Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

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cosmetic laboratory research and development . science bio skincare cream serum product with leaves. natural organic beauty cosmetics concept. cosmetology.

Scientists Have Been Recommending Changes to Science Education for Decades

The modern education system seems designed to squelch curiosity

Gary Smith describes the problems with today’s science in his new book Distrust: Big Data, Data-Torturing, and the Assault on Science. He recounts endless examples of disinformation, data torture, and data mining, much of which we already knew. Taken together, however, and as I described in this review, they are mind-blowing. He argues that many of these problems come from things scientists do such as p-hacking during statistical analysis, too little emphasis on “impact” in statistical analyses, outright data falsification, and the creation of the Internet, which can be a huge disinformation machine in addition to a valuable resource. In the last chapter, he also offers some solutions such as ending the artificial thresholds for p-values such as 0.05, requiring Read More ›

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Adorable little girl shopping for toys. Cute female in toy store. Happy young girl selecting toy

How a Toddler in a Toy Store Refutes Materialism

This everyday observation yields insight into a fundamental truth

I’m a magnet for materialists. I often get into discussions with people who tell me that the universe is nothing but matter and energy. These folks believe in materialism. They say I’m nutty and wrong to think there is anything else. Something like: “Silly theist! Gods are for kids!” Let’s follow that thought. A grandparent of 11 humans, I’ve journeyed with their parents through the young ones’ toddlerhood many times. There’s a lot to learn about reality from toddlers’ learning and growing. It leads to understanding Toddler Truth. Take a toddler to a game arcade, a toy store, or another kid’s house to play. There’s one thing you can count on hearing: “I want that!” We parents start tuning out Read More ›

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Infinite letters background, original 3d illustration.

Postmodernism’s Steady Deconstruction of Reality

How can we find truth when nothing is reliable?

Sometimes, you just have to try using college professors’ ideas in the real world. One such idea is “postmodernism.” Applied to communications, postmodernism teaches that whenever we read a written text, we should not try to discover what the writer intended. Instead of looking for an objective “meaning,” we should experience what the text means to us personally. The idea goes further, urging us to start by disbelieving the text and doubting our interpretations of it, too. People with the postmodern “deconstructionist” view say, “every text deconstructs” itself, and “every text has contradictions.” Deconstruction means “uncovering the question behind the answers already provided in the text.” Standing upon the ideas of the deconstructionist guru, Jacques Derrida, and his followers, one Read More ›

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Milky Way over Cordillera Huayhuash

Is Mathematics an Illusion? Lawrence Krauss and Cormac McCarthy Discuss

McCarthy asked, "Would mathematics be here if we weren't?"

In December, physicist and author Lawrence Krauss interviewed the late American novelist Cormac McCarthy, who died on June 13th at the age of 89 in Santa Fe, N.M. McCarthy is famous for his remarkable fictional works like The Road and Blood Meridian, but he was also deeply fascinated with mathematics and science. Apparently, he enjoyed reading science more than he did fiction! He moved to Santa Fe from El Paso to be closer to the Santa Fe Institute, a science think tank where McCarthy would spend time speaking with various physicists, scientists, and mathematicians. His latest two novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, are about a brother and sister who are both brilliant mathematicians. Towards the beginning of the interview, Read More ›

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Babel tower

Science After Babel

Read an excerpt of a new book by mathematician and philosopher David Berlinski

By David Berlinski Editor’s note: We are delighted to welcome Science After Babel, the latest book from mathematician and philosopher David Berlinski. This article is adapted from the book’s Introduction. The scientific revolution began in the 16th century, and it began in Europe. No one knows why it happened nor why it happened where it happened, but when it happened, everything changed.  Until the day before yesterday, the imperial architects of the scientific revolution were well satisfied and sleek as seals. An immense tower was going up before their very eyes. The physicists imagined that shortly it would reach the sky; the biologists were satisfied that it had left the ground; and only the theologians were heard to observe that it Read More ›

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Dark knight illustration, medieval era wizard, fantasy concept. Generative AI

J.R.R. Tolkien on Science Fiction

The master storyteller was more open to sci-fi and tech than the stereotype lets on

In early 2021, literary scholar Holly Ordway published a deep dive into J.R.R. Tolkien’s reading habits. The celebrated author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit was a linguist and medievalist at Oxford for decades until his death in 1973. Based on his immersion in ancient literature, people often assume that Tolkien despised all things modern – including modern books. Even C.S. Lewis is quoted as saying, “No one ever influenced Tolkien–you might as well try to influence a Bandersnatch.” Today’s conception of Tolkien stereotypically portrays him as a curmudgeon who refused to engage with modernity. Ordway, however, pushes back against such an image and lays out a comprehensive case for Tolkien’s interest in contemporary literature, including the Read More ›

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Catch the star. A person is standing next to the Milky Way galaxy pointing on a bright star.

