^ArchiveArticles

Creative background, male hand holding a phone with a 5G hologram on the background of the city. The concept of 5G network, high-speed mobile Internet, new generation networks. Copy space,

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
September 4, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance

Tagged
5G, ACES, Autonomous Vehicles, Bellevue (Washington), Bruce Agnew, Cascadia Center, Communication, Featured, Jay Richards, Seattle, Transportation}

Seattle Area a Good Site for 5G Development, Says Analyst

_{By increasing bandwidth and reducing slow times, 5G will enable more people to do more online} _{News

September 4, 2020

4

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance}

At COSM 2019, Jay Richards interviewed Bruce Agnew, Director of the Seattle-based ACES Northwest Network on the collective’s work in bringing ACES (Automated, Connected, Electric, and Shared) vehicle technologies to the Puget Sound region. They discussed, among other things, the role that 5G will play in implementing autonomous vehicles. Since 1993, Bruce Agnew has been the Policy Director of Seattle-based Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center. The Cascadia Center is a strategic alliance from Vancouver, BC, to Eugene, Oregon, promoting high speed passenger rail, Interstate-5 freight mobility, seamless border crossings, bi-national and bi-state tourism marketing, and sustainable community development. Two of his co-chairs, Tom Alberg and Bryan Mistele, were also interviewed in this series (at the links). From the interview: Agnew began Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
September 3, 2020

Categorized
Philosophy of Mind, Religion

Tagged
Bernardo Kastrup, cosmopsychism, Featured, free will, George Berkeley (1685–1753), god, Idealism, Materialism, Michael Egnor, Naturalism, Objective idealism}

Does Physics Today Point to Mind Rather Than Matter Only?

_{A cosmopsychist looks at the universe, God, and free will} _{News

September 3, 2020

12

Philosophy of Mind, Religion}

In a recent podcast, “Does the Moon Exist if No One is Looking at It?”, Michael Egnor continued his discussion with philosopher and computer programmer Bernardo Kastrup. As a scientist, Kastrup has worked for The European Organization for Nuclear Research and for Phillips Research Laboratories, and has authored many academic papers and books. This week’s topic is the way physics today points to mind as opposed to materialism. Kastrup offers some thoughts on God and free will as well, from his cosmopsychist (or objective idealist) position: https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Mind-Matters-095-Bernardo-Kastrup.mp3 From the transcript: (Other discussions in the series, Show Notes, Resources, and a link to the complete transcript follow.) Michael Egnor: You have said and written that physics points to the mind. What Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Michael Egnor
Date
September 3, 2020

Categorized
Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Derek Parfit, Featured, Identity, Personal identity, Roger Sperry, split-brain surgery}

Does Split-brain Surgery Show That We Have No Real Identity?

_{A prominent philosopher built his career arguing against the existence of personal identity} _{Michael Egnor

September 3, 2020

8

Philosophy of Mind}

One of the most bizarre consequences of the modernist materialist conception of human beings is the notion that personal identity is not real or not continuous. This view is, of course, contrary in every way to the lived experience of each of us. Like everyone else, I am the same person I was as a child, and the same person I will be a moment before my death. I am me, and I am no other. Of course, at different times of my life I have had different memories, experiences, and perceptions, but it is the same I (the only I) that has them. This is so fundamental to reality that it seems beyond question. It is not even clear Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
September 2, 2020

Categorized
Programming

Tagged
___longform, Docker, Featured, Linux, Unix}

Part 3: Working with Docker: An Interactive Tutorial

_{Docker gives development teams more reliable, repeatable, and testable systems, deployed at massive scale with the click of a button} _{Jonathan Bartlett

September 2, 2020

17

Programming}

As businesses move more and more infrastructure online due to the effects of competition (not to mention COVID-19), finding the best way to manage that infrastructure becomes more and more important. Docker gives development teams more reliable, repeatable, and testable systems that can be deployed at massive scale with the click of a button. In this series (Parts 1 and 2 are linked below), we are looking under the hood at Docker, an infrastructure management tool that has grown rapidly in popularity over the last decade. In this installment, I will walk you through the process of using the Docker command line tools to download, install, and run containers, as well as build your own container. If you’re not a Read More ›

