Sheldon: My objection, which I will develop in two streams, is that both reductionism and emergence are just wrong, as is the philosophical denial of free will based on them.
Mind
Philosopher: The laws of physics don’t rule out free will
George Musser, a science writer reviewing a new book on the subject, thinks it will force free will skeptics to become more sophisticated in their arguments
Why it’s hard to come up with a test for AI intelligence
Holloway: Intelligence, like randomness, is mathematically undefinable.
Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor: Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder is really confused about free will
It really is quite funny. And physicists should stick to physics.
45 experts tell us when AI will think like people – and they’re all over the map
It’s almost as if we’re missing something
How the human brain works is actually quite controversial
If the AI boosters really knew how the human brain functions, they’d be getting the Nobel for Medicine instead of some geek prize.
Intelligent computers? You may as well believe that Penn and Teller really do magic
A computer is not—in and of itself—smarter than a pile of tinkertoys, philosopher Ed Feser argues
Jay Richards: New evangelical statement on AI avoids major pitfalls
Including irrelevance. “Although the Statement nowhere distinguishes between “weak” and “strong” AI, the signers are clearly (and rightly) skeptical that computers can become conscious moral agents.”
Fun: Astonishing windup robots still work, centuries later
New science discoveries prompted our ancestors to ask, how much can we make invented objects behave like life forms? Maybe not much but more than we might have expected.
Michael Egnor: Apes are NOT spiritual beings
Never mind what Jane Goodall thinks: In an otherwise silly article about the “evolution” of religion, journalist Brandon Ambrosino quotes primatologist Jane Goodall on the topic of… religious belief among apes: “The chimpanzee’s brain is so like ours: they have emotions that are clearly similar to or the same as those that we call happiness, […]
Can a non-physical mechanism be measured?
Bartlett: It turns out that humans don’t just go from “incompetent” to “competent” at a given task. We develop new ways of doing things that didn’t exist before.
Smithsonian belatedly asks, What do we really know about Neanderthals?
What do we know? Well, we know what the science establishment has told us, that’s what. Previously, the science establishment spent a lot of time looking for the Darwinians’ subhumans. At all times, thin on the ground, it would seem. So they drafted the Neanderthals because, well, they were there. Now it seems, they have discharged them.
Breaking: Common sense statements about human vs animal intelligence
In a respectable venue. That’s so rare now. Noticing actual differences is radical in an age when politically correct nonsense is a form of virtue.
Jay Richards: In an information economy, the human person will be at the very center
Just the sheer hype from the AI rules! proponents alone should warn us to listen to a different perspective.
Researchers: Human face evolved to enhance social expression
Okay, but social expression is only important if one has something to communicate. How the “something to communicate” came to exist is the tricky part. That’s when the nonsense starts up. And when did the “something to communicate” start to happen? What if evidence of abstract reasoning predates the noted facial changes by tens of thousands of millennia?