What Ignited Richard Feynman’s Love of Science Revealed in an Animated Video

in Animation, Science | April 6th, 2015

The Exper­i­menters, a three-episode series that ani­mates the words of sci­en­tif­ic inno­va­tors, con­cludes with the reflec­tions of Richard Feyn­man, the charis­mat­ic, Nobel-Prize win­ning physi­cist who did so much to make sci­ence engag­ing to a broad­er pub­lic. Feyn­man knew how to pop­u­lar­ize sci­ence — to make the process of sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery and explo­ration so con­ta­gious — because he learned from a good teacher: his father. You can learn more about that by watch­ing the ani­mat­ed video above. And don’t miss the pre­vi­ous two episodes in The Exper­i­menters series. They touched on the life and thought of Buck­min­ster Fuller and Jane Goodall.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Now Com­plete­ly Online

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

Richard Feyn­man Presents Quan­tum Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics for the Non­Sci­en­tist

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Do You See Marilyn Monroe or Albert Einstein in This Photo? An Amazing Eye Test Based on MIT Research

in Science | April 3rd, 2015

This visu­al curios­i­ty beats the black/gold dress craze of last month. The video above asks you to look at a pho­to and decide whether you see Albert Ein­stein or Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe — two 20th cen­tu­ry icons who look pret­ty much noth­ing alike. If you say Albert, your eyes are in good shape. If you say Mar­i­lyn, it’s appar­ent­ly time to pay a vis­it to the optometrist.

MonroeEnstein_AudeOliva2007

The sci­ence dis­cussed here is based on the research of Aude Oli­va, who works on Com­pu­ta­tion­al Per­cep­tion and Cog­ni­tion at MIT.  You can see the orig­i­nal “Marylin Ein­stein” hybrid image above, which Aude cre­at­ed for the March 31st 2007 issue of New Sci­en­tist mag­a­zine. More back­ground info on hybrid images can be found on this MIT page. Plus find a gallery of hybrid images here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 430 Books in Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

Albert Ein­stein Reads ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)

A Sneak Peek at Junot Díaz’s Syl­labi for His MIT Writ­ing Class­es, and the Nov­els on His Read­ing List

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Animated: The Inspirational Story of Jane Goodall, and Why She Believes in Bigfoot

in Animation, Science | March 26th, 2015

Now out. The sec­ond video in The Exper­i­menters, a short series of ani­ma­tions high­light­ing three “icons of sci­ence” and “what spurred their cre­ativ­i­ty.” Episode 1 brought us into “the Geo­des­ic Life” of Buck­min­ster Fuller. This new install­ment gives us an ani­mat­ed look at Jane Goodall, the pri­ma­tol­o­gist who has done such inspi­ra­tional work with chim­panzees. (Don’t miss last week’s fea­ture on her in The Times.) Draw­ing on a 2002 inter­view that aired on NPR’s Sci­ence Fri­day, this clip fea­tures Goodall recount­ing her life sto­ry — includ­ing how she got a PhD at Cam­bridge before get­ting an under­grad­u­ate degree — and it also veers into some fun ter­rain. Does Goodall believe in Big­foot? You bet she does.

The next video in The Exper­i­menters series will focus on Richard Feyn­man. Stay tuned.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Richard Feynman’s Physics Lec­tures from Cor­nell (1964)

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Buck­min­ster Fuller Tell Studs Terkel All About “the Geo­des­ic Life”

 

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Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic Drawings Show How He First Visualized the Ego, Superego, Id & More

in History, Psychology, Science | March 19th, 2015

Id Ego Superego

It’s easy to think we know all there is to know about Sig­mund Freud. His name, after all, has become an adjec­tive, a sure sign that someone’s lega­cy has embed­ded itself in the cul­tur­al con­scious­ness. But did you know that the Ger­man neu­rol­o­gist we cred­it with the inven­tion of psy­cho­analy­sis, the diag­noses of hys­te­ria, dream inter­pre­ta­tion, and the death dri­ve began his career patient­ly dis­sect­ing eels in search of… eel tes­ti­cles? Per­haps you did know that. Per­haps you only sus­pect­ed it. There are few things about Freud—who also pio­neered both the med­ical and recre­ation­al use of cocaine, joined the august British Roy­al Soci­ety, and unwit­ting­ly re-engi­neered phi­los­o­phy and lit­er­ary criticism—that sur­prise me any­more. Freud was a pecu­liar­ly tal­ent­ed indi­vid­ual.

