David F. Clark's Blog

A passionate but, most importantly, scientifically sound presentation on the bad advice to which the American public has been victim for the last 30 years. As some have put it, we have been the subjects of the largest non-randomized uncontrolled trial ever put forth. And the results are not positive.

For more see here and here.

This is a very interesting and well-researched talk on enhancements and selection in elite athletics.

This was a very interesting series of posts by Ramez Naam, author of the novel Nexus.

The Singularity Is Further Than It Appears

Why AIs Won’t Ascend in the Blink of an Eye – Some Math

Can We Merge Minds and Machines?

Finally some common sense. Count the neurons, not just the brain volume.

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.c...

This is not a trivial question.

I love this. People don’t realize that insurance companies increase the cost of healthcare by millions, if not billions of dollars each year by forcing physicians or their office staff to waste countless hours on hold.

In almost every sci-fi movie worth re-watching, it seems that us humans are always less technologically advanced, dumber and only serve as a mere speed bump into an alien race eliminating humans to take over our planet and suck Earth dry of its resources. We’re always the weaker ones in alien wars. Well, what if we’re not? Tom Scott imagined a scenario where everyone else in the universe was afraid of humans. It’s fantastic.

Those of you who still rent DVDs from time to time, have you noticed if there is a scratch on the DVD, it follows that there is a high likelihood of the skip or freeze occurring at either the climax or during a scene where something important to the plot is revealed? This recently happened to me two nights in a row. After repeated incidents over the years, I think I have seen a real pattern. I have to wonder it’s a feature of DVDs created by devious designers.

At NextBigFuture: Energy-Efficient Neuromorphic Computers

Also recently at The Economist: The machine of a new soul

Digital computers do certain types of things extremely efficiently, such as storing exact numerical data losslessly and performing predefined mathematical operations rapidly. On the other hand, many tasks that involve low signal-to-noise, incomplete data sets, and real-time data streams can be done much more efficiently by analogue or neuromorphic computers. It will be interesting to see what some of these projects bring…

An awesome post from The Rationalist Conspiracy:

Consider a self-aware computer, somewhere in the space of minds. It’s smart enough to think about itself. But it can’t have perfect self-knowledge, due to Godelian infinite recursion issues. Hence, some of its parts must remain mysterious upon self-reflection.

The computer, realizing this, needs a label to describe the parts whose behavior can be observed, but whose detailed workings are (to it) inherently mysterious. In humans, this label seems to be “consciousness”.

I grow tired of many of the pontifications on this topic. This one is a gem. If the human brain were simple, we’d be too simple-minded to understand it. I could not have said it any better.