Speculation about–and vigorous contestations of–the possibility of ever realizing artificial intelligence have been stuck in a dreary groove ever since the Dartmouth conference: wildly optimistic predictions about the temporal proximity of the day machines (and the programs they run) will attain human levels of intelligence; followed by skeptical critique and taunting reminders of landmarks andContinue reading “Artificial Intelligence And ‘Real Understanding’”
Category Archives: General
Lucid Dreaming: A Pleasant Side-Effect of Sleep Disruption
A disrupted night’s sleep is one of the unfortunate concomitants of parenthood; rumor has it that so terrible is the toll that it extracts that some are scared off procreation altogether. Rare is the parent of the infant or toddler who has not tendered a complaint about sleep deprivation to his bored, unsympathetic, childless friendsContinue reading “Lucid Dreaming: A Pleasant Side-Effect of Sleep Disruption”
Bernard-Henri Lévy And The Problem of ‘Selective Outrage’
You, sir, are a knave and a hypocrite. You protest and fulminate when X assaults–or otherwise inflicts harms on–Y, but not when A assaults–or otherwise inflicts harm on–B. Yet the crime is the same in each case. Your outrage is selective. I do not, therefore, trust your motives, and will ignore your crocodile tears, yourContinue reading “Bernard-Henri Lévy And The Problem of ‘Selective Outrage’”
Evicted From The Twenty-Twenty Club
In 1998, I learned I no longer had twenty-twenty vision. This knowledge did not come to me suddenly. On a couple of occasions at work–on the open-plan office floor of an online brokerage–I noticed I could not clearly read the lettering on the ticker-tape that ran across some of the large monitors that hung from theContinue reading “Evicted From The Twenty-Twenty Club”
My Missing Uncle
The year I turned thirteen, a year after my father’s passing away, I spent part of my summer vacation, as usual, at my grandfather’s home in Central India. The days were long and hot, the afternoons slow and languorous, the evenings warm, the nights short and cool. We–my brother, my cousins, and I–played cricket inContinue reading “My Missing Uncle”
“Look Out of the Window, Camel Jockey”
Twenty-seven years ago, I arrived in the US, and shortly thereafter, began graduate school at a small technical school in Newark, New Jersey. Once classes picked up speed, I spent increasing amounts of time in our grim library–rather inefficiently if I may say so–struggling to stay awake while finishing my readings and programming assignments. ToContinue reading ““Look Out of the Window, Camel Jockey””
Tribalism’s Easy Allure: Brooklyn Does Not Like Toronto Anymore (in the NBA)
Tribalism in sports is a curious thing; it is especially so in professional sports, where as I’ve noted, we encounter: [T]he mystery of how millions of sports fans, here in the US, and all over the world, develop long-standing, passionately defended and articulated, emotionally infused, personal allegiances with large, profit-seeking, corporate entities, an enterprise thatContinue reading “Tribalism’s Easy Allure: Brooklyn Does Not Like Toronto Anymore (in the NBA)”
The Perennial Allure of Utopian Sex
In Margaret Atwood‘s cautionary, speculative tale of a genetic engineering run amuck, Oryx and Crake, the Snowman observes the Crakers are unusually and refreshingly sexually enlightened: Off to the side, from what is probably a glade where the tents and trailers used to be set up, he can hear laughter and singing, and shouts ofContinue reading “The Perennial Allure of Utopian Sex”
The Campus Bell, From School to College
When I began school, I passed into another zone of discipline. The most prominent marker of that regime of control was not the corporeal form of the stern schoolmaster but rather, the sounds of a bell ringing. It was the aural code that dominated the next twelve years of my life, slicing up the schoolContinue reading “The Campus Bell, From School to College”
Twenty-One Car-Free Years
Over the weekend, thanks to traveling up to Albany to meet an old friend, I was unable to make note of an especially important anniversary: March 30th marked twenty-one years of blessed freedom from car ownership. On March 30th, 1993, I sold my Toyota pickup truck, purchased a mere eighteen months previously, at a drasticallyContinue reading “Twenty-One Car-Free Years”
Samir Chopra 