Lifeboat Foundation

http://www.ted.com Philosopher Dan Dennett makes a compelling argument that not only don’t we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, politics and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

Daniel Dennett.
May 14, 2014

Serious thinkers contend that free will cannot exist in a deterministic universe — one in which events are the singular outcomes of the conditions in which they occur. The alternative view, that free will is prerequisite for personal responsibility and morality, is the basis of our legal and religious institutions. Philosopher Daniel Dennett unravels this conundrum and asks whether we must jettison one of these notions, or whether they can co-exist. He then asks: if free will is an illusion, as many scientists say, should we conclude that we don’t need real free will to be responsible for our actions?

Continue reading “Is Free Will an Illusion? What Can Cognitive Science Tell Us?” »

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE

Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord!
https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime.

Continue reading “What If We Live in a Superdeterministic Universe?” »

Derk Pereboom claims that free will is impossible because of its incompatibility with both determinism and indeterminism. Also he defends a robust nonreductive physicalism. It says that although consciousness can’t be reduced to physical it’s not something over and above physical.
The interview was taken by Vadim Vasiliev and Dmitry Volkov. Below you’ll see a list of questions of the interview.
1. The most influential books.
2. What are the differences between notions of moral responsibility and basic desert?
3. Which type of punishment should be eliminated if we find out that there is no justification for basic desert?
4. Is indignation as a reaction on wrongdoing a kind of irrational emotion?
5. How was the manipulation argument invented?
6. Why you’ve recently changed a presentation of the first case of Manipulation Argument?
7. How does the problem of free will relate to the problem of mental causation?
8. Could the problem of personal identity pose difficulties for moral responsibility and for basic desert? And why causal determinism is at the focus of free will debate?
9. Is there a real difference between hard incompatibilist’s position and that of compatibilists?
10. Can you list or name some differences and similarities between you and Daniel Dennett?
11. Could cognitive science and neuroscience eliminate the discussion on free will?
12. What is a definition of mental?
13. What were the most important changes of your views?
14. What is meaning of life?
15. What is your current research?

Summary: While scores for verbal reasoning and matrix reasoning have decreased, scores for spatial reasoning have improved, researchers report.

Source: Northwestern University.

IQ scores have substantially increased from 1932 through the 20th century, with differences ranging from three to five IQ points per decade, according to a phenomenon known as the “Flynn effect.”

“Of course, we need to finetune everything before we can apply it to humans. But I would say that 10 years is a realistic timeline,” Ngo-Anh said.

This fine-tuning is already underway. First studies have shown that it’s possible to induce torpor (opens in new tab) in otherwise non-hibernating animals, such as rats, and bring them safely back to life a few days later. The process of triggering hibernation is rather intricate and involves reduced exposure to daylight and a period of intense feeding followed by a strict fast.

Quantum ‘turnout’ device has a switching speed four to five orders of magnitude faster than that of current solid-state transistors.

Humans are musical animals 4 million years in the making, explained by music expert Michael Spitzer.

Year 2016 This is a simple set up for running an electric engine without wires with a tesla coil.

This is a small demonstration showing how Tesla’s wireless technology can run motors and other various devices. Although the setup is only using about 500–600 ma, the results are dependable up to about three feet from the transmitter.
John.

Continue reading “Motors Run Wirelessly With Tesla Coil” »