Time travel that works? Not exactly
It may be possible but, unlike what happened in “A Sound of Thunder” (the butterfly effect) we couldn’t really change past or future events.
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Worst science and tech fumbles of 2024
Science writer Ross Pomeroy on one example: “When evaluating potential pseudoscience: if it isn’t physics, and it has the word ‘quantum’, it’s probably BS.”
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Brazil: Ancient stone etchings found around dinosaur trackways
Sadly, with no written record, we can’t know how they interpreted the unknown giant tracks, only that they knew they were special.
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What does intelligent design of the universe really mean?
If there is a mind behind the universe, your mind, while a creation, is probably not ultimately just physics.
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Statistic: Living cells outnumber the stars
A research team estimates that 10^39–10^40 cells have occupied the Earth to date and argues that Earth can hold no more than 10^41.
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Is YouTube winning the battle with pay TV?
Musk: “Don’t hate the media, become the media.” Google: Broadcast yourself. So they agree on what social media has become. This is bad news for legacy media.
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Claim: Math excludes women because rational thought is masculine
No, it’s not a “male chauvinist pig” from the Seventies saying this, it is a Woke feminist.
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European journalists to leave X in January
Perhaps “commitment to press freedom” means something different to the European Federation than to the average X user. Freedom of speech is declining in Europe.
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The gun used in insurance CEO Thompson’s shooting was 3D-printed
According to law enforcement experts, this is the first really significant case traced to a 3D-printed weapon.
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When should writers who use chatbots, gen AI, etc., give credit?
Wired, a tech mag, does not — as a matter of policy — publish stories generated or edited by AI because the risk of false or botched information is too great.
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Researchers want rules to prevent “exploitation” of conscious AI
To what extent is this advertised concern about the sufferings of soon-to-be conscious AI simply a way of keeping AI hype alive?
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Chatbots are running out of training data
Publishers are beginning to fight back against copyright infringement but one analyst believes that “advances might soon come through self-reflection by an AI.”
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If life swiftly creates complex information, nature isn’t random
From A Catholic Case for Intelligent Design: The Cambrian wasn’t merely an explosion of new species. It was an explosion of entirely new phyla or body plans.
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Why does OpenAI’s ChatGPT crash at the name “David Mayer”?
From Devin Coldewey at Tech Crunch, we learn that it may have to do with legal battles, privacy issues, or efforts to be forgotten,
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Can the White House “Mean Girl” media be reformed?
The news control Cernovich reveals sounds pretty corrupt but, given declining trust and readership, a case an be made for letting it die an easy natural death.
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Scientists, not mystics, see in earthworms a “profound mystery”
Whatever forces scrambled the worm genomes then mapped out new ones, successful for hundreds of millions of years. Chaos does not do that.
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Are we ready for chatbots that make decisions for us?
The AI industry is currently working on agentic AI, which sounds something like putting HAL 9000 or the Terminator in charge of one’s life.
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Philosopher spots fallacy at the heart of multiverse claims
The fallacy is that if our universe is finely tuned, there must be many universes that are not. But there is no evidence for them.
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Murdered insurance CEO’s death triggers widespread rejoicing
The shooting appears to have been targeted. His company is accused of using an algorithm that unfairly denies benefits to sick policyholders.
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Prof: Students learn better when they write out notes in longhand
According to a research study, laptop and tablet users tended to transcribe the lectures rather than absorb key points. Nancy Pearcey, Professor & Scholar in Residence at Houston Christian University told her X followers earlier this week, I’ve banned laptops and tablets from my classroom. Studies show that you learn better when you take notes by hand instead of using Read More ›