Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 210

April 18, 2021

“‘Oumuamua is a spacecraft!” astronomer has come up with a SENSIBLE idea: Search the Moon

Ryder Crater/NASA

It has sometimes occurred to us that we were a bit harsh with Avi Loeb, the Harvard astronomer who feels sure that space debris ’Oumuamua is an extraterrestrial lightsail.

Never mind. He has come up with a very reasonable idea for searching for evidence of other civilizations in our galaxy: Look for alien debris on our still, lifeless, atmosphere-free Moon:

Loeb notes that, using realistic time scales, even if ‘Oumuamua were an alien probe (as he still argues it is*), it took 10,000 years to cross our solar system. Our technological civilization is not even that old. And other alien craft might take a million years to travel 100 light years. In that case, malevolent or otherwise, ET may as well be history or even fiction.

However, he offers a suggestion we can follow up on: While continuing to map the Moon, search the surface for crashed or discarded extraterrestrial equipment. There is no atmosphere or geological (or biological) activity there. Thus it could be a “museum of extraterrestrial equipment.” Actually, a single fragment of ET equipment would be pretty decisive but a museum would be a massive tourist attraction — space tourism with a purpose. For public awareness, it even fits in with the new NBC TV series, Debris.

News, “SETI director warns: Those aliens could be malevolent” at Mind Matters News

It’s one of the few places we could realistically hope to find it.

See also: SETI director warns: Those aliens could be malevolent

and

Sci-fi Saturday: New NBC X-files clone “Debris” feels disjointed. David Zeiger: Perhaps that’s intentional, though many critics aren’t getting it yet. Viewers are asked to ponder, will disruptive alien technologies heal or destroy? Is there a broader, cosmic purpose to our existence?

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Published on April 18, 2021 18:02

April 17, 2021

Philosopher Mary Midgeley (1919–2018) on scientism

Midgeley puzzled many people at one time on account of thinking that Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene (1976) was a stinker.

She took on a variety of overstuffed concepts, for example, what we now call “trust the science”, abbreviated for convenience to “scientism”:

She points out that there’s a difference between “doing science” and Scientism. Science is a method and discipline, but Scientism is something more – it establishes a set of beliefs by which to view things. It sees science as “realistic” or “just the facts”, like some objective totem. What’s more, Midgley argued that Scientism is invariably aligned with some kind of excessive reductionism, where everything is reduced to neurons or evolutionary psychology, for instance. It simplifies the complexities of life to being “nothing but” this or that. Love is, for example, “nothing but…” social cohesion. Consciousness is “nothing but…” neurons firing in a certain sequence. Scientism reduces the world to a single explanatory factor. Yet, this is a philosophical abstraction that has become untethered from how life is lived. It elevates one aspect of life at the expense of other things, such as culture or society.

Midgley also noted Scientism often comes with a condescension towards those who don’t see science as they do. Oppositional views are lambasted as the naïve wish-fulfillment of the weak, probably involving unicorns and leprechauns, angels and devils. Scientism, then, is a faith, or at least a value system, in favour of materialistic asceticism. Which means that it wants to say, “Accept the bleakness of reality!” or “Don’t childishly daydream!” We must all accept The Truth, as defined by science, and to do otherwise is ignorant and superstitious.

Jonny Thomson, “The Three Myths of Scientism” at RealClearScience

It’s going to be interesting to see what the COVID-19 Crazy does for “trust the science!” once the smoke clears.

Coincidentally, in the province of Ontario, Canada, another ridiculous mass “Trust the Science!” lockdown has sparked a police revolt, as the police have been refusing to carry out unconstitutional and otherwise ridiculous orders:

The public is pretty fed up too. It’s not at all clear that the provincial government’s response to the pandemic was any better than what we might have expected from the Three Stooges. It mainly created huge collateral damage like a big spike in isolated suicidal teens and addicted adults. Few of these people would have died of COVID anyway.

If only the government had made such a mess of things on behalf of something other than science…

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Published on April 17, 2021 21:22

Researchers: Cyanobacteria were an important part of marine ecosystems 1400 million years ago

Six hundred million years earlier than thought:

The first photosynthetic oxygen-producing organisms on Earth were cyanobacteria. Their evolution dramatically changed the Earth allowing oxygen to accumulate into the atmosphere for the first time and further allowing the evolution of oxygen-utilizing organisms including eukaryotes. Eukaryotes include animals, but also algae, a broad group of photosynthetic oxygen-producing organisms that now dominate photosynthesis in the modern oceans. When, however, did algae begin to occupy marine ecosystems and compete with cyanobacteria as important phototrophic organisms?