A Return to the Reality of the Soul

Materialism has depersonalized the universe, but the evidence for the soul remains

Contemporary Western culture is disillusioned. Under the mainstream narrative of materialism, moderns struggle to connect their lives with a transcendent meaning beyond the self. In the United States, we enjoy a level of privilege and wealth foreign to the majority of prior generations, and yet we see “deaths of despair,” frightening rates of anxiety and depression, and heightened political tensions. None of this is news to you, I’m guessing. I’ve personally written a variation of that paragraph in other articles a number of times. The question behind our collective disillusionment is, frankly, why? Why do we struggle to make something of our lives? Why do we enjoy technological and scientific progress but lack the moral and cultural means to enjoy Read More ›

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Abstract technology black background. Futuristic digital motherboard texture. Neon blue light

Carver Mead on the Future of Tech and Science

Listen to a classic lecture from Kyoto Prize winner Carver Mead

We’ve been featuring lectures and interviews from the 2022 COSM conference, but today’s video is from a bit further back. Carver Mead, the winner of the 2022 Kyoto Prize, spoke at a Discovery Institute event about his pioneering work in transistor technology. Mead said, Any time you have a leading-edge technology you’re pushing, you will uncover fundamental questions there aren’t answers to in the literature. When you first look at the literature it it looks overwhelming. It looks like everything’s been done and everything that needed to be known is already known. And it turns out. That’s only an illusion. Watch the full talk below:

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Reflection of mountain range in lake, Grand Teton National Park

Should We Give Nature “Rights”?

The nature rights movement is more ideological than rational

The major science journals are growing increasingly hard left politically. The prestigious journal Science, in particular, has swallowed progressive ideology–including supporting the “nature rights” movement. The rights of nature–which include geological features–are generally defined as the right to “exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.” Nature is, of course, not sentient. So, this campaign is really about granting environmental extremists legal standing to enforce their policy desires through litigation as legal guardians serving nature’s best interests. But the movement has a problem. It is clearly ideological rather than rational. So now, three law professors and a biologist writing in Science urge scientists to promote the agenda by giving courts a scientific pretext to enforce nature rights laws, or even, impose the Read More ›

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young asian business team people meeting in office

The Death of Peer Review?

Science is built on useful research and thoroughly vetted peer review

Two years ago, I wrote about how peer review has become an example of Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Once scientific accomplishments came to be gauged by the publication of peer-reviewed research papers, peer review ceased to be a good measure of scientific accomplishments. The situation has not improved. One consequence of the pressure to publish is the temptation researchers have to p-hack or HARK. P-hacking occurs when a researcher tortures the data in order to support a desired conclusion. For example, a researcher might look at subsets of the data, discard inconvenient data, or try different model specifications until the desired results are obtained and deemed statistically significant—and therefore Read More ›

jinx from arcane

The Moral Genius of Arcane

The show reveals how pursuing knowledge for the sake of greater manipulation, power, and control can open the floodgates of chaos

The 2021 show Arcane, based on the video game League of Legends, is fantastic. The animation style, writing, and world-building all merit its 100 percent scored rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Apart from its entertainment value, which is formidable, Arcane explores the pertinent themes of power, progress, and the promises and pitfalls of technological advancement. It does this without heavy-handedness, “instructing by delighting,” in the words of C.S. Lewis. A Powerful Civilization and a Chaotic Underworld The story takes place in the utopian city of Piltover, which prides itself on its innovations in science, technology, and infrastructure. On the lower edges of the city lies the unruly Zaun, an oppressed underworld overrun with crime and an addictive drug called “Shimmer.” The Read More ›

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Drawings of microbes in antique book with annotations on an abstract language, generative ai illustration

ChatGPT Listed as “Co-Author” For Several Scientific Papers

Large language models can’t be authors of text because they can’t have responsibility, critics say

