"Let's avoid the endless philosophical debates and focus on something almost everybody no matter where they fall on the ideological divide can agree on and that is the correlates of conscious in the brain." Watch neuroscientist Christof Koch on CTT now: bit.ly/3qR5NOZ

1/n In response to a recent open review of our bioRxiv preprint (which summarizes the 1st set of results of our adversarial collaboration), we have published an open response to the reviewer comments on PubSmear ↘️ pubpeer.com/publications/8… ↗️

I remember having way too much fun writing this back in 2017 when I made the Bitcoin explainer. If someone describes a cryptographic protocol as having "256-bit security", what does that really mean?

My reply to an email asking me about science fiction authors and stories that had influenced how I see the world, or my approach to AI: ---- Vernor Vinge's True Names and Other Dangers story collection, particularly the afterword to Run Bookworm Run, introduced the key idea

now.tufts.edu/2023/10/02/dan…

"the great AI consciousness conundrum" by Grace Huckins in MIT Technology Review, featuring Robert Long Liad Mudrik Susan Schneider Eric Schwitzgebel Anil Seth technologyreview.com/2023/10/16/108…

I realized recently I didn't know why prisms work. Like, why does light slow down? And why would that depend on color? It turns out, answering the first question with enough detail automatically answers the second, and it's completely delightful. youtu.be/KTzGBJPuJwM

Welcome to day 2 at #NeurIPS2023. From showcasing our latest model Gemini to an AI system helping predict the weather, here’s a snapshot of our work being shown today. 🧵 dpmd.ai/GDM-neurips2023

Applications open in 10 days! If you’re an African student consider applying to join us, and faculty from leading institutes across the world, in Kigali, Rwanda this July.

My wonderful conversation with Ted Chiang at CASBS, AI children, alignment, ethis, intellect and speculative fiction. youtube.com/watch?v=feCDCX…

How do we know (exactly) when and where an eclipse (like the one coming up on April 8) will happen? I just published a small book that tells the story: an inspiring tale of science, mathematics and computation spanning more than two thousand years... amazon.com/Predicting-Ecl…

We are happy to introduce you to Saray Soldado-Magraner, a postdoctoral researcher from Brain Research Institute. Saray is a member of the Organizing Team and an Instructor at the course 👩‍🏫 Thank you Saray for your initiatives regarding the course! 🤗 #VolunteerAppreciation

The Matt Parker pi day video this year was truly something to behold. I think I was smiling cheek-to-cheek the whole time. youtu.be/LIg-6glbLkU

I was curious how DALL-E might render a pi creature, and its true preferences for tau were revealed. And on today of all days! (Then again, maybe it's on me for the typo)

Descartes on the acquisition of knowledge

Your circumstance is imperfect. What of it? All circumstances are imperfect. Perfection in earthly circumstance is an illusion, one only periodically glimpsed. Adjust your expectations. Appreciate what is.

🚨Student applications for Imbizo 2025 are now open! Apply before 24 July to join us in South Africa🇿🇦for 3 weeks (Jan 12-Feb 2) of Comp Neuro lectures 🧠, coding tutorials💻, meeting new people 🌎, and exploring the wonderful beach of Noordhoek🏖️! More info in the link 👇

who introduced the brain-in-a-vat scenario into philosophy? my best candidate is jonathan harrison's wonderful and under-recognized 1967 story "a philosopher's nightmare" (jstor.org/stable/4544744), about a subject whose brain is in an "endocephalic electrohallucinator" and who

What if the universe is just a program? We're going live with researchers from the Wolfram Institute to explore the code behind reality. June 6, 2025 | 9 AM PST

“A scientific world-view which does not profoundly come to terms with the problem of conscious minds can have no serious pretensions of completeness.” ― Roger Penrose