Fun Stuffs: Dog metacognition, Tarski used drugs, Soul Machine babies, FarmBots

Dogs know when they don't know

DogStudies lab... have shown that dogs possess some "metacognitive" abilities -- specifically, they are aware of when they do not have enough information to solve a problem and will actively seek more information... a test in which a reward (food/toy) is placed by one researcher behind one of the two fences while another researcher held the dog. They found that the dogs looked through gaps in the fences significantly more often when they had not seen where the reward was hidden.

 Amusingly, looking through the gaps didn't help sometimes.

The researchers theorize that... the dogs get so excited about finding the reward, that they cannot stop themselves from approaching the closest fence even when they have seen that the reward is probably not there.

 Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic (2004), by Anita Burdman Feferman, Solomon Feferman.

There is ample evidence that Tarski regularly took stimulants such as Kola Astier (a coca-caffeine mixture he obtained from France) and Benzedrine (an amphetamine) to stay awake and keep a creative edge as he worked late at night and into the early morning hours. 

It is not clear just how much he experimented with hallucinogenic drugs; in the 1960s he smoked marijuana on occasion but there are no reports that he was a "user"... [because he did drugs for work, not for fun]

Yet he liked to be "high" and often was, although only a few people knew the extent to which the bulging eyes and pulsing veins were signs of his having taken "something." In 1963 he wrote to a friend who had been frightened by the way he was looking at her, "I did not feel physically well that day, my mind was not clear and, since I wanted to talk at the seminar, I took Benzedrine and this caused that tense look which scared you."" So that "look" in his eyes, which many assumed was a natural physiological condition, seems to have been enhanced pharmacologically; by the 1960s and probably earlier, Tarski was not only taking stimulants at night to stay awake, he was also using "speed" to clear his mind during the day.

Note: the painter, Witkacy, was also on drugs.

Soul Machine takes a human-emulation approach to AI, by building an artificial human brain with nerves and hormones and other things.

FarmBot makes robots that do farming. Looks like Plant Vs Zombies... without the zombies!

I like how it kills weeds: just push them to the ground. Stompy stomp. They explained that weeds are very fragile at the start, and so just pushing them to the ground can kill them. Humans don't do that because such weeds are too many, but FarmBot can do that all the time.