Predictions Are Very Hard

Posted on January 19, 2013 by James Cross

Predictions are very hard, especially about the future – Niels Bohr but often attributed to Yogi Berra

The latest paper to predict the inevitable collapse of civilization comes from Paul Ehrlich: “Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?”

Ehrlich has a history of making dire predictions and fortunately he has been mostly wrong about almost all of them. In The Population Bomb, he predicted massive famines in the 1970’s. Ehrlich’s prediction then were remarkably like those of Thomas Malthus over a hundred years earlier. The inevitable growth of population would outstrip food production and eventually epidemic, famine, or war would intervene to correct the imbalance. Given the spectacular failure of his predictions, we might expect Ehrlich to be more cautious. Yet his latest predictions are mostly along the same lines as his previous predictions with the added nuance of climate change thrown into the mix.

Should we take these predictions at all seriously?

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Posted in Climate change, End Times, Futurism | 12 Comments

The Algorithmic Origins of Life

Posted on December 22, 2012 by James Cross

Sara Imari Walker and Paul C. W. Davies have a great paper out that I would like to call attention to. It is called the “The Algorithmic Origins of Life” and can be viewed in its entirety by downloading the PDF. Davies has written a large number of relatively accessible books that deal with some of the big issues like the origin of the universe and the origin of life from a scientific standpoint. He is often called upon in interviews and panels as a sort of intermediary position between believers in God and Creation Science and atheists and scientists. I must caution that this particular paper is relatively technical so I will hit some of the highlights for you.

Theories about the origin of life fall into two general categories – genetics first or metabolism first.  Both of these approaches focus mainly on the chemistry of life; however, since genetics and metabolism are both required for life as we know it, this creates a sort of chicken or egg problem. Walker and Davies try to get beyond this problem by redefining the problem in terms of information. They argue that what makes life different from non-life is that in life “information manipulates the matter it is instantiated in.”

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Posted in Consciousness, Origin of Life | 7 Comments

Lost History: Revenge of the Nerds

Posted on December 22, 2012 by James Cross

About 1.8 million years ago Homo erectus, one of the better known ancestors of humans, emerged and developed what is known as the Acheulean tool tradition. Although Homo erectus had a cranial capacity close to the lower range of modern human and may have had many human-like social characteristics, the tools never become more complex than simple scrapers, choppers, and stone axes. They change little over the next million and a half years.

Mozart wrote his symphony No. 41 in about two weeks from late July to early August in 1788. Sir George Grove declared it “the greatest orchestral work of the world which preceded the French Revolution.” The symphony, nicknamed the Jupiter symphony, was his last symphonic work and one of three symphonies composed in a short time frame in the summer of that year. The full arrangement has parts for eight instruments and spans over a hundred pages.

How did we get from Homo erectus to Mozart?

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Posted in Brain size, Consciousness, Human Evolution | 5 Comments