Humans are so worried about being replaced by robots they often overlook the good parts of artificial intelligence, the human-like parts that don't involve stealing jobs or killing all humans.
Because, as this Safely Endangered comic shows, robots who think more like humans end up acting more like humans, and the day they discover they never have to leave their house again is the day they cease to be a threat.
-Via Geeks Are Sexy
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When scientists put bonobos (one of the words from the spelling bee) or macaques into a room that is alight with a tint, be it green or red, they see habituation occur in the occipital lobes of the apes. Eventually their brains stop reacting to the colored-light, it merely becomes as if it was white light. The brain habituates to the most common features in it's environment. White-light is defined by the contrast with incidental light. So it is with us, that which is most common in our environment and our experience is made transparent, invisible, undetectable. The old saying goes; we are like fish trying to find water. Because we spend our entire lives in water, and because to see water clearly would seriously impede our lives, we never experience the water except as negation.
Nothing is something in your imagination.
In the real world, nothing is nothing.
Well why didn't you say so sooner. You know how much time I've wasted wondering if nothing was really something, when all the while I just needed to hear you say how it is.
Ryan S covered the cognitive bit quite thouroughly so I'll say this about physical vacuum: its "non-emptiness" has been pretty much demonstrated 60 years ago by the Casimir effect, which I think is really cool but I might be a nerd.
If we still have a concept of vacuum in science, it's only as a reference, an ideal case, like the absolute zero (which is basically the same thing, i.e. the lowest possible energy state).
Still, in everyday life saying that your glass is empty is less confusing than stating that it is full of air.