The everyday reality is more like this: AI speeds up many tedious processes but doesn’t replace creative thinking.
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When science media sound like naturalist (materialist) sermons, that’s what they are. And that is a philosophical choice, not a necessity.
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Elon Musk tweeted the following: “Join xAI if you believe in our mission of understanding the universe, which requires maximally rigorous pursuit of the truth, without regard to popularity or political correctness.” Yann LeCun, chief scientist at tech giant Meta, could not resist responding. Musk claims to “want a maximally rigorous pursuit of the truth but spews crazy-ass conspiracy theories on his own social platform.” It escalated quickly, with Musk questioning what science LeCun had done in the past five years, and LeCun replying: “Over 80 technical papers published since January 2022. What about you?” LeCun then said: “If you do research and don’t publish, it’s not science”. So the most successful engineer over the last ten years criticizes academic Read More ›
In reality, the public’s loss of “belief” is the natural consequence of the international system’s failing and betraying those it was designed to serve.
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Grasso showed that reform can happen but perhaps it comes down to a question of numbers. Who wants thoughtful discussion vs. new atheist blog rants?
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We’ve been reporting (here and here) on the efforts of Otangelo Grasso to get chatbot Claude 3/Anthropic to quit refusing to answer or shoveling out new atheist boilerplate about design in the universe. The object was to get it to start offering actual information about the controversy. Where we left it yesterday, the chatbot seems to have been searching information sources that did not simply label the intelligent design hypothesis as “pseudoscience” but engaged with the arguments. Here’s it’s subsequent response: Claude: I appreciate you laying out the argument for intelligent design in such detail. You make some fair points that I will consider carefully. However, I still have some issues with the hypothesis and conclusions: So while I grant Read More ›
The chatbot, swatching more sources, now reports that it was in over its algorithmic head, simply labeling intelligent design as “pseudoscience.”
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The most reasonable theory of how the universe can be both uncertain at its base and yet reliable in everyday life is the least popular one: deism or theism.
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Ethan Siegel offers a fantasy representation of the science world. It may comfort him but it might provoke knowledgeable people to trust science even less.
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What benefits does the presumption of atheism provide? So many disciplines reel under peer review scandals while trust in science has diminished over the years.
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It’s telling that the obvious evidence for the fine-tuning of the universe, implying design, is — in sharp contrast — evaluated in a hypercritical way.
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English argues that science research, which is already mostly paid for by taxpayers, should be open access so more of us can see what’s happening.
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If we grasp the psychological role that the belief that we live in a sim universe plays, it’s easier to see why it persists in the absence of evidence.
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Panpsychism is very much a materialist theory. It avoids absurdity by admitting that human consciousness is real — but then tries to make it part of nature.
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AI can help detect fake papers but it is not going to save researchers from a partly AI-driven dystopia.
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Our conversation about the ethics of collecting and using genetic data brought out two important themes that are often addressed here at Mind Matters News.
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In a discussion at Psychology Today, a philosopher notes that her dissertation supporting the reality of near-death experiences was received without hostility.
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Invisibility is one of those interesting concepts that started out as imagination: What if I were invisible? Or— in the hands of a storyteller — what if my character were invisible? Tolkien famously made it a power granted by the Ring in The Lord of the Rings. The concept is used in science fiction too, for example, in the form of the cloaking device: However, as science fiction writer Douglas Adams (1952–2001) noted satirically in Life, the Universe, and Everything, in everyday life, “The Somebody Else’s Problem field is much simpler and more effective, and what’s more can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery. This is because it relies on people’s natural disposition not Read More ›
When one of the world’s most prominent research neuroscientists goes off the classic materialist script — and gets away with it — things are changing.
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Whether it’s good science terminology, the Anthropocene concept broadcasts so much cultural vibe that it may not just go away after a No vote.
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