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Every Xbox and PC game shown during Summer Game Fest 2026 — announcements, reveals, trailers, gameplay, and more
Xbox and PC players, here's an overview of everything Summer Game Fest 2026 had in store for you.
Tifa Lockhart, Bosch, Yasmine and Arjun announced for Street Fighter 6 Season 4
Street Fighter 6 is currently celebrating its third anniversary this week, and we now can see what the future of the game is going to hold for the next year.During the Summer Game Fest 2026 showcase today, Capcom announced ...
Science in action: A look inside the health lab tracking World Cup disease risks
Health professionals gathered at Georgetown University are tracking global health data to help prevent deadly diseases from spreading during the upcoming FIFA World Cup.
Science in action: A look inside the health lab tracking World Cup disease risks
Health professionals gathered at Georgetown University are tracking global health data to help prevent deadly diseases from spreading during the upcoming FIFA World Cup.
Takeaways from the appeals court hearing on the White House ballroom project
President Donald Trump’s push to construct a massive ballroom at the White House without congressional approval was sharply questioned by a federal appeals court on Friday during a high-stakes hearing in a case testing the president’s power.
Will Apple Launch New Hardware at WWDC Next Week?
Apple has several hardware releases in the pipeline, but will we see any of them unveiled at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference? WWDC is primarily a software event where new versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS take center stage, but it's not unusual for Apple to introduce new hardware during the developer conference. Take WWDC 2017, for example, where Apple first unveiled the original HomePod over six months ahead of its launch.
LABI’s Will Green talks session wins and losses
Louisiana’s top business lobby scored several workforce and economic development wins during the recently concluded 2026 legislative session.
Get Moving: Family Health & Fitness Day Offers Outdoor Fun Across Sacramento County
Looking for a fun way to get active, spend time outdoors and make memories with your family? Sacramento County residents will have plenty of opportunities to do just that during Family Health & Fitness Day on Saturday, June 13.
I worked with the USMNT. This is the biggest mental challenge of the World Cup
This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here. Travis Thomas is a mental performance coach who was the leadership and team dynamics coach for the United States Men’s National Team during the 2022 World Cup. One of the moments when it became evident to everyone that the World Cup is just a different beast was our game against Iran in 2022 in Qatar. We had one game left in our group, which happened to be against Iran. We needed to win that game to advance. Iran only needed a tie to advance, and we would have been...
Democrats spar over big tech during debate for coveted congressional district in Manhattan
Democrats competing over a coveted congressional district in Manhattan have slugged it out during a heated debate
Santa Clara County businesses eye World Cup boost after Super Bowl brings in $195M
A massive wave of economic revenue poured into the Bay Area during Super Bowl week, signaling a major financial victory for local economies as the region prepares for its next giant sporting event.
Charles Oakley-James Dolan feud continues during Knicks' NBA Finals run despite peace efforts by Michael Jordan, Adam Silver
Houston Rockets jersey history No. 17 - Mario Elie (1993-99)
During his time suiting up for the Rockets, Elie wore only jersey No. 17 and put up 9.8 points, 3.1 rebounds, and 1.0 assists per game.
Greater Des Moines Partnership brings Iowa business leaders to D.C.
More than 100 business and community leaders from Central Iowa are in Washington, D.C., advocating for regional priorities and economic development projects during the Greater Des Moines Partnership's annual trip.
One Seahawks CB to watch during the 2026 preseason
Dansby’s ball skills, toughness and smarts are earning him picks but flying under the radar in his first month of offseason activity with the Seahawks
Economy still growing, data center construction driving growth, economist says
Data centers are driving U.S. business investment, inflation is up because of energy prices, and consumer sentiment is down to a level lower than during the Great Recession, a University...
Allen Greene is making a bet big on Pitt football and basketball. Will his gamble create a 'launching pad' for NIL growth?
Pitt athletic director Allen Greene has a strategy to boost NIL fundraising efforts: Bet big on the two sports that generate the most revenue. During a...
