An interdisciplinary team of researchers at IBM have presented a paper at the SC09 supercomputing conference describing a milestone in cognitive computing: the group’s massively parallel cortical simulator, C2, now has the ability to simulate a brain with about 4.5 percent the cerebral cortex capacity of a human brain, and significantly more brain capacity than a cat.

…building a highly accurate simulation of a complex, nondeterministic system doesn’t mean that you’ll immediately understand how that system works—it just means that instead of having one thing you don’t understand (at whatever level of abstraction), you now have two things you don’t understand: the real system, and a simulation of the system that has all of the complexities of the original plus an additional layer of complexity associated with the models implementation in hardware and software.

…

The problem described above doesn’t mean that accurate simulations are worthless, however. You can poke, prod, and dissect a brain simulation without any of the ethical or logistical challenges that arise from doing similar work on a real brain.

I wonder if the Animal Liberation Front people are functionalists.

Secondly, Dan of XARK writes in defense of rule breaking generally, and in defense of cyclists breaking traffic laws in particular. I’d sign on to that manifesto even if I had no idea what a bicycle was. Meanwhile, Slate features a more balanced overview of the bicycles-in-traffic issue.

Well, actually no. Rather, this is an example of the sort of ridiculous result you can obtain if you’re not properly attentive to the possibility of false positives when separating noise from signal in fMRI scans. And it’s a nice example of how progress in epistemic methods is a partly empirical enterprise.

…on a slightly related note, I’m off to ponder the foundationalist / coherentist split now.

Dawkins, for example, argues as a scientist that religion is comparable to a mental virus or “meme” that can be explained through evolution, that religious believers are delusional, and that in contrast, atheists are representative of a healthy, independent, and pro-science mind. In making these claims, not only does Dawkins use his authority as the “Oxford University Professor of the Public Understanding of Science” to denigrate various social groups, but he gives resonance to the false narrative of social conservatives that the scientific establishment has an anti-religion agenda.

Yes, Dawkins is denigrating various social groups. He is doing so because those groups promote horribly ill-founded ideas. And being a member of a social group doesn’t make it okay to push stupid ideas on other people any more than joining the mafia makes extortion okay.

Keim says that “there are plenty of examples of the Bush administration skewing scientific facts for political ends, the ban on stem cell funding wasn’t one of them.”, from which one must conclude that Keim himself is either willfully skewing the facts or simply has no idea what he is talking about. As opponents of the ban having been pointing out since its inception, Bush’s policy never made sense according to anyone’s values:

If the president deemed it moral to use cell lines made from human embryos that had already been destroyed, then why would he argue that other embryos headed inevitably for destruction couldn’t be the source of new stem cell lines?
In fact, if the president was so concerned about the fate of embryos, why did he not speak out to close infertility programs around the country that destroy embryos?

Given the utter incoherence of Bush’s policy, the obvious explanation is that he was simply pandering to voters too clueless to figure out that it did nothing to further their values.

Consequentially, pretty much everyone who supported this policy was skewing a lot of facts, either willfully or ignorantly. Consider the photo of a GenerationLife poster which accompanies the article. Unlike the fetus shown in the poster, the blastocysts from which stem cells are taken do not have hands, or faces, or even nerve cells.

Lastly, Keim seems not to comprehend that factual questions are of central importance to the underlying ethical debate. Most of the people who place such extraordinary value on embryos do so because they believe that embryos have “souls”. If believing in ghosts based on no evidence whatsoever is not anti-science, then what is?

His post is a bit long, however, so let me summarize. Some very real market failures lead to underinvestment in basic science, and government funding can help correct this. In spite of all the usual problems which afflict government-directed investment, it’s a good idea to spend tax money on basic science. However, there is no good reason for the government to fund applied research and technological development. The market does so much more efficiently.

Figuring out who is right and who is wrong can be difficult and complicated. I can, however, suggest a starting point. If you have to fabricate data to support your theory, then no, you are not the next Galileo.

Would you want YOUR KIDS to become pot-smoking Olympic gold medalists?!?

Hat tip to Rebecca Watson.

Ultimately, the problem in Texas isn’t whether or not the theory of evolution has weaknesses, or whether pointing to such weakness is religiously or scientifically motivated. The problem is that the public schooling system requires everyone in the state to fund schools that take a single view, resulting in divisive conflict in the short-term and erosion of liberty in the long. Add to this that government-mandated orthodoxy is inherently incompatible with free inquiry, and it is clear that what Texas needs isn’t to decide what everyone will learn, but how to give everyone the ability to choose where and how their children will be educated.

