Talking Salsa with Douglas Hofstadter, Enigmatic Author of Gödel, Escher, Bach
The cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter is well known for his pioneering work on artificial intelligence,…
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The Avengers, Rogue Roombas, and Robot Accountability
Artificial intelligence is taking over—at least in Hollywood. In 2013, there was Spike Jonze’s acclaimed…
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The Promise of Immortality in a Tech-Enhanced Heaven
Talking transhumanism with R.U. Sirius and Jay Cornell.
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What Robot Theology Can Tell Us About Ourselves
There are places you never expect to be in life. For me, this was certainly one of them…
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Religious Belief Or Mental Illness?
The paranoid few who seem genuinely disturbed by the possibility of the coming end of the world may be responding the most reasonably to current events. Or not. This ambiguity is at the heart of Jeff Nichols’ recent film Take Shelter. The film explores whether its protagonist is crazy, or a prophet, or both.
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The Cult of Kurzweil: Will Robots Save Our Souls?
Scientists like roboticist Hans Moravec and inventor Ray Kurzweil advocate uploading our minds into robots or virtual reality so that we can live forever. They believe that our minds can be replicated outside of our brains if we simply copy the pattern of neuro-chemical activity taking place in our bodies. That pattern, rather than the brains in which the pattern takes shape, “is” the personality. If it can be transferred to a digital medium, it can be made immortal. Surpassingly intelligent robots—our Mind Children, according to Moravec—will populate the universe, converting physical reality into a cosmic interweb of thinking machines.
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The Zeitgeist Debate
Packed with conspiracy theories, while claiming to be about sustainability.
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Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World
RD columnist S. Brent Plate crosses disciplinary boundaries to show us how film creates worlds, just as religion does; through incantation or special effects anything is possible.
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Capricology: Big Ideas, Lack of Humanity
As the half-season closes on this sci-fi epic, we take inventory on where the show has gone, and gone wrong. Among the robots, avatars, and people who love them, there are a lot of big ideas, but not enough story.
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Capricology: A Robot is Being Tortured
Is it the inhumanity of the machines that will prove to be the tragic pivot in this science fiction world, or will it the inhumanity of the humans? Again we find ourselves asking: where does human consciousness begin?
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