Is Plant ‘Intelligence’ Just a Human Fantasy?
Although plants make up over 80% of the biomass on Earth, for centuries they have been thought of as inanimate and passive things. Researchers even coined the term “plant blindness” to refer to a cognitive bias that literally makes our brains zone out plants in our view and underestimate their importance. But as research into…
Paleontologists Predict What Future Animals Might Look Like
It’s a bit unorthodox, reaching out to those who spend their lives studying the past and asking them to predict the future. But these paleontologists were happy to take on our assignment: Could you apply what you know about how life has changed over time to guess what species might be like millions of years…
How an 18th Century Explorer Can Help Us Understand the Algorithms Taking Over Our World
We are in the midst of a Cambrian explosion of algorithms. Roughly 540 million years ago, the fossil record tells us that the planet experienced a dramatic diversification of animal life, producing the ancestors of most of the complex organisms that we’re familiar with today. The acceleration of innovation in algorithms and artificial intelligence similarly…