#Philip Ball

[tetw]

20 Great Articles by Philip Ball

He's one of the best science writers around -- he seems to be interested in everything and has an amazing ability to make any subject fascinating. Click through for 20 of Philip Ball's best articles from around the net.

#Philip Ball #Articles #Essays #Science Writing

[kitchen-light]

[Ghosts are] the invisible police, all-seeing agents that patrol norms and boundaries. In this respect traditional ghosts are not emissaries of chaos, but are, on the contrary, social conservatives.

Philip Ball, from “Invisible: The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen”, The Bodley Head, 2004

#philip ball #quotes #essays #words #found* #on death

[maaarine]

The Book of Minds: How to Understand Ourselves and Other Beings, from Animals to AI to Aliens (Philip Ball, 2022)

“The reason meaning exists for us and not for machines is that we are biological beings that have evolved to have innate goals, motives, and purpose, whereas machines have been built to do a task. 

The goal of a mind is to sustain itself, and the organism that embodies it, within its perceived environment. 

It is because of this goal-directed agency that a mind sifts and assembles meaning from what it perceives. 

Is this place safe? Am I hungry? What might I find in here (and might it be good or bad for me)? 

Meaning creates a filter: minds tend to be rather good (if not perfect) at identifying and ignoring information that can be given no meaning, that has no relevance to their goals. 

Meaning is a concept that only exists in the context of goals.”

#the book of minds #philip ball #book

[redshift-13]

Sciences from zoology to astrobiology, computer science to neuroscience, are seeking to understand minds in their own distinct disciplinary realms. Taking a uniquely broad view of minds and where to find them—including in plants, aliens, and God—Philip Ball pulls the pieces together to explore what sorts of minds we might expect to find in the universe. In so doing, he offers for the first time a unified way of thinking about what minds are and what they can do, by locating them in what he calls the “space of possible minds.” By identifying and mapping out properties of mind without prioritizing the human, Ball sheds new light on a host of fascinating questions: What moral rights should we afford animals, and can we understand their thoughts? Should we worry that AI is going to take over society? If there are intelligent aliens out there, how could we communicate with them? Should we? Understanding the space of possible minds also reveals ways of making advances in understanding some of the most challenging questions in contemporary science: What is thought? What is consciousness? And what (if anything) is free will? Informed by conversations with leading researchers, Ball’s brilliant survey of current views about the nature and existence of minds is more mind-expanding than we could imagine. In this fascinating panorama of other minds, we come to better know our own. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo180760293.html

#new books #minds #brains #other minds #science #philip ball

[allyouknowisalie]

For we are not merely a knot of atoms. The atoms that make us are constantly being exchanged with those in the environment, replaced almost entirely every several years. Unlike a lump of rock, in which many of the same atoms have sat there locked into a crystal lattice since before the dinosaurs, we are matter in flux. What exactly is it that stays steady (if not constant) over our lives? The best we can currently say is that we—each of us as individuals—are self-sustaining patterns that become imposed on matter. There’s no shortage of non-living analogues of structures that are temporarily sustained and organized while matter and energy flow through them: hurricanes and whirlwinds, say. We too are spinning patterns of organization. ... Our patterns interact and exchange: There is information flow between them. Once we cease clinging to our materiality, as if we were hewn from rock, we can see how there is a genuine spreading-out of the pattern and organization that make us. Some of the patterns in my brain have been set in place by the whirlwinds of meaning who are my family. We are leaky patterns, imprinting onto one another. When I am moved to tears by a Bach prelude, it is not because of some mysterious power of the acoustic vibrations; it is, it can only be, because there is some Bachness preserved in that pattern, some Bach-meaning encoded in the matter of the world.

A New Way of Thinking About Cancer, Life, the Power of Genes, and DNA, from Philip Ball, Author of How Life Works

#txt #Philip Ball

[averycanadianfilm]

Whatever the eventual outcome, the fractious debate about how to deal with the cultural and institutional legacies of racism and colonialism will surely continue. 

