Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
Just some thoughts on Doctor Who, Rebel Moon, and Beacon 23. We had the three Doctor Who specials earlier this month. In general I thought they were alright. The first was serviceable, the second pretty good, and the third a decent bit of canon cleanup. I know a lot of people who were hoping Russell Davies would find … Continue reading Beacon 23 and other TV notes
A new approach for reconciling general relativity and quantum mechanics proposes adding some randomness in general relativity, making it less deterministic on small scales. For several decades, physicists have been trying to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics. These theories, despite each having been empirically validated to several decimal places, contradict each other. The problem … Continue reading What would randomness in general relativity mean?
In this video, Matt O'Dowd tackles the issue of probabilities in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. A quick reminder. The central mystery of quantum mechanics is that quantum particles move like waves of possible outcomes that interfere with each other, until a measurement happens, when they appear to collapse to one localized outcome, the … Continue reading Many-worlds, probabilities, and world stacks
Comments on some shows I've watched, or tried to watch recently, including Pluto, Loki, For All Mankind, Doctor Who, and Blue Eye Samurai. Pluto is a "reinterpretation" of the classic Astro Boy characters and setting. This is a world that now includes robots, with laws passed to ensure their equal rights. But someone is killing … Continue reading Blue Eye Samurai, Doctor Who, and other TV notes
My first post on this blog was ten years ago this week. I almost missed the anniversary, but WordPress reminded me about it earlier in the week. I originally started the blog in 2013 for two main reasons. First, I did NaNoWriMo in 2012, but a week into November in 2013, it was obvious I … Continue reading The blogging experience at ten years
E. E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series is classic space opera. As a science fiction nerd, I'm actually a bit embarrassed to admit that I had never read it before. Part of the reason was only discovering it as an adult, and finding the opening of the official first book in the series, Triplanetary, to be … Continue reading The Lensman series
https://philosophyandfiction.com/2023/11/01/pigs-and-truffles-giveaway/?page_id=7569 Tina Lee Foresee, a longtime fellow blogger, has a new book coming out: Truth & Generosity: How Truth Makes Language Possible, by her and her husband, Neal Weiner. From what I understand, it will be on the relationship between language and belief. She's working to promote the book, which is what the pig hunt … Continue reading Tina’s new book on language and belief
I think the brain is a computational system and what we generally refer to as the mind and consciousness are some of its computations. But I'm also aware that the brain works very differently from how a typical digital computer works. One criticism of computationalism that I have some sympathy with is the word "computation" … Continue reading The unity of storage and processing in nervous systems
This week, WordPress.com announced that all of their blogs would now have the option to join the Fediverse. The announcement included instructions on how to enable it. As Twitter, now X, has become increasingly less usable, a number of other platforms have been vying to be its replacement: Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, and several others. Unfortunately, … Continue reading Hello Fediverse!
Eric Schwitzgebel had an interesting paper come out this week, exploring the question of whether there can be cases of borderline consciousness, that is, cases where a system is neither determinately conscious nor determinately non-conscious. For example, maybe humans, dogs, and cats are determinately conscious, rocks and protons are determinately not conscious, but something like … Continue reading Borderline consciousness?
SelfAwarePatterns 