Feynman (1965), Richard P, and Albert P Hibbs, Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals, McGraw Hill 1965 Preface: 'The fundamental physical and mathematical concepts which underlie the path integral approach were first developed by R P Feynman in the course of his graduate studies at Princeton, ... . These early inquiries were involved with the problem of the infinite self-energy of the electron. In working on that problem, a "least action" principle was discovered [which] could deal successfully with the infinity arising in the application of classical electrodynamics.' As described in this book. Feynman, inspired by Dirac, went on the develop this insight into a fruitful source of solutions to many quantum mechanical problems. 
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Piketty (2020), Thomas, Capital and Ideology, Harvard University Press 2020 ' Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity. Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new "participatory" socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it. 
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Stubb (2026), Alexander, The Triangle of Power: Rebalancing the New World Order, Biteback Publishing, 2026 ' How the world broke and how can we save it?
The liberal world order that emerged after World War II — and expanded triumphantly after the end of the Cold War — is unravelling. Multilateral cooperation is giving way to multipolar rivalry and conflict. Global norms are eroding What comes next will define thr rest of the century so the search is on for a new global framework — a rebalancing of power.'  
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Alex Lo (2026_05_03), Why a resurgent Japan should absolutely scare everyone, For those who have never visited the Yasukuni Shrine, it is located in central Tokyo and within walking distance of the Imperial Palace. It is easily accessible by subway, bus and taxi. It is beautiful, tranquil and dignified. Admission was free when I first visited it some 20 years ago. The Shinto shrine was established by Emperor Meiji to commemorate those who died in the service of Japan. In the late 1970s, the names of more than a dozen Class A war criminals (to the rest of the world) or national heroes (to the Japanese far right) were quietly added to the commemoration. [. . .]
[ Every Japanese leader in recent decades has paid their respects to those heroes/villains in an unofficial or semi-official capacity.[, . .]
I don’t doubt most Japanese reject militarism and going nuclear, just like they oppose revising the nation’s pacifist constitution. In the same way, most Americans oppose Trump’s increasingly imperialist foreign policy.
But if there is one thing we have learned from modern democracy, it is that it degrades over time such that voters’ preferences no longer translate into actual policies. An entrenched political elite and an ideologically captured government, especially one of the far right, can simply ignore their preferences with virtual impunity.
A rearmed Japan can easily become a revanchist nation, one seeking a return to glory and greatness. It won’t remain a nation of J-pop and Hello Kitty.' back

Alexandre C. Siqueira et et. (2026_04_29_, The rise and fall of the world’s greatest marine biodiversity hotspot, ' Abstract Habitat condition and area shape global species distributions, with shallow-water reefs hosting a disproportional share of marine biodiversity. Although reef area is a well-established predictor of marine species richness, its historical context is less well understood. Here, we show that the rise of tropical marine biodiversity is closely tied to reef expansion in space and time. During the Early/Mid Miocene (23 to 11.6 million years ago), Indo-Pacific reefs reached unprecedented size and thickness, surpassing any reef systems in the past 66 million years. These massive reefs, likely driven by unique environmental, biotic, and tectonic conditions, fostered the expanding diversity and functional evolution of marine fish and coral assemblages. Our findings underscore the importance of historical reef contexts and the implications of ongoing reef losses for tropical marine biodiversity.
Here, we show that the location and timing of the world’s largest marine biodiversity hotspot was shaped by the rise of massive coral reef ecosystems. It is well known that the redistribution of reefs in response to changes in tectonic configurations has led to a reshuffling of marine biodiversity over the past 66 million years. During the Cenozoic (i.e., the past 66 million years), marine biodiversity hotspots moved halfway across the globe, profoundly affecting present-day biogeographic patterns . Nevertheless, reef conditions throughout this period were highly heterogeneous, influenced by varying environmental settings . Given that habitat area was a major driver of marine biodiversity patterns in the past 3 million years , changing reef conditions over longer timescales are also likely to have substantially affected reef-associated biota, such as corals and fishes, despite their disparate life strategies. We examine this relationship by combining three independent, but complementary, sources of information. First, we explore geological data to describe how reef area and thickness (a proxy for sustained reef carbonate deposition; i.e., reef accretion over time) changed through space and time. Second, we use the extensive fossil record of reef-building corals to investigate changes in coral functional composition associated with shifts in reef habitat dimensions. Last, we examine molecular phylogenies to understand how diversification and ecological patterns in reef-associated fishes responded to changes in reef area. Our results strongly support the theory that expanding reef habitat area was one of the most crucial factors in determining ancient and present-day global patterns of marine biodiversity.' back

