Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

Monthly Archive March 2020

Shot of Corridor in Working Data Center Full of Rack Servers and Supercomputers with Internet connection Visualisation Projection.
Shot of Corridor in Working Data Center Full of Rack Servers and Supercomputers with Internet connection Visualization Projection.

What’s Hard for Computers Is Easy for Humans

Some of the surprising things computers have a hard time doing and why

We often hear that what’s hard for humans is easy for computers. But it turns out that many kinds of problems are exceedingly hard for computers to solve. This class of problems, known as NP-Complete (NPC), was independently discovered by Stephen Cook and Leonid Levin.

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Coronavirus fine della pandemia, successo. Virus definitivamente debellato.

COVID-19: Remembering Dr. Jim Goodrich, 73, Pediatric Neurosurgeon

Born wealthy, he spent his life working 80-hour weeks, operating on poor kids in the Bronx

His specialty was reconstruction of the skulls of children born with horrendous skull deformities, and he pioneered the surgery of separation of craniopagus (Siamese) twins.

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magician-hands-with-magic-wand-showing-trick-stockpack-adobe-stock.jpeg
magician hands with magic wand showing trick

Current Artificial Intelligence Research Is Unscientific

The assumption that the human mind can be reduced to a computer program has never really been tested

Because AI research is based on a fundamental assumption that has not been scientifically tested—that the human mind can be reduced to a computer—then the research itself cannot be said to be scientific.

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Young businesswoman thinking while using a laptop at work

Jeffrey Shallit, a computer scientist, doesn’t know how computers work

Patterns in computers only have meaning when they are caused by humans programming and using them.

Materialism is a kind of intellectual disability that afflicts even the well-educated. To put it simply, machines don’t and can’t think. Dr. Shallit’s wristwatch doesn’t know what time it is. Dr. Shallit’s iPod doesn’t enjoy the music it plays or listen to his phone calls. His television doesn’t like or dislike movies. And his computer doesn’t, and can’t, think.

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Math Shows Why the Mind Is Not Just a Formula

The Liar’s Paradox shows that even mathematics cannot be reduced to a fixed set of axioms

Gödel’s discovery brought back a sense of wonder to mathematics and to the rest of human knowledge. His incompleteness theorem underlies the fact that human investigation can never exhaust all that can be known. Every discovery builds a path to a new discovery.

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Blackboard inscribed with scientific formulas and calculations in physics and mathematics.

Bartlett’s Calculus Paper Reviewed in Mathematics Magazine

The paper offers fixes for long-standing flaws in the teaching of elementary calculus

Jonathan Bartlett tells us, “The review was mixed, but most importantly the reviewer didn’t disagree with the results, only their potential usefulness."

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Landing strip spaceship interior 3D rendering elements of this image furnished by NASA

Epix’s New War of the Worlds Gets Personal

And it works! Wells’s alien invasion (state of emergency, lockdowns) feels familiar in the world of COVID-19

Although the new series is set in Europe, the dialogue is mostly in English. We follow the paths of several apocalypse survivors who seek refuge from the alien robots that are killing any remaining humans. I love the tension that the show conveys and the characters it seeks to develop.

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Western lowland gorilla, Gorilla gorilla

How Not To Debate Materialists

This is the story of how a gifted scientist lost a debate with a Darwinist — a debate he should have won

Although ape brains do differ somewhat from human brains in cortical anatomy, it is the similarity between the brains of apes and men, rather than the differences, that provide striking evidence of human exceptionalism.

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Molecule model of Chloroquine, a medication used to treat malaria, maybe also able to calm the symptoms of Covid 19 virus. White is Hydrogen, black is Carbon, blue is Nitrgen, and green is Chlorine.

Is Chloroquine really a “Game Changer” for COVID-19?

Test it, but don’t bet on it

When a field is hot, there is a race to publish. With a large number of researchers trying a wide variety of treatments, it’s almost certain that that someone will find a coincidental pattern that is statistically significant but meaningless. The only solution, alas, is further testing.

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Photo by Fusion Medical Animation

Was the COVID-19 Virus Designed? The Computer Doesn’t Know

Some researchers confuse not finding a particular type of design with ruling out design

The authors of the paper saying that the virus could not have been designed base their findings on the fact that current software would not have predicted this result. I am not claiming that the virus was designed, only that a researcher need not have relied on this software to design a virus. The paper makes a faulty assumption.