In a new study Zhang et al use the molecular remains of ancient algae (so-called biomarkers) to show that algae occupied an important role in marine ecosystems 1400 million years ago, some 600 million years earlier than previously recognized.

Professor Don Canfield, Nordic Center for Earth Evolution, University of Southern Denmark, a co-author on the study adds: “We hope that our study will inspire others to utilize similar techniques to better unravel the full history of eukaryote evolution through geologic time.”

University of Southern Denmark, “A rich marine algal ecosystem 600 million years earlier than previously thought” at ScienceDaily (April 16, 2021)

Well then, how did a complex process like photosynthesis get the time to “evolve” by natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism)?

Researchers (wisely, for now) state such findings without making any obvious inferences. But the numbers of these situations are building.

We are developing two separate stories: One is the design story the research record actually shows and the other is the Darwinian flimflam marketed to the public on science shows.

Anyone’s guess how long the divide can last without being noticed.

The paper is closed access.

See also: If photosynthesis could really be as old as life itself… Well, that’s good news for the hope of finding life on other planets! But researchers hoping to rush in and save Darwinism should know that if the earliest organisms could photosynthesize, an intelligent origin of life is virtually certain.

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Published on April 17, 2021 20:28

If photosynthesis could really be as old as life itself…

According to one group of researchers, the earliest bacteria had the tools to photosynthesize:

Researchers find that the earliest bacteria had the tools to perform a crucial step in photosynthesis, changing how we think life evolved on Earth.

The finding also challenges expectations for how life might have evolved on other planets. The evolution of photosynthesis that produces oxygen is thought to be the key factor in the eventual emergence of complex life. This was thought to take several billion years to evolve, but if in fact the earliest life could do it, then other planets may have evolved complex life much earlier than previously thought.

The research team, led by scientists from Imperial College London, traced the evolution of key proteins needed for photosynthesis back to possibly the origin of bacterial life on Earth. Their results are published and freely accessible in BBA – Bioenergetics.

Lead researcher Dr Tanai Cardona, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: “We had previously shown that the biological system for performing oxygen-production, known as Photosystem II, was extremely old, but until now we hadn’t been able to place it on the timeline of life’s history.

“Now, we know that Photosystem II shows patterns of evolution that are usually only attributed to the oldest known enzymes, which were crucial for life itself to evolve.”

Hayley Dunning, “Photosynthesis could be as old as life itself” at Imperial College, London (March 16, 2021)

Well, that’s good news for the hope of finding life on other planets! But researchers hoping to rush in and save Darwinism should know that if the earliest organisms could photosynthesize, an intelligent origin of life is virtually certain.

Fine with us. But if any of the people working on this project doubt the need for an intelligent origin in this case… don’t tell James Tour. You know how he reacts to utter nonsense…

The paper is open access.

You may also wish to read: Researchers: Yes, plants have nervous systems too. Not only that but, like mammals, they use glutamate to speed transmission

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Published on April 17, 2021 19:20

What has information theory to say about talking to spiders?

There’s a way we can do that, provided the spider has anything to say:

An MIT researcher has developed an algorithm that translates the delicate vibrations of spider webs into music

One of the presentations at the American Chemical Society’s Spring 2021 meeting featured an algorithm that makes music from the analysis of spiders’ webs …

But what does it sound like?

News, “Spiders may not know it but they are making music” at Mind Matters News

Digitization can make information interchangeable in this way. For example, some researchers managed to encode a short video in DNA. As a recent science paper explains, “genomes appear similar to natural language texts, and protein domains can be treated as analogs of words.”

News, “Spiders may not know it but they are making music” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: The algorithm may help researchers communicate with spiders by analyzing the signals they send other spiders, via web vibrations.

Note: Spiders are more intelligent than once thought and they can even be taught simple tricks. See: In what ways are spiders intelligent? They are not out to get anyone but they can’t help noticing and reacting to the human beings around them.

