Today the church we attend hosted a talk from Dr. Richard Baldwin who is a history professor at Gulf Coast college. His talk was on The Future of the Mind and started with the history of the soul. In a less than an hour he covered:
- Nekyia in the Odyssey
- Plato's Republic and the Myth of Er
- Out of Body Experiences (OBEs)
- Turing Tests
- The Terminator
- I, Robot
- Asimo
and other dystopian future movies. His talk summed up in that there is no empirical evidence for a soul and that there are many examples of brain damage creating "mind" damage.
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| Phineas Gage sans left eye |
I talked to the Dr. afterwards and talked about William Gibson, Ray Bradbury and others who think the future won't result in an AI coming to kill us, but rather a slow merging with technology. An interesting example (spoiler alert) is the sequel to the Dune series in which a human/AI merged Duncan Idaho saves the day.
Currently reading Gibson's Distrust That Particular Flavor, which is a collection of essays by the novelist.
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