Archives for the 'Philosophy' Category
Raw Thoughts on Mass (updated)
Published on 21 Dec 2007 at 2:18 am.
1 Comment.
Filed under Philosophy, Physics, Probability, Research.
What good is a cortex if it doesn’t dream a little?
I have been thinking about Ariel Caticha and Carlo Cafaro’s derivation of Newton’s Second Law from probability theory (http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.1071). In this derivation, they assume three things:
There exist basic entities called particles
There is an intrinsic uncertainty about a particle’s position
There is change… not time necessarily, but change.
The first thing I […]
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Judgement Day Online
Published on 4 Dec 2007 at 3:45 am.
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Filed under Biology, Evolution, Philosophy.
Intelligent Design.
That phrase alone should ignite a firestorm of controversy.
The NOVA special, Judgement Day, on the recent Dover Pennsylvania trial now can be viewed online.
Let us begin with two moral principles: HONESTY and CONSISTENCY. I know of no one who can disagree with the importance of these ideas. These ideas are central to religions all over […]
Nature Abhors a Gradient
Published on 27 Nov 2007 at 3:54 am.
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Filed under Biology, Climate, Energy, Evolution, Philosophy, Physics, Social Justice.
I recall back to my first days in physics class where I read the quotation “Nature abhors a vacuum”. The phrase was accompanied by an image of two teams of horses trying to pull two hollow hemispheres apart after the air was pumped out from inside.
These were called Magdeburg hemispheres and the experiment was performed by […]
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Center for Collective Intelligence
Published on 18 Nov 2007 at 8:33 pm.
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Filed under Intelligent Systems, Internet, Philosophy, Research.
The MIT Center for Collective Intelligence is investigating the phenomenon of collective intelligence with the goal of improving collective decision making in social and business systems. They are working to devlop methodologies for quantifying and measuring collective intelligence.
Perhaps in the future we will be able to quantify and characterize the collective intelligence of ant colonies.
Kevin […]
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Robots and the Coming Creation
Published on 13 Oct 2007 at 1:43 am.
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Filed under Astrobiology, Astronomy, Computation, Evolution, Exploration, Intelligent Systems, Inventions, Philosophy, Research, Robotics, Space, Technology.
‘Am I already in the shadow of the Coming Race? and will the creatures who are to transcend and finally supersede us be steely organisms, giving out the effluvia of the laboratory, and performing with infallible exactness more than everything that we have performed with a slovenly approximativeness and self-defeating inaccuracy?’
- George Eliot,
The […]
