An interview of Douglas Hofstadter on recent AI development.

I read this article when it was trending on Hacker News in 2022. It changed my consumption habits (both in terms of buying and using) a lot. Whatever I want to buy or consume, I think about the benefit it brings me versus the cost - in terms of money, my time, and mental effort. My sense of "value" has changed a lot.

Someone in the comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36353272) talks about there being a third price - the cost of disposal. I couldn't agree more. This has bothered me - I tend to get attached to possessions. Every time I move and have to make the decision to throw away familiar things, I fall into depression for weeks.

I'm deeply moved by this article. I can't say how much I do feel the same way about ongoing decadent of humanity. The world has been more material than ever, and yet the people are a lot less alive nowadays.

No "outsourced" TL;DR for this article. You should to read it on your own.

“Our theory is that consciousness developed as a memory system that is used by our unconscious brain to help us flexibly and creatively imagine the future and plan accordingly,” said author Dr. Andrew Budson. “We don’t perceive the world, make decisions, or perform actions directly. Instead, we do all these things unconsciously and then—about half a second later—consciously remember doing them.”

That is mind blowing. "You" may be not the one who's in charge. The unconscious "you" does everything automatically and "you" takes the credit as the agent.

I first heard about this theory from Blindsight by Peter Watts. It was a really interesting idea.

A short summary of the book.

An article about a fundamental philosophical question: why is there anything, instead of nothing?

Following deep down the rabbit hole, we can see that nothingness is actually not that trivial. Something naturally arise easily from nothingness. Logic, math, conciousness all have their root from nothing and yet are no nothing. A quite inspiring read.

Intelligence: what is it? Is it fair to consider human the only intelligent animal? This article talks about various traits animals exhibit that we typically associate with having a intelligence.

Alongside the desire to brainwash people, the regime also wants to remind people of their power. When citizens are bombarded with propaganda everywhere they look, they are reminded of the strength of the regime. The vast amount of resources authoritarian regimes spend to display their message in every corner of the public square is a costly demonstration of their power.

Propaganda is intended to instill fear in people, not brainwash them. The message is: You might not hold pro-regime values or attitudes. But we will make sure you are too frightened to do anything about it.

Insightful! Considering China on these days, if the torrent of stupid propaganda abated, it would be resonable to suspect that Xi's power has been suppressed probably by his political enemies.

<blockquote>Part 1 of 2: "The Road to Superintelligence". Artificial Intelligence — the topic everyone in the world should be talking about.</blockquote>