[Link] Nick Bostrom says Google is winning the AI arms race

3 polymathwannabe 05 October 2016 06:50PM

Open Thread, Aug. 22 - 28, 2016

3 polymathwannabe 22 August 2016 04:24PM

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LINK: New clinical trial will try to restore dead brains

3 polymathwannabe 04 May 2016 08:05PM

"... in an effort to revive the brains of those being kept alive solely through life support. Stem cells will be injected directly into the brain..."

More at:

http://news.discovery.com/tech/biotechnology/dead-could-be-brought-back-to-life-in-medical-trial-160503.htm

LINK: Videogame with a very detailed simulated universe

1 polymathwannabe 19 February 2016 03:04AM

"In one sense, because of the game’s procedural design, the entire universe exists at the moment of its creation. In another sense, because the game only renders a player’s immediate surroundings, nothing exists unless there is a human there to witness it."

"Through the use of procedural generation, No Man’s Sky ensures that each planet will be a surprise, even to the programmers. Every creature, AI-guided alien spacecraft, or landscape is a pseudo-random product of the computer program itself. The universe is essentially as unknown to the people who made it as it is to the people who play in it—and ultimately, it is destined to remain that way."

More at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/artificial-universe-no-mans-sky/463308/

Open Thread, January 4-10, 2016

5 polymathwannabe 04 January 2016 01:06PM

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.


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LINK: Most of EvoPsych is pseudoscience

-5 polymathwannabe 08 December 2015 12:53AM

The evolutionary origin of human behavior is doubtless a valuable scientific field, but the way the research is currently being conducted raises several concerns.

By request from readers, I've added some excerpts:

EvoPsych’s most common failing is its fallacious methodology, often consisting of not even acknowledging the need to describe, much less pass, any adequate falsification test. 

(1) This is most commonly the case in its frequent failure to even confirm that a behavior widely exists cross-culturally [...]
(2) EvoPsych also rarely finds any genetic correlation to a behavior [...]
(3) More problematic still is the rarity of ever even acknowledging the need to rule out accidental (byproduct) explanations of a behavior [...]
(4) And one of the most common confounding factors for creating accidental behavior effects will be the sudden radical changes in our environment caused by civilization and technology.
[...] This makes EvoPsych almost impossible to practice as a genuine science. What it wants to know, is almost always simply impossible to know (at least currently).
First, EvoPsych imagines such a vast repertoire of evolved stimulus-response psychological mechanisms as to require a vast genetic apparatus that simply isn’t found in the human genome.
Second, [...] EvoPsych needs to test the non-adaptive hypothesis for any claim first. It should not be assuming every human behavior is a product of biological adaptation.
[...]
(1) The evidence actually suggests human evolution may operate at a faster pace than EvoPsych requires, such that its assumption of ancient environments being wholly determinative of present biology is false.
(2) “Neuroscientists have been aware since the 1980s that the human brain has too much architectural complexity for it to be plausible that genes specify its wiring in detail,” 
(3) “The view that a universal genetic programme underpins human cognition is also not fully consistent with current genetic evidence.”
(4) “Human behavioral genetics has also identified genetic variation underlying an extensive list of cognitive and behavioural characteristics,” thus challenging any claim that certain traits were adaptively selected for—when clearly, after tens of thousands of years, the variance was clearly adaptively selected for.
(5) “The thesis of massive modularity is not supported by the neuroscientific evidence,”
(6) “Evolutionary psychologists rarely examine whether their hypotheses regarding evolved psychological mechanisms are supported by what is known about how the brain works.”
(7) EvoPsych needs to start doing experiments in social learning, to see what can and can’t be unlearned by a change in culture and cognition, so as to isolate what actually is biological, and what is actually instead just picked up [...]
(8) [...] such studies do not test the evolutionary hypotheses themselves [...] by failing to rule out plausible alternative explanations for all of its results, EvoPsych has actually failed to prove anything at all.

Open thread, December 7-13, 2015

3 polymathwannabe 07 December 2015 02:47PM

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.


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4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

Stupid Questions, December 2015

5 polymathwannabe 01 December 2015 10:40PM

This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.

Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.

Group Rationality Diary, Dec. 1-13, 2015

3 polymathwannabe 01 December 2015 10:39PM

This is the public group rationality diary for December 1-13, 2015. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

  • Established a useful new habit

  • Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

  • Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

  • Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

  • Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

  • Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

  • Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

  • Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Crazy Ideas Thread, December 2015

3 polymathwannabe 01 December 2015 10:37PM

This thread is intended to provide a space for 'crazy' ideas. Ideas that spontaneously come to mind (and feel great), ideas you long wanted to tell but never found the place and time for and also for ideas you think should be obvious and simple - but nobody ever mentions them. 

Rules for this thread:

  1. Each crazy idea goes into its own top level comment and may be commented there.
  2. Voting should be based primarily on how original the idea is.
  3. Meta discussion of the thread should go to the top level comment intended for that purpose.

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