Mike Smith

Halcyon Years Alastair Reynolds' new novel, Halcyon Years, starts off as a murder mystery that takes place on an interstellar generation ship, a sealed O'Neill cylinder type environment, with cities, rivers, lakes, and forests. The ship is ruled by two rich families, the Urrys and the DelRossos, who hate each other. And while there are separate municipal governments and police forces, they're largely corrupt and in the pocket of the families.

Halcyon Years

Alastair Reynolds' new novel, Halcyon Years, starts off as a murder mystery that takes place on an interstellar generation ship, a sealed O'Neill cylinder type environment, with cities, rivers, lakes, and forests. The ship is ruled by two rich families, the Urrys and the DelRossos,…

No need to apologize for the sins of others. I'm fine with contention. There's nothing I enjoy as much as a good debate. It's when people get nasty about it that I have less patience with as I get older.

On blocking people, seems to be a fact of online life.

I agree. And yet, the things people seem incline to fight about the most are exactly the issues that can't be settled empirically.

Excession Excession is one of the novels I missed years ago when reading Iain Banks' Culture series. The main reason, I think, is that for along time it wasn't published in ebook format, I suspect due to formatting complexity. It just came out in ebook a couple of weeks ago, so I've finally been able to rectify the oversight. The Culture, if you're not familiar with Banks' books, is an interstellar society that is probably the closest thing in science fiction to heaven.

Excession

Excession is one of the novels I missed years ago when reading Iain Banks' Culture series. The main reason, I think, is that for along time it wasn't published in ebook format, I suspect due to formatting complexity. It just came out in ebook a couple of weeks ago, so I've finally been…

#philosophy #philmind

Chill about metaphysics This week I had to block a couple of people on different platforms. Neither seemed able to make their point without lacing in insults. One seemed to be on a mission to make me feel as bad about my outlook as possible. The disagreements were on purely metaphysical grounds, physicalism vs non-physicalism. And seem to be examples of something that appears pervasive in online discussions, the constant sniping between these different metaphysical camps.

Chill about metaphysics

This week I had to block a couple of people on different platforms. Neither seemed able to make their point without lacing in insults. One seemed to be on a mission to make me feel as bad about my outlook as possible. The disagreements were on purely metaphysical grounds,…

Thanks. Seen and bookmarked it but haven't read it yet. Hopefully sometime this week.

To me it's more like the distinction between understanding that water is H2O and understanding hydrology.

I think you'd find that you've only scratched the surface and there remains an enormous amount of detail to be discovered. But you're not alone. It's common for people to underestimate the task. Has been since the first electronic computers.

I briefly skimmed the page, saw that it was a newer version of what you had there before, then watched the video when you tagged me.

So if you've explained them, that means you can build a system with those capabilities?

You've seen my hierarchies before. I'd like to understand perception, affective processing, attentional dynamics, causal models including episodic memory and imagination, and of course recursive metacognition. Or more accurately, to understand summaries, since they're likely to be hideously complex.

Thanks. You've had my feedback before. Pattern recognition is definitely part of the answer. Of course, consciousness is in the eye of the beholder, so I can't say you're wrong, only that it doesn't fully cover the versions I crave explanations for.

Lot of work here though, which is impressive!

Pushing Ice I have a pet theory about good science fiction stories (and maybe fantasy ones). A good story needs to have both a wonder and a conflict element. A lot of classic SF only have the wonder one. Many of Arthur C. Clarke's stories fit in this category. Consider 2001: A Space odyssey. Remove the wonder elements and there's little left.

Pushing Ice

I have a pet theory about good science fiction stories (and maybe fantasy ones). A good story needs to have both a wonder and a conflict element. A lot of classic SF only have the wonder one. Many of Arthur C. Clarke's stories fit in this category. Consider 2001: A Space odyssey.…

Sorry to hear this. Hope you're taking something. I've had my share of dental pain. If you don't have anything stronger, I've learned that acetaminophen and ibuprofen in combination can help, something about the different actions. Obvs follow the label instructions.

