Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 5

Stray dogs vs “new species” at Chernobyl

At Smithsonian Magazine:

In a paper published last week in the journal Science Advances, researchers studied the genomes of 302 of these dogs, which are largely descended from pets that residents left behind as they fled during the disaster [1986]. For generations, the animals have lived in the plant itself, slept in abandoned buildings and begged cleanup crews and tourists for scraps.

The scientists discovered that the power plant dogs were genetically distinct from those that lived miles away from the site. Canines dwelling in the plant were more inbred and primarily German shepherds, while the dogs in nearby Chernobyl City and Slavutych, located 9 and 28 miles away from the disaster site, respectively, were more of a mix of modern breeds that resemble dogs elsewhere, writes the Atlantic’s Katherine J. Wu.

Scientists have no evidence yet that radiation caused the genetic differences between the dogs in these different areas, as Jim Smith, an environmental scientist at the University of Portsmouth in England who has studied the Chernobyl accident and did not contribute to the research, tells Science News’ Meghan Rosen. – Will Sullivan (March 8, 2023)

Not too long ago, the hunt was on for “entirely new species” to come from the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown:

Decades after the Soviet-era meltdown drove 60,000 people from their homes in the Ukraine, a rebirth is taking place inside the exclusion zone. With Geiger counter in hand, the author explores Europe’s strangest wildlife refuge, an enchanted post-apocalyptic forest from which entirely new species may soon emerge. – Outside (February 15, 2011)

Thing is, those “new species” have always existed and always will exist — in the human imagination at least.

Meanwhile, it is just the dogs. “Evolution” led them back to your basic dog:

The paper is open access.

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Vox offers three “unexplainable” mysteries of life on Earth

In three podcasts at Vox:

How did life start on Earth? What was the series of events that led to birds, bugs, amoebas, you, and me?

That’s the subject of Origins, a three-episode series from Unexplainable — Vox’s podcast that explores big mysteries, unanswered questions, and all the things we learn by diving into the unknown. – Brian Resnick (March 1, 2023)

The three mysteries they offer are:

Where did Earth’s water come from?How did life start in that water?What is life anyway?

About that last: Science writer Carl Zimmer offers “The problem is, for each definition of life, scientists can think of a confounding exception. Take, for instance, NASA’s definition of life: “Life is a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution.” But that definition would exclude viruses, which are not “self-sustaining” and can only survive and replicate by infiltrating a host.”

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Origin of life as a chemical Eden?

Well, we can’t blame them for trying…

At Aeon:

Thinking of life in terms of energy challenges the very definition of life. ‘It’s not what life is,’ [Mike] Russell said. ‘It’s what life does.’ After all, you replace each atom in your body, on average, every few years. In that sense, life isn’t a thing so much as a manner of being, a restless fit of destruction and creation. If it can be defined at all, it is this: life is a self-sustaining, highly organised flux, a natural way that matter and energy express themselves under certain conditions.

Russell’s conception of our species, along with every other living thing, as mere energy patterns, ultimately born of rogue fluctuations in the Universe’s infancy, might make us feel a little less special. Then again, it might also make us feel a little less alone. We are descendants of an unbroken energetic lineage from the dawn of time. Darwin intuited this deep link between biology and physics, speculating that it is ‘probable that the principle of life will hereafter be shown to be part, or consequence, of some general law’. And, he might have added, there’s grandeur in this view of life, too. – Tim Requarth (January 11, 2016)

That was back in 2016. It was one of the more artistic origin of life theories. But they come and they go. Life goes on.

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Is there a center of the universe?

Asked at ZME Science:

This very homogeneous image of the early universe is proof of two things we discussed. First, that the ‘bang’ was not triggered by something, and second, if there is no point of origin for an explosion, there is no center of the universe, no privileged spot.

There is another important characteristic of the universe, it does not indicate any relevant direction. In fancy words, the universe is isotropic in the big picture, meaning it doesn’t have a preferred direction. Roads are not isotropic, you have to be going in a direction, a sink is not isotropic, the water moves to the drain. – Paula Ferreira* (March 8, 2023)

How do we know that the Big Bang was not “triggered by something”? Do we know anything about what went on before that?

*Ferreira is a PhD student in physics.

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Earliest known horseback riders pushed back to 5000 years ago

At Smithsonian Magazine:

Who were the earliest humans to look at horses and consider trying to ride them?

