Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Fossil insect found at WalMart… maybe not even extinct

At Phys.org: "The giant lacewing was formerly widespread across North America, but was mysteriously extirpated from eastern North America by the 1950s. This discovery suggests there may be relic populations of this large, Jurassic-Era insect yet to be discovered, explained Michael Skvarla, director of Penn State's Insect Identification Lab." Read More ›

Convergent evolution: Sleeping behavior in plants evolved independently multiple times

At ScienceDaily: "It is now clear that sleeping behavior has evolved independently in various plant groups and at different times in the course of Earth's history, so it must have some ecological benefits to the parent plant," [Stephen] McLoughlin continued. Read More ›

More on the Lab Leak theory vindicated… receipts pile in…

Matt Ridley: To summarise. A bat coronavirus pandemic began in the city with the biggest bat coronavirus lab in the world, a long way from where those viruses are found naturally. It was caused by the first and so-far only sarbecovirus with a furin cleavage site in it, a feature that had been inserted into other coronaviruses nearby, and that had been planned to be inserted into a sarbecovirus for the first time. Read More ›

Lab leak theory vindicated in upper echelons

Turley has the receipts. The COVID crazies have singlehandedly done more damage to “the science” and “trust the science!” than anyone who actually hated science could possibly do. Read More ›

Bob Marks Knocks it Out of the Park on AI

This is a great discussion about whether AI (1) is currently sentient and (2) can, in principle, be sentient. All three panelists agree that it not currently sentient. It is 2 to 1 on whether it can, in principle, be sentient. As you might expect, how the materialists reach their conclusion follows more from metaphysical commitments than evidence. Max and Melanie (the materialists) see no reason why, in principle, computers cannot in the future be conscious. Why not? they ask, we are all just material stuff. And if you agree with their metaphysical premises, that is an unanswerable question. Max, especially is committed to this view and thinks we should be more humble. He is so blinkered by his commitment Read More ›

Massive early galaxies defy “prior understanding of the universe”

Tip: If all you want is to have your prior beliefs about the universe confirmed, don’t whack a huge telescope into space and code it to send back real-life actual data. Pound lecterns on behalf of manipulated interpretations of prior data instead. Read More ›