Merritt promptly converts the hypothetical question about salvatin for aliens—which depends, of course, on the assumption that Martians are beings much like ourselves—into: Are you there, God? It’s I, robot.
Mind
Ed Feser on the delusion that computers are intelligent
”As Smith observes, a computer can be programmed to detect instances of the word “betrayal” in scanned texts, but it lacks the concept of betrayal.”
Did the neural pattern that showed that there is no free will turn out to be noise?
If it was just noise, you may not hear that any time soon from the textbook mill.
Jonathan Bartlett: Does evolution mean computers will take over?
Elon Musk sees technology as taking over the human world and we’d best consider our options. Ma points out that humans build computers but no computer has ever built a human: For Musk, technology is not a tool to promote humanity. Rather, technology will take humanity’s place of leadership in the world. Humans will have […]
Late stage materialism?: Panpsychism (your coffee mug is conscious) sounds crazy but…
If you believe that nature is all there is and you can’t otherwise explain the mind, the mind must be part of nature and therefore electrons are conscious. Unless you want to say that the mind is an illusion.
Computers’ stupidity makes them dangerous
Statistician Gary Smith thinks the real danger today is not that computers are smarter than us, but that we think computers are smarter than us.
Parasites as “invisible designers” of the human brain
Apparently, design is okay if microbes do it: It seems so obvious that someone should have thought of it decades ago: Since parasites have plagued eukaryotic life for millions of years, their prevalence likely affected evolution. Psychologist Marco Del Giudice of the University of New Mexico is not the first researcher to suggest that the […]
Physics: No one said finding truth is easy, but need it be impossible?
In Scientific American: We are told that many physicists have “gotten interested in consciousness. Hard to see how the Hard problem of Consciousness will help.
Birds must choose between big brains and big guts
This is further indirect evidence— not, of course, drawn out here—that the human brain did not develop the way it did simply to enable survival.
Remember when dolphins could talk?
“The Green Bank Conference (1961), to which Lilly introduced “Dolphinese,” was a serious science meeting. The conferees were “totally enthralled” by the idea that communicating with dolphins would open to door to communicating with innumerable types of extraterrestrial intelligence… “
Can a simple triangle disprove materialism?
Edward Feser: When we grasp that formal nature of being a triangle, we are grasping something that is totally abstract. It applies to every single triangle that has existed, does exist, will exist or, for that matter, could exist, whether it is a triangle drawn in ink, whether it is a triangle drawn in sand, whether it is a triangle you construct by putting three sticks together, whether it is a triangle formed by the side of a pyramid, the idea or the concept is entirely abstract.
Why do atheists need to deny free will?
Eric Holloway takes on a reader’s question: Reader: Harris basically reduces everything to atomic physics and says all causality happens there, so the world is deterministic (i.e. no free will). While I vehemently disagree with that idea, I do respect that at least he can articulate himself well. Do you have any thoughts on the […]
If apes are people, we aren’t (but that’s the point, right?)
One factor that helps diminish awareness of the fact of human exceptionality is the promotion of “buzz” concepts around animal intelligence that are not supported by the histories of disciplines and fall apart under scrutiny. But any time one fails (apes can be taught to talk!), another rises, seamlessly, in its place (elephants can be taught to communicate via high tech!). No one ever calls any of these people to account.
Believing elephants into personhood
For decades, researchers were transfixed with the idea of humanizing great apes by raising them among humans and teaching them language. Emerging from the ruins and recriminations of the collapse, philosophy prof Don Ross has a new idea: Let’s start with elephants instead…
Scientists: For the last time, plants are NOT conscious!!
We know something’s changed when scientists need to make these points. Maybe underestimating the significance of human intelligence plays a role. After all, if we are just clever apes, maybe lettuce is just-as-clever apes too. Maybe salad is murder…