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Abstract Chinese flag painted on digital sphere. Futuristic network cyberspace illustration background. View from space. Selective focus used.

China Aims at Global AI Dominance by 2030

China’s systematic use of AI for social surveillance and control should cause us to think carefully about what that means

A 2017 central government document laid out the country’s plan for global dominance in AI by 2030, asking all “people’s governments of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government, all State Council ministries, and all directly controlled institutions” to ”please carefully implement.“ (translation) To achieve that timeline, China has employed several operations against the United States including the Confucius Institutes (fronts for Chinese propaganda according to the FBI, 2020), the Thousand Talents Program (spying and intellectual-property theft, Bloomberg, 2019) and cyber theft. While many Confucius Institutes have been exposed by key members of the Senate and many are being terminated domestically as a result, Chinese-driven cyber theft is costing the U.S. economy more than $100 billion per Read More ›

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Composite image of digital illustration of pixelated 3d woman

At the Movies: Can AI Restore Blurred Images?

Working with pixels, we can do remarkable things—as long as we are not asking for magic

It’s an exciting scene in crime investigation movies. A critical image, like the one on the left below, is blurred by pixelization. The detective commands the technician, “Sharpen it!” and the technician pushes a key on a computer keyboard. The key activates an algorithm and, magically, the deblurred image on the right appears. That can’t be done in real life. An image cannot be sharpened using only the information in the image itself. This is proven by a mathy theorem called the data processing inequality. 1 The mutual information between an image and a corrupted blurred image cannot be increased by further processing. Period. That’s why the title of a recent news article from Duke University is misleading: “Artificial intelligence Read More ›

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rfid tags

What You Need to Know About The Tactile Web

It’s a user-directed integration of technology into life

Many people have heard the term RFID, “radio frequency identifier,” a technology pioneered in the 1980s for creating tracking chips that needn’t be powered to work. This technology has improved quite a bit over the years. The technology area in which RFID originated is called NFC, for “Near-Field Communication.” In themselves, NFC chips are small and unpowered, but they can receive power from nearby devices, thus enabling them to communicate. The amount of work that modern NFC chips can do is amazing. The NXP firm, for instance, manufactures chips that can do full-blown data encryption and signing. These chips are not only powerful, they are also very inexpensive. NFC tags are available as label stickers at prices as low as Read More ›

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Jay Richards and Steve Forbes Interview

Cryptocurrency a “High-Tech Cry for Help” Says Steve Forbes of Forbes Media

Jay Richards interviews Steve Forbes, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Media, regarding the future of cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies, and the implications of the technologies for global money, global security, and internet architecture. Read More ›
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side view of senior man in coma on bed in hospital

Is There Hope for People in a Persistent Vegetative State?

Yes! Modern neuroscience is shining a light on their minds

Today, many neuroscientists don’t even call it a persistent vegetative state. The new term is disorders of consciousness. One neuroscientist recounts, In the past 20 years, advances in neuroimaging techniques have allowed us to explore brain functions in these altered states of consciousness. One breakthrough study conducted at our lab, in collaboration with the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, involved 54 DoC patients. The researchers asked the patients to perform two mental-imagery tasks while they lay in a brain scanner. In the first, they were asked to imagine playing tennis; in the second, to imagine walking from room to room in their home – mental tasks that are associated with contrasting patterns of neural activity. Remarkably, five patients Read More ›

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Young man shaving

Nominalism: The Stubble Left by Ockham’s Razor

Ockham was a methodological minimalist, not a philosophical minimalist
Ockham did not say that complex metaphysical realities don’t exist. He said that we should trim our understanding of reality to the use of as few concepts as possible for reasons of efficiency, even at the cost of absolute precision. Ockham may thus be said to be a methodological minimalist. Read More ›
The concept of planet Earth similar to the COVID-19 virus
The concept of planet Earth similar to the COVID-19 virus

Twenty Years on, Aliens Still Cause Global Warming

Over the years, the Jurassic Park creator observed, science has drifted from its foundation as an objective search for truth toward political power games

In 2003, author and filmmaker Michael Crichton (1942–2008), best known for Jurassic Park, made a now-famous speech at Caltech, titled “Aliens Cause Global Warming.” The title was humorous but the content was serious. He was not addressing some strange theory of global warming; he was warning about the politicization of science. Crichton (left, in 2002, courtesy Jon Chase, Harvard CC 3.0), noted that, over the years, science has drifted away from its foundation as an objective search for truth and given itself over to political power games. The first time that he witnessed that was with the famous Drake Equation, used to turn SETI speculations about space aliens into a science. The Drake equation was a series of probabilities multiplied Read More ›

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HUD Futuristic Screen Design Element Virtual Reality Aerial View Escort Security Technology. UI Information Interface In Cyberspace Scanning Landscape Geometric Wireframe..

