Category: Mind
How Darwinism played a role in misreading emotions
| September 18, 2018 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Mind, Psychology |
Efforts to enable machines to read our emotions are hitting a roadblock and, oddly enough, Charles Darwin (1809-1882), founder of popular evolution theory, plays a role in getting it wrong: The world is being flooded with technology designed to monitor our emotions. Amazon’s Alexa is one of many virtual assistants that detect tone and timbre […]
Why computer programs that mimic the human brain will continue to underperform
| September 17, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Design, Mind |
Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon offers a comment on whether simple probabilities can outweigh “deep learning” (as noted earlier here. ) When neural nets [computer programs that mimic the human brain] were all the rage in physics, some 25 years ago, I spoke with the author of a paper who was using neural nets […]
Researcher: A “chemical brain” will solve the hard problem of consciousness
| September 16, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism, Origin Of Life |
Because silicon can’t, says chemist: WHEN Lee Cronin was 9 he was given a Sinclair ZX81 computer and a chemistry set. Unlike most children, Cronin imagined how great it would be if the two things could be combined to make a programmable chemical computer. Now 45 and the Regius Chair of Chemistry at the University of […]
Making intelligent machines persons hits a few snags
| September 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Design, Mind |
Earlier this year, over 150 experts in AI, robotics, ethics, and supporting disciplines signed an open letter denouncing the European Parliament’s proposal to make intelligent machines persons. According to Canadian futurist George Dvorsky, the Parliament’s purpose is to hold the machines liable for damages, as a corporation might be: “The EU is understandably worried that […]
It’s amazing how much the public believes about neuroscience that is just myth
| September 14, 2018 | Posted by News under Education, Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience |
But maybe it doesn’t matter. For example, as British Psychological Society’s Research Digest’s editor, Christian Jarrett, tells it, Educational neuromyths include the idea that we learn more effectively when taught via our preferred “learning style”, such as auditory or visual or kinesthetic … the claim that we use only 10 per cent of our brains; […]
AI and pop music: Can simple probabilities outperform deep learning?
| September 14, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Design, Mind, Probability |
Haebichan Jung tells us that he built an original pop music-making machine “that could rival deep learning but with simpler solutions.” Deep learning “is a subfield of machine learning concerned with algorithms inspired by the structure and function of the brain called artificial neural networks.” (Jason Brownlee, Machine Learning Mastery) Jung tells us that he […]
Quantum mechanics: Pushing the “free-will loophole” back to 7.8 billion years ago
| September 14, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Mind, Physics |
Philip Cunningham writes to tell us of an interesting experiment by quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger and colleagues that pushed the “free-will loophole” back to 7.8 billion years ago, using quasars to determine measurement settings: Abstract: In this Letter, we present a cosmic Bell experiment with polarization-entangled photons, in which measurement settings were determined based on real-time […]
Earliest known rock drawing at 73,000 years ago
| September 13, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind |
A type of crosshatch etched in ocher: The discovery “helps round out the argument that Homo sapiens [at Blombos Cave] behaved essentially like us before 70,000 years ago,” says archaeologist Christopher Henshilwood of the University of Bergen in Norway. His team noticed the ancient drawing while examining thousands of stone fragments and tools excavated in […]
How do emotional robots “care”?
| September 11, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Culture, Mind |
Well, they don’t, exactly, but here’s the deal: From Sapiens, a journal of Anthropology/Everything Human: Pepper is a white, semi-humanoid robot, about the size of a 6-year-old, made by Tokyo-based SoftBank Robotics. You may have seen him working in a bank or a hotel, or being interviewed by Neil deGrasse Tyson. According to the […]
At Scientific American: Quantum theory does not require a conscious observer
| September 10, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Mind, Philosophy, Physics, Science |
Science writer Anil Ananthaswamy Intro of surveys current theories: If nothing else, these experiments are showing that we cannot yet make any claims about the nature of reality, even if the claims are well-motivated mathematically or philosophically. And given that neuroscientists and philosophers of mind don’t agree on the nature of consciousness, claims that it […]
Sam Harris vs. Jordan Peterson on whether an “objective” moral code is possible
| September 10, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind, Philosophy, Science |
We’ve written some things about Jordan Peterson and a fair bit about Sam Harris: Here’s an appraisal of their recent debate in Vancouver, moderated by Bret Weinstein : Peterson and Harris spent a large part of the first night discussing what they had in common. For example, both agreed that it was important to establish […]
Can machines really learn? Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor offers a parable
| September 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Information, Intelligent Design, Mind |
At Mind Matters Today: “Machine learning” is a hot field, and tremendous strides are being made in programming machines to improve as they work. Such machines work toward a goal, in a way that appears autonomous and seems eerily like human learning. But can machines really learn? What happens during machine learning, and is it […]
Why we can’t really live forever via advanced technology
| September 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind, Philosophy |
It wouldn’t really be “us” anyhow. Some thoughts from a political theorist: The moral philosopher Samuel Scheffler at New York University has suggested that the real problem with a fantasy of immortality is that it doesn’t make sense as a coherent desire. Scheffler points out that human life is intimately structured by the fact that […]
Could AI understand the universe better than we do?
| September 5, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism |
Better than we ever could? Recently, we discussed well-known chemist and atheist proponent Peter Atkins’s claim that science, not philosophy, answers the Big Questions: One class consists of invented questions that are often based on unwarranted extrapolations of human experience. They typically include questions of purpose and worries about the annihilation of the self, such […]
New research: Human brains do not differ much from reptile brains
| September 3, 2018 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience |
These findings don’t show that reptiles are secretly smart. They mainly deepen the mystery of the human mind, which traverses regions unknown to any of them without the brain being that much different.
Times a-changin’ New Scientist now hails mind over matter
| September 3, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Medicine, Mind, Neuroscience |
No, really. Here’s what they say in 2018 about the placebo effect (you start to get better when you think you are getting better): “OUR minds aren’t passive observers simply observing reality as it is; our minds actually change reality. The reality we experience tomorrow is partly the product of the mindsets we hold today.” […]
Unique type of cell found in human brain: rosehip neurons
| August 31, 2018 | Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience |
At least, it hasn’t been seen in other life forms. From ScienceDaily: Tamás and University of Szeged doctoral student Eszter Boldog dubbed these new cells “rosehip neurons” — to them, the dense bundle each brain cell’s axon forms around the cell’s center looks just like a rose after it has shed its petals, he said. […]
Could HAL 9000 ever be built? Robert Marks thinks so
| August 31, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Design, Mind |
But could the psychotic computer ever be conscious? That’s another story. Marks, an author of Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, weighs in, on the 50th anniversary of 2001: A Space Odyssey. At one point on the trip from Earth to Jupiter, HAL becomes suspicious that the crew might be sabotaging the mission. HAL then purposely tries […]
Daniel Dennett thinks a game can show that computers could really think
| August 29, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Design, Mind |
Fr. Robert Verrill, OP, takes different view: In his paper “Real Patterns,” Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett writes the following: In my opinion, every philosophy student should be held responsible for an intimate acquaintance with the Game of Life. It should be considered an essential tool in every thought-experimenter’s kit, a prodigiously versatile generator of […]
