Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

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Expert Technician Fixing Lawnmower: Spark Plug Service and Maintenance in Garden Workshop

Monday Micro Softy 90: Mow Power to You

Why would Charlie's well-maintained lawnmower apparently be losing energy efficiency over the years?

To unraveling the multiple negatives in last week’s confusing sentences, we start by remembering that any two cancel each other.

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Stained glass church windows illuminate floor

What Goes on in the Mind of a Suicidal Priest?

Suicidal ideation amongst priests could possibly be linked, amongst other things, to theological illiteracy

In a recent report during Men’s Mental Health Week, The Irish Catholic newspaper quoted a parish priest who said: “Priests are not immune to mental health struggles.” Priests are not immune to mental health struggles, PP says during Men’s Mental Health Week – The Irish Catholic Fr Michael Toomey, of St Carlo Acutis Parish Pastoral Area in the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore, said in a homily: Over the past number of years here in Ireland and around the world, and as recently as earlier this year in our own area, priests have died by suicide… There is a tendency to place priests on a pedestal [*this was surely the case prior to 1990, but not currently], expecting them to Read More ›

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old books background

It’s Time to Buy Old Books Before AI Destroys Them

This book destruction scheme is the brain child of technicians, people who lead tech companies and tech labs who are wholly committed to a technological view of the world

Before AI companies buy up all remaining physical copies of older, rare, out-of-print, obscure, or nearly forgotten books, we can buy our own copies.

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Meeting, training and planning with a finance CEO, manager or leader and team in the boardroom. Collaboration, workshop and presentation with a business man and staff talking about vision and mission

Colleges and Universities: Still on a Road to Nowhere

One cost-saving proposal has been to eliminate courses with ten or fewer students, irrespective of what the course is teaching

Significantly, no administrators who were contacted recommended reducing schools’ budget woes by reducing the number of administrators.

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A close-up of a curious brown dog with expressive eyes and a soulful expression.

Your Dog Presses a Button and … Poof! He Can Speak?

We’ve always wanted to talk to the animals but perhaps we are fooling ourselves again

Imagining a treasure trove of insight from teaching dogs to use buttons — that is not available just from paying closer attention to the dogs — is surely a loss for both parties.

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5. A primal cave dweller illuminated by firelight, surrounded by ancient cave paintings

Did Art Really Invent Humanity — as Opposed to the Other Way Around?

It’s an intriguing concept, and a welcome departure from more pedestrian claims

Art cannot have helped make us more human if we did not start out that way. And that in turn could not have happened without some impetus that was simply not granted to any other life form.

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Cute, retro robot with glowing eyes reads a book

More Books for the Bots

AI companies are buying (and destroying) rare books

AI companies are using physical books to train them for their large language models since these texts aren’t already ridden with AI-generated writing.

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With the global spread of the new coronavirus pneumonia, an automated line of disposable medical masks makes the masks ready for an epidemic 24 hours a day, COVID-19 outbreak

If It Is About the Covid Crazy, Don’t Tell Your Diary Anything!

Especially not if you are Anthony Fauci...

Fauci’s most revealing 1,141 pages are not a personal diary; despite all the personal material, he was writing at work on a government computer.

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Head of a woman - showing different states of mind and being through tranparency

Is the Mind Reducible to the Brain? The Debate in Krakow

Free will, abstract thought, and all the rest...?

The debate in Krakow, Poland, sponsored by education foundation Fundacja En Arche is now available, with translation, at YouTube.

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space of time dimension concept,universe,illusion,time theory

More Scientists Are Talking About a Mind Behind the Universe?

An urban affairs analyst thinks so and he also suggests some reasons why

If being a scientist means that one must refuse to consider the evidence for design, it’s no wonder if many are looking for alternatives.

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Close up of old English dictionary page with word vocabulary

Monday Micro Softy 89:  Double Negatives are a No-No

Actually, they do have their uses — for example, if politicians are trying to correctly state views while making them hard to understand

To solve last week’s puzzle: you are told how many heads there are so start by flipping that number of coins.

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Bioethics And The Law

Mainstream Bioethics Does Not Represent Mainstream Beliefs

It seems that bioethics is becoming just another social justice political movement

A recent book, “Sex Beyond “Yes,” provides evidence for the estrangement of bioethics from majority opinion.

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A man puts wooden blocks with the words Fact and fake. Concept of news and false information. Yellow press.

Open Letter to BibleHub.com: Please Remove LLM-Generated Word Sausage

I find your use of GenAI a betrayal of a sacred trust

We don’t come to Bible.Hub.com for ultra-processed word sausage, no matter how plausible sounding the words may be.

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Cosmic Eye. Macro Photo of a Hazel Eye in Space

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Review Part 5

Science fiction often has various characters describing different social or philosophical positions

There are plenty of flawless or powerful characters in storytelling. Sherlock Holmes has flaws, but he is powerful in the respect that his intellect is unparalleled, and his character has defined a genre of storytelling.

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spread of digital brain connections. Artificial intelligence and the idea of neural networks. Concept for mapping the brain's neuronal connections and connectome. Generative AI

Is “The brain is a computer!” One of Science’s Biggest Mistakes?

If so, the mistake throws a wrench into claims that conscious computers can ever be built

The messy processes of the brain that enable the various layers of consciousness bear no relationship to what happens in computers.

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Science professor giving lecture to class

Papers: Argumentation and Surprise Are Best Ways to Do Good Science

Many studies show that students learn science best when engaging in critical thinking — that is, when they are asked to understand arguments for and against a particular viewpoint.

I’m sure the authors of these papers didn’t mean to pay ID any compliments, but everything we’ve seen here closely tracks with intelligent design literature.

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Hospital staff operating an automated external defibrillator AED during a code blue, emergency response

A Genuine Science-Based Debate About Near-Death Experiences?

Such a debate seems to be developing. It would make materialism much hard to just take for granted

Explainaways protect the system from unwanted evidence by ignoring or dismissing it. But when the weight of such evidence grows, they stop sounding persuasive.

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An octopus holding a plastic bottle , generative ai

Maybe Being a Loner Helps the Octopus Be Smart?

With the asocial brain hypothesis, researchers ask us to think beyond traditional explanations for why some animals display unexpected intelligence

The research mainly shows that there is more than one route to animal intelligence and shaking up Darwin’s tree can be productive.

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An open book with pages creatively folded to form a heart, a symbol of knowledge, love, and storytelling, resting on a wooden surface with a blurred background of bookshelves.

Are Fictionbots Triumphing Over Writers?

At The Spectator, Geoff Bagwell tells us that AI is destined to destroy the creative writing industry as bots take writers’ jobs

Reading for entertainment alone will become increasingly rare. I expect we will return to a culture where people who read are mainly looking for new ideas.

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