The consensus within the scientific community is that to date we have not been visited by aliens... of the super-intelligent variety. Some of those who have seen UFOs beg to differ, of course.
Well, he's not your average computer nerd. He's kind of a psychedelic techno-shaman who had a rough start in life; but he is a genius, and I use that term sparingly:
I recently saw the film "Sound of My Voice", and I recommend it, mostly to see what SOME cult leaders are like up close. Warm and at peace with themselves, they are also often manipulative and dishonest.
What is it with physics these days? First we heard that the Higgs might be discovered. Then we heard that large-scale quantum computing is fast approaching, following a string of unprecedented breakthroughs.
You may object that what goes on inside the brain cannot possibly be captured on a computer -- subjective experience and all that. If so, you are not alone. Many people feel this way. And maybe you are right. However, it IS true that at least for some low-level neural systems like visual processing in the retina CAN be perfectly well simulated by a computer.
Futurist Thomas Frey has written a new blog posting on contour crafting, which is basically a method to 3D print houses! You can find this posting by going here:
Jason Silva has created another of his "philosophical espresso" videos, this time on the "Transcension Hypothesis", which is a proposed solution to the so-called Fermi Paradox:
Is Google trying to build an artificial general intelligence (AGI)? -- I'm not talking about SIRI, only a little better; I'm talking about C3PO... Data... HAL 9000. Impossible? I keep thinking so, but then I see things like the following:
Do you like to read Discover? Heard of Sean Carroll's blog on discover.com titled Cosmic Variance? Have a look at this recent posting of his, titled "Testing Your Theories is not Envy":
Artificial neural networks are computer imitations of biological brains that can reproduce at least some of their recognition and "thinking" capabilities. They are used, for example, to do optical character recognition -- to read the alpha-numeric characters in, say, a magazine written in a strange font.
I recently came across a fascinating TED talk that I thought I would share with you, that presents yet another bit of insight on the differences between liberals and conservatives. Here is that video:
So, the NSA has been busy building an enormous data storage facility to archive emails, blog postings, and forum discussions like this one. They probably also have archives of data from public webcams (at least some); cellphone location data; photographs; home movies stored at places like youtube and gmail; video calls (at least some...
"Banish the word 'struggle' from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
We are the ones we have been waiting for." — Hopi elders
