by Charlie Huenemann

It was announced last week that scientists have integrated neurons from human brains into infant rat brains, resulting in new insights about how our brain cells grow and connect, and some hope of a deeper understanding of neural disorders. Full story here. And while no scientist would admit they are working toward the development of some Rat Man who will escape the lab and wreak havoc on some faraway island or in the subways, it’s impossible not to wonder.

There are some legitimate and difficult ethical questions in this territory, such as whether we should work toward “curing” all conditions labeled as “disorders”, including those conditions that have become woven into people’s lives so thoroughly that they would rather not lose them. Autism, for example, can be a terrible burden in some cases, but in others it serves as a valued feature of one’s individuality, an element in the core of who they are. It’s difficult to follow the precept of doing no harm as we dig deeper into human natures and find it’s not always obvious what counts as a harm. There is a medical/pharmaceutical mindset that likes to pound down any nail sticking up, which is running into the fact that some nails prefer to stick up, thank you very much.

But as we leave those problems to more insightful minds, I would like to turn instead to an illegitimate and silly worry, which we shall call “Ewww”:

Ewww = What if my neurons end up in a rat brain? Would I feel its whiskers twitching, feel hungry for garbage, and find fulfillment by running endlessly inside a little wheel?

As I said, it’s not a legitimate worry, but it’s hard for many of us not to feel a tug in its direction, because many of us are entranced by illusions about consciousness. Read more »

My heart broke this morning reading a story

about surveillance reels from schools across

America where shooters use military grade

AR15 to tear apart skin and bones, the powers

that be before making the videos public first

edited out the screams of children.

by Rafiq Kathwari

by Mary Hrovat

Visualize a purple dog, the exercise said. Imagine it in great detail; picture it approaching you in a friendly way. So I did. I thought of a spaniel: long silky ears, beautiful coat, all a nice lilac color. Pale purple whiskers. The dog was friendly but not effusive. I’m not a dog person, but I wouldn’t have minded meeting this dog. All right, now what? The exercise went on to say something along the lines of “Wonderful! If you can visualize that purple dog, can’t you imagine your own life as being full of amazing possibilities?”

At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, no, I can’t. In fact, I was somewhat offended at the mild condescension of the exercise and the implicit suggestion that imagining a better life is helpful in and of itself. In my experience, it’s not that simple.

As I thought about why this well-meaning exercise bothered me so much, I realized that picturing the purple dog hadn’t actually been that difficult. I pictured a dog with a soft coat that I suspect could easily be dyed purple. (I wouldn’t advise anyone to dye their dog purple, but I can see how it could be done.) It would have been a bit harder to imagine a purple dog with a short oily coat, but I could see it happening by some kind of genetic engineering.

In any case, the main difference between the purple dog and an ordinary dog was cosmetic. Visualizing myself and my life differently, by contrast, often feels more like trying to imagine a dog, with a dog’s chest and throat and mouth and brain, meowing instead of barking. It’s much easier to imagine a purple dog than to imagine that my depression will vanish, after recurring for 40 years, or that I’ll find work in my city that pays enough to live on but also offers interesting mental challenges. Positive change does happen, even within constraints like mine, or worse. But how? Read more »

by Mindy Clegg

The mid-term elections are less than a month away—voting has begun in many places, including here in Georgia with some of the usual struggles already unfolding. In a normal mid-cycle election like this one, control of the house, senate, or both would flip to the minority party—so says common knowledge. This year seems a toss-up. The polls since this summer have kept swinging back and forth between the Democrats hanging onto the house, and expanding their control over the senate, to the GOP taking both, but barely. Ordinarily, the minority party sweeps Congressional elections and that would make perfect sense—the party in power rarely gets it right when they control Congress and the presidency. But this year, the GOP continues its march toward right-wing authoritarianism. The party is wildly out of lockstep with the majority opinions on most of the major issues facing the country. Yet many voters seem poised to hand over control of at least one house in Congress to them. Why? It seems to largely stem from a mistaken belief the GOP has a better set of economic policies (they don’t) and that inflation is thanks to the Democrat’s recent policies (it largely does not seem to be). Far too many people are treating these upcoming elections as normal, ignoring the plethora of red flags being waved in our face. This is not a full-throated defense of the Democrats, whose policies are a mixed bag. I do believe that we face a serious existential crisis that must be averted. The far right-wing represented by the former president have a stranglehold on the Repubilcan party. Despite the very real limitations of the Democratic party, they are better if we wish to maintain a democratic form of government. We should avoid support for the GOP based on their violent, anti-democratic (small d) rhetoric. Read more »

Rowan berries on a tree in late-afternoon sunlight in Franzensfeste, South Tyrol.

by Mike Bendzela

Hannah was a wide-horned, burgundy-red American Milking Devon heifer, with bug eyes and such a timid disposition you got the impression of a creature permanently bewildered.  You could not approach her; she would just pace off to a corner of the barnyard pasture and stare at you from a distance. And she seemed never to blink: you swore she knew she was doomed.

