1. VOICES OF SCIENCE: PZ Myers - Buy it now on DVD

Comment #222204 by VoxMoose on July 30, 2008 at 10:33 pm

Sigmund and Steve:
The "top scientist" group moniker is a stretch, but no reason to pick on PZ Myers alone. Steven Weinberg and David Buss are probably the only "top scientists" in the bunch by the definition of a "nobel prize winner or someone who regularly publishes in the big journals pushing the boundaries of his field of interest." Although Dawkins made contributions early, his currently held position at Oxford is technically that of "scientific communicator" (Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science). Indeed, by Sigmund's definition, Sagan couldn't be regarded as a "top scientist" either.

However, marketing blurbs aside, all of them in the video are working scientists and seriously know their stuff, even if many aren't at the top of their raw publish-or-perish game. However, being a "science communicator" (especially after paying one's dues in the trenches) is a very noble pursuit. I personally like Steve's alternative marketing blurb.

Ironically, although at one point probably the top of the top scientists in the world, Weinberg isn't the greatest science communicator -- although he certainly has his moments. Being a "top scientist" isn't the main point of interest for the the video content, its that the people in the discussion are thought-provoking, articulate, informed, and educated on the key topics of interest.

2. Neil Peart cites The God Delusion in new album's liner notes

Comment #148398 by VoxMoose on March 22, 2008 at 10:43 pm

I know this is a year late, however this great comment by Neil Peart was not made in the liner notes of the Snakes and Arrow album, but rather in an essay written by Neil Peart about the making of the album. Also, for some reason, the original link to the article is dead. The original essay is available on the Rush website:
http://www.rush.com/thegameofsnakesandarrows/Rush.Essay4.S&A.pdf

3. Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher

Comment #137093 by VoxMoose on March 2, 2008 at 10:42 am

firehot: "Surely the fact that no congressman in the US has managed to be voted in if he is openly atheist strongly suggests it wouldn't currently be possible for a president to be openly atheist. "

Let's not forget about atheist congressman Pete Stark (D) from California's 13th district (e.g. see http://www.nysun.com/article/50312).

4. Bill Moyers Interviews Susan Jacoby

Comment #129167 by VoxMoose on February 18, 2008 at 6:55 pm

As a long time skeptic and atheist I'm a big fan of the Center for Inquiry and generally respect the work of Susan Jacobi. However, I've observed that some skeptics, especially after they've been doing it for a while, fall deeper and deeper into the temptation for curmudgeonly rants and general fuddyduddism. Their language becomes more alarmist and narrow minded, striking even people like myself, inclined to agree with them, that they are simply professional complainers just trying to be controversial. It's the "back in my day..." or "get off my lawn" syndrome. Their arguments become riddled with the half-baked anecdotal ramblings, often perpetuating the very thinking fallacies they are attacking. Susan is clearly passionate about this issue of the dumbing down of America. I do believe her claim has merit and is worth discussing. Perhaps her book develops the ideas more clearly. But the supporting network of ideas in this interview was, unfortunately, half-baked and ranty. For example, she indicates "in an age of unreason, you tend to get focused on small personal facts." Really? It sounds to me like she just made that up. What evidence does she have that focusing on personal minutia is a sign if irrationality or that it is related to other cultural problems we perceive? Then, ironically, in what is clearly a personal pet-peeve, she spends almost 3 minutes explaining why "folks" and "troop" are abominations of the political language (without appreciating that language is intrinsically dynamic). She then falls into the old trap of glorifying the past (especially regarding politics -- apparently she bought into the FDR spin machine). She rants about the old anecdotal TV "boob tube" ideas, geography identification problems in youth, etc. Virtually the entire interview was riddled with these kinds of quasi-supported anecdotes. I certainly think claims of dumbing down merit investigation, but lets not get irrational about studying irrationality.

5. Penn & Teller's Bullshit - Holier Than Thou With Christopher Hitchens

Comment #45376 by VoxMoose on May 27, 2007 at 1:01 pm

Penn and Teller are great entertainers and, to the degree they get people questioning basic assumptions about their lives, I think they are doing a great service. I do love the show and watch it whenever possible. Also be sure and see their epic stage show at the Rio in Las Vegas. But Bullshit!, viewed beyond a form of "skeptically-minded entertainment" (e.g. if used as a source of actual information), is overrated. In this context, they have a clear ego-driven agenda and frequently come across as embarrassingly bombastic and ill-informed.

In some ways, they are like the Michael Moores of the libertarian skeptics movement. They ask the right questions, but essentially preach to the converted and reach conclusions through a series of argumentative fallacies and manipulations to make their point. Sometimes they are right, sometimes not. Both are entertaining, but Michael Moore isn't the one claiming to champion reason and clear thinking.

As an example, take Penn's quote (about TGD, on the right sidebar of RD's website) "If this book doesn't change the world -- we're all screwed." The comment is funny and witty (especially if you enjoyed TGD, as most of us here did). But Penn's comment highlights this Michael Moore-like thinking. The statement is manipulative and essentially nonsensical to a rationalist. As a bit of reasoning, it is a fallacy, representing a false dichotomy. Sure, it makes for a funny blurb on a website advertising a book, but my point is that their entire Bullshit! show is built off of such quips.

