Comments on: I’ve got your missing links right here (9 March 2013)

By: Bayesian Bouffant, FCD

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:24:31 +0000

The New York Review of Books demolishes Ray Kurzweil’s claims to understand the brain and makes some important points about how we describe neuroscience.>

“For consciousness and free will are surely central aspects of the human mind…”

Whaaaaa? The very existence, let alone centrality, of free will has been in question for a long time.

By: Tim

Tim — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 11:35:11 +0000

I must say the “demolition” of Kurzweil was pretty rubbish. The main theme as in the title is Homuculism accusing Kurzweil of incorrect language in saying stuff like a pattern recogniser may say in effect “Please be aware that there is a high likelihood that you will see your “E” pattern very soon, so be on the lookout for it.” But really that’s just pretty much the standard language in computer science. Your computer may say it does not recognise you printer not because the engineers think the printer diver is a homuculus but just beacause it the clearest way in English to say what’s going on. (Sorry to post here – there are no comments on the article which is usually the way when philosophers write dumb stuff on areas they don’t really understand like computer science).

By: Jackson

Jackson — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 03:29:40 +0000

Just a heads up, the link for Finkbeiner’s rule is not working. I believe this is what you were after: http://www.doublexscience.org/the-finkbeiner-test/

By: John Platt

John Platt — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 03:08:47 +0000

Sorry, but NatGeo got its rhino poaching numbers wrong. The IUCN says the number is one ever 11 hours, not every 11 minutes. (I can’t seem to comment there, so I’m doing it here.)

By: Brett

Brett — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 19:24:03 +0000

Considering the insane birth rate that the Koprulu Sector humans have, I can believe they’ll eventually win.

Seriously, they went from a starting population of 8000 people each on three different uninhabited planets, to 8 billion people on one planet alone in addition to tens of billions overall in the Sector. All in a period of about 200 years, which means that each family was having 7-8 children apiece, most of whom survived, for 200 years.