Month: January 2014

Is the United States conscious?

I saw this interesting post by Eric Schwitzgebel on whether or not regarding the US as a conscious entity is compatible with materialism.  In the post, he examines an objection by David Chalmers, which is interesting, but not something that particularly resonates with me, seeming like a just so rational to a pre-intuited conclusion.  Eric also … Continue reading Is the United States conscious? →

Neanderthals’ Genetic Legacy | HMS

“This suggests that when ancient humans met and mixed with Neanderthals, the two species were at the edge of biological incompatibility,” said Reich, who is also a senior associate member of the Broad Institute and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Present-day human populations, which can be separated from one another by as … Continue reading Neanderthals’ Genetic Legacy | HMS →

Artificial Intelligence – What You Really Need to Know – Forbes

For those who started their careers in AI and left in disillusionment (Andrew Ng confessed to this, yet jumped back in) or data scientists today, the consensus is often that artificial intelligence is just a new fancy marketing term for good old predictive analytics.  They point to the reality of Apple’s Siri to listen and … Continue reading Artificial Intelligence – What You Really Need to Know – Forbes →

Politics and money equal bad science

Jerry Coyne blogged yesterday about the trend in articles pointing out the flaws in science, noting that most of the observed problems are in medical studies, most notably in drug studies, and that generalizing these problems to all of science isn't really accurate or fair. I agree, but I have an observation about why some … Continue reading Politics and money equal bad science →

Belief in immortality hard-wired? Study examines development of children’s ‘prelife’ reasoning — ScienceDaily

By examining children's ideas about "prelife," the time before conception, researchers found results which suggest that our bias toward immortality is a part of human intuition that naturally emerges early in life. And the part of us that is eternal, we believe, is not our skills or ability to reason, but rather our hopes, desires … Continue reading Belief in immortality hard-wired? Study examines development of children’s ‘prelife’ reasoning — ScienceDaily →

The space age is in full swing, for robots

Yesterday I made the observation that it was much cheaper to transmit information than to travel to an interstellar destination, observing that sending a microscopic robot able to use raw materials in the destination system to bootstrap manufacture what it needs. The Leather Library pointed out that this applies as well to destinations in our solar … Continue reading The space age is in full swing, for robots →