Superficially plausible, but wrong. Firstly, note that the issue of state-run schools vs. voucher-subsidized private schools is not really relevant. The core issue is whether whatever schools do receive taxpayer money will be allowed to use it to teach creationism.

One way to resolve this conflict would be to stop spending taxpayer money on education entirely. This naturally leads us to ask why should we spend tax money on education in the first place. The answer to this question is that there are positive externalities associated with education. Education benefits not only the individual being educated, but also everyone else in society. Consequently, individuals pursuing their own self-interest tend to purchase less than the socially optimal amount of education. To overcome this problem the state taxes individuals and subsidizes education.

However, it is crucial to realize that “education” is a rather heterogeneous activity. During a typical school day, students may jump from geometry to english, to history, to chemistry, and so forth. One might legitimately inquire whether society reaps positive externalities from teaching kids each of these particular subjects. But today is not the day for a battle between Shakespeare and Nobel. Instead, I would simply like to propose that teaching kids false beliefs does not benefit society. Indeed, I would argue that there are negative externalities associated with teaching kids untrue things.*

Railing against “government-mandated orthodoxy” does make excellent rhetoric. Unfortunately, for the state to determine what educational activities are worth subsidizing, it must first determine what things are true and what are false (and what things are not yet known with adequate certainty). If the state is not willing to make these judgments then it has no business subsidizing education.

*Ok, I admit it: The thought of levying Pigouvian taxes against Sunday schools fills my heart with glee.

To see how professional Creation scientists approach the natural world, read Abbie Smith’s tour de force account of scientific inquiry (and creationist inquiry) into the “VPU” gene/protein in HIV.

And, you see, scientists arent like ‘Creationist’ scientists. They dont see a black box, declare a deity made the box, and take the rest of the week off. Scientists see problems and demand answers.

Why not take the week off? What do those Darwinist pigs think they’re going to learn anyway?

In six months, evolutions ‘just so story’ [led to the discovery of a new anti-viral component of the human innate immune system, suggesting] new drug targets for new HIV/AIDS therapies, and a brand new avenue of research for immunologists and virologists all over the world
…
What has Behe been doing the past six months?

I don’t really think an “Item Two” is necessary after that. Creation Science is a joke. A very bad joke.

Hat tip to The Quantum Ponitiff for finding this hilarious video (or should that be a mitre tip?).

In a recent post, he carefully explains why it is unreasonable, in light of our best physical theories, to believe in telekinesis and other parapsychological phenomena.

If you haven’t already seen it, make sure to read Sean’s essay on What I Believe But Cannot Prove, which is a broad discussion of logic, observational evidence, proof, and the limits of our knowledge.

The only reason I’m posting this is because I’ve long dreamed of launching an array of satellites able to act as a huge billboard in the sky. On the first night, I’d arrange for them to read “I am God and I am real”. As for subsequent nights, well, the possibilities are limitless. (“God says: Thou shalt honor the sabbath day by breakdancing to minimalist music in a kiddie pool full of borscht.”)

Please leave suggestions as to what God should say in the comments. The best ideas will appear in the night sky just as soon as my satellites are up and running.

Actually, there is a broader point to this post: if you see some extraordinary phenomenon, don’t just assume that it’s beyond your mortal comprehension. Take a closer look. Investigate. Make an attempt to understand what’s going on. Be curious about the world.

This evening I encountered a creationist while working on math in a cafe. This particular creationist thought that stars burn out on a timescale much shorter than billions of years, and hence the Earth could not possibly be that old. The creationist, who happened to be an engineering student, couldn’t give any particular reason as to why he thought the entire astrophysics community was so egregiously wrong. However, what I found most appalling was that he had not the slightest interest in figuring out just why accepted models make such terribly wrong predictions about stellar lifetimes. He didn’t care at all about how stars work.

Ask an angry atheist why they dislike religion, and you’ll most likely hear about how religion encourages humankind’s worst impulses: sexism, out-group hostility, violence, etc. There’s plenty of reason to be angry at the Osama bin Ladens of the world, but right now I’m just as furious at religion for what it did to the kid I met in the cafe as I am for what it did to the World Trade Center. That kid, that engineer, was not a stupid person. Yet he was told — by some non-violent, moderate, downright friendly pastor — that all of The Answers can be found in the collected mystic ramblings of a bunch of desert nomads. Those theists took a smart, talented kid and utterly crushed his sense of curiosity about the world. I’m mad at Christianity for destroying what was best and most noble in that kid, and so many others like him.

We regret to announce that due to unforeseen circumstances beyond our control, the publication of The Astrological Magazine will cease with the December 2007 issue.

There is (poetic) justice in the universe after all!

Hat tip to the Bad Astronomer for finding this.