Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

It turns out! Not only was space junk Oumuamua an “extraterrestrial lightsail” but our whole universe might be an alien’s experiment!

The stuff that comes out of Harvard these days and gets published in Scientific American used to be tabloid news. What has changed? Read More ›

Are our claimed most distant ancestors sponges or comb jellies?

Researchers: "The alternative candidates for our most distant animal relatives are the comb jellies: beautiful, transparent, globe-shaped animals named after the shimmering comb-rows of cilia they beat to propel themselves through the water." Read More ›

Can we teach a computer to feel things? A dialogue…

You are having an experience reading the vital signs. The dog is having quite a different experience living them. You have all of his data and none of his experience. The dog has none of his data and all of his experience. Suppose you took all that data and instantiated it into a robot. Is the robot having your experience or the dog’s? Or neither, actually? Read More ›

Candace Owens interviews Dr Stella Immanuel and dynamics of hope (yes, JVL, it’s back to answering the “never let a crisis go to waste”/ “inevitable crisis of Capitalism” Marxist revolutionary strategy)

Yes, Marxist ideology pivots on the idea of mounting crises of Capitalism opening the door to socialist transformation. (Where, yes, pandemics obviously count as do incidents of police brutality or anything else that can be used to hang the failure of Capitalism and/or Christendom crisis template on.) Back in the ’30’s, Stalin thought THE Crisis had arrived, but Kondratiev — his star economist — instead produced an honest analysis that discovered generation-length long-wave cycles; oops. Stalin had him shot. Kondratiev, of course, was right. Yes, he produced a breakthrough analysis and paid for being right with his life, at the hands of the notorious Marxist Dictator, Stalin. Simplifying: The typical 8 – 11 year business cycle we worry about is Read More ›

Apparently, Earth is STILL rare

Andrew Zic: But given Proxima Centauri is a cool, small red-dwarf star, it means this habitable zone is very close to the star; much closer in than Mercury is to our Sun.” That would mean those planets would be “sterilised” by dangerous ionising radiation that came from their Sun. Read More ›

Astronomer: I think aliens are out there but sightings claims aren’t persuasive

There may or may not be other intelligent life forms out there. As it happens, we may be in a position to get hard evidence in the next century. But there is no time where it more pays to be sceptical than a time when we could get genuine information. Or not. Read More ›