Genes Carrying Memes

The prospect of CRISPR-Cas9 germline editing has many wondering how it will be used on humans. Will there be more Chinese experimental babies? Will there be super babies? Yes, obviously. It is inevitable. How will future generations of cultures interact when some can bestow advantages of health, strength, and intelligence directly to their progeny? It …

Unemployed Donors

A friend of mine brought an article to my attention about untraceable ‘unemployed’ donors. It raises concerns about potentially fraudulent campaign donations. The article shows that, according to FEC records, ActBlue is receiving many donations from the unemployed, more so than another PAC, WinRed. The article goes on to suggest that many donations may have …

Artificial Intelligence is a dumb term

The recent boom in machine learning has led to a lot of misuse of the term “artificial intelligence“. This term was invented in 1955 when computer scientists were first starting to grapple with machine representations of human cognition. For decades, it meant trying to understand and render into algorithms what only humans could do. This …