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Science as a Belief System. Philosophy of Science Aaron Davidson As humans we are born into this world without any preexisting knowledge about our universe. In order to cope and survive, we must make observations and draw conclusions from them. Without making observations and generalizations we cannot make sense of our surroundings. From birth, formulating a belief system is essential to our survival, and perhaps even to our consciousness. 1) There exists an external objective reality 2) There exists some sort of uniformity through time a) the universe has structure b) predictions and generalizations are possible.

Even though these assumptions exist in science it should be noted that as stated before, there is no way around them if we are to attempt to function without difficulty in this universe. One of the greatest features of science is that it works as an algorithmic process of belief revision. Another potential distinction to make between science and religion is explanatory power. Simplicity. Experimental Philosophy and the Problem of Free Will. Discover Magazine: The latest in science and technology news, blogs and articles - Can You See With Your Tongue? At a University of Wisconsin lab, occupational therapist Kathi Kamm, right, tests graduate student Carla Becker's ability to "see" while blind-folded.

A video camera on Becker's forehead relays images through a laptop computer to an electric grid on her tongue. Becker's brain can then process the images. I'm sitting at a table draped in black, surrounded by black curtains. Candles, spheres, and unfamiliar symbols have been placed before me. Although this may sound like a scene for a Black Mass, it's even stranger than that: I'm trying to see with my tongue. The gear I'm wearing was invented by Paul Bach-y-Rita, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Kamm sits down in front of me. That leaves my tongue. I've caught it. Paul Bach-y-Rita says he owes his unorthodox thinking to life with his father. "We don't see with our eyes," Bach-y-Rita is fond of saying. Bach-y-Rita, who is 69, looks like a cross between Albert Einstein and Harpo Marx. The Crüel World of R. Scött Bâkkër. After some back-and-forth discussions pursuant to my opining on the New Nihilism of George R.R.

Martin, Joe Abercrombie and others in a post entitled The Decline and Fall of the Fantasy Novel, I found myself interested in the works of my interlocutor, who happened to be the author of The Prince of Nothing series as well as a second series entitled The Aspect Emperor. It’s too soon to write a review, as I have only finished the first book in the series, The Darkness That Comes Before. However, there are already five things that are readily apparent about Mr. Bakker’s fiction. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. “Anasûrimbor! Now that is indeed a fictional punch to the left frontal cortex, in response to which the English-speaking reader can but reel and mutter a heartfelt “Wöw!” Extropianism. Extropianism, also referred to as the philosophy of Extropy, is an evolving framework of values and standards for continuously improving the human condition. Extropians believe that advances in science and technology will some day let people live indefinitely. An extropian may wish to contribute to this goal, e.g. by doing research and development or volunteering to test new technology.

Extropianism describes a pragmatic consilience of transhumanist thought guided by a proactionary approach to human evolution and progress. Originated by a set of principles developed by Dr. Extropy[edit] A more recent definition of Extropy has been provided by Kevin Kelly, senior maverick at Wired magazine.[5] "Extropy is neither wave, nor particle, nor pure energy. In the philosophy of digital probabilistic physics, the extropy of a physical system is defined to be the self-information of the Markov chain probability of the physical system at a moment in time. The Extropy Institute[edit] Extropism[edit] A Fact More Indigestible than Evolution (Part II) For centuries, the human brain has been a kind of black box, a place we could theorize with impunity, which is to say, without fear of scientific contradiction. Well, the box has been cracked open, and our theoretical free lunch is at an end.

And what contemporary brain and consciousness research is discovering is at best, perplexing, at worst, terrifying. Indigestible. So what will the result be? What happens when an indigestible fact hits a culturally sensitive stomach? Will we get sick? As a culture, and perhaps as human beings, we simply find some facts too unpalatable. This is what happens when science serves up facts more indigestible than evolution.

Think about it for a moment. As the tools and techniques of brain science become ever more sophisticated, you can bet the manipulation will become ever more sophisticated and ever more effective. Did I forget to mention that we’re prone to always think it’s always the other guy who’s been duped? R. A Fact More Indigestible than Evolution. Ever wonder how people can believe Elvis and Hitler are still alive? Sad fact is, we are bunglers when it comes to believing things we can’t immediately see. We are prone to over-simplify. We are prone to feel certain about dubious things.

We are prone to cherry-pick what confirms our views, and to selectively overlook what challenges them. We are prone to understand complex phenomena in psychological terms. The list goes on and on. Science can be seen as a kind of compensatory mechanism, a family of principles and practices that allow us to overcome enough of our cognitive shortcomings to waddle toward an ever more comprehensive understanding of the world. Of course, believers in prescientific worlds generally don’t know anything about our theoretical incompetence, nor would they want to.

We can believe that hard, that stupidly. Science is the cruel stranger, the one who tells us how it is whether we like it or not. Take evolution. R. Extraverts, Free Will Go Hand in Hand. Philosophers’ views on freedom and moral responsibility are influenced by inherited personality traits. If they can’t be objective, can anyone?

