Lawrence Krauss – An update on Cosmology and thoughts on Education – Cosmologist with Attitude How Big Bang Gravitational Waves Could Revolutionize Physics! Lawrence is well known for his critical thinking and promotion of science. He has appeared on Q & A among other shows. Lawrence Krauss is Director of the ASU Origins Project at…
Did Nietzsche have something like Transhumanism in mind when he wrote about the Übermensch? Bostrom rejects Nietzsche as an ancestor of the transhumanist movement, as he claims that there were merely some “surface-level similarities with the Nietzschean vision” (Bostrom 2005a, 4). In contrast to Bostrom, I think that significant similarities between the posthuman and the…
Bioconservatives often quote a line from Nietzsche: “That which does not crush me makes me stronger.” But alas pain often does crush people: physically, emotionally, morally. Chronic, uncontrolled pain tends to make the victim tired, depressed and weaker. True, some people are relatively resistant to physical distress. For example, high testosterone function may make someone…
A mini-documentary on possible modes of being in the future – Ben Goertzel talks about the Singularity and exploring Altered States of Consciousness, Stelarc discusses Navigating Mixed Realities, Kent Kemmish muses on the paradox of strange futures, and Max More compares Transhumanism to Humanism Starring: Ben Goertzel, Stelarc, Kent Kemmish, Max More Edited: Adam Ford…
What is the Singularity? Vernor Vinge speaks about technological change, offloading cognition from minds into the environment, and the potential of Strong Artificial Intelligence. Vernor Vinge popularised and coined the term “Technological Singularity” in his 1993 essay “The Coming Technological Singularity“, in which he argues that the creation of superhuman artificial intelligence will mark the…
A discussion among philosophers, mathematicians and AI experts on whether science can be automated, what it means to automate science, and the implications of automating science – including discussion on the technological singularity. – implementing science in a computer – Bayesian methods – most promising normative standard for doing inductive inference – vehicle : causal…
Tim Josling discusses AI, the Singularity, the way the public might react, whether they would be prepared, John Searle’s Chinese Room thought experiment, and consciousness. Filmed in the majestic Blue Mountains a couple of hours out of Sydney in Australia. Here are some photos I took while I was there. Also see Tim’s talk at…
Interview with Cory Doctorow on Utopias by Adam Ford 00:11 Kim Stanley Robinson is absolutely my favorite utopian because he depicts in his utopias not worlds where all problems have been solved, but worlds in which the collective and action problem – of how we get along while we solve problems – has been in…
Bayesian inference is a useful tool in solving challenging problems in many fields of uncertainty. However, inferential arguments presented with a Bayesian formalism should be subject to the same critical scrutiny that we give to informal arguments. After an introduction to Bayes’ theorem, some examples of its misuse in history and theology will be discussed….
Science has a certain common core, especially a reliance on empirical methods of assessing hypotheses. Pseudosciences have little in common but their negation: they are not science. They reject meaningful empirical assessment in some way or another. Popper proposed a clear demarcation criterion for Science v Rubbish: Falsifiability. However, his criterion has not stood the…
