2019

Some say it’s time to consider the zoo hypothesis: “They can see us but we can’t see them. The idea revisits a theory proposed in 1973 by radio astronomer John Ball: Ball went further, proposing that we may live in a metaphorical zoo — a kind of cosmic Eden. The aliens of the galaxy have somehow arranged things so that our planet is shielded from them by one-way bars: They can observe us, but we can’t observe them. One nice thing about this conjecture is that it offers a solution to a long-standing puzzle known as Fermi’s Paradox. Broached nearly 70 years ago by physicist Enrico Fermi, it rests on the fact that the universe is very old. Consequently, if Read More ›

Sometimes an argument from Naturalism Inc. becomes too complex to follow. Here’s just such an argument: The appearance of moralizing gods in religion occurred after—and not before—the emergence of large, complex societies, according to new research. This finding upturns conventional thinking on the matter, in which moralizing gods are typically cited as a prerequisite for social complexity. Gods who punish people for their anti-social indiscretions appeared in religions after the emergence and expansion of large, complex societies, according to new research published today in Nature. The finding suggests religions with moralizing gods, or prosocial religions, were not a necessary requirement for the evolution of social complexity. It was only until the emergence of diverse, multi-ethnic empires with populations exceeding a Read More ›

Media personality and author Eric Metaxas talked to him in his university’s home town in Pennsylvania: Eric Metaxas interviews biochemist Michael Behe on “the new science about DNA that challenges evolution” as told in Behe’s book, Darwin Devolves Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,561 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) 9:50 am EST #1 in Developmental Biology (Books) #5 in Creationism #7 in Science & Religion See also: Michael Behe’s response to Lehigh colleagues’ criticism If Behe’s critics were right, new life forms would be popping into existence all the time. But increasingly, political correctness matters so much more than truth to nature that we will be hearing stranger things yet about the Darwinian magic they espouse. Also, Response, Part 2 and Part 3 and Michael Behe: Read More ›

Based on what we know of how algorithms work, it can be demonstrated mathematically that algorithms cannot deal with non-computable concepts: There is another way to prove a negative besides exhaustively enumerating the possibilities With artificial general intelligence (AGI), if we can identify something algorithms cannot do, and show that humans can do it then we’ve falsified the AGI position without running an infinite number of experiments across all possible algorithms. Eric Holloway, “The Flawed Logic behind “Thinking” Computers, Part II” at Mind Matters If Eric is correct, a great deal of the hype we hear in media is based not only on improbable concepts (the usual stuff) but impossible ones. See, for example, Top Ten AI hypes of 2018 Read More ›