2018

While scientific topics tied to AI are a main current focus — I will shortly add another headlined comment on why — there are several philosophical and theological topics that keep on coming up in and around UD. So, pardon a quick note on those wider themes. Here, on the soul and linked ideas from the thoughts on justice thread: JM, 155 to BA77: >>If you think I have not provided any evidence against the immortality of the soul, why don’t you answer my questions regarding the Adam and Eve scriptures?>> I picked this point up and responded: KF, 161: >>J-Mac, consider the scriptural definition of physical death: “as the body without the spirit is dead . . . ” Read More ›

From Michael S. Gazzaniga at Nautilus: Perhaps the most surprising discovery for me is that I now think we humans will never build a machine that mimics our personal consciousness. Inanimate silicon-based machines work one way, and living carbon-based systems work another. One works with a deterministic set of instructions, and the other through symbols that inherently carry some degree of uncertainty. In the end, we must realize that consciousness is part of organismic life. We never have to learn how to produce it or how to utilize it. On a recent trip to Charleston, my wife and I were out in the countryside looking for some good ole fried chicken and cornbread. We finally found a small roadside diner Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The number of recognized mammal species has increased over time from 4,631 species in 1993 to 5,416 in 2005, and now to 6,495 species. This total includes 96 species extinct within the last 500 years, and represents nearly a 20% increase in overall mammal diversity. The updated tabulation details 1,251 new species recognitions, at least 172 unions, and multiple major, higher-level changes, including an additional 88 genera and 14 newly recognized families. The new study documents a long-term global rate of about 25 species recognized per year, with the Neotropics (Central America, the Caribbean, and South America) as the region of greatest species density, followed closely by tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and the Indo-Pacific. Previous sporadic releases Read More ›

Jonathan McLatchie writes to say: Today at 8pm British time (3pm Eastern / 2pm Central / 12noon Pacific), I will be hosting a live interactive webinar featuring Baylor University’s Dr. Robert Marks II His topic will be artificial intelligence and human exceptionalism. There will be plenty of opportunity for live Q&A and dialogue after the presentation. Join here. Note: Robert Marks is the senior author of Evolutionary Informatics. See also: Evolutionary informatics has come a long way since a Baylor dean tried to shut down the lab

From ENST re Matti Leisola, Dr. Leisola is the former dean of Chemistry and Material Sciences at Helsinki University of Technology, and the author of 140 peer-reviewed science publications on enzymes and rare sugars. Among other distinctions, he is a winner of the Latsis Prize of the ETH Zürich. While arguing, from vast experience, against modern evolutionary theory and for intelligent design, the book is also a memoir. … Leisola’s deep knowledge of biology is evident throughout the book, but fellow scientists may find Chapter 10 particularly valuable. There, Leisola unpacks what he has learned about evolution and design from his work on engineering enzymes and microbes. More. If he is like Gunter Bechly, that’ll sink his career. Darwinism today Read More ›

From Stephen Curry, professor of structural biology and assistant provost for equality, diversity and inclusion, at Nature: The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) … Conceived by a group of journal editors and publishers at a meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) in December 2012, it proclaims a pressing need to improve how scientific research is evaluated, and asks scientists, funders, institutions and publishers to forswear using journal impact factors (JIFs) to judge individual researchers. … Most agree that yoking career rewards to JIFs is distorting science. Yet the practice seems impossible to root out. In China, for example, many universities pay impact-factor-related bonuses, inspired by unwritten norms of the West. Scientists in parts of Eastern Read More ›

From Todd Starnes at Townhall: The Todd Starnes Radio Show obtained exclusive emails between the UCO [University of Central Oklahoma] Student Association and Answers in Genesis explaining why they had to rescind the invitation and opt out of a signed and legally binding contract. “We are currently getting bombarded with complaints from our LGBT community about Ken Ham speaking on our campus,” student body president Stockton Duvall wrote on Jan 25. “I was going to request that Mr. Ham refrains from talking on this issue, even if asked his views during the Q&A.” Ham was scheduled to deliver his remarks on March 5 in the university’s Constitution Hall. I find it highly ironic that after being booked to speak in Read More ›

Robo-Doc will see you? Maybe, but not just now. This item popped up from the usual suspect tabloid paper sites while searching on AI and memristors. I have tracked down a couple of more reputable sources so, here goes from China Daily (which is also on the spot): >>A robot has passed the written test of China’s national medical licensing examination, an essential entrance exam for doctors, making it the first robot in the world to pass such an exam. Its developer iFlytek Co Ltd, a leading Chinese artificial intelligence company, said on Thursday that the robot scored 456 points, 96 points higher than the required marks. The artificial-intelligence-enabled robot can automatically capture and analyze patient information and make initial Read More ›

