Yesterday was the Presidential primary in my state. My vote went to Hillary Clinton, principally because I'm a Democrat and Clinton's views are slightly closer to mine than Bernie Sanders. At heart, I'm a pragmatist who isn't a big fan of hopeless battles. I agree with many of Sanders's aspirations, such as universal healthcare and free college, … Continue reading Voting in the primary
Category: Zeitgeist
SMBC: Do ethics actually exist?
This is just too close to some of our recent discussions for me not to call attention to it. As usual, Weiner knocks it out of the park. (Click through for hovertext and red button caption.) via: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
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
SMBC: Robot heaven
Click through for full sized version and red button caption. Source: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Of course, the upshot is that if you view humans as organic machines, it opens the door to something like robot heaven eventually working for us. We might someday build heaven. Indeed, if it should turn out that there is a heaven … Continue reading SMBC: Robot heaven
Michael Graziano: What hard problem?
Michael Graziano has an article at The Atlantic explaining why consciousness is not mysterious. It's a fairly short read (about 3 minutes). I recommend anyone interested in this stuff read it in full. (I tweeted a link to it last night, but then decided it warranted discussion here.) The TL;DR is that the hard problem of … Continue reading Michael Graziano: What hard problem?
Which political candidate do your views align with?
I took this political test, which provided the results below. For the most part, they're what I expected, although I'm mildly surprised I agreed with Jeb Bush that much. I couldn't imagine what healthcare and science issues I had in common with Ted Cruz, but it turns out he supports the legalization of marijuana, which … Continue reading Which political candidate do your views align with?
Merry Christmas
To all my online friends, whatever today and tomorrow mean for you, whether it's a religious observance, family event, or merely a couple days off work, I hope you have a great holiday! If by any chance it's not a holiday where you are, then I hope you have a great Thursday evening and Friday.
Is falsifiability essential to science?
xkcd: Why Asimov put the Three Laws of Robotics in the order he did
Source: xkcd: The Three Laws of Robotics The Three Laws from the Wikipedia article: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must … Continue reading xkcd: Why Asimov put the Three Laws of Robotics in the order he did
SelfAwarePatterns 