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POPSThe Physical World as a Virtual Reality (by Brian Whitworth) The abstract continues: ... It is suggested that whether the world is an objective reality or a virtual reality is a matter for science to resolve. Modern information science can suggest how core physical properties like space, time, light, matter and movement could derive from information processing. Such an approach could reconcile relativity and quantum theories, with the former being how information processing creates space-time, and the latter how it creates energy and matter.
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POPSThe Real Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet ...But I would much rather talk about future possibilities, and so I wrote a few historical notes to provide some context for the 1975 paper, and now can try to discuss some of the more important, and mostly hidden, gifts that personal computing networked together around the world can bring to humanity. Our thought was: but if we can get the children to learn the real thing then in a few generations the big change will happen. 32 years later the technologies that our research community invented are in general use by more than a billion people, and we have gradually learned how to teach children the real thing. But it looks as though the actual revolution will take longer than our optimism suggested, largely because the commercial and educational interests in the old media and modes of thought have frozen personal computing pretty much at the “imitation of paper, recordings, film and TV” level.
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POPSThe Simulated Universe ... In this article, I provide an exposition of the Simulated Universe argument and explain why some philosophers believe that there is a high possibility that we exist in a simulation. I will then discuss the type of evidence that we would need to determine whether we exist in a simulation. Finally, I will describe two objections to the argument before concluding that while interesting, we should reject the Simulated Universe argument. This article is a critique on Nick Bostroms article Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?
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POPSNanoEthics Journal Via {{wildcat}}'s clip Nanoethics -- The watchdog of a new technology? This is the link to the (freely online available) journal NanoEthics and its first (and sofar only) articles. NanoEthics: Ethics for Technologies that Converge at the Nanoscale will focus on the philosophically and scientifically rigorous examination of the ethical and societal considerations and the public and policy concerns inherent in nanotechnology research and development. These issues include both individual and societal problems, and include individual health, wellbeing and human enhancement, human integrity and autonomy, distribution of the costs and benefits, threats to culture and tradition and to political and economic stability. Additionally there are meta-issues including the neutrality or otherwise of technology, designing technology in a value-sensitive way, and the control of scientific research.
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POPSIs there an Artificial God? - Douglas Adams
So, my argument is that as we become more and more scientifically literate, it's worth remembering that the fictions with which we previously populated our world may have some function that it's worth trying to understand and preserve the essential components of, rather than throwing out the baby with the bath water; because even though we may not accept the reasons given for them being here in the first place, it may well be that there are good practical reasons for them, or something like them, to be there. I suspect that as we move further and further into the field of digital or artificial life we will find more and more unexpected properties begin to emerge out of what we see happening and that this is a precise parallel to the entities we create around ourselves to inform and shape our lives and enable us to work and live together. Therefore, I would argue that though there isn't an actual god there is an artificial god and we should probably bear that in mind.
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POPSArtificial Intelligence turns 50: Revisiting its Origins The expression ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) was introduced by John McCarthy, and the official birth of AI is unanimously considered to be the 1956 Dartmouth Conference. Thus, AI turned fifty in 2006. How did AI begin? Several differently motivated analyses have been proposed as to its origins. In this paper a brief look at those that might be considered steps towards Dartmouth is attempted, with the aim of showing how a number of research topics and controversies that marked the short history of AI were touched on, or fairly well stated, during the year immediately preceding Dartmouth. The framework within which those steps were taken was thedevelopment of digital computers. Earlier computer applications in areas such as complex decision making and management, at that time dealt with by operations research techniques, were important in this story. The time was ripe for AI’s intriguingly tumultuous development, marked as it has been by hopes and defeats, successes and difficulties.
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