Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 12

L&FP, 65f: It’s all tangled up — quantum entanglement (vs how we tend to talk loosely)

Arvin Ash poses a macro scale parallel to entanglement (while using a Stern-Gerlach apparatus):

Vid:

Ash highlights, of course, that once entangled, particles have superposed wave functions leading to inherent non locality. So, spooky action at a distance overlooks that non locality.

And as with the gloves, Alice needs to know her particle is part of an entangled pair to freely infer Bob got the other one, so to speak. Information has not evaded the speed of light limit.

Translation,* our concept of space, needs to be er, ah, uh, quantum adjusted. That was already lurking in low intensity beam interference and superposition. KF

*PS, added to show certain objectors that “translated” needs not be pernicious.

PPS, DV, quantum computing lurks here.

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Denisovan bracelet from 30,000 – 40,000 years ago shows high degree of skill

Worth recycling this story. From Archaeology News:

“In the same layer, where we found a Denisovan bone, were found interesting things; until then it was believed these were the hallmark of the emergence of Homo sapiens. First of all, there were symbolic items, such as jewelry, including the stone bracelet as well as a ring, carved out of marble,” Derevyanko told The Siberian Times. Details of the ring have not been released, but the bracelet, fashioned from imported chlorite, is fragile and thought to have been worn only on special occasions by an elite woman or child. “The ancient master was skilled in techniques previously considered not characteristic for the Palaeolithic era, such as easel speed drilling, boring tool type rasp, grinding and polishing with a leather and skins of varying degrees of tanning,” Derevyanko said. (May 7, 2015)

This video is fairly recent (2022):

Looks like we are going to have to scratch the Denisovans off the ape-man list too. The way things are going, we might end up having to mock up those apelike ancestors using CGI.

The paper requires a fee or subscription.

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Rob Sheldon responds to Sabine Hossenfelder’s loss of faith in science

Readers may recall that we covered her comments a couple of days ago: She asks in her vid intro: “Why do particle physicists constantly make wrong predictions?

Experimental physicist Rob Sheldon writes to us to say,

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Sabine is building up a quite a following because she is willing to say “the emperor has no clothes” about her very smart colleagues. As she reports, this doesn’t make her popular with fellow particle theorists, and accordingly she has switched fields to “foundations of quantum mechanics”. But she still gives seminars on why particle physicists are barking up the wrong tree. It is worth watching the video to hear her explain what is wrong with particle theory. There’s a very nice discussion of the difference between “valid theorizing” and “curve fitting”. It’s a discussion we never had in grad school, but should have. And this is pretty general, it is true in “magnetospheric physics” which is my specialty, it is true in “gamma ray bursters” it is true in “x-ray binaries”, “big bang nucleosynthesis”, “galactic formation” and I could go on. Sabine, however, doesn’t generalize to the malaise affecting all science, but only focusses on the problems in her specialty, theoretical particle physics.

She explains why particle physics has been wrong for 40 years–they are making up pseudo-problems for their extra complications to solve, when the simple model works perfectly fine. She says there are only 2 reasons to make a new theory: a) data contradiction, b) internal inconsistency. But pseudo problems are neither of these things.

Sabine doesn’t mention it, but many of the “pseudo-problems” of the past, did turn out to be real problems, which in her video she calls “Necessary”. It is easy to call something “inevitable” or “necessary” in hindsight, but how does one do this in foresight? She says “a) data contradiction, b) internal inconsistency” but neither of these criteria apply to “extrapolation” which is what her toy example with Bob is all about.

What is extrapolation? Predicting the future, where we don’t have data yet. In other words, Sabine says we shouldn’t make new models to predict the future—that isn’t useful science.

Then she launches into a rebuttal of the 4 reasons her former particle theorist colleagues say that Sabine is wrong:
1) “Nothing is broken. The field is doing fine.” Sabine says 40 years of lack of progress, with 40 years of wrong predictions is not normal, and we should not normalize it. (The field is losing graduate students, which means the end is nigh.)
2) “Being wrong isn’t a big deal, e.g. Edison tried 2000 materials for his incandescent lightbulb” Sabin says that resources are limited, and billions of $ have been spent on fruitless searches for dark matter, axions, SUSY, sterile neutrinos, etc, that could have been more fruitfully used. We have built a lot of useless equipment, and used up our good will with government to no purpose. “And besides”, she says, “in what other area of science do we falsify 1000’s of wrong predictions and say `it doesn’t matter’?”
3) “Serendipity—we might find something else there.” Sabine says, “that’s a poor strategy, because in fact, it doesn’t work. But if that is the motivation, they should put it in their proposals” (which they don’t because it would look silly.)
4) “It worked in the past”–that is, building a bigger particle collider always found new particles in the past. Sabine objects, and says that past breakthroughs were necessary problems, not pseudo-problems.

