The other day, when discussing a paper that criticized IIT (the Integrated Information Theory of consciousness) as unscientific, I noted that IIT, while questionable as the ultimate answer for consciousness, could be useful in the more limited capacity of distinguishing degrees of consciousness in a brain. Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks that, … Continue reading Empirical vs Fundamental IIT and the benefits of instrumentalism
Dehaene’s global neuronal workspace theory
I just finished reading Stanislas Dehaene's Consciousness and the Brain. Dehaene is a French psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist who is bullish on the idea of consciousness being something that can be scientifically investigated. It's an interesting book, one that I recommend for anyone interested in the science of consciousness. Dehaene accomplishes his scientific investigation by … Continue reading Dehaene’s global neuronal workspace theory
What is it about phenomenal consciousness that’s so mysterious?
I learned something new this week about the online magazine The Conversation. A number of their articles that are shared around don't show up in their RSS feeds or site navigation. It appears these articles only come up in searches, although it's possible they show in in the site's email newsletter, which I'm not subscribed … Continue reading What is it about phenomenal consciousness that’s so mysterious?
Chernobyl and the costs of power
When I first heard of HBO's miniseries Chernobyl, it didn't sound like something I'd be interested in watching. I generally don't have a fascination for disaster porn and that's mostly what it seemed like from a distance. But after numerous friends described it as compelling, I finally checked it out, and spent the whole day … Continue reading Chernobyl and the costs of power
Recommendation: Children of Ruin
Last year I recommended Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time, a novel about the far future involving a struggle between an interstellar ark of refugees from a dying Earth and an accidental civilization of uplifted spiders over the one terraformed world known to be available. Children of Ruin is a sequel, although a substantial portion of … Continue reading Recommendation: Children of Ruin
The sparsity of phenomenal consciousness, or of cognition, or both
Ned Block gave a Google talk (embedded below) that was ostensibly supposed to be about why AI approaches to cognition won't work. However, while he does address this topic briefly, it's toward the end and he admits he hasn't really justified it, beyond a vague proposition that while access consciousness involves information processing, maybe phenomenal … Continue reading The sparsity of phenomenal consciousness, or of cognition, or both
Is morality objective, yet relative?
Jason Mckenzie Alexander at iai.tv makes an interesting proposition, that morality is a social technology, one that goes out of date and frequently needs to be upgraded. He first describes the common sentiment that morals are objective in some timeless platonic sense. I discussed the problems with this view in a post a while back … Continue reading Is morality objective, yet relative?
Reflections on Game of Thrones
(Warning: Here be spoilers!) Last week was the series finale for Game of Thrones, a series I'd been watching from the very beginning. Indeed, I first discovered George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books way back in 2002. I still remember seeing the first book in the store, with the cover … Continue reading Reflections on Game of Thrones
Don’t trust your intuitions, they will betray you
A video at Aeon well worth checking out on what wrapping a rope around the Earth reveals about the limits of human intuition: If you tied a rope tight around the Earth’s equator and then added a single yard of slack, would the extra material make any noticeable difference to someone standing on the ground? … Continue reading Don’t trust your intuitions, they will betray you
Is cosmology in crisis?
In past posts, when I've written about the expansion of the universe, I've generally referred to the rate of that expansion, the Hubble constant, as being around 70 km/s/megaparsec, that is, for every megaparsec a galaxy is distant from us, it's moving away at 70 kilometers per second faster. So a galaxy 100 megapasecs away … Continue reading Is cosmology in crisis?
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