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Wednesday 5 April 2023
Playing God(again)
Pleistocene Park: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Popular Mechanics reports, “Bringing Back the Wooly Mammoth Is One Big Genetic Gamble, Scientists Say.” Pleistocene Park, as it’s called, is the brainchild of Sergey Zimov in 1997, 50 square miles of Siberia are to be returned to the Pleistocene — 25,000 years ago, during the Ice Age. (See sources here, here, here, and here.)
But how, and why? Strangely, as glaciers slowly ground over North America, producing the Great Lakes, Siberia sported vast grasslands in which the apex herbivore was the wooly mammoth. Like the bison of the American plains, the mammoth modified its environment to remove the trees and keep it a productive grassland, the “mammoth steppe.” The last mammoth died on Wrangel Island, in the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia, some 4,000 years ago. But not before leaving frozen carcasses in the permafrost of Siberia, which were so well preserved that we have stories of stranded explorers subsisting on mammoth steaks. It is to these ancient TV dinners that we owe the rediscovery of the genome of an extinct species of cold-adapted elephant.
Well, in recreating an extinct species, what else would researchers choose — the passenger pigeon that crowded the Appalachian forests, the thylacine wolf that preyed on Australian marsupials, or the half-zebra quagga that had roamed the South African plains? For all these animals, their habitat had been taken over by humans, and it is doubtful that they would ever survive in the wild again. But the mammoth lived in Siberia, in one of the least inhabited places on earth, and likely to stay uninhabited. If ever there was a place to regain prehistoric paradise, this was it.
Getting Started
How is one to restart an extinct species? Isn’t this the chicken-and-egg problem in spades?
The idea is to recreate some of the DNA from the sequencing of frozen mammoths, and inject it into an Asian elephant egg to produce a half-elephant half-mammoth hybrid. Once a viable embryo is made, further CRISPR-Cas9 splicing can increase the percentage of mammoth DNA to produce 3/4 and 7/8 “mammophants.” Then by degrees one approaches true mammoths. Many challenges present themselves, not least is finding which hybrids are viable and which are stillborn. The gestation of an Asian elephant is 22 months and many trials are needed. This will be an expensive and lengthy process.
Wouldn’t one of the other extinct species be a whole lot easier to recreate? Why choose a mammoth?
A Mission to Save the Planet
Zimov doesn’t want to just recreate the Pleistocene, but in an echo of the commercial possibilities outlined in Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, he wants to save the planet. In a world devoid of religion, global climate change (GCC) has risen to fill the need. The earth has a fever, and billions of dollars are being spent on antipyretics such as lithium batteries, giant windmills, carbon dioxide sequestration, and hydrogen fuels. If Zimov can link up to this powerful liturgy, his funding, if not his park, will be secure. And so he proposed that mammoths did not just spread poop across the steppe, distributing micronutrients, but they also cooled the planet, hence, the Ice Age.
How could a mammoth cool the planet, by flapping its ears?
That’s a peculiar feature of permafrost. It’s cold 365 days of the year. Cold enough that the methane gas, produced by methanogen bacteria slowly decomposing plant material, can form a special water ice mixture called a “clathrate.” Think of this as God’s bottled gas supply, existing in the bottom of oceans near gas seeps and in the polar permafrost. The GCC liturgy views methane as a powerful greenhouse gas, despite the fact that more abundant water vapor has already blocked all the infrared radiation that methane might potentially block, and despite the fact that methane is destroyed by ultraviolet light in less than a year. So GCC computer divinations warn the devout that should global warming begin to melt the permafrost, it would release all the methane and cause the runaway heat death of the planet.
Zimov Saw His Chance
Yet clones have no mothers, and surrogate wombs are either tanks or female African elephants. Like the elephant Horton in Dr. Seuss’ children’s book, this work will not hatch mammoths, but at best, elephants.
More to the genetics point, the same technologies would make even more profit for the breeding of humans. The success of Pleistocene Park would be rapidly transformed into Brave New World.
The carbon atom:foundation of life.
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Crowdsourced smarts vs. crowdsourced stupidity.
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Yet another slippery slope?
In Belgium, Subjectivity Triumphs Over Biology
We live in an irrational age. Germany allows people to change their gender once a year simply by filing out an official form. And now, Belgium is about to allow people to change gender — apparently, whenever they want.
The Belgian supreme court previously ruled that requiring people to identify as male or female violated the equality of people who don’t see themselves as exclusively either. So, a new law will be passed allowing ongoing fluidity of gender identity which will be officially recognized by submitting a simple form. From the Sudinfo story (Google translation):
The principle of irrevocability as well as the procedure before the family court are abolished, announced the Minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne in a press release. . . . This means that people will be allowed to change their gender and first name several times.
Similarly, the procedure before the family court will also be abolished. It will therefore always be possible to change the sex registration or first name with the registrar, following the same simple procedure as for the first change . . .
“It is important that the rights of transgender people are respected and that they can change their sex registration based on their gender identity, without unnecessary or nit-picking procedures. The Constitutional Court has rightly pointed out that the original law is insufficient in this area. We now want to remedy this situation with this bill, so that transgender people are recognized for who they are,” the minister said.
Apparently, even if “who they are” continually shifts.
Civilization-Destroying Stuff
This is civilization-destroying stuff. Not because of the transgender issue per se, but because it represents the triumph of the subjective.
