“I can give you a taste of the future even before you undergo the operation,” Eclar explained, “I have a nouspace unit right here with me.”
Read More ›
I have nothing against robots. (I am against bad pizza.) I do, however, get very tired of the science fiction-fantasy of humanity-squashing robots. And that’s all it is: A fantasy.
Read More ›
A range of neuroscience research findings is more readily explained by assuming that some aspects of thought–– abstract intellectual thought and free will–– are immaterial.
Read More ›
Near-death experiences are generally seen as real, even among hardcore skeptics, and research focuses on how to account for them.
Read More ›
Computers, like a friend of mine, are great at very narrowly defined tasks, like playing Go, retrieving facts, and calculating correlations. But they are utterly unreliable for anything requiring true understanding, wisdom, or common sense.
Read More ›
Entropy is a concept in information theory that characterizes the number of choices available when a probability distribution is involved. Understanding how it works helps us make better guesses.
Read More ›
The late philosopher Jerry Fodor (1935—2017) said that the reason “we’re all materialists” is that the alternatives seem even worse. Transhumanism, had he lived to see it develop, would give him pause for further reflection.
Read More ›
They dread 2047 when Hong Kong comes completely under the jurisdiction of the Communist Party and is subject to the CCP’s rule of law rather than Hong Kong’s own laws under the current “one country, two systems” regime.
Read More ›
If someone can see your traffic as it is transmitted across the “first hop” physical network and your devices are using the manufacturer-assigned MAC address, they can discover the unique address assigned to your device.
Read More ›
At times, we may think a more powerful illusion is a good enough substitute for reality.
Read More ›
This approach is contrary to Fisher's method where we formulate all theories before encountering the data. We came up with the model after we saw the cards we drew.
Read More ›
Arctang was one of the few outsiders who knew TruMind's secret. Long ago, his elder brother had entered the fortress-like facility, never to be seen again.
Read More ›
By all means, let’s build machines that enhance our abilities. But let’s not forget that the really amazing thing is not the tool, but the tool builder.
Read More ›
Robot error turned out to be a bigger problem than human error.
Read More ›
“The decision came to me slowly, creeping on me through my day-to-day work,” we are told, until it came down to “how could I say nothing?”
Read More ›
Automation can help some aspects of writing. But media outlets get tech “google”-eyes and too often fail to ask the hard questions about what they are automating, how, and why.
Read More ›
When we get to the end of the list, we will see that it is like beads connected by a string—revealing the most dangerous threat.
Read More ›
The biggest question coming into focus is whether traditional patient confidentiality protection really works in the age of the internet. As to what changes are needed and who will sponsor them, both US Sen. Amy Klobuchar and US Sen. Josh Hawley, on opposite sides of the aisle, are watching the file.
Read More ›
Rigorous naturalism, taken seriously, brought us to this place where illusion calls to illusion about things that can, by definition, have no meaning. There is no other place naturalism can bring us to.
Read More ›
Google’s quantum supremacy claim is certainly fascinating and controversial, but even if true, it ultimately only amounts to an incremental and even inconsequential improvement in the state of AI and ML, due to the still-unmet need for a halting oracle.
Read More ›