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Category: education – Page 71

Joscha Bach: Time, Simulation Hypothesis, & Existence

Joscha Bach is a cognitive scientist focusing on cognitive architectures, consciousness, models of mental representation, emotion, motivation and sociality.

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0:00:00 Introduction.
0:00:17 Bach’s work ethic / daily routine.
0:01:35 What is your definition of truth?
0:04:41 Nature’s substratum is a “quantum graph”?
0:06:25 Mathematics as the descriptor of all language.
0:13:52 Why is constructivist mathematics “real”? What’s the definition of “real”?
0:17:06 What does it mean to “exist”? Does “pi” exist?
0:20:14 The mystery of something vs. nothing. Existence is the default.
0:21:11 Bach’s model vs. the multiverse.
0:26:51 Is the universe deterministic.
0:28:23 What determines the initial conditions, as well as the rules?
0:30:55 What is time? Is time fundamental?
0:34:21 What’s the optimal algorithm for finding truth?
0:40:40 Are the fundamental laws of physics ultimately “simple”?
0:50:17 The relationship between art and the artist’s cost function.
0:54:02 Ideas are stories, being directed by intuitions.
0:58:00 Society has a minimal role in training your intuitions.
0:59:24 Why does art benefit from a repressive government?
1:04:01 A market case for civil rights.
1:06:40 Fascism vs communism.
1:10:50 Bach’s “control / attention / reflective recall” model.
1:13:32 What’s more fundamental… Consciousness or attention?
1:16:02 The Chinese Room Experiment.
1:25:22 Is understanding predicated on consciousness?
1:26:22 Integrated Information Theory of consciousness (IIT)
1:30:15 Donald Hoffman’s theory of consciousness.
1:32:40 Douglas Hofstadter’s “strange loop” theory of consciousness.
1:34:10 Holonomic Brain theory of consciousness.
1:34:42 Daniel Dennett’s theory of consciousness.
1:36:57 Sensorimotor theory of consciousness (embodied cognition)
1:44:39 What is intelligence?
1:45:08 Intelligence vs. consciousness.
1:46:36 Where does Free Will come into play, in Bach’s model?
1:48:46 The opposite of free will can lead to, or feel like, addiction.
1:51:48 Changing your identity to effectively live forever.
1:59:13 Depersonalization disorder as a result of conceiving of your “self” as illusory.
2:02:25 Dealing with a fear of loss of control.
2:05:00 What about heart and conscience?
2:07:28 How to test / falsify Bach’s model of consciousness.
2:13:46 How has Bach’s model changed in the past few years?
2:14:41 Why Bach doesn’t practice Lucid Dreaming anymore.
2:15:33 Dreams and GAN’s (a machine learning framework)
2:18:08 If dreams are for helping us learn, why don’t we consciously remember our dreams.
2:19:58 Are dreams “real”? Is all of reality a dream?
2:20:39 How do you practically change your experience to be most positive / helpful?
2:23:56 What’s more important than survival? What’s worth dying for?
2:28:27 Bach’s identity.
2:29:44 Is there anything objectively wrong with hating humanity?
2:30:31 Practical Platonism.
2:33:00 What “God” is.
2:36:24 Gods are as real as you, Bach claims.
2:37:44 What “prayer” is, and why it works.
2:41:06 Our society has lost its future and thus our culture.
2:43:24 What does Bach disagree with Jordan Peterson about?
2:47:16 The millennials are the first generation that’s authoritarian since WW2
2:48:31 Bach’s views on the “social justice” movement.
2:51:29 Universal Basic Income as an answer to social inequality, or General Artificial Intelligence?
2:57:39 Nested hierarchy of “I“s (the conflicts within ourselves)
2:59:22 In the USA, innovation is “cheating” (for the most part)
3:02:27 Activists are usually operating on false information.
3:03:04 Bach’s Marxist roots and lessons to his former self.
3:08:45 BONUS BIT: On societies problems.

Subscribe if you want more conversations on Theories of Everything, Consciousness, Free Will, God, and the mathematics / physics of each.

I’m producing an imminent documentary Better Left Unsaid http://betterleftunsaidfilm.com on the topic of “when does the left go too far?” Visit that site if you’d like to contribute to getting the film distributed (in 2020) and seeing more conversations like this.

Conversations About AI — Part 1: Overcoming Technophobia Through Education

Overcoming AI Technophobia

Currently, there is a public surge of interest in AI topics, especially in Large Language Models, like ChatGPT. This is not a random development.

AI is here to stay and will have huge social and economic implications, seen as both a blessing and a curse. In view of its potential dangers, many AI scientists have expressed concern over AI developments that border on technophobia. But there is a means of defending ourselves from the dark side of AI as expressed in dystopian science fiction.

Quantum Quasiparticle Sandwiches: Serving Up a New Era of Efficient Computing

A perovskite-based device that combines aspects of electronics and photonics may open doors to new kinds of computer chips or quantum qubits.

