Anhinga anhinga

A bit of information related to machine learning and philosophy talks at MIT.( Read more... )

Imagine a hypothetical situation where a brain and an artificial device are coupled in such a way that a single consciousness (a single subjective reality) is associated with them. Let's call this a "hybrid consciousness" (perhaps, a better name can be suggested for this).

One can do various interesting thought experiments with such an object. The contexts where this might be useful include the abstract topics such as "Hard Problem", technological singularity, or uploading, and more practical topics, for example, something like "if I could change a way I am [reading mathematical papers/writing computer code/...], how would I want to do that, and what would I want to feel in the process of doing that". ( Read more... )

Мне нравится новый сборник Пелевина, (который с оскорбительным названием -- "П5"), хотя многие в ленте жалуются, что "скучно, и хуже, чем раньше, и не то (или, наоборот, повторение)". У меня от него ощущение гораздо большего реализма, по сравнению с предыдущими текстами, и гораздо большей сфокусированности, сдержанности и ясности каждого рассказа в том, что касается изложения философского ядра.. ( фрагмент )

Один из номеров International Journal of Theoretical Physics находился в спецхране Ленинской библиотеки. Вот страшная крамола, которую он содержал:

http://riftsh.livejournal.com/48759.html

Что касается ситуации с библиотеками в Бостоне, то лучшей, как и в большинстве других подобных ситуаций, оказалась библиотека Northeastern University. У них много места, и дурацкие идеи переносить старые журналы в "хранилище" не приходят им в голову (они, правда, требуют удостоверение личности на входе, и записывают информацию о посетителях в журнал).

Статью, впрочем, мне понять не удалось..

Зато у dennett'a совершенно прекрасная дискуссия на тему: "Может ли машина чувствовать?":

http://dennett.livejournal.com/187179.html

Upd: наша ветка о том, сводится ли субъективное к физическому:

http://dennett.livejournal.com/187179.html?thread=5543723#t5543723

Manuscripts of Sir Isaac Newton – never before revealed to the public – are on show at the Jewish National and University Library at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem until July 17:

The manuscripts include details of Newton's alchemy experiments, his interest in ancient history and apocalyptic prophecies. Furthermore, they reveal his decipherings of what he considered to be ''secret knowledge'' – knowledge encoded in the sacred texts of ancient cultures and other historical records – including his attempts to extract scientific information from the biblical and Talmudic descriptions of the Tabernacle and the Temple. Newton's writings on Judeo-Christian prophecy reveal that he thought of himself as a kind of prophet.

Digitized manuscripts are available, e.g.

http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/mss/newton/
http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/mss/newton/collection_eng.html
http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/mss/Newton/item_eng.html?pageId=ms03

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/brain/i-chat-therefore-i-am

J: How do you define life?
A: Life is the opposite of death.
J: So death is the absence of life?
A: Take it easy. I try not to think about such things.
J: Why not?
A: Ambiguous.
J: Yes!

via http://syndicated.livejournal.com/mind_hacks/404705.html

Feb.12 issue (print version only): "Two Heads:A marriage devoted to the mind-body problem" by Larissa MacFarquhar.

(The article is mostly about Patricia and Paul Churchland, whom the author credits with helping persuade philosophers to pay attention to neuroscience.)

"The divide between those who, when forced to choose, will trust their instincts and those who will trust an argument that convinces them is at least as deep as the divide between mind-body agnostics and committed physicalists, and lines up roughly the same way."

Update: for online copy see
http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2007/03/new_yorker_article_o.html

Assume that we do live in a virtual reality, as Nick Bostrom suggests:
http://anhinga-anhinga.livejournal.com/8017.html
Also assume Marvin Minsky's theory that a person is a Society of Mind.

Thinking about possible ways to implement a reality containing persons as societies of mind and assuming limited computational resources, it seems quite likely that the societies of mind of different people would share a lot of common mental processes, and that the overlap is higher between people, who interact a lot or share common history.

Among other things, this would shed some light onto mysterious instances of synchronicity -- interaction via shared subprocesses would be one of the possible reasons.

University of Wales, Swansea, 30 June - 5 July, 2006

Luca Cardelli: Biological Systems as Reactive Systems.
Martin Davis: The Church-Turing Thesis: Consensus and Opposition.
István Németi: Can general relativistic computers break the Turing barrier?