Neanderthal or Homo Sapiens Family Cooking Animal Meat over Bonfire and then Eating it. Tribe of Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers Wearing Animal Skins Eating in a Dark Scary Cave at Night

^{Type
post

Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 1, 2020

Categorized
Creativity, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Consciousness Explained (book), Creativity, Daniel Dennett, Daniel Dor, Hypothetical thinking, Imagination, Keith Frankish, Language, The Instruction of Imagination (book2015)}

Did the Human Mind Originate in Telling Ourselves Stories?

_{A philosopher and writer tries to account for the jump from animal to human by wholly natural means} _{Denyse O'Leary

September 1, 2020

8

Creativity, Philosophy of Mind}

Philosopher Keith Frankish melds linguist Daniel Dor’s ideas with philosopher Daniel Dennett’s to come up with a revealingly circular theory. Read More ›

3D illustration of an autonomous shipping vessel controlled remotely by artificial intelligence software managed by sensors on the shipping freight

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
September 1, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Global Technology

Tagged
Autonomous ships, Autonomous watercraft, Container ships, DARPA, Ecology, Energy efficiency, IBM, Mayflower (autonomous vessel), Oceans, Pollution (marine), Promare, Sea Hunter II}

Will Your Next Water Outing Be on a Crewless Watercraft?

_{Crewless ships get much less attention than driverless cars but they are much more obviously practical} _{News

September 1, 2020

4

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Global Technology}

The new robot Mayflower, scheduled to set out across the Atlantic from Portsmouth next spring (tracing the voyage of the historic Mayflower in 1620), is one of a growing number of autonomous vessels. It must make many decisions based on its programming. Like most crewless ships at present, the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS)’s mission is information, not transportation. That mission includes gathering data on plastic pollution and marine mammals, according to IBM, the technology partner of U.K.-based marine research organization, Promare. Here are some reasons autonomous (crewless) vessels offer advantages: ➤ With 70% of Earth’s surface covered by water, only 20% of which is mapped, there are too few humans trained to do the scientific, commercial, and patrol jobs. Much Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Eric Holloway
Date
August 31, 2020

Categorized
Philosophy of Mind, Science

Tagged
Complex Specified Information, David Deutsch, Erwin Schrödinger, Featured, Multiverse, Specified Complexity}

Here Is a Way We Can Be Sure If We Are Living in a Multiverse

_{An experiment can test the idea that there is an infinite number of universes} _{Eric Holloway

August 31, 2020

5

Philosophy of Mind, Science}

For our experiment, we need a quantum coin flipper, a disintegration gun, and observers who are sure that there is an infinite array of universes out there. Read More ›

Interior of warehouse storage, Stack of shipment boxes on pallets and hand pallet truck, Warehouse industry delivery shipment goods, logistics and transportation.

^{Type
post

Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
August 31, 2020

Categorized
Business and Finance, Programming

Tagged
___longform, Alan Turing, Chroot jails, Cloud computing, Containers (programming), Docker, Emulator, Featured, Filesystem, LXC (Linux Containers), Union filesystem, Virtual memory, Virtualization, VMWare}

Part 2: A Peek Under the Covers at the New Docker Technology

_{Many advances enable Docker to significantly reduce a system’s overhead} _{Jonathan Bartlett

August 31, 2020

9

Business and Finance, Programming}

As businesses move more and more of their infrastructure online due to the effects of competition (not to mention COVID-19), finding the best way to manage that infrastructure becomes more and more important. As we saw in Part 1, Docker enables development teams to have more reliable, repeatable, and testable systems that can be deployed at massive scale with the click of a button. In this installment, we are going to take a look at the technology behind Docker and how it originated. From Emulators to Virtual Machines Docker allows you to run numerous “containers” at the same time on a single computer. Each of these containers acts as if it were a separate computer. It knows nothing about what Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
August 30, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Religion

