2011

What it means, from people who fight the battle against it: Here.

Says skeptical mathematician Peter Woit, after hearing Talks at the KITP (Not EvenWrong, August 12, 2011). The multiverse that makes all nonsense true just ain’t out there. While it’s true that SUSY was in trouble pre-LHC, there’s psychologically a big difference between indirect effects not showing up, and directly looking for something and finding it’s just not there. The discussion with the audience is quite interesting, with some audience members a lot more worried about SUSY. One of them reminded people that SUSY is supposed to solve naturality problems, so relatively light squarks were expected, but now “those models are being screwed.” Someone else (Lisa Randall, I think) reacted to Reece’s mentioning R-parity violating models as one way to evade Read More ›

In ID circles we often discuss the sheer rarity of biologically relevant polypeptides with respect to combinatorial sequence space (and the related conundrum of macromolecular interdependence). It has often been argued that this represents a potent challenge to chemical origin-of-life models of an order substantially greater than the challenge it presents to biological evolution. There is one related problem in this regard which is often overlooked, and I want to briefly explore it in this blog entry. When it comes to polymerization of amino acids to form proteins, two things must be borne in mind with regards to the formation of peptide bonds. Peptide bond formation is an endothermic reaction. This means that the reaction requires the absorption of energy: Read More ›

One of the most amazing examples of cellular nanotechnology is a molecular motor protein known as kinesin. Kinesin is responsible for transporting molecular cargo — including chromosomes (e.g. during cell division), neurotransmitters and other important material — along microtubule tracks from one region of the cell to another. Read More>>

I’d like to introduce my readers to two women of formidable intelligence who share a common first name. On the left is the British philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe (1919-2001), as she appeared in her younger days. Anscombe, a famously forthright philosopher who translated Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations from German into English, is best known for her highly original monograph, Intention (1957) and for her 1958 essay Modern Moral Philosophy. On the right is our very own Elizabeth Liddle, who lectures in Translational Mental Health in the Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences at the University of Nottingham. Dr. Liddle is particularly interested in ADHD and schizophrenia, as well as neuroimaging. She has described herself as “a catholic turned atheist, an ex-professional musician turned cognitive neuroscientist and computational modeller of evolutionary learning algorithms.” She attributes her atheism to “a radical shift in stance over the nature of free will.” She has stated that reading Professor Daniel Dennett’s Freedom Evolves in 2007 literally changed her life: “I changed from dualist to monist half-way through the book.”

The topic I’d like to discuss in this post is whether free will and physical determinism are compatible.

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