Isotropic is …
... my personal blog.
Unless otherwise indicated, anything I write here is simply my personal, probably ill-formed, opinion and does not represent the views, beliefs, positions, or opinions of any other person or entity.
Category Archives: philosophy
25 May 2009
Does it matter whether you are a simulation?
What is the probability that you are a simulation, and if so, how can you tell?
I ran across this idea a while back on one of the science blogs I follow, but had just glanced over and forgotten about it until someone asked about it on LinkedIn yesterday.
Nick Bostrom of Oxford University asked “Are You [...]
07 Mar 2009
Ghosts of Memory
In the small hours of the morning, as I wander randomly over the ‘Net, something reminds me of Ghost in the Shell. One of the pervasive issues in GITS is what it means to be human in a society where entire bodies can be replaced with prosthetics, consciousness transferred from one construct to another, [...]
17 Mar 2008
Gnome Killer
Eliezer Yudkowsky, in post Explaining vs. Explaining Away at Overcoming Bias, deconstructs a brief passage of Keat’s Lamia to point out that distinction. He concludes with
Bad scientist! No poems for you, gnomekiller!
Well, that’s how it feels, if you get emotionally attached to the gnomes, and then a scientist says there aren’t any gnomes. [...]
