The Way We Are Free – Thoughts about the problem of free will

by Spaceweaver

Abstract

Modern understanding of determinism collides head on with our experience of free will and leaves little place for it if any as a real phenomenon. This article proposes a new reconciliation between free will and determinism. It traces the experience of choice to an epistemic gap inherent in mental processes due to them being based on physically realized computational processes. This gap weakens the grasp of determinism and allows for an effective kind of freedom.  A new meaning of freedom is explored and shown to resolve the fundamental riddles of free will, or at least going a long way towards that end.  Freedom as arising from the epistemic gap is no longer a mysterious property of an agent but rather a dynamic property of a wider state of affairs involving the agent, the distribution of computational resources and information flow. Some implications of the way that we are free and how it might be influenced by future technology are briefly discussed.

Read the rest here: The way we are free (pdf)

Open Sourcing Education

by Djiezes

You probably already heard of MIT OpenCourseWare.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology provides over 1800 online courses fully & freely online available. I’ve selected some courses that sound quite intruiging.

I was able to limit myself to 33 courses from ‘Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences’ department. Main topics are technology, science, (new) media, the future, philosophy and ethics. Full course descriptions are included.

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a CyberReader

by Djiezes

I carefully selected a few of the utmost important texts on the history & future of technology, computers, internet etc… I consider all of them must-read material when it comes to the evolution of technology, computers, internet. Furthermore, they’re all texts that are fully & freely available online (really, just click the links).

I present them to you in a chronological order with either a short abstract or a relevant quote that will give you an idea on the content of each paper.

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Uncontrolled hubris – Unrestrained future

by Wildcat

I love Deleuze for many reasons, the most important of which is his realization, appreciation and promotion of the fact that a poet/writer/philosopher/artist main activity should be creation, conceptual creation that is.A futurist in this context can take after Deleuze and create/conceptualize a future that is not based on pre-existent realities but on desirable realities, this I strive to do.To say anything about the future, anything that is not a complete lunacy, at any rate, we need make assumptions. And assumptions, be they as strong founded as we can make them, remain at the end of the day, just that, assumptions. Having said that, assumptions are a necessary part of the game of predictions, or future presuppositions, and future presuppositions are of necessity an inherent part of the manner of action and thought we take and have presently.

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