Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

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closeup-of-womans-hand-writing-on-paper-over-wooden-table-stockpack-adobe-stock
Closeup of woman's hand writing on paper over wooden table
Type
post
Author
Gary Varner
Date
September 23, 2023
Categorized
Arts & Culture
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Arrival Review, Part 3

Investigating the meaning of time and language
Gary Varner
September 23, 2023
6
Arts & Culture

Last time, we finally got to the big twist. Louise has not been having flashbacks of her deceased daughter, but rather, she’s seeing her daughter who is going to die slowly in the future. After dropping this bombshell on the poor woman, the aliens send her back. Ian and Colonel Weber help her into a van while she’s still being bombarded with visions of future events and explain to her that China is on the move, and the Pentagon has ordered them to evacuate. Louise knows she’s supposed to use these visions to stop China, and she eventually does, but before we get to that, we need to talk about this entire setup. First of all, there’s the idea that Read More ›

the-head-of-a-person-is-full-of-different-numbers-generative-ai-stockpack-adobe-stock
the head of a person is full of different numbers Generative AI
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 23, 2023
Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind, Probability
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Did “Evolution” Wire Human Brains to “Act Like Supercomputers”?

In making such a claim, psychology researchers may have got more than they bargained for
Denyse O'Leary
September 23, 2023
4
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind, Probability

Intelligent design theory is still a third rail in science. But a media release for a recent research publication seems to subtly adopt its language. Researchers associated with the University of Sydney found that human brains are “naturally wired to perform advanced calculations, much like a high-powered computer, to make sense of the world through a process known as Bayesian inference.” Bayesian inference is based on Bayes’ Theorem; essentially, it’s a decision-making tool, “a means for revising predictions in light of relevant evidence, also known as conditional probability or inverse probability.” (Britannica). Originally developed by Presbyterian minister and mathematician Thomas Bayes (1702–1761) and found among his papers after his death, Bayesian inference is used today to assess probabilities using advanced Read More ›

noir-movie-night-city-street-under-the-rain-generative-ai-stockpack-adobe-stock
Noir movie, night city street under the rain. Generative AI
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post
Author
Russ White
Date
September 23, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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Welcome to Digital Pottersville

From homey Bedford Falls to greedy Pottersville: how "It's a Wonderful Life" reflects the dangers of the Internet age
Russ White
September 23, 2023
4
Artificial Intelligence

Anyone who has watched It’s a Wonderful Life remembers this: George Bailey is an unlikely hero. He does not go to war. He is not wealthy. He runs a little savings and loan that always seems to be just on the brink of disaster — losing a single envelope of money containing a single day’s takings threatens to destroy the entire enterprise. So why is this single life of such importance? We find out when we see the world without George. Bedford Falls, once named for a local landmark, is now Pottersville, named for the man who owns the town. The bartender no longer owns the bar on the outskirts of town, it is owned by some shady character in Read More ›

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Human brain on a gray background
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post
Author
News
Date
September 22, 2023
Categorized
Philosophy of Mind
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“Minding the Brain” Tops the Amazon Charts

The latest release from Discovery Institute Press is a #1 new release on Amazon
News
September 22, 2023
1
Philosophy of Mind

The latest release from Discovery Institute Press is a #1 new release on Amazon, in the bookseller’s “Consciousness & Thought Philosophy” section. Congratulations to the editors of Minding the Brain: Models of the Mind, Information, and Empirical Science — Angus Menuge, Brian Krouse, and Robert J. Marks! The book has scored some terrific endorsements, including this: Materialism about the mind is a deeply entrenched assumption, so much so that alternative viewpoints are shrugged aside as inconsequential. Minding the Brain challenges that mindset, but not by giving a single, knock-down refutation of materialism or a single, obviously superior alternative. Instead, it presents a kaleidoscopic array involving multiple objections and multiple alternatives, authored by highly competent thinkers from neuroscience, consciousness studies, computer science, information theory, and Read More ›

amateur-observatories-interior-views-vintage-engraving-stockpack-adobe-stock
Amateur observatories, Interior views, vintage engraving.
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post
Author
News
Date
September 22, 2023
Categorized
Science
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“Consensus” Doesn’t Always Mean Science

