Yesterday was the Presidential primary in my state. My vote went to Hillary Clinton, principally because I'm a Democrat and Clinton's views are slightly closer to mine than Bernie Sanders. At heart, I'm a pragmatist who isn't a big fan of hopeless battles. I agree with many of Sanders's aspirations, such as universal healthcare and free college, … Continue reading Voting in the primary
Are rocks conscious?
Consider a rock outside somewhere. It sits there, starting off in the morning in a certain state. The sun comes out and proceeds to warm it up. Its temperature climbs through the day until the sun sets, whereupon it cools through the night. The cycle starts again the next morning. The rock is going through … Continue reading Are rocks conscious?
SMBC: Do ethics actually exist?
This is just too close to some of our recent discussions for me not to call attention to it. As usual, Weiner knocks it out of the park. (Click through for hovertext and red button caption.) via: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Crash Course takes on philosophy
I've featured Crash Course videos before. The Green brothers (and collaborators such as Phil Plait) manage to take various subjects such as history, astronomy, politics, biology, and others many might find dry and boring, and make them interesting. Each episode is relatively short (usually under 15 minutes) but cover a lot in that time, edited to move along at a hyper … Continue reading Crash Course takes on philosophy
In case you haven’t heard yet, gravitational waves have been detected
I won't attempt to describe the implications. For that, your best bet is to read it from one of the experts, Ethan Siegel: The First Detection Of Gravitational Waves Validates Einstein In A Whole New Way! Let's hope those implications aren't this. Source: xkcd Both General Relativity and the Standard Model or particle physics keep getting … Continue reading In case you haven’t heard yet, gravitational waves have been detected
Panpsychism and definitions of “consciousness”
Disagreeable Me asked me to look at this interesting TED talk by Professor Mark Bishop. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUNHyPFvUWc The entire talk is well worth the time (20 minutes) for anyone interested in consciousness and the computational theory of mind, but here's my very quick summation: The human mind, and hence consciousness, is a computational system. Since animal … Continue reading Panpsychism and definitions of “consciousness”
97% of the observable universe is forever unreachable
The other day, I was reading a post by Ethan Siegel on his excellent blog, Starts With a Bang, about whether it makes sense to consider the universe to be a giant brain. (The short answer is no, but read his post for the details.) Something he mentioned in the post caught my attention. But … Continue reading 97% of the observable universe is forever unreachable
SMBC: Robot heaven
Click through for full sized version and red button caption. Source: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Of course, the upshot is that if you view humans as organic machines, it opens the door to something like robot heaven eventually working for us. We might someday build heaven. Indeed, if it should turn out that there is a heaven … Continue reading SMBC: Robot heaven
Michael Graziano: What hard problem?
Michael Graziano has an article at The Atlantic explaining why consciousness is not mysterious. It's a fairly short read (about 3 minutes). I recommend anyone interested in this stuff read it in full. (I tweeted a link to it last night, but then decided it warranted discussion here.) The TL;DR is that the hard problem of … Continue reading Michael Graziano: What hard problem?
Which political candidate do your views align with?
I took this political test, which provided the results below. For the most part, they're what I expected, although I'm mildly surprised I agreed with Jeb Bush that much. I couldn't imagine what healthcare and science issues I had in common with Ted Cruz, but it turns out he supports the legalization of marijuana, which … Continue reading Which political candidate do your views align with?
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