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Incorrect hypotheses point to correct observations
1. The Consciousness Researcher and Out-Of-Body Experiences
In his book Consciousness and the Brain, cognitive neuroscientist Stansilas Dehaene writes about scientifically investigating people’s reports of their out-of-body experiences:
… the Swiss neurologist Olaf Blanke[ did a] beautiful series of experiments on out-of-body experiences. Surgery ( Read more... ) -
Incorrect hypotheses point to correct observations
1. The Consciousness Researcher and Out-Of-Body Experiences
In his book Consciousness and the Brain, cognitive neuroscientist Stansilas Dehaene writes about scientifically investigating people’s reports of their out-of-body experiences:
… the Swiss neurologist Olaf Blanke[ did a] beautiful series of experiments on out-of-body experiences. Surgery ( Read more... ) -
Incorrect hypotheses point to correct observations
1. The Consciousness Researcher and Out-Of-Body Experiences
In his book Consciousness and the Brain, cognitive neuroscientist Stansilas Dehaene writes about scientifically investigating people’s reports of their out-of-body experiences:
… the Swiss neurologist Olaf Blanke[ did a] beautiful series of experiments on out-of-body experiences. Surgery ( Read more... ) -
Incorrect hypotheses point to correct observations
1. The Consciousness Researcher and Out-Of-Body Experiences
In his book Consciousness and the Brain, cognitive neuroscientist Stansilas Dehaene writes about scientifically investigating people’s reports of their out-of-body experiences:
… the Swiss neurologist Olaf Blanke[ did a] beautiful series of experiments on out-of-body experiences. Surgery ( Read more... ) -
Mark Eichenlaub: How to develop scientific intuition
Recently on the CFAR alumni mailing list, someone asked a question about how to develop scientific intuition. In response, Mark Eichenlaub posted an excellent and extensive answer, which was so good that I asked for permission to repost it in public. He graciously gave permission, so I’ve reproduced his message below. (He otherwise retains the ( Read more... ) -
On insecurity as a friend
There’s a common narrative about confidence that says that confidence is good, insecurity is bad. It’s better to develop your confidence than to be insecure. There’s an obvious truth to this.
But what that narrative does not acknowledge, and what both a person struggling with insecurity and their well-meaning friends might miss, is that that ( Read more... ) -
New paper: Long-Term Trajectories of Human Civilization
Long-Term Trajectories of Human Civilization (free PDF). Foresight, forthcoming, DOI 10.1108/FS-04-2018-0037.
Authors: Seth D. Baum, Stuart Armstrong, Timoteus Ekenstedt, Olle Häggström, Robin Hanson, Karin Kuhlemann, Matthijs M. Maas, James D. Miller, Markus Salmela, Anders Sandberg, Kaj Sotala, Phil Torres, Alexey Turchin, and Roman V. Yampolskiy ( Read more... ) -
Finland Museum Tour 1/??: Tampere Art Museum
I haven’t really been to museums as an adult; not because I’d have been particularly Anti-Museum, but just because museums never happened to become a Thing That I Do. I vaguely recall having been to a few museums with my parents when I was little, an occasional Japan exhibition as a teen when Japan was a Thing, and a few visits to various museums ( Read more... ) -
Is the Star Trek Federation really incapable of building AI?
In the Star Trek universe, we are told that it’s really hard to make genuine artificial intelligence, and that Data is so special because he’s a rare example of someone having managed to create one.
But this doesn’t seem to be the best hypothesis for explaining the evidence that we’ve actually seen. Consider:
- In the TOS episode “The Ultimate ( Read more... )
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Some conceptual highlights from “Disjunctive Scenarios of Catastrophic AI Risk”
My forthcoming paper, “Disjunctive Scenarios of Catastrophic AI Risk”, attempts to introduce a number of considerations to the analysis of potential risks from Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). As the paper is long and occasionally makes for somewhat dry reading, I thought that I would briefly highlight a few of the key points raised in the ( Read more... )