Freud 2

One area in which he excelled may seem mod­est next to his ros­ter of pub­li­ca­tions and celebri­ty acquain­tances, and yet, the doctor’s skill as a med­ical draughts­man and mak­er of dia­grams to illus­trate his the­o­ries sure­ly deserves some appre­ci­a­tion. Freud’s draw­ing received a book length treat­ment in 2006’s From Neu­rol­o­gy to Psy­cho­analy­sis: Sig­mund Freud’s Neu­ro­log­i­cal Draw­ings and Dia­grams of the Mind by Lynn Gamwell and Mark Solms. These are but a small sam­pling of the many works of med­ical art found with­in its cov­ers, tak­en from a 2006 exhib­it at the New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine of the largest col­lec­tion of Freud’s draw­ings ever assem­bled, in com­mem­o­ra­tion of his 150th birth­day.

Freud 3

As the title of the book indi­cates, the draw­ings lit­er­al­ly illus­trate the rad­i­cal shift Freud made from the hard sci­ence of neu­rol­o­gy to a prac­tice of his own inven­tion. Cura­tor Gamwell writes, “as Freud focused on increas­ing­ly com­plex men­tal func­tions such as dis­or­ders of lan­guage and mem­o­ry, he put aside any attempt to dia­gram the under­ly­ing phys­i­o­log­i­cal struc­ture, such as neu­ro­log­i­cal path­ways, and he began mak­ing schemat­ic images of hypo­thet­i­cal psy­cho­log­i­cal struc­tures,” i.e. the Ego, Super­ego, and Id, as rep­re­sent­ed at the top in a 1933 dia­gram. Below it, from 1921, see “Group Psy­chol­o­gy and the Analy­sis of the Ego,” a schemat­ic that “attempts to rep­re­sent rela­tions between the major men­tal sys­tems (or agen­cies) in a group of human minds.” And just above, see Freud’s dia­gram for “The Psy­chi­cal Mech­a­nism of For­get­ful­ness” from 1898, depict­ing “asso­cia­tive links between var­i­ous con­scious, pre­con­scious and uncon­scious word pre­sen­ta­tions.”

Freud 4

It is in these late nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry dia­grams that we see Freud make the defin­i­tive move from empir­i­cal­ly observed illus­tra­tions of phys­i­cal structures—like the 1878 “Spinal Gan­glia and Spinal Chord of Petromy­zom” above—to rela­tions between ideas and “con­cep­tu­al enti­ties that have no tan­gi­ble exis­tence in the phys­i­cal world.” That shift, gen­er­al­ly marked by the pub­li­ca­tion of Stud­ies in Hys­te­ria in 1895, caused Freud some unease. “Look­ing back over his career 30 years lat­er,” writes Mark Solms, “ his long­ing for the com­fort­able respectabil­i­ty of his ear­li­er career is still evi­dent.” Even at the time, Freud would write in Stud­ies in Hys­te­ria that his case his­to­ries “lack the seri­ous stamp of sci­ence.” Though his stud­ies of eel, lam­prey, and human brains involved tan­gi­ble, observ­able phe­nom­e­na, he approached the new dis­ci­pline of psy­cho­analy­sis with no less rig­or, stat­ing only that the “the nature of the sub­ject” had changed, not his method.

Freud 5

The draw­ings, writes Bene­dict Carey in the New York Times, “tell a sto­ry in three acts, from biol­o­gy to psy­chol­o­gy, from the micro­scope to the couch.” As Freud makes the tran­si­tion, his metic­u­lous­ly detailed med­ical work, copied from glass slides, gives way to loose out­lines. One draw­ing of the brain’s audi­to­ry sys­tem from 1886 (above) “is as spare and geo­met­ric as a Calder sculp­ture.” Just a few years lat­er, Freud sketched out the dia­gram below in 1894, a schemat­ic, writes Solms, of “the rela­tion­ship between var­i­ous nor­mal and patho­log­i­cal mood states and sex­u­al phys­i­ol­o­gy.” It’s his first pure­ly psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic draw­ing, sketched in a let­ter to a col­league, Dr. Wil­helm Fleiss.

