Past Events

This month's discussion topic: public discourse People widely agree that public discourse is difficult, and that bringing together people from differing ideological perspectives may be more difficult. Internet comments, for instance, have illustrated the extent to which misunderstandings and bad-faith arguments lead to the online flame wars. These exchanges seem to actually push people apart on ideological positions, rather than give people a chance to find more common ground. Classic Greek argumentation had clearly defined rules for argumentation, but was…

Please join CFI for Drinking Skeptically DC on TUESDAY evening, 6:30 PM, at MACKEY'S PUBLIC HOUSE, 1306 G Street NW, Washington DC. We will be downstairs. Please look for the 'CFI' sign on the table or ask the host for the 'Drinking Skeptically - CFI' group. See you there! Drinking Skeptically DC is an informal social event designed to promote fellowship among skeptics, humanists, and like-minded individuals. Drinking Skeptically provides an opportunity for skeptics, humanists, secularists, and others to talk,…

This month's discussion topic: Artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence can be considered to describe programs or algorithms that mimic the human mind. This could take the form of recall of information (memory), achieving an objective (problem-solving), generating a model of the world (analyzing), or understanding and mimicking interactions (social intelligence). The famous "Turing Test" is a model of artificial intelligence proposed in its formative years that defined an intelligence as successful if it modeled human interactions in a way that could…