…or, why I slightly disagree with Eliezer Yudkowsky.
E.Y. says that “free will” has no sensible referent in the range between determinism and dice-rolling randomness. I’d add that appealing to “souls” only bumps the question up one recursion. Fair enough. However, in pondering the question, I think I have found a useful referent for “free will”.
An [...]
Archive for the ‘mind’ Category
Free will is another word for ignorance
Posted in Eliezer Yudkowsky, mind on 2008-03-21 | 2 Comments »
I’ve come a long way, baby
Posted in Bayesian, Eliezer Yudkowsky, artificial intelligence, atheism, ideas, mind, transhumanism on 2008-03-20 | Leave a Comment »
It has been a few months since I posted here, and surprisingly much water has gone under the bridge. For most of my enlightenment, I owe Eliezer Yudkowsky, who is much smarter than me and something of a hero. (He’s also an autodidact. I will catch up to you!)
The two largest changes: I have come [...]
What AI did wrong, and an isomorphism of failure
Posted in artificial intelligence, mind, science on 2007-10-26 | 6 Comments »
General artificial intelligence has consistently failed. Although the number of problems thought to be general has been chipped away with narrow AI, the problem of generality shows no sign of being reduced.
At the same time, a theory of the organization of mind has been constructed from empirical data about the nature of learning. This has [...]
Unconscious bias
Posted in mentat, mind, science on 2007-09-24 | Leave a Comment »
Over the past few decades, growing evidence from cognitive science has revealed significant limits on the ability of individuals to criticize their own viewpoints. Even the most analytically gifted and experienced among us are susceptible to bias and self-deception to an extent that we (ironically enough) generally fail to appreciate.
[...] Science eventually yields impressive answers [...]
