I've spent the last 4 years trying to figure out how we can empirically investigate the nature of (putative) experiences in non-human animals, and I hope this review inspires a new research program into animal timescapes! 3/n
Also a big shout-out to @estherlower.bsky.social for her fabulous work on the illustrations on the main figure of the paper!
What is the minimal machinery needed for complex, cognition-like behavior?
Very cool.
"somewhere in Silicon Valley, a fruit fly is living its second life inside a computer, totally unaware that it is living in the insect Matrix."
I cannot begin to tell you how utterly disgusted I am with the state of science reporting at the very few remaining venues with a veneer of respectability.
It's a bit like homeopathy: it fails the tests, it's conceptually unsound, but "it works on me". Maybe neural codes are a powerful placebo though: nice epistemic satisfaction with no explanatory content.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30714889/
My paper explores a solution based on Gandhi's "progressive ahimsa". In this framework, a duty not to harm can be overridden by duties of care. For example, your duty of care to a child can justify putting up an insecticide-treated malaria net. 2/5 journals.publishing.umich.edu/jpe/news/290/
“The objective is a world in which we are seamlessly shuttled from one managed (and, ideally, exploitable) activity to the next – with no break or chance to look around us – from cradle to grave. The death of the university will bring that world a step closer.”