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STEM EDUCATION 1. Pursuing Nerd Quality Over Nerd Quantity
Reducing math and science to practice is what engineers do. Scientists didn’t put a man on the moon. Engineers did.
Has Science Shown That Consciousness Is Only an Illusion?
Using clever analogies, Philosopher Daniel Dennett argues that consciousness is all smoke and mirrors
Will the Free Market Help or Hurt Us in an AI-Empowered World?
We may need new institutions, such as insurance against job obsolescence
How Can Consciousness Be a Material Thing?
Maybe it can’t. But materialist philosophers face starkly limited choices in how to view consciousness
Facebook’s Secret Censorship Rules Expose a Key Problem
Most moderators are not skilled and have only a few seconds to decide on a post
Your Phone Knows Everything Now
And in a world where no data is anonymous, yours may be sold to the highest bidder
Research Showing That Fake News Easily Fools Us Collapses
A recent paper claiming that low-quality news (“fake news”) spreads as quickly on social media as accurate news has been retracted by its authors.
It’s 2019: Begin the AI Hype Cycle Again!
Media seemingly can’t help portraying today’s high-tech world as a remake of I, Robot (2004), starring you and me.
AI: Think About Ethics Before Trouble Arises
A machine learning specialist reflects on Micah 6:8 as a guide to developing ethics for the rapidly growing profession
Will artificial intelligence design artificial super-intelligence?
And then turn us all into super-geniuses, as some AI researchers hope? No, and here's why not
Can an Algorithm Be Racist?
No, the machine has no opinion. It processes vast tracts of data. And, as a result, the troubling hidden roots of some data are exposed
How Can Information Theory Help the Economy Grow?
New information is the true source of new wealth; everyone wins when we learn how to produce it more efficiently
In One Sense, Consciousness IS an Illusion…
We have no knowledge of the processes of our consciousness, only of the objects of its attention, whether they are physical, emotional, or abstract
How Can We Measure Meaningful Information?
Neither randomness nor order alone creates meaning. So how can we identify communications?
Is Salad Murder?
A Darwinian biologist wrestles with the significance of plant intelligenceIf plants can sense things and communicate with each other, even though they lack a mind or brain, should they have rights? In an age of sometimes violent animal rights activism, that’s not an idle question. Plant physiologist Ulrich Kutschera, author of Physiology of Plants. Sensible Vegetation in Action (January 2019, German), talked about it in a recent interview: This is a serious issue which is related to plant intelligence. In April 2009, the Swiss Parliament discussed the topic of “plant ethics” and proposed to attribute to plants a kind of “Würde”, which can be translated as “dignity” (3). As a consequence, some radical plant ethics-activists have distributed T-shirts and other propaganda material with the slogan “Salad is murder”. Despite Read More ›
Be Choosy About What You Automate!
Having automated many processes, I can assure you that that is the First Rule of Automation
Study Shows Eating Raisins Causes Plantar Warts
Sure. Because, if you torture a Big Data enough, it will confess to anything
How is Human Language Different from Animal Signals?
What do we need from language that we cannot get from signals alone?
Quantum Randomness Gives Nature Free Will
Whether or not quantum randomness explains how our brains work, it may help us create unbreakable encryption codesWhen I was boy, my father explained free will and predestination to me: I dig a fence post hole. · Did I create the hole because of my own free will? · Or was the hole already there and I simply removed the dirt? If true, the hole was predestined. The question cannot be answered by examining the evidence. In philosophy terms, it is “empirically unanswerable.” That is the sort of stuff that philosophers debate. Religious people might point to scripture to support one conclusion over the other.1 In physics, however, quantum randomness offers a definitive answer to the question of predestination vs. free will—for subatomic particles. In the world of classical physics (Isaac Newton’s physics), it can be argued Read More ›