Her adopted mother, Belle (full name: Colonial Williamsburg Belle), was just the opposite—outgoing, ornery, bright, also wide-horned and the burgundy red of the breed. We had had Belle a few years before we bought Hannah as a yearling from a Devon breeder. My husband, Don, had visions of hand-milking a small population of cows and selling the milk and the inevitable bull calves to neighbors and hobbyists. Such a prospect caused me to have visions, period.

But Hannah never calved.

We thought something was wrong with her from the time she was a young cow, when she attempted to nurse off Belle. Even though Belle already had her own calf to feed, she indulged the new yearling. Not even the spiked “weaner” that hung from Hannah’s nose like malevolent jewelry dissuaded her from Belle’s teat. She just learned to flip the weaning device up out of the way and twist her head in such fashion as to permit her access to Belle’s swollen bag.

The near-adult cow nursing off the adopted mother in the barnyard got to be something of a scandal. We even had to pen Belle up in the barn with her calf, Abe, to allow him an unmolested meal. Hannah literally had to grow out of it: After a time, she just could not fit her head and horns under the other cow anymore. Read more »

Editor’s Note: Frans de Waal’s new book, Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist, has generated some controversy and misunderstanding. He will address these issues in a series of short essays which will be published at 3QD and can all be seen in one place here. More comments on these essays can also be seen at Frans de Waal’s Facebook page.

by Frans de Waal

It’s not always easy to talk about bonobos at academic gatherings. There is no issue with fellow primatologists, who are used to straightforward descriptions of sexual behavior and know the recent evidence. But it’s different with people outside my field, such as anthropologists, philosophers, or psychologists. They become fidgety, scratch their heads, snicker, or adopt a puzzled look. Why do bonobos stump them?

One reason for the discomfort is excessive shyness about erotic behavior, which bonobos exhibit in all positions that we can imagine, and even some that we can’t. Moreover, these apes do it in all partner combinations. People assume that animals use sex only for reproduction, but I estimate that three quarters of bonobo sex has nothing to do with it.

But there is a deeper reason why bonobos are the black sheep of our extended family despite being as close to us as chimpanzees. They fail to conform to the traditional model of the human ancestor. Most evolutionary scenarios of our species stress male bonding, male dominance, hunting, aggression, and territorial warfare. This is how our species conquered the earth, it is thought.

Chimpanzee behavior, which can be quite violent, lends support to this narrative. This ape is therefore happily embraced as model. The peaceful, female-dominated bonobo, on the other hand, doesn’t fit. The species is sidelined, such as in “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” in which Steven Pinker calls bonobos “very strange primates.” And Richard Wrangham, in “The Goodness Paradox,” portrays them as an evolutionary offshoot, who “have gone their separate way.” In other words, bonobos may be delightful apes, they are bizarre and irrelevant. Let’s just ignore them! Read more »

by Raji Jayaraman

Scheduled departure at Dulles came and went as we waited for the last passenger to board.  Although the non-smoking section in the rear cabin was full, the smoking section where I sat was half empty. Death by asphyxiation on the flight to Paris was a distinct possibility but with three empty, adjacent seats in the centre nave there was some chance that my obituary might read, “She died peacefully, in recumbent sleep.”

A threat to abandon the tardy passenger filtered from the departure gate through the hull of the aircraft. Five minutes later, just as the pilot was threatening to offload his luggage, the no-show showed. Buckling under the weight of duty-free shopping bags, he made his way apologetically down the far aisle of the cabin, pausing at my row. From behind my paper, I listened to the sound of the overhead locker being opened and then clicked shut. My hopes for a good night’s rest sank with the soft thump at the far end of my four-seater.

At cruising altitude the signs blinked green, and the smokers lit up like runners at their starting blocks upon hearing the shot of the race pistol. The flight attendant rolled the drinks trolly up the aisle. I folded my paper and placed it on the empty seat beside me. As I lowered my tray table, I heard a voice at my far left ask, “Can I use your newspaper, please?” I turned to respond, but the words stuck in my throat as my eyes landed upon the most stunning man I had ever seen—the kind Michelangelo would have immortalized in white marble. He returned my stare with a disarming smile, with all the unselfconscious charm that only those born beautiful possess.

