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Tim Roberts is the Founder/Administrator of Unsolved Problems. He self-describes in "A Brief and Almost True Biography" as follows: I was definitely born lower-middle class. Britain was (and probably still is) so stratified that one's status could be easily classified. You were only working class if you lived in Scotland or Wales, or in the north of England, or had a really physical job like dustbin-man. You were only middle class if you lived in the south, had a decent-sized house, probably with a mortgage, and at work you had to use your brain, at least a little. My mother was at the upper end of lower-middle class, my father at the lower. After suffering through the first twenty years of my life because of various deleterious genetically-acquired traits, which resulted in my being very small and very sickly, and a regular visitor to hospitals, I became almost normal in my 20s, and found work in the computer industry. I was never very good, but demand in those days was so high for anyone who knew what a computer was that I turned freelance, specializing in large IBM mainframe operating systems, and could often choose from a range of job opportunities. As far away as possible sounded good, so I went to Australia, where I met my wife, and have lived all the latter half of my life. Being inherently lazy, I discovered academia, and spent 30 years as a lecturer, at three different universities. Whether I actually managed to teach anyone anything is a matter of some debate. The maxim "publish or perish" ruled, so I spent an inordinate amount of time writing crap papers on online education, which required almost no effort. My thoughts, however, were always centred on such pretentious topics as quantum theory and consciousness and the nature of reality. These remain my over-riding interest today, some five years after retirement. I have a reliance on steroids and Shiraz, and possess an IQ the size of a small planet, because I am quite good at solving puzzles of no importance, but I have no useful real-world skills whatsoever. I used to know a few things, but I have forgotten most of them." He discusses: artificial intelligence, and strange parts of science; conformity; a detour into Quantum Mechanics via ignoring the question; a known unknown; religion; more religion; mistaken truths; local peer group influence on human beings; logic, rationality, and evidence; and wishful thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tim Roberts is the Founder/Administrator of Unsolved Problems. He self-describes in "A Brief and Almost True Biography" as follows: I was definitely born lower-middle class. Britain was (and probably still is) so stratified that one's status could be easily classified. You were only working class if you lived in Scotland or Wales, or in the north of England, or had a really physical job like dustbin-man. You were only middle class if you lived in the south, had a decent-sized house, probably with a mortgage, and at work you had to use your brain, at least a little. My mother was at the upper end of lower-middle class, my father at the lower. After suffering through the first twenty years of my life because of various deleterious genetically-acquired traits, which resulted in my being very small and very sickly, and a regular visitor to hospitals, I became almost normal in my 20s, and found work in the computer industry. I was never very good, but demand in those days was so high for anyone who knew what a computer was that I turned freelance, specializing in large IBM mainframe operating systems, and could often choose from a range of job opportunities. As far away as possible sounded good, so I went to Australia, where I met my wife, and have lived all the latter half of my life. Being inherently lazy, I discovered academia, and spent 30 years as a lecturer, at three different universities. Whether I actually managed to teach anyone anything is a matter of some debate. The maxim "publish or perish" ruled, so I spent an inordinate amount of time writing crap papers on online education, which required almost no effort. My thoughts, however, were always centred on such pretentious topics as quantum theory and consciousness and the nature of reality. These remain my over-riding interest today, some five years after retirement. I have a reliance on steroids and Shiraz, and possess an IQ the size of a small planet, because I am quite good at solving puzzles of no importance, but I have no useful real-world skills whatsoever. I used to know a few things, but I have forgotten most of them." He discusses: test scores; never taking mainstream intelligence tests; correction of interviewer misconceptions followed by commentary on some work; National Advanced Semiconductors work; state of online learning; if online learning will become more or less important into the future; predictions having flaws; thoughts on the hard problem of consciousness; opinions about Chalmers, Dennett, and Hofstadter; becoming wiser; and critical thinking on grand claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tim Roberts is the Founder/Administrator of Unsolved Problems. He self-describes in “A Brief and Almost True Biography” as follows: I was definitely born lower-middle class. Britain was (and probably still is) so stratified that one’s status could be easily classified. You were only working class if you lived in Scotland or Wales, or in the north of England, or had a really physical job like dustbin-man. You were only middle class if you lived in the south, had a decent-sized house, probably with a mortgage, and at work you had to use your brain, at least a little. My mother was at the upper end of lower-middle class, my father at the lower. After suffering through the first