MIT

MIT is an acronym for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is a prestigious private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts that was founded in 1861. It is organized into five Schools: architecture and planning; engineering; humanities, arts, and social sciences; management; and science. MIT’s impact includes many scientific breakthroughs and technological advances. Their stated goal is to make a better world through education, research, and innovation.

Advances in Nanoelectrochemistry: Enabling New Discoveries in Small Volume Chemistry

In this interview conducted at Pittcon 2023 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, we spoke to Dr. Jeffrey Dick about his work studying the chemistry of small volumes and nano-electrochemical tools.

What is your background, and what first attracted you to this field?

My name is Jeffrey Dick, and I grew up in Muncie, Indiana. I studied chemistry at Ball State University and fell in love with research and education.

Embracing chatGPT in the financial technology classroom

ChatGPT has been a topic of great discussion in academia, particularly about how to prevent its unauthorized use in classes. However, students can benefit from understanding how to use generative artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool to save time and improve performance on writing assignments.

Craig Hurwitz, an Executive in Residence in the Pratt School of Engineering, asked the graduate in his “Emerging Trends in Financial Technology (Fintech)” course to generate a first draft of an essay with ChatGPT’s help. His working assumption was that when students enter the workforce they will have access to, and the ability to use, generative AI for productivity purposes. He wanted to experiment with ChatGPT in his course to give students a first-hand look at how to use generative AI.

For the assignment, the class was instructed to read a and each chose a Fintech approach to help solve a particular challenge mentioned in the case. Their written assignment was a 750-word Executive Summary convincing the instructor (playing the role of Venture Capitalist) why he should consider meeting to discuss a potential investment.

Elon Musk Says Bill Gates’ Understanding Of AI Is “Limited”

Billionaire Elon Musk took a dig at fellow billionaire and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates over his knowledge of artificial intelligence (AI). He insisted that Mr. Gates has a “limited” understanding of AI.

This was in response to a tweet by Sandy Kory, who praised the leadership of Mr. Gates at Microsoft and his approach toward AI. “‘I’d been meeting with the team from OpenAI since 2016…” –from Bill Gates’ essay, The Age of AI Has Begun. It’s big when someone like Gates is so bullish on AI. Also notable that MSFT has been tracking this so closely for so long,” he said.

Mr. Kory was referring to a long, 3,639-word essay the billionaire wrote on his blog titled “The Age of A.I. Has Begun”. He wrote about how humanity was waiting for another great revolution. Mr. Gates discussed the potential impact of AI on employment, health care, and education.

MIT’s New CRISPR-Based Gene-Editing Technique Transforms Cancer Mutation Studies

With the new method, scientists can explore many cancer mutations whose roles are unknown, helping them develop new drugs that target those mutations.

MIT

MIT is an acronym for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is a prestigious private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts that was founded in 1861. It is organized into five Schools: architecture and planning; engineering; humanities, arts, and social sciences; management; and science. MIT’s impact includes many scientific breakthroughs and technological advances. Their stated goal is to make a better world through education, research, and innovation.

Will AI Produce Useless Humans?

The other day a friend proudly told me she wrote a heartwarming graduation card to her teenage son. “Okay,” she confessed. “I

How long was your card? I asked her.

Not only that, but many also couldn’t even generate a topic on their own. They lacked creativity to dream up their own ideas, much less the critical thinking skills to put themselves in the shoes of their audience, imagining what would land. But they all had 4.0 GPAs or higher and came from private schools in Orange County and LA, reflecting our watered-down educational system.

And now we’re being told ChatGPT is a boon for our students?

Despite these concerns, our best days are ahead of us. As a positive futurist, I see the AI surge as a wakeup call. Especially in corporate America. For too long, we’ve outsourced too much. As just one example, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed how reliant we are on countries like China for manufacturing, including our critical medical supply chain.

Can charismatic robots help teams be more creative?

Increasingly, social robots are being used for support in educational contexts. But does the sound of a social robot affect how well they perform, especially when dealing with teams of humans? Teamwork is a key factor in human creativity, boosting collaboration and new ideas. Danish scientists set out to understand whether robots using a voice designed to sound charismatic would be more successful as team creativity facilitators.

“We had a robot instruct teams of students in a creativity task. The robot either used a confident, passionate—ie charismatic—tone of voice or a normal, matter-of-fact ,” said Dr. Kerstin Fischer of the University of Southern Denmark, corresponding author of the study in Frontiers in Communication. “We found that when the robot spoke in a charismatic speaking style, students’ ideas were more original and more elaborate.”

We know that acting as facilitators can boost creativity, and that the success of facilitators is at least partly dependent on charisma: people respond to charismatic speech by becoming more confident and engaged. Fischer and her colleagues aimed to see if this effect could be reproduced with the voices of social robots by using a text-to-speech function engineered for characteristics associated with charismatic speaking, such as a specific pitch range and way of stressing words. Two voices were developed, one charismatic and one less expressive, based on a range of parameters which correlate with perceived speaker charisma.

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