Author Archives: Raelifin

Is Consciousness Real? A Practical Answer.

By Raelifin | Published: January 31, 2012

This is a conversation I had back in October, but I haven’t posted anything recently, so I figured I’d copypasta it here for posterity. A friend wrote: Do you think consciousness is (i) A real phenomenon (ii) Unreal phenomenon ? Real here means that there exist (a) physical process/es (in the brain) that causally correspond [...]

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Extremist Language

By Raelifin | Published: November 4, 2011

On the 27th, which was 8 days ago, now, Jon Stewart had Andrew Napolitano on The Daily Show. I am a self-described libertarian. I voted for Ron Paul in 2008 (yes, I know he wasn’t on the ballot). I also love The Daily Show and Mr. Stewart; I think he’s insightful, wise, and funny. Here’s [...]

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Re: Conversations on Strong AI

By Raelifin | Published: August 1, 2011

I am having a conversation with Rod Furlan over on his blog about the possibility of self-preservation being an emergent property of intelligent systems. Just, you know… in case you were curious what I’m up to. Edit: I am commenting. I did not send the original email.

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Blind Cronus

By Raelifin | Published: July 6, 2011

Fire, frozen in apple’s sweet shape, From promethean serpent it was sent. A rite of passage from “mere ape”; Extended forehead was Eve’s punishment. We are not Abel; we are Cain. Brother rots in Neandertal. Over all of Gaia we now reign. Child monarch of mother thrall. Stumbling from Darwin’s crude workshop, We see a [...]

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Clustering and Perception

By Raelifin | Published: June 20, 2011

Rysade asks: What does clustering have to do with perception? All it takes is a question! To start, let’s take a functioning neural net (never mind how it learned), which is a well understood perceptual system. In a NN, each “neuron” is hooked to a bunch of others by weights. As the other neurons activate [...]

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