William A. Dembski
Pulling the Strands Together to Chart Life After Google
In Part 9, we begin by looking at how the manipulation directly affects you when you search for information
What Public Policies Can Help Us Achieve a Less Biased Internet?
Part 8: Robert Epstein proposes a number of changes worth considering
How Google Can Control and Manipulate Public Opinion
In Part 7, Robert Epstein, former editor of Psychology Today, offers some disturbing information on how search engines can be manipulated for political purposes
How Google Search Rank Disrupted the Alternative Health Industry
Part 6: Google’s bias is as real as ever, but the firm has deflected it to an impersonal policy that gives an air of objectivity
Google’s Power Over Online Business: Monopolistic and Extravagant
Part 5: To help people understand Google’s power over online businesses, I ask. What if the road on which the local Walmart is located suddenly became a dirt trail?
Becoming a Slave to Google: How It Happens
Part 4: After an update, you always have to second guess what Google did. You become a reverse engineer who never sees under the hood
A Potential Chink in Google’s Armor: Loss of Legal Immunity
Part 3: Currently, Google is legally protected from the consequences of frequent copyright violation
The Utter Dependence of Online Businesses on Google
Part 2: An SEO business needs to please Google or else it is dead in the water
The Evilization of Google—And What to Do About It
Part 1: Understanding Google's dominance over the internet
Orwell’s Cold Dystopia is Closer Than We Think
When we speak lies as truth, tyrants come marching inThe Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. [Winston’s] heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him… And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s center. With the feeling that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. GEORGE ORWELL, 1984 Read More ›
What’s the Relation Between Intelligence and Information?
The fundamental intuition of information as narrowing down possibilities matches up neatly with the concept of intelligenceThe key intuition behind the concept of information is the narrowing of possibilities. The more that possibilities are narrowed down, the greater the information. If I tell you I’m on planet Earth, I haven’t conveyed any information because you already knew that (let’s leave aside space travel). If I tell you I’m in the United States, I’ve begun to narrow down where I am in the world. If I tell you I’m in Texas, I’ve narrowed down my location further. If I tell you I’m forty miles north of Dallas, I’ve narrowed my location down even further. As I keep narrowing down my location, I’m providing you with more and more information. Information is therefore, in its essence, exclusionary: the more Read More ›
Can We Trust Large Language Models? Depends on How Truthful They Are
Just because a piece of tech is highly sophisticated doesn't mean it's more trustworthyThe trust we put in Large Language Models (LLMs) ought to depend on their truthfulness. So how truthful are LLMs? For many routine queries, they seem accurate enough. What’s the capital of North Dakota? To this query, ChatGPT4 just now gave me the answer Bismarck. That’s right. But what about less routine queries? Recently I was exploring the use of design inferences to detect plagiarism and data falsification. Some big academic misconduct cases had in the last 12 months gotten widespread public attention, not least the plagiarism scandal of Harvard president Claudine Gay and the data falsification scandal of Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne. These scandals were so damaging to these individuals and their institutions that neither is a university president any longer. When I queried Read More ›
When ChatGPT Talks Science
Can AI ever transcend its trained biases?
Inferring the Best Explanation Using Artificial Intelligence
With its wealth of information at hand, how well can AI make accurate inferences?
ChatGPT is Getting More Impressive
Nonetheless, human intelligence remains qualitatively different from artificial intelligence.
Moving On to Breaking Google’s Bard
These AI systems lack the uniquely human capacity of self-transcendenceI’ve finally started playing around with Google Bard. With self-referential sentences, it seems even more at sea than ChatGPT. Here is an exchange from May 18: Me: Consider the following six sentences: This is the first sentence. Ignore this sentence. Why are these sentences being written down? The second sentence has exactly three words. The fifth sentence has at least twenty words. This, along with the preceding five sentences, have fewer than twenty times twenty words. Which of these last six sentences has a truth value and which are true? Bard: The last six sentences have the following truth values: The second sentence is false because it has 5 words, not 3. The fifth sentence is true because it has Read More ›
How to Break ChatGPT
It has a difficulty dealing with self-referenceOver the last several months I’ve been playing with ChatGPT, first version 3 and now version 4. It’s impressive and it can answer many questions accurately (though sometimes it just makes stuff up). One problem it has consistently displayed, and which shows that it lacks understanding (that it really is just a big Chinese room in the style of John Searle) is its difficulty dealing with self-reference. Consider the following exchange that I had with it (on 5/8/23): Me: The fifth sentence does not exist. The second sentence has four words. Ignore this sentence. Is this sentence true? This is the fifth sentence. Which of these last five sentences has a truth value and is in fact true? << In Read More ›
Why Influence Matters More Than People Realize
How do we go from defending ourselves to persuading others?7 From Apologetics to Rhetoric During my years as a seminary professor, every course I taught had some connection with apologetics. One of the courses I taught that I liked best was rhetoric. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. Unfortunately, it is an art that Christian apologetics has failed to fully appropriate. Aristotle rightly distinguished three appeals of persuasion. These were logos, ethos, and pathos. You can try to persuade by logical argument. That’s logos, and Christian apologetics is hypertrophied in that department. But you can also try to persuade by the force of your personality, or by your reputation for moral probity, or by your demonstrated expertise and qualifications. That’s ethos, and it speaks to your standing and credibility in the act of persuasion. Read More ›
How Does Worldview Differ From Cultural Environment?
Confusion about the difference between worldview and cultural environment has been a stumbling block for Christian apologetics5 Worldview vs. Cultural Environment By now it will be apparent that a cultural environment differs from a worldview. Let’s say a bit more about that difference, because it is important. A cultural environment applies corporately to the group or community in which one resides. On the other hand, a worldview is, in the first instance, held individually, though it can be shared and therefore held corporately. Thus we may speak of “the Christian worldview.” One’s worldview is the set of beliefs that one holds about what the world is like. As such, it doesn’t distinguish between beliefs that are held intensely and those that are held more lightly. It doesn’t distinguish between beliefs that are non-negotiable and those to Read More ›