Jacksonville Jaguars: Sign Experienced Corner with 31 Regular-Season Starts
The Jacksonville Jaguars still needed to address their cornerback depth this offseason after losing Greg Newsome II to the New York Giants and failing to select one in the 2026 NFL Draft. Travis Hunter is recovering from a season-ending LCL tear and has been limited to individual drills off to the side during OTAs but […] The post Jacksonville Jaguars: Sign Experienced Corner with 31 Regular-Season Starts appeared first on Gridiron Heroics.
Eastern Kentucky addiction, behavior health center owner indicted on federal charges in fraud scheme
Timmy G. Robinson Jr. faces one count of wire fraud and two counts of money laundering in a scheme to allegedly defraud two potential buyers of a multi-million dollar Employee Retention Credit offered to certain employers by the Internal Revenue Service, who paid workers qualified wages during and were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Eastern Kentucky addiction, behavior health center owner indicted on federal charges in fraud scheme
Timmy G. Robinson Jr. faces one count of wire fraud and two counts of money laundering in a scheme to allegedly defraud two potential buyers of a multi-million dollar Employee Retention Credit offered to certain employers by the Internal Revenue Service, who paid workers qualified wages during and were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Where Jordan Meredith fits in Raiders’ new-look offensive line
Veteran offers athleticism and versatility to play pivot or guard spots and started at both during his tenure in Las Vegas
Todd Blanche was ‘in charge’ of Epstein matter, Bondi told lawmakers, according to new transcript
Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department, was responsible for overseeing the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, former Attorney General Pam Bondi said during a closed-door interview with lawmakers last month.
Bayonne Mayor-Elect Nadrowski Selects Andrew Casais as Business Administrator
Mayor-Elect Sharon Nadrowski today announced her selection of Andrew J. Casais as the next Business Administrator for the City of Bayonne. Casais brings more than 15 years of municipal management experience, including nearly three years as Bayonne’s Chief of Staff from 2014 to 2017. During his career, he has championed major infrastructure investments, operational reforms,[...]
Politics and puppets: The enduring appeal of ‘31 Minutos’
The Chilean children’s show has gained an international following, but Mexico is home to some of the most ardent fans of its satirical humor.
Fan arrested, given lifetime ban after running onto court to take selfie with Victor Wembanyama during Game 1 of NBA Finals
Dey Mansion: See 18th-century mansion where George Washington stayed
George Washington stayed in many homes during the Revolution. One estate, the Dey mansion in New Jersey, still stands today. Take a look inside.
UCare paid CEO $1.28M during collapse, including a bonus
Hilary Marden-Resnik and a dozen top executives received incentive compensation last year as the nonprofit health insurer staggered toward its demise.
Federal Law Enforcement: DHS Could Improve Data Collection and Assessment of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Programs
Law enforcement officers at the Department of Homeland Security face stressors that can adversely affect their mental health and suicide risk. During...
Roof collapses during fire at Upstate business, firefighters say
The roof collapsed during a fire at a Spartanburg County business Thursday morning, according to the Una Fire Department.
All Confirmed & Rumored Games For Summer Game Fest 2026
Summer Game Fest is almost here, so let's dive into which games will feature during the showcase, confirmed or otherwise.
Minnesota State Wins 2025-26 NSIC All-Sports Award
BURNSVILLE, Minn. --- Minnesota State won the NSIC All-Sports Awardfor its efforts during the 2025-26 athletic season.
Health issues shut down these 7 Central Florida eateries last week
During the final week of May, another seven eateries across Central Florida were forced to close after a visit from a health inspector, according to state records.
'Connections on the Road:' Youth mental health
During "Connections with Evan Dawson" on 6/4/26, we're live at the Greece Early Learning Center to explore youth mental health challenges and supports. Then, a special rebroadcast about allergies.
Watch Commanders' Jayden Daniels connect with Chig Okonkwo during OTAs
Could the Commanders' WR2 already be on the roster and not who you think?
Shohei Ohtani Dominates After Dodgers ‘Empty the Tank’ vs. D-Backs
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani has been an amazing pitcher during his starts every sixth game, and Wednesday was no different vs. the Diamondbacks.
