Author: Nathan Taylor

I blog at http://praxtime.com on tech trends and the near future. I'm on twitter as @ntaylor963.

Repeal price gouging laws now. Why? Zombie apocalypse.

Most economists are against price gouging laws, which make it illegal to raise prices during a natural disaster. The shortages and long gas lines after Hurricane Sandy showed the consequences of these laws. Let’s riff on Eric’s zombie post to give price gouging a fresh look. Eric pointed out that Hurricane Sandy shows how every single zombie… Continue reading Repeal price gouging laws now. Why? Zombie apocalypse.

Published
Categorized as Economics

Perfect meritocracy replaces class with caste

The still above is from the movie The Time Machine based on H.G. Wells’ book. It’s the scene where the uber-Morlock meets the time traveling human, who had been hanging out with the Eloi. This dystopia came to mind as I was thinking about Razib Khan’s post “The end of environmental inequality means the rise of genetic inequality”.… Continue reading Perfect meritocracy replaces class with caste

Sifting through bad password advice to find the good stuff

The always wonderful xkcd has a great comic 792 starting as above, talking about the dangers of password re-use. Along those lines, comic 936 has the caption “Through 20 years of effort, we’ve successfully trained everyone to use passwords that are hard for humans to remember, but easy for computers to guess.” The point here… Continue reading Sifting through bad password advice to find the good stuff

The debate on Strong Artificial Intelligence and conscious computers

There is a longstanding debate on whether computers will ever achieve true consciousness, sometimes called “Strong Artificial Intelligence (AI)”. So you might think the most interesting AI question right now is how close are we to thinking computers. But I think something else big will happen before we get there, and this will end the debate… Continue reading The debate on Strong Artificial Intelligence and conscious computers

Consciousness and Free Will

As explained last post, in regards to consciousness I’ll assume a materialist biology theory of mind. And as such the science question is how a real human brain is conscious. This approach avoids any abstract philosophical arguments such as the mind-body problem. Furthermore I’ll immediately concede I’m in the tank for Daniel Dennett, pictured above. So to a certain extent… Continue reading Consciousness and Free Will

The (very slow) Rise of Scientific Materialism

I was going to post about consciousness and free will, but while writing got caught up in digressions on scientific materialism. So rather than fight it, this week will be about scientific materialism.

Published
Categorized as Science

The Apple maps kerfuffle means the opposite of what most of the press is saying

This is the third and last post in a series on touchscreen devices. Post 1 here. Post 2 here. The press has been enjoying the Apple maps kerfuffle since Apple replaced Google maps on iOS6 a few weeks ago on Sep 19. Especially with Tim Cook apologizing. But on this one I’m more in line with fanboys… Continue reading The Apple maps kerfuffle means the opposite of what most of the press is saying

Beyond the Touchscreen Interface, to Voice Interaction

This is the second post in a series on touchscreen devices. Post 1 here. Post 3 here. The previous post, The Rise of the Touchscreen Interface, covered how radically new the touchscreen slab interface is. Then it went into some detail on the business implications of this new era. For this post, let’s return to defining eras of computing… Continue reading Beyond the Touchscreen Interface, to Voice Interaction