Philosophy Updates

[C C]

I recall seeing this news days ago, but didn't pay much attention to it. Apparently the world isn't going to let it twiddle by into oblivion, though. And as she says, it doesn't actually have anything to do with consciousness.
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Sabine Hossenfelder: "Brain really uses quantum effects"

PRESS RELEASE: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1042789

PAPER: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcb.3c07936

VIDEO EXCERPTS: This is news that I certainly didn’t see coming. Do you remember Roger Penrose’s idea that the human brain uses quantum effects in microtubules, and that those are origin of consciousness. Yeah, that sounds pretty crazy. But well, it seems that he was right. At least about the microtubules.

[...] I’ve heard more than one person say that what a pity that Penrose fell for this crazy Hameroff person. But, well, I’ve met both Penrose and Hameroff and they’re both crazy of course, but neither of them is stupid. So what are we to make of this microtubule business?

Now comes this new paper from a group that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with either Penrose or Hameroff and they say that they have clear evidence that these microtubules actually do display real quantum effects. More specifically it’s a process called superradiance. It basically requires the molecules to have quantum links to each other to achieve a larger emission of light...

[...] Another interesting part of the paper is that they say that the quantum effects in these microtubules can do something else, which is that they become much more efficient at absorbing ultraviolet light and redistributing it to lower energies. That is, they basically protect cells from the potential harm of ultraviolet light. In the press release, the researchers say if these quantum effects fail that might play a role for degenerative brain diseases. I’m somewhat sceptical about this, but then this isn’t my research area.

What does any of this have to do with consciousness? Nothing really...

video link --> Brain really uses quantum effects

 

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(paper) Exploration of the creative processes in animals, robots, and AI: who holds the authorship?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-024-03125-y

ABSTRACT: Picture a simple scenario: a worm, in its modest way, traces a trail of paint as it moves across a sheet of paper. Now shift your imagination to a more complex scene, where a chimpanzee paints on another sheet of paper. A simple question arises: Do you perceive an identical creative process in these two animals? Can both of these animals be designated as authors of their creation? If only one, which one?

This paper delves into the complexities of authorship, consciousness, and agency, unpacking the nuanced distinctions between such scenarios and exploring the underlying principles that define creative authorship across different forms of life. It becomes evident that attributing authorship to an animal hinges on its intention to create, an aspect intertwined with its agency and awareness of the creative act. These concepts are far from straightforward, as they traverse the complex landscapes of animal ethics and law.

But our exploration does not stop there. Now imagine a robot, endowed with artificial intelligence, producing music. This prompts us to question how we should evaluate and perceive such creations. Is the creative process of a machine fundamentally different from that of an animal or a human?

As we venture further into this realm of human-made intelligence, we confront an array of ethical, philosophical, and legal quandaries. This paper provides a platform for a reflective discussion: ethologists, neuroscientists, philosophers, and bioinformaticians converge in a multidisciplinary dialogue. Their insights provide valuable perspectives for establishing a foundation upon which to discuss the intricate concepts of authorship and appropriation concerning artistic works generated by non-human entities.

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(paper) A synthesis of Kantian ethics and Rousseauvian General Will in justifying the moral ground of political laws
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-024-03132-z

ABSTRACT: This article explores the Kantian and Rousseauvian solutions to the conflict between autonomy and authority. First, I discuss how the categorical imperatives (CI) are the supreme source of the legitimate authority of a limited number of political laws.

By extending the synthetic a priori nature of the CI, I demonstrate how Rousseau’s General Will (GW) can justify political laws in a broader sense. I also refer to the theory of H.L.A. Hart and John Rawls to show that all political laws are binding if they are within the limits of injustice and have some moral foundation. I discussed the limits of authority of on debatable laws such as banning abortion. I analyzed the possibility of GW by using Condorcet’s theorem.

