Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 498

John Steinbeck: Two men never created anything

Computer engineering prof Robert Marks has had to reflect on what human creativity means, discussing the goals of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence, of which he is the director. He found his inspiration in Nobel Prize-winning American novelist John Steinbeck’s conviction: “The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.”

He found his inspiration in Nobel Prize-winning American novelist John Steinbeck’s conviction: “The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.”

And there are limits to what one can simply replicate in machines:

Some limits, he explained, are fundamentals of nature: “Now, in computer science, one of the first things you are taught is that some things are non-algorithmic. The classic one is the Turing halting problem. You can’t write a computer program that can analyze another arbitrary computer program to see whether that program will run forever or stop. It is a very simple, proven operation that is non-analytic; you cannot write code for that.”

But then he asked, “Are there things about human beings that you cannot write code for? Non-computable things people can do? And the answer, I would say, is yes. And I think the most interesting and the most testable is creativity.” “Mind Matters“

See also: See also: Walter Bradley: Tell people about AI, not sci-fi His struggle to bring reality to“sci-fi” origin of life research is the Center’s inspiration. The Bradley Center hopes to have a similar effect by promoting more general knowledge of fundamental issues around “thinking computers and questions around the real effects of technology on human well-being.

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BREAKING NEWS EVENT: First images of a Black Hole Event Horizon announced

A long-awaited development, thanks to an array of radio telescopes:

BBC reports:

Astronomers have taken the first ever image of a black hole, which is located in a distant galaxy.
It measures 40 billion km across – three million times the size of the Earth – and has been described by scientists as “a monster”.
The black hole is 500 million trillion km away and was photographed by a network of eight telescopes across the world.
Details have been published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Prof Heino Falcke, of Radboud University in the Netherlands, who proposed the experiment, told BBC News that the black hole was found in a galaxy called M87.
“What we see is larger than the size of our entire Solar System,” he said.
“It has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. And it is one of the heaviest black holes that we think exists. It is an absolute monster, the heavyweight champion of black holes in the Universe.”

Image as released, showing the event horizon surrounded by bright gases being pulled in by the hole:

Developing, further as time is available. END

F/N: Live feed (RT):

F/N2: A case of image distortion due to gravitational lensing, the Smiley Galactic cluster, HT Wiki:

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Rawr!! Cats DO recognize their names, researchers say!

Greg Hume (CC BY-SA 3.0)

But why was that

Cats fare poorly overall in this either/or thinking. They are usually relegated to being “less intelligent than dogs.” Hence the researchers’ surprise that cats can learn their names. But if the cat can recognize and react to the household car pulling up the drive, a specific footstep on the stairs, or a can opener at work, why couldn’t he recognize his name when it is shouted?

Many misconceptions about cats stem from the all-or-nothing naturalist hierarchy:

“Cats are notorious for their indifference to humans: Almost any owner will testify to how readily these animals ignore us when we call them. But according to a study published Thursday in Scientific Reports, domestic cats do recognize their own names—even if they walk away when they hear them. Jim Daley, “Cats Recognize Their Own Names—even If They Choose to Ignore Them” at Scientific American”

Is the cat supposed to know that he should do something about the fact that a human is talking?

He pays attention once he understands that a given sound, usually pitched higher, means something for him in particular. He can have no other point of reference to human speech. – Denyse O’Leary, “” at Mind Matters

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See also: Dogs are not as intelligent as seals, say some researchers.

Crows can be as smart as apes

Yes, even lizards can be smart

and

Animal minds: In search of the minimal self

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Human brains have grown smaller since the Stone Age

There doesn’t seem to be a clear explanation as to why:

Based on measurements from 122 populations, modern adult brains range from 900 to 2,100 mL, with a global average of 1,349 mL, which is smaller than our Stone Age predecessors. However, we can’t reach meaningful conclusions from these species-wide global averages, in part because methods of skull measurement differ between datasets.

More convincing evidence for cranial decline comes from studies that applied the same measuring technique to hundreds or even thousands of skulls from a particular region across the millennia. Bridget Alex, “The Human Brain Has been Getting Smaller Since the Stone Age” at Discover Magazine

Apparently, a 1988 study of 12,000 European and North African skulls showed a 10% decrease in males and 17% in females in the last 10,000 years.

But what does it all mean? Alex surveys a variety of theories and favors the one that suggests that brain size decreased as we domesticated ourselves and grew more social. The same pattern is found in domestic animals.

