From & To Sathish #7 - Page 45

https://nautil.us/how-neanderthals-got-to-siberia-1219065/?utm_campaign=website&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nautilus-newsletter

How Neanderthals Got to Siberia

They trekked for 2,000 years across formidable terrain

By Kristen French

Tens of thousands of years ago, during the Pleistocene epoch, Neanderthals trekked more than 2,000 miles on foot from the Caucasus Mountains in Eastern Europe to a chain of caves in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. The journey likely took them just 2,000 years, a new study finds, a relative sprint considering the many major obstacles in their way: dramatic mountain ranges, massive rivers, and potentially hostile evolutionary cousins.

It was the Neanderthals’ second major migration through the region, according to analysis of DNA found in sediments in caves in Europe and Siberia. (In the years between migrations, glaciers completely separated Europe from Asia.) But until recently, the route of this second wave of Neanderthal migration was a riddle, primarily because of a dearth of archaeological artifacts showing the way.

Now, a team of anthropologists has mapped a potential path into Southern Siberia across the Ural Mountains, which form a rugged gauntlet stretching across what is today west central Russia. Neanderthals taking this route likely relied on river valleys as natural highways and traveled during the warmer months when the terrain was more accessible, according to Emily Coco, now a postdoctoral researcher at Portugal’s University of Algarve, and Radu Iovita, an associate professor at New York University’s Center for the Study of Human Origins. Previous modeling had suggested they might have traveled during the colder months, instead.

The routes Coco and Iovita identified would have taken the Neanderthals into areas already occupied by Denisovans, which squares with evidence that the two species came into prehistoric contact—in fact, research suggests they interbred.

Coco and Iovita published their findings, which were based on computer simulations, this month in the journal Plos One. To build their model, they considered the elevation of the terrain, reconstructed the routes of ancient rivers, mapped glaciers that could have obstructed Neanderthals’ migratory path, and calculated temperatures. They also assumed that the Neanderthals did not have a specific destination in mind and that they could only make decisions about where to migrate based on knowledge of local conditions. This simulated approach has been used to map the migrations of animals and humans in other time periods and geographies but had not previously been applied to Neanderthals.

The researchers note that their model doesn’t take into account every factor that could have influenced the migratory decisions of the Neanderthals: access to resources, distance to water, annual or seasonal weather patterns and climate change, vegetation preferences, locations of previous occupations. But it does begin to map out some possibilities and bring the complexity of our ancient ancestors’ wanderings into clearer view.

https://nautil.us/sleep-has-no-magic-number-1218435/?_sp=33090201-e4f4-4c34-b931-9c6aaf1c8189.1750366310850

Sleep Has No Magic Number

People who sleep according to their culture’s norms are healthier overall

By Katharine Gammon

In Japan, late nights are a way of life—the final trains of the night are often packed with people traveling back home in the midnight hours from work or a night out. In fact, studies consistently find that people living in Japan get far fewer winks per night than people living in other parts of the world. And yet, Japan also has the longest average lifespan of any of the world’s most advanced economies. There are a lot of elderly people out and about.

This presents a paradox. Sleep research has consistently shown that people who sleep fewer hours suffer poorer health outcomes and even live shorter lives. So how can Japanese people sleep so little and still seem to thrive into old age?

Christine Ou, an assistant professor at the University of Victoria School of Nursing in Canada, together with her husband Steven Heine, a professor of cultural psychology at the University of British Columbia, decided to dive into this question of how culturally distinct differences in sleep duration impact health with a study of 5,000 people from 20 different countries.

“Essentially, we asked: Is there a universal amount of sleep that’s healthiest for everyone, or does that ideal vary by country?” says Ou. “And do people feel healthier when their sleep matches what’s typical or expected of a culture?”

You can’t use eight hours as a magic number.

Together with a team of other researchers, they found that the range of sleep time varied widely from 6 hours and 18 minutes per night for Japan to 7 hours and 52 minutes per night for France (the United States was near the low end of the spectrum of sleep duration, with about 7 hours each night).

But when they looked at the relationship between individuals’ health and their sleep habits, controlling for factors like smoking and dietary nutrition, they found the amount of sleep needed for optimal health was lower for people from countries with shorter average sleep times. They also found that people from countries that have shorter average sleep durations did not have shorter life expectancies, nor higher rates of heart disease or diabetes. These short-sleeping cultures actually had lower rates of obesity than people living in countries with longer average sleep times.

“This suggests that we are learning how to sleep from our culture, and that is shaping the processes of our sleep,” Heine says. The research was published in the journal PNAS last month.

The team of researchers also found that people tended to be healthier if their sleep habits closely matched the norms of where they were living than if they diverged. This aligns with other research, they say, that shows that when people fit in culturally with others in the places where they are living—in what they eat or how they show emotions—their health is better overall.

It’s not just a matter of genetics. The behavior, and the physiological response to it, may well be learned, the researchers suggest. Having a sleep schedule that is aligned with that of others in one’s community could help reduce stress related to scheduling, they suggest. “Our basic physiological needs are shaped by how we interact with our cultures,” says Ou.

