Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
This video does a pretty good job at outlining the idea and stark challenges with mind uploading. (Watching it isn't necessary to understand this post, unless you're completely unfamiliar with the idea. It's 14 minutes long, although the last few minutes are an advertisement.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b33NTAuF5E Kurzgesagt: Can You Upload Your Mind & Live Forever I'm … Continue reading Mind uploading and the philosophy of self
When discussing eternalism and the block universe, the concept of "now" always ends up getting relegated to an aspect of our consciousness, not something "out there". "Now" seems to be the boundary between what we can remember and what we can only anticipate. But if, aside from entropy, the laws of physics are reversible and … Continue reading Why Do You Remember The Past But Not The Future?
Mark Solms is coming out with a book on consciousness, which he discusses in a blog post. Solms sees the key to understanding consciousness as affects, specifically feelings, such as hunger, fear, pain, anger, etc. In his view, the failure of science to explain the hard problem of consciousness lies in its failure to focus … Continue reading The dual nature of affects
In the last post, in response to my criticism of Chalmers for relying on the standard but vague "something it is like" definition of phenomenal consciousness, someone pointed out that Chalmers has talked before metaphorically about a movie playing in our head, notably at the beginning of his TED talk on consciousness. I think this … Continue reading The problem with the theater of the mind metaphor
This talk by David Chalmers on the relationship between consciousness and moral status is pretty interesting. You don't have to watch the video to follow this post, but it's in response to arguments he makes in the talk. The video is 75 minutes but the talk only lasts about 50 minutes with a Q&A afterward. … Continue reading Consciousness and moral status
A crucial point about science I couldn't have put any better. Science is an ongoing conversation, not a series of absolute determinations. Anytime a radical result is announced, we should really think about its implications in terms of if the results are replicated or hold up under further analysis. Every paper is only part of … Continue reading No Gospel Truth in Science
Philip Ball has an article up at Aeon: Life with purpose, which resonates in theme with the one a few weeks ago by Michael Levin and Dan Dennett on purpose in nature. Like Levin and Dennett, Ball argues that we shouldn't be shy about discussing purpose in biology, or feel obliged to put quotes around … Continue reading Agency, consciousness, and purpose
The black hole information paradox has been receiving some attention lately. This is the fact that information, that is any pattern of matter, that falls into a black hole is completely crushed as it approaches the singularity, losing whatever differentiation it might have had before. This has long been recognized as a problem, because in … Continue reading A basic question on the black hole information paradox
Well, that's a relief. Even though there were warnings for weeks and months before the election about a "red mirage" that might happen election night, a result of Trump supporters voting on election day and Biden supporters voting heavily by mail, and the order in which the ballots would be counted, even though many of … Continue reading An election fit for 2020
Somewhat related to the previous post, I just saw this video from Matt O'Dowd discussing why the block universe is such a compelling concept. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EagNUvNfsUI&t=12s The second video in the series discusses the effect quantum mechanics might have on this concept. It reminds me why cosmologists seem to be more comfortable with the Many Worlds … Continue reading A PBS Space Time series on time and the block universe
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