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The Dragon’s Deception: Conspiracy Theories and False Numbers
China’s global attempt to rewrite the history of coronavirus (COVID-19) is running up against incriminating evidenceThe Chinese Communist Party has touted the superiority of an authoritarian government over a democratic one in handling the virus outbreak. But American intelligence sources say that it was the punishment that local officials might receive from the authoritarian system that led to the initial coverup of the outbreak.
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If Your Brain Were Cut in Half, Would You Still Be One Person?
Yes, with minor disabilities. Roger Sperry’s split-brain research convinced him that the mind and free will are realThe true significance of the split-brain experiments goes far beyond the significance of the lateralization of the brain; your essential unity also points to the immaterial nature of the mind.
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Bartlett’s Calculus Paper Reviewed in Mathematics Magazine
The paper offers fixes for long-standing flaws in the teaching of elementary calculusJonathan Bartlett tells us, “The review was mixed, but most importantly the reviewer didn’t disagree with the results, only their potential usefulness."
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How Not To Debate Materialists
This is the story of how a gifted scientist lost a debate with a Darwinist — a debate he should have wonAlthough ape brains do differ somewhat from human brains in cortical anatomy, it is the similarity between the brains of apes and men, rather than the differences, that provide striking evidence of human exceptionalism.
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Why Does the Vatican Need Microsoft?
Should the Church really partner with IBM and Microsoft to make pronouncements on tech regulation?When giant corporate actors like IBM and Microsoft promote “transparency and compliance with ethical principles?”, we run the risk that they are helping to craft regulations that hinder future competitors (“regulatory capture”). Rather than partner with them in making statements, the Church should stay clear.
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Shelter in Place? Your Sci-Fi Video Game Binge List
You’ll never know where the long hours went, courtesy Sci-Fi Saturday at Mind Matters NewsHas your ISP lifted bandwidth limits in your area due to thousands more Americans working from home? Great news for gamers too! Here’s my list of top-notch sci-fi apocalypse games.
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AI Is Not Ready to Moderate Content!
In the face of COVID-19 quarantines for human moderators, some look to AI to keep the bad stuff off social mediaBig social media companies have long wanted to replace human content moderators with AI. COVID-19 quarantines have only intensified that discussion. But AI is far, far from ready to successfully moderate content in an age of where virtual monopolies make single point failure a frequent risk.
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China: Rewriting the History of COVID-19
Making the government the improbable hero of the taleChinese scientists worked together swiftly and seamlessly to sequence the virus, (completed February 25), even as the government was downplaying the extent of the problem and silencing doctors who attempted to warn colleagues and the public. The Wuhan public erupted in anger when the government demanded a show of gratitude for its efforts rather than theirs.
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The Mind Is the Opposite of a Computer
Matthew Cobb, a materialist, only scratches the surface when he explains why your brain is not a computerMental activity always has meaning—every thought is about something. Computation, by contrast, always lacks meaning in itself. A word processing program doesn’t care about the opinion that you’re expressing when you use it. In fact, what makes computation so useful is that it doesn’t have its own meaning. Because the mind always has meaning and computation never does, the mind is the opposite of computation.
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Stanford’s AI Index Report: How Much Is BS?
Some measurements of AI’s economic impact sound like the metrics that fueled the dot-com bubbleStanford University’s AI index offers us fanciful measures of the triumph of AI, rivaling the far-fetched metrics of dot-com commerce. The reality has been the opposite. For decades, U.S. productivity grew by about 3% a year. Then, after 1970, it slowed to 1.5% a year, then 1%, now about 0.5%. Perhaps we are spending too much time on our smartphones.
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Why Pioneer Neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield Said the Mind Is More Than the Brain
He gave three lines of reasoning, based on brain surgery on over a thousand patientsMichael Egnor points out that Penfield offered three lines of evidence: His inability to stimulate intellectual thought during brain operations, the inability of seizures to cause intellectual thought, and his inability to stimulate the will. … So he concluded that the intellect and the will are not from the brain. Which is precisely what Aristotle said.
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Pioneer Neuroscientists Believed the Mind Is More Than the Brain
A number of them were Nobel Laureates and their views were informed by their workIn a podcast discussion with Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor talks about how many famous neuroscientist became dualists—that is, they concluded that there is something about human beings that goes beyond matter—based on observations they made during their work.
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Which Career-Limiting Data Mistake Are YOU Most at Risk For?
Award-winning data science author Gary Smith says the odds depend on your relationship to the dataDr. Smith thinks that the most dangerous error is putting data before theory. Many data-mining algorithms that are now being used to screen job applicants, price car insurance, approve loan applications, and determine prison sentences have significant errors and biases that are not due to programmer mistakes and biases, but to a misplaced belief in data-mining.
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The Mind’s Reality Is Consistent with Neuroscience
A neglected “dualist” theory offers some insightsNeurosurgeon Michael Egnor thinks that the explanation of the relationship of the mind to the brain that best fits today’s neuroscience is that certain powers, particularly the intellect and will, are not generated by matter but are immaterial. However, other properties of the mind, like perception, memory and imagination are physical, generated by brain matter.
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A Philosopher Explains Why Thinking Matter Is Impossible
He’s right but Captain Kirk tumbled to it before him. So did a medieval poetAccording to analytical philosopher Richard Johns, we cannot represent ourselves completely mathematically so we cannot generate fundamentally contradictory thoughts about ourselves. Some part of us lies beyond mathematics. An android would not be so lucky, as Captain Kirk realized in an early Star Trek episode.
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Did Consciousness Evolve?: A Darwinist Responds
Jerry Coyne argues that consciousness is a mere byproduct of useful traits that are naturally selected. But wait…The critical problem that consciousness poses for Darwinian evolution is that there is no survival advantage for subjective first-person existence over objective third-person existence.
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Are Divergent Series Really an “Invention of the Devil”?
The real villain in the piece is horrendously non-specific concepts of infinity. But that can be fixedIt turns out that hyperreal numbers (i.e., infinities that obey algebraic rules) resolve many of the paradoxes that previously plagued conceptions of divergent series. It is now possible to assign specific values to divergent series.
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Censorship? But Coronavirus Doesn’t Care!
Back when SARS was a threat, social media wasn’t the giant it is today. Censorship, secrecy, and detention are less effective tools of control nowCoronavirus provides a test. The Chinese Communist Party offers mainland Chinese people security and prosperity in exchange for the sacrifice of personal freedom. But when the government cannot uphold its end of the agreement—security—the people may become less tolerant of the human rights violations. And the age of information makes it much easier to discover them.
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Does the Information Society Need a Free Market?
The Gilder Fellows’ July Seminar will wrestle with why Millennials favor socialismMany Millennials yearn for socialism but, according to the Gilder Fellows scholars, socialism is—at best—irrelevant to the challenges of an information society.
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