Buzz Blog: Getting Einstein to Say "I Was Wrong". An interesting post about how slow Albert Einstein was to accept the expanding universe cosmology. It demonstrates that all of us, no matter how brilliant, are often unable to see past our own blind spots. Of course, most of us would love to have Einstein's hit … Continue reading Buzz Blog: Getting Einstein to Say “I Was Wrong”
Why an AI revolt is unlikely
From time to time, articles or blog posts appear expressing anxiety about what will happen when we finally achieve artificial intelligence. The thinking goes that such a mind would quickly be able to design and build a better version of itself and in no time we'd be facing an overwhelmingly superior intelligence which may or … Continue reading Why an AI revolt is unlikely
8 Incredible Facts You May Not Know About Human Evolution
An interesting article at io9: 8 Incredible Facts You May Not Know About Human Evolution. For most of the time that modern humans have existed on the planet, we've been hunter gatherers. It's not until about 10,000 or so years ago that people started settling down and farming, with civilization cranking up around 5000 years ago. … Continue reading 8 Incredible Facts You May Not Know About Human Evolution
Goldstein: The Vindication of Spinoza
Rebecca Goldstein has an interesting post on BigThink about Baruch Spinoza and how prescient many of his ideas were. Spinoza's conception of God was the one believed in by Einstein. This conception, often summarized as being equivalent to the laws of nature, is an example of the wide diversity of notions that the word 'God' … Continue reading Goldstein: The Vindication of Spinoza
Could Miracles Happen?
Atheists should be tolerant of religion
Recently, there was an NPR story by Marcelo Gleiser on how scientists should respond to people's anxiety about science and God. Jerry Coyne responded in a post asking if faith should ever not be contested (excluding dying grandmothers and such). In his response, Coyne referred to a famous quote by Karl Marx. Religious suffering is, at one … Continue reading Atheists should be tolerant of religion
Tim Maudlin on Fine Tuning
A very interesting article. I’ve never been too impressed by fine tuning arguments. To me, they’ve always sounded like, “the universe is fined tuned to produce…the universe we have”. But this article does a good job of summing up the issues and is well worth the time.
Cosmology group researcher Tim Maudlin has a great post in Aeon Magazine about cosmic fine-tuning. Read it there and feel free to discuss it in the comments here!
Why science, philosophy, or religion cannot determine morality
There are some famous thinkers, Sam Harris and Michael Shermer, among others, who are currently attempting to sell the idea that we should have a "science of morality". They assert that moral propositions reduce to matters of fact about the wellbeing of conscious creatures. Many philosophers, such as Massimo Pigliuci, take umbrage at this, seeing … Continue reading Why science, philosophy, or religion cannot determine morality
Ancillary Justice: an excellent read
I just finished reading Ann Leckie's new novel, Ancillary Justice, after reading about it on John Scalzi's site. I found it one of the most absorbing books I've read in a while. If you enjoy space opera science fiction, with AIs, strange societies, and generally mind bending ideas, then you owe it to yourself to … Continue reading Ancillary Justice: an excellent read
Why extraterrestrial civilizations may be exceedingly rare
There's been a lot of news lately about the estimate of habitable planets in our galaxy. It sounds like there may be 40 billion planets in the habitable zones around their stars. This is cool stuff! The nearest one might be only 12 light years away. It's very tempting from this news, to conclude that … Continue reading Why extraterrestrial civilizations may be exceedingly rare
