1. Lungless frog discovered in Borneo

Comment #158672 by Pete_C on April 10, 2008 at 11:01 pm

I wonder whether there are vestigial breathing signals sent from the brain to...whatever used to be the muscles that controlled breathing.

2. The simple falsehood at the heart of Expelled

Comment #158385 by Pete_C on April 10, 2008 at 12:14 pm

"Isn't it true that since we know about the mechanisms behind Darwinian evolution, and we know how to make our genotype stronger, that we should engage in practices that make our species stronger genetically?"

First, you're committing the naturalistic fallacy, by arguing:
1) X is a fact
2) Y is a fact
therefore,
3) We should do Z

Hume convincingly argued that we can never make arguments of this nature, since we can't connect the "should" that pops up in (3) to anything occurring in (1) or (2).

Second, you start saying "What prevents us from building our ethical framework on the foundations of evolution, which -" and then add some more words that have nothing to do with the 'foundations of evolution'. You just commit the naturalistic fallacy again.

It is as if you said "What prevents us from building our ethical framework on the foundations of Newtonian gravitation, which suggests that we ensure that we are the most massive".

I suggest you think of it this way: we can use our knowledge of evolution, just like gravity, or chemistry, or ecology, to make more informed choices within an (independently argued) moral framework.

3. Richard Dawkins' US Tour begins this week

Comment #138699 by Pete_C on March 4, 2008 at 5:41 pm

#91: Interesting, but I wonder what his reasons were for not going with the "legend" option? In other words, if he doesn't believe in god, why does he still believe in Moses?

I don't mind the change of topic at all - I think I can predict the content of the next 30 posts (not the exact cities, but what the people who live there wish would happen).

Me, I'm in Berkeley so I'm all set. =)

4. Taking Science on Faith

Comment #90531 by Pete_C on November 25, 2007 at 12:33 pm

steve99, welcome to the Internet. =) You may be unsettled, but the last thing you should be is surprised.

I have noticed too that things often go like this: an article comes up for discussion. Some people quickly scan the article and make up their minds if it's from "our side", in which case the article and author are given lavish praise, or from "the other side", in which case derision follows. Some people want to discuss it in-depth, or try to turn down the noise, and are in turn attacked from all sides because they do not treat it as an us-against-them matter. But who cares? Just skip the bad comments. Or consider them an anthropological study.

As for the article, I think Davies happens to be right that lots of scientists haven't thought about the problem of induction, and do simply think that laws are laws. But to call that "faith" on a par with beliving in, say, the Virgin Birth, is really missing the point. And it's not as if those scientists who have thought about induction, and "lost their faith" as it were, are now out of a job.
I also understand the cynicism that attributes articles like this to his association with Templeton. I think he could have made all his points about science and his views on what physical laws are, without using the words "faith" and "god"; that he did use these words to me hints at an agenda. But I'm willing to hear otherwise...

5. URGENT APPEAL: Please Help Protect Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Comment #89342 by Pete_C on November 20, 2007 at 10:48 am

For anyone still interested in what's going on in this thread, I recommend reading Philip Tetlock's paper "Thinking the Unthinkable". (Google "tetlock unthinkable" to find it). Daniel Dennett brought his work up at his AAI talk.

The behaviors surrounding sacred/taboo violations are all being interestingly demonstrated here:
-outrage and strong language
-sanctioning not only of taboo-violators, but of those who express insufficient outrage at them (like me, in this post)
-cleansing behavior (the posters who said they donated more after being offended by comments)

It all makes sense if you assume that monetary contribution to the protection of AHA - an extremely important cause, in my opinion - has, to many people here, taken on the status of a sacred value (in Tetlock's sense). There's no reason to think that a group of atheists are any less susceptible to this universal way of human thinking - we have millions of years of history as social primates, but have only tried to be rationalists for a few hundred.