A person’s needs can also shift when they move to a new area with a distinct culture, they say. A previous study from the group showed university students in Japan slept an hour less than university students in Canada—but still felt less sleepy and had better health—while East Asian Canadian students had sleep behaviors and attitudes that were more similar to those of European Canadians. “That suggests that we are shaped by our local culture in terms of how we go about sleep,” Heine says.

Heine says the findings raise interesting questions for future research, and hit on a broader phenomenon. “The way we get our sleep needs met is shaped by cultural learning,” he says. “There’s no single ideal amount of sleep that’s best for everyone. So you can’t use eight hours as a magic number.”

The team is planning a future study to look into variations in the different sleep stages people go through over the course of a night—like deep sleep versus lighter sleep. For example, Heine wonders if cultures that sleep fewer hours may enter deep sleep faster than others—so that “French people probably are spending more time in some of the lighter stages of sleep than, say, Japanese people.”

Anders Fjell, a psychologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, says the study was new in using cross-cultural comparisons to show that sleep has an important cultural component. “The study shows that the most healthy people have different sleep durations related to how society looks at the importance of amount of sleep,” he says.

He adds that the findings suggest that natural variation in sleep duration does not have a strong causal effect on health, and instead varies as a function of individual and cultural factors. Sleep duration “should not only be considered from a biomedical point of view,” he says.

Most people are still sleeping too little, says Ou—the study findings also suggested that the average sleep duration for each of the countries was lower than what is optimal for one’s health in that country. So although there is no single amount of sleep that is ideal for everyone in the world, most people could benefit from some extra rest, say Ou. No matter where you live or when you go to bed, she says, “you’re probably not getting enough sleep.”

Katharine Gammon is a freelance science writer based in Santa Monica, California, who writes about environment, science, and parenting.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220620-why-humans-evolved-to-have-fingers-that-wrinkle-in-the-bath

Why your fingers wrinkle in water (and what it can reveal about your health)

https://psyche.co/guides/feel-bad-about-eating-heres-how-to-change-that?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=94c1fcf324-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_06_20&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-8e23a7006c-838120577

Feel bad about eating? Here’s how to change that

If eating certain foods or having ‘too much’ triggers guilt and self-blame, it’s time to explore a less punishing mindset

by Vivienne Lewis, clinical psychologist

It seems as if, every time Sam is in the staff room at work, coworkers are talking about their new diets, weight loss, how they’ve been ‘good’ not to succumb to the ‘temptation’ to eat cake today, and how they were ‘naughty’ on the weekend because they had a large meal with friends. Sam bites into a sausage roll and starts to feel bad for eating it, thinking: this is a bad food; I’ll have to exercise it off later.

What Sam and coworkers are exhibiting is food guilt: the negative feeling many people have when they think they’ve eaten something they shouldn’t, or that they’ve overindulged. It often comes with self-blame and feeling ashamed or disgusted with oneself. These feelings are commonplace, largely due to messages from family members, peers, advertising, social media and other sources that tell us it’s bad to eat too much or to eat certain kinds of food.

In my work as a clinical psychologist, I spend a lot of time talking to clients about food, eating and the emotions and thoughts attached to them. Many of them feel a sense of failure, worthlessness or a desire to hide their eating habits. This emotional response can lead to cycles of restrictive eating, binge eating or disordered eating behaviours, damaging their relationship with food. Fixing that relationship involves cultivating self-compassion, as well as a recognition that food does not define a person’s worth.

If you experience food guilt yourself, you are likely attuned to all the judgment that gets passed about what people eat. Disparaging comments about eating – such as ‘She looks that way because she eats junk,’ or ‘You’d better be careful eating that, you don’t want to get fat’ – reinforce the notion that people should feel guilty when they eat in certain ways. So does attaching words such as ‘bad’ or ‘indulgent’ to certain foods or to eating. (Conversely, eating less is often cast as good and virtuous.)

Perhaps you’ve been hard on yourself about your eating, criticising yourself if you eat certain things or eat more than you intended because you feel as if you’ve done something wrong. Maybe you’ve been led to believe that people won’t like you if you eat a certain way or look a certain way. It’s also common for people who experience food guilt to think that they have to justify why they’ve eaten something ‘bad’, or to make up for it the next day by restricting their eating or through exercise, like a form of punishment. Eating becomes about reward and punishment rather than nutrition and pleasure.

But being hungry, and responding to that hunger, is natural – and why shouldn’t we enjoy it? Those of us who experience food guilt need to ask ourselves questions like these: why do I feel guilty when I eat? Where did that come from? Does it reflect a certain belief, and is it a belief I want to hold on to? Does that belief help me, or just make me feel bad?

In therapy, I’ve seen people go from feeling like food is a constant battle to feeling free from guilt and more responsive to their body’s needs. To help you take steps in that direction, let’s talk about why we attach negative emotions to eating – and what you can do to create a more positive relationship with food.

Consider where your guilt about food comes from

Unfortunately, many of us live in cultures that idealise thinness, for women, and leanness and muscularity for men, portraying it as a measure of self-worth and success. This is reinforced through media and advertising, which frequently promote restrictive eating as a way to achieve idealised bodies. Research has found that these messages contribute to body dissatisfaction and disordered eating behaviours, promoting guilt when one indulges in ‘bad’ foods.