twenty years of my life because of various deleterious genetically-acquired traits, which resulted in my being very small and very sickly, and a regular visitor to hospitals, I became almost normal in my 20s, and found work in the computer industry. I was never very good, but demand in those days was so high for anyone who knew what a computer was that I turned freelance, specializing in large IBM mainframe operating systems, and could often choose from a range of job opportunities. As far away as possible sounded good, so I went to Australia, where I met my wife, and have lived all the latter half of my life. Being inherently lazy, I discovered academia, and spent 30 years as a lecturer, at three different universities. Whether I actually managed to teach anyone anything is a matter of some debate. The maxim “publish or perish” ruled, so I spent an inordinate amount of time writing crap papers on online education, which required almost no effort. My thoughts, however, were always centred on such pretentious topics as quantum theory and consciousness and the nature of reality. These remain my over-riding interest today, some five years after retirement. I have a reliance on steroids and Shiraz, and possess an IQ the size of a small planet, because I am quite good at solving puzzles of no importance, but I have no useful real-world skills whatsoever. I used to know a few things, but I have forgotten most of them.” He discusses: the quintessential skeptic James Randi; Daniel Dennett; Martin Gardner; Penn & Teller; and Richard Dawkins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tim Roberts is the Founder/Administrator of Unsolved Problems. He self-describes in "A Brief and Almost True Biography" as follows: I was definitely born lower-middle class. Britain was (and probably still is) so stratified that one's status could be easily classified. You were only working class if you lived in Scotland or Wales, or in the north of England, or had a really physical job like dustbin-man. You were only middle class if you lived in the south, had a decent-sized house, probably with a mortgage, and at work you had to use your brain, at least a little. My mother was at the upper end of lower-middle class, my father at the lower. After suffering through the first twenty years of my life because of various deleterious genetically-acquired traits, which resulted in my being very small and very sickly, and a regular visitor to hospitals, I became almost normal in my 20s, and found work in the computer industry. I was never very good, but demand in those days was so high for anyone who knew what a computer was that I turned freelance, specializing in large IBM mainframe operating systems, and could often choose from a range of job opportunities. As far away as possible sounded good, so I went to Australia, where I met my wife, and have lived all the latter half of my life. Being inherently lazy, I discovered academia, and spent 30 years as a lecturer, at three different universities. Whether I actually managed to teach anyone anything is a matter of some debate. The maxim "publish or perish" ruled, so I spent an inordinate amount of time writing crap papers on online education, which required almost no effort. My thoughts, however, were always centered on such pretentious topics as quantum theory and consciousness and the nature of reality. These remain my over-riding interest today, some five years after retirement. I have a reliance on steroids and Shiraz, and possess an IQ the size of a small planet, because I am quite good at solving puzzles of no importance, but I have no useful real-world skills whatsoever. I used to know a few things, but I have forgotten most of them." He discusses: familial background, religion in the United Kingdom; guardian and mentor influence on him, if any; Martin Gardner and Bertrand Russell; discovery of high intelligence; social difficulties; and the Titan Test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our lives are immeasurably easier and more connected than we could ever have imagined just 20 years ago. But to reap these benefits, we've had to cozy up to our tech. So close, in fact, that it has become personal, almost a part of who we are. But every now and then, that closeness enables us to see a darker side of the relationship: Sometimes, it seems, our devices are actively working against us. The phone that spontaneously reboots just when you need it most; the computer that crashes only when you have unsaved changes; a bug that suddenly appears when you demo your code. · This tendency for things not just to fail but to seemingly fail out of spite was labeled Resistentialism by the British humorist Paul Jennings back in the 1960s, but similar terms have been coined in the years since. We are often FOBIO (frequently outwitted by inanimate objects) or FOILED (frequently outwitted by inanimate, lame electronic devices). The editor and writer Edward Tenner coined the phrase revenge effect to refer to an unintended and negative consequence of some new or modified technology: Get everyone on e-mail and the result isn't a paperless utopia but soaring consumption of office paper; give everyone faster Internet connections and the result isn't a boom in leisure time but a dearth of time away from work. Programmers talk of Heisenbugs, software errors that disappear or change their behavior when the programmer tries to trace them or examine them (incorrectly named after the physicist Werner Heisenberg, whose Uncertainty Principle states that we can never know perfectly the position or momentum of a particle beyond a certain minimum level, and which is often confused with the Observer Effect, where the act of observing a particle alters its properties). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]