Video

Next up in the Engineering and Metaphysics series is a presentation by Winston Ewert. This one is on a new informatics metric, called conditional Kolmogorov complexity. Check it out!

For the next installment of the Engineering and Metaphysics Conference Videos, we have a talk on setting up a testable line between physical and non-physical causation, as well as how one can integrate non-physical causation into models of cognitive processes.

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The next video from the Engineering and Metaphysics conference is with Dr. Mark Hall. Hall attempts to reconnect with historic architectural principles through architecture critic John Ruskin, and show what, besides just functionalism and good looks, are needed for lasting architectural impact. We don’t often think of truth as an architectural value, or even see how it could be. Hall brings out Ruskin’s perspective of architecture, and how we can use it to bring deeper meaning into modern architecture. (Yes, the YouTube thumbnail is broken. The video, though, is just fine.)

The first video from the Engineering and Metaphysics conference is from Arminius Mignea. His talk is about self-replication, and what is really required for self-replication to occur. Mignea reviews current attempts at self-replication, and shows the minimal structures needed for it to occur. The slides for the talk are available here. Enjoy!

[youtube 259r-iDckjQ] After 10 years of trying, it seemed to me that getting scientists to understand something this simple was almost impossible, so this video, created with the expertise of my brother Kirk, was designed for “general audiences;” they do seem to understand it. But this time, I have been pleasantly surprised at how many scientists have told me they appreciate it also. More on this at my recent Evolution News and Views post.

For some months now, I have been having a behind the scenes correspondence with a regular viewer of UD, whom we shall call EP. He works with industrial robots, and has been fascinated by the way the ribosome works as a nano-scale automated machine cell. Accordingly, a process sequence diagram (‘map”) has been developed, based on accessible descriptions of the ribosome in action. The result is a fascinating look at the ribosome as industrial robot work-cell. (The tRNA’s are molecular scale position-arm devices with a universal CCA coupler — yup, the AA bond is universal, it is the loading enzyme that sets up which tRNA gets what AA — to load and click AAs to a protein chain.) So, enough Read More ›

A few months back, we looked at the story of Wallace’s views here and again here. Now, thanks to an online premiere, here’s the movie (HT: ENV): [youtube hxvAVln6HLI] Relax, enjoy, and discuss. END _____________ F/N: to understand Wallace, have a read of his major book published in 1910 ff, The World of Life (cf. here, here, here and here at Amazon — republished, of course, by Forgotten Books).

Since the question of the history of ideas roots of a certain Herr Schicklegruber’s thoughts seems to repeatedly come up, it is worth the while to here post the Lecture “From Darwin to Hitler,” by Prof Richard Weikart so that we all may see what he has to say: [youtube w_5EwYpLD6A] For record, so no comments. Comments may continue in the current “Who said this?” thread, here. My own view is simple: no responsible discussion of this topic or related concerns can ignore the evidence brought forward by prof Weikart here. END _______________ U/D Jan 5: CSU not UC, Thanks to an eagle-eyed reader.

Courtesy North Dakota State U: [youtube YM2X1c4K1x0] (And for those wanting a narrated version of the famous XVIVO vid, cf here.) Remember, we are looking at these videos in light of Denton’s remark of 1985: To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter [[so each atom in it would be “the size of a tennis ball”] and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions Read More ›

Sometimes, seeing is believing. Here is a nice, short summary of the kinesin microtubule highway “walking truck” protein in action: [youtube lLxlBB9ZBj4] This vid gives a bit of context: [youtube 8RULvE9rw6Y] Especially notice the role played by Brownian motion, and that played by ATP. So, post turkey and pudding vid no 3: ATP Synthase in action: [youtube KU-B7G6anqw] Walking trucks in the cell, fuelled by batteries made in a molecular factory that uses a nanotech motor  . . . And, a highway network that has to go where it is needed, with need for directions — that delivery truck has to know where to go, when! And the best explanation for all of this functionally specific, complex organisation and required Read More ›

ID thinker Phillip Johnson answers questions relating to Darwinism and underlying metaphysical and methodological naturalism: [youtube ww6T8xjp9Vo] Notice his summary from Gould etc: that in the intent of the main champions of “evolution,” material reality is reality, and science, properly, is limited to that circle of thought, so scientific reality is factual reality, and what is contrary to or outside of that circle of evolutionary materialism is imaginary. Now, too, he quotes Gould: “science incorporates all of factual reality.” Is that a reasonable position to take, why or why not? Ask, too, whether he is accurate in summarising an attitude of contempt that willfully conceals disputable prior philosophical commitments in dealing with lay policy makers (e.g. school boards)  and the Read More ›