The forest scene itself is just shy of three minutes, and the actors both do a wonderful job selling the scene, but in the end, I couldn’t buy it.
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He’s going to pull on your heartstrings to obfuscate from that all-important question: what is the definition of “real,” or to put it more directly, is endowed value real?
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The idea of picking a robot child to replace a real son is very disturbing, but disturbing or not, the parents aren’t allowed to have another child to begin with.
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When the scientist proposes creating a robot child who can love, the audience is bound to be asking the obvious question: Is that possible?
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Over the years, multiple explanations for the nature of reality have been proposed. Physicalists will claim that the only things that exist are physical matter. However, others in the dualist camp maintain that there are non-physical aspects of reality, such as immaterial concepts like numbers, logic, or a person’s mental state. Finally, we have idealists, who hold that the fundamental Read More ›
Does quantum mechanics, properly understood, point to the fundamentality of mind in the universe? In this episode, Michael Egnor concludes a conversation with philosopher of physics Bruce Gordon about the relationship between idealism and quantum mechanics. Gordon argues that quantum mechanics points to mind as the fundamental unit of the universe, as it is irreducibly probabilistic and exhibits non-local phenomena. He Read More ›
If mathematical objects are immaterial, does that mean aspects of human beings are too? On this episode, host Pat Flynn concludes his three-part discussion with Dr. Selmer Bringsjord about his provocative chapter in the recent volume Minding the Brain titled “Mathematical Objects are Non-Physical, so we are too.” They summarize the argument that formal thinking is non-physical and extend this reasoning to Read More ›
Things that are wholly determined by the laws of physics and chemistry aren’t truth claims. They’re just spilled ink.
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Cal Newport ascended into the limelight upon his viral Ted Talk in which he called people to ditch social media. In this video from last year, Newport rehashes some of the main benefits of not having social media. Boredom is on the list, interestingly; Newport notes that most people no longer have moments of boredom, and as a consequence, don’t have any space in their lives to reflect, think, and work through their emotions. Andrew McDiarmid, a contributor at Mind Matters, has written on this in the past. He notes, Mind wandering, or stream of consciousness thought, gives us several mental gains, including the ability to consider obstacles to future goals, generate novel, creative thoughts, and place our experiences in meaningful Read More ›
If we can uncover the smallest quantum particles in nature, will we have uncovered the fundamental secrets of reality? A longstanding philosophical tradition in the sciences claims “yes.” Uncovering the mystery of the world lies in the ability to interrogate the smallest of the small. But is that the right way to approach it? What special status does the tiny have over the large? A paper at IAI News by London philosopher Peter West argues that reality can’t in fact be elucidated simply by observing quantum mechanics. He talks in some length about the 17th century text Micrographia by Robert Hooke, which features various images of insects and other organisms under the microscope. West notes that Hooke set the stage, Read More ›
Contemporary Western culture is disillusioned. Under the mainstream narrative of materialism, moderns struggle to connect their lives with a transcendent meaning beyond the self. In the United States, we enjoy a level of privilege and wealth foreign to the majority of prior generations, and yet we see “deaths of despair,” frightening rates of anxiety and depression, and heightened political tensions. None of this is news to you, I’m guessing. I’ve personally written a variation of that paragraph in other articles a number of times. The question behind our collective disillusionment is, frankly, why? Why do we struggle to make something of our lives? Why do we enjoy technological and scientific progress but lack the moral and cultural means to enjoy Read More ›
With the proliferation of AI text and images, the issue of deepfakes is of deepening concern. The better AI gets at refashioning reality, will the already murky waters of the Internet become too surreal to navigate? Even real videos, when divorced from their proper context, can be deeply misleading. When entire clips are artificially contrived, then, it seems like the line between fact and fiction dissolves entirely. Some folks are already worried. Victor Tangermann writes at Futurism, [Given] recent developments, the situation is likely to get worse before it can get better. AI tools are making it easier to generate deepfakes every year. These days, an AI can be trained on a relatively small stockpile of audiovisual data to convincingly Read More ›
The world of popular art (TV, movies, etc.) has a problem. I would even go as far as to label it a crisis. The problem is that the art world is becoming increasingly derivative. There are some points where it is obviously derivative—every movie is a remake, and every TV show is a reboot. We are getting the same stories regurgitated instead of novelty. However, there are also more subtle ways that this is happening. TV comedies work largely by including inside jokes from previous TV shows. One of the most popular writers of the 20th century was Louis L’Amour. What I think made L’Amour’s stories so great is that he could draw from a vast amount of personal experience. He could write about a lot Read More ›
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other optimistic futurists think the metaverse is our collective future. We will exist in virtual nonexistence. We will eat, shop, worship, communicate, and marry in the metaverse. This is where progress is taking us. So, we’d best go along for the ride if we don’t want to get left behind. But “living” in a metaverse may be much more complicated than you might think. The question of identity, and who has the power to distribute identities at will, haunts the metaverse project, and there doesn’t seem to be an easy solution. In September, a Russian deepfake company called “Deepcake” (the name strangely makes me hungry for dessert) pasted the face of Bruce Willis on a Read More ›
To get the right answer to the question of whether artificial intelligence will ever become capable of replacing man we must get the ontology, epistemology, and metrology right. Ontology seeks to understand the essential nature of things and the relationships between different things. Epistemology looks at what we can know and how accurately we can know what is knowable. Finally, metrology explores how we make measurements and comparisons. To get the right answer we must measure the right things (ontology), select what we will measure (epistemology), and determine how we make our measurements and comparisons with accuracy, precision, and repeatability (metrology). Mistakes in any of these areas will lead to a bad outcome. A common mistake is to measure what Read More ›
In Part 1, we looked at the many dimensions to our thinking. Now, we ask, What then is man? Is man simply a complex biological machine that is fully explained by analyzing it in the four dimensions of space and time? Is the brain just a biological computer fully contained in four dimensions? Most of the world’s religions hold that man exists beyond the mere physical. Man has a soul, a spirit; these exist outside of the physical universe. There are characteristics, attributes, and values that are very real and have great impact, but which defy direct observation or quantification. String theory, an active research area in modern physics, requires 10 or 11 dimensions to fully explain what we see Read More ›
The title question has been around for quite some time. In this discussion, I would like to take an ontological look at this question. What is the essential nature of being a person? To fully replace humans, what must AI machines become capable of? IF we want to consider the possibility of making humans obsolete, we need to know what is the essence of humanity? What is the ontological nature of a person? What characteristics define being a person? Even before we can address the essential nature of a person, we must identify the essential nature of the universe in which that person exists. What is the universe? How many dimensions does it have? Can the universe, or in it Read More ›
This coming August will mark the beginning of a battle that I began with three different forms of cancer that I continue to this day to be fighting. I don’t know how long I have… When is it okay to disagree with what the majority of experts in a field believe? … I’m going to go with the majority of experts, unless something happens. If there are two conditions present, you are justified in going against the vast majority of experts. Number 1: If the majority opinion is based on non-rational factors If there is a small, educated rebel group who publish in peer-reviewed journals and high quality books who have provided an alternative paradigm. (July 9, 2018) Remember Moreland’s Read More ›