I conclude that GW cannot fully justify political laws based on majoritarian direct democracy, owing to problematic assumptions, although it may be an improvement to the current legislative procedure of the U.S.
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[Magical Realist]

I recall seeing this news days ago, but didn't pay much attention to it. Apparently the world isn't going to let it twiddle by into oblivion, though. And as she says, it doesn't actually have anything to do with consciousness.
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Sabine Hossenfelder: "Brain really uses quantum effects"

PRESS RELEASE: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1042789

PAPER: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcb.3c07936

VIDEO EXCERPTS: This is news that I certainly didn’t see coming. Do you remember Roger Penrose’s idea that the human brain uses quantum effects in microtubules, and that those are origin of consciousness. Yeah, that sounds pretty crazy. But well, it seems that he was right. At least about the microtubules.

[...] I’ve heard more than one person say that what a pity that Penrose fell for this crazy Hameroff person. But, well, I’ve met both Penrose and Hameroff and they’re both crazy of course, but neither of them is stupid. So what are we to make of this microtubule business?

Now comes this new paper from a group that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with either Penrose or Hameroff and they say that they have clear evidence that these microtubules actually do display real quantum effects. More specifically it’s a process called superradiance. It basically requires the molecules to have quantum links to each other to achieve a larger emission of light...

[...] Another interesting part of the paper is that they say that the quantum effects in these microtubules can do something else, which is that they become much more efficient at absorbing ultraviolet light and redistributing it to lower energies. That is, they basically protect cells from the potential harm of ultraviolet light. In the press release, the researchers say if these quantum effects fail that might play a role for degenerative brain diseases. I’m somewhat sceptical about this, but then this isn’t my research area.

What does any of this have to do with consciousness? Nothing really...

video link --> Brain really uses quantum effects

OMG! Does this mean Write4U was right all along? lol

 

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Richard Dawkins on Jordan Peterson's theology: "It's sheer BS.” (Alex O'Connor interview)

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AC: Jordan Peterson comes at it from a completely different perspective than most of your previous Christian opponents. Not that Jordan Peterson is strictly a Christian. I wonder what you make of him and his approach.

RD: I enormously respect his courage in standing up to the Canadian laws about free speech. So I want to get that out of the way first. I hugely value him for that reason.

But when he talks about religion, I think that he doesn't make any sense at all. He's impressing people by using language they don't understand, rather like Deepak Chopra. Where people think it must be terribly profound because they can't understand it. Which is not something I can respect.

Michael Shermer told me that he tried to pin him down, and said, do you actually believe that Jesus was born of a virgin? And Jordan Peterson said it would take him at least 2 days to answer that. So Michael said, more or less, how about one sentence or one word? No.

That's how I feel about all the stuff about Jungian archetypes. Not that I want to be skeptical about that, but constantly dragging them in...

I mean, I think the most egregious example of that is where he looks at primitive tribal art. Where he shows things like two snakes coiling around each other. And says, well they must have had some primeval knowledge of DNA, the double helix.

It's about Jungian archetypes, and that is sheer BS, and I told him so.

[...] But I want to once again say how much I respect his courage in standing up to the Woke nonsense...

video link --> Richard Dawkins on Jordan Peterson's theology: "It's sheer BS”

 

[exchemist]

OMG! Does this mean Write4U was right all along? lol

Hahaha. Obviously not.

This seems to be about tryptophan, an amino acid with an aromatic ring, absorbing in the UV (so far, so unremarkable) but doing so and then reradiating via a process involving a geometrical array of tryptophan molecules rather than isolated ones. I'll neeed to read up on what "super radiance" is but it is a collective effect.

Obviously this will be a "quantum" effect because any absorption and emission of light is a quantum process. So that in itself is not exciting - and in particular has nothing to do with so-called quantum computing.

Although the Eureka article contains a speculation that maybe this super radiance might provide some means of communicating signals between neurons more rapidly than by the conventionally understood electrochemical process, speculation is all it is. As far as I can see, no one has got anywhere close to showing that any re-radiated light is subsequently absorbed and retransmitted, let alone "processed" by adjacent neurons. And since the process seems to start by absorption of an externally produced UV photon, at the moment I can't see how this can help in nerve signalling.

And there is of course nothing at all here about consciousness, as Sabine herself is at pains to make clear.

But if I have time later I'll try to read the real paper and see what I can learn.

 

[exchemist]

Well, I've read it and a few related articles, and I think I stand by my original comments in post125. Interestingly, it seems microtubules have a structure not totally unrelated to some of the light harvesting structures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-harvesting_complex employed in photosynthesis, for capturing and transferring the energy of absorbed photons to the reaction centre where its energy is used to drive electron transfer reactions. That should not come as a total surprise, as it makes sense for both functions to have had some evolutionary common basis.

