Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
I'm currently reading Jonathan Birch's The Edge of Sentience, a book focusing on the boundary between systems that can feel pleasure or pain, and those that can't, and the related ethics. While this is a subject I'm interested in, I'm leery of the activism the animal portions of it attract. I have nothing in particular … Continue reading The semantic indeterminacy of sentience
I voted today. As with the last several elections, it was via early voting. My schedule was relatively light today, lighter than it's going to be next week, and probably lighter than election day. Getting it out of the way seemed like a good idea. This time I avoided the mistake I made last time, … Continue reading Voting 2024
Spurred by a couple of recent conversations, I've been thinking about computation in the brain. It was accelerated this week by the news that the connectome of the fly brain is complete, a mapping of its 140,000 neurons and 55 million synapses. It's a big improvement over the 302 neurons of the C. Elegans worm, … Continue reading Classic and connectionist computationalism
SelfAwarePatterns 