I’m sure you were all looking forward to it. He left an answer to my criticisms of his failed predictions
of evolution. He does not disappoint. It’s stupid.
We cannot defeat this density of inanity, but I will count it as a victory if he learns about these strange things called “paragraphs”.
Peter Watts has this short short story about a brain interface technology that allows people to merge their consciousness with other organisms — and in this one, “Colony Creature”, someone experiences what it is like to be an octopus, and is horrified by it.
“Those arms.” His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “Those fucking crawly arms. You know, that thing they call the brain— it’s nothing, really. Ring of neurons around the esophagus, basically just a router. Most of the nervous system’s in the arms, and those arms… every one of them is awake…”
It’s a good story, and I’m not knocking it. I think it’s also important to recognize that the experience of being a non-human organism is probably fundamentally different than being a human.
Imagine all the poor transhumanists who were born in the 19th century. They would have been fantasizing about all the rapid transformations in their society, and blithely extrapolating forward. Why, in a few years, we’ll all have steam boilers surgically implanted in our bellies, and our diet will include a daily lump of coal! Canals will be dug everywhere, and you’ll be able to commute to work in your very own personal battleship! There will be ubiquitous telegraphy, and we’ll have tin hats that you can plug into cords hanging from the ceiling in your local coffeeshop, and get Morse code tapped directly onto your skull!
Alas, they didn’t have a Ray Kurzweil or Aubrey deGray to con them with absurd exaggerations.
There deserves to be a special place in hell for smug, smarmy “pro-lifers”.
Dear @pzmyers I’ve read some of your reactions to pro-life claims on embryology. You seem to confuse biological claims with philosophical ones sir.
Oh, please, don’t “dear” and “sir” me. Have you ever noticed how some people like to paper over their stupidity with the most superficial expressions of politeness, as if it makes their argument respectable? Give me blunt honesty any day.
I also don’t need random goons on the internet telling me I have to make some distinction between science (usually, in this context, preceded by an unvoiced “mere”) and philosophy. Biology is a subset of philosophy. I get enough of that crap from real scientists.
Also, you don’t get to dignify your religious prejudices with the label “philosophy”.
Now I’m seeing exploding plants everywhere.
The Tully Monster has been an enigma for half a century. Now it’s been reconstructed on the basis of analysis of 1200 specimens.
That thing is weird. It’s been extinct since the Carboniferous, though, so we’re not going to be catching any nowadays, unfortunately. Note the eyes on stalks; the tubby body; the long ‘snout’ terminating in a toothy jawed mouth. People have been grappling with its taxonomic identity for decades, and it’s been labeled as various kinds of worms, or a mollusc, or an odd relic of some Cambrian phylum.
I just had this weird thought, provoked by the recent time change, and I went browsing through apps to see if anyone had thought of it before. Nothing jumped out at me.
What I want is an alarm that can be set off at a time relative to sunrise…so, for instance, instead of setting it for 6:30, I’d set it to go off one hour before sunrise. Anyone know of such a thing, for an iPhone?
I was just wondering if it would make more sense to map one’s sleep schedule relative to the solar day, rather than some arbitrary bureaucrat somewhere telling you that this week, you’re expected to get up precisely one hour earlier than last week.
A guy finds a hole in his wall, and behind it, a strange leathery brown mass. He pulls it out — first mistake. He cuts it open — second mistake. Within…
It’s a wasp nest stuffed full of dead spiders, each with an egg planted in them. It’s just adorable. There are more photos. I was kind and picked the least horrific.
Ouch. Why is Neil deGrasse Tyson doing this to himself?
If you have a gene for celibacy, you didn’t inherit it.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) March 12, 2016
No, that’s not right, for multiple reasons.
Celibacy is a behavior that almost certainly isn’t genetic in the first place. It’s more of a choice, strongly shaped by culture.
Traits that are deleterious to reproduction can get transmitted easily if they’re recessive.
You can get pregnant even if you don’t enjoy sex, and even if you are firmly committed to never having sex. Has he never heard of rape?
But really, the biggest problem here is that he’s echoing a pernicious fallacy that’s used to demonize all kinds of behavior. Haven’t you ever heard a wingnut complain that homosexuality is unnatural and can’t possibly have a genetic basis, because gays can’t reproduce? It’s the same argument. And it’s wrong.
Jeremy Yoder has torn that one apart in depth.
It’s getting weird. Tyson just keeps throwing out science canards — which is something a science popularizer shouldn’t do.