Archaeologists are now one step closer to answering that question. A new analysis of 5,000-year-old human skeletal remains has revealed the earliest known direct evidence of horseback riding.

In a recent study published in the journal Science Advances, researchers examined skeletons belonging to a Bronze Age group called the Yamnaya, who lived across the Eurasian steppe between roughly 3000 and 2500 B.C.E. – Julia Binswanger (March 7, 2023)

How long will it be before it’s pushed back to 10,000 years ago? It’s not that difficult a technology to grasp. Absent the internal combustion engine, horses are usually worth more to humans alive than dead.

The paper is open access.

You may also wish to read: Centaurs: The surprising truth – when humans meld with horses:

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Robert J. Marks on why AI doesn’t achieve consciousness

At Mind Matters News, Peter Biles writes,

Robert J. Marks wrote an article for the Spring Issue of Salvo Magazine on AI, covering his ideas on its “non-computability” in the areas of love, empathy, and creativity.

The Quality of Qualia

I was particularly intrigued by Marks’s thoughts on qualia, a term used to describe the multifaceted realm of sensory experience. We often report on AI’s inability to be creative here at Mind Matters, but what about experiencing the world through touch, smell, and sight? Qualia is related to the mystery of consciousness, another non-computable feature of human life, and according to Marks, is far out of the purview of AI capabilities. Marks writes about the experience of biting into an orange as an example:

If the experience of biting an orange segment cannot be described to a man without the senses of taste and smell, how can a computer programmer expect to duplicate qualia experiences in a computer using computer code? If the true experience can’t be explained, it is nonalgorithmic and therefore non-computable. There are devices called artificial noses and tongues that detect chemicals like the molecules associated with the orange. But these sensors experience no pleasure when the molecules are detected. They experience no qualia. Duplicating qualia is beyond the capability of AI.” by Robert J. Marks

Qualia can’t be explained or encountered through algorithms. – Robert J. Marks “Cannot Compute”(March 7, 2023)

This might be an argument for the uniquess of being alive in general and of human consciousness in particular.

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Astrophysicist insists on the need to distinguish ourselves from nature

At Medium, Harvard’s Avi Loeb offers,

We should not accept nature as fate, especially when dealing with the extinction of the human species. If our Artificial intelligence (AI) astronauts will venture into interstellar space, they will serve as monuments that humanity distinguished its destiny from the death prescribed to it by nature. Our natural endpoint involves the evolution of the Sun that will boil off all terrestrial water and sterilize Earth’s surface from life-as-we-know-it within a billion years. Most sun-like stars formed billions of years before the Sun and have already sterilized the surfaces of their formerly habitable Earths. We were not around billions of years ago to listen to the numerous cries for help from distressed civilizations on these planets. If these civilizations were indistinguishable from nature like the dinosaurs were 66 million years ago when the Chicxulub impactor killed them, then the ruins of these civilizations must lie on the surface of their burnt-up planets. Our AI astronauts might find these relics. But we could find the relics of the more intelligent species that ventured into interstellar space and avoided their natural doom to arrive at our doorstep near Earth.

Distinguishing ourselves by overcoming our natural destiny is what makes us human. I was supposed to play it safe and stay at home after noticing this morning the pileup of five inches of snow outdoors. Instead, I chose to maintain my morning jog at sunrise. When nature offers me a challenge, I enjoy facing it and marveling at its beauty. Life is worth living, particularly when we make possible what seems impossible at first sight. – “Distinguishing Ourselves from Nature” (March 4, 2023)

But wait! What fuels the possibility of separating ourselves from nature? Every run-of-the-mill science writer knows that we are merely the 99% chimpanzee that cannot transcend the accidental blob/monad-to-man history of life.

This human exceptionalism could be the most radical suggestion that Avi Loeb, no stranger to controversy, has ever made.

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Bumblebees can solve puzzles like chimps?

At Scientific American:

Like chimpanzees, bees can learn specific strategies for opening a puzzle box and accessing a reward inside by mimicking the behavior of their trained mates

Culture, at its most basic, refers to socially learned behaviors that are shared among a population. Until the mid-20th century, this ability was thought to be something uniquely human. But bountiful evidence now shows that culture exists in a wide variety of species, from bighorn sheep and vervet monkeys to meerkats and cranes.