The trouble is, it’s not clear what the impact of the size of a human brain really is, vs. its organization. Then there’s the question of what opportunities a brain has to develop and what type of difference that makes.

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See also: Do big brains matter to human intelligence?

Just a few of the attempts to explain how the human brain came to be what it is:

Eating fat, not meat, led to bigger human type brains, say researchers. Theories of the evolution of the human brain are a war of trivial explanations that no one dare admit are too trivial for what they purport to explain. It’s like blaming World War II on indigestion, only monstrously bigger.

Earlier discussion of the fat theory.

Starchy food may have aided human brain development

Do big brains matter to human intelligence?

Human evolution: The war of trivial explanations

and

What Taragana

RNA is no longer “worthless junk”; today’s revelations “unthinkable 20 years ago”

Surely you remember junk RNA, a worthy companion of junk DNA? Well…

Scientists no longer see the RNAs that aren’t envoys between DNA and ribosomes as worthless junk. “I believe there are hundreds, if not thousands, of noncoding RNAs that have a function,” says Harvard University molecular biologist Jeannie Lee. She and other scientists are beginning to learn what these formerly ignored molecules do. It turns out that they are involved in every step of gene activity, from turning genes on and off to tweaking final protein products. Those revelations were unthinkable 20 years ago.

Back in the 1990s, Lee says, scientists thought only proteins could turn genes on and off. Finding that RNAs were in charge “was a very odd concept.” Tina Hesman Saey, “Here are 5 RNAs that are stepping out of DNA’s shadow” at ScienceNews

Five examples of such “movers and shakers” among RNA are offered.

Rob Sheldon responds, “I think this is more than enough justification for the last 20 years of ID. Now can we get past the meme that ID isn’t science? That’s so 2005.”

He is referring to the fact that the ID folk never thought it was junk. One reason the ID folk were supposed to be wrong was that junk DNA proved Darwinism.

This just in: 2005 called, to find out what we have done with the Darwinism we were bequeathed.

See, for example, Paul Nelson: Junk DNA Is One Of Those Propositions That Have “Just About The Worst Track Record” In Biology. (June 23, 2018)

Francis Collins Admits His Own Prediction About Junk DNA Was False (Barry Arrington)

New York Times Science Writer Defends The Myth Of Junk DNA (the facrtfs could help “creationists”)

Evolutionary biologist Rick Sternberg on junk DNA (2014)

Jonathan Wells on the junk DNA myth (2013)

Somebody Finally Admits The Real Reason Darwin’s FollowersNEED Junk DNA (to refute intelligent design)

Hat tip: Rob Sheldon, author of Genesis: The Long Ascent

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Wesley J. Smith: Human exceptionalism is as close to a self-evident truth as one can find

Wesley J.Smith

He is reflecting on a recent claim that, from an “evolutionary perspective,” the idea that humans are exceptional is “preposterous:

No. One doesn’t have to believe in the soul to understand that we are not just another animal in the forest.

If the distinction between us and fauna is just a matter of degree — which I dispute, it is also of kind — then that difference is akin to the Matterhorn versus a small hill in the flatlands of Kansas.

After all, what other species in the known history of life has attained the wondrous capacities of human beings? What other species has transcended the tooth-and-claw world of naked natural selection to the point that, at least to some degree, we now control nature instead of being controlled by it? Wesley J. Smith, “Transhumanism, the Lazy Way to Human ‘Improvement’” at Mind Matters

Increasingly, the “scientific” view of many questions involves looking reality in the face and spitting at it. Why is that?

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See also: I spy AI. And AI spies on me… The true threat posed by AI is the greatly reduced cost and risk of mass surveillance and manipulation. Some people are quite sure that the world would be a better place if they knew more about our business and policed it better. Mass snooping creeps up unnoticed and becomes a way of life. Then it explodes.

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Darwinian PZ Myers blows off attack on Bret Weinstein

At Evergreen College:

Yet you are unable to show any evidence that professors are punished for “violating academic left orthodoxies”. Sorry, I’m not afraid of your imaginary boogeyman that you use to stir up feelings of victimhood in your fellow asshats.— PZ Myers (@pzmyers) April 9, 2019

Curiously, I (O’Leary for News) know of no non-Darwinist who blew off the attack and its significance. It takes a completely entrenched and socially unhealthy privilege to not see what happened to Bret Weinstein.