What do I think? Sabine is too restrictive on giving only 2 reasons for a new theory. Einstein’s famous paper about QM was entitled “Is a QM theory incomplete?” For Einstein, there also existed metaphysical reasons for a new theory. And while I agree with points (1) and (2), her analysis of (3) and (4) miss the mark.

Serendipity DID work in the past. The cyclotron was invented “because we could” not because we had a theoretical problem to solve. Theorists were funded AFTER experimentalists. Today it is backward, no one builds a new collider until there are thousands of (wrong) theory papers begging for it. This “cart before the horse” is a consequence of government funding. As an experimentalist, I would build a new particle collider if I could without writing a single government proposal or making a single wrong theory. She is focussing on the wrong results of theory, without seeing that it was governments who made that step necessary. In the best of all possible worlds, the theorists would wait for the data from the new colliders before making a theory. But we don’t live in that world.

The real problem or real question is why new particle colliders have failed to turn up any new particles. That’s the question that needs addressing. Sabine thinks it is because the Standard Model is complete—but if so, what does that say about the “end of particle physics”?

Sabine gives the impression that she can easily tell a pseudo problem from a necessary problem, but I would beg to differ. This ability to distinguish takes discernment, and while Sabine is generally a very sharp cookie, she demonstrates her lack of discernment when it comes to global warming, Covid-19, genetic technology, and the like. What Sabine’s analysis lacks is a genuine interest in metaphysics—why we make some problem important, what makes a theory a pseudo-problem. It’s more than “unnecessary complications”, because that begs the question “what makes it unnecessary?” She really needs to up her game on metaphysics, which clearly she is loath to do. And for good reason—it doesn’t sell videos, nor please her implicit “objective scientism” metaphysics.

Her criticism of Popper (or perhaps, a criticism of Popperism) shows that she is vaguely aware of metaphysics. She even says something nice about Feyerabend in her blog. But that’s about as far as her scientism can go.

Because scientism denies any limits to knowledge. Scientism balks at admitting an Intelligent Designer. It places human rationality as the arbiter of science—not divine rationality. It prefers “random chance” to “design of the Designer” , which often gives ridiculous numbers—like the probability of spontaneous life or the size of the cosmological constant. When Sabine hits one of these ridiculous numbers, she doesn’t invoke “fine tuning” (the ID answer) instead she invokes “that’s just the way it is” which is a showstopper answer. On the other hand, when she wants to ask a question, say, about QM entanglement which the Copenhagen school say “that’s just the way it is”, she insists there’s an inconsistency that still needs addressing. In other words, her metaphysics is arbitrarily applied, and this is supposed to explain why progress has stopped in particle physics?

Why has progress stopped, what holds scientism back from better metaphysics? Intelligent design. If we start asking “How would a good God design particle physics?” then already we have excluded some 90% of the pseudo-problems. For example, let’s try to answer the question, “why have new particle colliders not found any new (heavier) particles?” using metaphysics.

a) if the universe is designed, is it finite or infinite?
You may think otherwise, but I think only God is infinite, and all his creations finite. The universe is finite.
b) In a finite universe, is there an upper bound on the heaviest particle in it?
Yes, the heaviest particle cannot be heavier than the finite mass of the universe.
c) In a finite universe, is there a lower bound on the lightest particle in it?
Yes, since wavelength is inversely proportional to mass, a particle cannot have a wavelength larger than the universe. (Photons are a special case.)
d) if one could build a particle collider of any size, could it find an infinite set of subatomic particles?
No, the masses are bounded above and below. There is a limit reached by such a hypothetical particle collider when it will not find any more particles.
e) When will we reach that limit?
Very good question, and one worth exploring. But notice it is not the question posed either by Sabine or her colleagues.

So you see, our metaphysics discriminates between good theories and bad theories, between necessary and pseudo-problems. And ultimately, as our scientism abandons intelligent design, it finds more pseudo-problems than real problems, and progress stalls. We expend all our resources on useless experiments, to answer questions no one should have asked.

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Rob Sheldon is the author of Genesis: The Long Ascent and The Long Ascent, Volume II .

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Cockatoos found to rival chimps in tool set use

At Phys.org:

Goffin’s cockatoos have been added to the short list of non-human animals that use and transport toolsets. In a study publishing in the journal Current Biology on February 10, researchers show that the cockatoos carry multiple tools to their worksite when the job calls for it. This behavior has only been previously reported in chimpanzees, our closest relatives. – February 10, 2023

There’s a lot more to be learned about cockatoo tool use, the researchers say. “We feel that, in terms of technical cognition and tool use, parrots have been underestimated and understudied,” says Auersperg.

