From Mark Steyn: Google/YouTube and Facebook do not, of course, make laws, but their algorithms have more real-world impact than most legislation – and, having started out as more or less even-handed free-for-alls, they somehow thought it was a great idea to give the impression that they’re increasingly happy to assist the likes of Angela Merkel and Theresa May as arbiters of approved public discourse. Facebook, for example, recently adjusted its algorithm, and by that mere tweak deprived Breitbart of 90 per cent of its ad revenue. That’s their right, but it may not have been a prudent idea to reveal how easily they can do that to you. More. How will it affect Darwin vs design?

I have a question for our materialist friends. Often in these pages we meet an argument like the one Allan Keith makes in this post.  The thrust of the argument is that since humans are the only known intelligent species, design inferences are valid only if they infer specifically to human intelligence.  This argument would preclude inference to a non-human “intelligent agent.”  The obvious purpose of the argument is to derail biological ID, because any indicia of design in living things could not have been the result of human intelligence.  Therefore, all biological design inferences are invalid. David Klinghoffer over at ENV brings this post on NPR’s website to our attention:   In the article, astrophysicist Adam Frank (University of Rochester) asks fellow Read More ›

Without getting bitten. From Cornelius Hunter at ENST: Greg Mayer at Jerry Coyne’s website (Why Evolution Is True) posed study questions for learning about evolution. Evolutionists have responded in the “Comment” section with answers to some of the questions (see here, here, and here). Here is what I posted there in response: … But when I posted these few relevant thoughts, they were, after briefly appearing, quickly deleted. That’s unfortunate because these facts would help Coyne’s readers to understand evolution. More. Okay, you can read Dr. Hunter’s response to Dr. Coyne at ENST in “What your biology teacher didn’t tell you”, elsewhere deleted. I remember my Grade Seven biology teacher. He had a dry aquarium tank full of snakes. Now Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer at ENST: Cardiff University philosopher Orestis Palermos was at the center of a stir last week for a claim he made, in an online lecture, that evolutionary biology is as much of a pseudoscience as creationism, because it relies very heavily on ad hoc explanations for data after they have been discovered, rather than making bold universal predictions beforehand that hold up. Critics have been saying this for decades, and it’s encouraging to know that others can see it too. When this happens it is always entertaining to watch the consternation of our fundamentalist Darwinist friends. In response they have, of course, flexed their muscles to shut him up, or at least hide the intro video. It Read More ›

From John Ioannidis at the Journal of the American Medical Association: vPalues and accompanying methods of statistical significance testing are creating challenges in biomedical science and other disciplines. The vast majority (96%) of articles that report P values in the abstract, full text, or both include some values of .05 or less. However, many of the claims that these reports highlight are likely false. Recognizing the major importance of the statistical significance conundrum, the American Statistical Association (ASA) published3 a statement on P values in 2016. More. See also: P-values: Scientists slam proposal to raise threshold for statistically significant findings and Ioannidis again on misleading meta-analyses

From Ewen Callaway at Nature: A study analysing genome-wide data from 170 ancient Europeans, including 100 associated with Bell Beaker-style artefacts, suggested that the people who had built the barrow and buried their dead there had all but vanished by 2000 BC. The genetic ancestry of Neolithic Britons, according to the study, was almost entirely displaced. Yet somehow the new arrivals carried on with many of the Britons’ traditions. “That didn’t fit for me,” says Carlin, who has been struggling to reconcile his research with the DNA findings. More. Maybe the later Britons learned something from their predecessors? Or is that not an allowed assumption any more?

From the editors of Nature: Scholars are anxious because extremists are scrutinizing the results of ancient-DNA studies and trying to use them for similar misleading ends. Ancient DNA, for example, offers evidence of large migrations that coincide with cultural changes in the archaeological record, including the emergence of Corded Ware. Some archaeologists have expressed fears that the extremists will wrongly present such conclusions as backing for Kossinna’s theories. Another problem for archaeologists and historians relates to the potential for abuse of the results of ancient-DNA studies looking at more recent times, such as the Migration Period around the fall of the Roman Empire or the era covered by the Viking sagas. They worry that DNA studies of groups described as Read More ›