Tagged
A.I. Jesus, Boltzmannian natural-language processing, George Davila Durendal, King James Bible}

A.I. Jesus Sputters from the King James Bible

_{The developer emphasizes that the program is a purely human creation} _{News

August 30, 2020

5

Artificial Intelligence, Religion}

The developer of A.I. Jesus is brazen about his intentions: In these days of trials and tribulations many have turned to religion. But what religion is left for those who have averted their gaze from the fables of old to the shiny metal toys of today? I present to you A.I. Jesus. An artificial intelligence of my invention created from the King James Bible and nothing else. This A.I. learned human language from reading the bible and nothing else; absorbing every word more thoroughly than all the monks of all the monasteries that have ever been. George Davila Durendal, “I Created an A.I. Clone of Jesus” at Medium Durendal (pictured) is an AI engineer and Founder & CEO at a Read More ›

Unusual robotic eye in steampunk style. Focused robot look. Background pattern close-up.

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
August 29, 2020

Categorized
Arts & Culture, Global Technology

Tagged
Futurism, predictions}

What Goes Right and Wrong When We Predict a High-Tech Future

_{A pundit who predicted the internet also thought that the horse would be nearly extinct by now} _{News

August 29, 2020

5

Arts & Culture, Global Technology}

An article in Ladies’ Home Journal predicted 2001 a century earlier. Here’s a video version: Futurism is a hit and miss business: Fast food is predicted (3:40) but so is the extinction of the horse (3:20). Apparently, the futurist, John Elfreth Watkins, Jr., did not foresee a future for horses in recreation and sports except for “the rich.” He predicted the internet and wireless communications in principle (5:57, 13:29): “A husband sitting in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago.” But, surprisingly, he did not see much of a commercial future for the airplane but rather favored dirigibles and electrified ships (8:20ff). He predicted high-speed trains but also Read More ›

Bull market trend, green growth arrow. Stock Exchange and concept of a trading chart. Low poly, wireframe 3d Raster illustration. Abstract polygonal image on blue neon background

^{Type
post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
August 28, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance

Tagged
AI and prediction, COVID-19 Recession, Featured, Recession, stock market, Stock market predictions}

The Stock Market Keeps Rising Despite COVID. Is It Nuts?

_{I’ve been asked whether advanced AI can explain the conundrum} _{Gary Smith

August 28, 2020

7

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance}

What is going on? Our GDP has collapsed and 16 million people are unemployed. Thousands of small businesses and dozens of billion-dollar companies have gone bankrupt, including California Pizza Kitchen, Hertz, JCPenney, Neiman Marcus, and Brooks Brothers. Yet, the stock market keeps hitting all-time high after all-time high. The stock market is supposed to be related to the economy. When the economy booms, corporate profits explode; when the economy collapses, profits crater. That’s what happened during the Great Depression when stock prices fell 90 percent and the unemployment rate averaged 19 percent for a decade. Now, stocks and the economy are moving in opposite directions. What is going on? A friend who knows that I live, breathe, and teach investments Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
August 28, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance

Tagged
ACES, Autonomous Vehicles, employment, Featured, Jay Richards, Job Displacement, self-driving cars, Tom Alberg, Traffic fatalities}

Autonomous Vehicles Are Not a “Rich Person’s” Technology

_{A transportation expert tells Jay Richards, alternative transport may disrupt the transportation industry but only in the short term} _{News

August 28, 2020

4

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance}

Jay Richards talked recently with Tom Alberg, Founder of the Madrona Venture Group and Co-chair of the ACES Northwest Network, about ACES’ efforts to bring Automated, Connected, Electric, and Shared vehicle technologies to the Puget Sound region: The Benefits of ACES Vehicle Technology A partial transcript follows: Jay Richards: Well, you were chairing the panel on autonomous vehicles and you’re part of an initiative here in Seattle. What do you think is the most important takeaway from that? Tom Alberg: I think that it’s really a combination of technologies. It’s both new technologies and it’s changed business models. So we formed a group here in Seattle called ACES, Autonomous, Connected, Electric, and Shared. “Shared” is really kind of the Uber Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
August 27, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Creativity, Machine Learning