Freud 6

In the lat­er dia­grams, as we see above, his ten­ta­tive free­hand gave way to type­script and a tech­ni­cal draughtsman’s pre­ci­sion, with some draw­ings resem­bling, in Carey’s words, “the schemat­ic for an air-con­di­tion­ing sys­tem.” Freud seems to com­ment on the archi­tec­tur­al nature of these dia­grams when he writes in The Inter­pre­ta­tion of Dreams in 1900, “We are jus­ti­fied, in my view, in giv­ing free reign to our spec­u­la­tions so long as we retain the cool­ness of our judg­ment, and do not mis­take the scaf­fold­ing for the build­ing.” It’s a warn­ing many of Freud’s dis­ci­ples may not have heed­ed care­ful­ly enough.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Young Sig­mund Freud Researched & Got Addict­ed to Cocaine, the New “Mir­a­cle Drug,” in 1894

Sig­mund Freud Writes to Con­cerned Moth­er: “Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is Noth­ing to Be Ashamed Of” (1935)

Sig­mund Freud Appears in Rare, Sur­viv­ing Video & Audio Record­ed Dur­ing the 1930s

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Take the 146-Question Knowledge Test Thomas Edison Gave to Prospective Employees (1921)

in History, Science | March 16th, 2015

640px-Thomas_Edison2

I remem­ber open­ing my col­lege news­pa­per one day, and out of it fell what looked like an adver­tis­ing sup­ple­ment of unusu­al­ly util­i­tar­i­an design. Upon clos­er inspec­tion, it con­tained a series of math‑y look­ing prob­lems for the read­er to work out and, if they did so, mail in to an address pro­vid­ed. Word soon began to cir­cu­late that this unusu­al leaflet came from no less an insti­tu­tion than Google itself, already well known as a provider of advanced search ser­vices but not quite yet as a benev­o­lent provider of dream jobs (an image now sat­i­rized in movies like The Intern­ship).

The unusu­al hir­ing prac­tices of giant, inno­v­a­tive Amer­i­can tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies have become the stuff of mod­ern myth, but the usage of seem­ing­ly job-unre­lat­ed intel­lec­tu­al tests as a fil­ter for poten­tial employ­ees has a much longer his­to­ry. Thomas Edi­son, that orig­i­nal giant of Amer­i­can tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, put for­ward the first famous exam­ple: a 146-ques­tion test on sub­jects of gen­er­al knowl­edge from geog­ra­phy to his­to­ry to physics to the price of gold.

“Amer­i­cans obsessed over the test fol­low­ing [the] pub­li­ca­tion of many ques­tions in the May 11, 1921 New York Times,” writes Pale­o­fu­ture’s Matt Novak. “From there the test was debat­ed, copied, and par­o­died in news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines around the coun­try.” If you’d like to get a sense of how you’d have fared in the scram­ble for a sweet Edi­son job, set your mind back to the ear­ly 1920s and tack­le these ques­tions as best you can:

