Відео

Fantastic experience and would love to spend more time with Steve!

Another great one!!!!

Records have made a comeback and are the leading physical media for music again! Plenty of record shops in Ohio, in fact one of the biggest in the nation, Plaid Room Records. Are record stores not a thing where you are? Gotta respect dedicated shops of any kind that service a niche that could easily be replaced by digital options.

It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first. What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing. I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order. My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, ua-cam.com/video/J7Uh9phc1Ow/v-deo.html

Glad to hear you are slowly getting over the book hangover! I hope you continue to enjoy HP Lovecraft, I have never tried anyting by him before. And I feel you on the whole DNF debacle, I am also foolishly optimistic and it has never paid off lol. Here's to embracing the DNF and prioritising the stuff that brings us joy!

I happily take the blame, unless the show bombs, then it's all your fault :)

Have you read Tender is the Flesh? That is a food scarcity novel you would probably enjoy.

Too bad about Name of the Wind. I haven't read it yet, but it is well regarded, so I may give it a go at some point. I've never been very successful at journaling. I still keep track of what I read, and I'm using a standard notebook for that. I also have a standard notebook for to do lists, which I only use occasionally.

I read the Power of the Dog this year by Don Winslow and it was amazing. I'll definitely check this one out.

🎧 Much enjoying the return of the weekly updates!

Good for you! I wish I had dnf’ed the Name of the most boring fantasy book I’ve ever read. But I really dislike school settings and I didn't know that was a main part of the book. I kept waiting for him to be on his way out in the world getting famous for various adventures and that just didn't happen. So that's why it didn't land very well with me. I too feel the need of density and complexity in my fantasy reads. The pay off always feels so high for those kind of books. But I also have very low stamina when it comes to them. I read them for forever it seems and I feel so exhilarated, accomplished and oh so burned out afterwards 😅🔥

Good to see your weekly reading update is back. I hope you're doing well. I haven't been able to access the forums lately. I've entered my email address a couple of times to reset the password, but not gotten a reply.

Hahaha, can't say I am surprised about your reaction to Name of the Wind. I know I have read and enjoyed it but I also have to admit that I remember barely anything from it, didn't leave much of an impact lol. Anyway, hope you get over the book hangover asap! As for your question... on the one hand I would like to unplug a bit more, but at the same time I also think social media and my online friendships are hugely beneficial to my mental health since I have no real deep connections in real life (since I lost all of those due to mental health struggles). And with the whole kindle debacle of not owning the books you buy, I think I prefer to just ignore that fact hahah. With audible it's the same, but I know if you use LibroFM you actually get to download the files and they are yours so the audiobook can't be taken away from you. Interesting food for thought to reflect on! Hope you have a great week, Steve ☺

Glad to be a part of the small group on the forum! Highly recommended haha And for your question, I doubt I would ever go back to a dedicated iPod-like device. That being said, although I'm somewhat of a minimalist, I listen to vinyl at home...so it's not all through an app. Also, I listen to most of my digital music on UA-cam Music, which is bundled with UA-cam Premium. Really enjoy that service and has all the songs that Spotify has, and the no ads on UA-cam are great for viewing long-form content I enjoy. Overall, I am all about finding a balance, I don't favor one extreme over the other when it comes to digital media, and I think anyone can use their phone in a way that requires more self-control to not be controlled by algorithms, apps, or just scrolling in general.

The Gotham By Gaslight animated movie was so good, until the last 10 minutes. I hated the twist, but loved the setting....Batman needs better stories in that setting. Still can't believe how horrible that ending was. Check out the movie at least, Steve. It's a hot mess haha

Always good to mix things up whether taking a step back or going in a different direction. Need to reschedule the Titane talk (id completely forgotten tbh) One of these free Fridays should work out well 😀 Looking forward to whatever’s next 😀

Been way too long since I checked in on Page Chewing, loved getting a little update here, Steve! I remain very intimated by Bakker's books, but I am so happy for you that it's become such an all-time fave for you. Also looking forward to more chill and open-invite page chewing episodes, have fun with those. Glad to hear you are doing well!

Steeeeeve!

Completely agree on long books that could have been shorter and be just as good...and probably better! Tchaikovsky seems to have an issue with this in general, great ideas though. Nice to see another one of these chat style videos/podcast again, and also agree with the quality over quantity mindset shift you mentioned.

Hi Steve how do I gain access to the page chewing forum?

How are you Steve? I would love to be on sometime ☺️

Totally with Mike on Minor Arcana! I liked it a lot. I also was disappointed in Autumn Kingdom. Good episode guys

Hey y'all! Thanks so much for this conversation. I'm a PhD student in France specializing in speculative and weird fiction, I work very closely on Cisco's books and am definitely using his book on Weird Fiction as a significant resource. So glad to see how much this matters to him, because it was wonderful for me to find out about this work. Keep it up love your content!

Totally agree with you on Red Light #4. It really stank compared to the rest of the series. The villain monologing was some of the worst I've seen. Really bad ending. Another great episode guys!

This one was a lot of fun Steve!!!

I had not been spoiled on the ending of this book and I’m pretty sure my jaw didn’t leave the floor for 24 hours after I finished it

I finished this series nearly 2 years ago and had multiple re-reads and fine picked all the major conversations and revelations and still have more questions then answers. However I believe everyone underestimates kellhus. Everything in aspect emperor you have to look at why would kellhus want what’s happens to happen. 5D chess. Also in the appendices: under ‘The decapitant’ it tells a short story of after shimeh on the travel back to the empire at mangecca kellhus is seen swapping heads with the decapitants and talking to himself… We learn between the 2 series Iyokus becomes kellhus second teacher; he spends 20 years using the daimos to access the outside. Kellhus knew Ajoklis plan; I believe kellhus knew about Kelmomas all along aswell. Enjoy racking your brains around that ending and hoping Bakker will finally release The No God or this ending will haunt us forever 🤣

Excellent episode guys! I had to stop at your pick of the week Steve because I haven't read it yet and didn't want to know anything, ha. Sacrificers is so good though!

Interesting discussion about the gods. Bakker never says who determines how you get saved. Also that they also seem to lack freewill. Yatwer and the WLW perhaps, or maybe they just know what is predetermined. I missed the tense change with Sorwheel, will be more observant on reread. Almost done....

This is a series that is always fun to listen to. Keep it going please!

Thank you Steve! great video! I really enjoyed everything discussed here.

do you still use the procaster? cause the audio sound's soo nice( I don't read book's no more)( just like the audio of your mic your voice is nice with it) and do you have any post processing done to it?

Hail beardsmen!

Come the four bookbeards of the bookpacolypse!

Thanks for the invite, Steve-- was a great conversation, and feel like we only scratched the surface!

I wish these videos had more traction. I think this is one of the most underrated grim dark series. That being said I will be here for every episode, thank you!

Vague question for Steve. There is a grammatical... inconsistency regarding one of the pov's that I don't think has been mentioned. Have always wondered if this was a issue for not having an editor or what thematic it might serve.

You two have great chemistry. Congrats on almost getting to 50!

Eggs and drank, eggs bacon and sranc, eggs bacon sausage and sranc. Sranc sranc sranc sranc.... Apologies to Money Python.

Carl’s insights… damn!

Great discussion here! How long ago was it recorded, where are you up to now? :) Do you post links to the Bakker/Earwa groups on Reddit and Facebook?

Wait are these old or new? I need to hop back on page chewing and say hello. Life has been hectic these last few months

This is so good. Brilliant! Thanks for posting.

I can’t see any of the previous episodes for this!