2018

British political philosopher John Gray, author of Seven Types of Atheism (2018) and also of Straw Dogs, comments in an interview: Indeed. I’m a skeptic by nature, so I’m resistant to claims by anyone to have complete answers to intractable human problems. I’m particularly annoyed by what’s now called “New Atheism,” and I react strongly against those who debunk the beliefs of others in a way I find bullying and shallow. The New Atheists — Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and others — attack religions in the sublime confidence that these religions are myths and that they themselves harbor no myths, but that’s not true. In many cases, the New Atheists are animated by 19th-century myths of various kinds: myths of Read More ›

A historian asks: Science Fiction Lacks Religiosity, But Why? Consider science fiction which, like all genres, has its own share of standard tropes and themes. One of the main themes in science fiction is the status of technology, and you’ll notice a frequent assumption that technology will constantly grow more and more sophisticated over time; more precisely, the assumption is about a certain idea of progression… When people encounter alien cultures in science fiction, they’re usually on some sort of a spectrum of more or less technologically––and, therefore, intellectually––sophisticated. It’s very common, in these situations, that more primitive cultures have “religion” while more advanced cultures have dispensed with it. There’s no inherent reason that intellectual sophistication and religion should be Read More ›

You take for granted that you can just choose to read Uncommon Descent. Or something else instead. Increasingly, governments would like you to read what they think is best: There has been a definite uptick in digital authoritarianism worldwide, according to Freedom House, which assessed 65 countries: Chinese officials have held sessions on controlling information with 36 of the 65 countries assessed, and provided telecom and surveillance equipment to a number of foreign governments, Freedom House said. … The report found 17 governments approved or proposed laws restricting online media in the name of fighting “fake news,” while 18 countries increased surveillance or weakened encryption protection to more closely monitor their citizenry. According to the researchers, internet freedom declined in Read More ›

In an effort to program self-driving cars to make decisions in a crisis, MIT’s Moral Machine offered 2.3 million people worldwide a chance to crowdsource who to kill and who to spare in a road mishap… The project aimed at building righteous self-driving cars revealed stark differences in global values. People from China and Japan were more likely to spare the old than the young. But in Western cultures, numbers matter more: The results showed that participants from individualistic cultures, like the UK and US, placed a stronger emphasis on sparing more lives given all the other choices—perhaps, in the authors’ views, because of the greater emphasis on the value of each individual. Karen Hao, “Should a self-driving car kill Read More ›

Ewert, developer of the dependency graph model of relationships between life forms (as an alternative to the tree of life concept) offers some thoughts on whether technology is neutral: A number of examples can be put forward in defense of the thesis that technologies do change cultures. A commonly cited example is the printing press. When invented in Europe, the printing press caused the widespread availability of books and learning, sparking the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the early modern age. Another example is the clock, which was originally developed by monks for the purpose of punctually following the canonical hours of their liturgy. But this technology eventually led to factory workers following regimented working hours and produced modern capitalism. In contrast, Read More ›

As pop neuroscientist Anil Seth claims in a TED talk? What the brain “is” depends on how you study it. We live in a mechanical age, so we study it as a machine. But our method of study determines what we learn. Theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg noted perceptively that “…what we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning” ( Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science, 1958, p. 78). By its nature, the brain is an organ. It is a functional part of a living being. We can draw analogies to it in order to help us understand it, but we must remember that what we then learn about the Read More ›

A light sail is “a small spacecraft, propelled solely by sunlight.” Interstellar object Oumuamua, was discovered 2017 while passing through our solar system. It’s peculiar acceleration is explained, seriously, by a Harvard prof as an extraterrestrial spacecraft: Interestingly enough, there has also been some speculation that based on its shape, ‘Oumuamua might actually be an interstellar spacecraft (Breakthrough Listen even monitored it for signs of radio signals!). A new study by a pair of astronomers from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has taken it a step further, suggesting that ‘Oumuamua may actually be a light sail of extra-terrestrial origin. The study – “Could Solar Radiation Pressure Explain “Oumuamua’s Peculiar Acceleration?,” which recently appeared online – was conducted by Read More ›

Jonathan McLatchie announces a live interactive webinar today, Saturday, at 8pm British time, featuring pro-ID paleontologist Dr. Gunter Bechly, who will be exploring the implications of the fossil record for common ancestry. (Time zones.) Gunter Bechly is a distinguished paleontologist, specializing in fossil dragonflies, exquisitely preserved in amber for tens of millions of years. After revealing his support for the theory of intelligent design, he was pushed out as a curator at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany. He subsequently joined Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture as a Senior Fellow. He was also erased from Wikipedia due to his change of mind. Philip Cunningham has made a playlist of Gunter Bechly here: Follow UD News Read More ›

