Website: http://www.wheatandtares.org
Profile: jmb275 is an engineer. 3 different kinds in fact! He recently left a great high-paying job to come back to school to pursue a PhD. There are many days he wonders what on earth he was thinking! jmb275 likes to talk/write about anything, though he is regularly reminded of how little he actually knows about most things. "Real Engineers give you the feeling you're having a conversation with a dial tone or busy signal."
Ahhhh the Ensign. Let’s see what we’ve got this month. “Exhort them to Pray” by H.B. Eyring That might be good. Visiting Teaching Message. L-A-M-E j/k “The Lord Has Given Us a Law of Health” by ??? (what, some staffer?). That’s lame, there’s no authoritah in that! Let’s see how they’ve packaged up the no [...]
Libertarians and free-market proponents get a really bad rap in the economic sector these days. The argument is almost always the same – the financial disaster of this decade is primarily attributable to the greed, dishonesty, and poor ethics of bank owners, CEOs, and “Wall Street” (whatever that means), and the way to prevent this [...]
I like dystopian novels. I think that if many of the ideals espoused by most people were executed to perfection the result would be captured by one of the many dystopian novels that have been written. I think this says something very important about ideals, paradox, uncertainty, and truth. I’ve been reading “Brave New World” [...]
On August 6, 2009 I introduced myself to the bloggernacle with the introduction Unleashing the Analyst. A Personal Story. It is a story about me, my faith journey to that point, and some of the positions I had at that time. The real revelation in the story (even if only for myself) was the unboxing [...]
Steve Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011 at the age of 56 from complications arising from pancreatic cancer. At the outset of this post, let me say, Steve Jobs is a game changer. Love him or hate him (and he is quite the polarizing figure for some reason) if you’re reading this he has impacted [...]
Last time I addressed the topic of our discussion in the church I talked about faith in Christ, and how we might shift our discussion from speculation on doctrines designed to create an emotional response to discussions about faith in our real lives. In perhaps a not too dissimilar vein, I’d like to talk about [...]
I love music! And sometimes songs can say more in a few short lines than I could in 10 different posts. There’s always been a tug-o-war in the b’nacle between various personalities. I think there are three primary personalities in the ‘nacle represented nicely by the following three songs (complete with links to cool YouTube [...]
Because I have had my own trials of faith, and have stood in the figurative shoes of those who see things from a non-believing standpoint, I have become increasingly aware of the language we use and the ways in which it contributes to our cultural peculiarities and often times sets people up for failure. Sometimes [...]
In the last couple of posts (here, and here) I defined some terms relating to consciousness and artificial intelligence. Then in part II, I took a look at those topics from the point of view of philosophy and psychology. As I have examined the topics of philosophy of mind, and artificial intelligence I have learned there [...]
In my last post I gave some definitions of Autonomy, Intelligence, and Consciousness and discussed some possible implications with the intent of further discussing artificial intelligence. In this post, we’re going to dive a bit deeper into consciousness, and set the stage for a discussion of how conscious robots might emerge. Consciousness in Philosophy In [...]
In my last post (quite a while ago now), I talked about IBM’s Watson playing Jeopardy. I introduced the Turing test and gave a short analysis of Watson’s performance. The discussion that ensued examined some interesting points and I’d like to elaborate further on some of these issues. In this post I’d like to talk [...]
Surely everyone has heard that IBM’s Watson virtually crushed its meatbag counterparts in the epic trivia game Jeopardy. What? You haven’t? I suppose you’re not nerdy enough. Lucky for you…I am!! But first a bit of background. Alan Turing is often considered the father of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Besides being absolutely brilliant he was one [...]
I really like music. I like just about every kind of music. I like to choose it according to my mood to help me achieve a goal. Perhaps it is to relax, or maybe inspire me. Sometimes it’s nothing more than a distraction. Sometimes it moves me deeply in a very spiritual way. I really [...]
One of the most basic and fundamental premises of Mormonism is the idea of free will. While we take this for granted in Mormonism, in the secular world the debate is far from settled. In fact, the debate over determinism vs. libertarianism (not the political philosophy but the metaphysical philosophy) has raged on and on [...]
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