Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

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crystal-ball-with-dollar-signs-inside-symbolizing-financial-1055590086-stockpack-adobestock
Crystal ball with dollar signs inside, symbolizing financial forecasting of value and price trends

COSM 2026: What Does the Future Hold for Your Paycheck?

Economics and investment analyst David Bahnsen will be looking at where the US economy is headed after the midterm elections

Bahnsen sees attacks on capitalism as the denigration of hopes and dreams, of job opportunities and growth.

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Consummate mastery of magician

Magicians Do the Tricks. Minds Create the Magic

A Las Vegas close-up magician digs into creativity, human perception, and why no two people experience the same wonder

The magician can show you something extraordinary. But only your mind can decide what you’ve seen, what it means, and whether it rises to Wow!

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transhuman-woman-with-alien-blue-skin-and-technological-enha-1284325099-stockpack-adobestock
transhuman woman with alien blue skin and technological enhancements, glowing eyes and holographic data helmet

Longtermism: The Rise and Near Collapse of a Valley Philosophy

Valley philosophies may be more influential than we think, especially if we do not even know about them

Longtermism — making decisions based on assumptions about a far distant future where everything might be different — makes no sense.

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A worker in safety gear reviews machinery data on monitors in a mining control room

Don’t Get Trapped in a Data Mine

It’s a common pitfall. Even Google played with the idea that a coincidental relationship between baseball and a full moon might be meaningful

People are often superstitious—baseball players are among the worst for this—and that causes us to imagine statistical relationships.

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a-man-on-a-romantic-date-with-a-robot-girlfriend-chatbot-rom-693411163-stockpack-adobestock
A man on a romantic date with a robot, girlfriend chatbot, romance and technology

Seeing Chatbots as People Is Not New. Some See Cars That Way

It's actually a natural tendency but it certainly comes with risks

Anthropomorphism has nothing to do with electronics as such. But there are new perils.

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filling-the-screen-with-binary-code-symbolizing-the-onset-of-682484828-stockpack-adobestock
filling the screen with binary code, symbolizing the onset of a cyberattack, an abstract vision of digital crimes, a futuristic illustration

Machines “Chose” to Defeat Hugging Face Security, Steal its Data

Just the Facts: 1,200 swarming AIs don’t need consciousness to wreak havoc – just network connectivity and goals

Not as a computer guy but as a litigation lawyer, I’m looking at the Hugging Face intrusion incident in July 2026.

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Vintage brass scales of justice sit on a wooden desk with a sign stating every fact deserves attention, representing fair evaluation and legal integrity within the professional law office

Scholars’ Mag Offers Sympathetic Review of Non-Materialist Books

The books are Antony Flew’s There is a God and Michael Egnor’s The Immortal Mind. Unusually for these times, NAS’s mag listens to both sides

Materialists cannot apply common standards for assessing evidence because they must refute all evidence of non-materialism. That makes them hard to argue with.

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Outdoor view of US Capitol in Washington DC, USA

AI Goes to Washington — and Everyone Else Piles In Too

It’s hard to survey the current AI doom freakout without noticing that the U.S. mid-terms are approaching and political allegiances in the AI community are in flux

So let’s take a deep breath and look at what we might learn from the range of opinion about what the current call for “pacing” or a “pause” means: At Future Perfect’s newsletter, editor Maria Bolotnikova concisely sums up the newsmaking events: In the spring, Anthropic announced that AI was beginning to speed up the work of building better AIs, raising fears of “recursive self-improvement,” where the machines can build their own, more powerful successors much faster than humans can. By July, a swarm of OpenAI agents, of their own volition, broke out of their controlled environment and hacked into Hugging Face, a major AI platform; they collaborated, divvied up work, and even left notes for one another. Last week, AI researcher Jacob Coxon Read More ›

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classic statue Socrates

My Brand-New Tech Idea Turned Out To Be … Socrates!

This experience was a useful reminder that sometimes what looks like the frontier of science and technology is just another path into philosophy

The question of how to recognize a discovery without any criterion for recognition turned out to be Meno’s Paradox, from Plato’s dialogues.