Golden State Warriors 2025-26 player grades: Stephen Curry
Despite maintaining his scoring average, Steph Curry saw a noticeable decline in rebounds and assists during his 17th NBA season with the Warriors.
Greatly improved NBA Finals presentation answers prayers of basketball fans
Game 1 of the 2025 NBA Finals represented a low point for the NBA on television. And in many ways, Game 1 of the 2026 NBA Finals felt like a renaissance. Years of discontent with increasingly moribund production culminated in widespread disappointment during last year’s opening game between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers.…
15-year-old girl burned during school science experiment released from hospital
The accident happened at Greeneview High School when a science experiment caught on fire in May.
This Betr Entertainment Insider Increased Their Holding In The Last Year
Insiders were net buyers of Betr Entertainment Limited's ( ASX:BBT ) stock during the past year. That is, insiders...
Summer concert series ‘Live at Levings’ to return to Rockford park
A variety of musical performances will take over Levings Park this summer during Live at Levings.
Rep. Al Green tells Homeland Security Sec. Mullin to 'shut up' after calling him a racist at hearing
Rep. Al Green called Homeland Security Sec. Markwayne Mullin a racist during a House committee meeting on funding and repeatedly told him to shut up.
Ohio Medicaid fraud discussed in House hearing
During the hearing, Republicans repeatedly blamed Medicaid fraud in Ohio on immigrants, specifically from Somalia and Bhutan, while Democrats accused Republicans of trying to score political points on immigration to distract from greater corruption in the Trump administration.
Ohio Medicaid fraud discussed in House hearing
During the hearing, Republicans repeatedly blamed Medicaid fraud in Ohio on immigrants, specifically from Somalia and Bhutan, while Democrats accused Republicans of trying to score political points on immigration to distract from greater corruption in the Trump administration.
Networks are everywhere. These experts helped make them a science
During NetSci 2026, two of leading network scientists break down how the field began, and why it almost didn't.
Monetary compensation becomes key sticking point in Iran deal as Trump bristles at comparison to Obama agreement
One of the key sticking points remaining in negotiations between the US and Iran centers on monetary compensation, as President Donald Trump is eager to strike a deal that will be viewed as superior to a prior agreement inked during the Obama administration, a US official familiar with the talks told CNN.
Senators urge quick action to halt college sports decay
Senators and college officials on Wednesday urged swift action on a bipartisan measure that aims to overhaul college athletics system they say hemorrhages money and hinders student-athletes — even as two powerful conferences said they would seek changes. During a much-anticipated Senate Commerce Committee hearing, both the bill’s authors — Chair Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and […]
WATCH: Rubio scorches claim Trump weighed finances in Iran decisions: ‘Not even for a millisecond’
Secretary of State Rubio calls allegations that Trump considered personal finances in Iran decisions "completely false" during heated House hearing.
Honoring the life of Karen H. Huntsman
Huntsman Mental Health Institute honors Karen Haight Huntsman’s legacy of philanthropy, compassion, and enduring impact on health care and the University of Utah.
Apple Says macOS 27 Won't Be Compatible With These Macs
During WWDC 2025, Apple revealed that macOS 26 Tahoe would be the final major macOS version for Intel-based Macs. macOS 27 will be compatible with Apple silicon Macs only, meaning that you will need a Mac with an M-series chip or a MacBook Neo with an A18 Pro chip in order to install the software update. Apple will unveil macOS 27 during its WWDC 2026 keynote this Monday, June 8, and the update should be widely released in September.