1. What coun­tries bound France?

2. What city and coun­try pro­duce the finest chi­na?

3. Where is the Riv­er Vol­ga?

4. What is the finest cot­ton grown?

5. What coun­try con­sumed the most tea before the war?

6. What city in the Unit­ed States leads in mak­ing laun­dry machines?

7. What city is the fur cen­tre of the Unit­ed States?

8. What coun­try is the great­est tex­tile pro­duc­er?

9. Is Aus­tralia greater than Green­land in area?

10. Where is Copen­hagen?

11. Where is Spitzber­gen?

12. In what coun­try oth­er than Aus­tralia are kan­ga­roos found?

13. What tele­scope is the largest in the world?

14. Who was Besse­mer and what did he do?

15. How many states in the Union?

16. Where do we get prunes from?

17. Who was Paul Revere?

18. Who was John Han­cock?

19. Who was Plutarch?

20. Who was Han­ni­bal?

21. Who was Dan­ton?

22. Who was Solon?

23. Who was Fran­cis Mar­i­on?

24. Who was Leonidas?

25. Where did we get Louisiana from?

26. Who was Pizarro?

27. Who was Boli­var?

28. What war mate­r­i­al did Chile export to the Allies dur­ing the war?

29. Where does most of the cof­fee come from?

30. Where is Korea?

31. Where is Manchuria?

32. Where was Napoleon born?

33. What is the high­est rise of tide on the North Amer­i­can Coast?

34. Who invent­ed log­a­rithms?

35. Who was the Emper­or of Mex­i­co when Cortez land­ed?

36. Where is the Impe­r­i­al Val­ley and what is it not­ed for?

37. What and where is the Sar­gas­so Sea?

38. What is the great­est known depth of the ocean?

39. What is the name of a large inland body of water that has no out­let?

40. What is the cap­i­tal of Penn­syl­va­nia?

41. What state is the largest? Next?

42. Rhode Island is the small­est state. What is the next and the next?

43. How far is it from New York to Buf­fa­lo?

44. How far is it from New York to San Fran­cis­co?

45. How far is it from New York to Liv­er­pool?

46. Of what state is Hele­na the cap­i­tal?

47. Of what state is Tal­la­has­see the cap­i­tal?

48. What state has the largest cop­per mines?

49. What state has the largest amethyst mines?

50. What is the name of a famous vio­lin mak­er?

51. Who invent­ed the mod­ern paper-mak­ing machine?

52. Who invent­ed the type­set­ting machine?

53. Who invent­ed print­ing?

54. How is leather tanned?

55. What is arti­fi­cial silk made from?

56. What is a cais­son?

57. What is shel­lac?

58. What is cel­lu­loid made from?

59. What caus­es the tides?

60. To what is the change of the sea­sons due?

61. What is coke?

62. From what part of the North Atlantic do we get cod­fish?

63. Who reached the South Pole?

64. What is a mon­soon?

65. Where is the Mag­dale­na Bay?

66. From where do we import figs?

67. From where do we get dates?

68. Where do we get our domes­tic sar­dines?

69. What is the longest rail­road in the world?

70. Where is Kenosha?

71. What is the speed of sound?

72. What is the speed of light?

73. Who was Cleopa­tra and how did she die?

74. Where are con­dors found?

75, Who dis­cov­ered the law of grav­i­ta­tion?