Scientists are even discovering that insects can join in their own culture. In a new PLOS Biology study, researchers used a gold-standard test that’s been applied to species such as chimpanzees and great tits to reveal that bumblebees are capable of cultural transmission of information from one insect to another. Bees that were taught one of two solutions for opening a puzzle box spread that behavioral trait to untrained bees, creating a cultural signature for their colony. “This is an animal with a brain the size of a pinhead, and still they could achieve similar things [as] primates or birds, which is quite remarkable,” says lead author Alice Bridges, now a lecturer in biology and animal behavior at Anglia Ruskin University in England, who undertook the study as part of her doctoral research at Queen Mary University of London. – Rachel Nuwer (March 7, 2023)

So let’s see: Humans are the 99% chimpanzee, right? And bumblebees can solve puzzles like chimps. So that means they can solve puzzles 99% as well as humans?

Wait, no. Where is the bumblebee space telescope? Where is the chimp space telescope?

Human exceptionalism is becoming more obvious all the time, just harder to admit.

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At IAI News: Time existed before the Big Bang

Regius Professor of Chemistry, University of Glasgow, Lee Cronin argues that time is fundamental but space is not:

The problem with a universe in which time is frozen is that it requires four assumptions to be made. The first is that the origin of the universe is required to be almost perfectly ordered at the Big Bang. The second is that the second law of thermodynamics must emerge from this order at the beginning. The third is that time must be an emergent property. Finally, causality itself must be emergent. We have no reason to believe any of these assumptions are correct, but all four of these assumptions can be replaced with just one, more intuitive claim: that time is fundamental. Fundamental time removes the need for order at the Big Bang, it removes the need for an explicit second law of thermodynamics or for causality itself to emerge. Generally speaking, a theory is stronger the fewer assumptions it needs to make. That is the great advantage of time fundamentalism. Moreover, seeing time as fundamental has the advantage that it tallies with our own experience. – Lee Cronin (February 28, 2023)

Many folks in physics sure don’t like the Big Bang.

One problem is that if time existed before the Big Bang, it either came into existence separately from space or it is a past eternity. But a past eternity is, unfortunately, the dreaded Hilbert’s Hotel.

You may also wish to read: The Big Bang: Put simply,the facts are wrong.

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“Misinformation” is largely a phantom, a high-maintenance elite freakout

That matters because, according to UPI, a coalition of fifty medical groups is organizing to fight misinformation.

Alarmed by the increasing spread of medical misinformation, 50 U.S. medical and science organizations have announced the formation of a new group that aims to debunk fake health news.

Called the Coalition for Trust in Health & Science, the group brings together reputable associations representing American academics, researchers, scientists, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, drug and insurance companies, consumer advocates, public health professionals and even medical ethicists. – Alan Mozes, HealthDay News (March 23, 2023)

Meanwhile, here’s the cold-shower abstract from a recent study of the topic:

Abstract: Alarmist narratives about online misinformation continue to gain traction despite evidence that its prevalence and impact are overstated. Drawing on research examining the use of big data in social science and reception studies, we identify six misconceptions about misinformation and highlight the conceptual and methodological challenges they raise. The first set of misconceptions concerns the prevalence and circulation of misinformation. First, scientists focus on social media because it is methodologically convenient, but misinformation is not just a social media problem. Second, the internet is not rife with misinformation or news, but with memes and entertaining content. Third, falsehoods do not spread faster than the truth; how we define (mis)information influences our results and their practical implications. The second set of misconceptions concerns the impact and the reception of misinformation. Fourth, people do not believe everything they see on the internet: the sheer volume of engagement should not be conflated with belief. Fifth, people are more likely to be uninformed than misinformed; surveys overestimate misperceptions and say little about the causal influence of misinformation. Sixth, the influence of misinformation on people’s behavior is overblown as misinformation often “preaches to the choir.” To appropriately understand and fight misinformation, future research needs to address these challenges. (open access) More.

Two thoughts: Anyone who lived through the COVID era and was paying attention knows how much misinformation and stuff that didn’t really make sense generally was coming from people in power. The local looney toons had a hard time even getting a mike!

Second, the best way to fight misinformation is an open society.

Anyone remember the Disinformation Governance Board?

You may also wish to read: Royal Society: Don’t censor misinformation; it makes things worse. While others demand crackdowns on “fake news,” the Society reminds us that the history of science is one of error correction. It’s a fact that much COVID news later thought to need correction was in fact purveyed by official sources, not blogs or Facebook or Twitter accounts.

Hat tip: Instapundit

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