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Biological evolution is intelligent? All by itself?

It’s come down to this, apparently, among the no-design crowd. From Raw Story: Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution offers an explanation for why biological organisms seem so well designed to live on our planet. This process is typically described as “unintelligent” – based on random variations with no direction. But despite its success, some oppose this theory because they don’t believe living things can evolve in increments. Something as complex as the eye of an animal, they argue, must be the product of an intelligent creator. I don’t think invoking a supernatural creator can ever be a scientifically useful explanation. But what about intelligence that isn’t supernatural? Our new results, based on computer modelling, link evolutionary processes to the principles Read More ›

Consciousness like a self-driving car with no will or intent?

A product of carefully balanced chaos?  According to the last whiz that blew through here, There is no “I” anyway. From Science: Instead, consciousness might emerge from a careful balancing that causes the brain to “explore” the maximum number of unique pathways to generate meaning, he says. The researchers call this balance point “a critical point.”“[It’s] like cars exploring the streets of the city,” Tagliazucchi says. “If the cars move always in the same restrictive manner, if they move from point A to point B and back, at the end of the day you don’t really understand the city. But if the cars are thorough explorers and go through all possible parts of the city, you get a map that’s Read More ›

Durston and Craig on an infinite temporal past . . .

In recent days, the issue of an infinite temporal past as a step by step causal succession has come up at UD. For, it seems the evolutionary materialist faces the unwelcome choice of a cosmos from a true nothing — non-being or else an actually completed infinite past succession of finite causal steps. Durston: >>To  avoid  the  theological  and  philosophical  implications  of  a  beginning  for the  universe,  some  naturalists  such  as  Sean  Carroll  suggest  that  all  we  need  to  do  is  build  a  successful  mathematical  model  of  the  universe  where  time  t runs  from  minus  infinity  to  positive  infinity. Although  there  is  no  problem  in  having  t run  from  minus  infinity  to  plus  infinity with  a  mathematical  model,  the real Read More ›

Hawking uses black hole to split physicists

From Nature: Some welcome his latest report as a fresh way to solve a black-hole conundrum; others are unsure of its merits. … In a paper published in 1976, Hawking pointed out that the outflowing particles — now known as Hawking radiation — would have completely random properties. As a result, once the black hole was gone, the information carried by anything that had previously fallen into the hole would be lost to the Universe. But this result clashes with laws of physics that say that information, like energy, is conserved, creating the paradox. “That paper was responsible for more sleepless nights among theoretical physicists than any paper in history,” Strominger said during his talk. The mistake, Strominger explained, was Read More ›

Our Moon formed in collision with embryo planet?

A new moon formation theory, from ScienceDaily: The moon was formed from a violent, head-on collision between the early Earth and a ‘planetary embryo’ called Theia approximately 100 million years after the Earth formed, almost 4.5 billion years ago. … Scientists had already known about this high-speed crash, which occurred almost 4.5 billion years ago, but many thought the Earth collided with Theia (pronounced THAY-eh) at an angle of 45 degrees or more — a powerful side-swipe (simulated in this 2012 YouTube video). New evidence reported Jan. 29 in the journal Science substantially strengthens the case for a head-on assault. … The fact that oxygen in rocks on the Earth and our moon share chemical signatures was very telling, Young Read More ›

Newsweek admits, mediaeval world didn’t think Earth was flat

Of course not. That would make Earth a dinner plate circled by globes. From Newsweek: Columbus and the Spaniards knew the Earth was round—Columbus’s plans to sail to Asia were questioned because the ocean was thought to be too vast to sail across, not because anyone thought the Earth was flat, Gould writes. Even the religious authorities of the 15th century knew better. So why on Earth have so many schoolchildren been taught otherwise? The fault lies with 19th century writers such as Washington Irving, Jean Letronne and others. Letronne was “an academic of strong anti-religious prejudices… who cleverly drew upon both to misrepresent the church fathers and their medieval successors as believing in a flat earth, in his On Read More ›

Bees and ants provide clue to human suicides?

From Science Daily: Could human suicide have evolutionary roots in self-sacrificial behaviors like those seen in species such as honeybees and ants? … In a paper recently published in the journal Psychological Review, the researchers theorize that humans exhibit the characteristics of eusocial species such as relying on multigenerational and cooperative care of young and utilizing division of labor for successful survival. “Humans are a species that is eusocial, and that’s an important starting point,” Joiner said. “That suggests a certain set of characteristics, including some really striking self-sacrifice behaviors.” Those eusocial behaviors, understood as part of what is called inclusive fitness in evolutionary biology, are adaptive. “The idea is if you give up yourself, which would include your genes, Read More ›

Aw, not more of this “There is no ‘I’ stuff”?

