^ArchiveArticles

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
July 6, 2021

Categorized
Philosophy, Science

Tagged
Big Bang, Black holes, Causal closure, David Papineau, Featured, Michael Egnor}

Round 3: Egnor vs Papineau: The Big Bang Has No Natural Beginning

_{In the debate between theistic neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and naturalist philosopher David Papineau, the question gets round to the origin of the universe itself} _{News

July 6, 2021

6

Philosophy, Science}

Michael Egnor begins this portion of the discussion by asking What caused the Big Bang? What causes the singularities at the core of black holes? (Yesterday, we published materialist philosopher David Papineau’s reply to neurosurgeon Michael Egnor. For Egnor’s opening statement, go here. Starts, roughly, at 21:30 min: David Papineau: I don’t think it’s a coherent question. It’s like asking what causes the number five. I mean, you’re misapplying the notion of cause to the beginning of the material universe. … I’m not following. I said all physical effects have a physical cause, and you’re going to give me a counterexample of a physical effect that doesn’t have a physical cause, so what would that be? Note: The Big Bang, Read More ›

Seniorenpaar mit Rollator unterwegs mit Tochter

^{Type
post

Author
Wesley J. Smith
Date
July 5, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health

Tagged
Artificial intelligence-based prediction, Death and dying, MAID (euthanasia in Canada), RESPECT (death evaluation in Canada), Seniors}

Computer Program Predicts When Seniors Have 6 Months to Live

_{Developed in Canada, the program is further evidence that medicine is growing increasingly impersonal} _{Wesley J. Smith

July 5, 2021

3

Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health}

As if we needed further evidence that medicine is growing increasingly impersonal, the Canadian Medical Association Journal has published a study that claims a computer program can predict when seniors have six months to live. From the Global News story: Amid a lack of proper support for Canadians receiving home-based support towards the end of their lives, a new risk calculator is helping predict how long seniors have left to live. The Risk Evaluation for Support: Predictions for Elder-Life in the Community Tool — dubbed ‘RESPECT’ for short — can predict death within six months, and was developed using data from more than 491,000 community-dwelling adults aged at least 50 years who used home care between 2007 and 2013. Always with the acronyms to hide Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
July 5, 2021

Categorized
Business and Finance, Social Media

Tagged
bias, Google, GPT-3, Megan Kacholia, Muslims, Timnit Gebru}

The Most “Woke” Company Could Contribute Most to Online Bias

_{Google has got to be one of the "Wokest" companies but there is a lesson in how Timnit Gebru got fired} _{News

July 5, 2021

4

Business and Finance, Social Media}

Here’s a paper worth revisiting, “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?” (March 3, 2021), if only for the principal author’s trouble associated with publishing it. Although Google had hired Timnit Gebru to do ethics consultation, an executive, Megan Kacholia demanded that she remove all suggestion of her affiliation. In the ensuing uproar, Gebru ended up no longer employed there. The paper in question was, in Gebru’s mind, pretty unobjectionable. It surveyed the known pitfalls of so-called large language models, a type of AI software — most famously exemplified by a system called GPT-3 — that was stoking excitement in the tech industry. Google’s own version of the technology was now helping to power the Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
July 5, 2021

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Consciousness, David Papineau, Dualism, Michael Egnor, Naturalism, Physicalism}

Round 2: Philosopher Papineau Replies to Neurosurgeon Egnor

_{Dr. Papineau is considered to be one of the best defenders of naturalism (nature is all there is), often called “materialism.”} _{News

July 5, 2021

12

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

Yesterday, we published a portion of the transcript of the debate between materialist philosopher David Papineau amd neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, in which Egnor explains how, despite early atheism, the practice of medicine led him to believe that there is a God and that the mind is not simply what the brain does. He offered three reasons. Today, here’s a transcript of David Papineau’s reply. Starts, roughly, at 9:00 min: Note: Dr. Papineau is a “physicalist,” a form of materialism according to which “the mind is a purely physical construct, and will eventually be explained entirely by physical theory, as it continues to evolve.” (Philosophy basics) He is considered to be one of the best defenders of naturalism (nature is all Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
July 4, 2021

Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Aristotle, Arjuna, Consciousness, David Papineau, Featured, Franz Brentano, Michael Egnor, Physicalism, qualia, Thomas Aquinas}

Neurosurgeon Egnor Takes on Philosopher Papineau Round 1

_{In the debate, Egnor begins by offering three fundamental reasons why the mind is not the brain} _{News