76. What is the dis­tance between the earth and sun?

77. Who invent­ed pho­tog­ra­phy?

78. What coun­try pro­duces the most wool?

79. What is felt?

80. What cere­al is used in all parts of the world?

81. What states pro­duce phos­phates?

82. Why is cast iron called pig iron?

83. Name three prin­ci­pal acids?

84. Name three pow­er­ful poi­sons.

85. Who dis­cov­ered radi­um?

86. Who dis­cov­ered the X‑ray?

87. Name three prin­ci­pal alka­lis.

88. What part of Ger­many do toys come from?

89. What States bound West Vir­ginia?

90. Where do we get peanuts from?

91. What is the cap­i­tal of Alaba­ma?

92. Who com­posed “Il Trova­tore”?

93. What is the weight of air in a room 20 by 30 by 10?

94. Where is plat­inum found?

95. With what met­al is plat­inum asso­ci­at­ed when found?

96. How is sul­phuric acid made?

97. Where do we get sul­phur from?

98. Who dis­cov­ered how to vul­can­ize rub­ber?

99. Where do we import rub­ber from?

100. What is vul­can­ite and how is it made?

101. Who invent­ed the cot­ton gin?

102. What is the price of 12 grains of gold?

103. What is the dif­fer­ence between anthracite and bitu­mi­nous coal?

104. Where do we get ben­zol from?

105. Of what is glass made?

106. How is win­dow glass made?

107. What is porce­lain?

108. What coun­try makes the best opti­cal lens­es and what city?

109. What kind of a machine is used to cut the facets of dia­monds?

110. What is a foot pound?

111. Where do we get borax from?

112. Where is the Assuan Dam?

113. What star is it that has been recent­ly mea­sured and found to be of enor­mous size?

114. What large riv­er in the Unit­ed States flows from south to north?

115. What are the Straits of Messi­na?

116. What is the high­est moun­tain in the world?

117. Where do we import cork from?

118. Where is the St. Gothard tun­nel?

119. What is the Taj Mahal?

120. Where is Labrador?

121. Who wrote “The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner”?

122. Who wrote “Home, Sweet Home”?

123. Who was Mar­tin Luther?

124. What is the chief acid in vine­gar?

125. Who wrote “Don Quixote”?

126. Who wrote “Les Mis­er­ables”?

127. What place is the great­est dis­tance below sea lev­el?

128. What are axe han­dles made of?

129. Who made “The Thinker”?

130. Why is a Fahren­heit ther­mome­ter called Fahren­heit?

131. Who owned and ran the New York Her­ald for a long time?

132. What is copra?

133. What insect car­ries malar­ia?

134. Who dis­cov­ered the Pacif­ic Ocean?

135. What coun­try has the largest out­put of nick­el in the world?

136. What ingre­di­ents are in the best white paint?

137. What is glu­cose and how made?

138. In what part of the world does it nev­er rain?

139. What was the approx­i­mate pop­u­la­tion of Eng­land, France, Ger­many and Rus­sia before the war?

140. Where is the city of Mec­ca?

141. Where do we get quick­sil­ver from?

142. Of what are vio­lin strings made?

143. What city on the Atlantic seaboard is the great­est pot­tery cen­tre?

144. Who is called the “father of rail­roads” in the Unit­ed States?

145. What is the heav­i­est kind of wood?

146. What is the light­est wood?

Some of these ques­tions, like those on the loca­tion of Copen­hagen or the iden­ti­ty of Leonidas (you need think back only to 300), have grown eas­i­er with time. Some — “What is coke?” “What is vul­can­ite and how is it made?” — have grown hard­er. Oth­ers will require you to call upon not cur­rent knowl­edge, but peri­od knowl­edge: sure, you know the num­ber of states in the union now, but how about in 1921? And sure, you know which city is the fur cen­ter of the Unit­ed States now, but how about in 1921?

Once you’ve made your guess­es, you can check your answers over at Pale­o­fu­ture. Edis­on’s test will almost cer­tain­ly frus­trate you — and if it does­n’t, you may have a career wait­ing not at Google, but on Jeop­ardy! — and it may even fill you with grat­i­tude that we live in an age where hot employ­ers check for raw brain­pow­er, not the abil­i­ty to mem­o­rize a seem­ing­ly ran­dom assort­ment of facts. But the test itself, like sev­er­al of its ques­tions, pulls a bit of a trick. The tremen­dous amount of atten­tion it received when the pub­lic caught a glimpse of it reveals Edis­on’s mas­tery of the high­est Amer­i­can force: pub­lic­i­ty.

Note: Thanks to one of our read­ers, you can see how Edi­son defend­ed the test in the pages of The New York Times.

via Pale­o­fu­ture

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Har­vard Stu­dents Fail the Lit­er­a­cy Test Louisiana Used to Sup­press the Black Vote in 1964

Thomas Edi­son & His Trusty Kine­to­scope Cre­ate the First Movie Filmed In The US (c. 1889)

Take The Near Impos­si­ble Lit­er­a­cy Test Louisiana Used to Sup­press the Black Vote (1964)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Download Free NASA Software and Help Protect the Earth from Asteroids!

in Astronomy, Science, Software | March 16th, 2015

NASA’s Asteroid Data Hunter

Yes, you can help save the world. And just by down­load­ing some free soft­ware. Writes NASA:

Pro­tect­ing the Earth from the threat of aster­oid impacts means first know­ing where they are. NASA is har­ness­ing the incred­i­ble poten­tial of inno­va­tors, mak­ers and cit­i­zen sci­en­tists by open­ing up the search. In an increas­ing­ly con­nect­ed world, NASA rec­og­nizes the val­ue of the pub­lic as a part­ner in address­ing some of the country’s most press­ing chal­lenges. We need your help in iden­ti­fy­ing aster­oids – and to help fur­ther this effort, we’ve built an appli­ca­tion that enables every­one, every­where, to help solve this glob­al chal­lenge.

