Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
When the first season of The Witcher showed up a couple of years ago on Netflix, I was slow to watch it. From a distance, it looked too much like a Game of Thrones ripoff. But numerous recommendations eventually drove me to check it out, and I discovered a rich world with compelling characters, all … Continue reading The Witcher season 2
It's been a while since I've read a book in Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series. Reynolds, who has a background as a professional astrophysicist, writes fairly hard science fiction, particularly space opera. I say "fairly" because he isn't above mixing in speculative concepts to make the story more interesting. But most of his fiction doesn't … Continue reading Inhibitor Phase
I discovered the first book of The Expanse series, Leviathan Wakes, back in 2014. By then the first three books had already been out. I'm pretty sure I burned through those early books in a few weeks. I know I've read all the subsequent ones as they came out. This was a series that channeled … Continue reading Leviathan Falls (Book 9 of The Expanse)
One of my favorite shows as a young boy was Lost in Space. But when I attempted to rewatch it several years ago, I discovered that it hadn't aged well at all. Except for the earliest episodes, it was basically unwatchable. And after a 1990s failed attempt as a movie reboot, which I enjoyed but … Continue reading Lost in Space 3
Usually new TV shows I'm interested in are few and far between, which makes the last few weeks unusual, as there's been an avalanche of stuff that caught my interest. Apparently everyone wants to release their stuff in or near the holiday season. I wonder why they don't think we need entertainment throughout the rest … Continue reading Cowboy Bebop and other TV notes
I recently completed Anil Seth's new book, Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. Seth starts out discussing David Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness, as well as views like physicalism, idealism, panpsychism, and functionalism. Seth is a physicalist, but is suspicious of functionalism. Seth makes a distinction between the hard problem, which he characterizes as … Continue reading Anil Seth’s theory of consciousness
Okay, this is a bit different. Bryce is a very talkative assassin hired by a Japanese crime boss to kill a reform minded candidate for prime minister. Bryce succeeds in that assassination, to the horror of the country. But he's then betrayed by the crime boss. He escapes, but find himself badly wounded and alone … Continue reading Hit-Monkey
It's been a long time since I've been much of a game player, so I'm not familiar with the League of Legends game, or its overall story universe. But apparently the game developers have put together a rich lore and history behind it, and some of that is starting to come out in various franchised … Continue reading Arcane: League of Legends
Back in 2009, David Bourget and David Chalmers conducted a survey of professional philosophers, asking for their positions on 40 questions. Over the years, a number of people have pointed out the existence of that survey. While I don't think anyone should change their position purely based on what large numbers of philosophers think, it's … Continue reading What philosophers believe, 2020 edition
The new Dune movie has reminded me of that franchise's vision of future religions. So I was probably more primed than usual to notice a brief article asking if aliens would be religious. The author, Dirk Schulze-Makuch, invokes the Copernican principle to conclude that they likely would be. After all, most humans are religious to … Continue reading Would aliens or AI have religion?
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