It's not "lower levels of cognitive function", it's "lower activity when making a decision". It absolutely stands to reason that an area of the brain largely involved in detection of errors or shortfalls from some standard, anticipation and preparation before task performance, and regulation of emotions would be less active in someone who makes poor decisions.

That's a no-brainer.

At least some animals do: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=animals-like-to-get-drunk

It will be better adapted than the kakapo, since, being a flightless bird, it likes to jump off cliffs at night.

Can you guys please democratise that place soon? Wankers with nukes make me nervous.

When society as a whole rejects a notion, that's not called censorship, that's called the exercise of conscience.

Ask an atheist: "That which encourages the greatest human flourishing while causing the least unnecessary harm."

Linking biology to cryptography will just encourage criminals to either cut off my hand, or keep me alive just long enough to steal all my money.

technocratic.

Could you provide an example, please?

Tellingly, the inventor of the IQ test, when asked what intelligence was, responded "it's what my test measures".

I haven't encountered anyone who's ever claimed that the accumulation and sorting of data is a sufficient condition of intelligence, including my AI professors. So why are you characterising their position in such a way? You sound like you've already defined intelligence as something a machine can never have, when what we're learning is that "machine learning"- ie, what we're programming machines to do, appears to be exactly the process that biological systems undergo, removing any justification we had for claiming otherwise.

It would probably not be too far to say life is impossible without some kind of DNA-analogue. What does the term even mean if you aren't talking about self-replicating information?

Regardless, we should remain neutral on a claim until there is evidence for it. In other words, while we might be ultimately incorrect, we would be justified, currently, based on our observations, in claiming that a DNA-analogue is a necessary condition of life. And there can certainly be no grounds for claiming, given our current knowledge, that life without DNA is possible.