6. I didn't know the FLEA CIRCUS was back in town!

Comment #84949 by Pete_C on November 4, 2007 at 10:19 am

From Amazon's Book Description: "Theologians such as Alister McGrath and Keith Ward have defended the rationality of Christian beliefs about God, but both sides neglect wider questions about faith, science, power and justice in a postmodern world, which impinge deeply on all our lives."

Maybe it's a satire?

Seriously, here's my prediction: the book will not defend the thesis that a deity exists. Rather it will accuse the "New Atheists" of bad form.

7. Are the 'New Atheists' avoiding the 'real arguments'?

Comment #83904 by Pete_C on October 31, 2007 at 3:41 pm

Nice quote, joekoz451...

Protective stupidity is exactly how I would characterize, e.g., Alister McGrath's debating style. He does not for a second let his brain engage with the arguments against his religion; I think because somehow his unconscious knows that if that happened, it would be all over.

8. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!

Comment #81271 by Pete_C on October 24, 2007 at 2:19 pm

Sam Harris's response to this is one of the best ones, in my opinion... that the Killing Fields, the Gulag and the Holocaust were not the result of societies that became too attached to critical thinking, or too demanding of evidence.

The problem is how to take out the rhetorical sting itself. If it turns into the two sides shoving Hitler back and forth, the audience stops caring and probably just goes home unthinkingly with "Hitler was an atheist" since that's the thing they've heard most often.

Perhaps the atheist side should start being the first to bring up Hitler and Co. (since you can count on the theist bringing them up at some point). It is in fact a good point against dogmatism, so why not seize on it?

9. Cheney and Obama: It's Not Genetic

Comment #80651 by Pete_C on October 22, 2007 at 1:49 pm

The odds of someone being completely unrelated to her paternal-grandfather are quite long. She would have to have been produced from a sperm that carried only non-crossover chromosomes from her paternal grandmother. She obviously gets the X, so that leaves 22 more chromosomes. There's almost always at least one crossover per chromosome pair; we'll simplify and say there was one and only one. So in each pair of chromosomes there are two crossover and two non-crossover chromatids, and for each of these, one is paternal and one maternal. Only one out of the four chromatids is the maternal non-crossover chromatid. So the odds of an X-bearing sperm being produced that lacks all the DNA from the man's father is at best 1 in 4 to the 22nd power, or 1 in 17,592,186,044,416 (the odds are even worse if more crossovers are allowed.)

10. Stretching the Search for Signs of Life

Comment #78925 by Pete_C on October 15, 2007 at 12:17 pm

This is a very interesting thread, with good arguments on both sides. I do tend to come down on the rare earth, or at least rare intelligence, side. But a few things about the robot horde scenario don't quite sit right with me.
Let's say a probe is sent from the home planet to a star system with a known solid planet. The probe must be able to land on that planet and get to work. Now, occasionally, for whatever reason, that probe will not be able to succeed in building the next generation. So there's a probability, P, that the lineage continues, and 1-P that it will end right there. Depending on the distribution of P it is not entirely clear that a person sending out probes can sit back and be confident that their probes will overrun the galaxy.
Also, do the probes keep updated star charts, or can they detect planets and navigate to them? That's also something that can go wrong, isn't it? (Another reason for P to be made low)....and we can bet that the designer of the probes probably won't be around to get feedback and make improvements, right?
It just seems to me that the Fermi paradox has one weak point: the assumption that this self-replicating robot horde scenario is practically achievable. It may simply not be. We can't extrapolate from our earth experience of organisms spreading through all niches to the vastness of deep space.
We may very well be alone in the cosmos, but I'm not sure the Fermi paradox is rock-solid evidence for that.

11. If Muslim doctors are intolerant, let them go

Comment #77951 by Pete_C on October 11, 2007 at 8:47 am

You know, the RDF is the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.
You will never see a science paper that says, "We took a survey of a lot of people, and found some people who ate a lot of broccoli, and they didn't get cancer! So you should totally eat a lot of broccoli!".