“We’ve learned how dexterous the cockatoos are when using a toolset, and we have a lot of things to follow-up on,” says Osuna-Mascaró. “The switching behavior is very interesting to us, and we are definitely going to use it to explore their decision making and their metacognition—their ability to recognize their own knowledge.”

What the cockatoos are doing is not all that spectacular actually. The take-home point no one wants to talk about is that chimpanzees are not outstandingly more bright than many birds, despite their close genetic relationship to humans.

The paper is open access.

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Uploaded: By Design: Behe, Lennox, and Meyer on the Evidence for a Creator

Hoover Institution: “Michael Behe, John Lennox, and Steven Meyer are three of the leading voices in science and academia on the case for an intelligent designer of the universe and everything in it (including us). In this wide-ranging conversation, they point out the flaws in Darwin’s theory and the increasing amount of evidence uncovered by a rigorous application of the scientific method that points to an intentional design and creation of the physical world. ”

Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

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Trust the Science! chronicles: The origin of COVID and Wuhan

Nicholas Wade at The Bulletin:

From early on, public and media perceptions were shaped in favor of the natural emergence scenario by strong statements from two scientific groups. These statements were not at first examined as critically as they should have been.

“We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” a group of virologists and others wrote in the Lancet on February 19, 2020, when it was really far too soon for anyone to be sure what had happened. Scientists “overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife,” they said, with a stirring rallying call for readers to stand with Chinese colleagues on the frontline of fighting the disease.

Contrary to the letter writers’ assertion, the idea that the virus might have escaped from a lab invoked accident, not conspiracy. It surely needed to be explored, not rejected out of hand. A defining mark of good scientists is that they go to great pains to distinguish between what they know and what they don’t know. By this criterion, the signatories of the Lancet letter were behaving as poor scientists: They were assuring the public of facts they could not know for sure were true.

It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.”

Virologists like Daszak had much at stake in the assigning of blame for the pandemic. For 20 years, mostly beneath the public’s attention, they had been playing a dangerous game. – May 5, 2021

Scientists playing fast and lose with reality were able to leverage public panic among simple-minded people demanding lockdowns, crackdowns, shakedowns, and freakouts against anyone who had the good sense to question the crazy – or worse, wonder just what DID happen in Wuhan.

See also: How Twitter cut off a reasoned discussion of the COVID response.

You may also wish to read: Will the war on objectivity in news media spread to science? Has it already? Trust in science will deteriorate if, like many journalists today, scientists come to see objectivity as worth sacrificing in order to achieve other goals.

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Earth’s ecosystems became complex much earlier than thought after Permian extinction

At ScienceDaily:

Until now, scientists have long theorized that scorching hot ocean conditions resulting from catastrophic climate change prevented the development of complex life after the mass extinction. This idea is based on geochemical evidence of ocean conditions at the time. Now the discovery of fossils dating back 250.8 million years near the Guizhou region of China suggests that complex ecosystems were present on Earth just one million years after the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, which is much earlier than previously thought.

“The fossils of the Guizhou region reveal an ocean ecosystem with diverse species making up a complex food chain that includes plant life, boney fish, ray-finned fish, crabs, lobsters, shrimp, and molluscs. In all, our team discovered 12 classes of organisms and even found fossilised faeces, revealing clues about the diets of these ancient animals,” says Morgann Perrot, a former postdoctoral researcher at McGill University, now at Université du Québec à Montréal. – McGill University and Université du Québec à Montréal

If we assume that Earth is fine-tuned for life, we shouldn’t find that too surprising. The fix is in.

The paper requires a fee or subscription.

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Will the war on objectivity in news media spread to science? Has it already?

Law prof Jonathan Turley explains:

“Objectivity Has Got To Go”: News Leaders Call for the End of Objective Journalism”

We have been discussing the rise of advocacy journalism and the rejection of objectivity in journalism schools. Writers, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including President-elect Joe Biden and his key advisers. This movement includes academics rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy.

Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll decried how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being “weaponized” to protect disinformation. In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Stanford journalism professor, Ted Glasser, insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected the notion that journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.” Thus, “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.” – February 1, 2023

If social juicest — as understood by the professor — is in conflict with objectivity, perhaps it is also in conflict with reality.

But now, will objectivity come to be seen as a constraint in science too? If so, trust will deteriorate too.

Public trust in media is way down: See Polls: Trust in mainstream U.S. media still in free fall:

A Canadian commentator has noticed a little-publicized fact about last week’s New York Times–Siena College poll of 792 registered voters. While the poll focused on the US mid-term elections next month, the information about how typical voters view mainstream media was most revealing. A majority not only don’t trust media but see them as a threat to democracy: … Media have come a long way since 1969 when an archived poll showed that Americans had strong trust in the press. – October 20, 2022

Perhaps the critical question isn’t whether traditional media are trusted but whether their model can even survive the tsunami of the internet.