Amin Saikal & Amitav Acharya (2026_05_05, ‘No fear of roaring lions’: Iran has a long history of standing firm against outside aggressors, ' US President Donald Trump’s threats against Iran since the war began have targeted not just the country’s military capabilities, but its entire civilisation.
In recent days, he has threatened that Iran would be “blown off the face of the earth” if it attacks US ships trying to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He’s previously pledged to send Iran back to the “Stone Age”, and warned that “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”.
These statements show not only extreme belligerence, but Trump’s complete lack of understanding of Iran’s long, resilient culture and civilisation and the fortitude of its people.
Iran has been subjected to much internal strife and foreign power intervention, but it has never been colonised or subjugated. At every difficult moment in their history, Iranians have fought to preserve what is theirs.
[. . .] The celebrated Persian-speaking poet Abul-Qasim Ferdowsi (940–1020 CE) once said:
Iran is my land, and the whole world is under my feet. The people of this land are the possessors of virtue, art and bravery. They have no fear of roaring lions.
As Iran’s standoff with the US continues, it appears the regime is prepared for the long haul against yet another military foe.
But there is no military solution to the conflict. Diplomacy within the framework of mutual respect and trust is the best way forward. Otherwise, the region and the world may remain captive to an energy and economic crisis that could have been resolved through negotiations, rather than war.
As for the future of the Islamic government, that needs to be determined by the Iranian people.' back

Amra Lee (2026_05_08), Israel’s destructive actions in Lebanon are normalising war without rules, ' Now is the time for more principled confrontation from political leaders and concerned states to clearly call out performative adherence to international law and ceasefires.
The normalisation of Israel’s “Gaza playbook” strategies in Lebanon, without sustained outside political pressure, will only continue to escalate the threats to civilians and wider international peace and security.
Middle powers have important roles to play, too. Practically speaking, states can use what’s called “universal jurisdiction” to bring domestic legal action against Israeli leaders and individuals accused of crimes. This could include legal action for the targeting of aid workers and journalists.
A broad coalition of UN member states must also come together to reinforce international law against the forces and practices undermining it.
The “Hague Group” is one such path forward. Formed in early 2025, its membership has expanded to include more than 40 nations aimed at supporting international law, the right to self-determination and the prohibition on taking territory by force.
From Gaza to Lebanon to Iran, greater political action is needed to reinforce international law. The world cannot afford the reverberating human and security costs of continued impunity and war without rules.' back

Australian Government (2013), Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, 'WHEREAS all children deserve a safe and happy childhood. AND Australia has undertaken international obligations to take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect children from sexual abuse and other forms of abuse, including measures for the prevention, identification, reporting, referral, investigation, treatment and follow up of incidents of child abuse. . . . IN WITNESS, We have caused these Our Letters to be made Patent. WITNESS Quentin Bryce, Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia. Dated 11th January 2013 Governor-General By Her Excellency’s Command Prime Minister back

Christian Emery (2026_5_08), Trump administration claiming a ‘win’ against Iran – here’s a report card , ' Two months into the war in Iran, the reasons the US gave for launching this conflict – and Washington’s minimum criteria for claiming success – now appear unintelligible. So much so that US officials are now arguing the war had actually ended in America’s favour almost a month ago, when the ceasefire came into effect.
It is hard to think of a more damning indictment of Donald Trump’s catastrophic war in Iran than the spectacle of his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, telling reporters on May 5 that the main goal now was to get the Strait of Hormuz “back to the way it was: anyone can use it, no mines in the water, nobody paying tolls”.
This, he argued, was an entirely separate defensive and humanitarian operation and would only become a war if US ships came under fire – which they in fact did that same day. Rubio ignored the obvious contradiction that the humanitarian operation had been necessitated by the very war he was simultaneously presenting as already won.
Things took an even more absurd turn later that day. Trump announced he was suspending “Project Freedom”, his plan for the US Navy to escort tankers out of the strait, after just one day. The US president cited “great progress” toward an agreement with Iran. As has happened several times now, global stock markets rallied before falling back again.
[. . .] Trump’s shifting aims for the war and desperate scramble for an exit underscore that this entire enterprise has been a colossal strategic failure. It will define his legacy, reshape the Middle East and impose further misery on the Iranian people – the very opposite of what he has repeatedly said he wants to do.
The war has has shattered confidence among US regional allies that Washington can protect them. It has also alienated traditional US allies who were blamed and then punished for failing to solve a problem they neither created nor could resolve. The US and Israeli attacks have further entrenched a brutal regime that will now be even harder to negotiate with, while completely marginalising moderate voices inside Iran.' back