Family dynamics also play a role. Many people grow up in households where food is controlled, and food choices are moralised (eg, you might have gotten treats only when you behaved well). Parents or caregivers sometimes impose strict rules about food, leading one to believe that some foods are inherently bad and that eating them is a failure of willpower. Such experiences can contribute to lifelong feelings of guilt around eating. Think about your upbringing: were food and eating regarded in these ways?

Some people who experience food guilt were teased about their appearance growing up, which made them feel ashamed of their weight, size or shape. They internalised the message that there’s something wrong with how they look and so they try to control their weight through restrictive eating.

There are also personality factors, such as perfectionism, that can magnify feelings of guilt when a person has rigid food rules. When someone who is perfectionistic deviates from their rules – such as by eating something they normally wouldn’t, or feeling like they’ve overindulged – they can be highly self-critical.

Thinking about societal influences, family or peer messages and personal experiences can offer insight into how negative feelings about food developed and get you started toward developing a healthier relationship with food. Take some time to reflect on the things you tell yourself about your body and your eating. Whose voice is that, really? Where might it originate from? How does it make you feel, and do you want to continue to feel that way? What sort of relationship would you like with eating?

Recognise unhelpful beliefs about eating

Try to identify at least one specific, negative belief you hold about food or eating – ie, your assumptions or personal rules, associated in your mind with guilt and other negative feelings. They might include beliefs such as:

When I’ve been eating a lot (eg, during a holiday), I should go on a diet to compensate.

I should always try to eat less than I want to.

I should never eat [insert type of food here] because it’ll make me fat.

Do these or similar beliefs show up in your own thinking about food? Acknowledging them is the first step toward challenging them.

When you’ve identified a negative belief about food or eating, it’s important to assess its validity. Ask yourself if holding on to the belief – continuing to take it seriously – is truly beneficial to you. For example: is it helpful to think that there’s something wrong with you for sometimes eating a certain kind of food? Or does it mostly just make you feel sad or ashamed? Is it based on evidence, or is it based more on social pressure? What do you think you’re getting out of it?

You can also work on reframing negative thoughts about eating that come from these beliefs. For example, instead of having the thought: I shouldn’t eat this cake – it’ll make me fat, and taking that at face value, you could try responding to it with a kinder, more balanced thought, such as: It’s OK to enjoy cake in moderation. Food is meant to be enjoyed. Or: It feels like I need to lose weight in order to be accepted, but is that really true? Maybe I’m already accepted by those who care about me.

Don’t categorise foods as ‘good’ or ‘bad’

Another effective strategy for reducing food guilt is to stop thinking about foods in categorically positive and negative terms – as ‘good’ foods and ‘bad’ foods. Try to avoid describing foods in this way when you talk about eating with others, and see if you can stop mentally labelling foods as such. Instead, recognise that all foods can fit into a balanced diet when they are consumed mindfully. Eating without guilt does not mean eating whatever one feels like all the time, but the focus is on balance rather than restriction. It’s a good idea, of course, to seek out foods that provide the recommended nutrients – all vitamins, proteins, carbs, fats and so on – that you need to function well, both physically and mentally. However, you do not have to demonise fat or sugar, or particular kinds of food, in order to do that.

Giving yourself permission to enjoy a variety of foods helps foster a healthier relationship with eating. Here’s an example of what this might look like in daily life. For lunch, you have a meal that mixes grilled salmon for protein, quinoa for complex carbohydrates, and a side of roasted vegetables. You enjoy each part of the meal, appreciating the flavours and nourishment it provides. Later in the day, you’re offered a slice of cake at work. While you know it’s not the most nutritious option, you remind yourself that it’s OK to eat for pleasure and celebration, too. You take a portion you’re comfortable with, savour it slowly, and enjoy the experience without guilt, knowing it’s part of an overall balanced diet, and part of having a healthy relationship with food. This approach ensures you’re meeting your body’s nutritional needs while giving yourself flexibility, which leads to sustainable eating habits.

Show yourself kindness

Practising self-compassion is crucial in alleviating food guilt. This means treating yourself with the same care and concern you would offer a close friend. In the context of eating, it includes recognising that everyone has moments when they eat more than they intend to simply because it tastes good, or eat foods that might not be very nutritious, and that it’s a normal part of life.

When you catch yourself ruminating on your food choices, gently remind yourself that it’s OK to enjoy food without judgment. Think to yourself: what would you say to a friend who was feeling guilty about their eating? You’d probably tell them not to worry, to enjoy their food, that it doesn’t change what you think about them. You are not judging them. So don’t judge yourself.

You are human, and occasional indulgence is part of a balanced life. If you tend to strive for perfection in your eating habits, instead set a goal to get really good at eating without judgment. This shift in mindset can lead to greater peace with your food choices.

Seek a positive eating environment

Beyond your thoughts or inherited beliefs about eating, your present eating environment can significantly affect your relationship with food. So, to the extent that you can, seek out friends and dining companions who express healthy attitudes toward food and body image. Avoid engaging in negative conversations about dieting or body shaming. Instead, do what you can to foster a positive eating environment – one where healthy, balanced eating is supported and encouraged in a non-restrictive, stress-free way.

