Related papers: Conflict between anthropic reasoning and observati…
A fascinating hypothesis is that human and animal intelligence could be explained by a few principles (rather than an encyclopedic list of heuristics). If that hypothesis was correct, we could more easily both understand our own…
We study how macroscopic observational constraints restrict admissible microscopic explanatory structures when no intrinsic order or dynamics is assumed a priori. Starting from an unordered collection of measurement outcomes, we formulate…
The paper discusses the problem of demarcation between the dimensions of natural and the human sciences in contemporary cosmology. In spite of a common presumption that cosmology is a natural science, the specificity of its alleged subject…
We discuss the possibility that the inflationary paradigm, undoubtfully today's best framework to understand all the present cosmological data, may still have some viable challengers. The underlying idea for such discussions is that…
The ability to learn from others (social learning) is often deemed a cause of human species success. But if social learning is indeed more efficient (whether less costly or more accurate) than individual learning, it raises the question of…
The Doomsday argument and anthropic reasoning are two puzzling examples of probabilistic confirmation. In both cases, a lack of knowledge apparently yields surprising conclusions. Since they are formulated within a Bayesian framework, they…
A central component of rational behavior is logical inference: the process of determining which conclusions follow from a set of premises. Psychologists have documented several ways in which humans' inferences deviate from the rules of…
It is argued that the observed Thermodynamic Arrow of Time must arise from the boundary conditions of the universe. We analyse the consequences of the no boundary proposal, the only reasonably complete set of boundary conditions that has…
Politically divided societies are also often divided emotionally: people like and trust those with similar political views (in-group favoritism) while disliking and distrusting those with different views (out-group animosity). This…
The Great Filter hypothesis is an extension of the Fermi Paradox: "If life is so common in the universe, why don't we see it?" The Great Filter theory posits there are multiple obstacles or filters life must pass through which ultimately…
We investigate a new strategy which can defeat the (in)famous Carter's "anthropic" argument against extraterrestrial life and intelligence. In contrast to those already considered by Wilson, Livio, and others, the present approach is based…
Emergence is a pregnant property in various fields. It is the fact for a phenomenon to appear surprisingly and to be such that it seems at first sight that it is not possible to predict its apparition. That is the reason why it has often…
If the universe expands exponentially without end, ``ordinary observers'' like ourselves may be vastly outnumbered by ``Boltzmann's brains,'' transient observers who briefly flicker into existence as a result of quantum or thermal…
This paper suggests that a universal solution to the Fermi paradox exists and can be derived directly from the definition of life and/or intelligence, therefore eliminating the need for any questionable assumptions and even for the…
How do shared conventions emerge in complex decentralized social systems? This question engages fields as diverse as linguistics, sociology and cognitive science. Previous empirical attempts to solve this puzzle all presuppose that formal…
In a previous paper we proposed a new approach to the beginning of inflation -- a lingering universe. The universe begins in a lingering state with a nearly vanishing Hubble parameter. This calls into question the absolute age of the…
We explore conclusions a person draws from observing society when he allows for the possibility that individuals' outcomes are affected by group-level discrimination. Injecting a single non-classical assumption, that the agent is…
Time series interpretation aims to provide an explanation of what is observed in terms of its underlying processes. The present work is based on the assumption that the common classification-based approaches to time series interpretation…
Interstellar exploration will advance human knowledge and culture in multiple ways. Scientifically, it will advance our understanding of the interstellar medium, stellar astrophysics, planetary science and astrobiology. In addition,…
Order exists in the world. The intelligence process enables us to realize that order, to some extent. We provide a high level description of intelligence using simple definitions, basic building blocks, a conceptual framework and general…