^ArchiveArticles

EEG Test on an Elderly Man at Hospital Laboratory

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post

Author
News
Date
June 19, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
COSM, Electroencephalography, Featured, Jay Richards, Mind Uploading, Ray Kurzweil, Robert J. Marks}

Can We Really Cheat Death by Downloading Our Brains?

_{Through the ages, we have thought of unique ways to avoid death. Could the internet and artificial intelligence help?} _{News

June 19, 2020

5

Artificial Intelligence, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

Last October, Jay Richards, author of The Human Advantage, caught up with Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks, a Baylor University computer engineering prof, at COSM 2019 to ask, what are our cheat-death chances? They were responding to futurist Ray Kurzweil’s heady claims made at the conference that we will merge with computers by 2045 and live on as AI. Richards and Marks reflected on Kurzweil’s claims and the thoughts of the panel responding to them. Here’s a partial transcript: Jay Richards: He’s (Kurzweil, below right) very much a sort of, I’d say, a techno-optimist. And in fact, he sort of thinks we’re going to get brain scans and upload ourselves, whereas the panel… Though I know there was a Read More ›

Grey Wolf (Canis lupus) Between Trees Looks Up and to Right Winter - captive animal

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post

Author
Heather Zeiger
Date
June 18, 2020

Categorized
Global Technology, Social Media

Tagged
___longform, China, COVID-19, Diplomacy, Featured, Twitter, Wolf Warriors}

The Age of the Wolf Warrior: China’s Post-Pandemic Strategy

_{The younger diplomats take their cue from a Chinese Rambo-style movie and the rewritten history they learned at school} _{Heather Zeiger

June 18, 2020

8

Global Technology, Social Media}

While countries around the world have been dealing with the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus), China has claimed disputed areas in the South China Sea, taken over the Hong Kong government, and flown planes over Taiwan. One result was a standoff between warships from the U.S., Australia, and China. A 2016 international tribunal in The Hague ruled that China has no legal sovereignty over most of the South China Sea. China, saying that the ruling was void, claims areas that are also claimed by Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, and Japan. The Chinese Liberation Army has also increased the number of troops at its border with India (the Line of Actual Control) disputed since the Sino-Indian war in 1962 (below Read More ›

F35 advanced military aircraft locking on target and firing Missile's . 3d rendering

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post

Author
Eric Holloway
Date
June 17, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Military

Tagged
Autonomous drones, Billy Mitchell, Featured, Gary Kasparov, Manned drones, QuEST (Qualia Exploitation of Sensors), Steven Rogers, USCYBERCOMMAND}

Will AI or Fighter Pilots Win the 2021 Dogfight? Or Both?

_{The outcome of future warfare will be decided, not by AI alone, but by finding and optimizing the tradeoff between human and artificial intelligence} _{Eric Holloway

June 17, 2020

4

Artificial Intelligence, Military}

The US Air Force began as Billy Mitchell’s prophecy that air power could decide the next war. That happened, of course, when the B-29 superfortress dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Ever since, the USAF has sought to adapt to the latest and most decisive forms of military technology. But the challenges have drastically changed. Most recently the USAF started USCYBERCOMMAND, due to the fact that a lone hacker can paralyze an entire nation’s infrastructure. The USAF also started the new Space Force, since a well placed orbital burst can take down the world’s satellite grid. Now USAF is delving into the world of autonomous drones, the next logical step from the manned drones (drones operated by a controller on Read More ›

Abstract Chinese flag painted on digital sphere. Futuristic network cyberspace illustration background. View from space. Selective focus used.

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post

Author
Denise Simon
Date
June 16, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Global Technology, Surveillance, Technocracy

Tagged
China, Confucius Institutes, Corporate ethics, cyber theft, Double First Class Initiative, Featured, Global AI dominance, Social policy, Thousand Talents Program}

China Aims at Global AI Dominance by 2030

_{China’s systematic use of AI for social surveillance and control should cause us to think carefully about what that means} _{Denise Simon

June 16, 2020

5

Artificial Intelligence, Global Technology, Surveillance, Technocracy}

A 2017 central government document laid out the country’s plan for global dominance in AI by 2030, asking all “people’s governments of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government, all State Council ministries, and all directly controlled institutions” to ”please carefully implement.“ (translation) To achieve that timeline, China has employed several operations against the United States including the Confucius Institutes (fronts for Chinese propaganda according to the FBI, 2020), the Thousand Talents Program (spying and intellectual-property theft, Bloomberg, 2019) and cyber theft. While many Confucius Institutes have been exposed by key members of the Senate and many are being terminated domestically as a result, Chinese-driven cyber theft is costing the U.S. economy more than $100 billion per Read More ›

Composite image of digital illustration of pixelated 3d woman

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post

Author
Robert J. Marks
Date
June 16, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Information Theory

Tagged
Data processing inequality, Featured, Image restoration, Pixelation}

At the Movies: Can AI Restore Blurred Images?