July 4, 2021

7

Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

Recently, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor debated philosopher David Papineau at Theology Unleashed. Papineau is considered “one of the best defenders of naturalism” (actually, as he admits, physicalism). Egnor talks about how science and the practice of medicine persuaded him that there is a God and that the mind is real. The host is Arjuna and the show is billed as “Eastern theology meets Western skepticism.” What follows is a partial transcript of the first portion, with notes: Michael Egnor: Just as a little background about where I’m coming from, I was raised as a functional atheist, and I was educated as a scientific atheist, so I was an atheist for most of my life. I was a biochemistry major in college, Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
July 3, 2021

Categorized
Arts & Culture, Philosophy, Religion, Science

Tagged
Nothingness (as concept), Paul Trillo, Science fiction, Until there was nothing (film)}

What Happens If Earth Passes Through a Black Hole—Sci-fi Saturday

_{This story isn’t exactly about passage through a black hole: It is a meditation on nothingness that crashes headfirst into nihilism} _{News

July 3, 2021

14

Arts & Culture, Philosophy, Religion, Science}

“Until There Was Nothing” at DUST by Paul Trillo (August 25, 2020, 5:36 min) “A philosophical video and art exploration of the Earth’s passage through a black hole.” Review: This film is actually a philosophical meditation on nothingness — the concept of non-entity, as every concept of mathematics, physics, natural law, and order vanishes. Gravity reverses itself at odd moments for no particular reason. Terrifying. Whether the filmmakers intended this or not, it is really a meditation on the way the fundamental constants of the universe work. And what would happen if they didn’t. For more, see the Kalam Constant, a philosophical proof of the existence of God. — A note re our new feature below: We sort reviewed films Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
July 3, 2021

Categorized
Science

Tagged
Exoplanets (water), Goldilocks Zone, Habitability}

Researchers: Maybe Half of Earth-Sized Planets Missed by Studies

_{It’s not clear how many planets are in Earth’s size range but that is important for physics reasons for habitability as we know it} _{News

July 3, 2021

4

Science}

A recent study suggests that Earth-sized planets may be missed if they are orbiting one of two binary stars: Earth-sized planets may be much more common than previously realized. Astronomers working at NASA Ames Research Center have used the twin telescopes of the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab, to determine that many planet-hosting stars identified by NASA’s TESS exoplanet-hunting mission are actually pairs of stars—known as binary stars—where the planets orbit one of the stars in the pair. After examining these binary stars, the team has concluded that Earth-sized planets in many two-star systems might be going unnoticed by transit searches like TESS’s, which look for changes in the light from a star when a planet passes Read More ›

Black hole somewere in space. Science fiction. Dramatic space background. Elements of this image were furnished by NASA

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
July 3, 2021

Categorized
Arts & Culture

Tagged
Derek Abel, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Luke Reeves, Science fiction, Wreck of the Hesperus (poem), Zahlee Moore, Zoe (film)}

A Choice Between Saving One’s Child and Oneself — Sci-fi Saturday

_{Is life always so simple? Well, we shall see} _{News

July 3, 2021

15

Arts & Culture}

“Zoe” at DUST by Derek Abel, 2019 and uploaded to DUST, June 21, 2021, 4:58 min) ZOE and her FATHER have lived in space all their lives. The space station they call home is about to explode. Their only chance of survival is an old escape pod but there’s only room for one. Review: The film is very well done technically and the actors are veterans. Zoe is played by Zahlee Moore and her dad by Luke Reeves. That said, the ending seemed too saccharine, too soft. No real sacrifice was required. Not like “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) which gives a much better sense of what would probably really happen. In “The Wreck… “: Read More ›

Left-handed woman writing in notebook at wooden table, closeup

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
July 3, 2021

Categorized
Arts & Culture, Science

Tagged
Chirality, Will Lockett}

Aliens Who Landed Here Would Just Starve, Science Writer Predicts

_{We tend to assume that any life form could live with our complicated chemistry but what if — fundamentally — not?} _{News

July 3, 2021

6

Arts & Culture, Science}

NASA has — quite recently — stopped being snarky about aliens. That does not make them true. It just means we don’t have to live with the snark now. Which makes it easier to think. Will Lockett makes the point at Medium that if extraterrestrials did land on Earth, they would probablystarve to death: The way life forms work (at least, the only ones we know) involves chirality: All living organisms are based upon certain ‘mirror’ isomers of amino acids. Although normal chemical reactions produce right and left mirrors in equal amounts, often called a ‘racemic mixture’, the proteins which constitute the organelles in living cells are composed entirely of right handed forms of sugars and left handed forms of Read More ›

Frightened guilty dog pug looking sad at camera.

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
July 2, 2021

Categorized
Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Animal emotions, Anxiety, emotions, Fear, Joseph LeDoux, Lisa Feldman Barrett}

Is Fear the Same Thing for a Human Being as for an Animal?

