From time to time, and surprisingly in some rather serious media sources, we hear about the technological singularity, the fast-approaching (so we’re told) point where artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence, and quite often right alongside we have speculations about the “machines taking over.” As over-dramatic as that sounds, some quite intelligent humans have […]
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February 27th, 2015 | Tags: artificial intelligence, cognitive function, consciousness, electronic brains, Moore's Law, neuroscience, self-aware, technological singularity | Category: Critical Thinking, Reference, Science & Evolution |
 Leave a commentAs a species, we like to occasionally speculate on extra-terrestrial life – what it would be like, how prevalent it is, what we could learn from it, and so on. More than speculate, really, because we’re actively looking for it (or at least some of us are,) and have done some interesting theoretical science […] January 29th, 2015 | Tags: aliens, but they can have Manhattan for 24 bucks, ego, evolved behavior, extraterrestrial life, foresight, reaction versus planning, sustainability | Category: Critical Thinking, Science & Evolution |
Leave a commentI’m not surprising anyone when I say humans are a social species, both from the biological definition and from our own self-description. But it goes further than that – we’re socially-influenced and socially-dependent, meaning we make a really stunning number of our decisions based on how we feel others will respond to them, often […] January 13th, 2015 | Tags: approval, conformity, evolved behavior, groupthink, independence, mass hysteria, mob mentality, popularity, religious violence, social pressure | Category: Critical Thinking, Rants, Science & Evolution |
Leave a comment[Repost of original posted January 4, 2015, destroyed by hosting failure.] This one’s just for fun, mostly, but hopefully will provide a bit of perspective as well. Arthur C. Clarke once offered his three predictions for the future, which came to be known as Clarke’s Three Laws, and the third is fairly frequently quoted […] January 7th, 2015 | Tags: Arthur C. Clarke, low opinions, magic, sufficiently advanced technology, Third Law | Category: Critical Thinking, Science & Evolution |
Leave a commentI’m hoping everyone is enjoying themselves, not getting unduly stressed, and eating in a most unhealthy yet satisfying way – if not, let me know, because we have more cookies here this year than we can manage… I’m not much for blogging about personal details, but I do have to enthuse a little about […] This was originally intended to be part of the previous chapter, but it probably deserves its own post, plus that last one was getting kind of long. I suspect most people would classify me as an animal lover, or at least leaning heavily in that direction. And on occasion, I have run into a […] I stumbled across an article recently that told of a potential new psychiatric disorder, orthorexia nervosa, an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. Or to put it in more blunt (Al-like) terms, being too fucking neurotic over what one eats. Now, I’m among the first to believe the psychiatric professions can be over-exuberant in describing […] Among the many reasons why my photography, and thus my posting, has slowed down so much is the temperature, which like most of the rest of the country has dropped significantly. The triops tank on the porch, which was no longer showing any activity anyway, had formed several thin sheets of exploratory ice crystals […] I had a student yesterday (which I’ll talk about more in a later post,) which meant that I wasn’t glued to my computer watching what was going in with Philae. Philae, as you no doubt recall from an earlier post, is the lander portion of the Rosetta spacecraft, itself riding shotgun with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. […] Every once in a while, I start thinking about this topic again, and so I finally sat down to do some research and post about it – be warned, this is a long one. And so far, it seems that less research has been done on the topic than I suspected. I’m talking about […] |
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Current good cause:   No Facebook, no Twitter, no social fads of any kind. Link as you wish, just don't expect me to participate, okay? |
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