My article on Artificial Intelligence has appeared in Aeon magazine, here.

I wish people wouldn’t use the word ‘circuits’ to describe quantum computational networks. They’re not circuits. Circuits are closed paths. Would you call the retina display on your new iDevice a ‘cathode ray tube’? Of course not. So stop with the ‘quantum circuits’ terminology already.

Physics may or may not be the queen of the sciences in any useful sense. But “that’s an arrogant position” is definitely the queen of all invalid arguments.

They concluded that the exact shade, texture and depth of the imprints on the cloth could only be produced with the aid of ultraviolet lasers – technology that was clearly not available in medieval times.

They concluded that the marks were not made by paints, pigments or dyes and that the image was not “the product of an artist”, but that at the same time it could not be explained by modern science.

Nonsense. How negligent of them not to consider the possibility that the marks were caused by a neutrino beam from CERN.

(1) Construct a mathematical model of a certain class of human decisions. Of course the model will omit all creative thought on the part of the people being modelled, because it is not known how to model creative thought.

(2) Classify decisions made in the model as ‘rational’ or ‘irrational’ depending on some unacknowledged cultural criterion. (Again, this cannot possibly reflect the real distinction between rational and non-rational processes.)

(3) Invent an experiment in which humans are asked to make decisions in an artificial situation in which one can measure whether they are ‘rational’ or ‘irrational’ according to the criterion of (2). It will turn out that they (or some target group among them) are ‘irrational’.

(4) Denigrate the target group, or human beings in general (except perhaps the experimenters and whoever the above-mentioned cultural criteria are designed to flatter), as being unfit to make their own decisions.

If B flat major is the first ‘infra-red’ key, what is the first ‘ultra-violet’ key?

Answer…

I am now a Fellow of the Royal Society.

I came across this picture, of a demonstrator carrying a placard with a knock-down argument for the existence of God. Hmm. I guess it’s easy to believe God-based explanations if you don’t think about where God came from.

A video of the lecture entitled Why Are Flowers Beautiful?, which I gave recently via video link at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, is now available here.

A video of my TEDGlobal talk is now available here.