To down­load the app and join the hunt for aster­oids, please click here. To get more infor­ma­tion on the project (in which Har­vard is a strate­gic par­tic­i­pant) click here.

Next up? Hope­ful­ly an app that saves Cal­i­for­nia, which, a NASA offi­cial projects, will run out of water by next year.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free NASA eBook The­o­rizes How We Will Com­mu­ni­cate with Aliens

NASA Puts Online a Big Col­lec­tion of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Down­load and Use

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

Ray Brad­bury Reads Mov­ing Poem on the Eve of NASA’s 1971 Mars Mis­sion

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Alan Alda Uses Improv to Teach Scientists How to Communicate Their Ideas

in Creativity, Education, Life, Physics, Science | March 11th, 2015

Woe to the famous actor who dares to write a nov­el or start a band or design a line of cloth­ing. The pub­lic can be awful­ly snob­by about such extracur­ric­u­lar pur­suits. We reward our chil­dren for cul­ti­vat­ing a wide range of inter­ests, but heav­en for­fend a celebri­ty who wan­ders away from the accept­ed script.

Hacks! Poseurs! Wannabes!

There are excep­tions, of course. I don’t see too many peo­ple tak­ing pot­shots at Leonard Nimoy’s pas­sion for pho­tog­ra­phy, Ed Beg­ley Jr.’s com­mit­ment to the envi­ron­ment, or the Won­der Years’ Dan­i­ca McKel­lar’s devo­tion to math.

(Per­son­al­ly, I will brook no unkind words toward ani­mal lov­ing TV dad Dick Van Pat­ten, not after he fathered the only cat food the small mam­mal with whom I live a lie will deign to eat.)

If there’s a for­mu­la to be gleaned from these exam­ples, it’s like­ly a syn­the­sis of icon­ic role, num­ber of years spent on the pas­time of choice, and a rabid curios­i­ty of the sort that dri­ves ordi­nary mor­tals to become edu­ca­tors. Once a pub­lic fig­ure is in pos­ses­sion of that for­mu­la, the pub­lic he or she serves will grant a pass to pur­sue a side inter­est.

I’m not sure that sci­ence could be called a side inter­est of Alan Alda’s.

Not when he ranks host­ing Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can Fron­tiers  as the pin­na­cle of his TV career.

He played physi­cist Richard Feyn­man onstage, and has writ­ten plays about Albert Ein­stein and Marie Curie. He’s one of the annu­al World Sci­ence Fes­ti­val’s MVPs. At this rate, his love of sci­ence seems des­tined to car­ry him from cra­dle to grave.

By now, he’s prob­a­bly met more sci­en­tists than M*A*S*H fans—enough to sug­gest a trou­bling gap between the sci­en­tif­ic  mes­sage and the man­ner in which it’s deliv­ered. To put it anoth­er way, if you think sci­ence is bor­ing, per­haps the trou­ble is with the sci­en­tist.

The solu­tion? Improv train­ing.

Uh oh. Is there a dan­ger this knife could cut both ways? Will some emi­nent biol­o­gist or astronomer be pil­lo­ried for play­ing freeze tag a bit too zest­ful­ly or join­ing a lev­el 1 team at the Annoy­ance or UCB East? Like, how dare Stephen Hawk­ing think he can make a machine?

It’s worth the risk (tech­ni­cal­ly, Alda espous­es Vio­la Spolin’s explorato­ry impro­vi­sa­tion form over the kind with a strict­ly comedic goal, but c’mon. I know a gate­way drug when I see one…)

His belief is that sci­en­tists who study improv are bet­ter equipped to com­mu­ni­cate the com­pli­cat­ed nature of their work to pub­lic offi­cials, the media, and for­mer the­ater majors such as myself. The lev­el of engage­ment, flex­i­bil­i­ty, and aware­ness that impro­vi­sa­tion requires of its prac­ti­tion­ers are also the stuff of good TED talks.

Watch the “before and after” pre­sen­ta­tions of par­tic­i­pants in his improv work­shop at the Alan Alda Cen­ter for Com­mu­ni­cat­ing Sci­ence at Stony Brook Uni­ver­si­ty, above. His the­sis holds water, it would seem. Improv hones the sens­es and helps one to clar­i­fy what is essen­tial in any scene. Even the solo scene where­in one explains wave par­ti­cle dual­i­ty or spe­cial­ized leaf forms to one’s fel­low adults.