I recall at The Amazing Meeting 2006 how Penn sheepishly admitted that the message of their second-hand smoke episode was incorrect (i.e. second hand smoke isn't harmless). But to see them present the material on Bullshit!, you would think that to disagree with them on this issue was an assault on the very foundations of reason and free will.

In some sense, they are a classic reminder of how easy it is to misframe information. How ambition, ego, and just the desire to be right (or the desire for the other guy to be wrong), distorts the thinking of even the best intentioned and hardened rationalists.

All that said, I found this episode wonderfully iconolclasic.

6. How Did the Universe Survive the Big Bang? In This Experiment, Clues Remain Elusive

Comment #31653 by VoxMoose on April 13, 2007 at 4:07 pm

karlJ: Yes, it is an assumption, but not a bad one. There is no mechanism in our current understanding of physics that would favor matter production over antimatter. Because of this, if you had a vary large, random pool of energy to start things off, it is probably a good starting assumption that the universe would not favor the production of matter over antimatter. This sort of behavior is even seen in our current laboratories. At high enough energies, matter and antimatter are produced in equal amounts.

And yet, we live in a matter dominated universe (as far as we can tell). All the matter in our universe represents the residue of many microscopic reactions in the early universe that each somehow slightly favored matter output. Within our current understanding, it is natural to ask why "matter won" after that initial fireball. Moreover, there should be an identifiable mechanism.

7. How Did the Universe Survive the Big Bang? In This Experiment, Clues Remain Elusive

Comment #31648 by VoxMoose on April 13, 2007 at 3:50 pm

Rtambree: yes, the isospin property (so-called "weak isospin"), in this context, is a way to characterize this lepton/handedness mathematically into one parameter.

Your intuition is right on with the neutrino-antineutrino collisions. They do occur, but are very rare (they generate Z-bosons and those decay byproducts rather than gamma rays). A runaway reaction/explosion from bulk quantities of neutrino-antineutrino annihilations is a fun idea, actually. My hunch is it just isn't going to happen in our universe with a meaningful probability.

In the Majorana case, a neutrino can annihilate itself in some sense with only a spin flip. Interestingly, this is one of the main ways it is being investigated: one looks for a reaction called "neutrinoless double beta decay" where the pair of neutrinos that are expected in the reaction actually vanish because of self annihilation. Again, good intuition with that question!

8. How Did the Universe Survive the Big Bang? In This Experiment, Clues Remain Elusive

Comment #31466 by VoxMoose on April 12, 2007 at 8:21 pm

There are two "internal" degrees of freedom of the neutrino that distinguish it from its antiparticle: lepton number and handedness. In nature there only seems to be left-handed neutrinos and right-handed antineutrinos. The handedness is closely related to the intrinsic spin of the particle as projected along the direction of motion and can be experimentally determined. One can map out apparently consistent behavior of the neutrinos and antineutrinos in different reactions using this designation.

However, the point you raise is actually very important. Strangely enough, it has never been experimentally demonstrated that the neutrino and antineutrino are distinct particles! They could be, in effect, just two different spin states of the same particle and are reacting differently only because of this property. In this case, the other neutrino property I mentioned, lepton number, turns out to be a "false" property -- which indeed allows you to rethink the matter-antimatter imbalance question from that point of view of a mechanism called "leptogenesis" where lepton number is no longer conserved.

There are a number of major experimental efforts exploring this very issue of the neutrino's "nature". If massive neutrino and antineutrino are distinct, they are known as "Dirac neutrinos" and if they are the same object they are known as "Majorana neutrinos." Keep your eye out in the next few years for announcements along these lines!

9. Pope is warned of a green Antichrist

Comment #24309 by VoxMoose on March 5, 2007 at 9:10 pm

From TFA: The doctrine of the Antichrist appears in the New Testament, and could denote someone setting himself up as a Christlike saviour. The Book of Revelation refers to the "Number of the Beast", 666

Wasn't 666 a typo? I thought 616 was the real number of the beast? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/616_%28number%29

;)

Damn, guess my birthmark is 50 off...I knew I wasn't living up the pressures of antichristendom...

10. Atheists Take On Religion

Comment #24307 by VoxMoose on March 5, 2007 at 8:49 pm

robives wrote: 14% of Americans say they have no religion but only 2% are athiest ? Huh?!

Remember, it is some kind of poll (as others have said, perhaps using an odd mix of data). But even so, as a poll, the paradox of the numbers might have more to do with how people respond to certain classes of questions than anything else. E.g. these two questions might get very different responses over the phone during dinner time:

1) Are you religious?
vs.
2) Are you an atheist?

11. William Crawley meets Richard Dawkins

Comment #23326 by VoxMoose on February 27, 2007 at 9:03 pm

While I think Crawley's point about questioning the underlying assumptions associated with the scientific process is philosophically interesting, it is ironic that the very process of inquiring about them in that piercing manner is, in fact, an implementation of the very process he is questioning.