Good ole Brian Cox. I miss his wistful stares from mountaintops as he regales the audience with soundbites of majestic physics.
The TV presenter/scientist/ex-keyboardist of D-REAM has recently come to Twitter blows with blowhard Chopra and his rather dubious use of real science to espouse his spiritualistic nonsense. There is a great article, here, at The New Statesman:
Epic Rap Battle! Awesome sauce (H/T Void]
This is an issue that plagues every single media institution. Because the BBC is THE port of call, for me at least, for news and views, whether from their excellent website, r from their news coverage, it is infuriating, from a skeptical point of view, that equal airtime is given to dissenting views which do not hold equal proportion of adherence in the relevant fields. That a creationist might receive 1 on 1 battle time with an evolutionary bioligist is misrepresenting the state of affairs, as can be seen here:
Do you jump to help the less fortunate, cry during sad movie scenes, or tweet and post the latest topics and photos that excite or move you? If yes, you may be among the 20 percent of our population that is genetically pre-disposed to empathy, according to Stony Brook University psychologists Arthur and Elaine Aron.
A new light has been cast on one of philosophy’s most profound debates: Do we have free will, and if so where does it come from?
Free will seems pretty obvious. When we make a decision we feel like we’re actually making a choice, not as though a confluence of our genetic inheritance and environmental factors have made it inevitable that we will take the path we do. However, whether this is really the case is much less clear. The more we learn about the factors that cause people to act in certain ways the easier it is to question if there is any choice involved.
OK so my twins are almost 4, but that doesn’t stop me being proud when they make what appears to be good causal connections about the world around them. In this case, looking closely at a dinosaur boo, this is what happened. I was busy getting dressed and ready for work; I was impatiently in a hurry.
When the scientific method is used badly, when preconceptions are allowed to dictate analyses and conclusions, then you get bad science, and false knowledge. Untruths. In this vein, the work of Dr Caleb Lack and Dr Charles Abramson is well worth looking in to.
Representation!
I reported in my Free Will? book that we can laser in memories to fruit flies, so it was only a matter of time before such procedures were contextualised to humans. Scientific American reports:
A few weeks ago on the History Channel’s sister station, H2, the astronomy-based series The Universe went on a quest to solve an ancient mystery. Previous episodes in the previous few weeks had covered the construction and purpose of the pyramids (which was pretty good), Stonehenge, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The first two certainly have an astronomical connection, such as the solstice alignment of Stonehenge, but explaining Sodom’s ruin via astronomical body begs the very serious question: was this simply a theological story or etiological myth? Apparently that skepticism couldn’t find its way to the heart of the show.
I have been invited to come talk on the Skeptical Canary Show podcast on Wednesday evening (7pm), GMT, by Dr…
I really enjoyed watching the debate that is the talk of the town just now. Eben Alecxander, author of bestseller Proof of Heaven with team mate Ray Moody were arguing that death is not final, that there is an afterlife.
This article is taken from the excellent podcast Reasonable Doubts which itself borrows from source material and commentary from Tom Rees’ superb…
Here is a quote that I posted on the Daily Telegraph (eek) in the UK which was reporting the letter it had received denouncing PM Cameron’s claim that we should be proud that we are a Christian nation. I will first post the comment I reacted to:
Some fellow tippling philosophers and myself are having an email exchange about psychology. It started with one of us writing an email lauding Daniel Kahneman’s work Thinking Fast and Slow (the bold is where he is quoting someone else).
The other day I posted a piece refuting the notion that Christianity is somehow causally responsible for the development of science and the scientific method. I would like to continue with a short piece looking at another couple of points which I have had heard raised.
The room was heaving in Conway Hall last night as British Humanist Association (BHA) President, physicist and broadcaster Professor Jim Al-Khalili gave this year’s Voltaire Lecture on the theme of ‘Lessons from the past: science and rationalism in medieval Islam.’ The lecture was chaired by his predecessor as President, and current BHA Vice President, the journalist Polly Toynbee.
Tihs has come up in conversation elsewhere, so I thought I would resurrect this old post from my old, old…
William Lane Craig and his obsequious co-host recently slammed Counter-Apologist and his criticisms of Craig’s use of time and the Kalam, in his recent podcast. Craig takes chap potshots at CA and is pretty disingenuous. I have red a transcript of CA’s upcoming reply, and he is spot on.
Check this video out as it will give you some background.
This article in Mother Jones builds on work which I, myself, talked about in my book Free Will? It is certainly the case that we can predict political leanings using disgust sensitivity. As I state in my book (p. 153-4):