An essay by John Zhou
On an overcast afternoon in November, 2022, a teenage boy pages through a glossy video game manual in his bedroom in the Saitama prefecture of…
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From a dad hugging his daughter who lost a sports game to a husband trying to alleviate his wife’s distress by listening to her, humans have the capacity to adopt…
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"Paraphrasing Einstein, everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Take everything you know, everything you believe, and everything about life and existence. What does it all…
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While writing this article, I am lying in the grass, which is as green as the caipirinha I am drinking under the blue sky. This sounds great, doesn’t it? I’m…
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What happens when your mind disconnects from all outside sensations? First, you undress, put in earplugs, and step into a floatation tank, the water warmed to the temperature of your…
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Philosophers and neuroscientists agree that if there is an objective reality, human beings can’t perceive it: philosophers refer to objective reality as a perception independent of any conscious awareness. Neuroscientists…
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Consciousness is an ambiguous concept. It can mean a lot of different things, depending on the context. For example, I can say that I am conscious of something, as in, “I am…
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[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n a brand new episode of the Knowing Neurons podcast, we explore the concept of “mind uploading”. How would something like a mind upload really work?…
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[dropcap]H[/dropcap]ow do emotions construct human culture? Is culture uniquely human at all?
Hard questions, but some tackled nonetheless by renowned neuroscientist Antonio Damasio in his latest book, The Strange…
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When I walk through my kitchen, I smell fresh food and feel warmth radiating off of it. These internal, subjective experiences are called qualia. I assume that my refrigerator, my…
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[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he term “hive mind” refers to the apparent intelligence that emerges at the group level in some social species, particularly insects like honeybees and ants. An individual honeybee might not…
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You might have heard the term ‘phrenology’ thrown around, usually in the context of pseudoscience and racism. Or, if you’ve heard discussions about the Quentin Tarantino movie Django Unchained, it…
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Traduction en français par Nirosha Murugan.
Dans quelques mois, des millions des téléspectateurs vont revenir à Westworld, la série originale de HBO sur les androïdes artificiellement intelligents qui habitent dans…
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By Gabrielle Torre
In a few months, millions of viewers will return to Westworld, the HBO original series about artificially intelligent androids inhabiting a Western theme park. The show, based…
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[dropcap]I[/dropcap]’m trying to concentrate on writing this piece, but my two grandchildren in the room next door have stopped making paper aeroplanes and started arguing. ‘You kicked me,’ yells Freya.…
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[dropcap]N[/dropcap]ature is so predictable. Or is it? On Monday, August 21, 2017, thousands will travel to see the first total solar eclipse in the contiguous United States since 1979. Peering…
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The Matrix made all of us ask the same disturbing questions: How do I know that the world I see, hear, and touch is real? Can I prove that I’m…
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Is consciousness everywhere? Is it a basic feature of the Universe, at the very heart of the tiniest subatomic particles? Such an idea – panpsychism as it is known –…
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Common sense tells us that only living things have an inner life. Rabbits and tigers and mice have feelings, sensations and experiences; tables and rocks and molecules do not. Panpsychists…
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In Part II of this series, we considered artificial intelligent in the context of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel and Stanley Kubrik’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. In Space Odyssey, intelligence…
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In our previous post, we considered the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in the context of a thought experiment: a thinking tool used by scientists and…
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Let’s imagine something crazy.
What if each person in China was ordered to simulate a neuron in a brain, making an enormous “China brain?” Every participant in this grand experiment…
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Would you trust a memory if it felt as real as all your others? And other people confirmed they remember it, too? What if the memory turned out to be…
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It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon. Professor Freeman is enjoying the Southern California weather on Professor Domino’s patio.
Domino: Will it be Coke or Pepsi, Dr. Freeman?
Freeman: That’s an easy…
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Last month, astronomers announced the prediction of a new giant planet in our solar system dubbed Planet IX, a genuine ninth planet with ten times the mass of Earth. The…
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“A barber (who is a man) shaves all and only those men who do not shave themselves. Does he shave himself?”
If you can’t solve the above riddle, don’t worry…
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Some questions cannot be addressed by science. Like parallel universes, the consciousness of others is not something that can be directly observed, measured, or experienced. Rene Descartes famously said,
“I…
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