_{Psychiatrist Joseph Ledoux has thought about that; it’s a complex problem} _{News

July 2, 2021

4

Natural Intelligence, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind}

Recently, we looked at consciousness from the perspective of Joseph LeDoux’s recent book, A Deep History of Ourselves (1919). Psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett situates his work at Nature, offering an interesting qualification: LeDoux, an academic at New York University in New York City, is best known for his research on fear, and for carefully mapping the brain circuit centred on the amygdala — a knot of neurons in the medial temporal lobe. The amygdala, he showed, has a crucial role in non-conscious, defensive behaviour responses such as freezing or fleeing. His conclusion, based on the assumption that all mammalian amygdala circuits are structurally similar, was that all mammals (including humans) share these responses. He described this work in The Emotional Read More ›

concept of Different emotions drawn on colorfull cubes, wooden background.

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
July 2, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Peer Review, Philosophy of Mind

Tagged
Emotional recognition technology (ERT), John P. Desmond, Lisa Feldman Barrett}

Emotion Recognition Software Use Spreads While Science Is Doubted

_{Emotional recognition software has been coming under fire for misuse and racial bias for some time} _{News

July 2, 2021

4

Artificial Intelligence, Peer Review, Philosophy of Mind}

An editor at AI Trends notes The global emotion detection and recognition market is projected to grow to $37.1 billion by 2026, up from an estimated $19.5 billion in 2020, according to a recent report from MarketsandMarkets. North America is home to the largest market. John P. Desmond, “Market for Emotion Recognition Projected to Grow as Some Question Science” at AI Trends (June 24, 2021) But the software has been coming under fire for misuse and racial bias for some time: “How people communicate anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise varies substantially across cultures, situations, and even across people within a single situation,” stated the report, from a team of researchers led by Lisa Feldman Barrett, of Northeastern University, Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Eric Holloway
Date
July 2, 2021

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Science

Tagged
Adam Shapiro, Anthony Fauci, Coronavirus, COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis, design inference, Explanatory Filter, Kristian Andersen, Michael Behe, SARS-CoV-2, William Dembski}

COVID-19’s Origins: Uses and Misuses of the Explanatory Filter

_{How a critic of intelligent design theory misunderstands the application of design inference} _{Eric Holloway

July 2, 2021

8

Medicine and Health, Science}

Last year in July a prominent critic of intelligent design theory, Dr. Adam Shapiro, took the Discovery Institute to task for not debunking the lab origin theory. He says, Behe seems to miss an opportunity to demonstrate that intelligent design theory shows how those pathways are not irreducible complex. Adam Shapiro, “Did Intelligent Design Just Miss Its Corona Moment?” at American Scientist and, How better to demonstrate its own apolitical nature than to apply its scientific process to debunk the Chinese lab myth? Adam Shapiro, “Did Intelligent Design Just Miss Its Corona Moment?” at American Scientist First of all, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of ID. ID theory is only resilient against false positives, not false negatives, as Dr. Ewert Read More ›

Monument Of Chinese Communist Party At Tiananmen Square

^{Type
post

Author
Heather Zeiger
Date
July 1, 2021

Categorized
Censorship

Tagged
Andrew Nathan, China, Chinese Communist Party (CCP), History (rewriting history China), Kai Strittmatter, Kiwi Chow, Mao Zedong, Tienanmen Square (massacre), Wolf Warriors, Xi Jinping}

Chinese Communist Party: 100 Years of Erasing, Rewriting History

_{Tiananmen Square: Anyone born after 1980 has no idea that the People’s Liberation Army turned against the demonstrators in front of a gate whose name is “Heavenly Peace.”} _{Heather Zeiger

July 1, 2021

8

Censorship}

“The regime wants us to forget. I hope to use my camera to remember…We are resisting in our memories. We are resisting forgetfulness.” – Kiwi Chow, documentary filmmaker in Hong Kong, referring to the events in Hong Kong in 2019, “In a Scarred Hong Kong, ‘Beautiful Things Are Gone’” Reuters, June 29, 2021 The centenary commemoration of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Mao Zedong in 1921 commemorates a myth. The party was founded on July 23, but this year’s celebrations commenced July 1, which coincides with the date of the British handover of Hong Kong in 1997. According to China Digital Times, July 1 has a nice symmetry to the dates of the founding of the Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Richard W. Stevens
Date
July 1, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Law

Tagged
Artificial Intelligence, IEEE, Intellectual Property, patent law, Robots, Ryan Abbott, The Reasonable Robot (book)}

Can a Robot Hold a Patent?