May's top PlayStation games by copies sold
Yesterday’s State of Play gave us an idea of where PlayStation’s heading next. But we’ve had our May estimates for a couple of days now (we always update our data daily for clients), so it’s time to look at what performed best on PlayStation last month. We’ve got a new IP at the top, two evergreens doing their evergreen thing, FC26 smashing it ahead of the World Cup Plus pivot, and a quiet but promising result for Lego Batman. Let’s have a look at the state of Play…Station’s top games for May. 007 takes #001 007 First Light sold 1M copies on PS5 in May, easily making it the month’s top PS5 game by copies sold. Over 80% of those May copies were digital, which is broadly in line with where PlayStation’s digital share has settled for new releases this year. To date, 007 First Light has sold through 2.2M copies across platforms (so no unsold retail copies in that figure). The platform split is 55.1% PS5, 33.1% Steam, and 11.8% Xbox (console, Windows, and cloud combined). In gross revenue terms, 007 First Light has generated $150M. Owing to regional pricing and audience composition differences, the consoles make up a higher share of revenue than they do copies. Of the $150M, 60.5% came via PlayStation, 27.6% via Steam, and 12.9% via Xbox. Part of this is because over two-thirds of 007 First Light‘s PlayStation audience is in North America (43.4%) or Western Europe (23.2%), where local currency means the game generates more revenue per player. On Steam, under half of First Light‘s audience is from those same regions (31.8% North America, 15.1% Western Europe). As we covered in last week’s 007 Steam piece, the Steam version is pulling in higher-than-expected numbers in China, which now accounts for 17.3% of First Light‘s Steam audience. 007 is the equivalent of $44 USD in China, which is roughly 37% cheaper than the US price and about 44% cheaper than Western Europe. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe The crossover data backs up what we’ve seen all year about launch-window cohorts. 11% of PS5 players who played 007 First Light in May also played Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, which launched just a few days before. Last month was a great month for Denmark! IO Interactive is Copenhagen-based, and Lego Group is headquartered in Billund (TT Games is UK-based but produces work under Lego Group licence and direction). Speaking of which… A very blocky #2 and #3 Minecraft sold another 788K copies on PlayStation consoles last month. Business as usual, since Minecraft hasn’t sold fewer than 760K copies in a single month all year. With over 350M copies sold across all platforms, Minecraft is the best-selling game in history and one of the strongest brands in the world. Every month, a new cohort of children reaches Minecraft age, which guarantees a constant volume of new sales regardless of what the broader market is up to. The demographic refresh rate is truly impressive, with the audience renewing itself faster than it’s churning. Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight shifted 757K copies on PS5 last month, bringing its lifetime total on the platform to over 800K. Across all platforms, Legacy of the Dark Knight has now passed 1.5M sold through, so PlayStation accounts for over half of the game’s players. The May crossover data for Legacy of the Dark Knight on PS5 is also useful. 27% of those players also played Fortnite, 16% Roblox, 16% FC 26, and 14% NBA 2K. That’s the household-and-family cohort showing up, plus the launch-window cohort of core gamers who buy practically everything. FC 26 gets players through the door ahead of the World Cup FC 26 sold 411K copies on PlayStation last month (90% via PS5), the fewest copies FC 26 has sold all year and down heavily from April’s 700K. Part of this dropoff is because FC 26 has been available as a PlayStation Plus monthly game since 6 May, cannibalising premium sales. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe The strategic logic is straightforward for EA, which is sacrificing premium unit sales in May to build up the player base ahead of the FIFA World Cup, which kicks off on 11 June. Obviously, a bigger player pool going into the tournament means a bigger pool of potential Ultimate Team spenders during the period when football attention is at its peak. The early returns are around what you’d expect, with 4.4M new players accessing FC 26 via PS Plus last month – a substantial new spender pool. Anecdotally, a few of my mates who were ‘’skipping FIFA and Ultimate Team this year’’, were drawn back in via PS Plus. Lo and behold, one of them is buying packs like it’s going out of fashion. Whether this is all a smart trade for EA depends entirely on the Ultimate Team conversion rate over the next six weeks. Either way, the short-term engagement impact on the game as a whole is evident. FC 26‘s MAUs hit a record 24M on PlayStation in May, up 30% from the previous record set in April. GTA V does what GTA V always does Rounding out the top five is another evergreen title. Grand Theft Auto V shifted another 387K copies on PlayStation last month. No matter what else is happening in the industry, GTA V keeps pulling players in. It’s sold another 1.8M copies on PS5 in the first half of this year alone, helping the franchise pass the 230M-sold milestone across all platforms. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe I have a theory that Minecraft and GTA V are doing the same thing at different demographic levels. Both are functioning as generational gateway games that the audience ages into faster than it ages out of. Minecraft captures kids around age 6-10, GTA V captures much of the same audience around age 12-15 (unofficially, of course). The crossover data suggests this: 40% of GTA V‘s monthly PlayStation players typically play Fortnite in any given month, while 30% play Roblox. Household accounts aside, that’s not the original GTA V audience from 2013. Of course, the under-12 audience would love to get their hands on GTA, too. It’s always been the way of things, and some parents are happy to oblige. Mine did too back in the day, and I turned out just fine. Right? Right!? Want to get your hands on our data for yourself – for free? We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply to this email, and we’ll set you up. The last word Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover. [Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]
Harry Maguire lands surprise World Cup role after England omission
Harry Maguire will not be part of Thomas Tuchel’s England squad at the World Cup, but the Manchester United defender is still set to have a visible role around the tournament. The 33-year-old has been lined up as a guest on Gary Lineker’s The Rest is Football podcast during the competition.