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Self-driving electric semi truck driving on highway. 3D rendering image.

Star self-driving truck firm shuts; AI not safe enough soon enough

CEO Stefan Seltz-Axmacher is blunt about the cause: Machine learning “doesn’t live up to the hype”

Starsky Robotics was not just another startup overwhelmed by business realities. In 2019, it was named one of the world’s 100 most promising start-ups (CNBC) and one to watch by FreightWaves, a key trucking industry publication. But the AI breakthroughs did not appear.

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Choosing the High Road or Low Road

How Libet’s Free Will Research Is Misrepresented

Sometimes, says Michael Egnor, misrepresentation may be deliberate because Libet’s work doesn’t support a materialist perspective

“Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet’s experiments are described very often both in the scientific literature and in the popular press as supportive of materialism—which is something that they don’t support and something that Libet made very clear was not his conclusion.” – Michael Egnor

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Fractal galaxy cosmic consciousness, the Eye that is the Source of Creation

God’s Existence Is Proven by Science

Arguments for God’s existence can be demonstrated by the ordinary method of scientific inference

If we approach the arguments logically, as the ancient philosophers did, we will see that it is more certain that God exists than that anything else does. Atheist evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne should consider the arguments more carefully before assuming that prayer is foolish.

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Panoramic aerial view of St Peter's square in Vatican, Rome Italy

Why Does the Vatican Need Microsoft?

Should the Church really partner with IBM and Microsoft to make pronouncements on tech regulation?

When giant corporate actors like IBM and Microsoft promote “transparency and compliance with ethical principles?”, we run the risk that they are helping to craft regulations that hinder future competitors (“regulatory capture”). Rather than partner with them in making statements, the Church should stay clear.

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Senior couple having fun at home playing video game holding joysticks in hands.Quarantine.

Shelter in Place? Your Sci-Fi Video Game Binge List

You’ll never know where the long hours went, courtesy Sci-Fi Saturday at Mind Matters News

Has your ISP lifted bandwidth limits in your area due to thousands more Americans working from home? Great news for gamers too! Here’s my list of top-notch sci-fi apocalypse games.

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Woman in medical protective mask applying an antibacterial antiseptic gel for hands disinfection and health protection during during flu virus outbreak. Coronavirus quarantine and novel covid ncov

AI Is Not Ready to Moderate Content!

In the face of COVID-19 quarantines for human moderators, some look to AI to keep the bad stuff off social media

Big social media companies have long wanted to replace human content moderators with AI. COVID-19 quarantines have only intensified that discussion. But AI is far, far from ready to successfully moderate content in an age of where virtual monopolies make single point failure a frequent risk.

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Coronavirus pandemic - Cleaning and Disinfection. Professional teams for disinfection efforts. Infection prevention and control of epidemic. Protective suit and mask

China: Rewriting the History of COVID-19

Making the government the improbable hero of the tale

Chinese scientists worked together swiftly and seamlessly to sequence the virus, (completed February 25), even as the government was downplaying the extent of the problem and silencing doctors who attempted to warn colleagues and the public. The Wuhan public erupted in anger when the government demanded a show of gratitude for its efforts rather than theirs.

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Green wavy parrot is sitting on a white cage. The parrot looks out of the cage.

How a Neuroscientist Imaged Free Will (and “Free Won’t”)

At first, Libet thought that free will might not be real. Then he looked again…

Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet (1916–2007), who studied measured brain activity as people make decisions, came across the power of “free won’t”: an apparently free decision not to do something we had decided on earlier.

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Group Friends Video Chat Connection Concept

We Will Never Go Back to the Pre-COVID-19 Workplace

The virus forced us to realize: Staying together apart has never been so easy

While many people (myself included) have railed against the excesses of technology and its tendency to weaken community spirit and understanding, it turns out that, in the present crisis, it is having the opposite effect. We aren’t really alone in the same way any more.

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Remote jobs for public health concept. Computers, pills and medical mask

COVID-19: Do Quarantine Rules Apply to Mega-Geniuses?

How did Elon Musk, who has a cozy relationship with China, get his upscale car factory classified as an essential business during the pandemic?

If we are going to hold some people up as business icons, why should it be those who—in the present COVID-19 troubles—have relations with China that necessarily raise questions?

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