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Published on April 17, 2021 18:39

The Twin Peaks of the Second Amendment

In the wake of another senseless shooting yesterday we can expect progressive attacks on our Second Amendment freedom to become even more shrill and frenetic. That is why now is a good time to go back to basics. In this essay I will explain the history and theoretical underpinnings of the Second Amendment and discuss why it continues to be vitally important in both of its functions – ensuring the right of law abiding citizens to defend against both private violence and public violence.

The Theoretical Underpinnings of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

The United States Supreme Court has held the right to keep and bear arms [“RKBA”] is “among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty.” McDonald v. City of Chicago.1 No one should be surprised by this holding because the RKBA is deeply rooted in our history, not just as Americans but as heirs to the English common law tradition.

The first thing and most basic thing one needs to understand about the RKBA is that the right is codified in, not granted by, the Constitution. The Supreme Court put it this way nearly 150 years ago: “This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.”2 In 1689, William and Mary enacted a statute3 in the wake of the Glorious Revolution that is generally considered to be the predecessor of the right that was codified in the Second Amendment over 100 years later.4 William Blackstone’s famous commentaries on the common law greatly influenced the founding generation. Blackstone summed up all human rights within three primary rights – the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and right of private property.5 In addition to these three primary rights, he listed five auxiliary rights that serve as “barriers to protect and maintain inviolate the three great and primary rights.” The RKBA is one of these auxiliary rights. According to Blackstone, the RKBA has two independent aspects: (1) “the natural right of resistance and self-preservation;” and (2) “the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defence.” Thus, by the time of the American founding, the right was understood to protect against both public and private violence.

The first aspect of the right – the right to resist a tyrannical government – was the primary impetus behind the Second Amendment. After all, the Revolutionary War was ignited at Lexington and Concord when the colonists resisted a governmental attempt to seize their arms. The militia clauses of the original 1789 Constitution giving Congress the power to organize, discipline and call forth the militias were highly controversial, because the anti-federalists feared that these powers could lead to the derogation of the RKBA by the federal government. The Second Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights to address these objections.

In the years following the Revolution and the Constitutional Convention, the “check on government power” aspect of the right continued to receive prominence of place. St. George Tucker was an influential constitutional scholar in the founding period, and he described the right as “the true palladium of liberty.”6 Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, echoing Tucker, wrote in his commentaries: “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”7

By the 1850’s, the fear that the federal government would disarm the universal militia that had prompted the founders to include the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights had largely faded as a popular concern.8 And the second aspect of the right – the right to personal self-defense – had become more prominent in the public’s mind. Nevertheless, both grounds for the right – what I have called the “twin peaks of the Second Amendment” – continued to provide the theoretical foundation of the right. In the next two sections I will discuss why both of these peaks continue to be vitally important for ordered liberty in these troubled times.

The Right to Defense Against Private Violence

A few years, ago my wife and I adopted three precious, beautiful children, ages 3, 5 and 7. Sadly, not long after the kids came to live with us, we received what we believed to be credible information that the biological father was telling people he was making plans to invade our home, kill us, and kidnap the children. Naturally, when we heard this, we immediately contacted the police and an officer came to our house to meet with us. I doubt I will ever forget that conversation. The officer politely listened to our concerns and commiserated with us as we told our story. And then he said “Well, if he attacks you give us a call and we will get here as soon as we can.” Have you ever heard the old saw, “when you need the cops in seconds, they are only minutes away”? My wife and I sat there across our kitchen table from the officer and came to grips with the reality underlying that old saw. Don’t get me wrong. I am not criticizing the officer who sat with us, and in retrospect, I should not have been surprised. Criminals have this advantage over the police: They pick the time and place of their crimes. What was he going to do, promise us that he would have a unit parked in our driveway 24/7 from then on? Of course not. The cops cannot be everywhere, and it follows that their role is almost always reactive and not preventative.

My wife and I took our safety into our own hands. We upgraded our alarm system and installed a security door. And I made an appointment with a dear friend, an ex-Navy SEAL, who gave me a course in combat shotgun. And from that time on I slept with that shotgun nearby. Many nights I laid in bed wondering if this was the night when we would hear a crashing door or a breaking window, the dogs would bark, the alarms would scream, and I would face the test of whether I would be able to put another man down. My SEAL friend told me to have a specific plan and to visualize implementing that plan over and over. My wife and I physically practiced our roles in the plan, and countless times I laid there staring at the ceiling as I pictured hearing the crash, grabbing my weapon, racking the slide, and running to meet our attacker in what would surely be a deadly encounter.

