Critical Thinking | Zooming In and Zooming Out

Article here: Get full access to Steve Patterson's Substack at stevepatterson.substack.com/subscribe

Article here: Get full access to Steve Patterson's Substack at stevepatterson.substack.com/subscribe

The world outside our mind is actually glued together; relations are mind-independent; and patterns are objectively real. Get full access to Steve Patterson's Substack at stevepatterson.substack.com/subscribe

Trying to envision life alongside AI. How will our culture change? What will the norms be around beloved robots?  Should we let the machines hijack our emotional circuitry?  Will AI become the highest-level decision makers within governments? Get full access to Steve Patterson's Substack at stevepatterson.substack.com/subscribe

The world is ablaze with discussion about the risks and benefits of AI like ChatGPT I have not been persuaded by the doomsdayers concerns about rogue AI, but that doesn't mean the technology is actually safe. I investigate some philosophical concepts surrounding AI with Alexandros Marinos. Get full access to Steve Patterson's Substack at stevepatterson.substack.com/subscribe

Wonderful conversation with my old friend Isaac Deitz who shares his personal religious journey. After decades of being a Christian, he no longer identifies with that label. In my opinion, that's only because "Christian" is a terrible term nowadays. By some metrics, Isaac is a raging Christian. By others, he is a heretic. In that respect, I am coming to many of the same ideas about religion and truth--spiritual truth is often at odds with religious dogma. Better to give up a label than give up the pursuit of truth. Isaac's website: http://www.isaacdeitz.com/ Get full access to Steve Patterson's Substack at stevepatterson.substack.com/subscribe

The best explanation for the current madness of the world is that we're in a dark age and have been for at least a century. The epistemic standards of the 20th century were not high enough to overcome social, psychological, and political entropy. Get full access to Steve Patterson's Substack at stevepatterson.substack.com/subscribe

A couple of months ago, my friend Isaac Morehouse asked me to talk about the philosophy of mathematics and why I consider it so important. Appeals to mathematics are everywhere, from COVID lockdowns to NFL play calling, and if our concepts about math are flawed, we make the world a significantly worse place.   Get full access to Steve Patterson's Substack at stevepatterson.substack.com/subscribe

What does scientific progress look like? Is it steady progress, getting ever closer to the truth? Or does it go through waves?   What about cases where we seem to have lost knowledge or the foundations of a theory we’ve been building on turned out to be wrong? Can that still be useful? Is that still progress?   These are some of the questions I explore with Dr. Geoff Anders. Get full access to Steve Patterson's Substack at stevepatterson.substack.com/subscribe

A critical thinker must have the ability to zoom in and zoom out - to hyper-focus on cause and effect and to see how things interconnect in the big picture. It's a common and critical error to be too-zoomed-in or too-zoomed-out. The over-focused mind is like the mathematician who doesn't realize the assumptions of his model are non-mathematical and likely wrong. The under-focused mind is like the mushroom-enthusiast that's content concluding "All is one", with no finer-resolution of analysis. The careful thinker must be constantly zooming in and zooming out, gathering ideas from all levels of resolution. Get full access to Steve Patterson's Substack at stevepatterson.substack.com/subscribe