Questions MAR 31

1. Post your questions and comments about Playground thru p.292. Please. (Before Monday if possible.)
2. Are our people "insane with money"?
3. (I jumped the gun, bringing this up last time.) What do you think about "finite and infinite games"? 246
4. Was Huizenga right, that we can only "live in beauty" through play? 248
5. Why should computer scientists "never dabble in philosophy"? 260 Should anyone just "dabble"?
6. "What's more important, the journey or the destination?" 261
7. What does the title of Rafi's thesis tell you about his life? Have you read Plath, Bishop, or Reed? 270
8. Do any of us "just need a machine that could read and explain these stories to me and tell me everything they meant," or would that lead to the impoverishment of our capacity to think for ourselves? Is that how people are using, or will use, AI? 271
9. What do you think of the Energy Czar's 9% productivity calculation, and more generally of those who settle the question of religious belief for themselves on the basis of such calculations? 283 (And see ch.12 of Nigel Warburton's Little History of Philosophy, on Pascal's Wager)
10. COMMENT?: "Please remember that you have not seen the future." 285
11. Is PROFUNDA the next generation of chatbot? Is it really "a new way of being in the world"? 287 (And is this an allusion to Heidegger, btw?) Is something like it coming to our world soon, or even already here? 
12. Are ten trillion parameters really "enough..."? 289
13. Is "digested and analyzed" the same as understood? 290   (See Warburton's ch.39, "Can Computers Think?")
14. Is PROFUNDA right about "deep intelligence" and "other creatures"? 291