A society based primarily on feelings over thought will be, by definition, profoundly unstable. Our emotions are ephemeral. If I “feel” I am male today, and female tomorrow, and neither the next day — and the law and culture must accommodate my current emotional state — rationality as the basis of society will shatter.
Why is this, Wesley? Transgendered people are a tiny minority of the population.
Because rule by irrationality won’t be limited to gender dysphoria. The attitude will metastasize throughout the depth and breadth of society and culture, eventually corroding our most fundamental institutions and societal structures. As the ancient wisdom has it, a house built on sand cannot stand.
Tuesday 4 April 2023
Still able to cheat?
Paralympic athletes and officials call for action on cheating and intentional misrepresentation
Paralympic athletes and high-ranking officials have expressed alarm at what they say is widespread and growing cheating, calling for urgent action to salvage the credibility of the Games – one of the world's most-watched sporting events.
Key points
The International Paralympic Committee is reviewing its code for classifying competitors
Officials told the review an independent body was needed to deal with cheating
Classifiers said coaches and national sporting bodies must also be held to account
A Four Corners investigation this week revealed how Paralympic athletes are deliberately exaggerating their impairments to improve their chances of winning medals, sometimes with the tacit approval or even encouragement of coaches.
At the heart of the issue is a classification system meant to level the playing field by grouping competitors based on how their impairment affects performance in their sport.
But Paralympians and senior classifiers from around the globe have told a current International Paralympic Committee (IPC) review how easy it is to exploit flaws in the current system and expressed their despair at the movement's apparent impotence in the face of the cheating.
In comments to the IPC's review of its athlete classification code, Frenchman Richard Perot, the Chair of the Para Badminton Athletes' Commission, wrote that the practice of misrepresenting impairments, known as intentional misrepresentation, was "the biggest threat and … weakness of our system".
He said the difficulty of proving intentional misrepresentation and the fact that penalties were so rarely handed out "tends to promote cheating as the ratio [of] little risk of sanction vs big chance of winning medals is in the favour of cheaters".
"If the community knows there are little chances of sanction, then people will cheat more and more," he said.
In 2016, the IPC investigated more than 80 athletes for intentional misrepresentation but found there was not enough evidence to prove any wrongdoing.
Most recently, Indian discus thrower Vinod Kumar was banned from participating in Paralympic events for two years after the Board of Appeal of Classification found that he intentionally misrepresented his abilities when he presented for classification at the Tokyo Paralympics.
'No repercussions' for cheating, official says
In an IPC document from last year, produced as part of the ongoing classification review, more than 100 current and former competitors and officials from multiple sports and impairment classes detail their concerns with the current system.
The New Zealand-based official Ruth McLaren, who advises World Para Swimming on classification, described a "sense of powerlessness" in the face of "the increasing incidence of … intentional misrepresentation".
"Despite our best efforts, we are never able to get our evidence to the point where we can enforce these parts of the rules … " she wrote.
"This essentially means there are currently no repercussions [for intentional misrepresentation], and athletes and coaches are aware of this and are using this to their advantage."
She said classifiers should have the mandate to carry out random checks of athletes' classification, similar to drug testing.
She also called for "protection for classifiers/ volunteers from threats, bullying and abuse from athletes and coaches as this remains an ongoing issue".
US paralympic rower Laura Goodkind told the review: "It's become clear to me the bigger competition is during classification, not on the playing field."
Goodkind said some athletes decided "to cheat during classification because they know they'll perform better in a certain class".
She said other athletes with spinal cord injuries were being classified early in their recovery, knowing their function would "vastly improve" over time.
Misrepresentation on the rise, official says
Dia Pernot, the head of classification for World Para Nordic skiing, said classifiers needed a clear and formal system to report misrepresentation.
"Intentional Misrepresentation appears to be increasing," she wrote.
Dr Pernot said coaches of national sporting federations might be coaching their athletes to misrepresent their abilities.
"In these cases, there needs to be disciplinary action against the coach, team and [national sporting federation].
"The athlete may themselves be an "innocent" victim of their coach."
Carlos Henrique Prokopiak Garletti, a Brazilian paralympic shooter, ophthalmologist and visual impairment classifier, said national Paralympic committees should be held responsible for misrepresentations by their athletes.
"[It is] not rare to find athletes performing way better than the expected performance for their visual class," he wrote.
He said classifiers should be given the power to lodge protests over athlete classifications.
Under the current rules, only national bodies and international federations may make protests.
Another vision impairment classifier, Tania Jain, called for a tougher approach to intentional misrepresentation.
"I feel that we need to be more strict with it," she wrote.
"Sometimes we just mark an athlete NE [Not Eligible] but don't put intentional misrepresentation."
Calls for independent body to combat cheating
Winnie Timans, a consultant on classification to Germany's Paralympic committee, said the biggest challenge was trust in the classification system.
"Classification, being the cornerstone of para sport, should be transparent and trustworthy," she wrote.
She is one of a number of officials who have called for an independent body to detect and deal with the growing number of intentional misrepresentation (IM) cases.
"Disciplinary actions must be taken against athletes and support personnel that conduct IM," she wrote.
"An independent body with the resources to clear these cases would help in the development of trust in the classification systems.
"There should also be clearer pathways [on] how IM can be identified and which kind of information can count in terms of evidence for IM."
