WASHINGTON DC, May 15 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For decades scientists have debated whether DJs display signs of intelligence. This week researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that they will attend Burning Man in 2018 to conduct groundbreaking research that could finally find the answer.
“There’s no question that DJs have exhibited increasingly greater levels of complexity,” said lead researcher Dr. Jennifer Meisenthal, Director of the Dubstep program at the Stanford School of Ethnomusicology. “During the 50s and 60s, Jane Goodall’s pioneering work in local radio had many researchers convinced that DJs were making intelligent music choices, and even using language. But new research has cast significant doubt on that theory, suggesting instead that they’re only pushing buttons in a mechanistic, and ultimately pre-determined fashion.”
Dr. Richard Hapswick, of the Harvard School of Jazz Botany, agreed, adding that “frankly, after Coachella 2016, the idea that DJs are capable of deductive reasoning, let alone cognition, is essentially untenable.”
But Dr. Cynthia Rankitesh, who lectures on circuit parties at Duke University, said that this view is short-sighted, and even myopic. “DJs use tools, have a complicated social hierarchy, and appear to genuinely grieve when their dealer can’t make it to their set. Frankly it’s social taboos, not science, that keeps us from recognizing them as a sentient life form.”
Burning Man is a participatory arts event and civic experiment held annually in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. It was selected as the research site, Dr. Meisenthal said, because DJs there are plentiful and easy to capture. “Their population has been expanding at a frankly unsustainable rate for a number of years, and our expectation is that if we remove a few from the city, no one will miss them, and no damage to the environment will be done.” She rejected notions that Burning Man had been chosen because its DJs are the ‘illest.
Researchers will use a combination of fMRI studies and stimulus/response tests to see if DJs have the capacity to learn from mistakes, recognize the emotional needs of others, and utilize contextual clues to reach decisions.
“We know they respond to blinky lights,” Dr. Hapswick said. “But is that really a sign of intelligence?”
If DJs are found to be intelligent, it would be an enormous upheaval for society. But Dr. Rankitesh prefers to focus on the positive aspects. “Once we’ve determined they’re intelligent – and I’m confident we will – we can educate them. Help them find a productive use for their talents. Maybe even expose them to the arts. It’s an exciting possibility, and could lead to a much better world.”
The team is expected to publish their findings in February of 2019.
Please! Do not encourage these robots with attention.
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I’ll gladly invite you to DJ anytime and you can show this old robot just how simple the task is.
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Well written prose.
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You had me at blinky lights.
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I’m pretty sure that the learning curve must be pretty steep based on the amount of DJ’s playing to an empty area yet not changing their set. It shows a stubborn self indulgence when all evidence is against them.
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They must be using the Turing table test to determine if DJs are indistinguishable from humans
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I liked this article, it had pictures of DJ guy getting narcissistic supply. check out my new mix at lamespammingDJ.myfatherdidntpayattentiontome.com
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My brother, also a Burner, assures me there really IS good electronic dance music. I have yet to hear the evidence, sentient DJs notwithstanding.
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DJ is as DJ does
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Without an evolutionary incentive to form complex social groups, the lone solitary DJ will never have any fitness benefit/incentive to evolve higher forms of reflexive cognition (like the ability to jam with others) or tool use (like real instruments).
That makes DJs a challenge to our current evolutionary models…although an alternative hypothesis would be that the signs of intelligence we observe are merely vestiges of a more cognitively demanding environment.
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Not all burners are artistically adept
Whom participate, are the artists in the world!
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Not all burners are artistically adept
Whom participate, are the artists in the world!
We are all one
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My Burner son formerly blended music as a DJ on his “coffin turntable” at college. His Burner mother and I were pleased by this, our first effort at programming.
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will bassnectar be there?
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I heard Daft Punk will be there again this year, deep Playa 11PM Weds.
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I’m not sure how to take this article? Most of the descriptions of DJs suggest they are either idiot savants or half-wits. My daughter is a highly educated violinist who love creating techno music – DJ. She has explained that it is not easy to run a sound board, collecting samples of music and knowing how to blend the tonalities. Perhaps bcse we cannot SEE the instruments being played, many do not recognize it as music or art.
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