_{The boring answer is no, but the question raises intriguing thoughts about AI and intellectual property law} _{Richard W. Stevens

July 1, 2021

10

Artificial Intelligence, Law}

Since the late 1800s, people have been intrigued by robots. There’s something strange, wonderful, but sometimes scary about walking, talking, thinking machines, especially when in human form. Talking about “whether a robot can hold a patent” is bound to intrigue humanoids. Mute the Robot Sound Bite In June 2021, we started considering the provocatively titled podcast transcript, “Can a Robot Be Arrested? Hold a Patent? Pay Income Taxes?”, posted on the IEEE Spectrum site. Steven Cherry interviewed Ryan Abbott, physician, lawyer, and professor, about these topics and referencing his 2019 book, The Reasonable Robot: Artificial Intelligence and the Law. Our previous discussion, “Can a Robot be Arrested and Prosecuted?”, addressed criminal liability for crimes committed by artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Now we consider: “Can a Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
News
Date
June 30, 2021

Categorized
Philosophy of Mind}

Consciousness Is Mainly a Problem for Materialists

_{If you are not a materialist, there is no problem with understanding consciousness} _{News

June 30, 2021

4

Philosophy of Mind}

Psychiatrist Joseph LeDoux, author of The Deep History of Ourselves (2019), offers an extract at Aeon, musing on the mystery of consciousness. In a way, his approach typifies the problem with the wholly materialist approach to the mind and the brain: Like all living things, humans are organisms, biological entities that function as physiological aggregates whose constituent parts operate with a high degree of cooperation and a low degree of conflict. But unlike other organisms, humans possess a rogue component – a brain network that can, at will, choose to defect and undermine the survival mission and purpose of the rest of the body. This is the network that underlies human consciousness, and especially our capacity for autonoetic, or reflective, Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
June 30, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture

Tagged
Artificial Intelligence, CLIP, Ernest Davis, Gary Marcus, GPT-3, language translation programs, Nigel Richards, Open AI, Winograd Schema Challenge}

The Great American Novel Will Not be Written by a Computer

_{It takes more than statistical genius to understand words and create works of art} _{Gary Smith

June 30, 2021

5

Artificial Intelligence, Arts & Culture}

I’ve written before about how computer algorithms are like Nigel Richards, the New Zealander who has won multiple French-language Scrabble tournaments even though he does not understand the words he is spelling. Computers can similarly manipulate words in many useful ways — e.g., spellchecking, searching, alphabetizing — without any understanding of the words they are manipulating. To know what words mean, they would have to understand the world we live in. They don’t. One example is their struggles with the Winograd schema challenge — recognizing what it refers to in a sentence. Another example is the inability to answer simple questions like, “Is it safe to walk downstairs backwards if I close my eyes?” A third type of example is the brittleness of language translation programs. Yet another Read More ›

Space and Galaxy light speed travel. Elements of this image furnished by NASA.

^{Type
post

Author
Robert J. Marks
Date
June 29, 2021

Categorized
Mathematics, Science

Tagged
A Treatise on Probability (book), Big Bang, Conservation of Information (COI), Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics (book), Jacob Bernoulli, John Maynard Keynes, No Free Lunch theorems, Principle of Insufficient Reason (PrOIR)}

No Free Lunches: Bernoulli is Right, Keynes is Wrong

_{What the Big Bang teaches us about nothing} _{Robert J. Marks

June 29, 2021

5

Mathematics, Science}

Jacob Bernoulli made a now obvious observation about probability over three-and-a-half centuries ago: If nothing is known about the outcome of a random event, all outcomes can be assumed to be equally probable. Bernoulli’s Principle of Insufficient Reason (PrOIR) is commonly used. Throw a fair die. There are six outcomes, one for each face of the cube. The chance of getting five pips showing on the roll of a die is therefore one sixth. If a million lottery tickets are sold and you buy one ticket, the chances of winning are one in a million. This reasoning is intuitively obvious. The assumption about the die is wrong if the die is loaded. But you don’t know that. You know nothing. So Bernoulli’s PrIOR Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Jonathan Bartlett
Date
June 29, 2021

Categorized
Business and Finance, Economics

Tagged
bitcoin, Bitfinex, cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin, Etherium, Michael Burry, N.N. Taleb, NFT, Stablecoins, Tether}

June Crypto Mayhem: A Tough Month for Cryptocurrencies

_{What has caused the dramatic drops in Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Etherium, and NFT values?} _{Jonathan Bartlett

June 29, 2021

5

Business and Finance, Economics}

The month of June has been tough on the world of cryptocurrencies, with the past week being especially harsh. It is difficult to pin down a single, specific cause behind the pullback, as a variety of new and nagging concerns about the viability of cryptocurrencies continue to mount. As for the price action, Bitcoin dropped like a rock down below $30k this past week, less than half of what its high in the last year has been. The meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin lost over 60% of its value, down to $0.24 from a high of $0.72 earlier this year. Etherium has been cut in half, as have many other cryptocurrencies. The NFT market, whose enthusiasm has ridden on the back of Read More ›