Sci-Phi: Science & Philosophy Talk Series

Sci-Phi #2: Meaning in the age of the thinking machine.🎟 €10 general · €5 for Absent members (Become a member: www.absent.tech/memberships)Meaning in the age of the thinking machine.Learning machines abound and are multiplying around us by the second. For the first time in the history of sentient thought on Earth, thinking, remembering and communicating have begun to be outsourced. And with thought itself becoming externalised stimuli, what does it mean to think and what does it take for a thought to be meaningful? Is the knight's quest meaningful if he gets an LLM generated roadmap into the dungeon designed to avoid the dragon and a seduction manual for the maiden?In this beguilingly unsettling session, join a philosopher and a scientist as they take you through this topic and then you get to ask your burning questions.Rob Clowes, philosopher at IFILNOVA, Nova University, and inveterate grappler with the hard and soft problems of thought, selfhood and consciousness, will guide us gently through the intellectual minefield that is AI and its repercussions on the meaning of self and awareness and what it means to be sentient.Philosophy is the art of asking questions and there will be questions, conundrums, a couple of paradoxes mayhaps but no answers guaranteed. Come if you are willing to be seduced but unsated by the glorious uncertainty of incomplete pursuits.Suresh Nampuri, scientist and researcher in String Theory and Quantum Physics. Also a researcher at University of Lisboa.Format:​About AbsentAbsent is a phone-free creative third space and café in Principe Real where time is yours again. The kind you used to waste beautifully.Every experience at Absent is designed around presence.​​​​​​What to Expect​​Stay Connected on Instagram​​​​​​Walk-in to the Cafe​​​​​​Become a member - www.absent.tech/memberships