But the suggested fibre optic communication idea remains complete speculation and seems to me highly dubious as it would require light signals to be internally generated in the first place, in order for them to be communicated by any fibre optic analogue. There does not seem to be any evidence that any structure we know of in the nerves or brain does that.

It is perhaps also worth reiterating that none of this suggests any kind of information processing by microtubules.

 

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The collapse is coming. Will humanity adapt?
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-collapse-is-coming-will-humanity-adapt/

EXCERPTS: What follows is an edited record of one such meeting, more formal than most, which took place shortly after the publication of “A Darwinian Survival Guide.” [...] To clarify, when we talk about survival in the book, we talk about two different things.

One is the survival of our species, Homo sapiens. We actually don’t think that’s in jeopardy. Now, Homo sapiens of some form or another is going to survive no matter what we do, short of blowing up the planet with nuclear weapons. What’s really important is trying to decide what we would need to do if we wanted what we call “technological humanity,” or better said “technologically-dependent humanity,” to survive... (MORE - details)
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Religion as Make-Believe: A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity

Religion as Make-Believe: A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity

In Religion as Make-Believe, Neil Van Leeuwen argues that factual beliefs (for example, that there’s beer in the fridge) differ greatly from ...

ndpr.nd.edu

EXCERPTS: In Religion as Make-Believe, Neil Van Leeuwen argues that factual beliefs (for example, that there’s beer in the fridge) differ greatly from “religious credences” (for example, that God is a trinity). Although people commonly say they “believe” the central doctrines of their religion, their attitudes are often closer to pretense. Hence, religion as “make-believe”.

[...] Although some people may factually believe some religious doctrines, Van Leeuwen holds that commonly what religious people say they believe they instead religiously creed. Van Leeuwen describes his view as a “two map” view. Many religious people have one picture of the world – one map – concerning what they factually believe, and a different picture of the world – a different map – concerning what they religiously creed. These maps can conflict... (MORE - details)

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The case for scientific transculturalism

The Case for Scientific Transculturalism

Life will stand a better chance against climate change if we mix big- and small-picture thinking.

nautil.us

INTRO: In “On Exactitude in Science,” the short story writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote of an empire that achieved mastery in cartography. One map was so exacting, it was the size of the empire itself. Later generations found it so useless, Borges wrote, that they “delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters.”

In other words, they scrapped it. A map that precise, coinciding “point for point” with real territory, is ridiculously cumbersome. That level of exactitude may be extreme, but it offers an important reminder to scientists: Realistic models of the natural world can be counterproductive.

Brian Enquist, an evolutionary ecologist who studies plants at the University of Arizona and is an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute, likes the point Borges was making. He sees areas of science where an “exactitude culture” is too dominant. That includes his own field of biosphere science...

[...] He’s the lead author of a recent paper ... that makes the case for what he and his Santa Fe Institute colleagues call “scientific transculturalism.” It’s about integrating the three central different cultures of science—exactitude culture along with what the researchers call “variance culture” (which focuses on taking stock of how particular things are different or similar) and “coarse-grained culture” (which tries to simplify matters with general principles governing how systems operate)... (MORE - details)

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The Brain Abstracted – Overview and Precis

The Brain Abstracted

Join us this week on the Brains Blog for a symposium on Mazviita Chirimuuta's new book, The Brain Abstracted (MIT) with commentary from Mark Sprevak, Carrie Figdor, Dimitri Coelho Mollo, and Tina Röck.

philosophyofbrains.com

INTRO: The Brain Abstracted tackles the question of how we should interpret neuroscience for the purposes of doing philosophy of mind. Neurophilosophy rests on the premise that the findings presented in the theories and models of neuroscience are directly relevant to longstanding philosophical topics such as the nature of perception and agency. Insufficient attention has been paid to the challenge of brain complexity and how it fundamentally shapes neuroscientific practice.

