Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
Last week, when writing the TV notes post, which included remarks about the Foundation TV show, I opened the first Foundation book to check on something. I found myself falling into the story and kept on reading. I finished the third book in the trilogy yesterday. (The books are short by contemporary standards and Asimov's … Continue reading The original Foundation trilogy
It's been a while, but I've occasionally mentioned on the blog that Cecil B. Demille's The Ten Commandments (the 1950s color version) is one of my favorite movies. And this has remained true even as I've come to see it as straight fantasy. An interesting fact from when I first saw it as a very … Continue reading Are many-worlds and pilot-wave the same theory?
I finally finished watching season 3 of The Witcher, a continuation of a gritty version of a Tolkien-like world, with elves, dwarves, other creatures, and magic. On balance I enjoyed it, but not as much as the previous seasons. I'm not sure why. Part of it might be that the romantic drama between Geralt and … Continue reading Foundation, One Piece, and other TV notes
It's been an interesting week in consciousness studies. It started with Steve Fleming doing a blog post, a follow up to one he'd done earlier expressing his concerns about how the results of the adversarial collaboration between global neuronal workspace (GNW) and integrated information theory (IIT) were portrayed in the science media. GNW sees consciousness … Continue reading Integrated information theory as pseudoscience?
James S. A. Corey is the author of The Expanse series and the pen name of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Abraham and Franck are writing a new novel. And they're opening up the entire process to a Patreon audience. Membership allows you to watch the entire process, from figuring out what they're going to … Continue reading Watching James S. A. Corey work
I often use non-standard language to describe concepts, and I've had a couple of people over the last couple of years call me on it. There seemed to be a sentiment that I was confusing things, or being sneaky in some way, by not sticking to the standard nomenclature. A short post about why I … Continue reading Using alternate terminology
Adam Mastroianni has a post that's getting a pretty good amount of attention. Mastroianni discusses recent claims of fraud in psychology, as well as the replication crisis. But his actual topic is how little difference it makes when most of the studies in question are removed from the scientific record. The overall gist is that … Continue reading Solving a problem requires not banishing the possible solutions
An interesting preprint was released this week: Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness. The paper is long and has has sixteen authors, although two: Patrick Butlin and Robert Long, are flagged as the primaries. The list of contributors includes Jonathan Birch, Stephen Fleming, Grace Lindsay, Matthias Michel, and Eric Schwitzgebel, all … Continue reading How to tell if AI is conscious
When it comes to entertainment, for me, it seems like it never rains but it pours. We seem to go through stretches with nothing interesting on, then suddenly a flood. Although some things have been out a while and have just taken a while for me to catch up on. One of them is the … Continue reading Babylon 5 and other TV notes
If you're a nerd of a certain type and age, you might remember the 1970s Marvel comic series Planet of the Apes, the black and white one under the Curtis Magazines imprint. The Curtis comics were interesting in that they were sold as magazines on the magazine rack, not the comic book one. Which meant … Continue reading Planet of the Apes Archive
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