Hope you get relief soon.

It seems like more of a problem for them. The physicalist can just define it as everything. It's the ones who say it isn't everything who have to come up with the distinction.

Thanks. Read and enjoyed it years ago. Excellent descriptions of the options. But I disagreed with your take on the realist vs epistemic options. Epistemics seem incomplete to me. And not nearly as metaphysically conservative as often portrayed (participatory realism, flash ontology, etc).

#philosophy

If usefulness isn’t a guide to what’s real, what is? Seems like I've been writing a lot about quantum mechanics lately. Apparently so have a lot of other people. One thing that keeps coming up is the reality or non-reality of the quantum wave function. Raoni Arroyo and Jonas R. Becker Arenhart argue for non-reality: Quantum mechanics works, but it doesn't describe reality: Predictive power is not a guide to reality…

If usefulness isn’t a guide to what’s real, what is?

Seems like I've been writing a lot about quantum mechanics lately. Apparently so have a lot of other people. One thing that keeps coming up is the reality or non-reality of the quantum wave function. Raoni Arroyo and Jonas R. Becker Arenhart…

Why the Everett Interpretation of QM Is Not Insane The dollar-store version of Sean Carroll

I wrote a Thing about quantum foundations spinning off my talk in Oslo last month because that was more fun than the many other things I should've been doing: open.substack.com/pub/chadorze...

#philosophy #philmind

Biological computation and the nature of software A new paper is been getting some attention. It makes the case for biological computation. (This is a link to a summary, but there’s a link to the actual paper at the bottom of that article.) …

Biological computation and the nature of software

A new paper is been getting some attention. It makes the case for biological computation. Characterizing the debate between computational functionalism and biological naturalism as camps that are hopelessly...
selfawarepatterns.com/2025/12/31/b...

I would think monism is simpler than dualism, assuming of course all else is equal.

...I'm also fine with emergence in an weak/epistemic sense, but obviously not the strong/ontic version which seems inherently anti-reductionist.

And as someone who's site name is SelfAwarePatterns, I'm definitely onboard with the pattern view.

So we might be in total agreement here!

I noted in the post that most reduction is conservative, retaining the reduced concept if it's still useful. So I agree that a stance that only the lowest levels of reality are real isn't very productive.

#philosophy #philmind

Why I’m a reductionist The SEP article on scientific reductionism notes that the etymology of the word "reduction" is "to bring back" something to something else. So in a methodological sense, reduction is bringing one theory or ontology back to a simpler or more fundamental theory or ontology. The Wikipedia entry on reductionism identifies different kinds: ontological, methodological, and theory reductionism. I think the ontological one is the most interesting here, the proposition that all of reality consists of a small number of building blocks.

Why I’m a reductionist

The SEP article on scientific reductionism notes that the etymology of the word "reduction" is "to bring back" something to something else. So in a methodological sense, reduction is bringing one theory or ontology back to a simpler or more fundamental theory or ontology.…

If it can't, how does it evolve? What does natural selection select against?

Merry Christmas Happy Winter Solstice Season! The celebrations around the time that the sun's path in the sky starts getting higher again, and the days longer, seems to stretch back into prehistory. It's no accident that we observe many of our most cherished religious holidays and celebrate a new year around this time. It's kind of a corrective. Have a season of good will and fellowship in the darkest time of winter.

Merry Christmas

Happy Winter Solstice Season! The celebrations around the time that the sun's path in the sky starts getting higher again, and the days longer, seems to stretch back into prehistory. It's no accident that we observe many of our most cherished religious holidays and celebrate a new…

this paper on why biological computation is special (& necessary for consciousness) by @jaanaru.bsky.social, is as usual, very good & maybe the best one yet on the topic

but why doesn't the argument apply to e.g. motor control too?

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linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0149763425005251