Given that all models and theories in neuroscience are highly simplified, relying on numerous abstractions and idealisations, as well as experimental controls which reduce the complexity of datasets elicited, it is reasonable to worry that such results may not be informative about the inherent natures of the neural processes associated with the cognitive kinds of interest to neurophilosophers. To make a frivolous comparison, if science had only delivered models of free fall under conditions of zero air resistance, such findings would be of no relevance to people contemplating the floating and gliding phenomena observable in the skies around them.

That is the worst case scenario for neurophilosophy: that neuroscience has not even begun to investigate the aspects of the brain underlying the mental capacities of interest to philosophers. However, that’s not the picture I present in the book — I don’t think the situation is quite so drastic. Instead, the central portion of book offers case studies on the various simplifying strategies that neuroscientists, past and present, have employed in order to address the challenge of brain complexity; the first two chapters situate the topic historically, and in the final three chapters I draw out the philosophical implications of the case studies... (MORE - details)
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[C C]

Using vague language about scientific facts misleads readers (philosophy of journalism)

Using vague language about scientific facts misleads readers

Using subjective phrasing like "scientists believe" makes facts seem like opinions.

arstechnica.com

Using subjective phrasing like "scientists believe" makes facts seem like opinions...

PAPER: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2314091121
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[C C]

How newborn chicks are helping to settle a centuries-old debate about cognition and our senses

How newborn chicks are helping to settle a centuries-old debate about cognition and our senses

Philosophers have been debating whether we need conditioning to link information from different senses for centuries.

theconversation.com

EXCERPTS: Irish philosopher William Molyneux wrote a letter to fellow philosopher John Locke. Molyneux’s letter pondered whether a person born blind, who learns to differentiate between a cube and a sphere through touch, would recognise these objects upon immediately gaining sight.

[...] Being focused on the role of experience in people’s formation of ideas and beliefs, empiricists like Locke think that sensory experience is necessary to learn or understand the correspondence between tactile and visual information.

[...] This result would surprise Molyneux and Locke (and possibly modern empiricists) because it shows the brain is wired to make sense of the complexities of the world before we have direct experience with it... (MORE - details)
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[C C]

Some aspects of DIT conspiracy may unfortunately be the case.
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The ‘dead internet theory’ makes eerie claims about an AI-run web. The truth is more sinister.

https://theconversation.com/the-dead-internet-theory-makes-eerie-claims-about-an-ai-run-web-the-truth-is-more-sinister-229609

EXCERPTS: If you search “shrimp Jesus” on Facebook, you might encounter dozens of images of artificial intelligence (AI) generated crustaceans meshed in various forms with a stereotypical image of Jesus Christ. [...] So what exactly is going on here?

[...] Many of the accounts that engage with such content also appear to be managed by artificial intelligence agents. This creates a vicious cycle of artificial engagement, one that has no clear agenda and no longer involves humans at all.

[...] The dead internet theory essentially claims that activity and content on the internet, including social media accounts, are predominantly being created and automated by artificial intelligence agents.

[...] The dead internet theory is a reminder to be sceptical and navigate social media and other website with a critical mind. Any interaction, trend, and especially “overall sentiment” could very well be synthetic. Designed to slightly change the way in which you perceive the world.
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[C C]

The moral butterfly effect

The Moral Butterfly Effect - VoegelinView

That the whole moral universe could be inverted by a single word seems a rather absurd contention. Nevertheless, it is true, and knowing this fact helps us perceive a silent revolution now centuries in the making, wherein selfishness, cleverly rebranded as “self-love,” would become the central...

voegelinview.com

The Golden Rule is found in all the major religions of the world [...] Hobbes thought that he could improve upon the Golden Rule and thereby create a more solid and stable foundation for subsequent generations. In its place, Hobbes set forth his negative Golden Rule in Chapter XV of Leviathan: “Do not that to another, which thou wouldst not have done to thyself.”

Blink and you could miss it: the most consequential shift in the history of moral philosophy comes in the form of a simple negation. The moral universe has been inverted by Hobbes in a change so subtle as to be insidious...