Some questions for the journalist:
What percentage of doctors refuse treatment to patients on religious grounds? What percentage of cab drivers or store clerks refuse to deal with alcohol-carrying customers? How do these people break down by religion? How have these numbers changed over time?

Of course he doesn't know. Why do research when you can tell stories about your friend?

He makes the accurate and respectable point that no doctor should allow their religion to influence their practice. Well, of course - everyone agrees on that, and when these cases crop up, hopefully you have a medical association or legal system that does something about it. But he extrapolates from these anecdotes to a large pernicious social problem, phrased in terms of "We" and "the Muslims" (a great many of whom are British citizens, I assume - so who is "we" again?). Well, fine - it is an editorial. But it doesn't mean he's given evidence for his thesis. If you really want to know if you have a social problem on your hands, you need some statistics.

12. Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy's Couch

Comment #63477 by Pete_C on August 14, 2007 at 1:00 pm

Why does Nick assume that the simulations being run would be simulations of ancestors? Or use trends in our (presumably simulated) universe to gauge the probabilities of anything happening in the universe one level up?

(Imagine a sentient Pac-Man thinking he's in a computer simulation, written by another pie-shaped creature who eats dots and is chased by ghosts...)

13. Amnesty to defy Catholic church over rape victims' abortion rights

Comment #63145 by Pete_C on August 13, 2007 at 8:39 am

Maybe tigerbalm is purposely trying to elicit catharsis by being a troll, and thus unlike Ratzi a tangible target for all of you who like to respond to trolls.

macros_man, I was going to respond to your #27 by pointing out what you point out in #31 -- even if you accept for the sake of argument that the fetus is a "person" (ridiculous, but just for the sake of argument..), then the "suffering of the fetus" (if there is any, which I doubt) still shouldn't enter into the equation, since there's no case in which we compel one person (the mother) to sacrifice for another. It should be entirely up to the woman whose physical and mental health are at stake.

14. Christopher Hitchens and David Allen White discuss the impact of Christianity on Western Civilization

Comment #63142 by Pete_C on August 13, 2007 at 8:25 am

There are often arguments on both sides of this debate that use as examples a select few people from what could be called the extreme tails of achievement -- the great artists we're talking about here, or the tired arguments involving Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc...

This handful of people shouldn't be used as a proxy for all religion or all atheism. I think the most damning arguments against religion come from its steady browbeating of its billions of adherents, its chilling effect on society, opposition to science, etc. To say "Forget all that and listen to Bach's Passion!" is a risible argument. A pervasive chokehold on most of the planet for millenia outweighs the grand achievements (whether good or bad - here I'd include people like bin Laden, too) of a few people. I think this is an example of the availability heuristic in action.

15. Another Flea is Born

Comment #62770 by Pete_C on August 11, 2007 at 10:47 am

Joe Stalin.
Mao Zedong.
Sam Harris.
Three badasses you don't want to mess with.

Oh, this would be hilarious if it weren't so pathetic.

16. Emory Brain Imaging Studies Reveal Biological Basis For Human Cooperation

Comment #54368 by Pete_C on July 6, 2007 at 2:43 pm

"It suggests that the altruistic drive to cooperate is biologically embedded-- either genetically programmed or acquired through socialization during childhood and adolescence."

What possible results could they have observed that would have led them to conclude the opposite - that the drive to cooperate is not biologically embedded?

What exactly did the activity in the nucleus accumbens, caudate nucleus, ventromedial frontal/orbitofrontal cortex and rostral anterior cingulate cortex tell us about altruism that we did not know before?

I would like to see a study where people perform a task that is completely arfiticial and unlike anything anyone has ever done. Let people sit in a tub of warm water and read the dictionary backwards while rocking from side to side. See where the brain lights up. Then, conclude that this behavior is biologically embedded?!

17. The Panel

Comment #53642 by Pete_C on July 2, 2007 at 11:38 am

Because of 'Rayleigh scatter', the diffusion of blue light molecules.