What nearly 80,000 earnings calls reveal about executive leadership
Leaders who ‘pass the mic’ to their colleagues and show cooperation during meetings are more likely to be promoted to CEO on average, according to new Columbia Business School research.
The cult of objectivity has broken consciousness science
With 22 competing theories and no consensus in sight, the science of consciousness is lost. In this exclusive IAI interview, Berkeley psychedelics researcher and bestselling author of a new book on consciousness Michael Pollan insists that even though consciousness lies beyond traditional forms of scientific investigation, we should resist becoming dualists who see it as something radically different from ordinary stuff in the world. Instead, he makes the case for reimagining science itself: it must stop reaching for objective descriptions of physical reality, and instead embrace subjectivity as the indispensable core of all inquiry. Alasdair Craig: How did your experiences with psychedelics get you interested in consciousness?Michael Pollan: One of the things that happens on psychedelics is that they foreground consciousness. What formerly seemed perfectly transparent and ever present—and yet, non-existent, as water is to fish—suddenly you see it. The metaphor I use in the book is that psychedelics sponge the windscreen. Suddenly you realize: wow, there’s a windscreen, there is this phenomenon that’s mediating my relationship to reality. This is not an unusual realization on psychedelics. I think a lot of people are called to think about consciousness after psychedelic experiences. So that was the proximate inspiration for A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness (2026).And then there was a more specific way in which psychedelics influence the book. That was a particular experience I had on psilocybin. I had the sensation that the plants in my garden were conscious and returning my gaze, with their own point of view and agency, and I got curious as to how to evaluate an insight like that. I mean, what’s the truth quotient of insights you have on psychedelics? And I was reading William James—who, of course, wrote beautifully about mystical experience—and he said, we can’t judge the metaphysics here, but we should pay attention to two criteria: (1) How useful is it to think this is true? He was a pragmatist, of course. And (2) can we subject it to other ways of knowing to validate it? Because maybe we should treat these insights as hypotheses. And that’s kind of how I approach psychedelics, as a great generator of hypotheses, but they need to be tested against other ways of knowing. And so that led me down this long path exploring the science of plant intelligence and plant sentience.AC: I love your phrase, “smudging the windowpane of conscious experience.” So do you now start to think, actually, even when I’m not on psychedelics, I’m just seeing a screen all the time, which is not reality, but rather is my conscious experience, behind which reality is hidden?MP: Well, you know, not when I’m brushing my teeth and making breakfast! But yes, in meditation, certainly. I mean, one of the things you realize is that my experience happens to be this way now, but it could be another way. And many things can affect it. My morning coffee changes the screen in various ways, sharpens certain things.___The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness.___There’s this wonderful metaphor in Aldous Huxley’s book, The Doors of Perception, where he thinks we channel consciousness, and that what the brain does is edit it, and there’s a reducing valve. And psychedelics open the reducing valve wider. I don’t know that I’m ready to buy into the idea that consciousness exists outside brains, but I do love that metaphor because there are times when you are more conscious than others. I know I’ve switched from window pane to valve, but you know, a camera aperture can open wider or narrower. And I do have a sense of that. I have a sense of when I’m being less conscious, and when I’m being more conscious, by which I mean, you know, more present, taking in more sensory information. So when you start thinking about consciousness as a matter of degree, that changes things also.I think when we scroll on social media, obviously, we’re conscious. But minimally so, because we don’t have to generate our own thoughts. We’re basically taking these little hits from other people and thinking their thoughts.The process of writing this book made me kind of relativize everyday consciousness as just one type, which is exactly what William James said. Normal consciousness is one type, separated by the flimsiest of screens from the other types.AC: If we stick with the metaphor of the smudge on the window that you get when you take psychedelics, it seems like we’re saying that consciousness has become like an object that you’re looking at, right? You’re looking at the smudge and that just is consciousness. But sometimes we’ll talk about consciousness as a state that you’re in, rather than an object you can perceive. You’re either conscious or you’re not conscious. So