Change of layout here

Belatedly I've added a blogroll (to the right, scroll down) and taken the opportunity to re-arrange the sidebar. Hopefully this adds some value.

Razib Khan (Gene Expression) is setting up a new blog which won't be live for a couple of weeks.

Recall Neuropath from my post on transgressive science-fiction?

The blogroll now features Scott Bakker's blog, 'Three Pound Brain'. Always good to read a philosopher who rants. Philosophers have a very special way of writing: they take pride in marshalling a vast army of esoteric concepts to surround, envelope, besiege, frame and demarcate some concept of interest.

Scientists and mathematicians just figure out the relevant terms and get modeling.

This from his inordinately lengthy review of Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus.

"Science is steadily revealing the very sources intentional cognition evolved to neglect. Technology is exploiting these revelations, busily engineering emulators to pander to our desires, allowing us to shelter more and more skin from the risk and toil of natural and social reality. Designer experience is designer meaning. Thus the likely irony: the end of meaning will appear to be its greatest blooming, the consumer curled in the womb of institutional matrons, dreaming endless fantasies, living lives of spellbound delight, exploring worlds designed to indulge ancestral inclinations."

Translation: 'With AI and VR coming along apace, we'll all soon have the option of wasting our lives in virtual realities which super-stimulate our drives and emotions."

My version may be lacking Bakker's poetry, but it might get me a job at Google 😎.