This season of our life came to an end a few nights ago when this man died in a violent encounter with the police. The next day I marked the occasion by putting my shotgun in the gun safe for the first time in a very long while.

Here is where the RKBA comes in. This man was a career criminal who had been to prison several times. It was illegal for him to possess a firearm. Yet he had one in his hand when he died. This may come as a shock to you, but criminals don’t follow the law. That’s right. Criminals are infamous for ignoring pesky statutes they find inconvenient, such as the statute that prohibits criminals from possessing guns. Another old saw: “If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.” Trite? Yes. True? Also yes.

There are over 300 million firearms in this country – we have more guns than people. Any attempt to confiscate all of those guns would be not only unconstitutional, but also wildly futile. That is why one basic, indisputable fact should always underlie every discussion about the right to private defense: Bad men will always find a way to get a gun. Two more facts follow from this one: (1) The police will candidly admit that they usually cannot prevent bad men from attacking good people. (2) Therefore, law abiding citizens must be free to defend themselves with equal if not superior firepower to that employed against them.

My wife and I have lived as if under the Sword of Damocles. She was especially vulnerable, and can tell you how it feels to have a stab of fear in your heart every time an unfamiliar car passes by. We hoped the day would never come and thankfully it did not. But we had to prepare to defend ourselves and our precious children. Her .38 special and my 12-gauge pump action were crucial to that preparation. Gun control fanatics imagine a utopia where such preparation is never necessary. They have deluded themselves and would delude the rest of us too. We must live, not ignore, harsh realities, including the harsh reality that bad men will always find a way to arm themselves. We must resist the progressives’ efforts to disarm us and render us defenseless. Never forget that the Greek roots of “utopia” literally mean “no place.”

The Right to Defense Against Public Violence

Two of the stupidest comments I hear from gun control fanatics are “You don’t need an AR-15 to hunt!” and “the Second Amendment does not protect weapons of war!” God help us. The sheer breadth and depth of the historical ignorance that underlies these statements beggars belief.

The Second Amendment states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

What in God’s name do these fanatics think a militia does? That’s right. It fights wars. As we saw above, the RKBA ensures the right of the people to defend against both private violence and public violence. Only an idiot believes the Second Amendment was a sop the Founders extended to duck hunters to get them to vote to ratify the Constitution.

But surely, we are far past the time when we need to worry about public violence, aren’t we? No, we are not.

A few years ago I had a gun control debate with a friend (we will call him “Tony”) who was a citizen of Hong Kong. There was a mass shooting here, and Tony took to Facebook to bemoan gun violence in the United States and compare us unfavorably to peaceful Hong Kong. In my response I acknowledged that mass shootings are indeed a terrible thing and a few thousand people had indeed died in such incidents in the last 50 years. But then I tried to put that statistic into perspective, and I asked my friend “What did Mao call a few thousand deaths?” Answer: “Tuesday afternoon.” Mao famously said that “power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” and in his China, the government had a monopoly on guns. He used that monopoly to perpetrate 65 million murders. That’s right, I said, within living memory your government used its gun monopoly to accomplish the ruthless murder of tens of millions. Maybe governments should not have a monopoly on guns.

Tony was unimpressed with my arguments and eventually unfriended me. Xi’s government stands in direct linear descent from Mao’s government, and in recent months we have watched in horror as China brutally stomped out the last vestiges of freedom the British common law system had bequeathed to Hong Kong. As I watch those reports, I sometimes wondered if Tony ever thought back on our exchange. Has he reconsidered whether it would have been a good thing for the freedom loving citizens of Hong Kong to have the means to resist Xi’s brutality by force of arms?

But that can never happen in the United States Barry. Why do you say that? Are American politicians so much purer of heart than Chinese politicians? Does their lust for power not burn as hotly as their Chinese counterparts? Do you really think that a wild-eyed progressive fanatic like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would not impose her utopian visions on the American people by force of arms if she thought she had half a chance?

I will grant you this. Maoist style authoritarianism is unlikely to occur in the United States. But this is not because our politicians are better than theirs. It is because our politicians have a healthy fear of a well-armed citizenry and know there are limits beyond which they dare not push us. I hope there never comes a day when those limits are tested. But if they are, I am glad the Second Amendment ensures the US government – unlike the Chinese government – will not have a monopoly on power.

