19 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Religion Prevented Immortality
The other way was if you do various kinds of mumbo-jumbo then this great agent in the sky will come down and give you eternal life, in which case you could have an infinite number of sports cars. And so Pascal’s wager: either you believe in God or you don’t; if there is no God it can’t do any harm to believe in him because he’s not going to punish you because he doesn’t exist; on the other hand if you don’t believe in him and there is one then he’ll be mad at you and you won’t...From Marvin Minsky'S "Why Freud Was the First Good AI Theorist"
26 APR 2012 by ideonexus
Sir Eddington Doesn't Believe in Neutrinos
Just now nuclear physicists are writing a great deal about hypothetical particles called neutrinos supposed to account for certain peculiar facts observed in ß-ray disintegration. We can perhaps best describe the neutrinos as little bits of spin-energy that have got detached. I am not much impressed by the neutrino theory. In an ordinary way I might say that I do not believe in neutrinos... But I have to reflect that a physicist may be an artist, and you never know where you are with artists...But he's not willing to bet against their existence, because a physicist might invent them through reason and experimentation. A fascinating thought that this summary cannot do justice.