Our furry friends may be smarter than we think

A fascinating study suggests so, anyway:

Researchers have believed for some time that people and non-human primates are capable of "metacognition"--reasoning or thinking about one's own thinking. There have been studies on birds about this kind of thinking process, but results thus far have been inconclusive. The new study is the first that shows a non-primate species has metacognition--a proposal that may well be controversial.

The study involved what is called a "duration-discrimination" test--offering rats rewards for classifying a signal as either short or long. As in most such tests, the "right" answer led to a large food reward, while a "wrong" answer led to no reward at all. The twist, however, is that before taking the duration test, the rats were given the chance to decline the test completely. If they made that choice, they got a small reward anyway.

"If rats have knowledge about whether they know or don't know the answer to the test, we would expect them to decline most frequently on difficult tests," said Crystal. "They would also show the lowest accuracy on difficult tests that they can't decline. Our data showed both to be true, suggesting the rats have knowledge of their own cognitive states."

From here. Makes you wonder how many other species this applies to. If I was going to pick another, I'd bet on some species of crow (maybe the Common Raven), but that's just a guess on my part.

RIP Bobby Fischer

A sad day for the chess world:

Former chess champion Bobby Fischer has died of kidney failure following a long illness, his spokesperson said Friday. He was 64.

Fischer, a brilliant chess player who rocketed to grandmaster status at 15, was hailed as a Cold War hero when he defeated Russian Boris Spassky in 1972 to become the first American world chess champion in more than 100 years.

From the Ceeb. Nowadays most people know him for his, er, eccentricities- his forfeiting of the World Championship in 1975 following his refusal to defend his title, his sexism (he once said that he could give knight odds to any woman in the world), his rabid anti-Semitism (despite the fact that Fischer himself was of Jewish ancestry) and his comments about 9/11 (which, while a bit over the top, weren't really too far off the mark). But really, what we should remember him for is the fact that he was one of the greatest players in the history of the game. Just go through this game (played when he was only 13!) and try not to be amazed at his brilliance. Or just watch this moment of silence held in his honour at a major international tournament:

Via babble. As N. Beltov says, you could hear a pin drop in that room.

Weird things

The other day at work my senior boss was in a chatty mood (right now we're all basically marking time until the next project) and was talking at length about the alleged uncertainties with regard to global warming, basically parroting the arguments of folks like Tim Ball (though he didn't recognize Ball's name when I mentioned it). Actually I'm being a bit unfair; he didn't actually assert that Ball et. al. are right, just that their positions should be considered, but it seemed kind of strange to be having that conversation when it's over 10 °C in early January and nearly all the snow has melted. And to be fair, he also mentioned James Lovelock in his discussions. Lovelock has lately been on about how it's too late to stop global warming, so we should be focusing on how to cope with it. I guess it makes sense for a right winger to keep Lovelock in reserve, so that when the credibility of folks like Ball drops into the cellar, you can still trot out an excuse to oppose constraints on the sacred free market. Whatever...

Confessions of a mobster: 'My job was to kill Pierre Trudeau'

A former mobster says he was slated to rub out Prime Minister Trudeau back in the 1970s:

Trudeau was slated for execution because of his close association with Cuban President Fidel Castro, Craft said. Canada was trading with Cuba in 1974 and giving aid, despite an American boycott of the communist Caribbean nation.

Mobsters like Meyer Lansky hated Castro because he had kicked them out of Cuba and shut down their casinos when he seized power in 1959, Craft said. They hoped that Castro would attend Trudeau's funeral in Canada, so that they could get a shot at him, Craft said.

"They thought, if we kill Trudeau, we can get Castro."

From here.

Susan Blackmore on drugs

She likes them:

Every year, like a social drinker who wants to prove to herself that she's not an alcoholic, I give up cannabis for a month. It can be a tough and dreary time - and much as I enjoy a glass of wine with dinner, alcohol cannot take its place.
Some people may smoke dope just to relax or have fun, but for me the reason goes deeper. In fact, I can honestly say that without cannabis, most of my scientific research would never have been done and most of my books on psychology and evolution would not have been written.
Some evenings, after a long day at my desk, I'll slip into the bath, light a candle and a spliff, and let the ideas flow - that lecture I have to give to 500 people next week, that article I'm writing for New Scientist, those tricky last words of a book I've been working on for months. This is the time when the sentences seem to write themselves. Or I might sit out in my greenhouse on a summer evening among my tomatoes and peach trees, struggling with questions about free will or the nature of the universe, and find that a smoke gives me new ways of thinking about them.
Yes, I know there are serious risks to my health, and I know I might be caught and fined or put in prison. But I weigh all this up, and go on smoking grass.
For both individuals and society, all drugs present a dilemma: are they worth the risks to health, wealth and sanity? For me, the pay-off is the scientific inspiration, the wealth of new ideas and the spur to inner exploration. But if I end up a mental and physical wreck, I hereby give you my permission to gloat and say: "I told you so".

Source.

Help democratize the UN!

I usually don't waste my time for online petitions, but I really like this idea:

Humanity faces the task of ensuring the survival and well being of future generations as well as the preservation of the natural foundations of life on Earth. We are convinced that in order to cope with major challenges such as social disparity, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the threat of terrorism or the endangerment of global ecosystems, all human beings must engage in collaborative efforts.

To ensure international cooperation, secure the acceptance and to enhance the legitimacy of the United Nations and strengthen its capacity to act, people must be more effectively and directly included into the activities of the United Nations and its international organizations. They must be allowed to participate better in the UN’s activities. We therefore recommend a gradual implementation of democratic participation and representation on the global level.

We conceive the establishment of a consultative Parliamentary Assembly at the United Nations as an indispensable step. Without making a change of the UN Charter necessary in the first step, a crucial link between the UN, the organizations of the UN system, the governments, national parliaments and civil society can be achieved through such an assembly.

Via babble.

Dershowitz on torture: "Hey, it worked for the Nazis!"

Crazy as it sounds, that's pretty much what Dershowitz is saying here:

There are some who claim that torture is a nonissue because it never works--it only produces false information. This is simply not true, as evidenced by the many decent members of the French Resistance who, under Nazi torture, disclosed the locations of their closest friends and relatives.

Via babble. I can't help thinking there's a wee bit of an irony in Dershowitz, who jumps up and down and screams "anti-Semitism" the moment someone criticizes his beloved Israel, citing history's most notorious anti-Semites as exemplars of how to extract information from suspects. Of course he includes the obligatory line "I am personally opposed to torture", but then he seems to contradict himself here:

The members of the judiciary committee who voted against Judge Mukasey, because of his unwillingness to support an absolute prohibition on waterboarding and all other forms of torture, should be asked the direct question: Would you authorize the use of waterboarding, or other non-lethal forms of torture, if you believed that it was the only possible way of saving the lives of hundreds of Americans in a situation of the kind faced by Israeli authorities on the eve of Yom Kippur? Would you want your president to authorize extraordinary means of interrogation in such a situation? If so, what means? If not, would you be prepared to accept responsibility for the preventable deaths of hundreds of Americans?