_{Working with pixels, we can do remarkable things—as long as we are not asking for magic} _{Robert J. Marks

June 16, 2020

5

Artificial Intelligence, Information Theory}

It’s an exciting scene in crime investigation movies. A critical image, like the one on the left below, is blurred by pixelization. The detective commands the technician, “Sharpen it!” and the technician pushes a key on a computer keyboard. The key activates an algorithm and, magically, the deblurred image on the right appears. That can’t be done in real life. An image cannot be sharpened using only the information in the image itself. This is proven by a mathy theorem called the data processing inequality. 1 The mutual information between an image and a corrupted blurred image cannot be increased by further processing. Period. That’s why the title of a recent news article from Duke University is misleading: “Artificial intelligence Read More ›

Group of urban runners running on the street in New york city, conceptual series about sport and fitness

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Author
Eric Holloway
Date
June 15, 2020

Categorized
Information Theory

Tagged
___longform, Conditioned entropy, Entropy, Running, Unconditioned entropy, Usain Bolt}

Why Information Theory Is Like a Good Run

_{Information theory can help us understand a wide range of fields besides computers} _{Eric Holloway

June 15, 2020

7

Information Theory}

Information theory is a deep field that is responsible for our modern internet and satellite TV. The field was pioneered by Claude Shannon to measure our ability to communicate meaning. But besides powering the information revolution, information theory is also very widely applicable elsewhere. Once you understand the basic intuition, you can see applications popping up all over the place. To prove the point, I’ll show how we can apply information theory to gain insight in the very low tech world of running. I’ve been running off and on for many years and I’ve noticed that information theory describes a good run. First of all, what is a good run? A good run is when your body feels as if Read More ›

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post

Author
Adam Nieri
Date
June 15, 2020

Categorized
Arts & Culture

Tagged
DUST, Ivan Kander, Science fiction, Spice Frontier (short film), This Time Away (short film)}

Two More Hidden Gems Among the Sci-Fi Shorts

_{I spotted both of these gems on Short of the Week and was instantly intrigued} _{Adam Nieri

June 15, 2020

4

Arts & Culture}

Back in the old days, I used to endlessly browse YouTube for short films; hoping I would find a hidden gem. Don’t get me wrong, I have respect for any aspiring filmmaker but short films can be very difficult to pull off. It could certainly be said that each film deserves respect in one way or another. Every now and then, however, I would find something brilliant hidden in the corners of YouTube. Nowadays, though, Short of the Week has pretty much taken the burden of searching off my hands. First up, we have This Time Away (2019): Nigel is an elderly man living as a recluse, haunted by his past and memory of the family he once had, until Read More ›

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Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
June 15, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Social Media

Tagged
Android, apple, Featured, NDEF, NFC, Nokia, NXP, RFID, Tactile web}

What You Need to Know About The Tactile Web

_{It’s a user-directed integration of technology into life} _{Jonathan Bartlett

June 15, 2020

4

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Social Media}

Many people have heard the term RFID, “radio frequency identifier,” a technology pioneered in the 1980s for creating tracking chips that needn’t be powered to work. This technology has improved quite a bit over the years. The technology area in which RFID originated is called NFC, for “Near-Field Communication.” In themselves, NFC chips are small and unpowered, but they can receive power from nearby devices, thus enabling them to communicate. The amount of work that modern NFC chips can do is amazing. The NXP firm, for instance, manufactures chips that can do full-blown data encryption and signing. These chips are not only powerful, they are also very inexpensive. NFC tags are available as label stickers at prices as low as Read More ›

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post

Author
News
Date
June 12, 2020

Categorized
Business and Finance

Tagged
__focus-north, Blockchain, cryptocurrency, Featured, Steve Forbes, video}

Cryptocurrency a “High-Tech Cry for Help” Says Steve Forbes of Forbes Media

_{News

June 12, 2020

2

Business and Finance}

Jay Richards interviews Steve Forbes, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Media, regarding the future of cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies, and the implications of the technologies for global money, global security, and internet architecture. Read More ›

side view of senior man in coma on bed in hospital

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post

Author
News
Date
June 10, 2020

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Neuroscience

Tagged
Coma, Disorders of consciousness, Featured, Persistent vegetative state (PVS)}

Is There Hope for People in a Persistent Vegetative State?