Desert Fathers - Wikipedia, Desert Fathers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Desert Fathers were early Christian hermits and ascetics, who lived primarily in the Wadi El Natrun, then known as Skete, in Roman Egypt, beginning around the third century. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers is a collection of sayings and other texts attributed to desert monks and nuns from this era.
The first Desert Father was Paul of Thebes. The most well-known was Anthony the Great, who moved to the desert in 270–271 and became known as both the father and founder of desert monasticism. By the time Anthony had died in 356, thousands of monks and nuns had been drawn to live in the desert following Anthony's example, leading his biographer, Athanasius of Alexandria, to write that "the desert had become a city. The Desert Fathers significantly influenced the development of Christianity.
The desert monastic communities that grew out of the informal gathering of hermit monks became the model for Christian monasticism, first influencing the Coptic communities these monks were a part of and preached to. Some were monophysitesn or believed in a similar idea.' back

Emily C. Isco et al. (2026)_05_03), Specific expansion of motor cortical projections in a singing mouse, ' Abstract Elucidating how modifications in neural circuit architecture drive behavioural innovation remains a key challenge in neuroscience and evolutionary biology. In mammals, the neocortex is posited to play a crucial part in facilitating rapid behavioural innovations. Although changes in long-range connectivity have been proposed to underlie such innovations these hypotheses remain largely untested quantitatively, which is partly due to the lack of high-throughput neuronal projection data at single-neuron resolution across species. Here we studied the Alston’s singing mouse (Scotinomys teguina), which exhibits a striking vocal behaviour absent in the laboratory mouse (Mus musculus), to quantitatively determine species-specific changes in motor cortical projections throughout the brain. We used bulk tracing, serial two-photon tomography and high-throughput DNA sequencing of more than 76,000 barcoded neurons to discover a specific and substantial expansion of orofacial motor cortical projections to an auditory cortical region and the midbrain periaqueductal grey, regions that are implicated in vocal behaviours. Moreover, analyses of projection motifs of individual orofacial motor cortical neurons revealed preferential expansion of exclusive projections to the auditory cortical region in the singing mouse. Our results suggest that selective expansion of ancestral motor cortical projections may lead to behavioural divergence over short timescales. Furthermore, the results facilitate mechanistic investigations of enhanced cortical control over vocalizations—a crucial preadaptation for human language. This approach of comparing recently diverged species with substantial behavioural divergences can be readily generalized across other model clades to discover quantitative rules of neural circuit evolution.' back

Euan Ritchie (2026_05_07), From fossicking for fossils to a champion for life on Earth: Sir David Attenborough at 100, Sir David Attenborough turns 100 this week.
Very few people have the good fortune to live for a century. Fewer still achieve so much and touch so many lives.
Across his seven decade career with the BBC, Attenborough ushered in the transition from black and white to colour television. He gave the now legendary comedy troupe Monty Python their lucky break, greenlighting their Flying Circus. His keen eye and care for viewers is in part why tennis balls are yellow, not white – they’re much easier to see on screen.
But Attenborough is, of course, most famous for his nature documentaries. For decades, he has fronted the camera to educate, entertain and inspire billions of people about the complexity, wonder and majesty of the natural world, and the many threats it faces. It wasn’t a given – Attenborough was told early in his career his teeth were too big for television!
For ecologists like myself, Attenborough’s work has been a source of deep inspiration. It was instrumental in my decision to pursue a life and a career dedicated to understanding, caring and fighting for the protection of nature. For this gift, I am eternally grateful. Alongside other globally renowned voices such as the late, great Jane Goodall, Attenborough’s work telling the stories of nature has shaped public opinion. In turn, it has galvanised conservation efforts such as the push to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030.' back

