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Here: A well-replicated finding in the psychological literature is the negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence. However, several studies also conclude that one form of religiosity, church attendance, is protective against later-life cognitive decline. No effects of religious belief per se on cognitive decline have been found, potentially due to the restricted measures of belief used in previous studies. Here, we examined the associations between religiosity, intelligence, and cognitive change in a cohort of individuals (initial n = 550) with high-quality measures of religious belief taken at age 83 and multiple cognitive measures taken in childhood and at four waves between age 79 and 90. We found that religious belief, but not attendance, was negatively related to intelligence. The effect Read More ›

In his new book, “Social Physics,” Alex Pentland, a prominent data scientist at M.I.T., shows as much uncritical enthusiasm for prediction as Tucker, while making a case that we need a new science — social physics — that can make sense of all the digital bread crumbs, from call records to credit card transactions, that we leave as we navigate our daily life. (That the idea of social physics was once promoted by the positivist Auguste Comte, one scholar who would have warmed to the idea of Big Data, goes unmentioned.) What is social physics good for? It would allow us to detect and improve “idea flow” — the way ideas and behaviors travel through social networks. For example, Pentland Read More ›

Here: Allen Orr, my first Ph.D. student, has developed a thriving career as a popular book reviewer, and in this week’s New York Review of Books, he critique’s Nicholas Wade’s new book, A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History. I made a few comments on this book a few days ago, saying that it was in the main pretty bad, though one part, the presentation of the case for genetic differentiation of human populations, was not too bad. But Wade’s main thesis was that differences between human societies, as well as rapid changes within human societies, was due to evolutionary change mediated by natural selection. That latter contention, I claimed, had no evidence behind it, though Wade argued otherwise. Read More ›

Here. By definition, no one can know what arrogance looks like. It wouldn’t be arrogance if we knew it. Here (Ethan Siegel) Now, philosophy doesn’t have the answers, but it does teach ways to consider the limits of our knowledge. And if you’re talking about the philosophy of science, so long as those doing the philosophizing are honestly and accurately representing the science (which is something they can only do if they actually understand it adequately themselves, which many?—?but not all?—?of them do), it can certainly give you a number of interesting possibilities to think about. Which is why I was incredibly disappointed to learn that Neil de Grasse Tyson went on the Nerdist Podcast, and absolutely ripped the entire Read More ›

Gravitational wave theory faces scrutiny here, at Nature: Cosmologist casts doubts on BICEP2’s analysis of cosmic microwaves, but the team stands by its conclusions.