See http://www.kurzweilai.net/why-evolution-may-be-intelligent-based-on-deep-learning My comment there:  "I recall coming to essentially the same conclusion in the late '60's after reading Koestler's "The Act of Creation," or perhaps it was "Janus."  I think it was referred to me by the Nathaniel Brandon Institute. As I recall, Koestler did not believe in junk DNA, for good reasons having to do with basic information theory.  I agreed, but, in part, my agreemen...

New AI breakthrough:   One of the hardest jobs for AI has been natural language parsing. There are many examples of ambiguity that would stump most human recipients - and yet are perfectly valid, grammatically correct, etc. We humans resolve these situations by putting them in a context and/or by seeking further clarification. This task - translating a stream of symbols such as words into a meaningful mental object in our consciousness - has been partially solved to date ...

This blog is intended to be derivative of my blog "On Morals." Suppose you have the misfortune to be born to wealth, but with no apparent talent for greatness.  If you have good examples to emulate, you may still do ok.  However, as I demonstrated in "On Morals," the crucial impetus for consciousness - what drives it - is feedback of the form of reaffirmation of reality.  It is seeing the abstract made concrete - "the Word made flesh" - that fuels our passions,&n...