Posted in ideas, math, science, transhumanism on 2008-05-12 | 6 Comments »
I’ve been thinking about math a lot recently. Learning it has become a bit of an obsession.
I’ve come to believe that there is a fundamental mistake in the way society conceptualizes math.
“You need it for physics, engineering, computer graphics…”
“It’s a subject at school. Pass the exam and forget it.”
or even “it’s the study of things [...]
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 [...]
Posted in mentat, mind, science on 2007-09-24 | No Comments »
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 [...]
Posted in ideas, science, science fiction, technology on 2007-09-16 | No Comments »
Nick Szabo over at Unenumerated proposes a means to differentiate science fiction from imminent technology. In essence: require that if the exact form of the technology can’t be defined, then at least the experiments needed to resolve its unknowns can be defined. (For example, SENS meets this criterion.)
Personally I’d say this is a start, but [...]
