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svcg, in The brain makes a lot of waste. Now scientists think they know where it goes

Now scientists think they know where it goes.

Twitter, mostly.

sqgl, (edited ) in The brain makes a lot of waste. Now scientists think they know where it goes

RadioLab covered the dawning of the (serendipitous) discovery a few years ago called: “bringing back gamma”.

eveninghere, in The fascinating sex lives of insects

In the animal kingdom, females are rarely faithful to their mates, so there is probably sperm from a number of males inside a female reproductive tract.

How can I buy a plane ticket to that Animal Kingdom you all’re talking about.

averyminya, in The brain makes a lot of waste. Now scientists think they know where it goes

This just in: brain sleeve found filled with microplastics preventing washed amyloid fluid from draining.

Seriously though, this seems like a significant discovery!

CanadaPlus, in Scientists revealed that Neanderthals cared for their disabled children out of compassion

Scientists revealed that Neanderthals cared for their disabled children out of compassion

I mean it’s the obvious guess, but compassion doesn’t leave a direct fossil record. In the paper the thing they emphasise is that it was an obviously permanent disability, so there couldn’t have been a practical survival motivation.

Also, yeah, not good writing.

derbis, in Scientists revealed that Neanderthals cared for their disabled children out of compassion

I’m not sure what’s wrong with this article but even AI articles are more coherent these days. Old model? Unsupervised machine translation?

lvxferre,
@lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

The article is coherent (it conveys the relevant info without contradicting itself) albeit poorly written. Most likely the result of someone getting really sloppy while writing it, perhaps sleep-deprived. But it doesn’t read like AI stuff, nor a translation - cue to “Cova Negra cave” (lit. “Black Cave cave”).

millie,

Is it?

Researchers discovered the skeleton of a young Neanderthal man who was about six years old when he died. Although researchers were not sure what the child’s gender was, she was named Tina.

I can only really guess whether they’re talking about one or two subjects here. In one sentence they call a six year old a man and gender them male, then in the next they gender them female and call them Tina. The pronouns keep switching back and forth.

Scientists noted that Tina’s survival to the age of six indicates that her team provided the necessary care for the child and her mother throughout this period.

Her team? Why does it show someone cared for the mother as well?

That all reads like bad AI writing to me.

lvxferre,
@lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

Is it? [coherent]

Yes when it comes to the relevant info. The anaphoric references are all over the place; he, her, she, man*, they all refer to the same fossil.

*not quite an anaphoric reference, I know. I’m still treating it as one.

I can only really guess whether they’re talking about one or two subjects here.

It’s clearly one. Dated to be six years old, of unknown sex, nicknamed “Tina”.

Why does it show someone cared for the mother as well?

This does not show lack of coherence. Instead it shows the same as the “is it?” from your comment: assuming that a piece of info is clear by context, when it isn’t. [This happens all the time.]

That said, my guess (I’ll repeat for emphasis: this is a guess): I think that this shows that they cared for the mother because, without doing so, the child would’ve died way, way earlier.

That all reads like bad AI writing to me.

I genuinely don’t think so.

Modern LLMs typically don’t leave sentence fragments like “on the territory of modern Spain. Years ago.” They’re consistent with anaphoric references, even when they don’t make sense in the real world. And they don’t screw up with prepositions, like switching “in” with “on”. All those errors are typically human.

On the other hand, LLMs fail hard on a discursive level. They don’t know the topic (in this case, the fossil). At least this error is not present here.

Based on that I think that a better explanation for why this text is so poorly written is “CBA”. The author couldn’t be arsed to review it. Myself wrote a lot of shit like this when drunk, sleepy, or in a rush.

I’ll go a step further and say that the author likely speaks more than one language, and they were copying this stuff from some site in another language that has grammatical gender. I’m saying this because it explains why the anaphoric references are all over the place.

DarkThoughts, in Why are Scientists Ignoring all the Gay Animals??

Are they..?

AmidFuror,

Outside of the many publications, conferences, symposia, and discussions in the lay media on this topic over multiple decades, they've been completely ignoring it. Shameful.

DarkThoughts,

I think this is this insufferable clickbaiting bullshitter that goes on endless rants without actually saying anything. Pretty sure I've seen another of her videos posted somewhere on Lemmy a while ago that was of equal quality.

eveninghere,

You can fund it. A huge funding to change even the journals.

eveninghere,

They aren’t purposefully ignoring it.

It’s just that it’s not newsworthy for academics, either because it’s not surprising or there’s no funding for such studies.

RobotToaster, in Why are Scientists Ignoring all the Gay Animals??
@RobotToaster@mander.xyz avatar

They don’t want to remind people about all the chemicals they’re putting in the water?

spoilerReally shouldn’t be necessary, but /s

firstofus,

Friggin frogs

jarfil, in The brain makes a lot of waste. Now scientists think they know where it goes

Would be quite a plot twist if it resulted that the whole “seizures cure” spiel from electroshock therapy, resulted in it being “electrical waves help the brain to clean itself”, and have nothing to do with brain-destroying seizures.

sparkle, (edited ) in Wild chimpanzees eat plants that have pain-relieving and anti-bacterial properties to heal themselves, according to scientists

Chimpanzees are likely going to be extinct 2-3 decades from now. Bonobos will be extinct in 4-6 decades. Orangutans will go extinct within 10 to 20 years. Most animals closely related to humans (including most apes & monkeys) are projected to become extinct within a few decades. I do not want to be alive when gorillas go extinct

This is mostly due to the meat trade (apes and monkeys are often killed for meat which is eaten by locals or traded), being affected by the wars in the Congo/Africa, being kidnapped & sold as exotic pets, and habitat loss from human resource harvesting/logging & development. Humans are effectively displacing, enslaving, slaughtering, and cannibalizing their distant cousins

fwygon, in Redefining the scientific method: as the use of sophisticated scientific methods that extend our mind

Junk science article.

All discoveries use some element(s) of the scientific method.

The entire method in and of itself isn’t required to be 100% rigorously applied 100% of the time. However, the method is a starting point and does lead to discovery over time.

While it helps to apply the method to ensure clean and proper discoveries which can, hopefully, be reproduced and investigated, the fact that not all sciences or discoveries apply it rigorously is largely insignificant.

Kissaki, in Wild chimpanzees eat plants that have pain-relieving and anti-bacterial properties to heal themselves, according to scientists

Seems fairly obvious and to be expected that they would do that, given their intelligence and environment and utility use.

Still, important and significant to observe and prove in the wild. Especially as not one-off random anecdotal observations.

MonkderDritte, in Wild chimpanzees eat plants that have pain-relieving and anti-bacterial properties to heal themselves, according to scientists

This is about 20 years old knowledge, right?

Kissaki,

I think you can learn it when you’re younger than 20 years old

MonkderDritte,

lol

Devi, in Wild chimpanzees eat plants that have pain-relieving and anti-bacterial properties to heal themselves, according to scientists

I’ve mentioned this before but I worked at a zoo and we provided all kinds of plants to primates that were medicinal for just this reason, they’re very clever and often treat their illnesses before the keepers even know they’re sick. Not just great apes either, capuchins and lemurs that aren’t nearly as bright do it too.

AnarchistArtificer,

That’s really neat

onlinepersona, in Human Brains Can Tell Deepfake Voices from Real Ones

Now, if only human brains were able to more accurately tell apart fake from real news, we’d have much less of a problem. I bet it has to do with training though. Once we get used to having deepfake voices talk to us as often as normal human voices, we probably won’t be able to tell them apart - just like like with fake news. People trained to consider fake news normal will have much more difficulty telling it apart from genuine news.

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