Real scientific discovery happens within a culture of free speech and open dialogue
News
September 22, 2023
1
Science

Robert J. Marks, host of the Mind Matters podcast, recently put out an article at Newsmax discussing “scientific consensus,” and how that term has been used to bully dissenting scientific viewpoints and even establish political and social policy. Marks writes, Consensus was used as a reason to stifle debate during the COVID crisis. Facebook and YouTube saw opposition to the government narrative as disinformation. Posts against consensus were censored and users were banned. Pre-Musk Twitter had a policy concerning tweets about climate change: “Misleading advertisements on #Twitter that contradict the scientific consensus on #climatechange are prohibited, in line with its inappropriate content policy.” The word pairing “scientific consensus” is a destructive science-stifling oxymoron. -Robert J. Marks, Consensus Doesn’t Equal Science | Newsmax.com Read More ›

view-of-universe-with-stars-and-amazing-colorful-and-deep-blue-dark-stockpack-adobe-stock
View of universe with stars and amazing colorful and deep blue dark
Type
post
Author
Andrew McDiarmid
Date
September 21, 2023
Categorized
Physics
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The Universe and its Mathematical Structure

Do humans project mathematics upon nature or vice versa?
Andrew McDiarmid
September 21, 2023
2
Physics

This past June, we published an article featuring a conversation between physicist Lawrence Krauss and novelist Cormac McCarthy, where they discussed whether mathematics was “discovered or invented.” Robert J. Marks went on to write his own thoughts on the question shortly thereafter. If you’re further interested in mathematics and whether there is an actual correspondence between math and the natural world, consider watching new podcast episode featuring Dr. Melissa Cain Travis. Do humans project mathematical order onto nature? Or was it there all along? On a new episode of ID the Future, I conclude a three-part conversation with Dr. Melissa Cain Travis about her recent book Thinking God’s Thoughts: Johannes Kepler and the Miracle of Cosmic Comprehensibility.  In Part 3, we look Read More ›

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robot with glass laptop
Type
post
Author
William A. Dembski
Date
September 21, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
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ChatGPT is Getting More Impressive

Nonetheless, human intelligence remains qualitatively different from artificial intelligence.
William A. Dembski
September 21, 2023
12
Artificial Intelligence

A few months back I published two pieces (see here and here) where I was able to break ChatGPT4 (hereafter just ChatGPT). More recently I revisited some of the types of challenges I posed to it in the past that were able back then to break it. It handled the challenges with aplomb. The one challenge it still was unable to handle was finding patterns in numerical sequence, such as what is the next number after 2,4,6,8,… — this one is super easy, but more difficult ones that humans are well able to handle seem still beyond its capabilities, at least for now. Whether that ability can be trained into it remains to be seen, though the improvement I saw suggests that it Read More ›

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The complexity of digital ethics background. generative AI
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 20, 2023
Categorized
Neuroscience, Panpsychism, Peer Review, Philosophy of Mind
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Leading Consciousness Theory Slammed as “Pseudoscience.” Huh?

Integrated Information Theory’s panpsychist leanings are the 124 neuroscientist critics’ real target
Denyse O'Leary
September 20, 2023
5
Neuroscience, Panpsychism, Peer Review, Philosophy of Mind

Since last week, 124 neuroscientists, including some really big names, have signed an online letter,” to be published in a journal, denouncing a leading theory of consciousness, Integrated Information Theory (IIT), as “pseudoscience.” If you don’t follow these controversies, IIT may not immediately ring a bell. But the theory featured in popular science news earlier this summer when dualist philosopher David Chalmers won a 25-year bet with IIT neuroscientist Christof Koch. He had bet that a “consciousness spot” would not be found in the brain and it was not. But they were both good sports about it and, as agreed, Koch bought Chalmers a case of fine wine. But the signatories to the letter are in no mood for parties. Read More ›

robot-production-line-at-artificial-intelligence-factory-mass-production-of-machines-with-metal-skeleton-generative-ai-stockpack-adobe-stock
Robot production line at artificial intelligence factory, mass production of machines with metal skeleton. Generative AI.
Type
post
Author
News
Date
September 20, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence
Tagged

