27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus

 Our Modern Worldview and Morality is Shaped by Science

To begin with, the findings of science imply that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures—their theories of the genesis of the world, life, humans, and societies—are factually mistaken. We know, but our ancestors did not, that humans belong to a single species of African primate that developed agriculture, government, and writing late in its history. We know that our species is a tiny twig of a genealogical tree that embraces all living things and that e...
Folksonomies: science humanism morality
Folksonomies: science humanism morality
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17 NOV 2014 by ideonexus

 An Eloquent Description of Science and Wonder

As I gathered information for this book, I was continually reminded of the reality that science, rooted as it is in the certainties of the physical world, is a process that necessarily unfolds over time. In school, science classes tend to work according to this linear model; there's a “beginning, middle, and end” to science investigations, no matter how hard teachers may fight the “cookbook” reductionism that threatens true scientific inquiry. Yet, in probing further, I came to unders...
Folksonomies: science education wonder
Folksonomies: science education wonder
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24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus

 You Can't Predict What You Are Going to Do

In the physical world, the only way to learn tomorrow’s weather in detail is to wait twenty-four hours and see, even if nothing is random at all. The universe is computing tomorrow’s weather as rapidly and as efficiently as possible; any smaller model is inaccurate, and the smallest error is amplified into large effects. At a personal level, even if the world is as deterministic as a computer program, you still can’t predict what you’re going to do. This is because your prediction me...
Folksonomies: predictability modeling
Folksonomies: predictability modeling
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Rudy Rucker on why our brains are like the weather, so complex that only the actual system can run the computation.

10 DEC 2013 by ideonexus

 Why Science and Religion are Irreconcilable

To begin with, the findings of science entail that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures—their theories of the origins of life, humans, and societies—are factually mistaken. We know, but our ancestors did not, that humans belong to a single species of African primate that developed agriculture, government, and writing late in its history. We know that our species is a tiny twig of a genealogical tree that embraces all living things and that emerged fro...
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Steven Pinker's critique of why "non-overlapping magesteria" doesn't work.

14 JUN 2013 by ideonexus

 Prediction Errors for the Information Age

Perhaps the best way to describe the flawed vision of fin de siecle futurists is to say that, with few exceptions, they expected the coming of an ''immaculate'' economy -- one in which people would be largely emancipated from any grubby involvement with the physical world. The future, everyone insisted, would bring an ''information economy'' that would mainly produce intangibles. The good jobs would go to ''symbolic analysts,'' who would push icons around on computer screens; knowledge, rathe...
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Economists misunderstood the value of information and material goods in the information revolutions.

26 MAR 2013 by ideonexus

 Mathematics Lies Outside Ourselves

I believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our function is to discover or observe it, and that the theorems which we prove, and which we describe grandiloquently as our "creations," are simply the notes of our observations. * * * Let us suppose that I am giving a lecture on some system of geometry, such as the ordinary Euclidean geometry, and that I draw figures on the blackboard to stimulate the imagination of my audience, rough drawings of straight lines or ...
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When teaching mathematics, it does not matter how nice the drawings or the teaching space, the ideas are what's important and they are independent of the teaching method.

16 MAY 2012 by ideonexus

 Similarities of Natural Selection to the Laws of Thermody...

It will be noticed that the fundamental theorem proved above bears some remarkable resemblances to the second law of thermodynamics. Both are properties of populations, or aggregates, true irrespective of the nature of the units which compose them; both are statistical laws; each requires the constant increase of a measurable quantity, in the one case the entropy of a physical system and in the other the fitness, measured by m, of a biological population. As in the physical world we can conce...
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An interesting argument, difficult to follow, but important.

24 APR 2012 by ideonexus

 Physics Delves into More and More Abstract Mathematics

The steady progress of physics requires for its theoretical formulation a mathematics which get continually more advanced. ... it was expected that mathematics would get more and more complicated, but would rest on a permanent basis of axioms and definitions, while actually the modern physical developments have required a mathematics that continually shifts its foundation and gets more abstract. Non-euclidean geometry and noncommutative algebra, which were at one time were considered to be pu...
Folksonomies: physics mathematics
Folksonomies: physics mathematics
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According to Paul A. M. Dirac.

03 SEP 2011 by ideonexus

 This is the Age of Insects

The mortal enemies of man are not his fellows of another continent or race; they are the aspects of the physical world which limit or challenge his control, the disease germs that attack him and his domesticated plants and animals, and the insects that carry many of these germs as well as working notable direct injury. This is not the age of man, however great his superiority in size and intelligence; it is literally the age of insects.
Folksonomies: illness insects man
Folksonomies: illness insects man
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Man is under assault from germs carried by insects.

10 AUG 2011 by ideonexus

 Nonexistence is Preferable to the Afterlife

“What will happen? When we leave the world of the dead, will we live again? Or will we vanish as our daemons did? Brothers, sisters, we shouldn’t follow this child anywhere till we know what’s going to happen to us!” Others took up the question: “Yes, tell us where we’re going! Tell us what to expect! We won’t go unless we know what’ll happen to us!” Lyra turned to Will in despair, but he said, “Tell them the truth. Ask the alethiometer, and tell them what it says.” ...
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In Pullman's vision of the afterlife, things are dreary and static, the dead long to dissipate and have their atoms return to the world and become other things. An atheist alternative to the boredom of heaven.