ChatGPT was listed as a contributing author for at least four scientific articles, according to a report from Nature. The news arrives amid a flurry of debate over the place of AI in journalism and artistic and academic disciplines, and now the issue has spread to the scientific community. People are pushing back against the idea of ChatGPT “authoring” text, claiming that because AI cannot take responsibility for what it produces, only humans should be listed as authors. The article notes, The editors-in-chief of Nature and Science told Nature’s news team that ChatGPT doesn’t meet the standard for authorship. “An attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs,” says Magdalena Skipper, editor-in-chief of Nature in London. Authors using Read More ›

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Aerial view of Frankenstein Castle in southern Hesse, Germany

The Prophecies of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Andrew Klavan explores the world of the Romantics in new book and finds special insight in Shelley’s classic horror story

Andrew Klavan, acclaimed novelist and host of the Andrew Klavan Show at the Daily Wire, wrote a book about his profound encounters with the Romantics of the 19th century, called The Truth and Beauty: How the Lives and Works of England’s Greatest Poets Point the Way to a Deeper Understanding of the Words of Jesus. The Romantics include literary figures like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and John Keats. While it’s common to highlight the Romantics’ veneration of nature, they were also living in the throes of the Enlightenment, in which atheistic materialism was becoming a minority alternative to theism. Klavan writes, “The wonderful success of science at explaining the material world threatens to create in scientists a bias towards Read More ›

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Mechanical Bull

Don’t Blame Me; I’m a Meat Robot.

Methodological naturalism invariably draws certain conclusions. One of these notions is that we have no free will, and therefore, no culpability. We are essentially puppets hanging from genetic strings. Dr. Michael Egnor and Dr. Joshua Farris discuss this erroneous idea, as well as other failing conclusions created by ideological science. Show Notes 00:06 | Introducing Dr. Joshua Farris 00:24 | Read More ›

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3D rendering abstract round light background

Oxford Mathematician: Atheism Detracts from Science

The problem, as John Lennox sees it, is that atheism does not provide grounds for believing in rationality

Today, Evolution News and Science Today published an excerpt from Oxford mathematician John Lennox’s 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity (Zondervan 2020): in which Lennox discusses some of the ways in which atheism detracts from science: Science proceeds on the basis of the assumption that the universe is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to the human mind. No science can be done without the scientist believing this, so it is important to ask for grounds for this belief. Atheism gives us none, since it posits a mindless, unguided origin of the universe’s life and consciousness. John Lennox, “Why Science and Atheism Don’t Mix” at Evolution News and Science Today: He offers physicist John Polkinghorne’s explanation of Read More ›

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Real Php code developing screen. Programing workflow abstract algorithm concept. Lines of Php code visible under magnifying lens.

Will Ideas or Algorithms Rule Science Tomorrow?

David Krakauer of the Santa Fe Institute offers an unsettling vision of future science as produced by machines that no one really understands

The basic problem is that accepting on faith what we can’t ever hope to understand is not a traditional stance of science. Thus it’s a good question whether science could survive such a transition and still be recognizable to scientists. But does turning things over to incomprehensible algorithms, as Krakauer proposes, really work anyway? Current results from a variety of areas give pause for thought.

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Fractal galaxy cosmic consciousness, the Eye that is the Source of Creation

God’s Existence Is Proven by Science

Arguments for God’s existence can be demonstrated by the ordinary method of scientific inference

If we approach the arguments logically, as the ancient philosophers did, we will see that it is more certain that God exists than that anything else does. Atheist evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne should consider the arguments more carefully before assuming that prayer is foolish.

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Will an AI Win a Nobel Prize for Science All by Itself One Day?

No, but Support Vector Machines (SVMs) can allow scientists to frame questions so that a comprehensible answer is more likely

AI can certainly help scientists. But to understand why AI can’t do science on its own, we should take a look at the NP-Hard Problem in computer science. The “Hard” is in the name of the problem for a reason… 

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2019 AI Hype Countdown #6: AI Will Replace Scientists!

In May of this year, The Scientist ran a series of pieces suggesting that we could automate the process of acquiring scientific knowledge

In reality, without appropriate human supervision, AI is just as likely to find false or unimportant patterns as real ones. Additionally, the overuse of AI in science is actually leading to a reproducibility crisis.

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Crystal ball with building from antiquity

Futurism Doesn’t Learn from Past Experience

Technological success stories cannot be extrapolated into an indefinite future

The limits of science can be as instructive as the discoveries. If science someday proved that computer systems could never reproduce some aspect of mind, we'd have learned something important about the nature of mind.

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