Mythic AI is Dangerous

The evidence is inconclusive (at best) that AI could ever think or interact like a human being.
News
September 20, 2023
2
Artificial Intelligence

Computer scientist and tech entrepreneur Erik Larson recently launched a Substack account where he’ll be covering AI, tech, and human exceptionalism in the digital age. A new post from the channel discusses the dangers of “mythical AI” and how the evidence is inconclusive (at best) that AI could ever think or interact like a human being. Here’s an excerpt: In spite of the almost religious fervor about the mental powers of AI, we have at best inconclusive evidence that AI systems will get smart like humans—the so-called general intelligence attributed to us has so far proven entirely elusive for machines. It’s an open question whether future AI can really achieve general, or human-level, intelligence. To date, we have evidence that AI Read More ›

businessman-in-split-personality-concept-high-quality-photo-stockpack-adobe-stock
Businessman in split personality concept. High quality photo
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 19, 2023
Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind
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Split Mind: The Strangest Theory in Neuroscience?

The idea that we might all have separate, undetected consciousnesses in each half of our brain supports materialism but there’s little evidence for it
Denyse O'Leary
September 19, 2023
5
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

A century ago, many scientists — though certainly not all — cherished the hope that science would some day show that our universe is entirely determined by laws of physics physicalism. Neuroscientists insisted, along these lines, that the mind is simply the physical processes of the brain. But neuroscience is identifying many facts that show that the mind is independent of the brain. While working on the book that neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and I are writing on neuroscience evidence for the human soul (Worthy, 2024), I learned something remarkable: Some people’s brains have been split in half (corpus callosotomy) to treat otherwise intractable epilepsy) typically continue to think normally. For people who believe that the mind is simply the buzz Read More ›

Minding the Brain
Type
post
Author
News
Date
September 19, 2023
Categorized
Philosophy of Mind
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The Mind is More than the Brain

A new anthology, out today, features 25 philosophers with fresh insights on the mind-body problem.
News
September 19, 2023
4
Philosophy of Mind

An exciting new anthology from Discovery Institute Press is out today: Minding the Brain: Models of the Mind, Information, and Empirical Science, in which 25 philosophers and scientists offer fresh insights into the mind-brain debate, drawing on psychology, neurology, philosophy, computer science, and neurosurgery. Their provocative conclusion? The mind is indeed more than the brain. We will be offering brief excerpts here in weeks to come. The Mind-Brain Problem The book is edited by Angus J. Menuge, Brian R. Krouse, and Robert J. Marks, who explain in the Introduction: Is your mind the same thing as your brain? Or are there aspects of mind that are external to the biology of the brain? This question, referred to as the mind-body problem Read More ›

fall-college-campus-university-student-dorm-with-autumn-leaves-stockpack-adobe-stock
Fall College Campus. University student dorm with autumn leaves
Type
post
Author
News
Date
September 18, 2023
Categorized
Education

Where Are All the Men?

Physicist Lawrence Krauss notes that men are vanishing from the sciences
News
September 18, 2023
2
Education

Noted physicist Lawrence Krauss wrote an article in Quillette noting how men are vanishing from science and academia. Despite the perception that STEM and related fields are male dominated, Krauss shows how, due to decades of affirmative action programming and cultural shift, that’s no longer the case. He writes, As April Bleske-Rechek and Michael Bernstein have shown, while men still occupy three quarters of STEM positions (despite the fact that the percentage of women in STEM has more than doubled since 1980), the situation is precisely reversed in the fields of health, education, administration, and literacy. While massive efforts are underway to correct the imbalance between men and women in STEM, there have been no concomitant efforts to increase the numbers Read More ›

business-audit-stock-financial-finance-management-on-analysis-data-strategy-with-graph-accounting-marketing-or-report-chart-economy-investment-research-profit-concept-generative-ai-stockpack-adobe-stock
Business audit stock financial finance management on analysis data strategy with graph accounting marketing or report chart economy investment research profit concept. Generative AI
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post
Author
Eric Holloway
Date
September 18, 2023
Categorized
Machine Learning
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Life According to the Turing Machine

