The first human embryos have been edited in the US.
[Update a couple minutes later]
New gene editing screening does thousands of genes at for cancer, and will scale to entire genome.
Category Archives: Philosophy
Aging
How close are we to defeating it?
There are no laws of physics that require it. I’ve been taking NAD+.
[Update early afternoon]
This is interesting. Patients on an anti-cancer drug with gray hair see it turn dark again.
A Liberal Party
Bob Zubrin thinks we need one. I haven’t read the whole thing, but I generally agree. (Yes, I know it’s a few months old, but I just ran across it, and not much has changed.)
Elon And AI
Rob Bailey says that he’s mistakenly using the precautionary principle.
I’ve discussed this logical fallacy in the context of climate change.
The Gender Warriors
They’re America’s new Puritans.
It’s worth noting that the American Left are in fact the ideological descendants of the people who originally populated New England from old England. It’s why Massachusetts and the northeast in general are such a blue region. The primary difference is merely what they’re puritanical about.
Gender
If it’s fluid, why isn’t race? A nice insight into the insanity of the left.
That Time Of Year Again
It’s Victims Of Communism Day, 2017:
This year is a particularly important time to remember the victims of Communism because of the approaching one hundredth anniversary of the October Revolution – Bolshevik takeover of Russia. The Soviet Union was not the most oppressive communist regime. It probably did not match the even more thoroughgoing totalitarianism of the Khmer Rouge and North Korea. Nor did it kill the most people – a record held by Mao Zedong the Chinese communists. But the Soviet experiment was the principal model for all the later communist states, and it is hard to imagine communists seizing control of so much of the world without it. In addition to the significant material aid that the Soviets provided to communists in other nations, the communist seizure of power in Russia also greatly boosted the ideology’s prospects elsewhere.
Meanwhile…
Hearing that there are people in black clothes and masks in downtown LA protesting against fascism.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) May 1, 2017
Science As Religion
Nice to see things like this at Slate. Everyone who “marched” yesterday should read it. Didn’t like the “science deniers” reference in last graf, though.
[Tuesday-morning update]
The “March For Science” failed, as demonstrated by its own signs:
Time to brush up on your social science, Science Guy. You too, Astrophysicist Dr. DeGrasse Tyson. You too, all ye faithful March for Science marchers, all ye believers in Truth, Science, and the Objective Way. Beware your own version of science denial. The idea has not developed “somehow”, “along the way”, that belief is informed by more than just what science says. Modern humans have always interpreted the facts based on deep values and meanings, affective filters imbuing the facts with an emotional valence that plays a huge part in determining what ultimately arises as our view of THE TRUTH.
Tyson and others are profoundly (and willfully) ignorant of philosophy. Belief in an objective reality is a critical element of the scientific method, but it’s just a belief, not the “truth.”
Neuralink
A deep dive into what Elon is trying to do now. #Transhumanism
[Sunday-afternoon update]
@juancarlosrs @elpilot That is the aspiration: to avoid AI becoming other.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 23, 2017
The Hypocrisy Of The Left
A long but useful and interesting essay from someone of the left who recognizes the problem and wants to fix it. Unfortunately for her, it’s intrinsic in the ideology, which fails of its own internal contradictions. And everyone should read Haidt’s work.