits went sharply downhill; he wore shabby, ragged clothing, and stopped shaving. On June 7, 1926, during his daily walk to confession, Gaudí was hit by a tram. Because of the 73-year-old’s unkempt appearance (and the fact that he didn’t have identification in his pocket), people who witnessed the accident thought he was a beggar and taxi drivers wouldn’t bother taking a beggar to the hospital. (via Mental Floss)
Hi everyone! Mathew Ingram here. I am able to continue writing this newsletter in part because of your financial help and support, which you can do either through my Patreon or by upgrading your subscription to a monthly contribution. I enjoy gathering all of these links and sharing them with you, but it does take time, and your support makes it possible for me to do that. I also write a weekly newsletter of technology analysis called The Torment Nexus.
Experts say a rare Stradivarius violin that was looted by the Nazis has been found
The most sublime of the violins made by Antonio Stradivarius (Cremona, c. 1644-1737) have names like roses: there is the Countess Polignac and the Davidov, the Lady Tennant and the Molitor. Stradivarius’s technique evolved with time; his violins’ bodies grew longer and deeper, their sound richer. In 1719, at the height of his Golden Period, he made nine known violins. Of those nine violins, two were lost in World War II — until now, when one seems to have surfaced. Pascale Bernheim is a founding director of a Paris group that is devoted to tracking down musical instruments looted during World War II. In April, her organization announced that it had located a legendary instrument: a Stradivarius that hadn’t been seen since 1944. The violin is worth at least ten million euros, but its current owner — a Strasbourg luthier — refuses to acknowledge that his instrument is the long-lost Lauterbach. (via European Review of Books)
Study shows that bees can use tools to solve problems without any training
A new study published in Science on Thursday found that bees utilized tools to solve complex problems to win a sugary treat, even if they had never been trained to use the tools. Some of the bees even cheated — skipping the problem altogether — to reap the reward, the researchers found. This isn’t the first time bumblebees have been seen to use tools to get what they want. A 2016 study found that such bees could learn to pull a string to receive a reward — and that untrained bees could learn this trick from their more educated peers. Still, it adds to the evidence that creative problem-solving and tool use aren’t just the domain of larger-brained animals, such as birds and apes. Bumblebees’ brains are relatively primitive — they have around one million neurons, compared with the 86 billion or so in human brains — yet the new experiment indicates that complex problem-solving doesn’t require complex gray matter. (via Scientific American)
Russell Crowe gives Ryan Gosling a hard time about all his endorsements
Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other places that I rely on as “serendipity engines,” such as The Morning News from Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Jodi Ettenberg’s Curious About Everything, Dan Lewis’s Now I Know, Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton’s The Browser, Clive Thompson’s Linkfest and Why Is This Interesting by Noah Brier and Colin Nagy. If you come across something you think should be included here, feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com