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How your beliefs change what you perceive

How your beliefs change what you perceive: The Holistic Mind | Christian Mole

Philosophers often fantasize about starting from facts “given” by sense perception, building up the rest of their beliefs from this foundation. But this is a fantasy because sense experiences are themselves partly constructed by our prior beliefs: sense perception and thought seep into one...

iai.tv

Philosophers often fantasize about starting from facts “given” by sense perception, building up the rest of their beliefs from this foundation. But this is a fantasy because sense experiences are themselves partly constructed by our prior beliefs: sense perception and thought seep into one other. But, argues Christopher Mole, this doesn’t mean that perception is always biased in favour of our prior convictions: on the contrary, the influence of belief on perception can help us better navigate the world.

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Taking Aristotle to the Moon and Beyond

Taking Aristotle to the Moon and Beyond

For space exploration to benefit all of humanity, it needs a philosophy—a rigorous engagement on values, impact, and meaning.

issues.org

EXCERPTS: [...] According to Wolfe, NASA would never recover its lost vitality and sense of purpose because it had no philosophy of space exploration.

[...] For space exploration to benefit all of humanity, it needs a philosophy—a rigorous engagement on values, impact, and meaning.

[...] NASA needs to embrace philosophy so that it can better explain what it is doing and why to the public and itself. (MORE - details)

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The End of Aesthetic Life?

The End of Aesthetic Life?

It is ironic that the discipline of aesthetics, one of whose topics is beauty, has been treated as an ugly stepchild by analytic philosophy. Pressed to defend this neglect, one might complain that aesthetics in the analytic mode revolves around a limited menu of ideas, recirculating since the...

ksetiya.substack.com

EXCERPT: In an essay forthcoming in the Philosophical Review, Nick Riggle concedes that the theory of aesthetic value has been stagnant. “Philosophy is in a bad state,” he writes, “if there are no, or very few, alternatives to an influential but forcefully criticized answer to one of the oldest questions in philosophy.” The question is, roughly, “What makes something aesthetically good?”—a generalization of the question, “What is beauty?” that allows for other “aesthetic values,” from the cool to the sublime—and the orthodox answer runs along the lines of the formula above: it has something to do with inducing a distinctive sort of pleasure in the right sort of subject. This is called “aesthetic hedonism.” Aesthetic empiricists liberalize the view to encompass “aesthetic experiences” other than pleasure, but otherwise agree... (MORE - details)


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IN OUR TIME: Philippa Foot (BBC podcast)

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Philippa Foot

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century

www.bbc.co.uk

INTRO: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most significant philosophers of the twentieth century, Philippa Foot (1920 - 2010). Her central question was, “Why be moral?” Drawing on Aristotle and Aquinas, Foot spent her life working through her instinct that there was something lacking in the prevailing philosophy of the 1950s and 1960s which held that values could only be subjective. Could there really be no objective response to the horrors of the concentration camps that she had seen on newsreels, no way of saying that such acts were morally wrong? Foot developed an ethics based on virtues, in which humans needed virtues to flourish as surely as plants needed light and water. While working through her ideas she explored applied ethics and the difference between doing something and letting it happen, an idea she illustrated with what became The Trolley Problem. (MORE - details)

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Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy

Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

ABSTRACT: Autonomy is usually understood by feminist writers in the same way that it is understood within moral psychology generally, namely, as self-government or self-direction: being autonomous is acting on motives, reasons, or values that are one’s own. Early feminist literature regarded the notion of autonomy with suspicion because it was thought to promote unattractive “masculinist” ideals of personhood; that is, it was thought to presuppose a conception of the person as “atomistic”, as ideally self-sufficient, as operating in a vacuum unaffected by social relationships, or as an abstract reasoner stripped of distorting influences such as emotions. Recently, feminists have sought to rehabilitate the notion of autonomy. Some have argued that articulating the conditions of autonomous choice is essential to understanding gender oppression and related concepts such as objectification. The challenge facing feminist theorists, therefore, is to reconceptualize autonomy from a feminist perspective. The term “relational autonomy” is often used to refer to feminist reconceptualizations of autonomy to contrast them with notions of autonomy that are thought to presuppose atomistic conceptions of the self.
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[C C]

Quantum Mechanics, Plato’s Cave and the Blind Piranha

Quantum Mechanics, Plato’s Cave and the Blind Piranha — John Horgan (The Science Writer)

Hoboken, May 22, 2024. I was jogging along the Hudson recently, thinking about quantum mechanics , when a creepy memory popped into my head. It dates back to the late 1970s, when I was painting houses in Denver. One evening after work I found myself in a saloon on Denver’s eastern outskirts. Behin

johnhorgan.org

EXCERPTS: If we realize we’re in the cave, isn’t that the same, sort of, as escaping from it? Better yet, if we can never escape the cave, isn’t that the same as saying that there is no cave, because this everyday world is the one and only reality? And doesn’t that imply that we should just chill out and enjoy ourselves...