#Nature #Philip Ball #UK

[themillpond]

"...percussive instruments tend to generate ‘inharmonic’ overtones that are not pure harmonics of the fundamental, giving them an ambiguous pitch and creating the ‘metallic’ timbre of bells and gongs. This has posed difficulties when these instruments are used in ensembles, because the inharmonic overtones can produce dissonant clashes with other instruments even when the fundamental tones are consonant. The carillon, an array of bells sounded by a keyboard, has for over 300 years relied on the rather mysterious art of bell-tuning to suppress these mistuned overtones. But however skilfully they are prepared, the fact remains that traditional bells have a third overtone with a frequency 2.4 times that of the fundamental – a minor third, which is potentially dissonant. Acoustic scientists have now designed bells that generate only pure harmonics, obviating these clashes. Australian composer Ross Edwards makes use of such ‘harmonic bells’ in his Third Symphony (1998–2000)." — Philip Ball, The Music Instinct

That video shows some of that. I prefer the sound of the darker overtone to the computer modeled "corrected" one, but it's still fascinating to see. (And the correction makes sense in the context of the carillon, playing multiple notes at once).

#bells #church bells #carillon #acoustics #bell tuning #philip ball #Youtube

[ceilidho]

Curious as to how John would react to bounty hunter Philip Graves riding into town looking for the killer maid and fingering his wife for the murder when you're already nicely settled into married life

fuck now I kinda wanna write more for this au 😭 I want price covering up crimes for his pretty little wife ….gives you a new last name and lies through his fuckin teeth about there being no way you could’ve been living in another town because the two of you have been married for ages. And everyone else in town backs up his lie as well :\\

#screaming at the idea of price and graves sitting at a table together but underneath the table price has a gun aimed at Philip’s balls #and he’s getting increasingly pissed off that someone’s trying to take his wife from him

[shadow0-1]

in the backseat

#call of duty #modern warfare #call of duty modern warfare #MWII #CoD MWII #CoD MWIII #MWIII #blender renders #Phillip Graves #Philip Graves #Shadow Company #CoD OC #OC: Jax #Jackie Ramirez #Ship: High Places #I was originally gonna animate this but it was breaking my balls so #comfort in proximity #and all that

[mondschein14]

my obsession has reached the level of me rewatching the 2 1/2 hour musical just to look at the people sitting in the background

#somehow it's mostly colm philip and michael #well #tumblr only allows short videos so I had to cut it down a lot #les mis #les miserables #colm wilkinson #philip quast #michael ball

[polkaraton]

We gotta talk about the end of this video from one of Steven Ogg's Q&A sessions.

He speaks of two scenes that didn't make it into the game; The Sharmoota Job, which we knew about, and a "super intense" scene of Trevor and Michael bawling their eyes out?? What?!

Rockstar, release the crybaby cut!!!

#like statistically one of us has to have an uncle that totally works at rockstar dude trust me #we need the data #i want to see two spandex'd old men covered in ping pong balls wailing in eachother's arms #gtav #gtavi #steven ogg #trevor philips #trikey

[grellios]

here's some old art i never posted

click for better quality!

#toh #the owl house #emperor smellos #toh emperor belos #emperor belos #philip wittebane #look at this idiot #i fought with myself over whether or not to post this bc i spent a lot of time on it #but i kept it to myself for so long i felt like it was too late #but fuck it we ball #my art

[artfulacrostic]

some of my favorite moments from the 1995 10th Anniversary Concert of Les Miserables bc it's BARRICADE DAY and thus tis the season:

the convicts during Look Down all being Valjeans from different countries

the bishop M is baby faced and has an angelic voice

the clips from the fully staged show that they insert whenever there is too long of an instrumental/to explain things

colm wilkinson and philip quast's confrontation makes me want to chew on my laptop screen. so good. so crisp

baby cosette gets spooked by a balloon popping during castle on a cloud but barely flinches and keeps singing

the entire cast in the background of master of the house bopping back and forth in time. they are so here for it and it's amazing

philip quast's stars. he's so fucking good. i'm insane about him

michael maguire as enjolras's little happy dance when gavroche tells them that lamarque is dead

michael ball as marius somehow gives himself literally heart eyes whenever he talks about cosette. i can see them. it's so funny