VR Was Invented by an Air Force Engineer

Real world concerns drove his inventions, long before Comic Con

In a recent Mind Matters podcast, “Thomas Furness and the invention of virtual reality,” Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviewed Thomas Furness, an engineer who wanted American fighter pilots to be able to see what was really happening around them in the air. It seemed that they needed virtual reality to do it. And that’s how the technology that powers so many computer games today got started. The transcript can be downloaded at the bottom of the page here. https://episodes.castos.com/mindmatters/Mind-Matters-085-Thomas-Furness.mp3 Here is is a partial transcript of highlights from the interview: Virtual reality was pioneered by Thomas Furness during his Air Force service in 1966 when he served as a Second Lieutenant at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Much Read More ›

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hombre joven hundido en fondo tipo minecraft

Philosopher: Sims Do Not Understand Simhood

Richard Johns explains how you can know for sure that you are not a sim

Recently, philosopher Richard Johns (left), whose work was profiled here at Mind Matters News in “A philosopher explains why thinking matter is impossible,” has now written a piece for Medium. In it, he explains why we cannot create a sim that is a conscious, rational being. He uses a dialogue between “Alice” and “The Programmer” to unpack the idea: The dialogue begins with Alice returning from school to find a strange little man in her apartment. He seemed not to notice her entering the room, and remained seated comfortably in Alice’s favourite armchair, reading her own copy of Nick Bostrom’s “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?”. “Who the hell are you?” Alice shrieked. “What are you doing in my Read More ›

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Blue glowing multiverse in space

Is Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Right re the Multiverse?

Sheldon Cooper insists that in no universe would he dance with Penny

A collection of universes is called a multiverse. If there are enough universes in a multiverse, can almost anything happen? No. Common models of the universe aren’t big enough. The argument that anything can happen in a multiverse is nicely presented in a 2011 scene in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory (2007–2019) involving consummate nerd Sheldon Cooper and Penny, the girl next door (here). Penny: Morning, Sheldon! Come dance with me! Sheldon: No. Penny: Why not? Sheldon: While I subscribe to the Many Worlds theory, which posits the existence of an infinite number of Sheldons in an infinite number of universes, I assure you that in none of them I am dancing. Penny: Are you fun in any of Read More ›

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walnut split on a white background

My Right Hemisphere Is An Atheist! No, Wait …

In reality, split-brain surgery does not split consciousness in any meaningful sense

The atheist neuroscientist who has made bizarre claims about the outcomes of split brain surgery appears not to know much about neurosurgery.

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driver uber car in black car in the street of new york

Why Are There No New Googles and Amazons?

The internet has matured, making many new internet-based companies comparatively low-tech

Today’s startups have targeted a much different set of technologies than did startups in past decades.

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Smart technologies in your smartphone, collection and analysis of big data

The Birds Aren’t Real. But Maybe the Spying Is.

A defense of our fundamental right to privacy

Technology frees us from drudgery but also enable surveillance that enslaves us. Then, far from computers becoming more like humans, we may become more like computers.

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Cute pair of sitting French Bulldog dogs dressed up with unicorn costume headbands with flowers

Why Do Today’s Tech Startups Disappoint Investors?

Only 14 of the 45 recent Unicorns showed increases larger than those of the Nasdaq generally

Companies we hear a lot about, like Zoom and Beyond Meat, are not profitable compared to an earlier generation of tech startups.

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St Francis Outpatient Center in Federal Way, Washington State

COVID-19: Atheism Went Viral As Well

Atheists are uniquely unsuited to accuse others of devaluing human life

Professor Steven Pinker’s quickly deleted tweet provides a window into anti-religious hate. In health and medicine, he is entirely mistaken. 

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Free-range red angus cattle on pasture, Argentina.

No Free Will Means No Justice

Materialist biologist Jerry Coyne doesn’t seem to understand what denying free will would mean for the criminal justice system

Without free will, no one is innocent. Who asks cattle on the way to the abattoir if they are guilty or innocent?

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abstract circle fractal background

Hulu’s Devs Series: Where They Get Determinism Wrong

Devs disposes of a key limitation of computers that can supposedly predict the future with psychobabble

Call me a nitpicker: As a computer engineer, I must say, computers cannot predict the future.

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Bright light at the end of the dark spooky coridor. Concept of near death experience

Neuroscience Can’t Dismiss Near Death Experiences

It’s sobering to note that neuroscience has utterly failed to explain how the brain and mind relate

Despite claims, NDEs are radically different from any mental experience caused by brain impairment.

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Initial public offering icon on dark background. IPO share investment concept. 3d rendering

Where Have All the Profitable Startups Gone?

We must distinguish between COVID-19's devastating impact and pre-existing problems that it is making worse

The most successful startups of today aren’t as profitable as those founded 20 to 50 years ago. Something is terribly wrong with the current startup system.

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medical statistics and graphic charts with stethoscope

Making Sense of the Numbers Behind COVID-19

Media and politicians put statistics before us to sway our opinions. But what do they really mean?

Numbers can frighten or enlighten. The secret is making them explain themselves. Here’s a quick primer.

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