Category Archives: Opinion
Since high school, I’ve wondered if the USA is just too big to ever make sense. How is it possible to govern a nation that ranges from Bangor to Baton Rouge and from Richmond to Redmond. Finding a political center to such a diverse group of people seems a daunting task.
As our nation grew, so did business, and now we have businesses “too big to fail” because their failure would wreck us. Our capitalistic approach to business seems based on unchecked obsessive growth. Bigger is always better!
The rise (or perhaps return) of local beer brewing offers an interesting lesson in how it’s possible some things should stay small and local.
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14 Comments | tags: beer, craft beer, craft beer breweries, local breweries | posted in Opinion, Society
I’ve written before about Drake’s Equation and the Fermi Paradox. The former suggests the possibility of lots of alien life. The latter asks okay, so where the heck are they? Given that the universe just started, it’s possible we’re simply the first. Maybe the crowd comes later. (Maybe we create the crowd!)
Recently, one of my favorite YouTube channels, PBS Space Time, began a series of videos about this. The first one (see below) talks about the Rare Earth Hypothesis, a topic that has long fascinated me.
The synchronicity in this is that I’d just had a thought about basic probability and how it applies to our being here…
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16 Comments | tags: alien contact, alien races, alien vistors, aliens, ancient alien races, ancient aliens, anthropic principle, Drake Equation, Fermi Paradox, PBS Space Time, Rare Earth Hypothesis | posted in Opinion, Science
There is something about the articles that Ethan Siegel writes for Forbes that don’t grab me. It might be that I’m not in the target demographic — he often writes about stuff I explored long ago. I keep an eye on him, though, because sometimes he comes up with a taste treat for me.
Such as his article today, No, Thermodynamics Does Not Explain Our Perceived Arrow Of Time. I jumped on it because the title declares something I think many have backwards: the idea that time arises from entropy or change. Quite to the contrary, I think entropy and change are consequences of time (plus physics).
Siegel makes an interesting argument I hadn’t considered before.
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62 Comments | tags: arrow of time, entropy, Ethan Siegel, got time, is time fundamental, laws of thermodynamics, thermodynamics, time | posted in Opinion, Physics
We dream of soaring…
Sunday night I watched the new Apollo 11 documentary by Todd Miller. At first, I was really into the show. When the Apollo 11 mission happened I was just starting high school and had been a big fan of the space program going back to Project Mercury. Watching a Saturn V lift off has always induced a profound sense of awe in me.
But I was increasingly struck by how white it all was. And male, but really, really white. That diluted the joy I was feeling with some deep regrets about how we act still today over what are basically paint jobs and some minor accessories.
Given where we find ourselves these days, 50 years hasn’t brought as much progress as it should have. We’re still really stupid about paint jobs.
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13 Comments | tags: Apollo 11, Jackie Robinson, moral compass, Moses Fleetwood Walker, race, social change, social issues, social mores, space exploration, space race | posted in Opinion, Society
When it comes to consciousness, one of the top challenges is defining what it is. (Some insist it doesn’t even exist, which makes defining it even more of a challenge.) Part of the problem is that there is no single correct definition. There never really has been.
There is also that there is sentience (essentially the ability to feel pain as pain) and there is sapience (roughly: wisdom). Lots of animals are sentient, but sapience seems to be a property of human consciousness.
Which raises the question: Are humans just a point on a spectrum, or is there some sort of “band gap” between higher and lower forms?
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24 Comments | tags: brain, brain mind problem, consciousness, human brain, human consciousness, human mind, mind, Theory of Consciousness, theory of mind | posted in Opinion, Philosophy
On the one hand, a main theme here is theories of consciousness. On the other hand, it’s been almost eight years blogging, and I’ve covered my views pretty well in numerous posts and comment threads. Our understanding of consciousness currently seems stuck pending new discoveries, either in answering hard questions, or in providing entirely new paths.
A while back I determined to step away from debates (even blogs) that center on topics with no resolution. Religion is a big one, but theories of mind is another. Your view depends on your axioms. Unless (or until) science provides objective answers, everyone is just guessing.
But it’s been three-and-a-half years, and, well,… I have some notes…
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8 Comments | tags: AI, brain, brain mind problem, chaos theory, Cogito ergo sum, computationalism, computer model, computer program, consciousness, human brain, human consciousness, human mind, information theory, Isaac Asimov, mind, stored program computer, Theory of Consciousness, Von Neumann architecture | posted in Computers, Opinion, Science
Nope. Never liked’m.
Watching the Thanksgiving episode of the rebooted Murphy Brown on CBS, where Murphy decides to cook dinner with easily anticipated and well-worn results, it struck me exactly why I don’t find the show very funny. And why I really don’t find any of the CBS comedies since the 1990s very funny: Idiot Clowns.
In general, it’s why I don’t find a lot of comedy very funny. Idiot Clown comedy requires an idiot clown — someone so stupid they are unaware of basic reality, a blindness forced on them to enable a (typically) lame joke. I find it cheap and easy and without much value.
More to the point, I just don’t like idiots or clowns in my entertainment.
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17 Comments | tags: Adam Sandler, clowns, Dave Chappelle, George Carlin, idiots, LA Story, Melissa McCarthy, Northern Exposure, Robin Williams, Sarah Silverman, Seth MacFarlane, Steve Martin, Tracy Morgan, Will Ferrell | posted in Movies, Opinion, TV
Recent politics makes us, perhaps, overly aware of just how differently from us people can see the world. Recent politics also makes us very aware of how fraught it can be interacting with people who see the world differently. (Although it isn’t the differences that divide us so much as our tribalism.)
Setting politics aside for a moment, I recently stumbled over a difference that I found both bemusing and enlightening. It explains something that’s puzzled me (and caused a degree of headshaking) for quite a while. What’s cool is how it switches my worldview, because now I understand it’s not a mistake or laziness, but a valid choice.
I’m talking about periods and lower case in text messages!
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4 Comments | tags: grammar, lowercase, misspelling, Oxford comma, punctuation, spelling, text messages, texting, UPPERCASE | posted in Opinion, Society
For years friends have been urging me towards the TV show Breaking Bad. They tell me about how the writing is so good, and the drama so engaging. The problem I have is that it stars, not just a meth dealer, but a meth maker. For me that’s a deal breaker that no writing is good enough to overcome. Nothing is worth inviting a meth maker into my life on a regular basis.
I see a parallel in how people accept Trump even when they do see him for the idiot and creep that he is. In this case, it’s certainly not good writing (or good governing) they seek, it’s getting their way that makes them support an ignorant, incompetent, greedy, narcissistic racist.
I gotta ask: Have we gotten too willing to embrace human failure?
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Leave a comment | tags: Anyone But Trump, Breaking Bad, Donald Trump, election 2018, Never Trump, Trump is a monster | posted in Opinion, Politics, Society
For the last week or so, on a physics blog I follow, I’ve been part of a debate about the nature of time. It’s been interesting and fun, but the conversation has reached that point where folks are mainly maintaining their positions, and it seems that the matter has stalled.
Some of the on-going assertions bemused me so much, that I was about to tender one more rebuttal comment… When I remembered what a wiser person, “back in the day” (before the web), said about online debates: State your view. Support it further if you need to address points raised. But once you’ve covered it well enough, just stop. After that, you’re just wasting your time; it’s rare that anyone changes their mind on the internet. Including yours.
Fair enough. I can natter on about it to myself on my own blog, though…
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21 Comments | tags: arrow of time, Carlo Rovelli, chronon, got time, is time fundamental, space-time, spacetime, time, time dilation, time dimension, time-space | posted in Opinion, Science
Logos con carne 