Specifically, scientists have worked out how to teleport information almost instantly and over any distance – without needing any future technology
Either this is a world changing discovery that breaks everything that I’m hearing about only in… checks… the BBC Science Magazine
Or… it’s complete wank clickbait nonsense
OH WHICH IS IT GOING TO BE?!
Careful putting that manhole cover in place though! Delta-P is no joke
Regular windows user: uses PC
‘Roommate’ standing behind them: takes photo of screen
User: dude…
Roommate: what?
User: what the fuck?
Roommate: is ok… it’s so you can scan through them later and see what you’ve been doing
User:
Roommate:
User:
Roommate: takes photo of screen
User: the… fuck? that’s… that’s my credit card #
Roommate: oh…uhh…I was going to delete that
User: did you even notice it was there?!
Roommate: yes! I mean no! I mean…err
User:
Roommate:
User:
Roommate: takes photo
User: grabs baseball bat
I’m afraid you are not going to find anything in the brain except “dead molecules”. There isn’t anything in there except the laws of physics and chemistry acting out like clockwork.
But in terms of the scale of how “decisions” work. Then, yes, far simpler decisions (perhaps better to say “reactions”) happen with relatively few neurons. The complete brains of small insects have been mapped by researchers, maybe several million neurons. They can detect movement reactions happening in response to stimuli.
This though is a very different thing to what people mean when referring to their conscious decision to do something.
That’s how neurons work, yes. But you can’t reduce a “decision” down to a single neuron. It depends what you mean by decision really. Do you mean “the smallest thing that can affect something else”, in which case, yes, neurons are the smallest unit (it seems) of brain function. But not consciously so.
Or do you mean the collective input that goes into the brain generating an output? In which case, the brain appears to function more with swarms of neurons firing together. You won’t find any examples of a single neuron affecting, say, the choice of going to the cinema. We don’t know the brain in enough detail for that, nor does it seem possible for it to work that way (neurons die and are replaced but our behaviour and decisions seems far more stable).
Or do you mean the conscious experience of making a decision (free choice)? Which is a different thing again. The mechanics of the brain operating input and output and the conscious experience of it are not the same thing. They may be generated by distinct but overlapping parts of the brain. Often in step but not always. Conscious choice can’t have elements of it reduced to single neurons, brain experiments seem to frustrated any attempt to turn up evidence for that.
Whatever it is we colloquially mean by making a conscious decision about something doesn’t exist on the neuron level. It exists on the millions of neurons acting simultaneously level.
A “decision” is highly complex emergent behaviour. Looking for it in a single neuron is like asking if there’s a single air molecule where a gale started. We almost certainly will never identify single neurons corresponding to single mental ideas. A “go to the cinema” neuron versus “go to the park” likely don’t exist. What is more likely is that large ‘flows’ of neutral activity correspond to these things or to what we call ‘decisions’. However when we think of more and more specific mechanical things (like lifting a finger) then it’s more likely this corresponds to very small areas of neurons that controlled their activation and it makes a bit more sense to talk about that being a switch to ‘decide’ to move a finger. But the decision itself is actually the vast cloud of neutral activity leading into it not a single thing.
There isn’t a solution. People don’t want to pay for something that costs huge resources. So their attention becoming the product that’s sold is inevitable. They also want to doomscroll slop; it’s mindless and mildly entertaining. The same way tabloid newspapers were massively popular before the internet and gossip mags exist despite being utter horseshite. It’s what people want. Truly fighting it would requires huge benevolent resources, a group willing to finance a manipulative and compelling experience and then not exploit it for ad dollars, push educational things instead or something. Facebook, twitter etc are enshitified but they still cost huge amounts to run. And for all their faults at least they’re a single point where illegal material can be tackled. There isn’t a proper corollary for this in decentralised solutions once things scale up. It’s better that free, decentralised services stay small so they can stay under the radar of bots and bad actors. When things do get bigger then gated communities probably are the way to go. Perhaps until there’s a social media not-for-profit that’s trusted to manage identity, that people don’t mind contributing costs to. But that’s a huge undertaking. One day hopefully…