Author Archives: SelfAwarePatterns

The layers of emotion creation

Posted on August 12, 2017

What are emotions?  Where do they come from?  Are they something innate or something we learn?  The classic view is that they’re precognitive impulses that happen to us.  If so, this would imply that they have specific neural signatures. Early … Continue reading →

Posted in Mind and AI | Tagged , , , , , , , | 33 Comments

Politics is about self interest

Posted on August 5, 2017

I’ve read a lot of history, including American history of the 18th and 19th centuries.  It’s interesting to read about the politics of these periods.  From a distance across generations and centuries, you can see the distinction between the self … Continue reading →

Posted in Society | Tagged , , , | 29 Comments

Adding imagination to AI

Posted on July 31, 2017

As we’ve discussed in recent posts on consciousness, I think imagination has a crucial role to play in animal consciousness.  It’s part of a hierarchy I currently use to keep the broad aspects of cognition straight in my mind. Reflexes, … Continue reading →

Posted in Mind and AI | Tagged , , , | 21 Comments

The difficulty of interstellar travel for humans

Posted on July 22, 2017

Futurism.com has an article reviewing the results of a survey they conducted with their readers asking when the first human might leave the solar system.  The leading answer was after the year 2100, which make sense given our current level … Continue reading →

Posted in Space | Tagged , , , | 24 Comments

Does information require conscious interpretation to be information?

Posted on July 15, 2017

Peter Kassan has an article at Skeptic Magazine which sets out to disprove the simulation hypothesis, the idea that we’re all living in a computer simulation. I personally find arguing about the simulation hypothesis unproductive.  Short of the simulation owner … Continue reading →

Posted in Mind and AI | Tagged , , , , , | 32 Comments

Layers of self awareness and animal cognition

Posted on July 8, 2017

In the last consciousness post, which discussed issues with panpsychism and simple definitions of consciousness, I laid out five functional layers of cognition which I find helpful when trying to think about systems that are more or less conscious.  Just … Continue reading →

Posted in Mind and AI | Tagged , , , , , , , | 40 Comments

Recommendation: We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Posted on July 1, 2017

One of the things that many space enthusiasts find frustrating about the space age is how slow it’s moving, at least relative to its early years.  Humans made it to the moon almost 50 years ago, but since then seem … Continue reading →

Posted in Science Fiction | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments