http://www.complexitystudies.org metaphysics, philosophy, and a vision of the future Sun, 22 Mar 2009 17:56:56 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Both strong artificial intelligence (here in the sense of sentient/conscious AI) and faster than light travel (FTL) are dreams of science fiction and (some parts of) humanity, but what is the difference between the two? Proposing FTL today is pretty much a lost cause (although there are interesting ideas such as ... http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/complexitystudies/~3/pVchpIyxLTk/ http://www.complexitystudies.org/2008/08/16/strong-ai-and-ftl/ There was a time of blood, and war, of thick brow and clenched jaw, snarling faces baring sharp teeth. It is the way of ape. This way is trodden yet, but when we happen upon it, we do not dwell but hasten our pace. There was a time of loyalty and honour, dependable men and pompous ceremonies; solemn faces ... http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/complexitystudies/~3/7L7Qy7m1G30/ http://www.complexitystudies.org/2008/07/23/the-way-of-mind-a-poem/ Last Friday I decided I need to give my site a new theme - doing that in Wordpress usually takes one minute - copying the theme to your webhost directory and activating it. I hadn't planned to do more. What followed was one week consisting of a flurry of work (and ... http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/complexitystudies/~3/gPstrw1H3Ok/ http://www.complexitystudies.org/2008/07/18/site-redesign/ Since its inception, the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics has been used to justify mysterianism, subjectivism, postmodernism, relativism, the preferred status of consciousness and human beings in the universe, a realm of intuition outside of logic and science, and other intellectual errors too many to number. It seems that people ... http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/complexitystudies/~3/GMimqCbSjI4/ http://www.complexitystudies.org/2008/07/04/the-end-of-copenhagen/ Bee over at Backreaction had a post last week on Max Tegmark: Discover Interview with Tegmark, and I would like to respond to some things said there and in a previous post by Bee on the topic. (The Tegmark paper on "The Mathematical Universe" can be found on arxiv.org.) Does the theory ... http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/complexitystudies/~3/nk2Run7GOlg/ http://www.complexitystudies.org/2008/06/24/comments-on-tegmarkbackreaction-2/ I will duplicate some of my longer comments on OB here on my blog, as I'm not sure if all my readers are reading OB on a regular basis, and tracking comments there is difficult anyway. The post concerned (it's not long): Overcoming Bias: Tyler Vid on Disagreement The sentence I disagree with ... http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/complexitystudies/~3/IQITRTezROM/ http://www.complexitystudies.org/2008/06/23/comment-on-overcoming-bias-tyler-vid-on-disagreement/ This is a good development: Towards a Psychology of Philosophy? A question that I find particularly interesting is, do attitudes about science, such as naturalism vs. anti-naturalism, correlate with levels of scientific education and talent for science and math? Could it be that one factor behind the (seemingly prejudicial) anti-naturalist attitudes ... http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/complexitystudies/~3/CP4YSAkfL_k/ http://www.complexitystudies.org/2008/06/20/mainstream-philosophy-taking-the-experimental-turn/ This post of Eli has many links and may be a good occasion for delving into some of the issues he has been talking about lately. Overcoming Bias: Heading Toward Morality Why? Because that is the conclusion he is drawing to: Artificial Intelligence melts people's brains. Metamorality melts people's brains. Trying ... http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/complexitystudies/~3/ijPyDJKfZMk/ http://www.complexitystudies.org/2008/06/20/overcoming-bias-heading-toward-morality/ There's a blog entry at FXQI by William Orem nicely summing up a few points which are important to me: FQXi Community: Articles, Forums, Blogs, News First of all, much of confusion in Western Philosophy and thinking can be dissolved by looking beyond our culture - in that way we can ... http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/complexitystudies/~3/ecj-UbezAD8/ http://www.complexitystudies.org/2008/06/18/fqxi-the-big-bang-and-before/ Long awaited, finally arrived: a list of all of Eli's posts and a dependency graph!! Eliezer's OB Posts Dependency Graphs Great resource for newcomers and oldtimers. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/complexitystudies/~3/dbAQKBm0pzE/ http://www.complexitystudies.org/2008/06/10/eliezers-ob-posts/