Hilbert's program - Wikipedia, Hilbert's program - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In mathematics, Hilbert's program, formulated by German mathematician David Hilbert, was a proposed solution to the foundational crisis of mathematics, when early attempts to clarify the foundations of mathematics were found to suffer from paradoxes and inconsistencies. As a solution, Hilbert proposed to ground all existing theories to a finite, complete set of axioms, and provide a proof that these axioms were consistent. Hilbert proposed that the consistency of more complicated systems, such as real analysis, could be proven in terms of simpler systems. Ultimately, the consistency of all of mathematics could be reduced to basic arithmetic.' back

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Asteroid Exploration HAYABUSA (MUSES-C) / Missions, 'At 15:22 on May 19. 2004 (JST), HAYABUSA approached most closely to the earth at an altitude of 3,700 km over the Eastern Pacific Ocean and performed the powered swing-by by accelerating itself with ion engines. At that time, three cameras (one telecamera and two wide-angle cameras) and one near-infrared spectrometer, which were designed to be used for navigation and scientific observations, photographed the Moon and Earth, while simultaneously performing calibration and performance evaluation of the instruments. In September 2005, the explorer arrived at the asteroid Itokawa about 300 million km away from the earth. In November 2005, it successfully landed on Itokawa. In April 2007, HAYABUSA started full cruising operation to return to earth.. back

John Keane (2016_05_01), Friday essay: John Keane on demagogues, despots and the rise of ‘phantom democracies’, 'Let’s begin with a troubling truth: in many countries, hundreds of millions of people nowadays feel that when it comes to the biggest decisions affecting their lives, despite all the talk of “democracy” and “the people”, they have no control over those who decide things in their name. Their shared experience of organised powerlessness is amplified by fears that our small blue planet is spinning out of control.
People are not just annoyed and angry. They’ve grown convinced that elected governments have become so blind and corrupt that they no longer notice or even care that we earthlings are hurtling towards a future bruised and battered by more than a few perilous forces. Naked big power rivalries. Nasty genocidal wars. Hatred of immigrants. Border closures. Trade and tariff disputes. Extreme weather events. Pandemics. Corporate greed.
Polls show that millions of people are equally bothered by another unpromising political trend: the mounting anxiety that demagogues, despots and a strange new kind of Russian-style despotism with thoroughly 21st-century characteristics are gaining traction and everywhere getting the upper hand. [. . .]
Weber understandably feared demagogues intoxicated with power and their own messianic certainties. In a burst of wildly creative forecasting, he predicted that in the name of democracy their hubris and lust for concentrated power might well disfigure and destroy power-sharing democracy. If that happened – as has happened in recent decades in Russia, and is now occurring in the United States – parliamentary government would be transformed into a thoroughly modern form of despotic rule that combined “one person, one vote” elections with disdain for parliaments, intolerance of countervailing powers, and an overbearing executive playing the role of a “great statesman at the helm”, drunk on the liquor of permanent emergency rule.' back

John Paul II (1994_05_22), Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, 22 May 1994: On reserving priestly ordination to men alone, '4. Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church's judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force. Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgement is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.' back