Tagged
___longform, Alan Turing, Algorithms, Chinese Room, Church–Turing Thesis, Creativity, Dweebs, Featured, George Gilder, Go, Jay Richards, Jeopardy, John Searle, Larry L. Linenschmidt, Lovelace test, Peter Thiel, qualia, Quantum Computing, Robert J. Marks, Satya Nadella, Surprise, Turing Test, Watson}

Six Limitations of Artificial Intelligence As We Know It

_{You’d better hope it doesn’t run your life, as Robert J. Marks explains to Larry Linenschmidt} _{News

August 27, 2020

18

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Creativity, Machine Learning}

The list is a selection from “Bingecast: Robert J. Marks on the Limitations of Artificial Intelligence,” a discussion between Larry L. Linenschmidt of the Hill Country Institute and Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks. The focus on why we mistakenly attribute understanding and creativity to computers. The interview was originally published by the Hill Country Institute and is reproduced with thanks. https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Mind-Matters-097-Robert-Marks.mp3 Here is a partial transcript, listing six limits of AI as we know it: (The Show Notes, Additional Resources, and a link to the full transcript are below.) 1. Computers can do a great deal but, by their nature, they are limited to algorithms. Larry L. Linenschmidt: When I read the term “classical computer,” how does a computer function? Let’s build on Read More ›

Antibiotic resistant bacteria inside a biofilm, 3D illustration. Realistic scientific background

^{Type
post

Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 26, 2020

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Natural Intelligence

Tagged
Bacteria, intelligence, Necrosignals, Thomas Nagel}

Do Bacteria Warn Others While Dying from Antibiotics?

_{Scientists are learning more about the complex ways bacteria overcome efforts to control them} _{Denyse O'Leary

August 26, 2020

3

Medicine and Health, Natural Intelligence}

That’s what we learn from a new open-access paper in Nature titled “Dead cells release a ‘necrosignal’ that activates antibiotic survival pathways in bacterial swarms.” It’s sometimes described as “screams,” but it’s actually a release of chemicals, which amounts to the same thing: a warning to prepare for an onslaught of antibiotics. The scientists also noted another curious factor: The cascade of genes turned on by necrosignals not only protected the surviving swarm from antibiotics, but promoted future resistance to the compounds that killed their comrades. What’s more, the scientists realized that subpopulations of swarm bacteria were genetically variable; some were more susceptible to the antibiotics than others. Swarms of bacteria may collectively cultivate different subpopulations as an evolutionary survival Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Heather Zeiger
Date
August 26, 2020

Categorized
Data Privacy, Global Technology, Social Media, Surveillance

Tagged
___longform, bias, ByteDance, China, Featured, Intercept (publication), Michael Schuman, TikTok, Virtual eugenics, Zhang Yiming}

Why Some Nation States Are Banning TikTok

_{The United States is not alone in questioning the social medium’s allegiance to the Chinese government} _{Heather Zeiger

August 26, 2020

10

Data Privacy, Global Technology, Social Media, Surveillance}

Why is TikTok so controversial? It’s the first Chinese technology company that has reached a billion users outside of China. Its main demographic is Generation Z—teens and twenty-somethings. If you take a look at TikTok videos, most are goofy and irreverent. They’re frenetic shorts of everything from fashion tips to pranks and, of course, (bad) dancing. TikTok’s stated mission is to “inspire creativity and bring joy.” What could go wrong? Here’s what. Working with China, as Disney and the NBA can attest, comes with certain strings attached, including acquiescing to the Chinese Communist Party’s rules for acceptable speech. Because ByteDance, which owns TikTok, is a Chinese company (although partly owned by investors from the U.S. and Japan), the Chinese Communist Read More ›

White swan mask on black wooden surface. Empty space.

