Month: February 2016

Crash Course takes on philosophy

I've featured Crash Course videos before.  The Green brothers (and collaborators such as Phil Plait) manage to take various subjects such as history, astronomy, politics, biology, and others many might find dry and boring, and make them interesting.  Each episode is relatively short (usually under 15 minutes) but cover a lot in that time, edited to move along at a hyper … Continue reading Crash Course takes on philosophy →

In case you haven’t heard yet, gravitational waves have been detected

I won't attempt to describe the implications.  For that, your best bet is to read it from one of the experts, Ethan Siegel: The First Detection Of Gravitational Waves Validates Einstein In A Whole New Way! Let's hope those implications aren't this. Source: xkcd Both General Relativity and the Standard Model or particle physics keep getting … Continue reading In case you haven’t heard yet, gravitational waves have been detected →

Panpsychism and definitions of “consciousness”

Disagreeable Me asked me to look at this interesting TED talk by Professor Mark Bishop. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUNHyPFvUWc The entire talk is well worth the time (20 minutes) for anyone interested in consciousness and the computational theory of mind, but here's my very quick summation: The human mind, and hence consciousness, is a computational system. Since animal … Continue reading Panpsychism and definitions of “consciousness” →

97% of the observable universe is forever unreachable

The other day, I was reading a post by Ethan Siegel on his excellent blog, Starts With a Bang, about whether it makes sense to consider the universe to be a giant brain.  (The short answer is no, but read his post for the details.)  Something he mentioned in the post caught my attention. But … Continue reading 97% of the observable universe is forever unreachable →