Electric Agora (archive)

Tag: Isaac Asimov

  • Our Own Naked Sun

    By Daniel A. Kaufman ___ In The Naked Sun (1957), Isaac Asimov imagines Solaria, a low-population world in which residents live on estates so large that one never encounters one’s neighbors in person. As robots are employed in virtually all manner of labor, the only human inhabitants of these estates are their owners. This contrasts […]

  • Newcomb’s Problem, Neuroscience and Free Will

    By Greg Hickey ___ Imagine that you have agreed to participate in a neuroscientific research experiment on predicting human behavior. You undergo a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan of your brain while you watch a video. The video opens with an image of two boxes labeled A and B, and a narrator asks you […]