Philosophy (sort of) ⁽³⁾

Oh, that worry, that your prizes will feel empty. – Robert Sapolsky True, that title’s been meant to let you know what this is about, and – if I’m lucky – to even make you curious. In reality, there is no such debate: not in a factual, concrete way, and not with regard to content/substance either. Rather, there are two books, Determined – The Science of Life without Free Will by Robert Sapolsky, author of Behave, and Free Agents by Kevin Mitchell, author of Innate. For me, the link has been there ever since I listened to Brain Science Podcast episode 213, featuring Kevin Mitchell and his new book. Somehow, there was mention of another book forthcoming on that topic,…

This is a high-level, introductory article about Large Language Models (LLMs), the core technology that enables the much-en-vogue chatbots as well as other Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications. It is directed at a general audience, possibly with some technical and/or scientific background, but no knowledge is assumed of either deep learning or NLP. Having looked at major model ingredients, training workflow, and mechanics of output generation, we also talk about what these models are not. “At this writing, the only serious ELIZA scripts which exist are some which cause ELIZA to respond roughly as would certain psychotherapists (Rogerians). ELIZA performs best when its human correspondent is initially instructed to”talk” to it, via the typewriter of course, just as one would…

Much as we humans like to believe, consciousness is not a neocortex thing, a matter of analysis and meta-analysis. Instead – says Mark Solms, in his 2021 The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness – instead, consciousness is all about feeling. A claim that, if we take it seriously (and I don’t see why we shouldn’t) has far-ranging consequences. A few years ago, I found myself wanting to learn and, maybe, try to make up my mind, about a topic I – surprisingly – never had given much thought to, before: consciousness. However, having read around some (first and foremost, Blackmore & Troscianko’s Consciousness: An Introduction, which I liked a lot), I certainly had not made up…