From Deborah Byrd at Space: Living earthly microbes inhabit virtually every nook and cranny of our world, including extremely harsh environments like Yellowstone’s hot springs, deep ocean hydrothermal vents and the toxic sludge of polluted areas. Earthly bacteria have also been identified, alive, as high in our atmosphere as 25 miles (40 km) up. Neighboring Venus is a hostile world. Heat trapped by its dense atmosphere makes it hot enough on its surface to melt lead. But a series of space probes – launched between 1962 and 1978 – showed that temperatures and pressures at comparable heights in Venus’ atmosphere (25 miles or 40 km up) don’t preclude the possibility of microbial life. Now an international team of researchers has Read More ›

Conservative sources often decry the fact that entertainment media do not re-evaluate their nihilistic direction despite faring poorly in terms of rating and numbers in recent years. But could we look at the matter from another angle? What if Hollywood has lost the power to change, even if stasis kills it? Today, the awardee ranting into the mike may sound more like your boring uncle at a family dinner than like your secret heartthrob. Which means that something has definitely changed. More.

So there is something to discuss. From Thomas Cortellesi at Quillette: Scientism is often ridiculed as an appeal to excessive reductionism that “restricts human inquiry.” This notion is predicated on a view of science as purely reductionist, a charge that betrays a deep misunderstanding of scientific practice. Science is a way of demonstrating the deep connections between the smallest of parts and the largest of systems. Contrary to how it is often portrayed, the scientific project is not strictly reductionist. Reductionism is the belief that understanding complex phenomena comes ultimately from breaking them down into their simplest parts. This approach is made by isolating variables, refining the precision and accuracy of observations, and extracting from them fundamental laws, which in Read More ›

We must getting somewhere when it is possible to talk about facts for once. From Ruth Kava at ACSH, talking about Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb (1968): Dr. Ehrlich misjudged the promise of technology to increase food production yields. And here I’m speaking of the early efforts of Dr. Norman Borlaug, a founder of ACSH, which led to the so-called “Green Revolution”, providing new hybrids of corn and wheat that staved off starvation for millions. And now we have genetic engineering, technologies that can further improve yields of food crops and husbandry — but of course these weren’t really on the horizon in 1968. So concerned was he about the impending doom that Ehrlich even said he supported enforced birth control Read More ›

This is the cover from New Scientists magazine for March 31, 2018: The materialist editor who wrote the text for the cover is deeply confused about at last two things: He implies that we “know” that inequality is morally wrong in the same way we “know” the earth orbits the sun.  But that is true only if morality is objective and part of that objective morality is that inequality is wrong.  But by definition materialists cannot believe in objective morality, because they reject any transcendent moral code by which to judge moral claims. Under Darwinist principles inequality is the natural state in the struggle of all against all.  After all, in a world of “survival of the fittest,” the “fittest” Read More ›

From Cornelius Hunter at Darwin’s God: Jerry Coyne’s website (Why Evolution Is True) has posed study questions for learning about evolution. Evolutionists have responded in the “Comment” section with answers to some of the questions (see here, here, and here). But when I posted a few relevant thoughts, they were quickly deleted after briefly appearing. That’s unfortunate because those facts can help readers to understand evolution. Here is what I posted:More. Maybe some of you smart boys can spell hellzapoppin. See also: Darwinian fundamentalist Jerry Coyne responds to“Atheist Fairytales”

  From David Berlinski reviewing Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari at Inference Review: Harari believes, are about to lose their social and economic usefulness as well as their souls.25 Robots are coming, and, if not robots, then all-powerful algorithms. Having replaced chess champions and quiz show contestants, they are shortly to replace truck drivers, travel agents, accountants, lawyers, and doctors. Whether they are about to replace historians is a question that Harari wisely declines to discuss. What makes their forthcoming domination inevitable, Harari believes, is the discovery that consciousness may be separated from intelligence. Computers are no more conscious today than they were in 1950, but they are very much more intelligent, and in the Read More ›

From Ethan Siegel at Forbes: We do have dark matter in our Solar System, and it ought to have real effects on every other particle of matter around it. If there’s any interaction cross-section between normal matter particles and dark matter particles, then direct detection experiments should have a chance to discover it right here on Earth. And even if there isn’t, the gravitational effects of the dark matter passing through the Solar System, both gravitationally captured and gravitationally free, should affect the orbits of the planets. But until our measurements become more and more precise, there simply isn’t enough of a gravitational effect to result in anything detectable. For the meantime, we have to look to the Universe beyond, Read More ›