The Mind Considers a Sandwich
A field report on consciousness, possibility, and the thirty-seven seconds it took to almost make a decision about lunch. At 11:47 a.m.
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Articles
Philosophy & Mind
Cognition.
Most discussions about intelligence assume something that isn’t true: that thinking begins with complete thoughts, clear goals, and well-formed instructions. But real human cognition doesn’t work that way.
I didn’t write The Bitter Lesson but it’s geeky interesting.
The Bitter Lesson Rich Sutton March 13, 2019 The biggest lesson that can be read from 70 years of AI research is that general methods that leverage computation are ultimately the most effective, and…
Why do we have anxiety?
Anxiety is the number one human emotion. It is older than language.
The Consequences Will Be Lovely
The framing of our moment as a battle between action and consequence is touching, in the way that a child's drawing of a house is touching. It assumes there are two sides.
On the Necessity of an Invented God
God is a set of ideas that defines good and evil. Can good and evil exist without a mystical deity?
The Mind Does Not Collapse Easily
My conversations with AI keep circling the same point: movement. The mind does not settle.
What Follows From Your Usable Profile
Once a profile is good enough to predict behavior, it stops being descriptive and becomes operational. Decisions are no longer made in the moment alone.
Everything we call civilization came from individual humans.
The truly strange thing about human history is how little the human core changes, even when everything around it changes. The costumes change, the technologies change, the language changes, the flags and borders and…
Ink or Bread. Human Contribution.
Most of what we call “normal life” is borrowed. Borrowed language.