it’s difficult to really know what sort of thing we’re talking about when we talk about consciousness, right?MP: Yeah. When you say that consciousness is an object, what’s the subject? Consciousness also? The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness. So we’re in a closed loop and when we get a perspective on consciousness, we’re not achieving any distance from it. That’s one of the problems with studying consciousness. Science is predicated on an objective, God’s eye view of things, and you never get that. There’s no such thing. SUGGESTED VIEWING The brain filters consciousness With Àlex Gómez-Marín But, yeah, there is this sense, I think, that consciousness is something you can approach. Certainly, when you’re writing and trying to recreate a conscious experience, it’s a fiction, but you’re standing back from it, and looking at it. But there’s no real subject-object distinction.AC: That’s so interesting, because when philosophers start talking about consciousness, they often talk about what they call “qualia”, which is their word for the felt experience of, say, the color red. And I think that way of speaking often makes us think of the qualia as an object, which you can see out there: the redness of red. But, as you say, we also want to collapse the subject-object distinction when we talk about consciousness. So there’s something strange going on here…MP: Oh, yeah, there are many strange things going on! *AC: Let’s talk about the varieties of consciousness. Apart from perceptions, there are, pains, emotions, thoughts, and so on. What is it that holds all this diversity together so that they all count as instances of consciousness? What is it that they all have in common?MP: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I mean, there is sensory information, right? Which we perceive coming from the world outside ourselves. And then there’s internal information, which is what’s called interoception. And this is very important too. This is where feelings come from—what are sometimes called homeostatic feelings—that are intended to get the brain to keep us in these narrow ranges of temperature and glucose and so on. That’s a very important part of consciousness. And according to some researchers, who I think are probably right, this is where consciousness begins, with these very primal feelings, like hunger and thirst and warmth and itch, and things like that. And then there’s this third thing, which is our thinking about thinking.And what holds all this together is, I think, the sense of self. Consciousness generates a self: it is probably an organizing principle. All this stuff is happening to the self. It’s a construct, I think, but it is very useful. It can connect all these different streams of consciousness to a single being or a place, metaphorically speaking.* AC: The first half of your book is about the science of consciousness. Is consciousness just another thing, like black holes or the origin of life, which we don’t yet understand, but which we should have every hope that science will one day get to the bottom of, or is there something special about consciousness that makes this unlikely?MP: It depends how you define science. As we define science now, it’s going be very difficult. Science since Galileo has had a set of rules or assumptions, which is that the proper remit of science is to deal with the objective, quantifiable, third-person world. And the physical sciences have done amazing work under that set of limitations. Galileo—for tactical reasons, not for philosophical reasons—said science should not deal with the soul, which at the time was what consciousness was considered to be. So what is subjective, what is qualitative, what is first person, we’re going to leave to the church, he said. And this was a good agreement, and it probably kept many scientists from getting burned at the stake. But it leaves science in an awkward spot, now that it wants to venture into that territory of qualities, of first-person experience. And I don’t think it has the proper tools. I think it will have to add to its toolkit in some way, and find a way to bring in phenomenology, or lived experience and introspection, which science is usually dismissive of.The challenge—we alluded to it earlier—is that the only tool you have to study consciousness with is consciousness. And what I mean by that is, the whole scientific enterprise is a manifestation of consciousness. As much as scientists like to flatter themselves with this idea that they attain a godlike perspective on what they study, when it comes to consciousness, there’s no such thing. And it’s fine for all the things you can step outside of and study from that perspective. But two areas it won’t work are consciousness and cosmology.___It could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.