I love this SMBC on the Chinese room thought experiment. Click through for full sized version and the red caption button. Source: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal My regular readers know I'm not a big fan of the Chinese room thought experiment. I think it only confirms whatever intuitions you already have. If you think intelligence … Continue reading SMBC: Chinese room
Tag: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
SMBC: What if the universe is made of math?
I loved this SMBC. It echoes something I've observed before, that some physicists have disdain for philosophy, while often engaging in it themselves. Hovertext: "Philosophy is dumb, unless it comes out of the mouth of a physicist." Click through for full sized version and red button caption. via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. I've discussed the question before … Continue reading SMBC: What if the universe is made of math?
Emotional versus intellectual attributions of consciousness
Click through for full sized version and the red button caption. via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. This SMBC reminds me of a concept that I've been debating on ways to express, but a brief comment here seems like the opportunity to do so. We've had a lot of discussions about exactly when we might start to … Continue reading Emotional versus intellectual attributions of consciousness
The danger of thinking we know best
Click through for full sized version, and to see the red-button caption. via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. I often wish I could draw comics. You can say a lot in a brief and humorous cartoon. I think one of the dangers we always have to be on guard against is the trap of thinking that we know … Continue reading The danger of thinking we know best
SMBC: Apologies by discipline
Click through for full sized version. via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. STRICT REDUCTIONIST: Anyway, apologies are an evolutionary survival mechanism and therefore just an illusion.
SMBC: To the collider!
This may well be the best explanation of particle colliders, like the Large Hadron Collider, I've seen in a long time. Click through for full sized version, and for the Feynman diagram in the red button caption. via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Of course, none of it might be fundamental. It might be structure, patterns, mathematics, whatever, … Continue reading SMBC: To the collider!
SMBC: So, how long do we live?
Click through for full sized version, and for the red button caption. via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. This cartoon reminds me of one of the objections I often hear to mind uploading, that even if the uploaded mind was identical to the original, there would be a break in continuity between them. I've never quite understood … Continue reading SMBC: So, how long do we live?
I would draw a similar graph for FTL and knowledge of physics
Click through for full sized version and the red button caption. via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Sometimes, learning science means discovering the constraints reality puts on us, and that part isn't always fun.
SMBC: Proof altruism exists?
(Click through for full sized version and for the red button caption.) via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Of course, as we discussed on the Selfish Gene post, even if we are acting completely altruistically at a conscious level, our impulse to do so is broadly tied up with evolutionary survival advantages.
Who was the first person to have an afterlife?
Click through for full sized version and the red button caption. via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. The idea that only humans have an afterlife has always been one that I find interesting. If only humans have them, at what point in our evolutionary history did we obtain them? Did Neanderthals have them? What about Homo-erectus? If … Continue reading Who was the first person to have an afterlife?
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