Edge #485: The Mind Bleeds Into the World - A Conversation With David Chalmers

News from Edge To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves. January 24, 2017 THE THIRD CULTURE [The Mind Bleeds Into the World] A Conversation With [David Chalmers] Coming very soon is going to be augmented reality technology, where you see not only the physical world, but also virtual objects and entities that you perceive in the middle of them. We’ll put on augmented reality glasses and we’ll have augmented entities out there. My face recognition is not so great, but my augmented glasses will tell me, "Ah, that’s John Brockman." A bit of AI inside my augmented reality glasses will recognize people for me. At that level, artificial intelligence will start to become an extension of my mind. I suspect before long we’re all going to become very reliant on this. I’m already very reliant on my smartphone and my computers. These things are going to become more and more ubiquitous parts of our lives. The mind starts bleeding into the world. So many parts of the world are becoming parts of our mind, and eventually we start moving towards this increasingly digital reality. And this raises the question I started with: How real is all of this? DAVID CHALMERS is University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and Co-Director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University. He is also Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University. [David Chalmers's Edge Bio Page] [ [Continue...] ] --------------------------------------------------------------- Reality Club Conversation [DONALD D. HOFFMAN], Cognitive Scientist, UC, Irvine; Author, Visual Intelligence "I agree that, 'A virtual world is just as real as a physical world,' and (partly) that, 'When one sees one’s avatar in virtual reality, that’s a real body, it’s just a digital body.' … We must not, of course, conflate 'real' and 'independent of observation.' When I view an illustration of a Necker cube in a book of illusions, I experience a cube in three dimensions. My experience is real, but not independent of observation. It ceases to exist when I look away. There is no 3D Necker cube when no one observes." … --------------------------------------------------------------- [SEAN CARROLL], Theoretical Physicist, Caltech; Author, The Big Picture "David Chalmers does a wonderful job at making an important point: 'A virtual world is just as real as a physical world.' In discussing the nature of reality, we tend to be too quick to attach the word 'illusion' to anything less tangible than the chairs we are sitting on. Virtual worlds aren't illusory, they are simply different ways of organizing and talking about (certain parts of) the world as a whole, whatever that may be." … --------------------------------------------------------------- [STEVE OMOHUNDRO], Scientist, Self-Aware Systems; Co-founder, Center for Complex Systems Research "Chalmers' stimulating conversation links together several important recent ideas: Virtual Reality, AI/Human integration, Bostrom's simulation argument, and the Multiverse. An extra element I'd like to add to the mix is that both simulators and participants will have intentions and that those intentions may not be aligned. If a Simulator has created a virtual world for a particular purpose, they may not want participants to know that purpose or even that they are in a constructed simulation. Participants, on the other hand, will often strive to better know their true reality so that they may act most effectively in it." … --------------------------------------------------------------- [THOMAS METZINGER], Philosopher, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz; Fellow, Gutenberg Research College; Author, The Ego Tunnel "Where there is a theology, there also has to be a theodicy. If we abstract away from our naturally evolved cognitive biases and try to take on an intellectually honest, scientifically informed perspective, then it becomes more than obvious that there is much more suffering than joy in our world. The creator of our world would be ethically responsible for the suffering of all the sentient creatures in this world. If it is a teenage hacker one level up, then her personality would be stained by evil because she has causally contributed to the existence of everything in our world, and evil is one of those things. Surely this world is not the best possible world, and philosophically it's simply impossible to make the existence of an all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good or omnibenevolent God consistent with the existence of evil. If anything is real, suffering is." … THE EDGE QUESTION 2017 "Spiders 2013" by Katinka Matson [Click to Expand] | [katinkamatson.com] Richard Dawkins' “meme” became a meme, known far beyond the scientific conversation in which it was coined. It’s one of a handful of scientific ideas that have entered the general culture, helping to clarify and inspire. The Edge 20th Anniversary Annual Question ["WHAT SCIENTIFIC TERM OR CONCEPT OUGHT TO BE MORE WIDELY KNOWN?"] Of course, not everyone likes the idea of spreading scientific understanding. Remember what the Bishop of Birmingham’s wife is reputed to have said about Darwin’s claim that human beings are descended from monkeys: "My dear, let us hope it is not true, but, if it is true, let us hope it will not become generally known." [206 contributors; 143,000 words] --------------------------------------------------------------- [Full Media Coverage of the Edge Question 2017] IN THE NEWS IT.SOHU.COM [Transfer Learning] [1.21.17] "You can never understand a language—unless you understand at least two languages." Edge.org also launched the 2017 annual issue—what are the most noteworthy scientific terms or concepts? Dr. Peter Lee, Senior Vice President of Microsoft Worldwide, was invited to give a briefing on the past and present of this scientific term transfer learning. [ [Continue...] ] --------------------------------------------------------------- INGENIØREN [What scientific concept is the most important thing people know too little about?] By Jens Ramskov [1.19.17] This week's most important scientific news was enough that NASA and NOAA in the United States confirmed that 2016 was the warmest year. The European Copernicus program recounted the same already for more than a half week ago, but since it's not exactly the same data set that underlies the two statements, there was still some uncertainty about whether 2016 was actually warmer than in 2015. [ [Continue...] ] --------------------------------------------------------------- THE SPECTATOR [If Economists Want to be Trusted Again, They Should Learn to Tell Jokes] By Rory Sutherland [1.12.17] Writing recently at edge.org, one of the founding fathers of evolutionary psychology, John Tooby, answered a question which had long baffled me. Why do people on the left get more agitated about transgender bathroom access or hate speech than they do about modern slavery? Tooby explains: ‘Morally wrong-footing rivals is one point of ideology, and once everyone agrees on something (slavery is wrong) it ceases to be a significant moral issue because it no longer shows local rivals in a bad light. Many argue that there are more slaves in the world today than in the 19th century. Yet because one’s political rivals cannot be delegitimised by being on the wrong side of slavery, few care to be active abolitionists any more, compared to being, say, speech police.’ [ [Continue...] ] --------------------------------------------------------------- [New Books by Edgies] Edge contributors: [Daniel C. Dennett], [Terry Gilliam], [Daniel L. Everett], [Carlo Rovelli], [Paul Bloom], [Joichi Ito] Edge Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit private operating foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. [EDGE.ORG] John Brockman, Editor and Publisher Russell Weinberger, Associate Publisher Nina Stegeman, Associate Editor Copyright (c) 2017 by Edge Foundation, Inc. 260 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10001 All Rights Reserved. Published by Edge Foundation, Inc. --------------------------------------------------------------- "The World's Smartest Website. Edge is a salon for the world's finest minds." — The Guardian • "We'd certainly be better off if everyone sampled the fabulous Edge symposium which, like the best in science, is modest and daring at once." — David Brooks, The New York Times • "An epicenter of bleeding-edge insight across science, technology and beyond . . . with some of our era's greatest thinkers . . . A lavish cerebral feast." — The Atlantic • "Not just wonderful, but plausible." — The Wall Street Journal • "Deliciously creative, the variety astonishes. Intellectual skyrockets of stunning brilliance." — Denis Dutton, Founder, Arts & Letters Daily • "Take a look. 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