Paralympics Australia's classification manager, Cathy Lambert, also called for an independent body to investigate and respond to allegations of intentional misrepresentation, similar to the role the World Anti-Doping Agency plays on drugs in sport.
She recommended regular spot testing of athletes be considered, along with stronger provisions for whistleblowers and greater sharing of data and intelligence between sports.
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Paralympic athletes and officials call for action on cheating and intentional misrepresentation
Four Corners /
By Hagar Cohen, Alex McDonald, Alice Mulheron and Dan Harrison, ABC Investigations
Posted 17h ago17 hours ago, updated 12h ago12 hours ago
Three medals, one gold, one silver and one bronze sit on a wooden surface. They have purple ribbon and the Paralympic logo.
The Paralympic Games is the third-largest sporting event in the world by tickets sold.(Four Corners)
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Paralympic athletes and high-ranking officials have expressed alarm at what they say is widespread and growing cheating, calling for urgent action to salvage the credibility of the Games – one of the world's most-watched sporting events.
Key points:
The International Paralympic Committee is reviewing its code for classifying competitors
Officials told the review an independent body was needed to deal with cheating
Classifiers said coaches and national sporting bodies must also be held to account
A Four Corners investigation this week revealed how Paralympic athletes are deliberately exaggerating their impairments to improve their chances of winning medals, sometimes with the tacit approval or even encouragement of coaches.
At the heart of the issue is a classification system meant to level the playing field by grouping competitors based on how their impairment affects performance in their sport.
But Paralympians and senior classifiers from around the globe have told a current International Paralympic Committee (IPC) review how easy it is to exploit flaws in the current system and expressed their despair at the movement's apparent impotence in the face of the cheating.
Flame burns inside the Paralympic Cauldron, a structure made of multiple curved metal pieces.
The Paralympic flame at the closing ceremony for the Tokyo Games.(AAP: Thomas Lovelock)
In comments to the IPC's review of its athlete classification code, Frenchman Richard Perot, the Chair of the Para Badminton Athletes' Commission, wrote that the practice of misrepresenting impairments, known as intentional misrepresentation, was "the biggest threat and … weakness of our system".
He said the difficulty of proving intentional misrepresentation and the fact that penalties were so rarely handed out "tends to promote cheating as the ratio [of] little risk of sanction vs big chance of winning medals is in the favour of cheaters".
"If the community knows there are little chances of sanction, then people will cheat more and more," he said.
A man looks at the camera with a neutral expression and his arms crossed.
Mr Perot says the current approach to intentional misrepresentation is not working.(Badminton World Federation)
In 2016, the IPC investigated more than 80 athletes for intentional misrepresentation but found there was not enough evidence to prove any wrongdoing.
Most recently, Indian discus thrower Vinod Kumar was banned from participating in Paralympic events for two years after the Board of Appeal of Classification found that he intentionally misrepresented his abilities when he presented for classification at the Tokyo Paralympics.
'No repercussions' for cheating, official says
In an IPC document from last year, produced as part of the ongoing classification review, more than 100 current and former competitors and officials from multiple sports and impairment classes detail their concerns with the current system.
The New Zealand-based official Ruth McLaren, who advises World Para Swimming on classification, described a "sense of powerlessness" in the face of "the increasing incidence of … intentional misrepresentation".
"Despite our best efforts, we are never able to get our evidence to the point where we can enforce these parts of the rules … " she wrote.
"This essentially means there are currently no repercussions [for intentional misrepresentation], and athletes and coaches are aware of this and are using this to their advantage."
An overheard view of a running track with with Paralympics logo. Eight runners can be seen racing in lanes of the track.
The classification system is designed to level the playing field by grouping competitors based on how their impairment affects performance in their sport.(AAP: Joel Marklund)
She said classifiers should have the mandate to carry out random checks of athletes' classification, similar to drug testing.
She also called for "protection for classifiers/ volunteers from threats, bullying and abuse from athletes and coaches as this remains an ongoing issue".
US paralympic rower Laura Goodkind told the review: "It's become clear to me the bigger competition is during classification, not on the playing field."
Goodkind said some athletes decided "to cheat during classification because they know they'll perform better in a certain class".
A person, wearing a white cap with a USA logo, looks directly at the camera with a neutral expression and their arms crossed.
Goodkind competed at the Rio and Tokyo Paralympic Games.(Facebook: US Rowing)
She said other athletes with spinal cord injuries were being classified early in their recovery, knowing their function would "vastly improve" over time.
Misrepresentation on the rise, official says
Dia Pernot, the head of classification for World Para Nordic skiing, said classifiers needed a clear and formal system to report misrepresentation.
"Intentional Misrepresentation appears to be increasing," she wrote.
Dr Pernot said coaches of national sporting federations might be coaching their athletes to misrepresent their abilities.
"In these cases, there needs to be disciplinary action against the coach, team and [national sporting federation].
"The athlete may themselves be an "innocent" victim of their coach."
An unidentifiable person in a wheelchair rugby chair with a reinforced front bumper, holds a white ball.
The IPC's review of the athlete classification code was announced two years ago.(Four Corners)
Carlos Henrique Prokopiak Garletti, a Brazilian paralympic shooter, ophthalmologist and visual impairment classifier, said national Paralympic committees should be held responsible for misrepresentations by their athletes.
"[It is] not rare to find athletes performing way better than the expected performance for their visual class," he wrote.