For an example of such an environment, picture a dinner where everyone is seated around the table, sharing a colourful variety of foods: grilled chicken or fish, roasted vegetables, bread, fresh salad and dessert. The atmosphere is relaxed, and the focus is on enjoying the food and each other’s company. There’s variety and balance here, with a mix of proteins, vegetables and whole grains, as well as some sweet treats, offering different textures and flavours. There are no food rules or guilt: everyone is encouraged to serve themselves based on their hunger levels, with no pressure to finish everything on their plate or restrict portion sizes. Dessert – a bowl of fruit, a pie, ice-cream – is available if anyone wants some, but they’re not treated as a reward or a guilty indulgence. There’s positive conversation about food at the table, light-hearted and supportive, avoiding any negative talk about body image, diets or ‘bad’ foods. Instead, there’s a focus on how good the food tastes and how it fuels the body.

While it can take some practice to develop, this kind of eating environment can support a healthy relationship with food, where choices are driven by hunger and satisfaction rather than guilt or external pressures.

Listen to what your body tells you

Another skill that helps with reducing food guilt is learning to listen to your body’s hunger and fullness cues. This means tuning into physical feelings, emotions and thoughts that signal when you are getting hungry or full, and responding with mindful eating.

Imagine it’s mid-morning, and you start to feel a gentle gnawing in your stomach – a sign that your body might need fuel. You pause for a moment to check in with yourself. Physically you might feel that your stomach is empty, and that you lack energy. Emotionally, it’s not that you’re particularly stressed or bored (which, for many people, prompts a desire to eat); you’re just calmly interested in these signs of hunger. You have a thought about when you last ate – breakfast was a few hours ago. It makes sense that you’re ready for a snack.

Instead of ignoring the sensation of hunger, or waiting until a designated time to eat, you decide on a tasty snack such as an apple with peanut butter. You eat slowly, paying attention to the taste and texture, stopping when you feel satisfied, not overly full. This approach ensures you’re feeding your body based on actual hunger signals, not external triggers like boredom or strict mealtimes. As you practise this, avoid restricting yourself based on external factors or perceived notions of what you ‘should’ eat. Rather, savour your meals and make choices based on your body’s needs (for example, eating for concentration or energy).

The essence of mindful eating is being present during meals and snacks, focusing on the experience of eating, and fully enjoying the flavours and textures of the food. So try to eliminate distractions, such as phones or televisions, while eating: it can help you better connect with your food and recognise when you’re satisfied or full. This practice can lead to more positive experiences with food and reduce the likelihood of overeating, which often contributes to feelings of guilt.

It’s important to recognise when you are eating for emotional reasons rather than due to hunger. If you have moments when you’ve already eaten until full, based on your body’s hunger signals, but you still feel an urge to eat more amid feelings such as stress, sadness or boredom, consider engaging in an alternative activity that could be more fulfilling. It might be going for a walk, writing in a journal or talking to a friend. Finding healthier outlets for your emotions can diminish the urge to seek comfort in food. This helps to extinguish the link between eating and negative emotions, including guilt.

Know when to seek support

For a subset of people who struggle with food guilt, what they are experiencing is part of a more complex eating disorder that calls for the help of a qualified professional. Eating disorders are severe mental health conditions in which people often overvalue their weight, size and shape as part of their self-esteem, and experience constant distress around food and eating. People with eating disorders might also feel highly anxious in social eating environments; engage in excessive exercise; misuse diet pills and laxatives; deliberately vomit after eating; and/or use food to cope with negative emotions, whether by under- or overeating. Eating disorders can lead to suicidal thinking and affect a person’s physical health. They can be deadly.

If you think it’s possible that you are experiencing an eating disorder, it is important to get professional help as soon as possible, from a doctor and a psychologist at the very least. Talk to your healthcare provider about what you’ve noticed with regard to your eating. You can additionally search online for ‘eating disorder support’: in Australia, for example, the Butterfly Foundation is a great resource and assists people in accessing the help they need.

Alleviating food guilt is a process that requires self-awareness, self-compassion and a commitment to redefining your relationship with food. By challenging negative beliefs, practising mindful eating and embracing the joy of food, you can cultivate a more positive mindset about eating. Remember that food is not just sustenance; it is also a source of pleasure and connection. Embracing this perspective can lead to a healthier, happier life, free from the burden of food guilt.

Vivienne Lewis is a clinical psychologist who specialises in body image and eating disorders. She is an assistant professor in psychology at the University of Canberra and has written several books, including Eating Disorders: A Practitioner’s Guide to Psychological Care (2023) and No Body’s Perfect: A Helper’s Guide to Promoting Positive Body Image in Children and Young People (2016).

https://psyche.co/ideas/platos-challenge-to-the-meaning-of-manliness-still-resonates?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=94c1fcf324-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_06_20&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-8e23a7006c-838120577

Plato’s challenge to the meaning of manliness still resonates

by Yancy Hughes Dominick, philosophy professor

Even in ancient Greece, Plato questioned whether gender norms around masculinity were good for men’s individual freedom

Socrates, on his way to the Lyceum, meets two hyper-competitive teenage boys hanging out in a wrestling gym. Almost immediately, he begins asking the sort of questions that turn everything upside down, questions that may seem silly or pointless but tend to get at the very foundations of people’s views. He asks one of the young men, Lysis (after whom the dialogue is named), a preposterous question: does his mother ever let him play with her wool and her loom while she’s weaving? Lysis simply laughs. Not only would she stop him from doing that, he replies, but she’d strike him if he even tried.