Freedom is Costly

None of what I have written means I take the deaths caused in mass shootings lightly. Every death is a tragedy. And it is certainly the case that the right to keep and bear arms comes at a cost – the cost we incur when that right is abused. But we do not jettison our fundamental rights even when it is absolutely certain that public safety would be increased if we did. This principle is true not only of RKBA; it is equally true of many of our other freedoms. As the Supreme Court noted in McDonald:

The right to keep and bear arms, however, is not the only constitutional right that has controversial public safety implications. All of the constitutional provisions that impose restrictions on law enforcement and on the prosecution of crimes fall into the same category. The exclusionary rule generates substantial social costs, which sometimes include setting the guilty free and the dangerous at large. [There are] serious consequences of dismissal for a speedy trial violation, which means a defendant who may be guilty of a serious crime will go free. In some unknown number of cases [the Miranda rule] will return a killer, a rapist or other criminal to the streets to repeat his crime.

We could do away with the right against self-incrimination and let cops beat confessions out of suspects. There is not the slightest doubt that if we did, countless lives would be saved by keeping criminals off the street. We do not give up this and other freedoms even though they come at a high cost. Why? Because in the United States we have chosen a dangerous freedom over a peaceful slavery.

_______________

1561 U.S. 742, 778 (2010).

2United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 553 (1876).

31 W. & M., ch. 2, § 7, in 3 Eng. Stat. at Large 441.

4District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 593 (2008).

51 Blackstone 141 (1765).

61 Blackstone’s Commentaries, Editor’s App. 300 (S. Tucker ed. 1803).

73 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 1890, 746 (1833).

8McDonald, 561 U.S. at 770.

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Published on April 17, 2021 06:43

April 16, 2021

At Popular Mechanics: The universe is a “machine that keeps learning”

Is this a new form of panpsychism?:

In fascinating new research, cosmologists explain the history of the universe as one of self-teaching, autodidactic algorithms. The scientists, including physicists from Brown University and the Flatiron Institute, say the universe has probed all the possible physical laws before landing on the ones we observe around us today. Could this wild idea help inform scientific research to come?

Caroline Delbert, “The Universe Is a Machine That Keeps Learning, Scientists Say” at Popular Mechanics

Umm… well, what do you propose to do with “this wild idea”?

Here’s how it works: Our universe observes a whole bunch of laws of physics, but the researchers say other possible laws of physics seem equally likely, given the way mathematics works in the universe. So if a group of candidate laws were equally likely, then how did we end up with the laws we really have?

Caroline Delbert, “The Universe Is a Machine That Keeps Learning, Scientists Say” at Popular Mechanics

To make the idea of the universe learning work, Delbert, of course, invokes Darwin:

Evolution is already a kind of learning, so when we suggest the universe has used natural selection as part of the realization of physics, we’re invoking that specific kind of learning. (Does something have to have consciousness in order to learn? You need to carefully define learning in order to make that the case. Organisms and systems constantly show learning outcomes, like more success or a higher rate of reproduction.)

Caroline Delbert, “The Universe Is a Machine That Keeps Learning, Scientists Say” at Popular Mechanics

Granted, life forms do not need consciousness in order to learn, depending on how we define learning. But a claim that inanimate matter “learns” is a much further bridge. It amounts to a radical form of panpsychism attempting to pass as cosmic Darwinism.

It sounds as though some would like to hold onto the name of Darwinism while — in reality — adopting panpsychism. That would be consistent with other trends we’ve noted.

The paper is open access. We are apprised that it is very long.

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Published on April 16, 2021 20:35

Top scientist admits we haven’t been humble enough to appreciate the complexity of gene regulation

Sukhendu B. Dev, in History of Medicine at Oxford, hopes to establish a prize for the solution of unsolved problems in biology, akin to the Millennium Prize in mathematics. Of course, trying to determine what the unsolved problems in biology are is bound to be a murder hornet’s nest.

For one thing, in some quarters, if anything to do with evolution is involved, all problems are solved by the incantation “Darwin!” and few ask for a more detailed, curve-fitting approach.

But he did get some interesting feedback from some key thinkers in biology, including a comment from Immo Scheffler (UCSD), an expert in mitochondrial biology:

Gene Regulation: all along we have not been humble enough to appreciate the complexity of this problem.

