From Derek...

Do you suppose silicon based life forms construct computers from carbon and then agonize over whether they will become intelligent?

A 100% crime detection and solving rate is clearly not compatible with most people’s notions of civil liberty. This implies that there are certain types and levels of crime that we are tacitly prepared to tolerate. What are they and how much. If you are still in doubt, how would you react to being compelled to provide a DNA fingerprint for a national database?

The greatest failure of science has been its inability to stamp out religion (and astrology).

Humankind does not have free will. The underlying causes of our behaviour are [too] complex and insufficiently understood to give the impression of being spontaneous.

What society judges as moral and ethical lags behind,and is ultimately dictated by, technological progress and scientific discovery. Human cloning will ultimately be regarded as no more remarkable than textured vegetable protein.

Genetically modified food will become as widely consumed and popular as battery farmed chicken because it will be cheap. Cost is the final arbiter of consumer acceptance.

Not only was Diana Precious of Wales self obsessed and sentimental she was also a perfectly vacuous cloths horse.

A cult becomes a religion when it graduates from killing its members to killing non-members.

If there is nothing in the universe that is not matter or its momentum, is information (as distinct from its representation) merely matter in motion? Does information exist in the absence of minds?

Life is an emergent property of complex autocatalytic systems the rest is just natural selection. In an AI context what is the equivalence of autocatalysis?