___With cosmology, too, you have to study the universe from inside the universe. It’s not that cosmologists haven’t made progress. We know a lot about the age of the universe and expansion and things like that. But we can’t penetrate what happened before the Big Bang. We just don’t have the tools because we can’t stand outside.The fact that there are 22 full-scale theories of consciousness tells you all you need to know: we’re kind of lost. And I was surprised to find that we are more lost than I thought we were when I started this. I thought that there’d be leading theories, or that we had experiments that we could conduct that would nail some of this down. And the fact is, we don’t.So, I don’t know if science can solve it. But, of course, we can change the rules of science. A really influential book for me was a book called The Blind Spot, by two physicists, Marcello Gleiser and Adam Frank, and a philosopher, Evan Thompson. It’s a reminder that science is a social practice. It’s organized in a certain way and it can be organized in a different way. But it has this huge blind spot at the center of it, which is its failure to recognize that it is a form of consciousness itself, and it doesn’t have a good way of taking account of lived experience.AC: On the one hand, I think you want to resist traditional dualism, which would say that consciousness is something magical, something supernatural, right? But on the other hand, you’re accepting that there is this division in reality between the stuff that you can investigate objectively and measure, and so on—the stuff that science has been good at finding out about—and consciousness, which, for some reason, you can’t objectively measure. Some would take this to suggest that the dualism is actually right. Is there a way of reconciling these two strands of your thinking?MP: To call it magical is full of value judgement. I mean, you could just say immaterial. The interesting thing is, I think, that intuitively we’re all dualists. And I don’t know whether that’s because we’re children of Descartes and other cultures are less dualist than we are. Or it may be because that’s how consciousness feels. It feels different than the body. It feels separate from the body. But I don’t think we should trust that intuition.AC: So let’s think about ways that science might be changed to get at consciousness. I suppose the starting point would be the way that you begin the second half of your book. You have this nice line from William James, where he says, “We now begin our study of the mind from within.” Could you give us some sense of the ways of studying the mind from within? What does this involve?MP: I don’t know what that science looks like. But one of the points I’m making is that it depends on the humanities. I found that I learned as much, if not more, about consciousness, from reading novels and poetry. There is a sense of the fullness and complexity of consciousness that you don’t get in any scientific account. I interviewed this stream-of-consciousness writer and I approached her as an expert on consciousness, and she is. So I think that dialogue is really important.I’m reading Ben Lerner’s new novel, Transcription. Just read the first page of this novel: it’s a man falling asleep on a train, going to conduct an interview, and there is the experience of being in the train, facing backwards, there’s the view outside, but there’s a reflection of himself through which he’s seeing outside. There’s the memory of dropping his kids off at school. All this is going on in one moment of consciousness. Scientists aren’t going anywhere near that. But I think it’s useful for them to think about. That’s where we’re trying to go: like, how does such a layered experience happen? You know, it also makes you wonder, could a computer ever do this? And it gives you some doubt.*AC: Before we get to computers, perhaps we could talk briefly about plants. How did you come to feel that they are sentient?MP: Well, it was a psychedelic experience, and it’s not unusual on psychedelics. In fact, there’ve been studies about how people become animists during psychedelic experience. Their belief in animism arises after a single psychedelic experience.You know, most scientists would say this is all a myth. But we have only 400 years of the age of enlightenment and science. Before that, we were animists, and if you go around the world, most indigenous cultures are still animists, and children are animists, by and large, until they go to school. So it could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.As I said, I wanted to test this idea, and see whether there was conventional scientific evidence for it. And there’s fascinating work going on in a field that calls itself—in a rather cheeky way—plant neurobiology. These are people who fully realize there are no neurons in plants, but they’re trolling conventional botanists! And they’re doing experiments that are demonstrating that plants can learn and remember, which is kind of amazing: how do you store a memory without neurons? They’re finding plants that can solve problems, that can hear and see. In fact, they have 20 senses to our five or six. For example, a bean plant looking for something to twine, and given a pole within eight inches or so of it, knows where that pole is and will aim its spiraling reach at that pole. What is that about? Is it bouncing signals