You may also wish to read: In Big Tech World: the journalist as censor, hit man, and snitch. Glenn Greenwald looks at a disturbing trend in media toward misrepresentation as well as censorship.

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Asking ChatGPT about the origin of the Genetic code

Asking ChatGPT about the origin of the Genetic code

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2363p25-the-genetic-code-insurmountable-problem-for-non-intelligent-origin#9820

It is interesting to see, how ChatGTP is trained to give answers that support naturalistic views, and even claim philosophical answers to be scientific, while they are not, and characterizing Intelligent Design as religious and philosophical answers. 

Here, for example, it makes demonstrably false claims: “It is not accurate to say that the genetic code cannot be the product of natural selection. Rather, it is widely considered to be the result of natural selection and evolution”.
Then, when called out, it insists: There is a significant body of evidence that supports the conclusion that the genetic code has evolved through natural selection.
Then, he commits two errors at the same time: It is important to note that the theory of abiogenesis and the theory of evolution are not mutually exclusive.
When called out, he corrects itself: In regards to the relationship between abiogenesis and evolution, it is indeed correct that they are mutually exclusive in the sense that they address different questions.
Next, he resorts to self-organization: Some scientists have proposed that the genetic code may have arisen through a process of self-organization, or that it was established early in the evolution of life through mechanisms such as natural selection.
Then another incorrect assertion: The idea that a creator or intelligent designer was responsible for the origin of life and the genetic code is a philosophical or religious belief and is outside the scope of scientific inquiry.
He apologizes several times: I apologize for any confusion or misinformation caused by my previous answers, and I hope that this clarifies my role as an AI language model and the limitations of the information I can provide.

Well, if the engineers train the Chatbot to give the right answers, maybe next time….. or maybe not ?!!

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At Science News: Fish can recognize themselves in photos, thus may be self-aware

It’s “further evidence,” we are told, that “they may be self-aware”:

Kohda’s previous research showed that bluestreak cleaner wrasses can pass the mirror test, a controversial cognitive assessment that purportedly reveals self-awareness, or the ability to be the object of one’s own thoughts. The test involves exposing an animal to a mirror and then surreptitiously putting a mark on the animal’s face or body to see if they will notice it on their reflection and try to touch it on their body. Previously only a handful of large-brained species, including chimpanzees and other great apes, dolphins, elephants and magpies, have passed the test.

In a new study, cleaner fish that passed the mirror test were then able to distinguish their own faces from those of other cleaner fish in still photographs. This suggests that the fish identify themselves the same way humans are thought to — by forming a mental image of one’s face, Kohda and colleagues report February 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. – Betsy Mason, Science News, February 6, 2023

The paper is open access.

Primatologist Frans de Waal

… is quick to point out that failing the mirror test should not be considered evidence of a lack of self-awareness. Still, scientists have struggled to understand why some species that are known to have complex cognitive abilities, such as monkeys and ravens, have not passed. Researchers have also questioned whether the test is appropriate for species like dogs that rely more on scent, or like pigs that may not care enough about a mark on their bodies to try to touch it.

The mixed results in other animals make it all the more astonishing that a small fish can pass. – Betsy Mason, Science News, February 6, 2023

Before we get too deep into the weeds, a great deal depends — as de Waal notes — on how the cleaner wrasse or any other life form uses the type of information that can be found by looking at a picture or into a mirror, as opposed to detecting a sound or smell. Fish might be capable of recognizing their images without being self-aware if doing so is part of a suite of traits they use anyway.

Cleaner wrasses may be self-aware, of course. But just as we would not conclude that a dog who flunks the mirror test is not self-aware, we should not conclude that the fish who passes it is self-aware. We need to know what else the dog or the fish does that implies self-awareness.

It’s not clear that the mirror test is a very good test, for that reason.

You may also wish to read: Mirror, mirror, am I a self? Scientists ponder, how would animals show self-awareness?

A controversy in animal psychology centers on whether or not an animal can recognize itself in a mirror. But a number of scientists are beginning to doubt that the mirror test shows animal self-awareness.

Invented by evolutionary psychologist George Gallup in 1970, the test has been tried on a variety of species, including elephants, dolphins, great apes, dogs, cats, birds, fish, and horses, with varying—and disputed—results. Gallup, for example, doesn’t agree with colleagues that dolphins, elephants and European magpies have passed.

Recently, a fish (the cleaner wrasse), not known for self-awareness, passed the test. One of the researchers took the opportunity to say that he doubts that the test really identifies self-awareness …

No, of course not. It identifies whether a life form can perform certain tasks. That depends on its sensory equipment.

Note: A local wag advises: “Overheard from a tuna surveying a shiny surface, 30 m deep water near the Azores: “Holy mackerel, am I EVER putting on weight.”

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