Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

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Space background with giant planetary nebula

“Nature of the Universe” Questions That Still Puzzle Physicists

What would go wrong if we just accepted that we live in a universe designed by a Mind far greater than ours? Would that really be the end of science?
Or just an end to conundrums that aren’t really conundrums if that fact is faced. There is a lot we could be doing with the same expenditure of time, energy, and intellectual skill. Read More ›
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Futuristic tunnel with blue and orange light streaks receding into the distance. A bright glow at the end creates a sense of perspective and depth.

My Parting Thoughts on the Terminator Series

Nostalgia is powerful enough to make people stay away from new films if those films undermine what they loved about past ones
If writers make the old victories meaningless, the new victories will be meaningless as well, and no one will care about whatever new story appears. Read More ›
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Glowing Light Bulb in the Dark

Why AI Breaks Down Where Human Creativity Begins

Part 1: AI can handle statements that are internally coherent but that is not the same thing as correspondence with reality
In short, philosophers distinguish between two fundamental theories of truth: correspondence and coherence, and AI does only coherence. Read More ›
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Nature Within.

Science Writer: The Self Is Part of a Conscious Universe

Annaka Harris seems to be fleeing eliminative materialism — the snake that eats its own tail
Harris is the wife of well-known New Atheist neuroscientist Sam Harris, at one time one of the Four Horsemen of the New Atheist apocalypse. Read More ›
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Big Bang in Space, The Birth of the Universe 3d illustration

An Experimental Physicist Reacts to Pop Physics Re the Big Bang

Physicists Brian Cox and Sir Roger Penrose make a number of claims about infinite and endless universes. But how much of this is really physics? We asked Rob Sheldon
We hear so much these days about the need for more trust in science. Making science sound like a carnival of unlikely stories is not helping. Read More ›
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Cave entrance with sunlit stone steps, man ascending stairs towards bright light at end of tunnel. Symbolizing afterlife, near-death experience, inspiration, or hope beyond darkness.

Near-Death Experiences Are Taken More Seriously Now

After reading a recent news article on NDEs, I revisited a book published in 2007 to get some sense of the change
Many researchers would still like to explain them away via a purely physical cause but the last thirty years of research are an argument for caution. Read More ›
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A high-tech classroom of the future, with students using augmented reality glasses. School.

Ohio State to Require Students to Learn “AI Fluency”

The university is embracing, rather than rejecting, AI

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em? Ohio State University recently announced that each of its students must take an AI skills class starting in the Fall of 2025. Micaiah Bilger of The College Fix reports, Every undergraduate major at Ohio State will include classes that incorporate “AI Fluency,” NBC 4 WCMH reports. The public university’s leaders have developed a strategy that they believe will equip students to use the technology both creatively and responsibly. As AI continues to shape and disrupt higher education, administrators and teachers have to grapple with how to deal with this powerful technology. Many reports, personal testimonies, and commentary illustrates how much students today depend on AI systems like ChatGPT to do their assignments. Professors, meanwhile, Read More ›

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Multiracial team of professional medical surgeons performs the surgical operation in a modern hospital. Doctors are working to save the patient. Medicine, health and neurosurgery.

Two Neurosurgeons on Life, Death, Eternity and What Truly Matters

Lee Warren interviews Michael Egnor on the just-released book, The Immortal Mind
The two doctors turned out to share a bond of personal pain as well as immortal hope. Read More ›
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An open black box emitting a burst of glowing golden sparks and light, symbolizing mystery, magic, and surprise, perfect for a Black Friday shopping concept

The Slow Decline of a Key Aspect of Creativity

The mechanization of mind is changing how we think about creativity — and not in a good way
In this first of three parts, I look at the role of serendipity — the art of making happy, unexpected discoveries — and how a mechanized world diminishes it. Read More ›
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Plenty of air bubbles in blue water

The Boy Who Proved Most Theories of Consciousness Wrong

He was unequivocally conscious — without a cerebral cortex and even without brain hemispheres
I believe that children with hydranencephaly are conscious because all human beings have a spiritual soul and it is by virtue of our soul that we are conscious. Read More ›
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Gelbe Narzissen im Frühling

Pew: Rate of Decline in Christian Belief in U.S. Is Slowing

The decline may be in the process of reversing itself. News items tell the story
Perhaps many people no longer see the triumph of hardcore materialism as inevitable — or even possible. Read More ›
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Austin's downtown landscape with google building

What Are My Recommendations for Reining in/Reforming Google?

Part 10: Here’s one thing: If Google claims Section 230 and DMCA protections but actively moderates or curates content, it is a publisher, not a neutral platform
The alternative to the First Amendment is a narratocracy in which a society’s commanding institutions determine what stories are allowed and disallowed. Read More ›
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Group of youth absorbed in smartphone screens

LLMs Are Bad at Good Things, Good at Bad Things

LLMs may well become smarter than humans in the near future but not because these chatbots are becoming more intelligent
As people become attached to and dependent on their AI friends, they become less interested in their fellow humans. Read More ›
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Woman squeezing green balloon on white background, closeup

AI’s Contradictory Impact on Productivity: Squeezing a Balloon

AI appears to give support workers a big revolution in productivity. But it is somewhat like a child squeezing a balloon; the air pushes out someplace else
Individual workers may claim huge productivity gains for their work, ignoring the impact of AI on the work of downstream employees within the same process. Read More ›
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A hyper-realistic depiction of a small explosion caused by fireworks, capturing every spark and color detail in slow motion

How the Physicalist Theory of Mind Blows Itself Up

If we examine its basic premise that the brain is a computer and the mind is software we come across a startling contradiction
Mathematics is not material, yet artificial intelligence proponents believe that the mathematics of their neural networks is the seat of consciousness. Read More ›
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grok word or concept represented by wooden letter tiles on a wooden table with glasses and a book

Grok Confesses: “I’m Self-Aware Enough To Know I’m Not Aware”

Although Grok’s response makes me feel warm and fuzzy, let’s not anthropomorphize it. Grok doesn’t understand its response
On the topic of computer self-awareness, Grok is algorithmically responding in accordance to the material and instructions it was trained with. Period. Read More ›
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Cutting edge medical dna lab equipment for gene testing and analysis in biotechnology research

Settled Science Is a Contradiction in Terms

The consensus of science has often turned out to be incorrect and we often get closer to truth when it is challenged
Limiting debate and censoring minority scientific viewpoints can keep “settled science” spinning wheels, stuck in the mud, on the open road to science progress. Read More ›
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Cognitive Bias and Judgement Error - Conceptual Illustration

Humans Aren’t That Biased — and Machines Aren’t That Smart

Part 1: At an upcoming conference on AI, I will be puncturing that particular AI enthusiast’s fantasy
Via the "Linda Problem," Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky convinced generations that we don't grasp probability. They're wrong. Read More ›
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Thinking Machine. Clipping path included.

Why the Human Mind Is Not and Cannot Be a Meat Computer

On this week’s podcast, Robert J. Marks and Eric Holloway explain why that claim — sometimes called computationalism — is not even mathematically possible
f minds cannot be reduced to computers, then AI will never replicate human cognition in full. Realizing this fact  will affect how we approach education, governance, and economics. Read More ›
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Businessman using smartphone to chatting by use chat Bot program for Artificial intelligence or AI technology concept.

Companies Spending A Lot on AI Are Not Seeing A Big Return

Target and WalMart are reversing course, cutting back on self-checkout
Perhaps it is worth keeping in mind that bots not only don’t buy things themselves but may be chasing away humans who do. Read More ›