He reached out his right hand. Snatching it, I blurted my name, noticing too late that his outstretched palm had been upturned in anticipation of the paper. Retracting my hand clumsily, I retrieved the paper and handed it to him. He took it but laid it on the empty seat beside him without so much as a glance. “Thank you,” he said, “But please can you repeat: what is your name?” “Raji,” I repeated, more articulately this time. “My name is Raji.” It was his turn to be dumbstruck. Read more »

Talking with my Guru

….. — Nothing and Emptiness

Me: What is emptiness?

G: What do you mean by emptiness?

Me: I mean nothing.

G: Then why are we discussing it?
…. Take your tiny Tao shears
…. and snip emptiness out of Webster’s
…. and heave it into the void. It’s another
…. self-serving tool like time
…. and collateral damage

…. Cut wood, draw water
…. and stop sound-biting life & death,
…. and travel light (and lightly)
…. until no sun remains

…. Nothing and Emptiness
…. are for advanced students
…. with nothing left to lose or gain

Jim Culleny
October 2007

by Ada Bronowski

Indifference is an attitude first theorised as a philosophical stance by ancient Greek Stoic philosophers from the 3^rd century BC. It was conceived as the right attitude to cultivate in reaction to indifferent things. What was surprising were the things the Stoics considered to be indifferent and hence require us to be indifferent to. Not your usual ‘whether the number of hairs on your head is odd or pair’, or the number of billions of stars in the galaxy, or even what colour underwear your boss wears – though in some circumstances, the latter can start becoming titillating. And titillation is of course what it’s all about. It’s the tickle that spurs the Stoic to resist it. Resisting what exactly? Feeling, uncontrolled gratification, heart-melting, giving in, touching, kiss-&-make-up-ing.

The quintessential titillation is pleasure, sensorial or otherwise. The first Greek Stoics, pioneers of austere indifference, doubted there even really was such a thing: ‘pleasure, if it even exists’ reports of them their most stalwart chronicler, Diogenes Laertius[1]. But the more world-wise Romans, whose genius, after all, was to find pleasure in every aspect of everyday life from grooming to the delivery of justice in an orgy of spectacular blood, could not echo such a flat denial. The Roman Stoics we still know of, happen mostly to be from amongst the most prominent, wealthy and powerful figures of their time who could not but make full fruition of the gamut of pleasures life had on offer. It was the Roman Stoics who transformed the Stoic possibly non-existent pleasure into a tickle. Read more »

by Rebecca Baumgartner

We prefer not to think about our own ignorance. We hope it sorts itself out as we get older and presumably wiser. We especially resent having it pointed out to us – which of course is very counterproductive if the goal is to get rid of it. The better approach is to cultivate an appreciation for our ignorance, get comfortable with it and look at it very closely, disentangling it as much as possible from our ego to see what’s really there (or not there). 

* * *

This is the moral lesson in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which isn’t really about Christmas, of course, despite the yuletide trappings; the emotional heart of the story is a man discarding his attachment to pride and expanding the definition of himself to make room for new knowledge about the world. In other words, it’s about the importance of learning, and the courage it takes to learn and change.

The Ghost of Christmas Present makes this explicit when he shows Scrooge two filthy urchins crouching at his feet, a boy symbolizing Ignorance and a girl symbolizing Want. The Spirit makes it clear that Ignorance is the greater threat of the two: “On his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”

We’re very good at ignoring our ignorance. It took several supernatural interventions just for Scrooge to start to admit that his conception of the world was flawed. We might give him a hard time about this, but in reality all of us are bad about seeing what we don’t want to see. That’s why the Spirits had to be so heavy-handed – it required a series of guilt-trips bordering on psychological warfare for Scrooge (and the audience) to see the extent of the problem. 

“Deny it!” the Spirit says sarcastically. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end!” In other words, go ahead and stay in denial about your ignorance and impugn those who point it out – go on, he says, I dare you to brush this aside and see where it gets you. Read more »

Deborah Roberts. Shankia and Grace. 2021.

Collage and mixed media.

More here, here, and currently at ICA Boston..

by Thomas R. Wells

According to the meta-charity GiveWell, the most effective charities can save a child’s life for between 3 and 5,000 US dollars. One way of understanding this figure is that whenever you consider spending that amount of money, one of the things you would be choosing not to spend it on is saving a child’s life.

Take the median of the GiveWell figures: $4,000. I propose that prices for all goods and services should be listed in the universal alternative currency of percentage of a Child’s Life Not Saved (%CLNS), as well as their regular prices in Euros, dollars, or whatever. For example, a Starbucks Frappucino might be priced at 5$ /0.13%CLNS. A Caribbean holiday cruise might be priced at $8,000/ 200%CLNS.

