jamesofseattle.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

a man throws a glass apple at a concrete egg, causing it to shatter

submitted 2 days ago • 4 comments

The Forever War For some reason I had never read Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, and recently decided to remedy that. Like most classic sci-fi novels, it's a quick read, much shorter than most contemporary novels. It's often been called a Vietnam veteran's response to Robert A. Heinlein's Starship…

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Hmmm … looking at the questions … I think I have a theory of consciousness. Ah well.

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

New post by @wiringthebrain.bsky.social Kevin J. Mitchell: "What questions should a comprehensive theory of consciousness consider?" doi.org/10.21428/8e6...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

The Agent Cormac series A few weeks ago I reviewed Neal Asher's new book Dark Diamond. It takes place in his Polity universe, a future interstellar society ruled by AIs, where everyone is effectively immortal, but in a dangerous universe. That book featured Ian Cormac and other characters from his…

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Mickey 7 A couple of weeks ago I reviewed the movie Mickey 17, which I found fairly intelligent. That movie is based on a book, Mickey 7, by Edward Ashton. The book turned out to be on Kindle Unlimited and didn't look long, and I needed a break from some of the other stuff I was reading, so it fit…

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

Green Hour

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Is quantum immortality a real thing? In discussions about the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics, one of the concerns I often see expressed is for the perverse low probability outcomes that would exist in the quantum multiverse. For example, if every quantum outcome is reality, then in…

submitted 16 days ago • 1 comment

Open access is awesome!

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

Today's blog post: Types and Degrees of Turing Indistinguishability -- and why the Turing test is unlikely to be a good test of machine consciousness: schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/06/type...

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment

House Republicans passed the single largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the HISTORY of our country. The GOP tax bill would deliver the largest cut to Medicaid and SNAP EVER. Repost and help me put a burning, bright spotlight on this awful disaster of a bill.

submitted 17 days ago • 14 comments

Hey! I posted a brief description of my theory of consciousness (Psychule Theory), and l had ChatGPT rewrite it. I like what the AI rewrote and made some small edits, but I could see using this process to write a full version. Would love to know what you think. jamesofseattle.com/2025/06/01/p...

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

The 5 stages of grieving, UK edition

submitted 25 days ago • 73 comments

When a user attributes consciousness to a chatbot, does it affect trust? In this new study, we guessed people more willing to attribute consciousness to chatGPT would trust it more on a factual matter - but found substantial evidence AGAINST this. (1/5) www.nature.com/articles/s44...

submitted 27 days ago • 6 comments

Dark Diamond Over the years I've recommended a number of Neal Asher's books. Although recently I haven't found his stuff as compelling. Dark Diamond represents something of a return to form for him: epic space opera. The story takes place in his Polity universe, one where Earth and its…

submitted 37 days ago • 1 comment

So @selfawarepatterns.bsky.social , is this related to information being causal? :)

submitted 41 days ago • 1 comment

What is it like to be you? In 1974, in a landmark paper, Thomas Nagel asks what it’s like to be a bat. He argues that we can never know. I’ve expressed my skepticism about the phrase “what it’s like” or “something it is like” before, and that... selfawarepatterns.com/2025/05/10/w... #philmind

submitted 44 days ago • 4 comments

These boxes are not moving. A mind-bending optical illusion by Japanese artist Jagarikin.

submitted 48 days ago • 274 comments

Monochrome Mary

submitted 48 days ago • 5 comments

No Philosophy Booth tonight friends. Take care of yourself, be good to each other. 🥰

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon

submitted 56 days ago • 72 comments

Trump Opens Up Nation’s Aquariums To Commercial Fishing theonion.com/trump-o...

submitted 58 days ago • 65 comments

What is a non-functional account of consciousness supposed to be? I'm a functionalist. I think the mind and consciousness is about what the brain does, rather than its particular composition, or some other attribute. Which means that if another system did the same or similar things, it would make…

submitted 58 days ago • 1 comment

open.substack.com/pub/petemand...

submitted 63 days ago • 0 comments

The Kraken Wakes Adrian Tchaikovsky announced the other day that he and Emma Newman were starting a new podcast: Starship Alexandria, where they will take turns recommending sci-fi and fantasy books, with most of the episode devoted to discussing them. Their first episode dropped a couple of weeks…

submitted 64 days ago • 0 comments

Friend? Or FOE? open.substack.com/pub/petemand...

submitted 65 days ago • 0 comments

Great article, but I’m wondering what you think of the relation between finding alien life and finding intelligent alien life.

submitted 66 days ago • 0 comments

Many-worlds without necessarily many worlds? IAI has a brief interview of David Deutsch on his advocacy for the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. (Warning: possible paywall.) Deutsch has a history of showing little patience with other interpretations, and this interview is no…

submitted 67 days ago • 1 comment

The Roads Both Taken xkcd.com/3076

submitted 69 days ago • 71 comments

Alien Clay What would aliens look like? Not just another intelligent species, but alien animals, or entire ecosystems? It's very hard for us to imagine them without falling back on variations of Earth animals. So aliens in sci-fi often look like insects, octopuses, or other species we're familiar…

submitted 71 days ago • 0 comments

They have some pretty cool illusions at World of Illusions in #Dublin. This one’s a black and white photo with a coloured grid superimposed. You perceive the image in colour. (Zoom in to see the details.)

submitted 71 days ago • 8 comments