Efram

Just to throw this into the mix: I know the idea of consciousness being some kind of powerless observer attached to an otherwise computational brain i...

I've noticed you express this sentiment a couple of times in the thread; could you elaborate further? I'm not sure how you're arriving at "A isn't fav...

25 pages of reading later... I'm going to try to come at this from a different angle to try to break the stalemate. I'm in a curious position because ...

AI is something I invest a lot of time in, but I didn't pursue it formally precisely because the whole field is so unappealing in its current state. A...

I got called a white supremacist for pointing out the simple historic fact that white slavery was a thing. You're probably wasting your time here. :P

In the example I gave, the algorithm (let's say) would be identical on both computers, but one computer would have a hardware limitation (slower CPU o...

The question was sincere and I was ready to follow up on either outcome; I just wanted to know what kind of discussion we were having. I can see why i...

Just to quickly check: Do you believe that the mind is a result of physical processes in the brain - or do you believe we have supernatural souls of s...

I've been rumbled.

Fun fact: I once had an 11 hour debate on this very topic. To clarify first of all, I'll speak of "problem solving" here as a broad term for anything ...

I won't actively participate in this thread, but I wanted to throw this into the mix: There has been historic slavery of white people. For some reason...

For the people who took issue with it, I'll try to give a more moderate version of what Rich might have been touching on. First of all, there's money ...

Where did you study? I was working on my rolloutcheckology PhD at Oxbridge, but I took some time out to travel Europe and just couldn't get back into ...

... Maybe. The point is that you can't decide exactly what happens as a result of blinking your eye.

Numbers, arithmetic and such are just systems for labeling, counting or otherwise describing things. Quantities can be one of those things. What about...

Seems you're confusing numbers and quantities. There's also a lot more nuance to both of those things. To give you something else to think about: Unti...

There may be a possibility that wearing a certain shirt will have some impact on the game (e.g. you wear blue, someone who knows one of the players se...

That's just my failure to clean up after myself; there used to be code in those blocks.

Challenge accepted.

It's purely a pisstake. ;) I'm aware it doesn't necessarily run more efficiently than the other implementations.

As has been vaguely covered already, there's nothing wrong with nested loops when they're doing their job; it's just usually more efficient to avoid t...

I've had quite a bit of fun with HackerRank in the past; it covers a good range of subjects and difficulty levels. I wrote about one of my solutions h...

I have a lot of objections to the linked essay, but I assume it's given here more for illustration and not as a focal point for us to critique specifi...

I'm familiar with the mathematics. Cantor's diagonal argument does not make any assertions about the quantity, nature or relationships of infinity. It...

If you're basing this on set theory, there may be an argument that one infinity can be bigger than another. The argument may have been explored more t...

I just finished "remastering" an old comic strip I drew a while ago - and I remembered seeing this thread before. I thought some of you might apprecia...

If you're talking about the idea that this existence is a simulation, I've always thought it's just the God of the gaps wrapped up in technobabble and...

For my own personal interest, could you elaborate on the part about astrophysics? I ask because I ultimately agree (regarding other areas of science a...

The solution can be used where "win and lose" conditions can be defined, where a random choice is possible and where there are no negative consequence...

If you have or know of an alternative, I'd be interested to (eventually) hear it. At first I wondered if this was a homework assignment, but now I sus...

I don't think paradox was ever intended to be taken so seriously to begin with, but at its heart lies this question about rationality. Forget the ass....

If you're making the assumptions that a) there is an overall objective to the choice (such as your life vs death dichotomy) and b) that you can just h...

You missed out the part that minds must create knowledge. Also, it might be helpful here to clarify what you mean by 'knowledge'.

I didn't! See my first reply. ;)

You've made two statements here. First, that minds must create knowledge. Second, that animals don't create knowledge. Can you support either of those...

The implication is that either a) the essence of the colour (the qualia, if you will) is stored in X (which I would personally disagree with) or b) so...

Just out of curiosity, could I ask why you wish to do this? I'm only loosely familiar with first-order logic so I could be mistaken here, but my first...

I sent Nick Bostrom his consolation prize right around the time Elon Musk was the one who started getting praised as a genius for the simulation idea,...

Wosret, clearly the meaning of the term "identical" in this instance is that, as far as the ass's needs are concerned, neither pile of grass has a pro...

You could also make the point that those who argue against animal minds do so merely out of a desire to be superior - or even something so simple as n...

To my mind your logic makes some leaps, but I mainly take issue with your assumption that humans are the most intelligent animal. Whales and elephants...

When the donkey is given the choice, a process is involved in making a decision. For sake of example, we assume that this process is physical - the ch...

Are you accounting for the mechanism behind rationality, though? Whether a brain, a computer, whatever - there are processes which inform how a decisi...

I wouldn't count this as a paradox, but it is an interesting problem. If we leave the example scenario as an ass and hay, it opens the door to all kin...

I've had similar thoughts about ADHD, autism and such. For me, the danger lies in assuming that the status quo is correct and that anything contrary t...