_{Yes! Modern neuroscience is shining a light on their minds} _{News

June 10, 2020

2

Medicine and Health, Neuroscience}

Today, many neuroscientists don’t even call it a persistent vegetative state. The new term is disorders of consciousness. One neuroscientist recounts, In the past 20 years, advances in neuroimaging techniques have allowed us to explore brain functions in these altered states of consciousness. One breakthrough study conducted at our lab, in collaboration with the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, involved 54 DoC patients. The researchers asked the patients to perform two mental-imagery tasks while they lay in a brain scanner. In the first, they were asked to imagine playing tennis; in the second, to imagine walking from room to room in their home – mental tasks that are associated with contrasting patterns of neural activity. Remarkably, five patients Read More ›

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post

Author
Jed Macosko and Bradley A. Alaniz
Date
June 9, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics

Tagged
Artificial Ethics, HAL 9000, Trolley problem}

Artificial Ethics May Make Poor Choices

_{Whether or not AI can become powerful enough to follow its own rules is still an open question} _{Jed Macosko and Bradley A. Alaniz

June 9, 2020

5

Artificial Intelligence, Ethics}

We’ve all heard about computers that make poor ethical choices. One of the most memorable is HAL 9000 in the 1968 classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the film, HAL kills four humans and attempts to kill a fifth. The concurrently written book elaborates on HAL’s murderous plans, explaining that they were due to HAL’s inability to properly make the correct ethical choice: lie to the humans or kill them (and, thus, no longer be forced to lie to them). Poor HAL 9000! If only people had developed a new field of academic inquiry in time to help him (or should we say, “it”?) make better fictional ethical choices! Putting aside Hollywood’s imaginary universes, the real need for the new Read More ›

Stack of papers isolated on white background

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post

Author
Robert J. Marks
Date
June 9, 2020

Categorized
Military, Peer Review

Tagged
Albert Einstein, Frank Tipler, Hiroshima, Karl Popper, Marshall McLuhan, William Sealy Gosset}

Einstein’s Single Journal Paper Ended WWII

_{Does that mean that a thousand papers could multiply the effect? Think again.} _{Robert J. Marks

June 9, 2020

5

Military, Peer Review}

It was Albert Einstein’s work on matter and energy, captured in e = mc2 that enabled the atomic bomb that ended World War II. Modern anonymous peer review today works well except that it is muddied with bias, incompetence, and ignorance. The review processes of Einstein’s day were better. A renowned expert’s approval was sufficient for a paper’s publication.1 The current system has only been in force since the end of World War II when pressure was applied to professors to write papers. The mantra “publish or perish” looks to have been coined soon after the war in 1951 by Marshall “The Medium is the Message” McLuhan.2 Earlier, professors were often discouraged from publishing. Karl Popper, one of the most Read More ›

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post

Author
Michael Egnor
Date
June 8, 2020

Categorized
Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Aristotle, Augustine, Duns Scotus, Featured, Immanuel Kant, Nominalism, Noumena, Phenomena, Plato, Realism, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham}

Nominalism: The Stubble Left by Ockham’s Razor

_{Ockham was a methodological minimalist, not a philosophical minimalist} _{Michael Egnor

June 8, 2020

6

Philosophy of Mind}

Ockham did not say that complex metaphysical realities don’t exist. He said that we should trim our understanding of reality to the use of as few concepts as possible for reasons of efficiency, even at the cost of absolute precision. Ockham may thus be said to be a methodological minimalist. Read More ›

The concept of planet Earth similar to the COVID-19 virus

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post

Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
June 7, 2020

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Peer Review, Science

Tagged
censorship, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Drake Equation, Featured, Hydroxychloroquine, Iraq War, Jair Bolsonaro, Michael Crichton, Nuclear winter, The Lancet}

Twenty Years on, Aliens Still Cause Global Warming

_{Over the years, the Jurassic Park creator observed, science has drifted from its foundation as an objective search for truth toward political power games} _{Jonathan Bartlett

June 7, 2020

5

Medicine and Health, Peer Review, Science}

In 2003, author and filmmaker Michael Crichton (1942–2008), best known for Jurassic Park, made a now-famous speech at Caltech, titled “Aliens Cause Global Warming.” The title was humorous but the content was serious. He was not addressing some strange theory of global warming; he was warning about the politicization of science. Crichton (left, in 2002, courtesy Jon Chase, Harvard CC 3.0), noted that, over the years, science has drifted away from its foundation as an objective search for truth and given itself over to political power games. The first time that he witnessed that was with the famous Drake Equation, used to turn SETI speculations about space aliens into a science. The Drake equation was a series of probabilities multiplied Read More ›

HUD Futuristic Screen Design Element Virtual Reality Aerial View Escort Security Technology. UI Information Interface In Cyberspace Scanning Landscape Geometric Wireframe..