He said classifiers should be given the power to lodge protests over athlete classifications.
Under the current rules, only national bodies and international federations may make protests.
The words 'International Paralympic Committee' and the IPC logo, on the side of a white wall of a building.
The International Paralympic Committee's headquarters in Bonn, Germany.(Four Corners)
Another vision impairment classifier, Tania Jain, called for a tougher approach to intentional misrepresentation.
"I feel that we need to be more strict with it," she wrote.
"Sometimes we just mark an athlete NE [Not Eligible] but don't put intentional misrepresentation."
YOUTUBEGaming the Games: The scandal threatening the Paralympics
Calls for independent body to combat cheating
Winnie Timans, a consultant on classification to Germany's Paralympic committee, said the biggest challenge was trust in the classification system.
"Classification, being the cornerstone of para sport, should be transparent and trustworthy," she wrote.
Wheelchair races compete along a road lined with traffic cones.
Several officials told the review the classification system needed to be more transparent.(Four Corners)
She is one of a number of officials who have called for an independent body to detect and deal with the growing number of intentional misrepresentation (IM) cases.
"Disciplinary actions must be taken against athletes and support personnel that conduct IM," she wrote.
"An independent body with the resources to clear these cases would help in the development of trust in the classification systems.
"There should also be clearer pathways [on] how IM can be identified and which kind of information can count in terms of evidence for IM."
Do you have a story tip?
Email Hagar Cohen at Hagarcohenabc@protonmail.com and cohen.hagar@abc.net.au.
Paralympics Australia's classification manager, Cathy Lambert, also called for an independent body to investigate and respond to allegations of intentional misrepresentation, similar to the role the World Anti-Doping Agency plays on drugs in sport.
She recommended regular spot testing of athletes be considered, along with stronger provisions for whistleblowers and greater sharing of data and intelligence between sports.
A sign that reads 'Paralympics Australia' has its logo and the Paralympic Games logo. Out of focus in the foreground is a weight
Paralympics Australia's classification manager backed calls for an independent body to handle allegations of intentional misrepresentation.(Four Corners)
The IPC's classification code review process started in 2021 and is scheduled to run for three years.
In a statement to the ABC, the IPC said the purpose of the review was "to further improve classification as a whole and address topics that have been raised by stakeholders, including IPC member organisations and the athlete community".
"Intentional misrepresentation is one of several topics that the IPC and stakeholders have discussed in detail during the review process and will be addressed in the new code…" it said.
"The IPC strongly encourages senior officials and classifiers who have concerns regarding classification to share them with their respective International Federation so that they can be looked into and appropriate action taken.
"The IPC and all International Federations treat intentional misrepresentation as a very serious offence. It is one that can lead to a suspension of up to four years for an athlete and/or athlete support personnel for a first offence and a lifetime suspension for repeat offenders."
'Change needs to happen now'
A new classification code is not expected to be implemented until after the summer and winter Paralympic Games, to be held in Paris in 2024 and in Milan and the Italian ski resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo in 2026.
But Francesca Cipelli, who competed in athletics for Italy in the Tokyo Paralympics, told the IPC review more urgent action was needed.
Cipelli, who suffered a traumatic brain injury when she was 10 years old, competes in the T37 classification, one of a number of classifications for athletes with coordination impairments.
She said because of flaws in the classification system, she was competing against athletes with cerebral palsy whose impairments had less impact on their sporting performance than hers.
"The Paralympics were created to ensure equal competition between athletes with the same disability, while currently in the brain injury standing categories, this is not happening," she wrote.
"I'll probably never win [a medal] in the current T37 category which I'm in … because my competitors are much stronger than me because their disability affects them in a slighter way than mine does."
Cipelli said the IPC risked losing its credibility if the existing categories were not reorganised before the Paris Games next year.
"This is a real emergency; the change needs to happen now."
Monday 3 April 2023
The science on U.F.Os?
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Just another false God?
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A lamb with the voice of a dragon?
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Sunday 2 April 2023
George Orwell: a brief history.
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When it's cruel to be "kind"
Freeing Captured Orca Could Be Cruel
One of my favorite stories in The Little Prince has to do with a fox that the Little Prince tames. When the time comes for the Little Prince to leave him, the fox is very sad. Why? “Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”
More than 50 years ago, an orca juvenile was separated from its pod, captured, and sent to the Miami Seaquarium. She has lived her entire life there.
Now, after years of protest pressure, Tokitae — aka Lolita — is to be freed. From the New York times story:
The killer whale Lolita, which has entertained generations of visitors with colossal leaps and sloppy belly flops that splashed crowds at the Miami Seaquarium, will be returning to her native waters after more than 50 years in captivity, the owner of the marine life aquarium and Miami-Dade County officials said.
The plan to release the orca — also known as Tokitae — is the result of a “binding agreement” among The Dolphin Company, which operates the Seaquarium, Miami-Dade County and animal rights advocates, the company said. The move comes after an outcry from those who complained for years that an animal from the ocean should not be kept in a small tank.
Is this really a kindness? The Seaquarium is the only home Tokitae knows. As the story notes, she can’t fish anymore and will have to be trained to fend for herself. She could starve if training in that regard does not go well. Moreover, orcas are social animals. Lolita could end up alone, not part of a pod, perhaps an object of predation because of her advanced age. (An orca’s life span tops out at about 50 years.)