Cartloads of it these days at places like Big Think: Jon Kabat-Zinn: If you put people in a scanner and tell them to just do nothing; just rest in the scanner; don’t do anything at all, it turns out that there’s a region in the midline of the cerebral cortex that’s known as the default mode network that just lights up, that all of a sudden gets very, very active. I mean you’re told to do nothing and then your brain starts to use up energy a lot. A lot of ATP in this, you know, activation in the medial frontal areas. And that’s called the default mode network because when you’re told to do nothing, you default to activity Read More ›

Empathy more common in animals than thought?

From ScienceDaily: A new study reveals that prairie voles console loved ones who are feeling stressed — and it appears that the infamous “love hormone,” oxytocin, is the underlying mechanism. Until now, consolation behavior has only been documented in a few nonhuman species with high levels of sociality and cognition, such as elephants, dolphins and dogs. More. One difficulty with discussing such issues is anthropomorphism, that is, ascribing states of mind to animals that are probably unique to humans. Animals doubtless have empathy; after all, tortoises can put upended tortoises back on their feet. But reason and moral sense are different from empathy, in that they require some level of abstraction. Moral sense, for example, may compel the view that Read More ›

More ways to pack tennis balls than atoms in universe?

From New Scientist: How many ways are there to arrange 128 balls? Now Stefano Martiniani of the University of Cambridge and his colleagues have found a clever way around the problem. They say there are 10^250 ways to arrange 128 jammed spheres – far more than the 10^80 atoms in the universe. So how did they do it? More. So were some choices made when the universe came to exist? See also: Copernicus, you are not going to believe who is using your name. Or how. Follow UD News at Twitter!

Is the gene tree a delusion?

From a recent article in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution: In summary, the long c-genes that are required for accurate reconstruction of species trees using shortcut coalescence methods do not exist and are a delusion. Coalescence approaches based on SNPs that are widely spaced in the genome avoid problems with the recombination ratchet and merit further pursuit in both empirical systematic research and simulations. A delusion? Wow. Story: Well, here’s a ScienceDirect abstract, and you decide: Higher-level relationships among placental mammals are mostly resolved, but several polytomies remain contentious. Song et al. (2012) claimed to have resolved three of these using shortcut coalescence methods (MP-EST, STAR) and further concluded that these methods, which assume no within-locus recombination, are required to unravel Read More ›

Dawkins disinvited but defended here

With your coffee … At “TGIF: Dawkins disinvited to science conference”: Professor Richard Dawkins has had an invitation to speak at a science event withdrawn by organisers for sharing a “highly offensive” video mocking feminists on Twitter. Here. Make a point of seeing it while it is up. Big Social Media like Facebook and Twitter have taken to censorship of speech that offends whoever complains. If WordPress gets into the act, there’ll probably be some fragile consciousness out there wittering to the new media censors about Uncommon Descent. After all, If someone who has political cachet makes a big to-do about feeling attacked or threatened, their target has committed an offence. So, even if we are nothing more than your daily Read More ›

TGIF: Dawkins disinvited to science conference

Probably for all the wrong reasons. From UK Independent: Richard Dawkins dropped from science event for tweeting video mocking feminists and Islamists Professor Richard Dawkins has had an invitation to speak at a science event withdrawn by organisers for sharing a “highly offensive” video mocking feminists on Twitter. Dawkins was scheduled to speak at the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism which will take place in New York City in May, but on Thursday organisers issued a statement concerning his participation. “The NECSS has withdrawn its invitation to Richard Dawkins to participate at NECSS 2016. We have taken this action in response to Dr. Dawkins’ approving re-tweet of a highly offensive video. More. A joke song satirising the alliance between radical Read More ›

Wikipedia: The world of heavily edited unfacts

Or “troo” facts. From APS Physics: Focus: Wikipedia Articles Separate into Four Categories But do we know which category we are reading? Wikipedia allows anyone to contribute to its millions of articles and doesn’t exert any central control, yet striking order has emerged, according to an analysis of the entire editing history of the English portion of the website. Researchers found that articles fall into four main categories based on the way they are edited and that a relatively small number of editors have a major influence on the site. Sure. You would think the multiverse was Settled Science, to listen to them. The four distinct categories found point to a persisting inequality of influence—with a small number of super-editors controlling Read More ›

The Selfish Gene, dying, yet lives?

We figure Dawkins’ selfish gene will die after its proponents retire. Look, even New Scientist was last spotted quietly getting off the boat. It doesn’t get worse than that. Oh wait … from a puff piece in Nature: Matt Ridley reassesses Richard Dawkins’s pivotal reframing of evolution, 40 years on. … Books about science tend to fall into two categories: those that explain it to lay people in the hope of cultivating a wide readership, and those that try to persuade fellow scientists to support a new theory, usually with equations. Books that achieve both — changing science and reaching the public — are rare. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) was one. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins Read More ›