Tag Archives: Science

Recommendation: What Is Real?

Posted on August 20, 2019 by

Last week I started listening to a Sean Carroll podcast episode, an interview of Adam Becker on his book, What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics.  Before even finishing the episode, I downloaded Becker’s book … Continue reading →

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The Anthropocene is a conceit of human exceptionalism

Posted on August 18, 2019 by

Peter Brannen has an interesting piece in the Atlantic, pointing out that the Anthropocene is more of a geological event rather than an epoch, at least so far. Humans are now living in a new geological epoch of our own … Continue reading →

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Consciousness science undetermined

Posted on July 8, 2019 by

An interesting paper by Matthias Michel on the underdetermined nature of theories of consciousness. Consciousness scientists have not reached consensus on two of the most central questions in their field: first, on whether consciousness overflows reportability; second, on the physical … Continue reading →

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Is cosmology in crisis?

Posted on May 19, 2019 by

In past posts, when I’ve written about the expansion of the universe, I’ve generally referred to the rate of that expansion, the Hubble constant, as being around 70 km/s/megaparsec, that is, for every megaparsec a galaxy is distant from us, … Continue reading →

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Emotions, feelings, and action programs

Posted on May 1, 2019 by

Sean Carroll’s latest Mindscape podcast features an interview with neuroscientist Antonio Damasio: When we talk about the mind, we are constantly talking about consciousness and cognition. Antonio Damasio wants us to talk about our feelings. But it’s not in an … Continue reading →

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Protecting AI welfare?

Posted on April 27, 2019 by

John Basl and Eric Schwitzgebel have a short article at Aeon arguing that AI (artificial intelligence) should enjoy the same protection as animals do for scientific research.  They make the point that while AI is a long way off from … Continue reading →

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The relationship between usefulness and falsifiability

Posted on April 25, 2019 by

There’s an article by Matthew R. Francis in Symmetry magazine garnering a lot of attention asking whether falsifiability is a useful criteria for scientific theories. Popper wrote in his classic book The Logic of Scientific Discovery that a theory that cannot be … Continue reading →

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Neanderthals and the beginnings of us

Posted on April 20, 2019 by

The Smithsonian has an interesting article up on what we currently know about Neanderthals.  The article details some of the internecine battles that always seems to be a part of the paleoanthropology field, in this case focusing on the capabilities … Continue reading →

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Is cosmic inflation settled science?

Posted on March 17, 2019 by

Ethan Siegel at Starts With a Bang has a post up arguing that the multiverse must exist.  His reasoning has to do with cosmic inflation.  Inflation is the theory that the universe expanded at an exponential rate in the first … Continue reading →

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Synthetic DNA and the necessity of biological mechanisms

Posted on February 24, 2019 by

Scientists have created synthetic DNA with four extra “letters”: A couple billion years ago, four molecules danced into the elegant double-helix structure of DNA, which provides the codes for life on our planet. But were these four players really fundamental … Continue reading →

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