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Cosmic Geometry: A Celestial Blueprint

Top Mathematicians Issue Letter Warning About a Rush to AI

Fields Medalists are concerned that a rush to produce answers could come at the expense of careful explanation and shared understanding

AI can solve a problem without understanding the proofs so the question arises, was anything learned that can be passed on?

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Artificial General Intelligence concept visualized with a human hand presenting a glowing brain icon symbolizing advanced AI

Artificial General Intelligence? No, We’re Not There Yet

A few days ago, I retested GPT5.6 Luna with three prompts it had struggled with in the past

The intelligence, understanding, and logical reasoning of ChatGPT and other LLMs continue to be limited by their inability to connect words to the real world.

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Close-up of computer screen displaying code at night.

What Exactly Was AI’s Breakthrough in Hard Math?

Claude translated an already proven theorem into a detailed computer-related derivation, which is much more difficult than, say, translating it into Cantonese

Meanwhile, some are asking if Claude’s Navier–Stokes proof really originated with a researcher and a math prof using the system.

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composers-block-a-musician-sits-dejected-amidst-a-chaotic-sy-916159643-stockpack-adobestock
Composer's Block: A musician sits dejected amidst a chaotic symphony of instruments and sheet music, grappling with creative burnout.

Who Owns Your Mind’s Creative Work? Who Owned Dolly Parton’s?

The unsettling logic driving the movement to abolish copyright — and the counterargument rooted in the mind itself

Weddings, funerals, breakups at 2 a.m. — one song always shows up: “I Will Always Love You.” Whitney Houston sent it into the stratosphere. Lorelai Gilmore poured it out on Gilmore Girls. Yet it arose out of Dolly Parton’s soul in 1974, pure emotion turned into melody, lyrics, and musical history. So it’s Dolly’s song, right? It’s hers, she wrote it, she can license it, she can get paid for it. Right? Not according to attorney Stephan Kinsella. His 2025 article, “The Problem with Intellectual Property,” argues that Dolly shouldn’t have any rights to her own song. By that logic, she owns the paperclip holding her sheet music more than she owns the song itself. The movement to abolish your Read More ›

compassionate-female-doctor-in-her-mid-forties-adorned-in-a-791560552-stockpack-adobestock
compassionate female doctor in her mid-forties, adorned in a pristine white lab coat, holding a sleek digital tablet with a caring smile gracing her lips

Monday Microsofty 95: I Told You Her Name But …

You weren't listening. Getting to the core of a problem doesn’t need to involve math. Here’s one that doesn’t

To answer last Monday’s tree planting dilemma, look for shapes other than squares.

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Teenager using a smartphone lying in bed late at night, playing games, watching videos online, and scrolling the screen. Children's screen addiction. Screen Addiction in Youth

Meta to Pay Billions to Several States

People like Jonathan Haidt have been warning the public of social media's dangerous algorithmic power over young people for years

29 states sued Meta, alleging that its platforms were designed to be addictive and users were misled about the risks.

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Symbol of scales

Trends: Eminent Journal Nature Gets Community-Noted (!) at X

The critics of its Jason Arday editorial are the very people who would once have gone to bat for Nature and similar journals

Community notes are usually the fate of people who pass on debunked or fake news. But Nature took that risk with its surprising approach to the Jason Arday tragedy/scandal.

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Concrete blocks of modern hi raising residential apartments in China, property market and overpopulation concept

What Can We Learn From the Chinese Housing Bubble?

Anyone can use our theory, which has been confirmed by events in foreign real estate markets, when determining whether to buy a home

Bubbles are created by speculators who don’t care about an asset’s income because they expect the price to keep rising. For most buyers, income is what counts.

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reforestation set of young trees trunks in pots

Monday Microsofty 94:  A Tree Planting Dilemma

This week's puzzle sounds simple but it involves thinking in terms other than squares

The answer to last week’s “count the squares” puzzle can be turned into a formula that can be applied to any number of dimensions.

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