[...] Maybe. On good days, I look out the window [...] and I think, Yes, this is reality, there is nothing else. But then I remember the quantum mist at the core of reality, which not even the smartest sages can penetrate, and to which most of us are oblivious. And I remember the piranha, bumping over and over again into the walls of its [aquarium] prison, blind to its own blindness... (MORE - missing details)
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[C C]

How Soviet communist philosophy shaped postwar quantum theory
https://aeon.co/essays/how-soviet-communist-philosophy-shaped-postwar-quantum-theory

When quantum mechanics posed a threat to the Marxist doctrine of materialism, communist physicists sought to reconcile the two...

EXCERPTS: Bohr emphasised that complementarity did not deny the existence of an objective quantum reality lying beneath the phenomena. But it did deny that we can discover anything meaningful about this. ... Complementarity also fell foul of the principal political ideologies that, in different ways, dominated human affairs from the early 1930s...

[...] Vladimir Lenin, who had led the Bolshevik Party in the October Revolution of 1917, was a dogmatic advocate of the materialist worldview expounded by the German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...

[...] In Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909), Lenin had berated the physicist Ernst Mach and his Russian followers, and the German philosopher Richard Avenarius, who had formulated the positivist doctrine of empirio-criticism. The philosophy of positivism was anathema, as it sought to reduce knowledge of the world to sensory experience.

[...] Complementarity looked just like the kind of positivist gibberish that Lenin had sought to annihilate. A reality accessible only in the form of quantum probabilities did not suit the needs of the official philosophy of Soviet communists. It appeared to undermine orthodox materialism.

[...] As the 1930s progressed towards world war, many Western intellectuals had embraced communism as the only perceived alternative to the looming threat of Nazism. ... David Bohm’s communist affiliations led the director of the Manhattan Project, Leslie Groves, to deny him the security clearance necessary to join the project.

[...] Bohm had by this time moved to Princeton University in New Jersey. Einstein ... asked to meet with him sometime in the spring of 1951. The meeting re-awakened the Marxist materialist in Bohm...

[...] Einstein was known for his pacifist and Leftist inclinations. ... Both of Einstein’s assistants were sympathetic to the Soviet cause. Six months after the publication of the EPR paper, Rosen asked Einstein to recommend him for a job in the Soviet Union. ... Rosen was at first delighted with his new home, and soon he had a son. ‘I hope,’ Einstein wrote in congratulation, ‘that he too can help in furthering the great cultural mission that the new Russia has undertaken with such energy.’ But by October 1938 Rosen was back in the US, having discovered that his research did not prosper in the people’s paradise.

[...] Bohm examined the EPR experiment in considerable detail. He developed an alternative that offered the prospect of translation from a thought experiment into a real one. ... inspired by Bohm, the Irish physicist John Bell also pushed back against complementarity...

[...] It began to dawn on the wider scientific community that entanglement and nonlocality were real phenomena, leading to speculations on the possibility of building a quantum computer, and on the use of entangled particles in a system of quantum cryptography...

[...] Soviet physicist-philosophers lent their support by finding positivist tendencies in Bohr’s teaching in conflict with dialectical materialism. Some sought an alternative materialistic interpretation. ... Bohm laboured at a time when there was little appetite for what many physicists judged to be philosophical, and therefore irrelevant, foundational questions. It says much about Bohm’s commitment that he resisted the temptation to leave such questions to play out in the theatre of the mind. The Marxist in Bohm sought not only to show that a materialistic alternative was possible, but also to find a way to bring the arguments into the real world of the laboratory... (MORE - missing details)
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[C C]

The dangerous illusion of AI consciousness

The dangerous illusion of AI consciousness | Shannon Vallor

AI expert and DeepMind contributor Shannon Vallor explores OpenAI's latest GPT-4o model, based on the ideas of her new book, ‘The AI Mirror’. Despite modest intellectual improvements, AGI's human-like behaviour raises serious ethical concerns, but as Vallor argues, AI today only presents the...

iai.tv

excerpt: We have not begun to imagine the impact of that illusion taking hold at commercial scale. Remember that Lemoine genuinely thought LaMDA had the legal rights of personhood, that it deserved to be seen as a victim of human ‘bigotry,’ and that it was a true friend to him as much as any human could be. The illusion cost him his job. What would it cost you?

