It seems both neuroscience and psychology are in crisis. Sabine Hossenfelder has the updates. Shit like this will eventually make the public (including the educated part - they are the only ones paying attention anyway) skeptical towards the entire scientific establishment. And maybe even the project itself? Which I wouldn´t consider a positive development. Note also the crises in quantum physics and cosmology...
Is causality an emergent property? And what does that even mean? Sabine hopes that quantum physics can be made more logical and less woo-woo-ish, but a recent paper on the topic falls short of this. Or so she believes. Since I´ve been up most of the night, I hardly understand what she´s talking about, but I´m sure it´s interesting...
Or 9 out of 10 on a bullshit meter? Sabine isn´t *terribly* impressed by the recent headlines about some scientist creating a "mini-universe" in a lab, und so weiter.
Some lesser known facts about Stanley Kubrick´s weird masterpiece "2001: Space Odyssey". Note the quasi-religious messaging of both Clarke´s novel and the film. But...but...I thought we were an atheist and secular civilization?!
Overheard on the internets: scientists just disconfirmed some old experiment from the 1990´s which supposedly proved the existence of dark matter particles. What did I tell you, chat...
Dark matter aint real. And the light shineth in the darkness.
I´ve been wondering about "the Obelisks" for some time now. Anton has the latest updates.
Damn. It seems to be official now: the mysterious object 3I/ATLAS isn´t an alien probe (pun unintended) but an entirely natural object. A kind of comet, in fact, made of "heavy water" and other mundane substances. Blasted!
On the positive side, the comet could be 12 billion years old (!) and give us clues to how solar systems were formed in the early universe ("early" if you believe in the Big Bang). Clue: probably not as ours. It struck me that this could have some kind of consequences, too. For instance, does it make it more likely or less likely that alien star systems might harbor intelligent life (or any life)?
Sabine Hossenfelder tries to take Donald Hoffman seriously, but it just doesn´t work. She gives Hoffman a ten out of ten on her "bullshit meter", claiming he´s "not even wrong". Apparently, Hoffman recently published a paper trying to prove mathematically that aliens seen during psychedelic trips are real. I think even people who do believe in aliens and/or psychedelics might find that approach a bit...trippy.
Our man Formscapes (the mutant Anthroposophist) just came up with a new term: "physicalist traditionalism". If you want science to go back to its state circa 1890, you are a physicalist traditionalist. Common sense science before Einstein, the Copenhagen interpretation and (I would guess) all the dark matter bullshit. And common sense materialism, too! Differently put: there is no such thing as "quantum mysticism" independent of quantum physics, indeed, QM *is* quantum mysticism. It´s woo-woo all the way down to the super-strings.
Had I been a consistent materialist, I would probably be a "physicalist traditionalist". And while Marxism isn´t exactly that (due to its implicit teleology derived from one Hegel), there is certainly a family likeness. See Lenin´s "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism".
I admit a strong sympathy for this position even though I don´t consider myself a "physicalist"...
According to atheism as informed by modern science, God doesn´t exist. Humans are temporary products of a blind process of evolution that didn´t have them in mind. Here is an intriguing idea: God does exist *and* humans are products of a blind process of evolution that didn´t have them in mind.
How does that make you feel, earthling?
I´ve heard about "the Fifth Giant" before, but here is a new hypothesis: there was also a Sixth Giant! One of the additional ice giants / gas giants collided with Uranus, which (of course) explains that planet´s strangely tilted axis and apparently also the anomalously large amounts of ice on its moons. Both extra giants were then ejected from the solar system.
The most fascinating proposal is that the Fifth and Sixth Giants still exist...somewhere in the deep dark space in between the stars. I see the potential for some kind of science fiction movie here!
What the fuck does this experiment even mean? How did "time stop"? We´re still here, dude. And the show goes on...
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| AI´s fantasy picture of Vamadeva, a form of Shiva |
This is all inconlusive, if you read the fine print, but interesting anyway. Obviously.
Building blocks of life may be common in the universe
NASA rover finds complex organic molecules on Mars
Study suggests life on Earth may have 1.8 billion years left
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| Credit: Alain6963 |
Mariamman is the Hindu goddess of smallpox. She was worshipped to cure smallpox or avert smallpox outbreaks. Why? Because she was believed to cause them!
Did worship of Mariamman stop smallpox? No. Modern science stopped smallpox by simply eradicating the smallpox virus. I´m sure materialist atheists might draw certain conclusions from this.
But let´s assume the spirit-world is real. Maybe Mariamman is "real" in some sense. What does *that* tell us? Say about the character of the spirit-world...
Självklart är detta också en bluff. Är allt inom sociologin och psykologin baserat på rena falsarier?
Is it finally over for dark matter and (maybe) Einstein? Sabine Hossenfelder may have found the silver bullet...