Why does Lysis laugh? Part of the reason is that, in ancient Athens, weaving is a famously feminine activity, to the point of being called, by the classicist Ruby Blondell, ‘the signature activity of women in Greek ideology’. Penelope weaves in Homer’s Odyssey, and Arachne challenges the goddess Athena to a weaving contest, only to be turned into a spider: both human and divine women are regularly depicted weaving in ancient Greek art and literature. So, asking a teenage boy on the cusp of manhood if his mother wants him to play with iconically feminine things like wool and looms could hardly do more than earn a derisive snort in response.

But the brief interaction is telling. Can we learn, question and rethink gender norms with the help of Plato? Although this Greek philosopher lived and wrote thousands of years ago in a very different culture with different norms, many of his works invite us to reimagine gender norms in ways that continue to resonate today.

Unlike driving a chariot, weaving is simply something an Athenian man would never do. Of course, Socrates (by which I mean the character in Plato’s writing; the ‘real’ Socrates lies forever out of reach) is famous for saying strange and silly things, so in some ways his question to Lysis shouldn’t really surprise us. What’s remarkable, though, is the off-handed way in which Socrates challenges conventional gender norms. What he really seems to want is to inspire Lysis and his friend to pursue philosophy. His question about weaving, as I have argued elsewhere, reminds them – and us – that the stakes are high, and that a truly philosophical life is one in which traditional norms, including gender norms, get scrambled.

Ultimately, texts like the Lysis challenge us to reimagine what masculinity might ask of those of us who identify as men. Perhaps this reveals Plato as a kind of proto-feminist, as some scholars suggest he may be. And, indeed, in the landscape of ancient Greek thought, there’s no surviving work that comes anywhere near as close to feminism as what we find in Plato. On the other hand, there’s too much misogyny in Plato’s works to be able to easily count him as a feminist. As with all the best questions, the question of Plato’s feminism, therefore, ought to remain open. Regardless, he clearly challenges masculinity because for him philosophy is ultimately about liberation – and liberation is possible only if we are willing to free ourselves from our preconceptions, including our preconceptions about gender.

By questioning competition, Plato is questioning a pedestal of masculinity

It’s hard to think of a place with more oppressive gender roles than ancient Athens. Women lived in separate quarters from men and were largely expected to remain secluded and sequestered in their homes. They could neither own property nor speak on their own behalf in the courts, and wore veils when they ventured out. And all of this applies to free Athenian women – things were even bleaker for enslaved women. Pericles, the renowned orator and leader of the city during the Peloponnesian War, went as far as to say that the women who earn the greatest glory are the ones seen and heard the least.

Men too lived within strict gendered expectations of what counted as acceptably masculine. Those perceived to move outside of these bounds were often held up for ridicule. In the play Thesmophoriazusae, for instance, Aristophanes ruthlessly mocks his fellow writer Agathon for his perceived effeminacy right from his first entry onstage: he arrives in women’s clothing, and the jokes keep going from there. Naturally, a boy like Lysis would laugh out loud when asked if his mother might let him play with her weaving tools.

Although the question about weaving marks the most obvious challenge to gender norms in the text, it isn’t the only such challenge. Lysis and his friend Menexenus are hyper-competitive, even to the point of arguing, strangely enough, which one is older. Such competitive behaviour is expected and encouraged among men in Athens. In fact, the festival of Hermes, which is taking place while Socrates is speaking with the boys, was a celebration of competitiveness and included contests such as judging the beauty of male bodies. But Socrates, querying this all-embracing competitiveness, reminds the boys of the saying that ‘friends have all things in common’, and encourages all present to engage in a cooperative discussion rather than any kind of competition. By questioning competition, he is questioning a pedestal of masculinity.

Socrates himself is a living challenge to reigning gender stereotypes. Athenian men are expected to focus on honour, money and political activity; Socrates avoids and often criticises all of those. Likewise, he helps Lysis to see that a meaningful life comes from seeking wisdom rather than from money or power.

Socrates’ sense of self-worth does not depend on the opinions of others, and in many ways that seems to be the lesson for Lysis as well. Rather than thinking that his parents would prove their love by letting him drive their chariots or play with their looms, Lysis should come to see that his value comes from within rather than from the opinions of strangers or even loved ones. And the thing in Lysis that gives him worth is precisely this ability to see past social norms and seek meaning. In other words, it is his ability to freely choose a philosophical life.

He argues not out of a desire to liberate women, but in the interest of making the most efficient city

Although these subtle challenges to gender norms help make sense of Socrates’ conversation with Lysis, some less subtle challenges to gender in other texts by Plato help us see that this is not a fluke of one short text, but rather characterises much of Plato’s thought. In the Symposium, Socrates tells his friends he learned everything he knows from a wise woman named Diotima – and then he proceeds to explain philosophy as involving being pregnant and giving birth to ideas. And in the Theaetetus, he explains that his work as a philosopher is a type of midwifery, though, unlike female midwives, he works with men, helping them give birth to their ideas. In a culture as misogynistic as his, it’s remarkable to see Socrates repeatedly describe his work through these feminine images.

