2016

From Richard Webb: Quantum physicists just can’t agree on how to handle the fundamental uncertainty that apparently underpins reality. We round up their best attempts so far … In 2011, 33 physicists and philosophers at a conference in Austria on “Quantum physics and the nature of reality” were asked to nominate their favourites, listed below. The percentages of the delegates backing the various options do not add up to 100 – in keeping with the spirit of quantum theory, the poll allowed multiple answers. Here’s an interesting, moderately sane one: The information interpretation – 8 votes, 24 per cent Information-theory interpretations stem from a growing realisation among physicists that the most basic currency of reality might be not stuff, but Read More ›

From Ethan Siegel: From everything we can observe, and from all the theoretical hints the Universe gives us about its topology, shape, curvature and origin, we fully expect that there’s more Universe out there — identical in properties to what we observe — beyond what we can see. It’s only due to the fact that the Universe has been around for a finite amount of time that we can only observe a specific part of it. This is the most simple definition of Multiverse that’s out there: the idea that there’s simply more, unobservable Universe out there beyond what we can see. That’s a very conservative definition of multiverse compared to most that one hears. And sure enough, soon: The Read More ›

Asks Adam Frank: Earlier this year, my colleague Woody Sullivan and I published a paper in the journal Astrobiology presenting new results that, I believe, throw new light on the ancient question. And, based on that work, last month I wrote an OpEd in The New York Times that ran with provocative title “Yes, There Were Aliens.” The Times piece found a large audience and generated strong responses running from agreement to dissent to folks telling me I really should look into UFOs (sorry, not my thing). Just what he’s got against the UFOs is not, under the circumstances, clear. But anyway, One of the principle objections raised to my piece was that the fact that just because 10-22 is Read More ›

In this next video from the Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism (AM-Nat) conference, Rope Kojonen defends methodological naturalism by suggesting that the foundation for its objections is the belief that science is the only valid way of knowing.
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According to 270 scientists From Vox: Scientists often learn more from studies that fail. But failed studies can mean career death. So instead, they’re incentivized to generate positive results they can publish. And the phrase “publish or perish” hangs over nearly every decision. It’s a nagging whisper, like a Jedi’s path to the dark side. “Over time the most successful people will be those who can best exploit the system,” Paul Smaldino, a cognitive science professor at University of California Merced, says. To Smaldino, the selection pressures in science have favored less-than-ideal research: “As long as things like publication quantity, and publishing flashy results in fancy journals are incentivized, and people who can do that are rewarded … they’ll be Read More ›

I welcome Matspirit to these pages, because he gives us a never ending supply of materialist error to discuss.  In his latest he addresses the origin of life debate.  He says that all materialists have to do is make wildly implausible evidence-free assertions about OOL, and unless ID proponents can affirmatively disprove those wildly implausible evidence-free assertions, the materialists win the debate.  Gpuccio shoots this lunacy down: Matspirit: Prove that the DNA/RNA system we see today is the only one that ever existed. Prove that a simpler system didn’t exist long before and evolve the start of our present system. Gpuccio No. The system we see today is a fact, because we can observe it. It is the only system Read More ›

Readers may vaguely remember Francis Collins’* colleague at BioLogos, Karl Giberson. In an expected pan review, he tells us: Dogged by controversy since its conception, the project overcame many challenges. Tax incentives were controversial, given the organization’s view on LGBT hiring. Raising funds was a problem, solved partially by Ham’s high-profile debate with Bill Nye, who was an early visitor to the Ark Encounter. Scientists expressed concern about the promotion of pseudoscience. Biblical scholars objected to treating the myth of Noah’s flood as a historical event. Having overcome so many problems—which he views as the work of Satan—Ham now confidently states, “The Lord has worked mightily over the years to make this project a reality.” The Ark Encounter is based on Read More ›

gpuccio to materialist fideistic materialist dogmatist Matspirit: The only result of dogmatic anti-dogmatism is a new form of dogmatism.