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post

Author
News
Date
June 6, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Military

Tagged
Aerial combat, Air Force, Featured, Robert J. Marks, Thomas Furness, Virtual Reality (VR)}

VR Was Invented by an Air Force Engineer

_{Real world concerns drove his inventions, long before Comic Con} _{News

June 6, 2020

10

Artificial Intelligence, Military}

In a recent Mind Matters podcast, “Thomas Furness and the invention of virtual reality,” Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviewed Thomas Furness, an engineer who wanted American fighter pilots to be able to see what was really happening around them in the air. It seemed that they needed virtual reality to do it. And that’s how the technology that powers so many computer games today got started. The transcript can be downloaded at the bottom of the page here. https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Mind-Matters-085-Thomas-Furness.mp3 Here is is a partial transcript of highlights from the interview: Virtual reality was pioneered by Thomas Furness during his Air Force service in 1966 when he served as a Second Lieutenant at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Much Read More ›

A hand pointing at brain MRI on the light box

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post

Author
News
Date
June 6, 2020

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Ahmad Hariri, functional MRI (fMRI), Idea of the Brain (book), Matthew Cobb}

Why Brain Activity Doesn’t Reveal Our Minds

_{There is poor correlation between different scans of even the same person’s brain, experienced researchers say} _{News

June 6, 2020

4

Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

At one time, we were told that, one day, machines will read our minds. But, now researchers say, the more we know about the brain (set aside the mind for a moment), the more reasons we have for doubt: But a new analysis by some of the researchers who have done the most work in this area finds that those measurements are highly suspect when it comes to drawing conclusions about any individual person’s brain. Karl Leif Bates, “Studies of brain activity aren’t as useful as scientists thought” at Duke Today Brain scanning—functional MRI (fMRI)—tells us about general brain structures, says Duke University neuroscientist Ahmad Hariri, who led a team that reanalyzed the data. It doesn’t say much about the Read More ›

hombre joven hundido en fondo tipo minecraft

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post

Author
News
Date
June 5, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Featured, Richard Johns}

Philosopher: Sims Do Not Understand Simhood

_{Richard Johns explains how you can know for sure that you are not a sim} _{News

June 5, 2020

2

Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind}

Recently, philosopher Richard Johns (left), whose work was profiled here at Mind Matters News in “A philosopher explains why thinking matter is impossible,” has now written a piece for Medium. In it, he explains why we cannot create a sim that is a conscious, rational being. He uses a dialogue between “Alice” and “The Programmer” to unpack the idea: The dialogue begins with Alice returning from school to find a strange little man in her apartment. He seemed not to notice her entering the room, and remained seated comfortably in Alice’s favourite armchair, reading her own copy of Nick Bostrom’s “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?”. “Who the hell are you?” Alice shrieked. “What are you doing in my Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Robert J. Marks
Date
June 4, 2020

Categorized
Arts & Culture, Mathematics

Tagged
Big Bang Theory (sitcom), Cantor’s theory of the infinite, Featured, Max Tegmark, Multiverse}

Is Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Right re the Multiverse?

_{Sheldon Cooper insists that in no universe would he dance with Penny} _{Robert J. Marks

June 4, 2020

6

Arts & Culture, Mathematics}

A collection of universes is called a multiverse. If there are enough universes in a multiverse, can almost anything happen? No. Common models of the universe aren’t big enough. The argument that anything can happen in a multiverse is nicely presented in a 2011 scene in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory (2007–2019) involving consummate nerd Sheldon Cooper and Penny, the girl next door (here). Penny: Morning, Sheldon! Come dance with me! Sheldon: No. Penny: Why not? Sheldon: While I subscribe to the Many Worlds theory, which posits the existence of an infinite number of Sheldons in an infinite number of universes, I assure you that in none of them I am dancing. Penny: Are you fun in any of Read More ›

Sad wife holding wedding ring on coronavirus confinement

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post

Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
June 3, 2020

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind, Science

Tagged
COVID-19, David Papineau, Evolutionary psychology, Gorillas, Infidelity, Martin Graff, Stone Age, Subpersonal, Subrena E. Smith}

Does COVID-19 Lead Women to Cheat?

_{The “subpersonal” approach to human psychology is popular but is it valid?} _{Denyse O'Leary

June 3, 2020

7

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind, Science}

It's an open question whether the mind evolved at all and therefore whether evolutionary psychology is any help in understanding it.

My Right Hemisphere Is An Atheist! No, Wait …

_{In reality, split-brain surgery does not split consciousness in any meaningful sense} _{Michael Egnor

June 2, 2020

7

Medicine and Health, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

The atheist neuroscientist who has made bizarre claims about the outcomes of split brain surgery appears not to know much about neurosurgery.