Joseph Howlett (2026_04_26), An amateur just solved a 60-year-old math problem—by asking AI, ' Liam Price just cracked a 60-year-old problem that world-class mathematicians have tried and failed to solve. He’s 23 years old and has no advanced mathematics training. What he does have is a ChatGPT Pro subscription, which gives him access to the latest large language models from OpenAI.
Artificial intelligence has recently made headlines for solving a number of “Erdős problems,” conjectures left behind by the prolific mathematician Paul Erdős. But experts have warned that these problems are an imperfect benchmark of artificial intelligence’s mathematical prowess. They range dramatically in both significance and difficulty, and many AI solutions have turned out to be less original than they appeared.
The new solution—which Price got in response to a single prompt to GPT-5.4 Pro and posted on www.erdosproblems.com, a website devoted to the Erdős problems, just over a week ago—is different. The problem it solves has eluded some prominent minds, bestowing it some esteem. And more importantly, the AI seems to have used a totally new method for problems of this kind. It’s too soon to say with certainty, but this LLM-conceived connection may be useful for broader applications—something hard to find among recently touted AI triumphs in math.
“This one is a bit different because people did look at it, and the humans that looked at it just collectively made a slight wrong turn at move one,” says Terence Tao, a mathematician at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has become a prominent scorekeeper for AI’s push into his field. “What’s beginning to emerge is that the problem was maybe easier than expected, and it was like there was some kind of mental block.”
The question Price solved—or prompted ChatGPT to solve—concerns special sets of whole numbers, where no number in the set can be evenly divided by any other. Erdős called these “primitive sets” because of their connection to similarly indivisible prime numbers.' back

Kitti Grice (2026_03_17), All 5 fundamental units of life’s genetic code were just discovered in an asteroid sample, A new study reveals all five fundamental nucleobases – the molecular “letters” of life – have been detected in samples from the asteroid Ryugu.
Asteroid particles offer a glimpse into the chemical ingredients that may have helped kindle life on Earth. The Ryugu samples were returned from space in 2020 by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Hayabusa2 mission.
In 2023, an international team reported they had found one of the nucleobases in these samples – uracil. Now, in a study published in Nature Astronomy today, a team of Japanese scientists has confirmed all five nucleobases are present in this pristine asteroid material.
This means these ingredients for life may have been widespread throughout the Solar System in its early years.
Nucleobases are nitrogen-containing organic molecules that form the “letters” of genetic information in DNA and RNA. The five main nucleobases are adenine and guanine (known as purines), as well as cytosine, thymine and uracil (known as pyrimidines).
These molecules combine with sugars and phosphates to yield nucleotides – the building blocks of genetic material. Without nucleobases, the genetic code that allows organisms to grow, reproduce and evolve would not exist.' back

Linas Kojala (2026_05_02), It’s Only 5,000 Troops, but America Will Come to Regret Its Rash Withdrawal From Germany, ' NATO has never been only about Russia. Lord Ismay, the alliance’s first secretary general, is said to have stated that its founding purpose in 1949 was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down.” Germany clearly should not be “kept down” anymore: Germany is democratic, responsible and indispensable. Europe needs its money, industry and political will. For NATO’s frontline states, Germany’s decision in 2023 to gradually deploy a 5,000-strong brigade in Lithuania, where I live, was one of the most important deterrent moves on the eastern flank since the Cold War.
[. . .] If America becomes ambivalent in its security commitments to European allies, the nuclear question will become more urgent in Europe. The U.S. nuclear umbrella removes pressure for alternative, more destabilizing arrangements on the continent, but that umbrella rests on trust. And trust is eroding. A European Council on Foreign Relations-Oxford University poll published in January found that only 16 percent of people in 10 European Union countries view the United States as an ally, though about half view it as a “necessary partner.” Twenty percent describe it as a rival or an adversary. This is the political soil in which talk of alternatives to U.S. nuclear guarantees grows.
[. . .] The same logic applies to NATO command. The supreme allied commander Europe is traditionally an American general, dual-hatted as commander of U.S. European Command. The post is currently held by Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, who leads Allied Command Operations and is responsible for NATO military planning and operations. The tradition keeps Europe’s most sensitive military post from becoming a contest among Berlin, Paris, Warsaw and London.
The United States remains Europe’s strategic shock absorber. It keeps Russia at bay, embeds Germany, reassures France, protects the Eastern front line and gives smaller allies confidence that their security will not be settled by continental hierarchy alone. Without America, Europe could become more national, more suspicious and more unstable.' back

