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…
Read More
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…
Read More
"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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
[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?…
Read More
[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…
Read More
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…
Read More
[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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
[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.…
Read More
[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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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 –…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
“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…
Read More
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…
Read More
