Pat Suwonpanich has made a comment on hearing and sound as a mental phenomenon leading to questions of conscious mind that I think is worth pondering by one and all, so let us headline (with slight edits): >>For those who wanna read less-technical article on hearing, I have tried to write my own article as shown below. Hope it will be useful for many of us. Whenever we hear beautiful music or any other interesting sounds, we should realize that the ability to hear is so special that no known set of nature’s laws can explain it ! Most of us tend to think that we hear sounds because there are various sounds around us. In reality, if there were Read More ›

The WIMP (Weakly Interacting Massive particles) model has just not worked out: We understand how the Standard Model particles behave. We have solid predictions for how they should interact through all of the fundamental forces, and experimental confirmation of those theories. We also have extraordinary constraints on how they’re permitted to interact in a beyond-the-Standard-Model fashion. Because of our constraints from accelerators, cosmic rays, decay experiments, nuclear reactors and more, we’ve been able to rule out many possible ideas that have been theorized. When it comes to what might make up the dark matter, however, all we have are the astrophysical observations and our theoretical work, in tandem, to guide us. The possible theories that we’ve come up with include Read More ›

What, him again? And no new, ground-breaking book? Richard Dawkins is one of the best known scientists in the world. He is author of ‘The Selfish Gene’, which upturned our understanding of natural selection, and in 2017 was named the most influential science book of all time. He is also author of ‘The God Delusion’, which caused a global sensation upon publication in 2006. He has chaired almost every event in the Darwin Day Lecture series since its launch in 2003. Humanists UK president Professor Alice Roberts takes over the chair of the lecture at this event, and introduces Richard Dawkins as he delivers the Darwin Day Lecture for the first time. More. Somehow this stuff hasn’t aged well. Dissent Read More ›

Nieri looks at them as the narrative of the sci-fi game Detroit: Become Human develops them:  A Closer Look at Detroit: Become Human, Part I Gaming culture provides a window into our culture’s assumptions about artificial intelligence (Adam Nieri) In the game, Detroit has transcended its current economic despair, emerging as the epicenter of the android revolution. Cyberlife, headquartered there, has become the first company to engineer and produce fully autonomous, general purpose AI androids for consumers. A Closer Look at Detroit: Become Human, Part II Adam Nieri: One pillar, if you like, of the worldview of the “Church of AI” is the belief that our embrace of artificial intelligence is a step on the road to a higher form Read More ›