The eternal questions

For the philosophically minded we have the following from Terry.

Lone Survivor by Chris Stringer

Have you ever looked at one of those charts that represent the precursors of our species and some lines in our species that didn't make it and feel like it was just a jumble of unconnected short  lines?  Lone Survivor attempts to remedy that.  The book is by Chris Stringer one of the authors of The Complete World of Human Evolution and is published by Henry Holt and Co, 2012.  It presents a view of most likely connections among our ancestors.  It is subtitled - How we came to be the only humans on earth.

Like The Complete World .. the presentation seems scientifically sound and accessible to the interested reader.  It is very well done and I highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the subject.

I enjoyed the book very much.

Climate Change

When I first considered the question of climate change I went online to the website of the National Academy of Sciences to see the minority opinion on the subject.  I found that there was no minority opinion.

So, since I believe in science (see Belief in Science and Religion ) I tentatively believe in Global Warming.

However, when it comes to the world human population I find two things that are strange:

1.       None of the proposed solutions that I have heard from the mainstream warmers include a major effort to reduce future human population which would reduce future problems by a corresponding amount.

 2.      Writers on the subject almost invariably assume that the population is going to a substantially higher level and they do so without commentary.

The Complete World of Human Evolution

The Complete World of Human Evolution  by Chris Stringer and Peter Andrews and published by Thames and Hudson, second edition, 2012.  It presents an overview of primate and human evolution.

The presentation seems scientifically sound and accessible to the interested reader.  It is very well done and I highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the subject.

Erewhon

Erewhon: The 1872 Fantasy Novel that Anticipated Thomas Nagel's Problems with Darwinism Today

This book review comes from Terry and contains the following paragraph:

Nagel's argument is that the mechanics of natural selection can't answer one of the most crucial questions of our existence: how living, reasoning creatures emerged from insensate matter. Although he himself is an atheist, Nagel says he shares the theists' conviction that the appearance of such creatures strongly suggests that the universe has, from the beginning, evolved teleologically, meaning it's moving purposively, toward ever-higher levels of consciousness.

Are Machines Better Than You?

This is exciting and scary.  Of course every science fiction novel ever tells us that this way leads to disaster.  But, what the heck, let's try it anyway.  Let's let machines make our decisions for us since they do it so much better.  What could go wrong?

http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682125/in-a-predictive-algorithmic-world-are-machines-better-than-you

Flying Robots

I have always been fascinated by science and science fiction.  Particularly the leading edge of science (which is what any good science fiction will include).  Many years ago, in a galaxy far far away, when I was in college I took an elective 3 week course between semesters (I know there is a word for the between semesters courses but it's been so long it escapes me now) entilted "Science Fiction and the History of Science".  I enjoyed it thouroughly even though the reading requirements, as one would guess, were quite heavy.  We had a history of science text book and 10 science fiction novels.  It was the most fun I ever had at school that didn't end with a hangover or worse.  But one of the several things that stuck with me from that course is that what we generally think of as science would be more correctly called research and development.  And so I believe the instructor of that course would probably consider the TED video below to be about a research and development project.  But it's still science to me, whatever you want to call it (much like Billy Joel once said "it's still rock and roll to me").  

This video both fascinated me and made me feel a bit queasy.  With all of the warnings that we humans, and in particular science fiction writers, have given, it is apparent that we are STILL going there...I suppose because we can.  I would keep an eye out for those nasty Cylons. 

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/vijay_kumar_robots_that_fly_and_cooperate.html

Belief in Science and Religion

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This is a prelude to a post on Climate Change and Capitalism.

Those who are familiar with the topic of belief will find nothing new here. This is a note for those who, like most of the reporters that I see on TV, could not pass the science part of Jeff Foxworthy's ten question test to decide if one is Smarter Than a Fifth Grader.

I come from the math-science side of Academia. I believe in science (thank you Aristotle, Roger Bacon, et al.) I believe scientists in general, even those whose work I know nothing about. That is because I know how they decide what they claim is true. That is, I believe in the scientific method and I think that those who have not practiced it may not understand that, inherent within science, are two of the most charming devices for the prevention and correction of errors.

The first is that your evidence must be reproducible. If you get results and someone else performs the same experiment and doesn’t get those results, then there is a problem and you basically start over. This is quite different from the way disagreements in religion have been handled. When Jesus and Mohammad have different visions then you had a very long religious war. Then of course there was the Pope and Martin Luther.

The second involves the difference between scientific and faith based belief. Faith based belief is often absolute – the expression that comes to mind is “written in stone”. Scientific belief is very tentative and can perhaps best be described as a belief that the position in question is the “best explanation available” at the present time. It may give way to a better or more complete theory at any time. The example that comes to mind is Newton’s mechanics which stood for 300 years before the arrival of Einstein's relativity. Those who are familiar with (or should I say committed to) faith based belief often imagine that the practitioners of science meekly accept its current beliefs as if they too were written on stone tablets. (I think I have seen this argument used by the intelligent design folks.) This is a more profound question because it speaks to the possibility that the whole enterprise may become biased in favor of its current beliefs. (The claim currently made about global warming.) In fact, it is true that errors have, in the past, been allowed to linger too long, the Piltdown Man comes to mind.

The corrective for that is, I think, one of the most profoundly delightful aspects of science. It is this: far from worshiping the pedestrian follower of the current perception, the scientific community reserves its highest accolades and greatest honors for those individuals who shake the very foundations of the current “best available explanation.” Carl Sagan is very well thought of as a presenter of science, but he will never compare to Albert Einstein or Charles Darwin in the pantheon of scientific stars.

Science saves its loudest applause for those who “look where all have looked and see what none have seen.”
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The public debate by a center-left friend

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Hello YA.

I found the following article interesting (even if flawed)

I find myself on the opposite side of the republicans about half the
time, and generally consider myself more of a democrat than a
republican. However, a lot of the supporters of each party seem to have
a penchant for wanting issues to be simplistic in whatever sense allows
them to appear the Masters of the correct point of view and the other
party to be completely and inexplicably out-of-touch.

I think there ought to be a University Studies course on the
construction of arguments against another point of view in which the
arguments look for the complexity in the other point of view which make
it possible for reasonable people to disagree. A student gets a "D" if
they are incapable of seeing beyond these ludicrous paintings of the
other side. A student is failed, who simplifies the other side beyond
even that student's own sensibilities just so that they can poke fun at
the other side. I think that 1/2 of the time these people know that
they are assigning to their opponents opinions that their opponents
don't have.

This does not mean that I think that many of the politicians are not
trying to sculpt statements that might allow them to be everything to
everyone. However, I think these two go hand-in-hand: there are so
many people willing to misinterpret what one says, and so many people
willing to buy into these idiotic arugments, that a politician finds
her/himself in a difficult spot.