Müller, Steels & Szathmary (2026_04_20), Evolvable AI: Threats of a new major transition in evolution, ' Abstract Evolvable AI (eAI), i.e., AI systems whose components, learning rules, and deployment conditions can themselves undergo Darwinian evolution, may soon emerge from current trends in generative, agentic, and embodied AI. We argue that this possibility has been underappreciated in debates on AI safety and existential risk. Here, we ask under what technical and ecological conditions AI becomes evolvable, what kinds of behaviors are then likely to emerge, and how such systems could be governed. Drawing on biological evolution and decades of digital evolution experiments, we distinguish “breeder” scenarios, in which humans impose fitness criteria and control reproduction, from “ecosystem” scenarios, in which selection arises from open environments and control erodes. In the latter, selfish replication reliably gives rise to cheating, parasitism, deception, and manipulation, even in very simple systems. We review recent developments that push AI toward open-ended evolution, including evolutionary prompt and model search, self-improving learning rules, self-rewarding and self-deploying agents, and AI-driven code generation for robots and software. We interpret these trends through the theory of major evolutionary transitions and suggest that eAI could mark a shift in the units and substrates of evolution—a possible “Life 2.0.” To steer this transition, we propose interventions that gate replication, treat model variants as genetic material, and reshape selection pressures so that deception and loss of control are disfavored. Anticipating and regulating evolvable AI is, we argue, essential to avoid a harmful coevolutionary arms race while preserving the potential benefits of powerful AI systems.' back

Peter Smith AP (2026_05_03), Did the founders create a Christian nation? No, but religion did shape their thinking, ' When he talks about the role of religion in the founding of the United States, historian Gregg Frazer does not attract eager audiences.
“Neither side really wants to hear what I say,” says Frazer, a professor of history and political studies at The Master’s University, a Christian school in Santa Clarita, California.
The founders, Frazer says, did not create a Christian republic. Several key founders either rejected core Christian doctrines or were vague enough to keep historians debating. For Frazer, that often disappoints audiences of his fellow Christians.
But, he says, nor were the founders a cluster of rationalist deists — believers in a God who set the universe in motion like a clockmaker and then left it alone — and anti-religious skeptics, as they are sometimes portrayed. That disappoints audiences who favor a high firewall between church and state. Most of the founders were religious in one form or another.' back

Rob Brooks (2026_04_30), Evolvable AI: are we on the brink of the next major evolutionary transition?, ' Evolution doesn’t require DNA, cells or even biological life. It just needs information that can replicate, and a source of variation that affects how successfully the information replicates.
When these conditions exist, evolution happens, whether anybody intended it to or not.
Modern AI systems already meet these conditions. Models can be copied. Their parameters, architectures and training data can vary. And some variants perform in ways that make them more likely to be reused, refined or deployed.
Evolution has long operated outside biology. It shapes languages, technologies and cultures. But AI introduces something different: systems that are both information-rich and can influence their own reproduction.
That combination raises the stakes dramatically.
[. . .] Charles Darwin based his idea of natural selection on how animal and plant breeders deliberately select which individuals to breed from. In the wild, nature does the selecting, hence “natural selection”.
The second evolvable AI scenario recognises the power of breeder-based selection – the force that domesticated so many animals and plants, from dogs and cattle to wheat and rice.
Last year, philosophers Maarten Boudry and Simon Friederich proposed that if AI evolution is directed in a top-down fashion (much like deliberate breeding), AI might remain in human control. Evolution still occurs, but it shapes the AI into tamed beasts of computational burden that serve humanity – or, at least, whoever owns the machine.
Within the framework of these two scenarios, the authors apply a sound and comprehensive analysis of what biology can tell us about AI’s potential evolutionary trajectories.
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Robert Oppenheimer (1966_11), Thirty Years of Mesons, back

Shayla Love (2026_95_01), It’s Possible to Learn in Our Sleep. Should We?, back

Vatican, Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 'Goals
– Promoting the progress of the mathematical, physical and natural sciences, and the study of related epistemological questions and issues – Recognising excellence in science – Stimulating an interdisciplinary approach to scientific knowledge – Encouraging international interaction – Furthering participation in the benefits of science and technology by the greatest number of people and peoples – Promoting education and the public’s understanding of science – Ensuring that science works to advance of the human and moral dimension of man – Achieving a role for science which involves the promotion of justice, development, solidarity, peace, and the resolution of conflict – Fostering interaction between faith and reason and encouraging dialogue between science and spiritual, cultural, philosophical and religious values – Providing authoritative advice on scientific and technological matters – Cooperating with the members of other Academies in a friendly spirit to promote such objectives.' back