I understand the motive, but this could be a case of ideology trumping actual animal welfare. And I can’t help thinking of the Little Prince’s fox.
Darwin's theory of devolution?
Michael Behe on Why Lenski’s Experiments Show Devolution, Not Evolution
On a classic episode of ID the Future, biochemist Michael Behe reviews the well-known Long Term Evolution Experiment at Michigan State, where evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski’s team was initially excited to see what they thought was a new species of E. coli forming in their flasks. As Behe has written here at Evolution News, one flask of E. coli in Lenski’s experiment evolved the ability to metabolize (“eat”) citrate in the presence of oxygen. But along with it came multiple mutations breaking genes, degrading genetic information, and ultimately increasing the bacteria’s death rates. It all goes to support Behe’s thesis in his book Darwin devolves : evolution is good at creating niche advantages by breaking things; it isn’t good at building fundamentally novel forms, the very thing the grand narrative of modern evolutionary theory purports that it does. Download the podcast or listen to it Here
Saturday 1 April 2023
Reductive materialists are still trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Dangerous Skating: Kauffman, Jaeger, and Roli on the Need for a New Teleology
Here is a fascinating article: “How Organisms Come to Know the World: Fundamental Limits on Artificial General Intelligence,” by Andrea Roli, Johannes Jaeger, and Stuart A. Kauffman, writing in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
Notice how closely the authors skate to a robust teleology:
Our insights put rather stringent limitations on what traditional mechanistic science and engineering can understand and achieve when it comes to agency and evolutionary innovation. This affects the study of any kind of agential system — in computer science, biology, and the social sciences — including higher-level systems that contain agents, such as ecosystems or the economy. In these areas of investigation, any purely formal approach will remain forever incomplete. This has important repercussions for the philosophy of science: the basic problem is that, with respect to coming to know the world, once we have carved it into a finite set of categories, we can no longer see beyond those categories. The grounding of meaning in real objects is outside any predefined formal ontology. The evolution of scientific knowledge itself is entailed by no law. It cannot be formalized…What would such a meta-mechanistic science look like? This is not entirely clear yet. Its methods and concepts are only now being elaborated…But one thing seems certain: it will be a science that takes agency seriously. It will allow the kind of teleological behavior that is rooted in the self-referential closure of organization in living systems.
All three authors insist on their naturalistic bona fides. That’s understandable. Openly breaking with naturalism can get one dispatched to the gulag of intelligent design. For most scholars, that is a one-way trip to academic Siberia.
So, to use a musical metaphor, I simply enjoy this trio’s lyrical melody, and ignore the “Just naturalism!” squawks when they occur.
For sale: immortal evil?
Pre-Order Immortality Now! (It’s Only 8 Years Away, Apparently)
Ray Kurzweil, former Google engineer, thinks that humanity is a mere “eight years away” from achieving immortality. No, he’s not a spiritual leader predicting the eschaton. He’s not telling you to seek union with God and achieve immortality the old-fashioned way. He thinks we’ll be able to live forever via age-reversing “nanobots.” These “tiny robots” will correct damaged cells and make us immune to disease, thus leading to radically increased human longevity. Stacy Liberatore writes at the Daily Mail,
Now the former Google engineer believes technology is set to become so powerful it will help humans live forever, in what is known as the singularity.
Singularity is a theoretical point when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence and changes the path of our evolution, LifeBoat reports. Kurzweil, an author who describes himself as a futurist, predicted that technological singularity would happen by 2045, with AI passing a valid Turing test in 2029. It is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. He said that machines are already making us more intelligent and connecting them to our neocortex will help people think more smartly. Contrary to the fears of some, he believes that implanting computers in our brains will improve us. ‘We’re going to get more neocortex, we’re going to be funnier, we’re going to be better at music. We’re going to be sexier’, he said. ‘We’re really going to exemplify all the things that we value in humans to a greater degree.’
STACY LIBERATORE, HUMANS WILL ACHIEVE IMMORTALITY IN EIGHT YEARS, SAYS FORMER GOOGLE ENGINEER | DAILY MAIL ONLINE
Efforts to increase biological longevity (if not total immortality) are funded at places like Altos Labs, which both Elon Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos are involved in. Peter Biles covered Altos Labs and similar operatives in this piece here, and considered the following questions: Who could afford the technology? Are the futurists delusional in thinking we can actually achieve immortality?
On a more philosophical note, greater length of physical life doesn’t solve the more fundamental, existential questions of meaning and purpose that we all have as human beings. Would living forever in a utopian technological society really be as great as the transhumanists insist?
PS.What technology's evangelists never seem to take into account is that given the tragedy of the human condition technological advancements are just as likely to empower criminality and tyranny as beneficence . For example if the proponents of the technological singularity are to be taken seriously, soon we would not merely have to worry about criminal syndicates hacking our machines but hacking us.
Friday 31 March 2023
Explosions are the rule in the fossil record?
Fossil Friday: The Triassic Explosion of Marine Reptiles
Last week I reported about the abrupt origin of ichthyosaurs in the Early Triassic. However, ichthyosaurs are not the only marine reptiles that appeared abruptly in the Early Triassic. Actually, there are 15 (!) different families of marine reptiles that appear as if out of nowhere in Triassic deposits, while none of them or any putative precursors are known from the preceding Permian period. All aquatic reptiles from the Permian (McMenamin 2019), such as mesosaurs, are clearly unrelated (Laurin & Piñeiro 2017, MacDougall et al. 2018).
