Why Hal Lewis resigned from the American Physical Society.
Was it always this politicized?
Category Archives: Science And Society
Carbon Action Day
Iowahawk has a contest to increase your carbon footprint. I’m going to go for heavy breathing, myself, though if I had the money, I’d hire a private jet.
Monkey Self Awareness
I continue to be baffled by research such as this:
It was once thought that only humans could pass the mark test. Then chimpanzees did, followed by dolphins and elephants.
What I continue to not understand is why they don’t think that (e.g.) cats are self aware. My cats recognize each other, so they clearly recognize cats. When they see themselves in a mirror, they don’t treat it like another cat — they basically ignore it. Is there any other explanation for this than they recognize it as themselves? What am I missing here?
According to Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal, the new findings fit with his work on capuchin monkeys who don’t quite recognize themselves in mirrors, but don’t treat the reflections as belonging to strangers. “As a result, we proposed a gradual scale of self awareness. The piece of intriguing information presented here may support this view,” he said.
However, de Waal cautioned that “many scientists would want more tests and more controls” — a warning especially salient in light of a high-profile controversy involving Marc Hauser, a Harvard University evolutionary biologist who appears to have overstated the cognitive powers of his own monkeys.
“What you’re seeing in the videos is subject to all kinds of interpretations,” said Gordon Gallup, a State University of New York at Albany psychologist who invented the mirror test, and has administered it with negative results to rhesus monkeys. “I don’t think these findings in any way demonstrate that rhesus monkeys are capable of recognizing themselves in mirrors.”
It seems to me that, for whatever reason (Homo Sapiens chauvinism?), some scientists go out of their way to deny the obvious. It reminds me of the arguments during Descartes’s day that animals couldn’t feel pain, and the even more absurd ones that babies couldn’t, either, used as an excuse to not have to use anaesthesia to operate on them.
[Update a while later]
I should add that there is no definitive test for self awareness. There is no way to know for certain that anyone other than yourself is self aware.
But Don’t Call Them Fascists
What were they thinking? It’s amazing to see them so willing to show their true totalitarian nature so blatantly. And it’s too late to pull it, despite the attempts. That’s the magic of the Internet.
[Update a few minutes later]
A comment that Iowahawk left at the Youtube page (and reposted on his FB page):
In order for your “No Pressure” advert to have been made, I am assuming several writers pitched a professionally-prepared storyboard to a committee, detailing shot-by-shot each second of …the film. The committee approved it, along with a minimum $250,000 budget to hire actors, director, & crew. Each scene probably took 3-10 takes, and weeks of post production by special effects wizards.
At no time did a single person involved in this clusterf**k say, “hey, maybe it isn’t the best PR to air our fantasies about detonating the people who don’t agree with us into a mist of blood meat and bone fragments.”
This has got to be the biggest FAIL in the entire history of the internet. Anyone remotely associated with the production of this film should forever be banished from any public institution in the English speaking world, and immediately referred for psychiatric evaluation.
I know what my evaluation would be.
[Update a while later]
More thoughts from a James Delingpole:
With No Pressure, the environmental movement has revealed the snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness.
Again, what were they thinking?
They were thinking something like the things these people (who were finally brought to justice) were thinking. Because they’re all children of the first totalitarian, Rousseau. It’s what the left does.
[Update a few minutes later]
Spring time for Al Gore — the eco-Anschluss.
Back From The Dead
Conservationists have been overestimating the number of extinct species. On the other hand, if you’re going to err, that’s probably the best way to do it.
Nasty, Brutish And Short
The Pueblo apparently weren’t as peaceful as the multi-cultis want us to believe. One of the many annoying things about political correctness is its whitewashing of the brutality of many aboriginal American cultures, and false history of their supposed environmental sensitivity.
Attitudes And Regulations
…that hold back progress in aging and health breakthroughs.
Worshipping Gaia
Joel Garreau, on environmentalism as religion. It has all the earmarks, and it’s the only one that’s allowed to be taught in the public schools. In fact, with so many adherents in government (and particularly among Democrats) you could even say that it’s a state-sponsored violation of the First Amendment.
Old Age
…is it a cause of death?
There will be unintended consequences (good ones, in my opinion) of making it one. It implies that aging is itself a disease, and one that should be fought directly, rather than coming up with palliatives for individual symptoms of it (e.g., hypertension, muscle degeneration, senility, etc.), which would mean that the medical establishment would have to take gerontological research a lot more seriously than it currently does, both in terms of interest and resources. It also flies in the face of the deathist belief that we shouldn’t seek longer life, because it’s not “natural” (the naturalistic fallacy).
Why We Should Read Science Fiction
Thoughts from Walter Russell Mead. I disagree with his opinion on Clarke’s writing quality, though.