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Good Job Ray
February 10, 2010

Ray Kurzweil has some pretty elaborate and seemingly unlikely theories about the future, but reading the following was a wonderful thing:

"I get very excited about discussions about the true nature of consciousness, because I‘ve been thinking about this issue for literally 50 years, going back to junior high school. And it‘s a very difficult subject. When some article purports to present the neurological basis of consciousness... I read it. And the articles usually start out, “Well, we think that consciousness is caused by...” You know, fill in the blank. And then it goes on with a big extensive examination of that phenomenon. And at the end of the article, I inevitably find myself thinking... where is the link to consciousness? Where is any justification for believing that this phenomenon should cause consciousness? Why would it cause consciousness?"

It's very rare that I read someone's thoughts about consciousness and think "Wow, this person really gets it, they're thinking about it in a very similar way to how I think about it".

But I have to say, this was very encouraging.


Defining intelligence
December 16, 2009

Thought of the day:

Intelligence is the ability to form high level concepts from low level observations, and then to be able to relate those high level concepts to new low level observations to solve problems.


The prez made a funny
November 24, 2009

http://gizmodo.com/5411752/obama-to-robots-im-watching-you

lol, I love it.

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