Marc Defant gave a TEDx talk on the improbable events that had to happen in our planet's history for us to eventually evolve, along with the implications for other intelligent life in the galaxy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nCOhrYV7eg I find a lot to agree with in Defant's remarks, although there are a couple points I'd quibble with. The … Continue reading The extraordinary low probability of intelligent life
The layers of emotion creation
What are emotions? Where do they come from? Are they something innate or something we learn? The classic view is that they're precognitive impulses that happen to us. If so, this would imply that they have specific neural signatures. Early in her career, psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett attempted to isolate the neural basis of emotions … Continue reading The layers of emotion creation
Politics is about self interest
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
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
SelfAwarePatterns 