The new marine reptile groups appearing in the Triassic include, for example, plesiosaurs, placodonts (like the featured Psephoderma), nothosaurs, thalattosaurs, hupehsuchians, nasorostrians, ichthyopterygians, pleurosaurids, and enigmatic forms like Atopodentatus as well as marine turtles and marine crocodiles (thalattosuchians) (Motani 2009). Twitchett & Foster (2012: fig. 5) showed that these 15 families appeared within 9 million years “from obscure origins in the Early Triassic.” It is not like we Darwin critics make this stuff up. We just look at all the evidence and draw our conclusions from conflicting data that Darwinists prefer to ignore or explain away with ever more ad hoc hypotheses.
References
Laurin M & Piñeiro GH 2017. A Reassessment of the Taxonomic Position of Mesosaurs, and a Surprising Phylogeny of Early Amniotes. Frontiers in Earth Science 5:88, 1–13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2017.00088
MacDougall MJ, Modesto SP, Brocklehurst N, Verriere A, Reisz RR & Fröbisch J 2018. Response: A Reassessment of the Taxonomic Position of Mesosaurs, and a Surprising Phylogeny of Early Amniotes. Frontiers in Earth Science 6:99, 1–5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2018.00099
McMenamin M 2019. Permian Aquatic Reptiles. PaleoXiv July 11, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31233/osf.io/wb6h7
Motani R 2009. The Evolution of Marine Reptiles. Evolution: Education and Outreach 2, 224–235. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12052-009-0139-y
Twitchett RJ & Foster WJ 2012. Post-Permian Radiation. eLS 2012, 1–6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/
Thursday 30 March 2023
And that's Ms.Great salt lake to you.
Let’s Declare the Great Salt Lake a Person?
The nature rights movement keeps making inroads into establishment thinking — and people keep ignoring the threat.
The concept has now been advocated in a major opinion piece in the New York Times. Utah’s Great Salt Lake is shrinking — a legitimate problem worthy of focused concern and remediation. Utah native and Harvard Divinity School’s writer-in-residence Terry Tempest Williams — who focuses on “the spiritual implications of climate change” — makes a strong case that the lake is in trouble.
A Conservationist Approach
Her proposed remedies reflect a proper conservationist approach worthy of being debated:
Scientists tell us the lake needs an additional one million acre-feet per year to reverse its decline, increasing average stream flow to about 2.5 million acre-feet per year. A gradual refilling would begin. Two-thirds of the natural flow going into the lake is currently being diverted: 80 percent of that diversion by agriculture, 10 percent by industries and 10 percent by municipalities. Water conservation provides a map for how to live within our means. We can create water banks and budgets where we know how much water we have and how much water we spend. Public and private green turf can be retired.
If only Williams had stopped there. Alas, she plunges into environmental radicalism, urging that the Great Salt Lake be declared a person and granted rights. She quotes ecologist Ben Abbott to the effect that the lake owns its water:
“If we believe in the Western water doctrine of ‘first in time, first in rights,’ then the water law of prior appropriation says these water rights originally belonged to her as a sovereign body,” said Mr. Abbott.
Nature-Worship Mysticism
Please. This is nature-worship mysticism. The Great Salt Lake is a geological feature. It is not a living being. It is not sentient. It cannot own anything.
Nor should it be granted human-style rights. But don’t tell that to Williams:
The Rights of Nature is now a global movement granting personhood to rivers, mountains and forests. In Ecuador, they have granted constitutional rights to Pachamama, Earth Mother.
In the United States, Lake Erie was granted personhood in 2019, allowing citizens to sue on behalf of the lake. Although this right was invalidated by a federal judge, this is the new frontier of granting legal status to a living world. Why not grant personhood rights to Great Salt Lake, which in 2021 was voted “Utahn of the Year” in The Salt Lake Tribune? This is not a radical but a rational response to an increasingly wounded Earth.
Wrong. It is radical. And it is profoundly subversive of Western civilizational values:
Nature rights violates human exceptionalism: Human exceptionalism appeals to our exclusive capacity for moral agency. Only human beings have duties, one of which is to be responsible stewards of the environment and to leave a verdant world to those who come after us. That duty is expressed by conservation efforts and proper environmental regulations. In contrast, nature-rights ideology rejects the traditional hierarchy of life. In rightists’ view, humans are no more important than any other species or life form and, it increasingly seems, even non-animate features of the natural world. Those approaches — conservation versus rights — are profoundly different and would have equally divergent consequences.
Nature rights devalues the vibrancy of rights: Granting rights to nature means that everything is potentially a rights-bearer. If everything has rights, one could say that nothing really does. At best, nature rights would devalue the concept in much the same way that wild inflation destroys the worth of currency. Indeed, if a squirrel or mushroom and all other earthly entities somehow possess rights, the vibrancy of rights withers.
Nature rights would be incapable of nuanced enforcement: A conservation approach allows the natural world to be harnessed for human benefit, mediated by our responsibilities to engage in proper environmental policies and practices. In contrast, nature rights would have all the nuance of handcuffs that could never be unlocked. Under such a regime, nuanced husbandry practices would yield to the “right” of “nature” to “exist and persist.” The human benefit from our use of the natural world would, at most, receive mere equal consideration to the impacted aspect of nature’s rights — and this would be true no matter how dynamic and otherwise thriving the potentially impacted aspects of nature might be.
