Apropos my first post on video game design, I have thought up a new “game” for the Wii. It is a marionette theater simulator: you would get to create virtual marionettes, with customizable bodies and outfits (Mii integration if possible, lots of different clothing options), and levels would include performing different scenes from plays or entire plays. The accelerometers of the Wii controllers would function as the strings on the virtual marionettes. As you tilt […]
David Schrader on WNYC: The Brian Lehrer Show
or click here: The Brian Lehrer Show: Heavy Thinking (April 07, 2008)
The Monty Hall Problem
[check out my more recent Monty Redux for, perhaps, a clearer exposition] The Monty Hall Problem illustrates an unusual phenomenon of changing probabilities based upon someone else’s knowledge. On the game-show Let’s Make a Deal the host, Monty Hall, asks the contestant to choose one of three possibilities – Door One, Two or Three – with one door leading to a prize and the other two leading to goats. After the contestant selects a door, […]
Links, BEcause
Not that everyone hasn’t already seen everything on the ‘net. Animal of the Month – Armadillo girdled lizard: YouTube – A History of Evil (5:40) “Animated Documentary-Mockumentary about Evil in western civilization from Ancient Greece to present day.” Nils Frederking‘s Brilliant Folding Furniture (0:52) [via]: garfield minus garfield “Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the […]
Psychopharmacological Enhancement
The only ways to enhance the mind is to learn or evolve. Since evolution is out of our hands, all that is left is to learn. Drugs that purport psychopharmacological enhancement do not do what their name states: they may change certain psychological factors but there is no drug that will make you smarter. This would be to eat from the tree of knowledge. However drugs may be able to let you do things that […]
Solved Philosophy
I was reading the philo-blogs and today (7 March) Richard Brown has taken issue with Richard Chappell’s Examples of Solved Philosophy. Brown holds that there is no such thing as solved philosophy (or problems are “only solved from a theoretical standpoint” and hence “involve substantial begging the question”), whereas Chappell happily provides examples that “are at least as well-established as most scientific results.” Now there is something to be said for both sides: Brown is […]
Computers, Intelligence and the Embodied Mind
This interview with Hubert Dreyfus (just the parts about computers: part 1, part 2. via Continental Philosophy) briefly outlines one of the major criticisms leveled against artificial intelligence: computers will never be intelligent because our intelligence is based upon our physical interactions in and with the world. Very briefly, our intelligence is fundamentally tied to our bodies because it is only through our bodies do we have any interaction with the world. If we separate […]
More links, again….
More ID. Industrial Design and Interaction Design, that is. Some random links. Design: A Chat with the Designer of the Google Logo | WebProNews Advice posters 2007 – a photoset on Flickr Clarence Larkin Dispensational Charts Really well made charts for explaining heaven and the like. Shaker’s sweet success – Los Angeles Times: CONSIDER this humble sugar shaker, a staple of kitchens and coffee shops across the land. About 35 million have been sold — […]
63rd Philosophers’ Carnival’s a Laugh
Welcome to the 63rd Philosophers’ Carnival. The subject was Comedy and there are three sections: the first is about theories of comedy and philosophy, and second is a roundup of recently funny things with a philosophical bent. At the end I put submissions of non-comedic philosophical musings. Part 1: Comedic Theory Did you hear the one about the philosopher writing a book on humour? via Continental Philosophy Philosophy Through Humor on ‘Philosophy Talk’ radio program. […]
Intentionality is Dead
After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave–a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead: but given the way of men there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown.–And we–we still have to vanquish his shadow, too. ~F. N. If want to study the mind, we believed that we needed to understand intentionality: Intentionality is the power of minds to be about, […]