Light has molecules now?

A scientifically literate person should certainly have been able to get all of these. However, a lot of being "smart" is knowing how to obtain the answers somehow and not necessarily having the answers memorized. Also, some of these bad answers could be chalked up to the pressure of being put on the spot.

18. Yes, the universe looks like a fix. But that doesn't mean that a god fixed it

Comment #53155 by Pete_C on June 29, 2007 at 5:54 pm

Stephenray - I think you're discounting something about the anthropic principle. You say there's "no point being amazed", but I think there may be.
Didn't Richard give the example in TGD about the man who miraculously survives the firing squad: should he be surprised? On one hand, no, he shouldn't, since all bullets sparing him is the only outcome consistent with his still being alive to wonder at it (your interpretation). On the other hand, that is such a surprising outcome that the guy could still be forgiven for wondering if something was up. Especially if there were thousands of shooters, etc.

19. Researchers May Remake Neanderthal DNA

Comment #52614 by Pete_C on June 27, 2007 at 2:03 pm

The "species" idea doesn't admit of hard definitions like that - in my understanding, the question of "are these individuals the same species or not" is not as informative as "what is the phylogenetic relationship between these individuals", i.e. how related are they; when was their last common ancestor; how do their genomes compare, etc. To put it another way: when we have the Neanderthal genome, and find out our degree of relation to them, our knowledge will make the question "Are we the same species" superfluous.

If, after the genome sequence is done, it does turn out that there is evidence for interbreeding, I predict there will soon be a company that will purport to tell people their "Neanderthal quotient".

20. An Inquisition in science's name

Comment #51071 by Pete_C on June 21, 2007 at 11:06 am

"Whereas we employed fire (literally), you have access to firewalls and anti-virus software that conceivably could relegate most correspondence and written communications infected with the God virus to the cultural trash bin."

I am imagining Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens gleefully cackling in a command center paneled with giant monitors displaying routes of global communications they are blocking with their FIREWALLS!

21. When They Came for the Homosexuals...

Comment #26074 by Pete_C on March 16, 2007 at 1:51 pm

Logicel wrote:
"it seems to me that Hedges is a true Christian--he practices what all the cherry pickers do not."

Instead of "true", don't you mean, he's the kind of cherry picking Christian whom you would rather have over for dinner than the other, nasty kind?

22. Debate between Sam Harris and Reza Aslan

Comment #22101 by Pete_C on February 12, 2007 at 11:05 pm

I watched it all- I think that Reza made very good points against Sam in the area where Sam's arguments are weakest, i.e. the sociological ramifications of religion, especially Islam. I think Reza's most important sociological point could be summed up like this: if a random Muslim committed apostasy, it is simply not the case that 1.2 billion people would vie with each other for the chance to throw the first stone - regardless of what it says in the Qur'an. If Sam and Reza were arguing about philosophical questions such as the existence of gods, the truth of religion, etc., I have no doubt that Sam would have won as handily as he did in his debate with Andrew Sullivan. But that is not where the discussion went - and I'm actually glad it went the way it did. Sam Harris is a formidable champion for atheism, but he is just getting started; we all need to keep learning. We have to realize that scholars like Reza Aslan, Scott Atran, etc., are not "adversaries" - where they are wrong, they are very wrong, but let's not pretend they are wrong about *everything* or that there is nothing we can learn from them.

23. Sam Harris's Faith in Eastern Spirituality and Muslim Torture

Comment #16641 by Pete_C on January 7, 2007 at 7:53 pm

I found the torture section of End of Faith thought-provoking and challenging. I'm not sure where I come down on it.
The paranormal stuff was, well, a bit more concerning. Paranormal claims are believed on insufficient evidence, no less than are the claims of religions. Being agnostic about reincarnation or ESP seems to me to be as ridiculous as being agnostic about deities or orbiting teapots. Still, it's good that Harris made a clarification of his views; it sounds a lot more reasonable when put this way.