What about Alfred Russel Wallace? Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon on the Hubble’s Law name change, to recognize “Big Bang” priest, Fr. Georges Lemaitre: — The misappropriation of laws is a well-known institution in science. Avogadro had nothing to do with his constant. The French just didn’t want to name it after the Austrian Loschmidt who discovered it. Likewise the Bose-Einstein condensate had little to do with Einstein; Bose couldn’t get his paper published in an English-speaking journal, so he asked Einstein to send it into Zeitschrift fur Physik. Hannes Alfven had no knowledge of “Alfven layers” “Alfven boundaries” and so on. But he was the only plasma physicist to get a Nobel Prize, so he had name recognition. Read More ›

Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon has this to say: — I’ve been a skeptic of the gravity wave observations from the very beginning. The noise is ONE MILLION times stronger than the signal, which in every other field of science, pretty much excludes the opportunity of seeing the signal. Making this worse, no one knows what the signal looked like, having never seen a gravity wave before. At best, we make models of what we think it might look like, but how can one be sure? Finally and perhaps the killer, LIGO’s method of signal extraction is borrowed from RADAR analysis, where “matched filters” are used. Only radar engineers actually know what the signal looks like since they sent it, Read More ›

The 2015 find may have been an illusion: The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory collaboration, better known as LIGO, switched on its upgraded detectors on 12 September 2015. Within 48 hours, it had made its first detection. It took a few months before the researchers were confident enough in the signal to announce a discovery. Headlines around the world soon heralded one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the past century. In 2017, a Nobel prize followed. Five other waves have since been spotted. Or have they? That’s the question asked by a group of physicists who have done their own analysis of the data. “We believe that LIGO has failed to make a convincing case for the detection of any Read More ›

Whose triumph would create “catastrophic genomic instability”: Since Carnegie Institution’s Barbara McClintock received her Nobel Prize on her discovery of jumping genes in 1983, we have learned that almost half of our DNA is made up of jumping genes—called transposons. Given their ability of jumping around the genome in developing sperm and egg cells, their invasion triggers DNA damage and mutations. This often leads to animal sterility or even death, threatening species survival. The high abundance of jumping genes implies that organisms have survived millions, if not billions, of transposon invasions. However, little is known about where this adaptability comes from. Now, a team of Carnegie researchers has discovered that, upon jumping gene invasion, reproductive stem cells boost production of Read More ›

Belgian priest Lemaitre apparently got the idea, which “underpins modern cosmology,” two years before Edwin Hubble: The International Astronomical Union (IAU) recommends that the law now be known as the Hubble–Lemaître law. In the 1920s, the Belgian described in French how the expansion of the Universe would cause galaxies to move away from Earth at speeds proportional to their distance. He did this two years earlier than US astronomer Edwin Hubble used his own data to establish the same relationship. Of the 4,060 astronomers who cast votes (out of around 11,072 eligible members) 78% were in favour of the change.Elizabeth GIbney, “Belgian priest recognized in Hubble law name change” at Nature These name changes, like the downgrading of Pluto to Read More ›

Not in principle, according to Ann Gauger, of the Biologic Institute. A reader wrote to ask, “I was just wondering why some fellows at Discovery believe in ID but still hold to common descent. Science knows that the genetic code is not universal.” From her reply: I first need to make clear that living things can be the product both of intelligent design and of common descent. If the designer chose to guide the process of gradual change from species to species, that would be both common descent and intelligent design. In other words, intelligent design theory does not require that common descent is false. Neither does intelligent design require that common descent is true. All that intelligent design theory Read More ›

Dark matter was first theorized a century ago and yet “ super-sensitive underground labs that can detect a particle just one-trillionth of one-trillionth of a square centimeter” haven’t found it. Some now think that the problem is that two different approaches to the search are in conflict: There are two methods that physicists use to discover dark matter, and they differ greatly. Particle physics focuses on the small-scale world — the subatomic properties of matter — whereas astronomy focuses on the large-scale world — faraway areas of the universe that we can probe with telescopes and signal detectors. Naturally, they use different approaches. “The language and tools we [physicists and astronomers] use tend to be quite different,” Peter, an assistant Read More ›