Between Carbon and Silicon

The notion that logic and emotion are opposed is itself illogical. In rational decision-making, a course of action which failed to account for all variables would be incomplete, and where those variables are as commonplace and inevitable as the  emotions of people, grossly insufficient--such a process would be appropriately recategorized as irrational  for failing to treat all relevant factors as such. A perfectly logical process would see weight given necessarily to emotional aspects, treating emotion both as a factor contributing to some system, and also as a dimension of value in the outcome. A proof by contradiction can demonstrate that emotion  is not contrary to reason , since emotions are highly correlative, following patterns, attributable to causes, measurable, and deeply connected to the decision-making neural processes--all attributes indicative of rational thinking. The two--logic and emotion--are inseparable, being only different interpretations of a deeply r...

Social media gets blamed for just about any problem imaginable, and while social media is certainly not innocent of many of the accusations, rare is the issue that was introduced by  social media. The overarching contribution of social media is really that the new medium catalyzes and exacerbates  existing ones. It is bad that children are bullied by their peers at school--"cyber-bullying" is the extension of the hours of the day during which they're susceptible to such treatment. The reference group to which people critically compare themselves is no longer constrained geographically, nor by just the countable occurrences of celebrities appearing in print magazines--the effective group against which to feel inferior is much larger  (explained by the Big-fish-little-pond effect ). The platform itself does not instigate the problems--the problems are either systemic, prevalent above and before it, or else interpersonal and deriving from human psychology. The projection o...

The security  in "Cyber Security" is relative. Sure, when someone invokes the term it is usually loaded to convey a particular standpoint, but this is not inherent to the system itself. Security is the degree to which outcome reflects intent , so that a password is secure if only the intended  user knows it--but whose  intent are we referring to? A person might secure  a password that was previously unknown to them, and it is only context and an arbitrarily-picked perspective that can distinguish between whether this constitutes password recovery  or password cracking .  Security  only denotes opposition between  intents--the normative aspect to security  is independently lent to the issue by the observer, and so is relative  to the observer. Put it this way: a Soccer game would be very dull if both sides respected the will of each other's defense, and the competition that breaks out on the field does not demand one side is morally su...

If you're uncomfortable about the idea of Facebook, Google, etc. learning about you, your interests, or recording your online behavior, you might be shy . Conventionally shy people (in physical contexts) will prefer situations where they are not observed, or else will wish their public presence goes unnoticed. In virtual contexts, shy users will desire anonymity. In any case, the tendency of a shy person to blame the context  they are in is maladaptive, and stokes anger toward bystanders. Facebook might acknowledge that you engage with certain types of content, and harmlessly infer that "maybe you like cats"--this is hardly threatening your livelihood. I would anticipate the same inference from actual people who spent much time around me in person--no, I would be offended if they were so indifferent as to not  infer anything about me at all. Consequently I would find it distasteful for  artificial intelligence  to be so apathetic as to not bother getting to und...

Consider some moral dilemmas--is a person excusable if they: order a homicidal hit and supply a soon-to-be-murderer with the weapon. out of neglect, leave a weapon where it is accessible to a young child who accidentally killed someone with it. In neither case is the subject in question directly hurting anyone, though in both cases the subject was a necessary factor for the events to have occurred. The two scenarios serve as endpoints for what might be an infinite spectrum of scenarios: toward one end are events in which the subject facilitates, even anticipates the harm; toward the other end is an accident in which a similar consequence was completely unintended. When considering this spectrum, there are only a few possible stances to take: The entirety of the spectrum is inexcusable (the consequentialist ) There is a point within the spectrum, on one side of which the subject is excusable (the virtue ethicist ) The entirety of the spectrum is excusable (the deontologist ) The conseq...

The strongest evidence against an idea is in the cognition of its sympathizers. I can listen to critics all day, but I will never be so convinced as when I hear the cultist themselves who, in their effort to sway me to their side, reveal the most genuine   proof to the contrary . Let the crazies  tell you how crazy they "aren't."  As recent as when I last posted , I remained suspicious of the threat posed by social media--it took watching The Social Dilemma  for me to finally feel the weight of that tinfoil hat atop my head. Described as a "documentary-drama" (emphasis on drama !), the conspiracies were so thick I found myself salivating for facts, a seasoning the filmmakers skimped on. This "documentary-drama" really needs a woodsy campfire around which its viewers can sit. A note to the director: you forgot to mention the Illuminati. I feel strange having to say this: mind-reading and mind-control  are still science fiction. Software developers turn...

Diary foods are not inherently suited to the human diet. Except as babies, ancient humans were pretty much unable to digest milk at all, and ingesting it would result in diarrhea or vomiting. Modern social media  is very much like milk! Just as dairy products augment a diet with a rich source of protein, social media presents a rich and more readily-available source for social interaction. The main problem is that social media remains largely indigestible, manifested not in wet poops, but rather in  depression and anxiety . While young people have the largest appetites for it--social interaction is essential to their development--they also have the least-developed resistance to this particularly crude source of it. Consequently we might expect that the advent of social media would have brought along with it an increase in depression and anxiety among teenagers. In fact, this is exactly the case . Social media must afford significant potential (in the way that dairy enrich...