Latest Blog
-
OBITUARY for NZARH Member and Supporter JOYCE PATON
Margaret ‘Joyce’ Paton was born in February 1930 in Langley, in sight of WindsorCastle. Joyce’s father died soon after her birth, but as he was a Mason she was sent tothe Royal Masonic School For Girls as a boarder at age seven. She then trained as asecretary, working mainly in the law and criminology fields. In later years she alsotrained as a teacher. Joyce…
-
Opinion, faith and belief
by Chris Gee It is imperative that we encourage the separation and definitional understanding of Opinion vs Belief vs Faith in the public narrative. Too often these three concepts are conflated together or used interchangeably, leading our to public narrative (where political capital is manufactured and harvested) becoming vulnerable to manipulation through political, public relations, ideological and marketing sophistry. This is a very bad…
-
What is reality? How do we know?
Imagine living four thousand years ago. What would you believe about reality? You would believe that you live on the surface of a flat plain, with the stars and the sun rising and setting each day, moving predictably across the sky. Your senses would tell you this is true. And in a limited way it was, in that to a mere human in that…
-
The Engagement Maximisers
Nick Bostrom described a thought experiment in 2003 about a paperclip maximiser, an artificially general intelligent system whose utility function is to maximise paper clip production. The paperclip maximiser would lack the social values of humans, and so would continue to make paperclips even as it destroyed humanity and turned the entire Earth into a huge pile of paperclips. Academic thought experiments are one…
-
Artificial Intelligence Resources
Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence Why AI researchers shouldn’t turn their backs on the military The World Economic Forum warns that AI may destabilize the financial system Children ‘at risk of robot influence’ AI identifies heat-resistant coral reefs in Indonesia Google DeepMind’s AI can detect over 50 sight-threatening eye conditions Don’t expect IBM’s Watson to cure cancer anytime soon Engineers teach…
-
State of Surveillance
In George Orwell’s 1984 the state had something like a TV in every room that was two way. There could be someone watching or listening to you at any time, and therefore you could not assume that it was safe to talk about any critical views of the state without being monitored. This vision has essentially become reality, but with vastly larger scope. Almost…
-
Islam and Humanism
Thanks to all who posted on ‘Islam and Rationalism’. Here are some thoughts on Islam and Humanism. I see Humanism as being more concerned with the ethics of human coexistence and Rationalism being more concerned with the development of accurate understanding. An underlying theme of many anti-Islam posts here has been a rejection of the idea of coexistence with Muslims. ‘Keep them out’ means…
-
AI Storming Medical Image Analysis
The days of highly trained specialists being required to perform analysis of medical images is coming to a close.
-
Dying to Choose
When terminal illness robs people of a long and happy future, leaving them only with the ashes of suffering and decline, who would say that we should refuse to end their suffering should they openly request it? Those that propose we deny people the right to choose an end to their suffering are proposing that force people to endure against their will. Let us…
-
A Way Out of Moral Relativism
Moral Relativism refers to the idea that all cultures and societies have their own moral system and that there is no objective way to determine a moral system. The charge of moral relativism is often made against atheists by theists when they claim that their favourite deity has given them a moral system through divine edict and that atheists can have no morals without…
-
Six Questions
What brought the laws of nature into existence? Nobody knows. We don’t even know if the question itself has any meaning, as time itself is product of the universe, and so the whole concept of ‘bringing’ may not hold meaning outside the framework of a temporal dimension. While many religions claim to know the answer to this none can demonstrate it. What is the…
-
Is it 1984?
In 1984 society was an Oligarchy where the leaders at the top, the Inner Party, had a huge percentage of the wealth while the Proles, the lower 80% of people, had little or no wealth or political power. Anyone familiar with the levels of wealth inequality in the United States knows this is reality today. The bottom 40% of Americans have little or no…