Perhaps even more remarkably, in the Republic Socrates argues that, in the best city, women would do all the work Athenians think of as men’s work, including being soldiers, philosophers and rulers. He’s arguing for this not out of a desire to liberate women, but rather in the interest of making the most efficient city possible, a city in which a woman gifted at warfare wouldn’t be stuck at home weaving. Although he may not be a feminist, Socrates is clearly seeking a world liberated from accepted norms, including gender norms. Similarly, he seeks a sort of masculinity that also draws on supposedly feminine virtues.

This idea of being freed from accepted norms points to the focus on liberation in Plato’s thought. As much as he might be asking us to rethink masculinity and move beyond stereotypical gender norms, the ultimate goal isn’t a rejection of gender norms or a non-toxic model of masculinity (much as we might wish it were). Instead, the goal is bigger, and therefore more difficult – the goal is liberation, the sort of liberation possible only through deep engagement with philosophy. It’s fitting, of course, that the goal should be difficult: one of Plato’s favourite ancient Greek aphorisms, which has also become a touchstone in my own life, is χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά: beautiful things are difficult.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgDNFQ2RaLQ

Ed Sheeran - Sapphire with Arjit singh (Official Music Video)

*The leaders in the USA are that stupid or just following their Boss's (Israel) orders?*

The Chinese Embassy in Moscow has published a list of countries bombed by the United States since World War II:

• Japan: August 6 and 9, 1945

• Korea and China: 1950–1953 (Korean War)

• Guatemala: 1954, 1960, 1967–1969

• Indonesia: 1958

• Cuba: 1959–1961

• Congo: 1964

• Laos: 1964–1973

• Vietnam: 1961–1973

• Cambodia: 1969–1970

• Grenada: 1983

• Lebanon: 1983, 1984 (attacks on targets in Lebanon and Syria)

• Libya: 1986, 2011, 2015

• El Salvador: 1980

• Nicaragua: 1980

• Iran: 1987

• Panama: 1989

• Iraq: 1991 (Gulf War), 1991–2003 (U.S. and British strikes), 2003–2015

• Kuwait: 1991

• Somalia: 1993, 2007–2008, 2011

• Bosnia: 1994, 1995

• Sudan: 1998

• Afghanistan: 1998, 2001–2015

• Yugoslavia: 1999

• Yemen: 2002, 2009, 2011

• Pakistan: 2007–2015

• Syria: 2014–2015

This list includes more than 20 countries. China emphasized:

“We must never forget who the real threat to the world is.”

⸻

This raises several questions:

• Has the Western world ever shown outrage toward the United States?

• Has there ever been a loud, unified condemnation against it?

• Has the U.S. ever once faced sanctions for its actions?

This entire global system, which we call the “international community,” has remained a silent spectator—while the U.S. storms into countries like a bandit and turns their dreams into horrifying nightmares.

No condemnation. No reprimand. No sign of displeasure.

Just a cowardly, shameless, and hypocritical global conscience.

What’s needed now is that this list be shared on every possible platform, again and again.

Videos should be produced to expose these Western hypocrites and constantly remind the world of the crimes committed by the U.S. around the globe.

This list was released by the Chinese Embassy in Moscow as a political and moral message—at a time when the global media and Western governments were harshly condemning Iran’s attack on Israel, while completely ignoring America’s own history.

The aim of this list was to expose the double standards employed by the U.S. and the West when it comes to human rights, international law, and global security.

When Iran launched a retaliatory strike on Israel, the U.S. and its allies quickly labeled Iran as a “global threat.”

In response to that aggressive campaign, the Chinese embassy issued this list to remind the world that the real threat is the country that has bombed over 30 nations since World War II.

China’s stance is clear: the U.S. has no moral ground to speak from—its past and present are both filled with human rights violations and global aggression.

By releasing this list, China has sent a broader message:

“The world must remember who the true danger is. Western media and governments act with hypocrisy. When the U.S. commits mass killings, they remain silent.”

This move is not just a diplomatic gesture or informational release—it is a political response and a moral charge sheet against the one-sided narrative pushed by the United States and its allies.

https://nautil.us/what-we-misunderstand-about-robots-1219038/?utm_campaign=website&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nautilus-newsletter

What We Misunderstand About Robots

Sci-fi master Adrian Tchaikovsky on evolution, other minds, and the politics of science

By Brandon Keim

A malfunctioning robot butler in search of a purpose. Spiders infected by a virus that accelerated their cognitive evolution. A dissident ecologist exiled to another planet for challenging the idea that humanity is the apex of evolution.

These are just a few of the characters to spring from the ever-fizzing mind of science-fiction maestro Adrian Tchaikovsky, whose novels combine an endless delight in science with a sharp awareness of how that science is shaped—for better and for worse—by economic and political power.

That combination made Tchaikovsky, winner of the prestigious Hugo and Arthur C. Clarke awards, one of his genre’s most relevant, of-the-moment voices. Given Tchaikovsky’s background, though, his success is itself a plot twist.