From the comment stream:

Jesus dude. Have you heard of @BretWeinstein and @HeatherEHeying? They were literally hunted by baseball bat wielding students, denied campus police protection by the admin, and had to quit their jobs because they dared to say kicking white people off campus was “problematic.”— Dave Stephens (@DaveStephens11) April 9, 2019

Later, Myers seemed to double down but for some reason, I am unable to embed the tweet.

Yes, I’m familiar with their story, but not just the Fox News version. I see two people who demonize the students at their former university, who are now cuddling up with the right wing & making palsies with people like Tucker Carlson.— PZ Myers (@pzmyers) April 9, 2019

We are told that Weinstein’s brother Eric flagged attention to this episode: “The biologist @pzmyers in a thread with my brother & fellow biologist @BretWeinstein . @pzmyers is making the case that nothing bad happens to professors who violate leftist orthodoxy. This is brutal leftist reality denial on a scale unfathomable to me.”

Maybe Myers’s callous attitude is unfathomable to Bret’s brother Eric. But it is the reality progressives seek to impose on everyone, every day. The progressive war is, increasingly, with facts, with nature itself. They can’t win but we can certainly lose.

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Even Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne sort of “gets it”:

See also: Jerry Coyne: Just sign Chicago “Statement On Principles Of Free Expression”

and

Jerry Coyne discovers the lack of intellectual freedom on campus

Also: Which side will atheists choose in the war on science? They need to re-evaluate their alliance with progressivism, which is doing science no favours.

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Is Standard Calculus Notation Wrong?

We usually think of basic mathematics such as introductory calculus to be fairly solid. However, recent research by UD authors shows that calculus notation needs a revision.

Many people complain about ID by saying, essentially, “ID can’t be true because all of biology depends on evolution.” This is obviously a gross overstatement (biology as a field was just fine even before Darwin), but I understand the sentiment. Evolution is a basic part of biology (taught in intro biology), and therefore it would be surprising to biologists to find that fundamental pieces of it were wrong.

However, the fact is that oftentimes fundamental aspects of various fields are wrong. Surprisingly, this sometimes has little impact on the field itself. If premise A is faulty and leads to faulty conclusions, oftentimes workaround B can be invoked to get around A’s problems. Thus, A can work as long as B is there to get around its problems.

Anyway, I wanted to share my own experience of this with calculus. Some of you know that I published a Calculus book last year. My goal in this was mostly to counter-act the dry, boring, and difficult-to-understand textbooks that dominate the field. However, when it came to the second derivative, I realized that not only is the notation unintuitive, there is literally no explanation for it in any textbook I could find.

For those who don’t know, the notation for the first derivative is . The first derivative is the ratio of the change in y (dy) compared to the change in x (dx). The notation for the second derivative is . However, there is not a cogent explanation for this notation. I looked through 20 (no kidding!) textbooks to find an explanation for why the notation was the way that it was.

Additionally, I found out that the notation itself is problematic. Although it is written as a fraction, the numerator and denominator cannot be separated without causing math errors. This problem is somewhat more widely known, and has a workaround for it, known as Faa di Bruno’s formula.

My goal was to present a reason for the notation to my readers/students, so that they could more intuitively grasp the purpose of the notation. So, I decided that since no one else was providing an explanation, I would try to derive the notation myself.

Well, when I tried to derive it directly, it turns out that the notation is simply wrong (footnote – many mathematicians don’t like me using the terminology of “wrong”, but, I would argue that a fraction that can’t be treated like a fraction *is* wrong, especially when there is an alternative that does work like a fraction). Most people forget that is, in fact, a quotient. Therefore, the proper rule to apply to this is the quotient rule (a first-year calculus rule). When you do this to the actual first derivative notation, the notation for the second derivative (the derivative of the derivative) is actually . This notation can be fully treated as a fraction, and requires no secondary formulas to work with.

What does this have to do with Intelligent Design? Not much directly. However, it does show that, in any discipline, there is the possibility that asking good questions about basic fundamentals may lead to the revising of some of even the most basic aspects of the field. This is precisely what philosophy does, and I recommend the broader application of philosophy to science. Second, it shows that even newbies can make a contribution. In fact, I found this out precisely because I *was* a newbie. Finally, in a more esoteric fashion (but more directly applicable to ID), the forcing of everything into materialistic boxes limits the progress of all fields. The reason why this was not noticed before, I believe, is because, since the 1800s, mathematicians have not wanted to believe that infinitesimals are valid entities. Therefore, they were not concerned when the second derivative did not operate as a fraction – it didn’t need to, because it indeed wasn’t a fraction. Infinities and infinitesimals are the non-materialistic aspects of mathematics, just as teleology, purpose, and desire are the non-materialistic aspects of biology.