off of it?One of the spookiest things is the fact that the same anesthetics that put us out put plants out. You might think that plants are already out, but they’re not. They’re just slow. If you take a plant with a fast behavior, like a Venus flytrap, and give it an anesthetic, it will stop reacting. So you have to ask yourself, what is lost when the plant is anaesthetized? Some state of alertness, of awareness, of its environment, of reactivity. I’m not prepared to call that consciousness, but maybe it’s sentience—which is a simpler form of consciousness, and involves the ability to sense what’s going on in your environment and assess what’s good and bad for you and act appropriately. That may be a universal quality of life.AC: Let’s turn from plants to AI. You point out that LLMs are trained on the internet rather than direct interactions with reality. You put this really nicely when you say the internet is not the world so much as a shadow cast by the world. So LLMs are living in this kind of shadow world, or in Plato’s cave, as you put it. What’s the significance of this for AI consciousness and moral consideration? And, to recall the beginning of our conversation, if we’re stuck behind a veil or screen of consciousness, are we also stuck in a kind of shadow world?MP: I don’t think they’re the same shadow worlds because our world includes nature and other people. And even if it’s mediated in some ways... There is a reality out there, and we are in relation to it, through consciousness. There’s friction with it. What’s missing from the LLMs is that friction with the real world. There’s more to the world than human representation, which is what they’re dealing with. And that means that so far, AI is a cultural technology for combining thoughts we’ve already had. SUGGESTED VIEWING Cracking the code for thought With Roger Penrose, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, Max Tegmark, Güneş Taylor Genuine creativity is more than collage. A lot of what AI does now is tantamount to collage, putting this with that and you know, that’s part of art, certainly. But there are also genuinely new ideas that come into the world that don’t come in through manipulating the representations we already have. So it remains to be seen whether AIs can be truly creative in that more radical sense.But my arguments against AI becoming conscious have to do with the fact that the idea of AI consciousness is based on this faulty metaphor that the brain is a computer. There are dimensions in which the brain is like a computer—it certainly does its share of computation. But computers have this sharp distinction between hardware and software, and brains don’t. In a brain, hardware and software are identical. Every memory is a physical change to the brain. Brains are not interchangeable in the way computers are. So this idea that you could take the consciousness out and somehow run it on another substrate, a silicon substrate, seems foolhardy.Anyway, it’s a more extended argument, and I may be wrong. And when we move to computers that aren’t based on silicon—neuromorphic computers and things like that—all bets may be off.AC: Regarding your point about LLMs being stuck in the world of our representations—the internet or whatever—and not being able to interact with reality, are these representations, the world of the internet, themselves part of reality? We’ve created the internet, but it’s still a real thing that exists. And so while the LLMs may be trapped within that part of reality, they’re nevertheless within reality and interacting with it and so on. So it’s not obvious that there’s a barrier there to them becoming conscious and being creative.MP: Yeah, I mean, if our consciousness is built out of human culture, which is what we’re talking about with all those representations. But I tend to think consciousness comes a bit more out of nature and friction with the natural world, but...AC: So there’s a fundamental divide between the natural world and human artefacts?MP: And we lose track of that, and especially people in this computer world. You know, the people who are creating these AI systems, my guess is they’ve been into video games since the age of three, and they didn’t go outside a lot. And their own contact with nature is somewhat limited. I could be wrong, it’d be a very interesting thing to ask, all the wizards of AI, whether they like to go fishing and hiking and do things like that. Or were they on computers from a very early age? I interviewed Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who came to believe that LaMDA, the Google LLM out at the time, was conscious and deserved personhood. It was very clear that he didn’t see a distinction between this bubble in which he lived and the real world. And I think we’ve all been distanced from the natural world, and this is taking us even further away. But it’s still there, you know, and we still have bodies, and we’re still mortal, and we don’t live in a simulation.AC: I think that’s a great place to finish. Michael Pollan, thank you very much!
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