How Small Became Beautiful: A Brief History of Information Storage

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, compact discs, Computational Sciences, computers, Delft University of Technology, DNA, electronic storage, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Engineering, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, George Gaylord Simpson, gigabytes, Gordon Moore, hard drives, heat-assisted magnetic recording, IBM, information, Kryder’s law, Macintosh, Mark Kryder, megabytes, Michael Denton, Microsoft, molecular calculation, Moore’s law, nanometers, Pan Am, physics, printing, quantum holography, RAMAC, Richard Feynman, Stanford University, Technology, terabyte, Thomas Newman, University of Washington, volumetric density
For readers whose eyes may be glazing over with all these large exponentials for measuring DNA storage, let me offer an observation from Michael Denton. Source
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Legal Liability for the AI Geniuses? It’s So Far Largely Undiscussed

AI agents, ambition, Anthropic, artificial inteligence, Axios, banks, Computational Sciences, Coyotec, Gary Marcus, Gizmodo, grade school, Hugging Face, irresponsibility, Jason Clinton, Journal of the American Medical Association, Kate Knibbs, laziness, Legal Science (jurisprudence), medical training, murder, Philadelphia, Sam Altman, Sophie Warburton, Stanford University, stupidity, Technology, This Is Money, White House, Wired
AI can become a serious social pest without rogue superagents or cyberDoomsday. Human stupidity could do all the heavy lifting. Source
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An Elevator Pitch About What Information Is

communication, elevator pitch, epistemologists, Fred Dretske, information, Inquiry (book), Intelligent Design, John Archibald Wheeler, John Horgan, Logic and the Flow of Information, MIT, My Personal History with Information (series), naturalists, physical causality, possibilities, Robert Stalnaker, Scientific American, scientific reasoning, semantic content, Shannon information, Stanford University, teleology
The conception of information as ruling out possibilities allows for teleological as well as non-teleological processes to generate information. Source
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Remarkable Engineering and the “Two Brains” Myth

Ars Technica, biology, brain, designer, Engineering, Evolution, forebrain, hindbrain, John Timmer, midbrain, Nature (journal), nervous system, neurons, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, reptilian brain, signaling molecules, skin, Stanford University, tail, Tudor Tarita, two brains, vertebrates, ZME Science
Did two brains evolve into one? This is not a left brain/right brain thing. It is more like claims for a reptilian brain underlying our mammalian one. Source
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Math, Mystery, and the Mind of God: A Conversation

beauty, Faith & Science, faith and science, Hoover Institution, Ideas, Intelligent Design, mathematical structure, mathematics, Peter Robinson, Plato, Plato's Revenge, Princeton University, Return of the God Hypothesis, Richard Sternberg, Sergiu Klainerman, Stanford University, The Republic, Uncommon Knowledge, universe
The discussion takes place against a stunning Alpine background, which is appropriate since the mysterious beauty of mathematics, is a theme. Source
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Remembering Bernie Widrow, a Great Engineer and a Wise Scientist

ADALINE, Adolf Hitler, algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, Bell Labs, Bernard Widrow, Boeing, Claude Shannon, Computational Sciences, copper, copper plating, Earl Sannard Herald, electrical engineering, electroplating, Engineering, English, Frank Rosenblatt, French, IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, IEEE Neural Networks Pioneer Medal, Japanese, Least Mean Squares, MADALINE, Marcian Hoff, National Academy of Engineering, Neural Networks, neurons, pennies, Science in Action, Seattle, silver nitrate, speech recognition, Stanford University
Widrow called his learning machine a neural network because it was loosely based on the 1943 McCulloch-Pitts model of the biological neuron. Source
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Free Will vs. the Totalitarian Temptation

Alain Aspect, Anton Zeilinger, atheists, Benjamin Libet, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, ethics, free will, J.D. Vance, John F. Clauser, logic, meat puppets, Michael Egnor, Minority Report, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, neuroscientists, physics, readiness potential, Robert Sapolsky, Sam Harris, Soviet Union, Stanford University, The Immortal Mind, totalitarianism, United States, Wilder Penfield, Yuval Noah Harari
If our thoughts and choices really are wholly determined, well then what follows? Source
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A Device to Read Minds? Not What Researchers Intended, But…

amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Benyamin Meschede-Krasa, brain implant, brain-computer interfaces, BrainGate2, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, dissidents, English, Erin Kunz, ethics, Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, Francis Willett, government, Ian Fleming, inner speech, Jacques Vidal, Manhasset, monologue, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, new york, Rudy Molinek, Sarah Wandelt, Smithsonian Magazine, speech, Stanford University, stroke, Technology, UCLA
"There’s a voice inside most people’s minds that comes alive when they listen, read, or prepare to speak." Source
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Revenge of the Turtle Lady 

Big Bang, biologists, causes, conscious experience, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, explanations, free will, gravity, infinite chain, infinite regress, Intelligent Design, movement, Neuroscience & Mind, neuroscientists, Peter Corning, philosophers, physical universe, physicists, promissory note, quantum mechanics, Robert Sapolsky, Stanford University, turtles, universe
You’ve probably heard the story about the old lady who tells a Famous Professor that the world is actually sitting on the back of giant turtle.  Source
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Let’s Not Forget About That Covid Commission

9/11 Commission, accountability, bureaucrats, Children, Congress, Covid commission, COVID-19, Culture & Ethics, deaths, Declaration of Independence, Democrats, English, ethics, experts, Hoover Institution, Humanize, Jay Bhattacharya, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, leadership, liberty, lockdowns, Medicine, National Institutes of Health, pandemic, Republicans, Scott Atlas, Stanford University, vaccine, vaccine mandates, virus, Wall Street Journal, Washington DC, Washington State, Wesley J. Smith
When speaking of the disaster that began to unfold in 2020, do you refer to it as the Covid “pandemic” or the Covid “lockdowns and vaccine mandates”? Source
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