Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

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Will Rogers

Scaling Up is Not Going to Make Large Language Models Intelligent

ChatGPT-5 misunderstood the jab in a simple Will Rogers joke five out of six times

Bigger data centers are not going to change the harsh reality that LLMs are prone to generating unreliable blather.

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Chat GPT Artificial Intelligence copy writing bot by Open AI. Robot for student homework, education.

Large Language Models: Inconsistent Because They’re Unintelligent

Here’s what happened when I tested popular LLMs on student exercise questions I have been using for over fifty years

Claims that an LLM is intelligent don’t square with the fact that it may answer a question one way and, a few seconds later, simply contradict itself.

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Facial recognition technology to monitor the population on busy street. Generative AI

The Real Threat AI Poses to Us Is Created by Widespread Abuse

In If Anyone Builds It, Yudkowsky and Soares are not really grappling with this problem

The authors really believe in AI doom. Soares has stopped contributing to a retirement plan. I show that the serious problem is NOT superintelligence.

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A close-up view of a human egg cell surrounded by sperm cells, illustrating fertilization.

How a Biologist Became a Casualty in the War on Reality

If evolutionary biology’s core belief is that everything human can be reduced to animal impulses, truth is merely a survival strategy. But nonsense proved more successful

Carole Hooven discovered that, where the sex binary nature of humans is concerned, the new elite at Harvard and The Lancet thrive on nonsense. But she can’t.

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60 40 Strategy Money Savings Investment Mix Ratio Stocks Bonds 3d Illustration

For a Sounder Approach to Investment: Deep-Six the 60/40 Rule

Sometimes, good decisions require more than blindly accepting advice from humans as well as computers!

The conventional belief that a sound investment portfolio should be 60% stocks and 40% bonds does not stand up to careful scrutiny.

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Portrait of smiling multinational people different religions stand together. National Religious Freedom Day. January 16. Holiday concept. Template for background, banner, card, poster and wallpaper

At Psych Mag: How Your Brain Allegedly Invented God…

Not THIS again, you say? Yes, this again. Straight out of the 1970s, as if the last fifty years of research never happened

One effect of the presumption of atheism in science is that all kinds of speculation can be grandfathered as reasonable scientific thinking.

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education laptop student teenager studying boy learning homework idea thinking dreaming student thoughtful looking education inspiration study young school

Natural Intelligence Creates Information; AI Processes It

Human intelligence creates new information through free, purposeful choices, while AI can only process/transform existing data according to predetermined rules

If intelligence essentially involves agency, artificial general intelligence (AGI) in the human sense is not attainable by computation alone.

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slipping over the edge. just a tiny bit more. falling down the ledge cliff

Researchers Ask: What Happens After a Near-Death Experience?

The experiences themselves tend to attract attention and study. But how do they really change lives?

NDEs do change lives but, according to a recent study, NDErs often require counseling and not many counselors are equipped to support them.

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Planets Galaxy Science Fiction Wallpaper Beauty Deep Space Cosmos Physical Cosmology Stock Photos.

French Authors Say Science Points to God; Scientists Listen

But, as materialism wanes and religion slowly revives, will many scientists find panpsychism more attractive?

Something has changed if the magic word “Evolution!” cannot be used to paper over vast improbabilities and silence dissenters in the way that it has for over a century.

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girl riding a bike and looks at her smartphone, danger

Glued to Our Phones. Our Troubling Addiction to Social Media

It's disconcerting to see people out for a nature walk — completely absorbed in the traffic on their phones

Social media addictions clearly cause harm among minors but the tech giants who profit by them won’t regulate themselves in any meaningful way.

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open eye in space

Michael Egnor: Atheism as a “Foreign Influence” on Science

On the Ex-Skeptic show, the neurosurgeon — an ex-skeptic himself — discusses his journey with Jana Harmon, who studies atheists who came to believe in God

Suggesting a trend, a new book which aims to dethrone materialism in science, has been selling well in Europe and coming out shortly in English.

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Kangaroo at Lucky Bay in the Cape Le Grand National Park

Humanists Cancel Steven Pinker’s Lecture Over Trans Issues

The Humanist Society of Australia pulled out of sponsoring his lecture because they linked him with a defense of the idea that humans are male or female

The episode is part of a much broader picture: When private truth beats public truth, ideology quickly overrules science.

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empty classic red chinese room

Philosopher of Mind and Language John Searle Has Died

His Chinese Room thought experiment, an argument for why computers can seem clever without having minds, was widely understood among the lay public

The Chinese Room thought experiment helped us see the nature of computation, as opposed to human thinking.

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A humanoid robot philosopher contemplating the nature of consciousness in a virtual reality chamber, abstract digital environment with neural networks and philosophical texts, Innovative style

Brain Surgeon Shows Why AI Can Never Become Human

Spoiler alert: AI requires physical hardware; the mind does not

AI can never be more than a machine; the human mind soars far above any machine model. Be nice to your robot. But don’t think she is human.

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Drowning in debt as bank crises loom over an ocean of currency beneath stormy skies

COSM 2025: Publisher Steve Forbes’ Take On National Debt Crisis

He will be one of the participants in a panel discussion on That Unpleasant Subject at COSM 2025 in Scottsdale, Arizona, in November this year

Two other panelists are Chapman University’s Mark Skousen and John Tamny, author of The Deficit Delusion (2025). George Gilder will moderate.

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Alien extra-terrestrial life forms, micro-organisms, floating in cosmic space, outer space

In What Sense Is Origin of Life From Space a Scientific Question?

We can never know for sure what happened in the remote past. But future discoveries could, in principle, either strengthen or confirm the life from space claim.

One thing emerges clearly from the life from space approach: Intelligent design is a viable hypothesis for the origin of life.

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Small green sprout breaking through cracked concrete in a neutral urban setting, representing resilience, hope, determination, and new beginnings against harsh adversity and environmental contrast.

News Roundup: This Certainly Looks Like a Religious Revival…

The Barna Report says that, for the first time in decades, younger adult s— Gen Z and Millennials — are now the most regular churchgoers. There have been a number of unexpected conversions to Christianity in recent years

The growth in interest in the Bible is significant because studying the Bible is work and its message is about costly commitment.

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DNA strands in endless space

In What Sense Is Origin of Life a Scientific Question?

Recently, a friend recommended a paper on theories of the origin of life. (Yet another one?) But this one proved most interesting…

We’re allowed to consider that intelligent design may have got life going provided we locate it somewhere between Star Wars and Star Trek.

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futuristic cityscape with blockchain and ai data networks connecting buildings

If China Wins the Blockchain Derby, a Global Chill Will Follow

COSM 2025: While the West fusses about cryptocurrencies, China aims at building a blockchain to control the global internet. And few pay attention…

DoD Chief Strategy Officer Jinyoung Englund will be speaking on what control by China would mean and whether the United States can catch up.

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Bearded businessman in a suit looking surprised

A Realistic Direction for Artificial General Intelligence Today

Based on GPT5's performance to date, it would make a superb substitute for a mansplainer I know of — call him Brock

The fundamental problem remains; models like GPT-5 are hobbled by their inherent inability to relate the text they input and output to the real world.

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