Philosophers are trained to think things through logically and reach conclusions based solely on reason. But as science provides increasing evidence for the interconnectivity of mind, body and emotions, is that sort of intellectual objectivity truly possible? A newly published study suggests the answer is no — at least when it comes to addressing one fundamental issue. While this may sound like a theoretical argument, the researchers, led by Eric Schulz of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, argue it has potentially profound implications. “Even highly skilled professionals such as lawyers, judges, ethicists and philosophers may not be immune to the influence of their different personalities,” they write in the journal Consciousness and Cognition.

In other words, people who have been trained how to think scientifically. David Eagleman - The Brain on Trial. Advances in brain science are calling into question the volition behind many criminal acts. A leading neuroscientist describes how the foundations of our criminal-justice system are beginning to crumble, and proposes a new way forward for law and order. On the steamy first day of August 1966, Charles Whitman took an elevator to the top floor of the University of Texas Tower in Austin. The 25-year-old climbed the stairs to the observation deck, lugging with him a footlocker full of guns and ammunition.

At the top, he killed a receptionist with the butt of his rifle. The evening before, Whitman had sat at his typewriter and composed a suicide note: I don’t really understand myself these days. By the time the police shot him dead, Whitman had killed 13 people and wounded 32 more. It was after much thought that I decided to kill my wife, Kathy, tonight … I love her dearly, and she has been as fine a wife to me as any man could ever hope to have. For that matter, so did Whitman. In sexual assault cases, athletes usually walk. In sexual assault cases, athletes usually walk By Tom Weir and Erik Brady, USA TODAY As Kobe Bryant's sexual assault case winds its way through pretrial motions and hearings, the Los Angeles Lakers star may have one intangible factor working in his favor.

USA TODAY research of 168 sexual assault allegations against athletes in the past dozen years suggests sports figures fare better at trial than defendants from the general population. Of those 168 allegations, involving 164 athletes, only 22 saw their cases go to trial, and only six cases resulted in convictions. In another 46 cases, a plea agreement was reached. "I would say almost the exact opposite would be true in the normal course of business," says Nancy O'Malley, who chairs the sexual assault committee of the California District Attorneys Association and who is Alameda County's chief assistant district attorney. "In some areas, the conviction rate is 80-85%" at trial, O'Malley says. Stats in sex cases questionable B.

The Backfire Effect. The Misconception: When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking. The Truth: When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger. Wired, The New York Times, Backyard Poultry Magazine – they all do it. Sometimes, they screw up and get the facts wrong. In ink or in electrons, a reputable news source takes the time to say “my bad.” If you are in the news business and want to maintain your reputation for accuracy, you publish corrections.

In 2006, Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler at The University of Michigan and Georgia State University created fake newspaper articles about polarizing political issues. They repeated the experiment with other wedge issues like stem cell research and tax reform, and once again, they found corrections tended to increase the strength of the participants’ misconceptions if those corrections contradicted their ideologies. No, probably not. P E R C E I V I N G R E A L I T Y. SimTech Web Design.

The author as entrepreneur, and the dangers this poses. The British company Unbound offers a fundraising platform for authors who want to get started on their next book. It is basically a subscription model for the creation of art - something that was popular in previous centuries. It is somewhat like the U.S. -based site Kickstarter, which supports investment drives for all kinds of art forms, including movies; Unbound is purely for written works. It works like this: The author posts an idea for a book, and how much money she's going to need to write it. If you're interested in the idea, you subscribe. You pledge as little as £10 ($16) or as much as £250 ($400). Once the author has reached her target, she gets to work. Mozart raised money for the writing of concertos in this way: The subscribers not only got to attend the premiere but received a copy of the score.

In other words, this is a great game for the famous. This may well be true but it's problematic. Amazon. Unnerved by Neuropath « In The Margin. Science For Smart People. Confirmation Bias Part of America's 'Just Do It!' Culture. New research finds people primed to think in terms of action are more certain of their opinions and less likely to seek out dissenting views. We humans have a stubborn tendency to focus on information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs. The 21st-century media facilitates this presumptuous proclivity: It’s easy to avoid discomforting contradictory claims when there are websites and cable news networks tailored to fit your particular prejudice. Newly published research points to another factor that feeds this ingrained confirmation bias: Our “Just do it!” Culture. In both overt and subtle ways, Americans are constantly being encouraged to take action, and exposure to such messages makes us more liable to ignore dissenting ideas.

The researchers found evidence for this thesis in three experiments. The students were then instructed to complete a simple word test during what they were told was a “brief break” from their experiment. A follow-up experiment again produced this effect. New R. Scott Bakker Interview (part 1) Many thanks to Bakker, who as always is very forthcoming and thoughtful with his answers. As the title implies, this is the first part of a longer interview. Bakker couldn't get to the questions from fans before my Eastern European adventure, so those questions will have to wait for a few weeks. Since it has to do with a lot of metaphysical stuff for hardcore fans, it just might be better that way, after all. There’s as many answers to this question as there readers of the series. One of the factors, I think, has to do with the difficulty of The Thousandfold Thought.

