Sam Harris speaks with Thomas Metzinger about the scientific and experiential understanding of consciousness. Jump to 26:32 for the consciousness discussion proper — the first 26 minutes are for the most part a well-trodden exercise in mutual virtue-signalling. Discussion of the phenomenology of intuition . . . now that is interesting. Artificial intelligenceconsciousnessmeditationneurosciencephilosophy mindphilosophy of…
This published in Progress in Artificial Intelligence, March 2017, Volume 6, Issue 1, pp. 79–86 but available as a galley here. Artificial intelligenceFrancis HeylighenSelf-organizationstigmergic cognitionStigmergySwarm behavior
This study from a few years back confirms what genuine music lovers already know to be the general trend in the homogenization of music. Full report in Scientific Reports 2, Article number: 521 (2012). Check out Thoughty2’s popular and rightfully scathing overview below. It was reassuring though to see some under 35s at a recent Pokey LaFarge show, Pokey himself…
An old philosophical chestnut discussed in The Atlantic. Words and concepts used by a brain in a vat can’t be meaningfully applied to real objects outside of the brain’s experience, because the ability to have causal interaction with the specific things that words name is inherently how such words acquire meaning, Putnam argued. Artificial intelligenceCognitive…
Not Herzog’s best but certainly, as one would still expect, an insightful and elegant take highlighting some of the most disturbing and techno-ebullient aspects of this technology, a technology that surely marks the cultural tipping point, ushering in the global shit storm that we are now in. The section on AI is fascinating: Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? You know we…
Artificial intelligenceBart SelmanCognitive scienceDavid ChalmersDemis HassabisElon MuskJaan TallinnneuroscienceNick BostromRay Kurzweilsam harrisStuart Russell
Publisher’s blurb: “How is it that thoroughly physical material beings such as ourselves can think, dream, feel, create and understand ideas, theories and concepts? How does mere matter give rise to all these non-material mental states, including consciousness itself? An answer to this central question of our existence is emerging at the busy intersection of…
