What, Why & How do we Know ?
I posted a holding post last month when Sean Parker – founding president of Facebook – publicised his concerns at the monster they had created and linked to a few other sources I’d gathered. I see in the last couple of days Chamath Palihapitiya a former VP of Facebook added fuel to that same fire. I’ve said … Continue reading “Social Media “Ripping Society Apart””
Origin is the latest from Dan Brown. [Many spoilers and rough notes.] [This below is a doubtful piece of writing – a much better review here in “Pre and Post-Humanism”.] ===== This review focusses on the “technical” content, with anything on the plot and style or on my reading of it being relegated to a … Continue reading “Origin Where We’re Headed”
I’m reading Kevin Laland’s “Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony – How culture made the human mind“. There’s two reasons I’m reading it but firstly, the one reason I’m posting now before I’m very far into it. Since all readings and reviews are prejudiced by prior understanding and expectations, I prefer to be honest up front what those … Continue reading “Kevin Laland’s Unfinished Darwinian Business”
The Conversation here on the place of understanding in AI – effectively defining AI as not involving understanding. That is Intelligence Without Understanding. Not intelligence in my book, mere competence in Dennett terms, but here Sandis and Harper are suggesting there would be too many snags if “AI” did have understanding, that it would be … Continue reading “AI Hype – Pale Imitation of Intelligence in Prospect.”
There was a time when I followed John Brockman’s Edge regularly, it was a great way to pick up relationships between living thinkers you already knew and admired and others you didn’t, from across unlimited intellectual fields. The great thing about the annual Edge Question is that apart from the open question, there is no … Continue reading “Hidden Concepts – Edge 2017 – Let’s play Connections instead of Bulldog”
Here (#3) below is the David Hamill piece from the Free Thought Prophet blog that triggered the two … previous (#1) … posts (#2) as well as a lot of comments and tweets. Most of my earlier thoughts concerned the Jerry Coyne post given as a reference and the linked Dan Dennett Big Think video. … Continue reading “Dennett and the “Little People” #3″
Recasting the arguments from the previous post, it’s comments – and a twitter thread of disagreements. How this started: Public tweet – FTP – recommending “Brother Hamill’s great blog”. Public response – Me – a two word response “[great, but] wrong, though”. All arguments / debates start with a gap or a point of contention. … Continue reading “Dennett and the “Little People” – Round#2″
I came across a twitter thread of Free Thought Prophet (FTP, otherwise anon) recommending a blog post by John Hamill (Atheist Ireland National Committee) about Dennett’s position on free-will. FTP I know as a knockabout humorous commentator in the space occupied by the four horsemen. As a rationalist, atheist, humanist myself, “free-thought” is the traditional tag … Continue reading “Dennett and the “Little People””