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?
Gödel’s incompleteness theorems don’t rule out artificial intelligence
I've posted a number of times about artificial intelligence, mind uploading, and various related topics. There are a number of things that can come up in the resulting discussions, one of them being Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorems. The typical line of arguments goes something like this: Gödel implies that there are solutions that no algorithmic system can accomplish but that humans … Continue reading Gödel’s incompleteness theorems don’t rule out artificial intelligence
Merry Christmas
To all my online friends, whatever today and tomorrow mean for you, whether it's a religious observance, family event, or merely a couple days off work, I hope you have a great holiday! If by any chance it's not a holiday where you are, then I hope you have a great Thursday evening and Friday.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (spoiler free)
I saw the new Star Wars flick Friday morning. I considered blogging about it later that day, but then figured there were already a zillion reviews on the web and adding one more wouldn't be particularly useful. But some of my friends, including a few who read this blog, have asked me what I thought about … Continue reading Star Wars: The Force Awakens (spoiler free)
Is falsifiability essential to science?
Childhood’s End and why a war between us and aliens is profoundly unlikely
Last night, SyFy debuted two shows, 'The Expanse', which I've already written about, and 'Childhood's End', which is an adaptation of a classic science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke. With these two shows, along with some other pretty decent ones earlier this year such as 'Dark Matter' and 'Killjoys', the network seems to be on … Continue reading Childhood’s End and why a war between us and aliens is profoundly unlikely
SelfAwarePatterns 