Is there more to the world than just data and digits?
Eric Holloway
September 18, 2023
8
Machine Learning

John sat down at the kitchen table for breakfast. He poured himself a big bowl of bit-o-byte flakes and topped it off with a slosh of random milk. After a couple of big crunchy mouthfuls with his Turing spoon to reoptimize his compression ratio, John sat back and sipped at his virtual machine coffee. It was a pleasant morning. The principal components of the digitized sun were just visible above the trie data structure on the mountains in the distance. Thanks to the large rain bandwidth from the night before, the tries were well balanced, throwing off sparkles as the sun’s rays traced through to his viewport. What a wonderful world, he mused, and to think it all came from a dovetail Turing Read More ›

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Hurricane Katrina heading towards New Orleans, Louisiana in 2005 - Elements of this image furnished by NASA
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post
Author
News
Date
September 17, 2023
Categorized
Events
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Niall Ferguson on the “Politics of Catastrophe”

How can we better respond when disaster strikes?
News
September 17, 2023
2
Events

In today’s featured video, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Jay Richards interviews Niall Ferguson, Senior Fellow of Hoover Institution and author of “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe,” about the history of disasters and how we should think about them. (REGISTER NOW FOR COSM 2023) COSM is an exclusive national summit on the technologies remaking the world as we know it. The mission of the conference is to stimulate debate and deliberation amongst industry leaders, illuminating the synergy between Seattle and the world and providing a scene of civilized conversation and exchange. (REGISTER NOW FOR COSM 2023) We’ve been sharing a number of lectures from past COSM conferences. This video is just one of many you can find at the Bradley Center’s YouTube page. Read More ›

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Doctor Defibrillating Critical Patient In Hospital
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post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 17, 2023
Categorized
Media, Medicine and Health, Peer Review, Philosophy of Mind, Science
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Near-Death Experience Study: Brain Is Active After Death

Science media are making surprisingly few efforts to attack or explain away the team’s findings
Denyse O'Leary
September 17, 2023
6
Media, Medicine and Health, Peer Review, Philosophy of Mind, Science

A recent study led by near-death researcher Sam Parnia of the consciousness of patients whose hearts have stopped is providing more baseline data about the circumstances under which many near-death experiences occur. A team at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, working with 25 hospitals mostly in the US and Britain, studied the “lucid death experiences” that can occur when heart attack survivors are apparently unconscious. Of 567 patients, only 53 (9.3%) survived. Most of them were flatlined, meaning that they had no brain activity at a certain point. Sometimes brain activity was restored as late as up to an hour later. Only 28 of them completed interviews. According to the media release for the open-access study, “Four in 10 Read More ›

stained-glass-collage-of-stores-from-the-bible-stockpack-adobe-stock
Stained glass collage of stores from the Bible
Type
post
Author
Peter Biles
Date
September 17, 2023
Categorized
Transhumanism
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AI as Refashioned Religion

How AI fits into the transhumanist utopian dream, and where that dream might have come from
Peter Biles
September 17, 2023
3
Transhumanism

You can see it in the discourse surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) over the last year: AI is going to change everything. Some think it’s going to do this for the better. Others think it’s a technological handmaiden for world destruction if its programming goes awry — or worse: AI becomes self-determining and sentient. An insightful article at Vox by Sigal Samuel considers this doomsday/salvific kind of rhetoric and points out that AI developers sound a whole lot like religious priests, prophesying doom, promising salvation, warning the populace to heed the coming armageddon. He writes, These technologists propose cheating death by uploading our minds to the cloud, where we can live digitally for all eternity. They talk about AI as a Read More ›

gallipoli-canakkale-turkey-close-up-of-an-octopus-eye-octopus-vulgaris-cuvier-1797-generative-ai-stockpack-adobe-stock
Gallipoli, Canakkale, Turkey; close up of an octopus eye (Octopus vulgaris Cuvier, 1797). Generative AI
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 16, 2023
Categorized
Evolution, Natural Intelligence
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Octopus Intelligence Shakes Up Darwin’s Tree