Nature rights is unnecessary to proper environmental protection: We can provide robust safeguards for the environment without the subversion of granting rights outside the human realm. Yellowstone National Park, for example, is one of the great wonders of the world. It has been splendidly protected since 1872 (when it was made a national park) and in a manner that has protected its pristine beauty and allowed people to enjoy its incredible marvels — without declaring Old Faithful a “person” entitled to enforceable rights.
Consequences of the Rights Approach
When we dig to the intellectual core of the movement, we find that the controversy isn’t about “rights” at all. Rather, we are having an epochal debate about the scope, nature, and extent of our responsibilities toward the natural world. The rights approach would impose such extreme duties on us we would hurt ourselves.
So, by all means, act to protect the Great Salt Lake. But turn it into a “person” with enforceable rights? Absolutely not!
Hideki Tojo : a brief history.
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Resistance is futile?
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Thomas Sowell in his own words.
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Darwin vs. Darwinism?
Darwin’s Top 10 Arguments Against His Own Theory
In a recent article Here I referred to my canceled presentation at the annual conference of the National Science Teaching Association. My topic was to be, “The Top 10 Scientific Arguments Against Darwin’s Theory — According to Darwin Himself.” What are those top ten arguments? Let’s take a look.
Charles Darwin took seriously objections to his theory that had been raised by many of the most eminent naturalists of his day. In The Origin of Species he considered in detail 37 of them. Darwin acknowledged that there were “a crowd of difficulties” with his theory and stated, “Some of them are so serious that to this day I can hardly reflect on them without being in some degree staggered; but, to the best of my judgment, the greater number are only apparent, and those that are real are not, I think, fatal to the theory.” (p. 158) (All citations are to Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (New York: NAL Penguin Inc., 1958).)
Based on Darwin’s discussion in The Origin of Species, it is reasonable to conclude that he considered the arguments set forth below to be the top ten scientific arguments against his theory. These arguments relate to Darwin’s proposed mechanism for evolution, i.e., the application of natural selection to randomly produced variations. (Note: With respect to the origin of life, Darwin theorized in The Origin of Species that the very first forms of life (at most, eight to ten forms) were produced by the Creator. He did not consider any arguments against this part of his theory and apparently none were raised by the naturalists of his day, most of whom subscribed to a theory of design.)
Darwin’s thoughtful consideration of the scientific arguments against his theory is consistent with his hope for the future: “I look with confidence to the future, — to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality.” (p. 444)
1. The Complexity of Eyes
Darwin states, “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” (p. 168)
2. Existence of Similar Organs in Remotely Allied Species
Darwin considers the electric organs of species of fish that are remotely allied and also the luminous organs of insects “belonging to widely different families.” He states that the latter “offer, under our present state of ignorance, a difficulty almost exactly parallel with that of the electric organs.” (p. 176)
Darwin admits the difficulty under his theory “of an organ, apparently the same, arising in several remotely allied species.” (p. 176)
3.Existence of Different Organs for the Same Function in Closely Allied Species
Darwin considers two genera of orchid, the Coryanthes and the Catasetum. He explains in detail the ingenious “contrivance” that the Coryanthes uses for pollination. He then turns to the Catasetum, which is “closely allied” to the Coryanthes, and states that the construction of the flower in the Catasetum “is widely different, though serving the same end.” (p. 180)
Darwin admits that it is common throughout nature for the same end to be gained by the most diversified means, “even sometimes in the case of closely-related beings.” (p. 178)
4. Parts with Little Importance
Darwin states, “I have sometimes felt great difficulty in understanding the origin or formation of parts of little importance; almost as great, though of a very different kind, as in the case of the most perfect and complex organs.” (p. 181) He mentions the tail of the giraffe as an example of a part with little apparent importance. He states that it looks like “an artificially constructed fly-flapper” and “[it] seems at first incredible that this could have been adapted for its present purpose by successive slight modifications, each better and better fitted, for so trifling an object as to drive away flies.” (p. 181)
5. Complex Instincts
Darwin acknowledges, “Many instincts are so wonderful that their development will probably appear to the reader a difficulty sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.” (p. 228)
Darwin states, “He must be a dull man who can examine the exquisite structure of a [honeycomb], so beautifully adapted to its end, without enthusiastic admiration. We hear from mathematicians that bees have practically solved a recondite problem, and have made their cells of the proper shape to hold the greatest possible amount of honey, with the least possible consumption of precious wax in their construction. It has been remarked that a skilful workman … would find it very difficult to make cells of wax of the true form, though this is effected by a crowd of bees working in a dark hive.” (pp. 242-243)
6. Neuter Ants and Their Different Castes
With respect to neuter ants, Darwin states it is “one special difficulty, which at first appeared to me insuperable, and actually fatal to the whole theory … for these neuters often differ widely in instinct and in structure from both the males and fertile females, … yet, from being sterile, they cannot propagate their kind.” (p. 250)
Darwin goes on to state, “But we have not as yet touched on the acme of the difficulty; namely, the fact that the neuters of several ants differ, not only from the fertile females and males, but from each other, sometimes to an almost incredible degree, and are thus divided into two or even three castes.” (p. 253) He acknowledges, “It will indeed be thought that I have an overweening confidence in the principle of natural selection, when I do not admit that such wonderful and well-established facts at once annihilate the theory.” (p. 253)
7. The Eyes of the Flat-Fish
During its early youth the body of the flat-fish is symmetrical with one eye on each side. However, as the body matures, one eye “begins to glide slowly round the head” to the other side. (pp. 209-210) This is beneficial because the adult flat-fish spends most of its time lying on its side on the bottom of the ocean.