The idea is the same: embrace the genre, then stuff it with as much craziness as I can get away with. Values are judgments, so when you abandon one set for another, as happens to so many in university, you are in effect learning how to play a different ‘judgment game.’ Bullshit. Even worse, it stigmatizes ‘intellectualism,’ renders it the marker of an adversarial social identity. In a sideways manner, definitely. Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography - Language. The Wertzone: The White Luck Warrior by R. Scott Bakker. The Aspect-Emperor, Anasurimbor Kellhus, is leading the Great Ordeal into the heart of the Ancient North. Hundreds of thousands of troops and thousands of sorcerers are heading for Golgotterath, the seat of the vile Consult, where they plan to destroy the Ark of the Heavens and obliterate the alien Inchoroi before they can resurrect the No-God and plunge Earwa into the Second Apocalypse.

After the relatively painless opening leg of the march, the Ordeal now crosses through hundreds of miles of territory infested by the vile Sranc, whose numbers blanket the earth. For Sorweel, the young King of Sakarpas who has been sworn to Kellhus's cause but continues to harbour doubts, the Ordeal is doubly a nightmare, for he also seeks to avenge the death of his father and serve the gods, who, blind to the machinations of the Consult, are offended by Kellhus's temerity and fear his power. The White Luck Warrior sees Bakker achieving a near-perfect balance in his work. The OF Blog: R. Scott Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior. The largest Sranc clans the Horselords battled rarely numbered more than several hundred. Sometimes a particularly cruel and cunning Sranc chieftain would enslave his neighbours and open warfare would range across the Pale.

And the legends were littered with stories of Sranc rising in nations and overcoming the Outermost Holds. Sakarpus itself had been besieged five times since the days of the Ruiner.But this... slaughter.Only some greater power could have accomplished this.Meat sweated in open sunlight. Flies steamed about the scrub and grasses. Cartilage gleamed where not chapped with gore. The stink was raw unto gagging. "The war is real," he said with dull wonder. The White-Luck Warrior, R. Bakker's prose typically has been tight, measured bursts of information told in a limited third-person point of view. The plot here is very tight. Bakker manages to avoid what I feared might be a flaw in one of the subplots, that of enemy forces.

Untitled. Book Review: The White Luck Warrior: The Aspect Emperor, Book 2 by R. Scott Bakker. The Final Sacrifice. Fiction Review: The White-Luck Warrior by R. Scott Bakker. Overlook, $25.95 (608p) ISBN 978-1-59020-464-1. Vox Popoli: Claws of the lion kitty. Idiocracy. Vox Popoli: Let's try this one more time. Vox Popoli: Postulating a literary triumph.

The Decline and Fall of the Fantasy Novel. Marvin Minsky: Health, population and the human mind. Heliotrope_pg32-38_SkepticalFantasist. The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. The Wertzone: Missing the Point. News: Big Hollywood. Report: Mubarak is terminally ill - JPost. TIME. Plane of immanence. The Fascinating Story of the Twins Who Share Brains, Thoughts, and Senses. Lifedream Adventures: Conciousness Encapsulation Theory. Malazan Re-read of the Fallen: Deadhouse Gates, Chapter 6 and 7. Why we love bad writing - Stieg Larsson. Best Smeller Dept. - Genji Press. Human Wave 6: To Be Read - Genji Press. The White-Luck Warrior. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. Index of /en. Science, the cruel stranger. EdwardDocx3. Are Stieg Larsson and Dan Brown a match for literary fiction? | Books | The Observer.

Ja-conspiracies-cover. Mulholland Books. WikiLeaks: Not all hypocrisies are equal. Neuroscience and Free Will. Remembering Updike: The Gospel According to John. Profile for Ian Vance. The Bomb in the Brain Part 3 - The Biology of Violence: The Effects of Child Abuse. New R. Scott Bakker interview. Risingshadow - Beyond the Reality. In conversation: Lee Rourke and Tom McCarthy.

Oil drop experiment. The Semantic Apocalypse | Speculative Heresy. 1976 Jack Vance radio interview part 1 of 12. You Are Not So Smart. 1,000 True Fans. History News Network. Why Aren't Businesses Hiring? Andy Clark. Transhumanist Values. PHILOSOPHY AND THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGE OF MAN. William James. Human enhancement and the future of work report. Man climbs skyscraper with bionic leg - Technology & Science. Eternal Reoccurrence vs. Finite Progress « Codex Sarepticus. On the Nature of Causation in Digital Computer Systems. Oscar Pistorius. Everything List - Google Groupes. 4.2.3_Feyerabend. The Speculative Turn: Continental Realism and Materialism. MercierSperberBBS. KARL JASPERS FORUM. The Ignorance of Voters | Wired Science. Confirmation Bias Part of America's 'Just Do It!' Culture. The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand. Three Pound Brain. The Paradox of Wealth: Capitalism and Ecological Destruction.

Dan Pink: The puzzle of motivation. Omnipotence paradox. Duty Calls. Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences) Why I reimagined “LOTR” from Mordor’s perspective. Why Intelligent People Do Foolish Things. Science fiction author begins war of the books worlds. Picture of the World As a Quantum Monadistic System | Nakagomi | NeuroQuantology.