Thank you to the UD News desk for putting up From Closer To Truth: Is Mathematics Invented Or Discovered?  In this video public intellectual Robert Lawrence Kuhn interviews mathematicians and philosophers regarding the titular question. The most profound statement in the video does not address the question.  It addresses the current cultural constraints on the approach to answering this — indeed all – questions.  Kuhn is interviewing mathematician Gregory Chaitin.  At  about 13:25 Chaitin tentatively expresses that he would like to believe that mathematics expresses a fundamental reality that is independent of the physical world.  The following exchange ensues: Chaitin:  It’s a separate reality, and I don’t know where it is.  Don’t ask me where the positive integers live, but Read More ›

Maybe some of us (yer news writer, for one) have been unkind to Avi Loeb, the Harvard astronomer who continues to insist that space debris Oumuamua is an extraterrestrial lightsail. Anyway, at 29:06 in this vid, Loeb says “nature does not produce such things.” We’re told Loeb is using a design filter like design theorist William Dembski’s explanatory filter. Interesting use of design detection. Anyway, Loeb has a book coming out, in which he makes his case: Obviously, if you believe that there are many extraterrestrials out there, it makes much more sense to believe that the universe is fine-tuned for life than that it is all just a big cosmic accident. Are we being too hard on the guy? Read More ›