Category: Cognitive Science
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Information Death
My mother died this morning. She was on life-support for hours as we agonized about when to let her go. Was her brain already dead, or was there a chance she could wake? We decided that if her heart stopped again, they should not do another CPR. Then her EKG line gradually faded away. Did…
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Chicken behavior
One of our chickens died yesterday, and I had the opportunity to see some interesting behavior from the rest of the flock. Normally they are pretty relaxed around us, especially when we are putting down water and feed. But when I picked up the dead bird, the others starting making warning clucks and ran to…
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Humans 2.0
The second season of Humans is now available without extra charge on Amazon Prime. Yeah! Binge watched this week. Like the first season, it was an engaging story with interesting characters and problems. Here a few of the things it did right: Working out the relationship between humans and technology — This is really the…
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Is the Universe personal?
This summer I battled the elements to finish the exterior of my “doomstead”, an underground house that Crystal and I are building. We needed to wrap the thing in several layers of plastic and Styrofoam. Unfortunately, both of those can blow away in the wind rather easily, and you can’t tape them together when they…
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Ex Machina — Jurassic Park for AI
OK, I’m not the first person to make this observation, but seems apropos. Extremely rich man full of hubris brings in outside expert to examine creation. He flies to a remote but richly appointed place in a helicopter, where they are sort of trapped for a few days. (Screams plot setup, doesn’t it?) Expert is…
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Science versus Magic: The Secret of NIMH
My family recently watched The Secret of NIMH, an animated movie based on the book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. I was surprised and annoyed at how the movie turned science fiction into fantasy. In the book, everything was the result of disciplined neuroscience research. The rats achieved success via intelligence and hard…
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Is the Turing test passé?
My editor Suzan Troutt sent me an email this morning, pointing out the recent Turing test conducted by the University of Reading in collaboration with the EU RoboLaw project. Their results have been sufficiently debunked by various analysts and comment threads, so I will not spill more ink on it here. In the novel SuSAn…