Author: SelfAwarePatterns

A middle aged guy who loves discussing science, philosophy, history, science fiction, and many other nerdy topics.

Politics and money equal bad science

Jerry Coyne blogged yesterday about the trend in articles pointing out the flaws in science, noting that most of the observed problems are in medical studies, most notably in drug studies, and that generalizing these problems to all of science isn't really accurate or fair. I agree, but I have an observation about why some … Continue reading Politics and money equal bad science →

Belief in immortality hard-wired? Study examines development of children’s ‘prelife’ reasoning — ScienceDaily

By examining children's ideas about "prelife," the time before conception, researchers found results which suggest that our bias toward immortality is a part of human intuition that naturally emerges early in life. And the part of us that is eternal, we believe, is not our skills or ability to reason, but rather our hopes, desires … Continue reading Belief in immortality hard-wired? Study examines development of children’s ‘prelife’ reasoning — ScienceDaily →

The space age is in full swing, for robots

Yesterday I made the observation that it was much cheaper to transmit information than to travel to an interstellar destination, observing that sending a microscopic robot able to use raw materials in the destination system to bootstrap manufacture what it needs. The Leather Library pointed out that this applies as well to destinations in our solar … Continue reading The space age is in full swing, for robots →

Ancient Rome Infanticide Practices Did Not Favor Boys After All, DNA Study Suggests

"Now that we can use DNA to tell whether the babies were male or female, we're starting to revise the commonly held assumptions about infanticide in the Roman world," said Kristina Killgrove, a bioarchaeologist at the University of West Florida, who was not involved in the research. As horrifying as the killing of newborns seems … Continue reading Ancient Rome Infanticide Practices Did Not Favor Boys After All, DNA Study Suggests →

After human extinction, a robot civilization?

This is a review of Charlie Stross's science fiction novel 'Saturn's Children'.  It's been out for a few years, but I wanted to read his latest, 'Neptune's Brood', which is a sequel (of sorts), so I started with this one. Stross describes a universe where humans have gone extinct, but where the sentient machines that … Continue reading After human extinction, a robot civilization? →

For interstellar travel, transmission is much cheaper

It will always be a lot cheaper to send a radio signal to an interstellar destination than any kind of physical presence.  Our discussion the other day on the difficulties of interstellar travel left me pondering this, something that is well known to astronomers and other thinkers in this area. Given sufficiently advanced technology, the … Continue reading For interstellar travel, transmission is much cheaper →

Daniel Dennett on free will

Daniel Dennett has written a long paper on free will, specifically taking on Sam Harris' book on the subject.  Dennett is a compatiblist and uses arguments similar to the ones I used in describing this position and in the limitations of determinism. Harris is aware of Dennett's paper... https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/427472770025283585 ...so I'd think we'll see a … Continue reading Daniel Dennett on free will →