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 interested stances people took and the rhetoric that was used to justify those stances. An … Continue reading Politics is about self interest
Author: SelfAwarePatterns
A middle aged guy who loves discussing science, philosophy, history, science fiction, and many other nerdy topics.
Adding imagination to AI
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, instinctive or conditioned responses to simuli Perception, which increases the scope of what the reflexes … Continue reading Adding imagination to AI
The difficulty of interstellar travel for humans
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 of progress just getting humans back out of low Earth orbit. But I think the … Continue reading The difficulty of interstellar travel for humans
Does information require conscious interpretation to be information?
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 deciding to jump in and contact us, we can't prove the hypothesis. Even if the … Continue reading Does information require conscious interpretation to be information?
Layers of self awareness and animal cognition
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 to recap, those layers are: Reflexes, primal reactions to stimuli. Perception, sensory models of the … Continue reading Layers of self awareness and animal cognition
Recommendation: We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
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 to have retreated to low Earth orbit, working in space stations just above the atmosphere. … Continue reading Recommendation: We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
Panpsychism and layers of consciousness
I've written before about panpyschism, the outlook that everything is conscious and that consciousness permeates the universe. However, that previous post was within the context of replying to a TEDx talk, and I'm not entirely satisfied with the remarks I made back then, so this is a revisit of that topic. I've noted many times … Continue reading Panpsychism and layers of consciousness
Recommendation: The Roboteer Trilogy
I'm sure anyone who's paid attention to my science fiction novel recommendations has noticed that I love space opera. But as much as I love the genre, I'm often aware of an issue many of its stories have. In order to have the characters be in jeopardy, they often ignore the implications of artificial intelligence. … Continue reading Recommendation: The Roboteer Trilogy
Having productive internet conversations
Anyone who's frequented this blog knows I love having discussions, and can pontificate all day on subjects I'm interested in. I've actually been participating in online discussions, on and off, for decades. My earliest conversations were on dial up bulletin boards. Those were usually tightly focused discussions about technology and gaming. With the rise of … Continue reading Having productive internet conversations
The system components of pain
Peter Hankins at Conscious Entities has a post looking at the morality of consciousness, which is a commentary on piece at Nautilus by Jim Davies on the same topic. I recommend reading both posts in their entirety, but the overall gist is that which animals or systems are conscious has moral implications, since only conscious … Continue reading The system components of pain
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