Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
In last week's post on entropy and information, I started off complaining about the most common definition of entropy as disorder or disorganization. One of the nice things about blogging is you often learn something in the subsequent discussion. My chief complaint about the disorder definition was that it's value-laden. I asked: disordered according to … Continue reading Reconciling the disorder definition of entropy
Frank Herbert's novel: Dune, is the epitome of classic science fiction. It's widely regarded as one of the best science fiction novels ever written, if not the best. The story takes place roughly 20,000 years in the future, in an interstellar feudal society. 10,000 years earlier, humanity underwent a religious movement that made computers and … Continue reading Dune: Part One
I've long struggled with the concept of entropy. Part of the reason is the way it's often described in popular science accounts, which typically seem subjective and value laden. The most common way of describing it is the amount of disorder in a system. But disorder according to who? A room that appears messy and … Continue reading Entropy, information, and causality
As many of you know, I spend a good amount of time listening to podcasts while on daily walks. Over the years, I've highlighted some writing podcasts, notably Writing Excuses and the Odyssey Writing Workshops. But these are oriented toward science fiction and fantasy writing. Recently I discovered Kelton Reid's The Writer Files, a podcast … Continue reading The Writer Files
I've been watching the new Apple TV+ series Foundation, but wanted to get a few episodes in before commenting. This is an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's classic Foundation book series. In that series, set in the far future (20,000 years), a vast galactic empire rules the entire galaxy. Hari Seldon is a mathematician who has … Continue reading Foundation
I haven't been hugely impressed by Marvel's recent TV shows. I found WandaVision's first few episodes hard to get through, and the later action never really made up for it. And the first episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier didn't draw me in. So I was slow to watch Loki. But after hearing … Continue reading Loki
John Horgan recently wrote a column which has received a lot of attention. Horgan's thesis is that when it comes to three topics: the existence of God, the mind-body problem, and the measurement problem in quantum mechanics, science can't provide the answers and may never be able to. Horgan advises that the only responsible position … Continue reading Clarifying agnosticism
As I've gotten older, I've become increasingly weary of the alien invasion premise. The problem is the level of coincidence. Earth was a sitting duck for 4 billion years, but the aliens wait until the very century when humans are able to mount any kind of resistance. (To the credit of HG Wells, the originator … Continue reading Project Hail Mary
ID-0 is an interesting little series I stumbled across on Netflix. Like a lot of sci-fi anime, it's in the mecha genre (involving giant robots), but with a twist. The premise is that humans can copy their mind into a robot called an "I-machine" and essentially become the robot. A backup copy of the human's … Continue reading ID-0
For years Netflix dangled Knights of Sidonia in front of me as a recommended show to check out. But as I noted several posts back, I was generally resistant to anime for a long time. I did try to take up the show once, but remember struggling with the standard anime female tropes and the … Continue reading Knights of Sidonia