Raised on David Attenborough specials and visits to London’s Natural History Museum, a young Tchaikovsky was fascinated by evolution and the mind’s workings, but his university studies in psychology and zoology soon left him disillusioned. “I wanted to learn how people think,” he says. “What I got was 400 different statistical tests.” As for insects, a subject of particular devotion, they merited but one lecture in his zoology course—“and it was about how people kill them.”

“I can appreciate that people want science as it relates to them, but I want to learn about insects,” he continues. “I want to talk about things that are very different than us. And we are still very prey to that old Victorian idea of a ladder of progress with people at the top.”

Nautilus talked to Tchaikovsky—whose new book, Bee Speaker, is set in a future where genetically engineered, super-intelligent honeybee swarms help humanity rebuild their war-ravaged, climate-changed society—about his fascinations.

Many of your books feature scientists rebelling against authoritarian governments or trying to survive in authoritarian times. Do you think there is something intrinsically anti-authoritarian about science?

While I am a rationalist and very pro-science, I am well aware that there have been periods of time when science has been entirely co-opted for malign purposes.

But speaking of a Platonically ideal science: The point of science is that truth matters. Science is an attempt to find the truth about the universe by empirical methods. It is a unique belief system in that it is not based on faith; while people often attempt to equate it with other belief systems, such as religious ones, it is unique in that it should be interested in a truth that is testable and findable, rather than one that you set ahead of time and try to make everything fit. Authoritarian governments do not look for truth. If you’re running an authoritarian system then you have a set of predisposed beliefs that everything has to fit, just as if you were running a theocracy. So science, if it is being conducted honestly, is going to come into conflict with authoritarianism.

In your writing, I’ve found a simultaneous delight in technology and wariness of how it could go wrong. What do you think is a healthy relationship to technology?

Technology is where the application of science moves into wider society. My own attitude toward technology has shifted because of the rise of the “tech bros” and their global dominance and this aggravating debasing of technology. Most of what people describe as AI are not AI. Actual AI research is probably being set back by 10 or 20 years—partly because people will get very disillusioned with it, and anything described as AI will get kicked to the curb, and partly because the funding that would go to valid projects is going to that sort of nonsense.

The point of science is that truth matters.

Given the plot of your novel Service Model, I expected you to say something about the dangers of overreliance on technology.

Service Model is set up to look like an overreliance-on-technology scenario. Hopefully, though, the message at the end is actually that it comes down to what you do with it. Where do you put your priorities? Do you punish the guilty or protect the innocent? The reason society fell in that book is not because the robots were there.

Your portrayal of the subjectivity of Uncharles, the robot protagonist of Service Model, felt so real to me. What went into your thinking about how to portray that mind? And have you come across the idea that the neurobiology of emotion is bound up with cognition—so much so that without emotion, you’re not going to have a functioning intelligence?

Our current understanding of intelligence involves a huge amount of cross-body input. An awful lot of what drives us comes from the gut, from internal organs which produce hormones that tell us what to feel about things, and then that motivates our thoughts. Emotion has been viewed as separate from cognition for a long time. That distinction is now very much broken down.

When we start to think about artificial intelligence, though, we basically go back 20 or 30 years in what we think intelligence is. We go back to the idea that you can have a kind of cold, calculating intelligence—a cerebral intellect that is not mediated by emotions. Cutting-edge science knows that all these things are muddied together, but it’s a readily graspable narrative that you can have something that is entirely rational. And in fiction, this is usually presented as a bad thing. The idea is that if you strip away that emotional layer, you are left with something that will make terrible decisions—which isn’t necessarily true.

Moving on to the first half of your question: How does one write Uncharles? Uncharles does not believe he has free will. By his own reckoning, he’s following a chain of priorities and programming that has been given him. But he is very complicated, and these can interact in interesting ways. For example, there are multiple times when Uncharles is going to get destroyed and doesn’t particularly care, because it makes sense to him at the time and because of the logic chain he’s worked through.

One of the weird fallacies we have about AI is that if you got a genuine artificial intelligence, a reasoning intelligence, then it would try and stop you turning it off—like Skynet does, kicking off the whole Terminator franchise. But there’s no reason why self-preservation must come with sapience. You could have an enormously rich artificial intellect that wouldn’t care a damn if you turned it off. Not wanting to die is something we have evolved as part of our evolutionary fitness, because if you don’t die then you have more chance of having offspring, and therefore the predilection gets passed on. Any artificial creature we create isn’t going to have that. The only reason it would want not to die is if you tell it not to.

Among the other minds you’ve explored are bears, dogs, arachnids, cephalopods, and a swarm of bees. What is your process? How do you balance the tension between being rooted in what is scientifically known and what is fair to speculate about?

I try to start with what is known from the research. In some cases, such as in Dogs of War, I ask, “What is being done to them?” Because obviously the bioforms in Dogs are at least partly artificial. After that it becomes a game of logical extrapolation. With a lot of these creatures I’m also working on the basis of, “What is the sensorium?” That is an extremely good shortcut to presenting something alien to people. Spiders and octopuses and dogs all experience the world very differently.

