The Empirical Heart of Mathematics

Mathematics is often grouped together with the many other sciences, despite science supposedly being an empirical study of some domain; while math for centuries has been claimed by the rationalists. I argue however that math is indeed a kind of science, albeit a very strange one. While physics is the study of natural laws, chemistry …

Can we tell if we’re simulated, and why does it matter?

See part 1 here. So maybe we're living in a simulation, maybe we're not. Why does any of this matter? If we can't actually tell any way, we are just arguing over the likelihood one way or the other and why should any of us care? It doesn't change the taste of coffee; it doesn't …

John Searle’s Error: A Defense of the Turing Test

The Turing test, developed by Alan Turing, is a method which is used in the field of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to determine whether an agent is intelligent in some manner. It does so by asking the agent to perform a series of tasks, cognitive or physical, and if the tester cannot distinguish the difference between …