There does not seem to be a Tree of Intelligence, which deepens the mystery of intelligence
Denyse O'Leary
September 16, 2023
7
Evolution, Natural Intelligence

(This article was first published in Salvo 64, Spring 2023, as Spineless Wonders.) The octopus presents a conundrum in animal intelligence: A highly intelligent invertebrate. We used to live in tidy world, where vertebrates, with backbones terminating in a brain, were more intelligent than invertebrates, with a variety of nervous system layouts and structures (or, in many cases, little or none thereof). Mammals and birds are, of course, highly favored for intelligence because they are warm-blooded (endothermic), and the brain is a high metabolic area. The traditional “tree of intelligence” makes sense, actually. But then we got to know the octopus. A “Second Genesis” Called by some a “second genesis of intelligence”, the octopus is the hero or perp of Read More ›

ufo-stockpack-adobe-stock
UFO
Type
post
Author
Gary Varner
Date
September 16, 2023
Categorized
Arts & Culture
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Arrival Review, Part 2

On the strangeness of a language telling the future
Gary Varner
September 16, 2023
6
Arts & Culture

Last time we talked about the beginning of the movie Arrival, and how the main characters seemed surprisingly melancholy when aliens visit their planet. But once Louise and Ian reach the military base, everyone starts acting human. As soon as Louise and Ian began translating the alien’s language, the story gets more interesting. Things seem to be going well for the two of them. But the situation changes once Louise decides to tell the aliens her name and takes off her suit. Physically, Louise seems fine, but she begins having visions of a little girl. In the first part of the film, there is a montage where Louise’s child is shown to have died of some unknown disease. The monologue Read More ›

psychology-stockpack-adobe-stock
Psychology.
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 16, 2023
Categorized
Cosmology, Environment, Human exceptionalism
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Theoretical Physicist Admits That Humans Are Unique

In his forthcoming book, Marcelo Gleiser challenges us to acknowledge our responsibility to save the planet
Denyse O'Leary
September 16, 2023
6
Cosmology, Environment, Human exceptionalism

Yesterday, I noted a new book by Durham University philosophy professor Philip Goff, Why? The Purpose of the Universe (Oxford University Press, 2023). Notwithstanding his choice of topic, Goff is a panpsychist, not an intelligent design theorist. He originally tried approaching the massive evidence for the fine-tuning of the universe by supposing that there must be a very large number of flopped universes out there (multiverse theory). But he realized that that assumption is simply pulled out of thin air. We have no evidence for the existence or conditions of any other universe. So he is now working with the assumption that the universe is itself conscious in some sense. Significantly, Goff is given a respectful hearing despite having touched Read More ›

silhouettes-of-people-observing-stars-in-night-sky-astronomy-concept-stockpack-adobe-stock
Silhouettes of people observing stars in night sky. Astronomy concept.
Type
post
Author
Peter Biles
Date
September 16, 2023
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind
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Another Non-Computable Trait: Spiritual Longing

You can't program spiritual longing into a computer, not matter how savvy the algorithm.
Peter Biles
September 16, 2023
2
Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy of Mind

What makes human beings unique, compared to say, a piece of granite? What distinguishes us from advanced artificial intelligence? Robert J. Marks has argued that several characteristics set us apart from the machines in his book Non-Computable You. This week, scientist Eric Hedin, citing from the classic thought of Anglo-Irish writer C.S. Lewis, adds another trait to the list: spiritual longing for something greater than the material. Hedin writes, If physical desires, such as hunger, rightly indicate that we were meant to be satisfied with food, then the longing for something that transcends even our most lavish experiences of abundance must also indicate an attainable fulfillment we have never yet tasted and without which we cannot be fully satisfied. Stated Read More ›