The “strange loop” of life — a loop with no apparent beginning in non-life — was, Robert Rosen concluded, beyond the reach of computing.
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Some biologists argue that purpose in nature is only “apparent” but, as Bartlett notes, there are philosophical and evidence problems with that approach.
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The “hippie ape,” it turns out, is yet another product of the human imagination; the bonobo is an animal in nature. It’s best not to confuse the two.
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The Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence is pleased to be able to share the videos from the 2023 COSM conference, now available on YouTube. This annual conference explores the status and the future of our era-defining technologies, from artificial intelligence to electric vehicles to new developments in biotech. Today’s video features a discussion on anti-aging, and whether this is even a possibility. Matt Scholz, CEO of Oisin Biotechnologies, leads a discussion with Vered Caplan, CEO of Orgenesis, and Elena Sergeeva, Neuroscientist at Tufts and Harvard and co-founder of Tiamat Labs, about anti-aging biotechnologies — how genetic reprogramming of cells could negate the effects of aging and even allow a person to stay in perfect health indefinitely, essentially Read More ›
IVF is the industrial manufacture of human beings. The right to life of the embryo is a bulwark against dehumanization for all.
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Embattled genetic testing outfit 23andMe had a customer base of 14 million for its home DNA testing kits. Thus, many of us know at least someone who has discovered a partial Mongolian, West African, or even Neanderthal ancestry via the famous “spit kit.” The 2006 startup, birthed in Silicon Valley and riffing off the Human Genome Project (2000), had a dazzling “the future is now!” launch. The founder, Anne Wojcicki (pronounced as if “Wojisky”), was the daughter of “Godmother of Silicon Valley” Esther Wojcicki and sister of YouTube’s former CEO, Susan Wojcicki. For a time, she was married to Google co-founder Sergei Brin and had plenty of billionaire backers. Thus 23andMe raised $1.4 billion in funding. So why has the Read More ›
Science is as dependent on the concept of public truth as the great religions are. Thus, when private truth rapidly gains power, it is just as vulnerable.
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According to the researchers, they can form and pass along iron-based memories to later generations of cell division.
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Information is immaterial by nature which makes it difficult to predict.
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Materialist science has got about as far as it can go and progress will only be made if we are willing to contemplate non-materialist approaches.
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Materialists want to banish meaning and purpose from science because they know perfectly well that only an immaterial mind could recognize meaning in anything.
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We can’t know for sure but increasingly, the evidence favors assuming that some sort of mental development is possible.
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These discoveries fuel panpsychism at the expense of materialism. But panpsychism’s downfall is that it cannot address an intelligence that is beyond nature.
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Fundamentally, Barbieri wants a new information-friendly paradigm without dispensing with the old no-information one. But no one can ride two horses at once.
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Although Barbieri depicts the origin of life as the production of “artefacts,” he certainly does not see himself as an intelligent design theorist.
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In 2016, University of Ferrara theoretical biologist Marcello Barbieri wrote a rather interesting open access paper on a key philosophical conflict in biology: Is life only chemistry or is it chemistry plus information? In it, he says that many biologists see information in life forms — biological information — as something that “does not really belong to science.” How did they get there from here? Author of Code Biology: A New Science of Life (Springer, 2015), Barbieri offers a history, a critique, and a proposed solution. In this three-part series, I will look at all three elements. First, the history. Molecular biology understands genes as transferring linear sequences of information to proteins that carry out instructions. That’s information as it Read More ›
Once again, biotechnology is racing ahead of our capacity to intellectually digest what is happening.
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No day that we can’t provide materialist explanations for everything can even be contemplated and that is where “emergence” stands bravely in the gap.
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In this featured COSM conference video, Matt McIlwain, Managing Director of Madrona Venture Group, moderates a panel on exciting innovations in biotech that are offering new ways to both eliminate diseases and extend life. Panelists include Dr. Steve Meyer, Director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, and Dr. Jim Tour, Professor of Chemistry at Rice University. We’ve been sharing a number of lectures from past COSM conferences and other videos related to artificial intelligence and technology. This video is just one of many you can find at the Bradley Center’s YouTube page. There you’ll find several lectures, interviews, and panels dealing with issues that range from economics, Big Tech, and artificial intelligence. Notable speakers include 2022 Kyoto Prize winner Carver Read More ›
Conundrums like this help us understand why panpsychism (all life forms/cells are conscious in some sense) is beginning to replace materialism in science.
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