Altruistic Awesomeness, Your Challenge

So you woke up in this universe, containing not only yourself, but a planet in which you live, a few billion galaxies, religious grandmothers, cookies, weekends and downloadable series which you can watch any time. Eventually you noticed people are way more intentional than cookies, people always want something. Everyone told you, also, that you [...]

Teachings of Mount Qassiun

Teachings of Mount Qassiun There are no places better suited to a complete reflection about life than Mount Qassiun. This geological formation, a little bit younger than the dinosaurs, was forged eons ago, during the Eocene in the northeast of what has become Africa, and has been slowly making its way up towards Asia. It [...]

Utopia The Hidden Design Part 2

What are we allowed to change?    Here and throughout this book, I shall keep the mesoscopic alone. Things of medium size are way too visible in our cognition for us to be able to change them in an interesting way without loosing track completely, going completely bonkers. From the size of teeth to the size [...]

Utopia The Hidden Design Part 1

Not particularly tall, nor particularly small, João de Almeida is a man of vision… His main vision was seeing a ghost when he was eight years old in his aunt’s house, and he’s been using this story as his standard way to impress others ever since. Now 41, he is a construction worker, married, with [...]

Two Cognitive Cases

Two Cognitive Cases This is the first draft of an article I’m developing, I appreciate any commentaries and corrections, which can be sent as reponses. The study of cognition can be benefited in a number of ways, and people from areas as separate as mechanical engineering, artificial systems and psychology show us that. In fact, [...]

Os Principais Obstáculos ao Conhecimento Racional

Esse texto concerne os seis hábitos mentais que me parecem ser os maiores desmanteladores do pensamento racional, seja em discussões de senso comum, conversas do dia a dia, ou nos maiores e mais conhecidos artigos filosóficos e científicos1. Esses seis hábitos são a Falácia Naturalista (e o problema ser-dever), Vagueza, Relativismo, Procura de Skyhooks, Medo [...]

Doomsday and Conscious Machines

Penultimate Draft 17/dec/2008 Please Help me improve this article by commenting it before it is sent to press. Every Conscious Machine Drives us Closer to Death “Every time the clock ticks ‘plus one’,’plus one’,’plus one’, it will be telling you ‘one less’,’one less’, ‘one less’…” Abril Despedaçado The Doomsday Argument is alive and kicking, and [...]

Adorno, Snickers e Etologia: A informavoridade como motor do homem contemporâneo

O comportamento exploratório, nos dizem os etólogos, é uma das motivações de todos os animais. Seja um espaço vazio e um tempo dentro dele, um animal irá explorar o que quer que possa. Da revista veja até as nuances de sujeira que compõe o rodapé do canto do banheiro (sim, você não foi o único). [...]

Fundamentos da matemática e a mente humana

Teoria dos conjuntos No final do século XIX o desenvolvimento da analise de um lado levou a noção intuitiva de conjunto que foi desenvolvida por Cantor de maneira subentendida nos seus estudos sobre o infinito e a descoberta de números transfinitos (infinitos maiores que a infinitude dos números naturais), de outro lado Peano havia conseguido [...]

Flights from Reality

Num artigo de mesmo título, escrito para o times dos anos trinta, Russell comenta sobre o habito da leitura, discutindo esses pequenos vôos da realidade, esses desvios possíveis ao quais nos damos o luxo de habitar durante uma leitura de uma boa ficção. Gostaria de que colocássemos aqui diferentes reflexões sobre esse hábito, não o [...]