Human Connectome Project | Mapping the human brain connectivity
The Turing Test
First published Wed Apr 9, 2003; substantive revision Wed Jan 26, 2011 The phrase “The Turing Test” is most properly used to refer to a proposal made by Turing (1950) as a way of dealing with the question whether machines can think. According to Turing, the question whether machines can think is itself “too meaningless” to deserve discussion (442). However, if we consider the more precise—and somehow related—question whether a digital computer can do well in a certain kind of game that Turing describes (“The Imitation Game”), then—at least in Turing's eyes—we do have a question that admits of precise discussion. Moreover, as we shall see, Turing himself thought that it would not be too long before we did have digital computers that could “do well” in the Imitation Game. The phrase “The Turing Test” is sometimes used more generally to refer to some kinds of behavioural tests for the presence of mind, or thought, or intelligence in putatively minded entities. 1. 2.
Science Fiction Book Review Podcast › Luke Burrage reads a science fiction novel and reviews it when he's done. Then he reads another.
Elon Musk Says There’s a ‘One in Billions’ Chance Reality Is Not a Simulation
Wednesday night, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk did that thing he does every so often, which is take wild questions from an audience and answer them as if he’s been thinking about them for years, usually because he has. Pick a random quote out of a bag and you can turn Musk’s statements at the Recode Code Conference into a piece of news: He wants to put humans on Mars by 2025, said SpaceX is still on track to test the most powerful rocket in the world this year, said Mars isn’t a “bad choice” for a place to die, wants to relaunch a used Falcon 9 rocket in a few months, said we’re already cyborgs, discussed why a direct democracy would be the best political system for a Mars colony and then went into specifics of how that democracy would work, etc. Depending on the question, the resulting discussions are ones philosophy or engineering students have probably had while they’re flying high on an illicit substance. "There’s a one in billions chance we’re in base reality"
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Dualism
First published Tue Aug 19, 2003; substantive revision Thu Nov 3, 2011 This entry concerns dualism in the philosophy of mind. The term ‘dualism’ has a variety of uses in the history of thought. In general, the idea is that, for some particular domain, there are two fundamental kinds or categories of things or principles. In theology, for example a ‘dualist’ is someone who believes that Good and Evil—or God and the Devil—are independent and more or less equal forces in the world. 1. 1.1 The Mind-Body Problem The mind-body problem is the problem: what is the relationship between mind and body? Humans have (or seem to have) both physical properties and mental properties. Physical properties are public, in the sense that they are, in principle, equally observable by anyone. The mind-body problem concerns the relationship between these two sets of properties. The ontological question: what are mental states and what are physical states? The problem of consciousness: what is consciousness? 2.
Elon Musk: There's only one AI company that worries me
Elon Musk's concerns about the dangers of artificial intelligence have been well publicized, but the SpaceX and Tesla founder says that of all the companies currently working on self-aware computers, there's only one whose efforts actually worry him. Speaking on stage at Recode's Code Conference, Musk was asked by The Verge's own Walt Mossberg whether he was worried specifically about the efforts of big tech players like Google and Facebook currently pivoting to AI research. "I won't name names," Musk said, "but there's only one." Mossberg pressed the question, wondering whether the company that kept the Tesla boss up at night was not one currently preoccupied with developing its own car. Musk set up the OpenAI non-profit to help avoid a scary Skynet future But that doesn't mean that every possible AI future is some horrific version of Skynet waiting to happen.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1. Biographical Sketch Wittgenstein was born on April 26, 1889 in Vienna, Austria, to a wealthy industrial family, well-situated in intellectual and cultural Viennese circles. In 1908 he began his studies in aeronautical engineering at Manchester University where his interest in the philosophy of pure mathematics led him to Frege. Upon Frege's advice, in 1911 he went to Cambridge to study with Bertrand Russell. Russell wrote, upon meeting Wittgenstein: “An unknown German appeared … obstinate and perverse, but I think not stupid” (quoted by Monk 1990: 38f). During his years in Cambridge, from 1911 to 1913, Wittgenstein conducted several conversations on philosophy and the foundations of logic with Russell, with whom he had an emotional and intense relationship, as well as with Moore and Keynes. In the 1930s and 1940s Wittgenstein conducted seminars at Cambridge, developing most of the ideas that he intended to publish in his second book, Philosophical Investigations. 2. 3.
