Category Archives: Wild Speculation

Spiritual Machines are Not Possible

The Paradox of the Artificial Zen Master:

If we make an artificial Zen master, 
And it perfectly reproduces everything
that a real Zen master can say or do, 
Is it a Zen master?

My commentary:

No. To be an actual Zen master it would have to be sentient.… Read More “Spiritual Machines are Not Possible”

Proposal for a Consciousness Test

Summary

A proposed experimental design to test whether consciousness of a future event improves the ability of humans and/or computers to predict that event. If we find that this is true, it implies the existence of consciousness, as well as retrocausality as a result of conscious observation.… Read More “Proposal for a Consciousness Test”

The Keeper of the Book: My Childhood Dream of the Future

When I was eight years old, I had a very unusual dream in which I saw many lifetimes of my future. In this dream I saw a very clear picture of what the world would go through for perhaps a century or two into the future.… Read More “The Keeper of the Book: My Childhood Dream of the Future”

An Interesting Pattern in the Prime Numbers: Parallax Compression

Early this year a software engineer, Shaun Gilchrist, reached out to me after reading a blog post of mine from many years ago, about my informal search for hidden patterns in the prime numbers.

The Ulam Spiral revealed non-random patterns, but they didn’t quite match up.Read More “An Interesting Pattern in the Prime Numbers: Parallax Compression”

Let’s Put the Wikipedia in Space: The Arch Project

UPDATE: The Arch Mission Foundation was officially launched on October 24, 2016

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In this article, I propose an achievable project to seed the solar system and eventually the universe with digital copies of humanity’s most important knowledge — stored in digital archives that I call “Archs.”… Read More “Let’s Put the Wikipedia in Space: The Arch Project”

Did Apple Buy Topsy for Contextual Awareness?

The stunning news that Apple bought social search engine, Topsy, for more than $200M has many scratching their heads. Why would Apple want social data, and why would they pay so much for it?

There has been a lot of speculation about the reasons for this acquisition — ranging from making Siri better, to making the App Store smarter, to acquiring big data expertise to develop insights on the Apple firehose.… Read More “Did Apple Buy Topsy for Contextual Awareness?”

Is the Universe a Computer? New Evidence Emerges.

I haven’t posted in a while, but this is blog-worthy material. I’ve recently become familiar with the thinking of University of Maryland physicist, James Gates Jr. Dr. Gates is working on a branch of physics called supersymmetry. In the process of his work he’s discovered the presence of what appear to resemble a form of computer code, called error correcting codes, embedded within, or resulting from, the equations of supersymmetry that describe fundamental particles.… Read More “Is the Universe a Computer? New Evidence Emerges.”

My Best Interview: About Global Brain, Consciousness and AI

I was recently interviewed by Stephen Ibaraki and Alex Lin (CEO of ChinaValue) in what turned out to be the most interesting, far-reaching, and multi-disciplinary (and long) interview I’ve ever given. I was very pleased with the depth of their questions and the topics we covered.… Read More “My Best Interview: About Global Brain, Consciousness and AI”