Sukhendu B. Dev, “Unsolved Problems in Biology—the State of Current Thinking” at ResearchGate

The other comments are quite interesting but that one is framable. If we have too many answers, we don’t have enough questions.

The paper is open access. Let’s wish Dev luck with the venture.

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Published on April 16, 2021 20:16

Evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala’s membership in the National Academy of Sciences may be withdrawn

Along with that of an astronomer, Geoffrey Marcy. Ayala, 2010 Templeton winner, had stepped down in 2018 at UCal Irvine due to allegations of sexual harassment. The NAS bylaws were changed in 2019 to permit expulsion:

With the potential moves against Marcy and Ayala, “We are watching social change happening in front of our eyes,” says Nancy Hopkins, an NAS member and emeritus biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It has been a long time coming.” …

Meredith Wadman, “National academy may eject two famous scientists for sexual harassment” at The Scientist

From the story, it’s clear that NAS was looking for a way to go after these people. Once the system is perfected, some of us give the whole business of expelling members ten years before it sinks into ideological persecution and corrupt politicking. But we shall see.

A post from back in 2018: Larry Krauss? Francisco Ayala? And Now Neil DeGrasse Tyson? — All MeToo’d It doesn’t seem as though naturalism or Darwinism offer much protection. Again, we shall see.

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Published on April 16, 2021 19:21

Science writer John Horgan explains how he came to doubt the AI apocalypse

John Horgan’s endorsement of Erik J. Larson’s new book critiquing AI claims stems from considerable experience covering the industry for science publications:

At first, science writer John Horgan (pictured), author of a number of books including The End of Science (1996), accepted the conventional AI story.

News, “Why did a prominent science writer come to doubt the AI apocalypse?” at Mind Matters News

Over time, it wore thin. Besides, he discovered stuff:

Perhaps the most interesting thing Horgan learned from Larson before The Myth of Artificial Intelligence was published is that there is “a very large mystery at the heart of intelligence, which no one currently has a clue how to solve”:

Put bluntly: all evidence suggests that human and machine intelligence are radically different. And yet the myth of inevitability persists.”

When I first started writing about science, I believed the myth of AI. One day, surely, researchers would achieve the goal of a flexible, supersmart, all-purpose artificial intelligence, like HAL. Given rapid advances in computer hardware and software, it was only a matter of time. And who was I to doubt authorities like Marvin Minsky?

JOHN HORGAN, “WILL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE EVER LIVE UP TO ITS HYPE?” AT SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (DECEMBER 4, 2020)

In 1998, computer pioneer Marvin Minsky (1927–2016, pictured) told an interviewer,

My goal is making machines that can think—by understanding how people think. One reason why we find this hard to do is because our old ideas about psychology are mostly wrong. Most words we use to describe our minds (like “consciousness,” “learning,” or “memory”) are suitcase-like jumbles of different ideas. Those old ideas were formed long ago, before “computer science” appeared. It was not until the 1950s that we began to develop better ways to help think about complex processes.

JOHN BROCKMAN, “CONSCIOUSNESS IS A BIG SUITCASE” AT THE EDGE

In 1995 philosopher David Chalmers coined the term “Hard Problem of consciousness” as a way of categorizing a problem that is not a “big suitcase” and defies so simple a solution as “computer science.”

[…]

Note 1: Most recently, Horgan has published a book, Mind–Body Problems, which is free to read at his site.

Note 2: The photo of Marvin Minsky is courtesy Sethwoodworth at English Wikipedia. – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Mardetanha using CommonsHelper., CC BY 3.0

Takehome: Horgan finds that, despite the enormous advances in neuroscience, genetics, cognitive science, and AI, our minds remain “as mysterious as ever.”

You may also wish to read design theorist William Dembski’s takes on Larson’s Myth:

New book massively debunks our “AI overlords”: Ain’t gonna happen AI researcher and tech entrepreneur Eric J. Larson expertly dissects the AI doomsday scenarios. Many thinkers have tried to stem the tide of hype but, as an information theorist points out, no one has done it so well.

and

No AI overlords?: What is Larson arguing and why does it matter? Information theorist William Dembski explains, computers can’t do some things by their very nature.

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Published on April 16, 2021 18:45

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