Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

At Science News: Fish can recognize themselves in photos, thus may be self-aware

Cleaner wrasses may be self-aware, of course. But just as we would not conclude that a dog who flunks the mirror test is not self-aware, we should not conclude that the fish who passes it IS self-aware. We need to know what else the dog or the fish does that implies self-awareness. Read More ›

What science media make of the 3 million year old tool assembly, recently found

Some of us suspect that it is long past time someone shone a light on how these classifications of early humans are really created. How much is evidence and how much is underlying assumption? Read More ›

Killer whale mommies are not good DarwinMoms, it turns out

Group dynamics like this may be one reason that a species becomes critically endangered or goes extinct. Yes, human activities drive many extirpations/extinctions.* But others may be due to the adoption of behaviors that result in fewer than the needed number of offspring. Not easy to change. Read More ›

From Frontiers Science News: Neanderthals cooked and ate crabs too

Well, that’d never do. We are all expected to be slack-jawed in amazement when what we might have expected - that is, if we didn’t buy into that Darwinian Ascent of Man stuff - turns out to be true. We are paying more for Darwinism than we might sometimes think. Read More ›

At Big Think: The weirdness of quantum mechanics forces scientists to confront philosophy

Marcelo Gleiser: Due to space, I will only mention one more epistemic interpretation, Quantum Bayesianism, or as it is now called, QBism. As the original name implies, QBism takes the role of an agent as central. It assumes that probabilities in quantum mechanics reflect the current state of the agent’s knowledge or beliefs about the world, as he or she makes bets about what will happen in the future. Read More ›

L&FP, 65e: Imaging light as a “wavicle” — both wave and particle

. . . using standing waves of light, vid: x Here is a snapshot: By setting up standing waves and using an electron beam to interact with it, a map could be imaged on photon location and waves. As an article explains: Until now [–> c 2015], scientists have only ever been able to capture an image of light as either a particle or a wave, and never both at the same time. But a team from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland have managed to overcome the obstacles that stood in the way of previous experiments by using electrons to image light in this very strange state.  The key to their success is their unusual experiment design. Read More ›

L&FP 65d: Superposition and the wave function

Here Hossenfelder is an instrumentalist, and emphasises that the superposition is an expression of a probability wave thus a prediction of observations not ultimate truth. Bonus, she brings in entanglement and the concept that it discusses correlated states, using radioactive decay as a case. However, all of this can help us address things like alleged clashes between Quantum Theory and Logic, cf our weak arguments discussion here. Q-Mech, of course, humbles us all. KF

Unique octopus genes seem to have appeared from nowhere

The octopus — a highly intelligent short-lived exothermic invertebrate — should sink lectern-splintering Darwinism — but then the octo does not have tenure and many of the lectern splinterers do. That’s life. But so is finding out the facts. Read More ›

At Smithsonian Magazine: Neanderthals hunted and butchered massive elephants

"...yet another piece of evidence to suggest that humans’ closest ancient relatives were more sophisticated and skilled than the brutish oafs popular culture has made them out to be.” Just a minute here. Popular culture did NOT get that idea from thin air. It was carefully inculcated by science popularizers because it tied in with Darwinian Ascent of Man stuff. If it’s not true, let’s be honest about how the correct information affects the establishment science narrative. Read More ›