Recurrent thoughts about mathematics, science, politics, music, religion, and Recurrent thoughts about mathematics, science, politics, music, religion, and Recurrent thoughts about mathematics, science, politics, music, religion, and Recurrent thoughts about ....
Want to get your uninformed opinion about AI published in the most prestigious newspaper in the United States? Then follow my advice. First, it helps if you have little or no perceptible training that would give you the necessary background to critique AI. For example, perhaps you majored in history, instead of relevant fields like computer science, or philosophy, or neuroscience. Or maybe you…
In the past I've commented on bad discussions of thinking, intelligence, brains, and computers, such as those by Gary N. Smith , Doug Hofstadter , Arthur Gardner , and Robert Epstein . With the rise of LLM's like ChatGPT, the commentary has only gotten worse. We see the same kinds of mistakes and bad argumentation tactics that have been used for decades. Here are some of them. Commenters will…
Whenever some new breakthrough in AI (artificial intelligence) is made, you can depend on ignorant naysayers to break out the usual clichés. We will be told that this program or that one isn't "really" creative (but no testable definition of `creative' will be given). We will be told that some new system doesn't "really" understand what you are saying (but no testable definition of `understand'…
Well, it seems so soon, but the 7-year anniversary of Robert Marks's complete failure to provide any evidence for his claims about information is upon us. You may remember it was back on September 9 2014 that I first asked the illustrious Marks for some calculation justifying the following claim of his: Dear Prof. Marks: Here…
The fake "science" of intelligent design claims to provide a reliable methodology for determining if something was "natural" or created through the intervention of an intelligent agent. Yet somehow its proponents never actually apply it to cases of genuine interest, like this one . Why is that?
Six years ago, the illustrious Baylor professor Robert Marks II made the following claim: "we all agree that a picture of Mount Rushmore with the busts of four US Presidents contains more information than a picture of Mount Fuji". I didn't agree, so I asked the illustrious Marks for a calculation or other rationale supporting this claim. After three months , no reply. So I asked again. After six…
I realize that most people have better things to do currently than read the ravings of a creationist neurosurgeon, but Michael Egnor is at it again, making completely unsubstantiated claims about the minds of people and animals. Here he claims that "abstract thought (as classical philosophers pointed out) is inherently an immaterial ability and thus it cannot arise from the brain or from any…
Every so often, the Catholic Church goes through the bizarre process of elevating one of its adherents to the status of saint. This absurd spectacle demands that the wannabee-saint be responsible for at least two miracles. Now it's the turn of John Henry Newman (1801-1890), a British theologian. For some inexplicable reason, although Newman died almost 130 years ago, it's only quite recently that…
Five years ago, the illustrious Baylor professor Robert Marks II made the following claim: "we all agree that a picture of Mount Rushmore with the busts of four US Presidents contains more information than a picture of Mount Fuji". I didn't agree, so I asked the illustrious Marks for a calculation or other rationale supporting this claim. After three months , no reply. So I asked again. After six…
I suppose it's not so remarkable that creationists can't do mathematics. After all, almost by definition, they don't understand evolution, so that alone should suggest some sort of cognitive deficit. What surprises me is that even creationists with math or related degrees often have problems with basic mathematics. I wrote before about Marvin Bittinger, a mathematician who made up an entirely…
I will now tell you my Jerry Garcia story. To appreciate it, you must remember that Jerry was missing part of a finger on one hand. I was having lunch with a close friend in a crappy Mexican place on Telegraph Ave in Berkeley, California; it must have been about 1983. The restaurant was called La Villa Hermosa, and is long gone. (There is a photo of it here .) Sitting at the next table was a…
As academics age, some of them get cranky. I don't mean "cranky" in the sense of ill-tempered, although that's also true. I mean "cranky" in the sense of "being a crank", that is, being "a person who is obsessed by fringe ideas and beliefs". I've written about this before. Some of them become 9/11-truthers . Some of them get cranky about anthropogenic global warming . One became cranky on the…
Michael Egnor, the man for which the term "egnorance" was coined, is at it again, sneering at experts while demonstrating he knows little about linguistics, philosophy, or ethology. In this piece he makes a number of claims that are either flatly false, or contradict what we know, or are given without any justification at all. Why he thinks this kind of pompous tripe will convince anyone is beyond…
Here .
I wrote before about Inference , a weird "journal" that bills itself as an "International Review of Science", but has published some very questionable pieces by some very questionable people. Back when they were hiding their editorial board, I deduced that David Berlinski was involved with it somehow, and my deduction was later proved correct . Now a real investigative journalist has taken the job…
Canada and Norway are engaged in a Moose War . I have to say, Norway is definitely winning. Their moose makes ours look pitiful by comparison.
...is a moose map. See? (Hat tip: J. C.)
"Here as he walked by [in Dublin] on the 16th of October 1843 Sir William Rowan Hamilton in a flash of genius discovered the fundamental formula for quaternion multiplication i 2 = j 2 = k 2 = ijk = -1 & cut it on a stone of this bridge." It's the 175th anniversary.
For Moose Friday, from CBC New Brunswick , a video of two male moose battling it out.
You have to look really quickly, but the youtube channel numberphile briefly mentions our recent paper on sums of palindromes : Our paper appears onscreen at 3:30.
Karen Tumulty discovered a previously unpublished 1982 letter written by Ronald Reagan to his father-in-law, Loyal Davis, shortly before Davis's death. She, like many other columnists, think this illustrates what a wonderful guy Reagan was. Michael Gerson gushed, "This letter is remarkable and revealing. I am so grateful that Karen found it." Peter Wehner called it a "rather remarkable/moving…
When I read the latest dreck from the "Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence", all I could think was: I did warn you. Of course, it didn't really take that much cleverness. The "Center" is a project of the Discovery Institute, a think tank so committed to dissembling about evolution that it's often been called the "Dishonesty Institute". And, as I pointed out, the folks…
Once upon a time, the illustrious Baylor professor Robert Marks II made the following claim: "we all agree that a picture of Mount Rushmore with the busts of four US Presidents contains more information than a picture of Mount Fuji". I don't agree, so I asked the illustrious Marks for a calculation or other rationale supporting this claim. After three months , no reply. So I asked again. After six…
If there's one consistent aspect of creationism, it's that people lacking understanding and training are put forth as experts. Here we have yet another example, from the creationist blog Uncommon Descent . There physicist Rob Sheldon is quoted as saying THere [sic] can even be uncertainty in mathematics. For example, mathematicians in the 1700’s kept finding paradoxes in mathematics, which you…
This American president's library contains many books on religion, but it also contains a copy of Darwin's Origin of Species . Which American president is it?