This year I also released Shroud, where the alien species lives in a world of sound and electromagnetic radiation rather than sight. You get to see contrast between what the human characters see and believe, and then what the world looks like to the aliens accompanying them. Currently I’m working on a book featuring a weird human-alien interrelation where there’s a symbiosis going on, but the two halves of the symbiont understand the situation in very different ways.

Evolution is essentially biological complexity into the fourth dimension.

That touches on a question I wanted to ask about the experience of a collective intelligence. For an ecological system—or even an entire planet—to be an organism doesn’t necessarily mean the organism is cognitive like an animal is. In Alien Clay, though, I thought you did suggest that the planet Kiln’s ecology was intelligent in that animal-like sense—but you didn’t describe its inner life. Is that a fair reading? And have you ever thought about exploring the subjectivity of an ecosystem that is also an organism?

That’s a good reading. I’m playing with the idea of emergent complexity; because everything in the biosphere of Kiln is extremely interconnected, you get a sufficiently complex system that becomes aware of itself in some measure. That is probably the least scientific part of that book. It’s extremely hand-wavy.

On the other hand, we do know that there is a great deal of informational interplay between plants to fungi to other plants. There is, at that informational level, a great deal more complexity going on than we’ve traditionally accepted. So who knows, on an alien world which is very heavily into symbiosis as its major evolutionary model, how that might go?

It’s worth noting that the conscious planet is an extremely old sci-fi idea. Stanislav Lem wrote about it [in 1961] in Solaris. It’s even there in the Avatar movies. It would have been nice to have that explored more and things blow up less, but that wasn’t the sort of film it was going to be.

Of course Kiln is imaginary—but many of the ecosystems you imagine are here on Earth, accelerated into the future.

There is so much crazy stuff happening on Earth that we’ve discovered recently and that people are generally not aware of. I want to keep flagging up the idea that none of this is as crazy as it sounds because a whole bunch of this stuff is really going on.

It’s like the mite on the army ant’s foot, which is one of my favorite mad pieces of evolution. There is a mite who hitches a ride on the feet of army ants; it basically just clasped on, but then ants need to do ant-foot things to function, so the mite has evolved to act like a little prosthetic foot. It links up with other ants when they’re forming a bridge, and all that sort of thing, because otherwise the ant giving it a ride would not be able to keep up. From what is a fundamentally parasitic start, they’ve become this sort of weird symbiont.

You can imagine what this might become if you give it a few more million years of evolution. What if the mites become better than an ant’s actual foot, and the ants evolve to make use of the mites, and you have this Kiln-style interdependence where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts?

I’ve always been fascinated with evolution, which is essentially biological complexity into the fourth dimension. I love going back to earlier periods of Earth and seeing all the very weird stuff that might have become the model for animals going forward but by whatever chance turned out not to be. Burgess Shale, Cambrian fauna—that kind of biological diversity is endlessly fascinating.

Science, if it is being conducted honestly, is going to come into conflict with authoritarianism.

When you describe a particular view of evolution as a political project, I think of how in Alien Clay, a different understanding of ecology—not as red-in-tooth-and-claw, but as cooperative—is also intertwined with an anti-authoritarian political movement. Was that meant as a parable?

People seized on a very simplified understanding of Darwinian evolution: Survival of the fittest, thing-eating-other-thing, the idea that evolution progresses as a series of knockout battles where the winner carries on into the next historical era where it will meet up with the reigning champion—which is not how evolution works.

In an upcoming book I talk about mantis shrimps. They are very simple creatures by human standards, but they are very dangerous to one another and they live in densely packed environments. They have evolved this incredible set of behaviors to get on with one another; they have essentially become much more complex and intelligent because of the presence of other mantis shrimps. And those who are better at reading other mantis shrimps and behaving appropriately toward them will do better.

This idea that everything has to be in competition with each other is not necessarily true. Everything essentially has to work out how to work with other things, whether that’s their own species or other species or the environment as a whole. That’s what people don’t tend to get about Darwinian survival of the fittest. The basic concept of Alien Clay is that I wanted to take a world where that side of the biosphere’s evolution—the better you are at working with other creatures of all types, the more fit you are to survive—had become the dominant one.

That leads to my final question: In Saturation Point, you repeat the adage “all things change, and we change with them.” In the context of the ecological upheaval now happening, what does that mean?

It will change us. The problem is that we think we can hold back the tide, that human society is proof against this change. And of course it’s not.

People like to believe that things can be the same as they were 40 years ago, that you can turn back the clock. We can’t. Everything does change, but we are not mentally equipped to have a longevity of perspective. We believe the time we live in is going to be infinitely preservable or can be perfected into some kind of notional past Golden Age. There is no Golden Age.

We are going to be changed. Do we change organically, in order to roll with those punches? Or is it going to be like the dam that changes because eventually the pressure becomes so great that it breaks, and everything is left in ruin? Gradual change is something you can adapt to. Sudden change is something you can’t.

Brandon Keim is a freelance journalist and contributing editor at Nautilus. His new book, Meet the Neighbors, explores what the science of animal intelligence means for how we understand and live with the wild creatures around us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOHUOZaR18A

Baakiyalakshmi | 23rd to 27th June 2025 - Promo