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Very simple chemistry RNA molecules and amino acids combine to form pre-cell proteins. Science paper here, in Nature.

Hundreds of physicists got together at the birthplace of quantum mechanics to talk (argue) about what it means: “It’s a mess.” The article pretty much covers most of the interpretations of qm. Superdeterminism is omitted, either because it’s not really an interpretation of qm, as Sabine...

Israel can’t wait two weeks! It is pushing the U.S. to act now! Perhaps a hopeful note is that JD (Hillbilly Elitist) Vance reportedly pushed back, accusing Israel of trying to drag the U.S. into a war, which of course is exactly what Israel is doing.

Is there a necessary conflict between religion and science (given that this is the name of the forum)? Jerry Coyne thinks so. He wrote a book called Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible. The main title already contains an ambiguity. For surely not all faith-based claims...

Internet Rando With Wackaloon Ideas Somehow Thinks He Teacher IIDB (Internet News Service) — An area internet rando with wackaloon ideas somehow thinks he’s a teacher, sources confirmed late Tuesday. “It’s rather pathetic,” said a source close to the rando, who requested anonymity because of...

Analytic idealism is the thesis put forth by the philosopher Bernardo Kastrup that the world is entirely mental. With phenomenal consciousness the basis of everything, individual humans are characterized as “dissociate alters” that contain private versions of the cosmic consciousness. The...

The Onion, America’s Finest News Source, is seeking staff writer, so I thought I’d apply. :) They ask that you submit 25 Onion-style headlines, and two short “news” articles written from them. Today I wrote nearly 80 headlines, and am posting about 40 below. I haven’t written a story from any...

I know we already have a thread on AI, but I thought this was remarkable enough to warrant its own thread: a discussion between Richard Dawkins and ChatGPT. The basic topic of the conversation is whether ChatGPT is conscious, but the dialogue is wide-ranging and discursive, touching on a number...

This article appeared a couple of years ago in a neuroscience magazine; the full paper to which the article refers is here. I have read the former but not the latter. The article describes a paper that claims to have solved the hard problem of consciousness, which is that while we have a neural...

I don’t particularly wish to revive the long-running free will/determinism debates staged here, unless there are new participants (a defender of libertarianism would be welcome) or old participants who have a fresh angle to offer. That said, I do think for those of us interested in the topic...

A Drop of Reason, a book containing essays from the Secular Web to commemorate its 30th anniversary this year, will on sale shortly, perhaps as soon as later this month. It will use the Amazon print-on-demand model. When the book is actually for sale on Amazon, I will post up this video I made...

Krishnamurti came up in another thread, so I thought I’d start a thread about him, beginning with What Love Is Not. I am especially taken with: So true! :ROFLMAO: Your ugly country, your petty little belief, your narrow ideology, your bank account, all the rest of it! In the other thread I...

This is a thread about hard determinism, but not hard determinism v. free will. I don’t want to debate that at all. It has been done to death here, though I’m sure it will be resurrected at some point. What I’d like to know how it feels, personally, to be a hard determinist. I wouldn’t know...

I’ve been avoiding all news on any platform since the election, and mainly just browsing science websites. Missed this one from August: Possible signs of Mars life found by Rover The site hosts organic molecules, evidence of past flowing water, and “leopard-spot” splotches with black rings of...

I have seen a number of posts in various threads suggesting that philosophy is useless to science, or just useless period. And it’s true that many scientists say they have no use for philosophy. On Page One of one of his books, Steven Hawking famously declared “philosophy is dead,” and then went...

Someone else here (I believe it was Swammerdami) mentioned, in some context, Julian Barbour’s time capsules. I read his book The End of Time years ago, but no longer have the book. I still don’t quite feel I have grasped Barbour’s position. I understand the Minkowski block universe position that...

China roadmap (sky map?) for space includes not just a crewed mission to Mars, and the establishment of a permanent base there, but ALSO a crewed mission to Mars by 2033 (!) They plan to set up a permanent base there, too. I wish them luck. I know Elon Musk ain’t sending anybody anywhere.

Looks to be a interesting series here, divided into nine parts, at Quanta, called “The Unravelling of Space-Time.” The interactive intro page to which the link takes you is inventive, especially at the end where you can manipulate an entire concluding paragraph to fall down a black hole, but...

Argumentum ad hominem, Latin for argument to the person, is an INFORMAL fallacy. A recent post charged an ad hom argument to another poster, whereas no such fallacy was in evidence. I think it would be good to get straight on this because the rules here properly ban ad hom arguments. But what...

Interesting (about 5,000 words) article from quanta magazine about “experimental metaphysics.” The term was coined in 1980, though the author maintains it originated with Einstein’s friend Michael Besso. It refers to the first experimental test of Bell’s Inequality, an experiment that...