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
August 25, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence

Tagged
Big Data, Featured, Gary Smith, Jay Cordes, Patterns (in statistics), Phantom Pattern Problem (book)}

New Book Takes Aim at Phantom Patterns “Detected” by Algorithms

_{Human common sense is needed now more than ever, says economics professor Gary Smith} _{News

August 25, 2020

3

Artificial Intelligence}

Pomona College economics professor Gary Smith, author with Jay Cordes of The Phantom Pattern Problem (Oxford, October 1, 2020), tackles an age-old glitch in human thinking: We tend to assume that if we find a pattern, it is meaningful. Add that to the weaknesses of current artificial intelligence and “Houston, we have a problem,” he warns: The scientific method tests theories with data. Data-mining computer algorithms dispense with theory and search through data for patterns, often aided and abetted by slicing, dicing, and otherwise mangling data to create patterns. Gary Smith, “Phantom patterns: The big data delusion” at IAI News (August 24, 2020) Many of the patterns so detected are obviously spurious, for example: A computer algorithm for evaluating job Read More ›

Aerial view of New York downtown building roofs. Bird's eye view from helicopter of cityscape metropolis infrastructure, traffic cars, yellow cabs moving on city streets and crossing district avenues

^{Type
post

Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
August 25, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture

Tagged
Big Data, Ed Niedermeyer, Featured, Microsoft Flight Simulator, OpenStreetMap}

Microsoft Flight Simulator: Promise and Problems of Big Open Data

_{For some software, bad data doesn’t matter; for other software, working off of month-old data could be life-threatening} _{Jonathan Bartlett

August 25, 2020

5

Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture}

Last week, Microsoft released its critically acclaimed Microsoft Flight Simulator, to much cheering and applause. The game creates a photorealistic journey across the planet. Artificial intelligence combines multiple data sets to create a magnificent virtual experience of flying through the world. The data comes from satellite maps for terrain and texture information and OpenStreetMap to add three dimensional information to city data, such as building heights and other information. Combining all these data sources generates a 3D world using a variety of AI photogrammetry techniques. The program then streams this world to you as you fly through it. Additionally, the system streams in real-world weather data, so that the weather experienced in any part of the world is transmitted to Read More ›

Conceptual image of international logistics, featuring a docker, looking at the unloading of a container ship by huge cranes in the

^{Type
post

Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
August 24, 2020

Categorized
Programming

Tagged
Containers (programming), Docker, Infrastructure management, Kubernetes}

How the Docker Revolution Will Change Your Programming, Part 1

_{Since 2013, Docker (an operating system inside your current operating system) has grown rapidly in popularity} _{Jonathan Bartlett

August 24, 2020

5

Programming}

As businesses move more and more infrastructure online due to the effects of competition (not to mention COVID-19), finding the best way to manage that infrastructure becomes more and more important. Docker enables development teams to have more reliable, repeatable, and testable systems that can be deployed at massive scale with the click of a button. In this series, we are looking under the hood at Docker, an infrastructure management tool that has rapidly grown in popularity over the last decade. A new infrastructure element has been quietly taking over for managing server-side code deployments. Docker was first released in 2013, and has seen an exponential rise in usage for developer deployments. Over the last seven years, Docker has quietly Read More ›

Graphene molecular nano technology structure on a green background - 3d rendering

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
August 23, 2020

Categorized
Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
brain, Brian Greene, Edward Feser, Featured, Materialism, Mind Brain, Particle physics, Reductionism, Until the End of Time (book)}

Why the Brain Can’t Be Understood Simply in Terms of Particles

_{For the same reasons as a basketball cannot be understood wholly as a “sphere,” the brain is more than particle physics in action} _{News

August 23, 2020

4

Philosophy of Mind}

In a review of theoretical physicist Brian Greene’s latest book, philosopher Edward Feser explains why mathematics can’t capture all of reality. Read More ›