Sewell killed himself at the urging of a speaking and texting chatbot. The next gen is nearly flawless human impersonation video bots. Protect your children.
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Earlier this year, University of Toronto psychiatrist Ralph Lewis wrote a two-part series at Psychology Today titled “The Strongest Neuroscience Arguments in the Free Will Debate” (here and here). He looked at Mitchell (yes) and Sapolsky (no), both of whom published serious books on the topic in 2023. And he concluded, For now, for practical purposes, given our current level of incomplete understanding of the complexities of the brain’s decision-making processes, and our inability to predict human behaviors in most situations, we might as well regard ourselves as having free will—or rather, degrees of freedom. We do know that our brain has highly evolved systems for self-control—even for those of us who struggle with this relatively more than others, and Read More ›
If materialism fails to account for the origin of the soul, then creationism—not as a fringe theory, but as a viable explanation—deserves serious consideration.
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Despite its neutrality claims, Wikipedia often refuses to use sources that may be the only ones providing accurate information on some sensitive topics.
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If technology in the next two decades is the kind of thing you need to know for your future, you can hear from people who are helping make it happen at COSM.
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Confirmation of post-death consciousness during trauma might seem a little thing. But in science persistent little discrepancies are often the ones that matter.
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Larry Sanger, one of the founders of Wikipedia, will be speaking at COSM, Friday, November 1, at 10:30 am. His topic?: The increasingly pressing matter of preserving our knowledge. He should know. Originally a co-founder of Wikipedia, he has become increasingly critical of its role as a go-to source. In 2021, he warned, “If only one version of the facts is allowed then that gives a huge incentive to wealthy and powerful people to seize control of things like Wikipedia in order to shore up their power,” But let’s go back a bit Sanger, who has a Phd in philosophy (2000), was approached by entrepreneur Jimmy Wales that year to come to work for him on a project that evolved Read More ›
Lichtman’s Thirteen Keys to the White House prediction model for the presidency shows some evidence of p-hacking, as does Helmut Norpoth’s Primary Model.
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Unless deepfake technology is outlawed wholesale, the collection of piecemeal laws and regulations aiming to fix this or that problem will grow without limit.
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The idea that plants can “feel” things, based on their complex reactions, may stem from a misunderstanding of categories of consciousness.
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The Woke, it turns out, are no more tolerant of atheists than they are of anyone else with divergent views. That may be what finally fells new atheism.
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Could it happen in the United States? Of course. It can happen anywhere where people are willing to ignore the demands of evidence in favor of private truth.
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But what is the origin of unique octopus intelligence? It’s almost as if the self-assured world of biology needed a shakeup.
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As radio host Mark Davis put it recently, “ultimately everything AI does is go in search of something that some human being said or wrote sometime.”
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Wish you had known about the smartphone before 2000 – instead of the Y2K scare? To hear what’s really next, get in on COSM’s special price till September 30.
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AB 2839 targets political speech, the most protected form of expression under the First Amendment. There are 7 meritorious challenges
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Split minds doesn’t make sense as a concept. To simultaneously pursue two abstract thought processes or moral choices is not a meaningful idea.
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The traditional explanation — that natural selection acting on random mutation (Darwinian evolution) explains it all — is becoming increasingly untenable.
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Pavel Durov’s arrest chilled social media bosses but elated those who think it is time for governments, worldwide, to exert more control over what we say.
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How can students be expected to read and study or engage in discussions when educators are competing with TikTok videos and Instagram in the classroom?
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