28 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
Presenting Evidence is a Moral Act
Making an evidence presentation is a moral act as well as an intellectual activity. To maintain standards of quality, relevance, and integrity for evidence, consumers of presentations should insist that presenters be held intellectually and ethically responsible for what they show and tell. Thus consuming a presentation is also an intellectual and a moral activity.
1 Our responsibility as the audience is to hold the presenter accountable.
16 JUL 2013 by ideonexus
The Web is the Death of the Anecdote
Surveillance serves not just as a legal and historical
record but as a record of rep: proof that you’ve done
what you say you’ve done. You bark, and anyone on
the mesh can search to see if you also bite. It’s the
foundation of the reputation economy.
It’s not just video, of course, but surveillance of all
types. Ubiquitous, ever-present surveillance has become
the new public record in countless habitats. You’ve
seen the phrase, “Links or didn’t happen,” right?
Without footage... 1 
notes
notes"Links or it didn't happen," if something is not on video, the oral history is worthless.
29 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
Belief VS Evidence
Our own view of what is and is not
possible in reality affects how we
perceive identical evidence. But that view
shifts with time, and thus, evidence that
might at one point seem meaningless can
come to hold a great deal of meaning.
Think of how many ideas seemed
outlandish when first put forward, seemed
so impossible that they couldn’t be true:
the earth being round; the earth going
around the sun; the universe being made
up almost entirely of something that we
can’t see, dark matter and... 1 notes
notesMany great minds have been taken in by supernatural ideas.
13 APR 2012 by ideonexus
How Scientists Differ from Clerics
When more evidence is garnered, whether through the analysis of additional characters, through the discovery of new specimens, or by pointing out errors and problems with the original data sets, new trees can be calculated. If these new trees better explain the data (taking fewer evolutionary transformations), they supplant the previous trees. You might not always like what comes out, but you have to accept it.
Any real systematist (or scientist in general) has to be ready to heave all that... 1 notes
notesThey must discard incorrect beliefs when facing new evidence.
13 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
Evidence in Geology is Overwhelming
The gradual advance of Geology, during the last twenty years, to the dignity of a science, has arisen from the laborious and extensive collection of facts, and from the enlightened spirit in which the inductions founded on those facts have been deduced and discussed. To those who are unacquainted with this science, or indeed to any person not deeply versed in the history of this and kindred subjects, it is impossible to convey a just impression of the nature of that evidence by which a multit... 1 notes
notesIn the layers of geological strata are written more evidence than any human witness could bare.
16 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
DNA as Evidence of Common Ancestry
By sequencing
the DNA of various species and measuring how similar these sequences
are, we can reconstruct their evolutionary relationships. This is done
by making the entirely reasonable assumption that species having more
similar DNA are more closely related—that is, their common ancestors
lived more recently. These molecular methods have not produced much
change in the pre-DNA-era trees of life: both the visible traits of organisms
and their DNA sequences usually give the same informatio... 1 notes
notesThe idea of common ancestry leads naturally to powerful and testable predictions about evolution.
18 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny
The similarity between different vertebrate embryos is indeed remarkable. Since the early 1800s, embryologists have been struck by the parallel between early development in various animal species and their evolutionary relationship, a resemblance conveniently abbreviated by the saying "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." Of course, each of us does not really pass through a "lizard" stage on our way to a fully developed human form. But it is true that animals who are more closely related in ter...
1 Living things go through the forms of their ancestors, not specifically but generally, because it is easier for evolution to add a mutation to the end of a complex sequence of developments than to re-engineer earlier in the process.
20 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Skeletal Similarities in Mammals
What a piece of work is the mammalian skeleton. I don't mean it is beautiful in itself,
although I think it is. I mean the fact that we can talk about 'the' mammalian skeleton at all: the fact
that such a complicatedly interlocking thing is so gloriously different across the mammals, in all its
parts, while simultaneously being so obviously the same thing throughout the mammals. Our own
skeleton is familiar enough to need no picture, but look at this skeleton of a bat. Isn't it fascinating
ho...There are corresponding bones across species, evolved into other functions.
20 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Transforming Species Through Mathematics
In 1917 the great Scottish zoologist D'Arcy Thompson wrote a book called On Growth and
Form, in the last chapter of which he introduced his famous 'method of transformations'. * He
would draw an animal on graph paper, and then he would distort the graph paper in a
mathematically specifiable way and show that the form of the original animal had turned into
another, related animal. You could think of the original graph paper as a piece of rubber, on which
you draw your first animal. Then the tr...D'Arcy Thompson showed how one species could be transformed into another by sketching it on graph paper and distorting it.
19 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
People Freed by DNA Evidence
...there is a distressingly long list of people
who have been wrongly convicted on eye-witness testimony and subsequently freed - sometimes
after many years - because of new evidence from DNA. In Texas alone, thirty-five condemned
people have been exonerated since DNA evidence became admissible in court. And that's just the
ones who are still alive. Given the gusto with which the State of Texas enforces the death penalty
(during his six years as Governor, George W. Bush signed a death warrant... 1 notes
notesIt's shocking how many people have been falsely imprisoned.