From Elise Crull at Aeon: The problem is that entanglement violates how the world ought to work. Information can’t travel faster than the speed of light, for one. But in a 1935 paper, Einstein and his co-authors showed how entanglement leads to what’s now called quantum nonlocality, the eerie link that appears to exist between entangled particles. If two quantum systems meet and then separate, even across a distance of thousands of lightyears, it becomes impossible to measure the features of one system (such as its position, momentum and polarity) without instantly steering the other into a corresponding state. Up to today, most experiments have tested entanglement over spatial gaps. The assumption is that the ‘nonlocal’ part of quantum nonlocality Read More ›

Memristors [= memory + resistors] are a promising memory-based information storage technology that can work as non-volatile memory and in neural networks.  They were suggested c. 1971 by Leon Chua, and since HP created a TiO2-based multilayer architecture device exhibiting memristor capabilites in 2007, they have been a focus for research, given their potential. Here, we may ponder a crossbar array of memristor elements forming a signal-processing matrix: Memristors are of interest to AI as a means to effect neural networks. For instance, a crossbar network (as is illustrated just above) has been used to demonstrate powerful image processing. As Sheridan et al reported in Nature, May 22, 2017 (details pay-walled, of course . . . ): >>Sparse representation of Read More ›

From Columbia mathematician Peter Woit at his blog Not Even Wrong: Back in 2003-4 I never would have believed that the subject would end up in the state it finds itself in now. With the LHC results removing the last remaining hope for observational evidence relevant to string theory unification, what we’ve been seeing the last few years has been a concerted campaign to avoid admitting failure by the destructive tactic of trying to change the usual conception of testable science. Two examples of this from last week were discussed here, and today there’s a third effort along the same lines, Quantum Multiverses, by Hartle. Unlike the others, this one includes material on the interpretation of quantum mechanics one may Read More ›

Remember Gunter Bechly? That gifted and productive German paleontologist who got driven out and also disappeared from Wikipedia because he thinks there is design in nature?* Alex Berezow for American Council for Science and Health noticed and writes: If a respected scientist endorses a controversial view, should he or she be erased from history? The editors at Wikipedia think so, but only if the controversial opinion is one they personally dislike. That’s precisely what happened to a respected German paleontologist, Günter Bechly. His biography on Wikipedia has been deleted. Poof. Gone. It’s like he never existed. According to German Wikipedia, where a version of Dr. Bechly’s page (which appears to have been created in 2012) still exists, he was once an Read More ›

From Denyse O’Leary at MercatorNet: Unhinged criticism of the man has obscured the merits of his book: Professor Jordan Peterson, author of the top-selling 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, is beginning to look weary in the face of the waves of hatred he has endured recently. Two years ago, he was almost unknown outside his field. A Canadian clinical psychologist and professor of psychology (University of Toronto), he is author of over 100 papers in his specialities, the psychology of religious and ideological belief and personality theory. His principal work, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (1999), was a well-received tome. He taught at Harvard before being awarded tenure at the University of Toronto. So how Read More ›

From Susan Milius at ScienceNews: In a lab face-off, 43 percent of Pheropsophus jessoensis bombardiers escaped alive after being swallowed by toads, a pair of researchers at Kobe University in Japan report February 7 in Biology Letters. These lucky beetles were vomited up — in one case, 107 minutes after being gulped — covered with goo, but still able to pull themselves together and walk away. Fifteen of the 16 beetles coughed up into daylight lived for at least 17 days, with one still going 562 days later. Scalding internal beetle blasts proved vital in persuading the toads to spit the bugs up, ecologists Shinji Sugiura and Takuya Sato report. The pair prodded beetles into spraying until no more defensive Read More ›

as in “your last question, the question for which you will be remembered.” Some interesting answers (in the form of questions) emerge: Can we program a computer to find a 10,000-bit string that encodes more actionable wisdom than any human has ever expressed? – Scott Aronson Are complex biological neural systems fundamentally unpredictable? – Anthony Aguirre Are the simplest bits of information in the brain stored at the level of the neuron? – Dorsa Amir and many more. Everyone seems to be trying their hand on the 20th anniversary. See also: CSICOP’s ridiculously out-of-date questions and answers on evolution show how far naturalism has fallen They don’t even keep up.