Anyway, for those who want to read the paper, it is available here:

Bartlett, Jonathan and Asatur Khurshudyan. 2019. Extending the Algebraic Manipulability of Differentials. Dynamics of Continuous, Discrete and Impulsive Systems, Series A: Mathematical Analysis 26(3):217-230.

I would love any comments, questions, or feedback.

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Researchers: Neanderthals shared genes with woolly mammoths

Neanderthals ate mammoths but they appear also, according to three case studies, to have “genetic similarities”:

“The first case study outlined the mutual appearance of the LEPR gene, related to thermogenesis and the regulation of adipose tissue and fat storage throughout the body,” TAU’s Department of Archaeology reported. “The second case study engaged genes related to keratin protein activity in both species. The third case study focused on skin and hair pigmentation variants in the genes MC1R and SLC7A11.”

Mammoths and Neanderthals “coexisted in similar geographic and environmental European settings during the Middle and Upper Pleistocene,” according to a synopsis of the paper. “Both were direct descendants of African ancestors, although both fully evolved and adapted in Europe during the Middle Pleistocene.”Jerusalem Post Staff, “ Neanderthals, Woolly Mammoths Shared Genetic Material, Say TAU Researchers” at Jerusalem Post

Well, the evolution message we were expecting was that they shared genes with chimpanzees. Elephants, not so much.

Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon, author of Genesis: The Long Ascent, saw this and kindly writes to say,

This article suggests that Neanderthals and Wooly Mammoths had the same unique LEPR gene (unknown to humans and elephants):

“The first case study outlined the mutual appearance of the LEPR gene, related to thermogenesis and the regulation of adipose tissue and fat storage throughout the body,” TAU’s Department of Archaeology reported.”

So is this a case of:

a) Horizontal gene transport?

b) Cross-breeding?

c) Convergence?

And if you think (b) is ridiculous, why is it the accepted explanation for how modern Europeans and Neanderthals share some genes?

(This is not a rhetorical question, but an effort to understand the opaque reasoning behind the discussion of the Neanderthal genome.)

Wethinks we are all“anti-science” for even wondering what’s going on here.

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See also: Researchers: Warm weather made cannibals of Neanderthals The researchers see it as a desperate measure. They don’t (and, of course, shouldn’t) rule out ritual cannibalism, which could also be a response to stress (= if we eat this person, we will absorb his ability to spot big game). Slowly the picture comes in and we are still looking for that subhuman Darwin promised us.

The Neanderthals are undergoing a renaissance Smarter every time we look at them!

and

Was Neanderthal man fully human? The role racism played in assessing the evidence

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DNA as a “master of resource recycling”

cell/royroydeb (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The researchers say that their results “challenge the notion that DNA replication is uniform and consistent”:

The Molecular Horizons work has for the first time revealed the complex molecular choreography where both processes occur. The replisome can adapt how it uses SSBs [
Single-stranded binding proteins] according to how much is available….

“Until now it hasn’t been shown exactly how SSBs are used. What we have revealed is a dynamic and highly efficient process that adapts to its surrounding conditions.”…

SSB’s job is to coat the lagging strand and protect it from being attacked and broken. A broken strand can cause chromosome breakage, which can contribute to genetic disorders and intergenerational disease….

… errors are rare, occurring at a rate of 1 mistake per million base pairs, one mistake that slips past the repair mechanisms can produce a DNA sequence that, if it survives and avoids the body’s defence mechanisms, could also survive drug treatments and eventually become a superbug. As a result, understanding SSBs’ role is crucial in understanding disease and antimicrobial resistance…

“If you think of the replisome as a car, it’s a complete functional system, but we can’t really test the more intricate parts of the engine,” Dr Spenkelink said. “To do that, engineers might remove the engine and bench test it. That allows them a more detailed look at specific parts that can’t be tested in a moving car. University of Wollongong, “ DNA copying machine a master of resource recycling” at Phys.org

Paper: Recycling of single-stranded DNA-binding protein by the bacterial replisome, Nucleic Acids Research (2019). academic.oup.com/nar/advance-a … 3/nar/gkz090/5320382

Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

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See also: The amazing energy efficiency of cells A science writer compares the cell to human inventions and finds that it is indeed amazingly energy-efficient.

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