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The rise and fall of genetic determinism

Ken Richardson | Nautilus | 
We’ve all seen the stark headlines: “Being Rich and Successful Is in Your DNA” (Guardian, July 12); “A New Genetic ...
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Can we ‘build’ a better banana with genetic engineering?

Norman Ellstrand | Nautilus | 
Reproductively, domesticated banana plants are self-copying machines .... With the emergence of the 20th century, the confluence of the Industrial ...
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Do super high IQ children end up successful?

Dean Simonton | Nautilus | 
The original motive behind [IQ] tests was to get a diagnostic to select children at the lower ends of the ...
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How can seemingly-unique animals be genetically the same?

Peter Ward | Nautilus | 
More and more, biologists are discovering that organisms thought to be different species are, in fact, but one. A recent ...
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Why the idea of solving problems with unconscious thought is ‘fanciful’

Nick Chater | Nautilus | 
The great French mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) took a particular interest in the origins of his own astonishing ...
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Viewpoint: Space colonization could be a really bad idea for humanity

Phil Torres | Nautilus | 
[W]ould colonization of space lead to a dystopia? In a recent article in Futures, which was inspired by political scientist Daniel Deudney’s forthcoming ...
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Not so optimized? Human evolution was ‘totally accidental’

Brian Gallagher | Nautilus | 
Archaeologist Ticia Verveer recently posted a thread on Twitter showing that customer complaints go way back. And I mean way ...
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Is genius an attribute or a ‘circumstance’?

Brian Gallagher | Nautilus | 
[T]he notion of genius as a capability a person can possess has come under attack recently in several ways. Megan ...
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Searching for alien intelligence and how dolphins can help

Daniel Oberhaus | Nautilus | 
The return to dolphins as a model for alien intelligence came in 1999, when SETI Institute astronomer Laurance Doyle proposed using information ...
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Our brain works ’10 million times slower’ than computers—so why is it better at some tasks?

Liqun Luo | Nautilus | 
[W]hy is the computer good at certain tasks whereas the brain is better at others? Comparing the computer and the ...
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Implantable ‘neural lace’: How we may be able to stimulate our brain to regain youthful functions

Charles Lieber, Kiki Sanford | Nautilus | 
[Elon] Musk stated publicly that given the current rate of A.I. advancement, humans could ultimately expect to be left behind—cognitively, ...
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How Rev. Thomas Bayes’ faith helped us understand how the brain works

Jordana Cepelewicz | Nautilus | 
It all began in 1748, when the philosopher David Hume published An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, calling into question, among ...
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‘Star cluster’ genetic analysis illuminates history’s social inequalities

David Reich | Nautilus | 
In humans, the profound biological differences that exist between the sexes mean that a single male is physically capable of ...
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Humanzee: Creating lab-produced human-chimpanzee hybrids would be ‘profoundly ethical’

David Barash | Nautilus | 
It is a bit of a stretch, but by no means impossible or even unlikely that a hybrid or a ...
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Chasing the ‘Fountain of Youth’ through stem cells

Victor Gomes, Vittorio Sebastiano | Nautilus | 
Editor's note: The following is part of a Q&A interview with Vittorio Sebastiano, a research professor of reproductive biology at ...
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Singing the praises of the stick’s role in human evolution

Alexander Langlands | Nautilus | 
Sticks are probably where the story of craft begins—the point at which our very distant ancestors progressed from animalistic existences ...
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Neuron by neuron: We often examine the brain too closely to see the big picture

Grigori Guitchounts | Nautilus | 
[Rafael Yuste thinks neuroscientists have been looking at the brain too close. “It’s just like a TV screen—if you’re watching ...
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Mom was right: We get wiser with age and manage stress better

Victor Gomes | Nautilus | 
[Professor Dilip] Jeste points out that some things get better with age, like the ability to make decisions, control emotions, ...
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Viewpoint: ‘Mutation-centric’ cancer treatment ignores critical environmental factors

Brian Gallagher, James DeGregori | Nautilus | 
[Editor's note: The following is part of an interview with James DeGregori is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry ...
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Peak athletic performance: What are our human limits?

Stephen Hsu | Nautilus | 
Athletic performance follows a normal distribution, like many other quantities in nature. That means that the number of people capable ...
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‘Gettier case’: Philosophical puzzle illustrates challenge of understanding what is true

Brian Gallagher | Nautilus | 
Philosopher Edmund Gettier devised a thought experiment that has become known as a “Gettier case.” It shows that something’s “off” ...
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Universal structures? Galaxies and neural networks ‘strikingly similar’

Alberto Feletti, Franco Vazza | Nautilus | 
We — an astrophysicist and a neuroscientist — joined forces to quantitatively compare the complexity of galaxy networks and neuronal ...
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Here’s why conscious robots are possible — and needed

Ryota Kanai | Nautilus | 
People often ask me whether human-level artificial intelligence will eventually become conscious. My response is: Do you want it to ...
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Masters of everything: Should humankind look to colonize the universe?

Seth Baum | Nautilus | 
Humanity is already exploring outer space; give us a few billion more years of technological progress and we can probably ...
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What would ‘seeing’ like a blind person feel like?

Jim Davies | Nautilus | 
What does a blind person see? Your first guess might be that she sees a vast blackness...The answer, of course, ...
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Seeing what others don’t: Do genius and madness walk hand-in-hand?

Dean Simonton | Nautilus | 
[Given the various so-called mad geniuses in history, many people assume] that creativity and psychopathology are intimately related...But some recent psychologists ...
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Sex and the gender spectrum: How genetics help determine gender identity

Siddhartha Mukherjee | Nautilus | 
That genes have anything to do with the determination of sex, gender, and gender identity is a relatively new idea ...
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Genetics key to why world’s greatest solo climber doesn’t feel fear

J.B. MacKinnon | Nautilus | 
[Alex] Honnold is history’s greatest ever climber in the free solo style, meaning he ascends without a rope or protective ...
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