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When wellness becomes a belief system: Science, stories, and the search for certainty

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  "A few minutes watching a wellness influencer online can reveal far more than health advice. It can reveal what people are truly searching for." It started, as many modern curiosities do, with a social media recommendation. A wellness creator, Barbara O'Neill, appeared on my feed. What initially caught my attention was not necessarily the advice she offered. As a someone with a background in biology, I couldn’t help but notice, how much it ranged from conventional lifestyle recommendations to claims that have been challenged or lack strong scientific support, and outstandingly, the track record she has had in terms of being rejected and denounced from various health related organization and venues she has attempted to speak in. Additionally, shockingly, was the response she inspired. Thousands of comments praised her as someone who had "opened their eyes." Others described abandoning conventional medical advice in favor of natural remedies. Her talks wer...
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The brain, prompt and question of intelligence: What is intelligence and are humans still as intelligent in the rise of artificial intelligence?

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Imagine being the smartest, clever or intellectually great species in the world. Then you have AI. Who is actually the most intelligent? For a good amount of time, humans, have been, seen as what would be called the “top of the food chain” when it comes to being intellectually superior. However, in a great twist of events, throughout history, humanity has repeatedly discovered that the universe is less centered on humans, than we once believed. Let us take it back a bit, all the way, to the sixteenth century, where Nicolaus Copernicus displaced Earth from the centre of the cosmos, beginning a scientific revolution that transformed our understanding of the universe. Three centuries later, Charles Darwin demonstrated that humans are not separate from nature but one branch on the evolutionary tree, sharing common ancestry with every living organism. More recently, the study of animal behaviour, which, has steadily dismantled the notion that many cognitive traits, such as, tool use, cu...
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