I’ll bet those same improv-based skills could help a TV star to per­suade his stu­dents that he’s just as approach­able and sup­port­ive as any old teacher. (Maybe even more so, to judge by his han­dling of an invis­i­ble jar of jel­ly­fish that slips through one sci­en­tist’s fin­gers.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Is a Flame?: The First Prize-Win­ner at Alan Alda’s Sci­ence Video Com­pe­ti­tion

Adam Sav­age (Host of Myth­Busters) Explains How Sim­ple Ideas Become Great Sci­en­tif­ic Dis­cov­er­ies

Charles & Ray Eames’ A Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Primer Explains the Key to Clear Com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the Mod­ern Age (1953)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author and illus­tra­tor who teach­es improv to teenage girls. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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187 Big Thinkers Answer the Question: What Do You Think About Machines That Think?

in Science, Technology | February 18th, 2015

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It’s time, again, for Edge.org’s annu­al ques­tion. The 2015 edi­tion asks 187 accom­plished (and in some cas­es cel­e­brat­ed) thinkers to answer the ques­tion: What Do You Think About Machines That Think?

John Brock­man, the lit­er­ary über agent and founder of Edge.org, flesh­es the ques­tion out a bit, writ­ing:

In recent years, the 1980s-era philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sions about arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI)—whether com­put­ers can “real­ly” think, refer, be con­scious, and so on—have led to new con­ver­sa­tions about how we should deal with the forms that many argue actu­al­ly are imple­ment­ed. These “AIs”, if they achieve “Super­in­tel­li­gence” (Nick Bostrom), could pose “exis­ten­tial risks” that lead to “Our Final Hour” (Mar­tin Rees). And Stephen Hawk­ing recent­ly made inter­na­tion­al head­lines when he not­ed “The devel­op­ment of full arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence could spell the end of the human race.”

But wait! Should we also ask what machines that think, or, “AIs”, might be think­ing about? Do they want, do they expect civ­il rights? Do they have feel­ings? What kind of gov­ern­ment (for us) would an AI choose? What kind of soci­ety would they want to struc­ture for them­selves? Or is “their” soci­ety “our” soci­ety? Will we, and the AIs, include each oth­er with­in our respec­tive cir­cles of empa­thy?

Numer­ous Edgies have been at the fore­front of the sci­ence behind the var­i­ous fla­vors of AI, either in their research or writ­ings. AI was front and cen­ter in con­ver­sa­tions between char­ter mem­bers Pamela McCor­duck (Machines Who Think) and Isaac Asi­mov (Machines That Think) at our ini­tial meet­ings in 1980. And the con­ver­sa­tion has con­tin­ued unabat­ed, as is evi­dent in the recent Edge fea­ture “The Myth of AI”, a con­ver­sa­tion with Jaron Lanier, that evoked rich and provoca­tive com­men­taries.

Is AI becom­ing increas­ing­ly real? Are we now in a new era of the “AIs”? To con­sid­er this issue, it’s time to grow up. Enough already with the sci­ence fic­tion and the movies, Star Mak­er, Blade Run­ner, 2001, Her, The Matrix, “The Borg”. Also, 80 years after Tur­ing’s inven­tion of his Uni­ver­sal Machine, it’s time to hon­or Tur­ing, and oth­er AI pio­neers, by giv­ing them a well-deserved rest. We know the his­to­ry. (See George Dyson’s 2004 Edge fea­ture “Tur­ing’s Cathe­dral”.) So, once again, this time with rig­or, the Edge Question—2015: WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MACHINES THAT THINK?

The replies — 187 in total — fea­ture thoughts by Bri­an Eno, Dou­glas Cou­p­land, Kevin Kel­ly, Esther Dyson, and Daniel Den­nett, among oth­ers. You can access the com­plete col­lec­tion of respons­es here.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es

Noam Chom­sky Explains Where Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Went Wrong

Isaac Asi­mov Explains His Three Laws of Robots

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