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Why Donald Hoffman is wrong: Spacetime is not an illusion (Sean Carroll)

excerpt: The real part to me is what is called structural realism. So we don't know what the world is at a deep fundamental level, right. Let's put ourselves in the in the minds of people living 200 years ago...

video link --> Why Donald Hoffman is wrong: Spacetime is not an illusion

 

[C C]

Steve Kirsch "reinvents" challenging a scientific consensus

Antivax tech bro Steve Kirsch "reinvents" challenging a scientific consensus

Antivax propagandist Steve Kirsch reinvents how to challenge a scientific consensus, basically offering $1 million to reinvent the wheel.

www.respectfulinsolence.com

EXCERPT: I couldn’t do anything too strenuous for today…at least not yet. That’s why it’s a good thing that there was a particularly brain dead post by tech bro turned rabid antivax propagandist Steve Kirsch that I’ve been meaning to address. In it, he “reinvents” what it means to challenge a scientific consensus…very, very badly. Indeed, he claims to have found A better way to challenge scientific consensus. See if you can find the flaws in his “reasoning” (such as it is) before I apply a dose of well-deserved not-so-Respectful Insolence to it.... (MORE - details)

 

[C C]

The Ironic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

The Ironic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics — John Horgan (The Science Writer)

Hoboken, May 25, 2024. When I set out to learn quantum mechanics several years ago, physicist Sabine Hossenfelder predicted that someday a quantum interpretation would be named after me. I didn’t take her seriously, because I figured she was kidding, being ironic. I love irony. In The End of S

johnhorgan.org

EXCERPT: I see all these interpretations as ironic, not to be taken seriously, because they cannot be experimentally distinguished from each other. Choosing one interpretation over another is a matter of taste, not truth. You dig "many worlds", I’m into "it from bit".

Contemplating this situation, and recalling Sabine’s ironic prediction, I came up with the ironic interpretation of quantum mechanics. It’s really a meta-interpretation, which says there can be no definitive interpretation of quantum mechanics, no final statement of what it means. This is the implicit position of physics professors who disdain interpretation and command students to “Shut up and calculate.”

Einstein and his intellectual heirs, notably physicists David Bohm and John Bell, reject the shut-up-and-calculate stance, insisting that physics must be more than a set of formulas for cranking out predictions and applications. They want truth.

The ironic interpretation encompasses both seemingly contradictory positions. You keep trying to understand quantum mechanics while acknowledging that final understanding will always elude you, because words, numbers and all means of representing “reality” fall short. This perspective resembles negative theology, which tries to describe God while stipulating, as an axiom, that God transcends description.

A corollary of the ironic interpretation is pluralism, the idea that there are many ways to see the world. Engineers are pluralists without making a fuss over it. Faced with a problem like building a new bridge over the Hudson, engineers don’t ask, What is the final, definitive, true solution to this problem? That sort of thinking is dumb, counterproductive. The engineer’s job is to find a solution that works.

A solution can work in lots of ways.... (MORE - missing details)
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Has Quantum Physics Determined Your Future?

https://archive.is/99O88#selection-205.0-205.44

Everything in the universe may be preordained, according to physics.

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Liberalism As a Way of Life

Liberalism As a Way of Life

An interview with political theorist Alexandre Lefebvre, whose important new book offers a comprehensive, spiritual defense of liberalism against its enemies and opponents

damonlinker.substack.com

An interview with political theorist Alexandre Lefebvre, whose important new book offers a comprehensive, spiritual defense of liberalism against its enemies and opponents.