From Sarah Lewin at Space.com: When life originates on a planet, whether Earth or a distant world, the newborn life-forms may have to overcome incredible odds to come into existence — and a new equation lays out exactly how overwhelming those odds may be. Well, it’s good that someone is admitting that there aren’t billions and billions of them out there. If we can’t factor in information, we can get precisely nowhere, though there may be some good luncheon talks in the meantime. “It’s not an answer; it’s a new tool for trying to think about the issues involved,” Ed Turner, an astronomer at Princeton University, told Space.com. Turner was not involved in the work, but the paper’s definition of Read More ›

Daniel King refuses to follow the evidence regarding the implications of biological semiotics, so Upright Biped asks him: Are you suggesting we dig up Alan Turing and test the need for a symbol system expressive enough to describe an interpreter for itself? Are you wanting to test von Neumann’s mathematical structure of self-replication, or the validity of Crick’s adapter hypothesis? Are you uncertain whether or not the anticodon-to-amino acid association is isolated from the codon-to-anticodon association? Are you wanting to test Pattee’s epistemic cut between rate-independent control and rate-based dynamics? Are you wondering if amino acids can be derived from the spatial orientation of nucleobases? Are you wanting to know if Nirenberg had to demonstrate the code in order to Read More ›

A clip from Flight: The genius of birds “Avian flight requires a cause that’s able to visualize a distant endpoint and bring together everything necessary to achieve that endpoint. Only intelligence is capable of that kind of causal process.” Paul Nelson, Philosopher of Biology More. At dusk on a winter evening in southern England a flock of 200,000 European starlings congregate to soar in breathtaking formations before roosting for the night. These incredible displays of aerial precision and biological engineering are captured in this memorable sequence from Flight: the Genius of Birds. See also: Genius of Birds: Embryonic development Follow UD News at Twitter!

From a review of Steve and Hillary Rose’s Can Neuroscience Change Our Minds? in Times Higher by Louise Whiteley, Whether or not you end up cheerleading for the book’s political agenda, its deconstruction of faulty claims about how neuroscience translates into the classroom is relevant to anyone interested in education. The authors tear apart the scientific logic of policy documents, interrogate brain-based interventions and dismantle prevalent neuro-myths. … The Roses’ descriptions of how experimental set-ups are extrapolated to real-world contexts add a seam of humour to the serious business of myth-busting. I smiled to learn that statements about the negative effects of poor environment on the learning brain often refer to studies that compare rats raised in empty cages with Read More ›

In the next installment of videos from the AM-Nat conference, Jim LeMaster discusses Francis Bacon and David Hume, and shows their issues with teleological thinking in science, and why the arguments against analogies don’t measure up. We have a conference coming up in November focused on biology, and another in February focused on business and technology, so be sure to check out the AM-Nat website for more information on conference registrations and abstract submissions.

At Phys.Org there is an article describing the work of some scientists with the “chordate” Oikopleura dioica which does not have the genes for Retinoic Acid (RA), which all other chordates have. RA is a form of Vitamin A and is needed in the development of the heart. In this organism, the heart develops but without the presence of RA. How can this happen? Answer: “Regressive Evolution.” All the genes for RA have been lost, and lost in a non-random fashion. You would be hard-pressed to identify the above organism (a planktonic organism) as a “chordate,” but developmentally, it is one—you know, the chordate “body-plan” allows it to be identified as one. Now, this O. dioica cannot be the LCA Read More ›

It seems there is now a talking-point agenda to dismiss the fine tuning issue as an illusion. So, in the current thread on the big bang and fine tuning, I have clipped and commented on a recent article by Luke Barnes. However, comments cannot put up images [save through extraordinary steps], so it is first worth showing Barnes’ key illustration, as showing where fine tuning comes in, updating Hoyle’s remark about the C-O balance first key fine tuning issue put on the table in 1953: Let me also headline my comment, no. 77 in the thread: >>Luke Barnes has a useful semi-pop summary: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/…..tures-laws Today, our deepest understanding of the laws of nature is summarized in a set of equations. Read More ›