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POPSArtificial General Intelligence: Barking up the wrong tree? The question is: could Kurzweil and Goertzel's Aritifical General Intelligence genuinely surpass the human brain? Or is ti simply mimicing it? Their solution still relies on computation, but there is no evidence that the human brain makes any such calculations to arrive at its conclusions. If so, what needs to be done in order to develop a computer system that works the same way as the human brain? And what about the mother of all conundrums: free will. Goertzel pretends it doesn't exist at all, but how could we motivate even a self-aware computer to do things on its own initiative?
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POPSThe Orthodox Patriarch visits Greenland Neal Ascherson writes with clear but contemplative prose about the surreal beauty of Greenland as it comes in contact with the surreal union of Religion and Science. An interesting look into the ideas of the much-overlooked Orthodox Christian Churches on the issues of global politics and the environment.
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POPSAnimals aren't as complex as we imagine. We spend a lot of time presuming that animals are smart and somehow like us. This is not my experience. The more we learn about them, the more realize exactly how primitive their cognition is. At some point we have to draw the line between science and fantasy. It's lonely being humans.
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POPSThere Is So Much Left To Discover! For those who thought that the world's mysteries had been stripped bare by science and technology, I present to you the Flying Fox. That which "did not exist" has been conjured from the void of our own incomplete knowledge, and stands before you today! Am I anachronistic to want to make my way in this world as an explorer in the tradition of Roald Aumendsun or V. K. Arseniev? Some think that we need religion or science to feel certainty in the world, but I would wager that a world of absolute certainty and defined meaning would be un-livable. Whether we realize it or not, our minds are frolicking in the freedom of the vacuum created by all that we have yet to learn. Just when we think we know something for sure, we discover how little we know, and I think that is very comforting. Perhaps the true meaning of life is as simple as persistence in chaos.
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POPSNo Shortcuts to First-World Wealth New cluster-analysis of the world's product export space reveals the differences in connectivity and diversity between nations' production capacities as well as the very sizable developmental gaps in this network that keep poorer countries on the industrial fringes. The rich countries of the industrialized world tend to have broad portfolios of industries, and accordingly occupy large areas of the product space, usually including much of the network's core. Fast-growing developing countries such as China, Thailand, and Hungary are strong in some of those central, well-connected regions. The poorest countries, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa, tend to specialize in a few of the peripheral products—such as oil for Nigeria and copper for Zambia. EDIT :My first title was too generic ("Mapping the Wealth of Nations.")
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POPSOliver Sacks: Certified Rennaisance Man After a long spell of academic inclination towards specialization, it is refreshing to see at least one university leaning back towards recognizing breadth. I've long enjoyed Sacks, not because he writes challenging, detailed pieces - he has placed himself squarely in the current of popular science, or at least, made his science popular. What I admire is his earnest interest in so many subjects, without pretense. He uses his expertise as a window through which to view the stunning breadth of the human landscape, rather than as a microscope to focus on the esoteric minutiae that defines the careers of many less creative, less humanistic researchers.
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POPSQuestions about Questions about Global Warming...
As the banter and punditry continues, I am still confused by one thing: what should we do? Raising questions about global warming is one thing, but these critics provide no constructive agenda. I suppose that their implicit agenda is that we should do nothing, but once again, I don't understand this. First, the obvious obligation to environmental stewardship, simply for the sake of our own quality of life seems sound enough to mandate action with or without global warming. But, second, what is the point of all this? Science is not religion, it never really provides concrete answers. Instead it provides judgements based on the current knowledge. Even if our knowledge of climate change is imperfect today, it probably always will be. Yet in the mean time we must act in good faith on our best conclusions. Although we should be willing to change our minds if we discover new evidence in the future, today we would be idiots to not act on what knowledge we do have.
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POPSBest Places to Get Free Books - The Ultimate Guide Best of the best free book resources on net. pdfs, docs, ebooks, mp3s... philosophy, science, technology, religion, theology, futurism, fiction.... almost all public domain intellectual work is available online. net is soon going to become the sum of all human knowledge (or has it already :)
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POPSIn Memory of a Dark Future All science fiction writers dream of their work slipping into reality, of being described as a visionary. I couldn't call Philip K. Dick a science fiction visionary, since his terrifying visions came not from the future but from within. However, that is the very trait that does make him a literary visionary. It is also perhaps why, of all the writers, his portrayal of the future is the one that resonates deeper within the present with every passing day. He has achieved what all science fiction writers, and even all writers would ever hope for, and charmingly enough, I'm sure he would hate it.
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POPSThis Old Earth - Part 1 Response to a young earth creationist's arguments. The first two parts are debunking the arguments for a 6,000 year old earth, and the third part will detail how we know the earth is 4.5 billion years old.
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POPSMath Behind Ancient Islamic Tile Patterns Decoded When Peter J. Lu traveled to Uzbekistan, he had no idea of the mathematical journey that he was about to embark on as well. See the full research article as published in Science . It's a wonderful example of original, multidisciplinary academic research bridging history and mathematics that happens to force us to re-think the sophistication of ancient geometrical knowledge. When Lu looked at photographs of Islamic buildings, he found that he could break the patterns on their surfaces up into the same shapes, even though the shapes often weren't immediately visible. "I couldn't sleep for days," he said. "I skipped Christmas break to work on it."
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