When you consider all the reasons why machines cannot be creative, one must ask, is the belief that we can build superintelligent machines rooted in naturalism (nature is all there is), often called “materialism,” or in evidence?
Logic and First Principles, 15: On the architecture of being. Or, are certain abstract entities (“abstracta”) such as numbers, natures, truth etc real? If so, how — and where?
For some weeks now, an underlying persistent debate on the reality of numbers has emerged in several discussion threads at UD. In part, it has been cast in terms of nominalism vs platonic realism; the latter being the effective view of most working mathematicians. Obviously, this is a first principles issue and is worth focussed […]
Gaia needs a reboot and New Scientist is here to explain
A machine built from scavenged parts from Britain’s Royal Air Force started randomly but ended in equilibrium. Can it boost the Gaia cult?
Atheist public intellectual John Gray separates the atheist wheat from the chaff
Graham McAleer: This book should put to rest the canard that atheism is free thinking, and oh so much more broad-minded and gentle than what is on offer from the dull and cramped-spirited God-fearing types.
Does the idea of a blind, undirected cosmos govern our ideas of sexuality?
Is there a natural way to live? Are we happier if we follow it? Are we happier if we follow it? Nancy Pearcey, author of Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, defends that view.
Darwinism’s influence on philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn
A friend writes, “There was one paradigm that Kuhn assumed was not a paradigm, but a fact of nature: Darwinism. His whole approach to scientific revolutions was Darwinian. New paradigms emerge as accidental mutations, not because of new evidence. “
Philosopher of science Steve Meyer will be on Ben Shapiro’s show Sunday
Steve Meyer is the author of Signature in the Cell and Darwin’s Doubt. Not everyone wants to hear what he has to say: It was announced on Twitter this morning, and as you can imagine, the Twitterati are not pleased. They are bombarding the show with replies about “bunk science and the 6,000 year old […]
Was philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn “evil”
Postmodernism is to science what rabies is to dogs. That is, it will lead to post-science as surely as rabies leads to post-dogs. But by all means, let them fight in the meantime.
One way viruses get spread “should never have evolved”?
Maybe in some fields, we need more “stupid” ideas that don’t depend on what “should have” evolved.
Insectologists swat insects-are-doomed paper
The temptation for some seems to be to resort to apocalypse voodoo to demonstrate a crisis, at the expense of the methods that make scientists worth listening to, as an alternative to supermarket tabloids. File this one with: The real reasons people don’t “trust science”
Are the best measurements to date deepening the “cosmological crisis”?
Two things many cosmologists would like to get rid of are the Big Bang and apparent fine-tuning of the universe. Telling a different story is difficult mainly due to lack of evidence for a different story but they can make do with discrepancies. But then maybe the years have made some of us cynical.
Please Pass the Blueprints
Termite nests are a unique example of architectural perfection by insects.
Biologist responds to fretting over “denialism” at Nature
Why should we trust “authority,” when it has been publicly embarrassed over and over?
New US free speech policy for universities miffs boffins at Nature
The universities are “spooked by” Trump, are they? Well, they brought him on themselves. They could have listened before, when someone nicer than he is was telling them.
At Nature: Waging war on the science deniers!
Sadly, there is a war on science, of sorts, afoot. Social justice warriors, for example, are taking dead aim at math. And at objectivity generally. It’s as if, unable or unwilling to even name, let alone withstand the threat, establishment science types hope to distract themselves with a different story until it goes away. Good luck with that. They see you have funding. And they always need more money.