Monday Microsofty 101: Speed Is Relative
When two people holding hands show different distances on their fitness trackers, what is going on?The simplest solution to last week’s question involves preventing a royal flush.
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The Mind–Body “Interaction Problem” Is Desperately Overhyped
Why would our mental states NOT be "causally relevant" to the way we behave?The universe contradicts the eliminativist point of view. The laws that govern it are not physical things but they are real.
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Is Evolution Theory Canceling Itself? If So, It’s Not Alone
Darwinian biology, along with other areas of science, seems much less sure of itself todayNew information suggests that basic assumptions underlying many disciplines may be inadequate or mistaken. How they respond will predict their future.
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Searching for Any World at All in the Many-Worlds Interpretation
If the many-worlds interpretation (multiverse theory) originated by Hugh Everett is understood realistically as it was intended to be, it can easily be rejectedWhile an interpretation might survive many difficulties, it cannot survive the failure to provide the one thing it promises — and even after seventy years, “many worlds” has yet to produce even one.
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Polling Physicists: What the Big Mysteries Survey Shows — and Doesn’t
Physicists who think that the constants of nature are brute facts without need of explanation simply have an incoherent opinionIf nature’s beginning has no explanation, the door is left open to embracing unexplained occurrences anywhere in nature, undermining the practice of science.
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Monday Micro Softy: Dr. Marks’s Incredible Ice Diet
Here’s a breakthrough announcement that will be a blessing to all the people in the world like me who struggle with weight controlTo solve Micro Softie 85, ask yourself, when would a slightly smaller caliber bullet than the enemy uses be a definite advantage?
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Science Writer Takes Aim at Many Universes Theory
Phillips sees it as a materialist dodge. But a proposed alternative is definitely not your everyday theory eitherWhat these speculations point to is the way new findings have destroyed classical materialism. Materialism isn’t so much dying out as breaking up.
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Can We Talk the Hard Problem of Consciousness Out of Existence?
A prominent theoretical physicist thinks it is worth a tryWe don’t have a reason to expect the eliminative materialism Carlo Rovelli recommends, which has not helped in the past, to be more help in the future.
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How Much Does the Mind Weigh? How Long Is It?
A recent article at Popular Mechanics provides a chance to reflect on mind vs. matter — and materialismPeople are entitled to their own definitions of materialism, of course. But once we focus on a standard one, we see that it is false to the reality of the human mind.
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Monday Microsofty 59: Alfred Hitchcock’s Low-Pressure Tire
Could the tire in the old Hitchcock film really be reinflated in the way shown?The solution to last week’s puzzle is to ask whether the way each of the relationships is created makes any difference.
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Does Quantum Mechanics Help Us Make Sense of the Soul?
Quantum mechanics seems to be the game-changer that Albert Einstein (1879–1955) feared it would be. It is certain to liven up discussions about the soulShermer told Mind Matters News after the event that he would bump up his credence in the existence of souls from 1% to 2% out of 99%.
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COSM 2025: Entanglement in Physics —What It Means for Materialism
Physics is sometimes weirder than we imagine or physicists can explain. It does not favor a tidy materialist explanation of our cosmosInitially, many scientists felt that non-locality or “action at a distance” was too spooky to be correct. But it is correct.
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Physicists: Math Shows That the Universe Can’t Be a Simulation
The physicists argue that pure information underlies the universe of matter and energy, as a Platonic realm of ideasWe seem a long way now from the once-dominant science view of eliminative materialism in which even human consciousness was not considered real.
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When the Big Bang Cost Physicists Their Lives
A new book from France tells the astonishing story of how governments murdered or drove out scientists to hush up the reality that our universe has a beginningI was hardly prepared for what Bolloré and Bonnassies reveal about efforts to discredit the idea of a beginning to the universe — by any means necessary.
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Sabine Hossenfelder Gets Canceled. A Physicist Responds
Experimental physicist Rob Sheldon offers some further thoughts on the theoretical physicist’s ejection from the Munich CenterHere at Mind Matters News, we thought there might be fallout. And 1.15M views in less than a week seems like fallout already. Something’s rotten.
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Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder Gets Canceled by the Munich Center
Her parting words: “A lot of research [in] the foundations of physics is now pseudocience. It hasn't followed the scientific method for decades.”It seems unlikely that the only reason that the Munich Center parted ways with Hossenfelder is bad language in her posts. Is she uncomfortably correct?
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Wall Street Journal: A Disappointing Fret About “Conspiracy Physics”
If physicists are starting to “worry about the consequences” of discussing long-term theory failure, it is reasonable to think that there are even more serious problems within the disciplineIf the physics establishment is only just now beginning to see that public funding depends on public legitimacy, well… it’s about time.
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When Physicists Clash Over an Allegedly Pointless Universe…
… we end up finding out how much current research appears to be an elaborate waste of public fundsWhen Piers Morgan invited Sean Carroll and Eric Weinstein on his show, sparks flew. And Sabine Hossenfelder’s comments are an eye-opener.
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Monday Micro Softy 37: A Unique Baseball Game
Something was missing from the game played on June 30, 1997, that occured in every MLB game for decades beforeThe answer to Micro Softy 36 lies in considering the problem from a number of angles…
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Today’s Free Will Debate Shows How Science Culture is Changing
The fact that this Sapolsky–Mitchell debate is still raging shows that eliminative materialism and physicalism are experiencing setbacks in our philosophy of science culture todayInterestingly, Mitchell uses evolution to establish free will. Most uses of the concept would be to deny or diminish it, as in “We evolved to be violent,” etc.
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