The justification for this would be to fix a gap in the way the price system functions. Normally we make our consumption decisions entirely in terms of a consideration of how much we want something and how much we can afford, a matter of prudence only. As economists have analysed, such exercises in constrained maximisation are all we need do to enjoy a flourishing economy since by responding to prices we automatically take into account the social cost to others of resources being used for what we want rather than for something else (so long as some wise and non-self-interested government steps in to correct for externalities).

Occasionally it is questioned whether merely responding rationally to the information revealed by prices is enough. For example, perhaps we should also be pushed to take account of the impact of our choices on non-human entities by explicit ethical warnings on animal products (previously). Read more »

by Michael Abraham

It was in the midst of thinking about my own childhood and friendships, of thinking about faith and magic and the End of the World and the World to Come, in the midst of reflecting quite deeply on these things, which for me are so profoundly interwoven, so profoundly interwoven because, in the tapestry they make together, there is, glimmering, the idea of what love is and means, the sense I have of amory, of life’s affectionate trajectory and the purpose of affection in the trajectory of life—it was in the midst of reflecting on these these things and of writing about them over and over that I met a man we’ll call Khalid. 

I was in Tribeca, playing pool with the friend I once liked to call Shakti in my writing. She had to run off to a dinner, and so I was left on my own with a beautiful summer night thrumming around me. O, it was perfect. It was deep purple and eighty degrees with a strange chill in the breeze—everything New York in August is supposed to be. I was two blocks from the train to my house, but how could I go home on such a night? So, I decided I would walk north from Tribeca to the Christopher Street pier. This pier is a mightily historical place, both for me personally and for queer history itself. It was on this and the surrounding piers that voguing was invented by unhoused Black and Brown queer youth in between turning tricks, as they dance battled to pass the night. It was on this and the surrounding piers that so much of the twentieth century gay and trans lifeworld of sex and friendship existed. It was also on this pier that I first discovered myself as a queer man. I had been gay long before the discovery of course; I came out at fourteen. But I was not queer until I was nineteen. I was taking a class my second semester of freshman year at NYU, taught by Tamuira Reid, in the writing of creative nonfiction and immersive journalism. For our final projects, we had to pick something to immersively research, something to involve ourselves in, and then write a long-form lyrical essay about it. Having recently been exposed to Elegance Bratton’s then-unreleased film, Pier Kids, which follows the lives of three unhoused queer youth as they secure housing, I decided what I would write about were just these people, the unhoused youth of color who make the Christopher Street pier their nightly home. Looking back, I can see how voyeuristic and naïve this was. But I didn’t want to meet the pier kids to gawk at them. I had a sense, a sense merely, that they knew something, many things, about the kind of people we are, them and me, that I did not yet know. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

by Joseph Shieber

1. There’s something ironic about the fact that the received wisdom about science is that science teaches us not to trust received wisdom. Or, to paraphrase a recent blog post that seems oblivious to this irony: “Scientific expert opines, ‘Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.’”

I should be fair to Daniel Lemire, the author of that blog post. He does a good job of spelling out the received wisdom about science, as well as of reflecting the orthodox opinion about the scientific expert that Lemire takes as his authority, the Nobel prizewinning physicist, lock-picker, and bongo-player, Richard Feynman.

Unfortunately, Lemire is wrong on both points: the received wisdom about science is hopelessly naive and, far from being a univocal opponent of the importance of expert opinion, Feynman was himself rather confused about the role of iconoclasm in science.

2. Let me begin by tackling the second, in some sense less interesting, point concerning Feynman interpretation.

Far from being of the opinion that all scientists should be iconoclasts who question the experts, the bulk of Feynman’s writing is far more nuanced than the pull-quotes that are turned into the posters that adorn undergraduate science majors’ dorm rooms.

Before appealing to Feynman as an authority on the nature of science, it is worthwhile to keep in mind that Feynman’s field of expertise isn’t the nature of science itself, but theoretical physics. This is important, since, as Feynman himself noted, “In order to talk about the impact of ideas in one field on ideas in another field one is always apt to be an idiot of one kind or another. In these days of specialization, there are few people who have such a deep knowledge of two departments of our understanding that they don’t make fools of themselves in one or the other.” (“The Uncertainty of Science,” John Danz Lecture Series, 1963)

With that in mind, we can appreciate the ways in which slogans like, “science is the belief in the ignorance of experts,” do an injustice to Feynman’s own insights about the nature of science. I’ll briefly sketch five ways in which this is true. Read more »

Autumn colors in Franzensfeste, South Tyrol.