Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
Last week, Science News had an article about the difficulty of studying animal emotions, on understanding what an animal in a particular situation is really feeling. It's an interesting article, although not one with much new information for many of you. However, I want to focus on one point raised by one of the researchers … Continue reading The benefits of functionalism for animal welfare
This Scientific American video, shared by Aeon, is pretty good if you're looking for a quick basic primer on quantum computing. It's short, less than nine minutes. Although I do have a beef which I'll discuss below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLnGp1WTNFQ Decoded: How Does a Quantum Computer Work? The beef, which is pretty common with popular explanations of … Continue reading Decoded: How does a quantum computer work?
Quanta has a pretty interesting article up today: A Solution to the Faint-Sun Paradox Reveals a Narrow Window for Life. Our understanding of the physics of the sun indicate that it should have been only 70% as bright as it is today. But if so, early Earth should have been a snowball not really capable … Continue reading Complex life may be more rare in the universe than we thought
2021 was not the dumpster fire of 2020, but it was a year with its own challenges. The pandemic continued in its second year, but at least many of us were vaccinated, so the ability to move around again in public was a nice change. But it also led to my employer bringing people back … Continue reading Merry Christmas
When the first season of The Witcher showed up a couple of years ago on Netflix, I was slow to watch it. From a distance, it looked too much like a Game of Thrones ripoff. But numerous recommendations eventually drove me to check it out, and I discovered a rich world with compelling characters, all … Continue reading The Witcher season 2
Okay, this is a bit different. Bryce is a very talkative assassin hired by a Japanese crime boss to kill a reform minded candidate for prime minister. Bryce succeeds in that assassination, to the horror of the country. But he's then betrayed by the crime boss. He escapes, but find himself badly wounded and alone … Continue reading Hit-Monkey
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
Ronnie de Souza has an interesting article at Aeon on why he thinks the concept of morality isn't helpful. His overall thesis is that the idea that there are things that are right or wrong without qualification, in and of itself, adds nothing useful to the conversation. We can find reasons why or why not … Continue reading Some words might simply no longer be productive for precise conversations
I've only recently discovered Ricardo Lopes and his interviews of all kinds of interesting people. Here is one from a couple of years ago of Keith Frankish, the most prominent contemporary champion of illusionism, the idea that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion, that it doesn't exist, and much of this is him giving the standard … Continue reading The necessity of weak emergence
The second season (err, volume) of Love Death & Robots was released yesterday, so naturally I ended up binging it last night. Not that it took long. Each episode is less than 20 minutes (one is less than 10) and there are only eight of them this time around. One of the episodes was written … Continue reading Love Death and Robots, Volume 2
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