What would extraterrestrial life be like? Would it be similar to life on earth, or could it be very different? Some have claimed that silicon could be the basis for life on other planets instead of the carbon based life found on Earth. Perhaps there are creatures on other planets that are made of silicon and water or perhaps silicon and sulfuric acid, instead of carbon and water. How would they be similar or different than carbon based life? This has been a common theme in science fiction literature. A paper was published by the journal Life about a year…
Read moreBook Review: If the Universe Is Teaming With Aliens… Where is Everybody?
A review of If the Universe is Teaming With Aliens…Where Is Everybody? Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life by Stephen Webb. Second edition, 2015 Springer. . The Fermi Paradox: Where Is Everybody? This book documents and comments on 75 potential solutions or answers to the Fermi Paradox on why we haven’t found proof of intelligent, extraterrestrial life yet. The Fermi Paradox is based on the following generally accepted views on the likelihood of ETI (Extraterrestrial Intelligence) in the Milky Way galaxy: The Milky Way contains about two hundred billion stars. These presumably have planets…
Read moreUs And Them
If you haven’t noticed, America is polarizing into two main factions. The trigger for this division is generally seen as being the election of Donald Trump in 2016, though, to me, this ‘us vs. them’ culture war started decades earlier. This “us and them” thinking is, of course, also called in-group favoritism and out-group bias. It is the result, apparently, of our natural tribalism, meaning we tend to quickly form distinct groups or “tribes” in various areas of life (politics, religion). Problems can arise as the polarization between in/out-groups increase. Here is an excellent 12 minute video on the psychology…
Read morePerseverance Rover Lands On Mars
The Mars Perseverance rover mentioned in a previous post, has successfully landed on Mars. Here is some video of the actual landing. To keep up on the rover, it’s helicopter and their mission, NASA has a page dedicated to it.
Read moreBook Review: Necessary Existence
Everything that exists that we know of is contingent. Something being contingent means it exists because of something else existing that caused it to exist, or at least provided the necessary conditions, for it’s existence. Contingent beings thus depend in their very existence on other things that exist. They could have thus failed to exist to begin with if not for the existence of other things. Trees, rocks, planets, galaxies, and everything else in the universe apparently, all exist contingent upon other things. The entire collection of everything we know of is an interconnected, interdependent web of contingently existing things…
Read moreBook Reviews: Getting a Universe From Nothing
A Review of A Universe From Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing, by Lawrence Krauss; The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas About the Origins of the Universe, by John Barrow; The Grand Design, by Leonard Mlodinow and Stephen Hawking I just finished reading The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. I thought I would give a brief review of this and the other two books listed above. All deal with the subject of “nothing,” the universe perhaps coming from “nothing,” and the physicists here who claim this has relevance to, or even…
Read moreDo Physicists Know Nothing?
The title of this post is ambiguous. I meant it to be as several physicists, including some of the most prominent ones have been, not just ambiguous, but downright equivocating on the word “nothing.” As in the fallacy of equivocation. This post explains the informal logical fallacy of equivocation and gives the example of how some physicists commit the fallacy when trying to explain how the universe came from “nothing.” The Fallacy of Equivocation The fallacy of equivocation is using two different meanings or senses for the same word or phrase in the same argument. It is easy to define…
Read moreThe Straw Man Fallacy
Starting our look at a few logical fallacies, we have perhaps the most well known one, the “straw man” fallacy. The straw man fallacy is misrepresenting or misunderstanding an argument. You are stating or attacking/refuting an argument that is different than the one your opponent holds. To “attack a straw man” is to attack your misunderstanding or caricature of a person’s argument, not the real one. A “man” made out of straw (scarecrow) may look superficially like a real man, but it isn’t. Attacking or beating up a straw man is easy. Beating up a real man is harder. He…
Read moreThe 3 Laws of Thought
To start our series of brief looks at critical thinking, we will look at logic and logical fallacies. We first look at what traditionally has been viewed as the 3 laws of logic, or 3 laws of thought. The above YouTube video gives a good overview of this.
Read moreConfirmation Bias, Bias Blind Spots and Intellectual Tide Pools
Continuing our overview of cognitive biases we have the well known confirmation bias. This is one that definitely is important to know as everyone suffers from this bias. It can, like other biases, lead to and reinforce other biases. Coupled with the fact that we are all, to some degree, ignorant of our own biases (Bias Blind Spot) this can create what I call stagnant, intellectual tide pools. Confirmation bias is the bias we all have to seek information to confirm what we already believe. We gather and interpret information in a way that fits into what we already believe…
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