during a heart full of love, colm wilkinson and philip quast are so invested in the background. they're leaning over to whisper to each other. they are besties

lea salonga as eponine delivers "i know this house i tell you, there's nothing here for you. just the old man and the girl, they live ordinary lives" like a GODDESS she is EVERYTHING

michael ball surreptitiously wiping his sweat on lea salonga's hair during her death scene. mans is dying a little

drink with me features anthony crivello as a fucking stellar grantaire, and after his verse, enj comes over and puts his hand on his shoulder to comfort him for a very long time. complete with a lingering touch on the arm and everything. fantastic exr crumbs 👍

the clips from the full show of the final battle are hilarious. completely different cast (though only obvious to insane people like us.)

highlights include one of les amis right on the middle of the barricade doing like. a backwards worm he's so into his death throes. he always has me losing my shit

empty chairs at empty tables includes the fucking cruel choice to have the entire les amis cast of actors line up on each side of michael ball and just a step behind so that they're in shadows, all staring sadly at him for the whole song. gives the impression of all the ghosts of marius's dead friends looking on from the afterlife and demanding answers. heart wrenching. THIS IS JUST SUPPOSED TO BE A CONCERT, WHY ARE U DOING STAGING LIKE THIS

beggars at the feast has everyone in the background clapping/tapping along again. love seeing the thenardiers get their due appreciation

the 17 valjeans from other international productions enter after the finale and they all have their gavroches holding their country flags it's so fucking cute

and of course final encore with all the additional valjeans and the whole cast is fucking ACES

ANYWAY if ur looking for a production to watch that is good af this is the top of my list even though it isn't fully staged. it's sooooo. it's some good fucking food. happy barricade day!!

#les mis #les miserables #les mis 10th anniversary concert #barricade day #les mis musical #colm wilkinson #philip quast #ruthie henshall #michael ball #lea salonga #judy kuhn #michael maguire #anthony crivello #and many others lol #enjolras #grantaire #jean valjean #javert #eponine #marius #cosette #fantine #gavroche #r speaks

[maaarine]

The Book of Minds: How to Understand Ourselves and Other Beings, from Animals to AI to Aliens (Philip Ball, 2022)

“In the face of that gulf, we seem predisposed to read into other minds not just malevolence but a sort of malevolence we already know about (and how could it be otherwise, really?). 

As Steven Pinker has said, ‘A characteristic of AI dystopias is that they project a parochial alpha-male psychology onto the concept of intelligence . . . There is no law of complex systems that says that intelligent agents must turn into ruthless megalomaniacs.’ 

It’s telling, he adds, ‘that many of our techno-prophets don’t entertain the possibility that artificial intelligence will naturally develop along [stereotypically] female lines – fully capable of solving problems but with no desire to annihilate innocents or dominate the civilization.’ 

That’s a rather gender-essentialist view, but you can see the point. 

In all this, Pinker sees our own reflection: we are constantly imagining that a supersmart AI will do to us what we have done to animals less well endowed with our particular modes of intelligent cognition. 

When Bostrom wonders how we might program or teach our own values into AI, he raises the question of what those values should be – and thereby turns this into an exercise for finding moral consensus in ourselves. 

In this way and others, AI dystopias act as vehicles for exploring our fears and questions about ourselves. (…)

For example, there is a common presumption that the goals an AI has will be independent of its intelligence. Bostrom makes this an explicit hypothesis; 

but even Pinker, within the ‘anti-catastrophist’ camp, says that ‘intelligence is the ability to deploy novel means to attain a goal; the goals are extraneous to the intelligence itself.’”

#philip ball #the book of minds #book

[wolame-o-ccx]

Mmm yes

#philip wittebane #belpapa #idk how you guys have the balls to put the papa titan tag #belpapa au

[beesgav]

midnight drawing idea strikes again

#futurama #philip j fry #fry #digital #art #sketchbook #forgot how much fun ping pong was till i got to play it again #with the pose I've drawn I don't think there was an angle I could draw the ball coming from #which wouldn't make it look like whatever swing he's about to make isn't going to send the ball flying at a wild trajectory