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How metaphysical idealism can benefit society

How metaphysical idealism can benefit society | James Tartaglia

Many in the 20th century abandoned idealism. James Tartaglia now advocates for a revival of metaphysical idealism, arguing that it is misunderstood and often unfairly dismissed by the scientific establishment. By clarifying common misconceptions, Tartaglia reveals how idealism could offer...

iai.tv

INTRO: Many in the 20th century abandoned idealism. James Tartaglia now advocates for a revival of metaphysical idealism, arguing that it is misunderstood and often unfairly dismissed by the scientific establishment. By clarifying common misconceptions, Tartaglia reveals how idealism could offer significant social benefits, encouraging a more philosophical society and one focused on the primacy of experience. His new book Inner Space Philosophy: Why the Next Stage of Human Development Should Be Philosophical, Explained Radically (Suitable for Wolves) comes out on the 28th June 2024... (MORE - details)

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Navigating reality in the misinformation age

Navigating reality in the misinformation age | Lee McIntyre

In an age of disinformation, philosopher Lee McIntyre emphasizes the importance of understanding truth and reality. Join him and Omari Edwards in an enlightening interview as they discuss the misuse of postmodernism, the role of philosophers in public discourse, and the need to combat propaganda...

iai.tv

INTRO: Philosophy has a long tradition of rejecting those who claim to know the objective truth. But in an age of disinformation, philosopher Lee McIntyre argues that understanding truth and reality is more critical than ever. In this interview, with Omari Edwards contributing editor of IAI News, they delve into the complex nature of truth, the misuse of doubt, and the vital role philosophers must play in public discourse to combat propaganda and promote clarity... (MORE - details)

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We can only dream up a better future when we dig into the unfinished past

We can only dream up a better future when we dig into the unfinished past

Political scientists describe the age we are living in as “post-political”. This controversial concept refers to a noted lack of political alternatives on a global scale.

theconversation.com

EXCERPTS: The US philosopher and literary critic, Fredric Jameson, once claimed that it is “easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”. [...] Political scientists describe the age we are living in as “post-political”. This controversial concept refers to a noted lack of political alternatives on a global scale.

[...] Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe ascribes the post-political to a “crisis of representation” and the disappearance of contestation. Politics, she says, requires antagonism: the dichotomy of left and right, us and them. Without contestation, there is no politics.

The question then is whether it is possible to find ways to be a visionary in the 21st century. My research suggests looking at the 20th-century German philosopher, Ernst Bloch, whose life’s work showed that the future lies in what is still pending from the past... (MORE - details)
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Will society become colder if robots help the sick and elderly?

Will society become colder if robots help the sick and elderly?

Social robots could soon assist in nursing homes or even be present in our living rooms. Is there a risk that they will replace human interaction?

www.sciencenorway.no

EXCERPTS: Atle Ottesen Søvik is a professor at the MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society with a focus on the philosophy of religion. He points out that we must consider what the care alternatives are.

[...] While robots might be a cost-effective solution, Søvik argues that we should not focus solely on the numbers. Other values must also be considered, such as recognition, dignity, and community.

“Some people want to feel empathy from another person, while others question how genuine that empathy really is. Is the person [or robot] just pretending to care without actually being interested?

[...] Humans can form relationships with robots and feel acknowledged as the robot learns how to get to know you.

[...] But there are differences between the relationship with a robot and a relationship with other humans. One of them is that people spend a long time getting to know each other and build a relationship. Søvik points out that a robot can 'like' everyone equally.

[...] Another aspect is that a good friend can challenge you. “The machine is often designed just to tell you that you’re great and might not provide the challenges and resistnce you need," he says... (MORE - missing details)

 

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A right to warn about advanced artificial intelligence

A Right to Warn about Advanced Artificial Intelligence

righttowarn.ai

EXCERPTS: AI companies possess substantial non-public information about the capabilities and limitations of their systems, the adequacy of their protective measures, and the risk levels of different kinds of harm. However, they currently have only weak obligations to share some of this information with governments, and none with civil society. We do not think they can all be relied upon to share it voluntarily.

So long as there is no effective government oversight of these corporations, current and former employees are among the few people who can hold them accountable to the public. [...] We therefore call upon advanced AI companies to commit to these principles... (MORE - details)
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