Darwin agrees that his theory of natural selection cannot account for this feature. He states that it “may be attributed to the habit, no doubt beneficial to the individual and to the species, of endeavouring to look upwards with both eyes, whilst resting on one side at the bottom.” (p. 211) Thus, it “may be attributed almost wholly to continued use, together with inheritance.” (pp. 222-223)
8. Absence of Transitional Forms in the Fossil Record
With respect to the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record, Darwin states that under his theory, “…as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.” (p. 287) Darwin admits that “though we do find many links — we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all extinct and existing forms by the finest graduated steps.” (pp. 335-336)
He states, “That the geological record is imperfect all will admit; but that it is imperfect to the degree required by our theory, few will be inclined to admit.” (p. 431) He also acknowledges, “He who rejects this view of the imperfection of the geological record, will rightly reject the whole theory.” (p. 336)
9. Absence of Transitional Forms Even Within Particular Geological Formations
With respect to the absence of transitional forms even within particular geological formations, Darwin states, “[I]t cannot be doubted that the geological record, viewed as a whole, is extremely imperfect; but if we confine our attention to any one formation, it becomes much more difficult to understand why we do not therein find closely graduated varieties between the allied species which lived at its commencement and at its close.” (p. 298)
He confesses, “But I do not pretend that I should ever have suspected how poor was the record in the best preserved geological sections, had not the absence of innumerable transitional links between the species which lived at the commencement and close of each formation, pressed so hardly on my theory.” (pp. 304-305)
10. Sudden Appearance of New Forms of Life
Darwin states, “The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations, has been urged by several paleontologists — for instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and Sedgwick — as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species.” (p. 305)
He goes on to state, “There is another and allied difficulty, which is much more serious. I allude to the manner in which species belonging to several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks,” i.e., the Cambrian strata. (p. 308) “To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits … prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer.” (p. 309) Darwin concludes, “The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained.” (p. 310)
Wednesday 29 March 2023
File under "well said." XCIV
"he fondly imagined people to be intelligent enough to accept a good thing when it was offered to them, which was conclusive evidence that he knew little about the human race."
George Schuyler
The other Wilberforce?
Robert Shedinger: Darwin’s Sacred Cause Is “Historical Fiction”
On a new episode of ID the Future, science-and-religion scholar Robert Shedinger makes the case that a well-known historical work about Charles Darwin, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, is deeply misleading. The book by Adrian Desmond and James Moore holds that Darwin was significantly motivated in his scientific work by abolitionist sentiments; and Shedinger says, not so fast. He had spent considerable time reading Darwin’s correspondence and had seen no evidence supporting this thesis, so he reread Darwin’s Sacred Cause, this time tracking down all the key citations the book offered as evidence, and a pattern soon emerged. The sources the authors cite didn’t actually support their thesis. Some were totally irrelevant. Some were cited completely out of context. In other cases, the authors gave the impression that Darwin said something when the comment they attributed to him was stitched together from multiple correspondences and the constituent comments were often about something else altogether. Shedinger says he realized that this biography that looked to be so well documented amounted to “historical fiction.” The effect of the book is to misrepresent Darwin in such a way as to make those who reject Darwinism appear to be opposing a saintly anti-abolitionist.
While Darwin did hold anti-slavery sentiments, they didn’t drive his science and he himself was anything but free from racism. In fact, his case for human evolution partly rested on deeply demeaning racist attitudes toward indigenous peoples. For more on this, see historian Richard Weikart’s book Darwinian Racism.
Also in this episode, Shedinger tells host Michael Keas about how he went from a scholar fully persuaded of Darwinian theory to a skeptic of modern evolutionary theory, attracted to the theory of intelligent design. Shedinger lays out his case against Darwinism in his recent Book The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms. Download the podcast or listen to it Here
Yet another clash of titans.
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Copying the original engineer?
Engineering Brings Life and Vice Versa
I came across an uplifting video about a life-saving invention that encapsulates several running themes about intelligent design. If you can, take 22 minutes to watch this video by Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer. I assure you it will be well worth your time.
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The story is uplifting on many levels. How wonderful is it to see former enemies from a major genocide in 1994 having learned how to live together in peace 30 years later? How inspiring is it to see one near victim of that slaughter starting in poverty to become a Harvard engineer and inventor in a company that is saving lives? How beautiful is it to see smiling children mastering soccer with a makeshift ball? How gratifying to prove naysayers wrong, and to show the fruit of well-tested engineering being put to beneficial use in the poorest parts of the world? I was very impressed by this story.
There was one brief statement I will criticize, but otherwise this video made my day, especially since I have relatives in Africa on a medical mission who may soon benefit from this amazing technology. Whether or not you like drones or believe this type of delivery system will change shopping in America (I can see lawyers rubbing their hands), the way the invention is working in Africa right now cannot help but impress. This is the power of ethical intelligent design in action. Let’s look at some lessons from this story.
Biomimetics
The heroes of the story are the birds. They were already masters of takeoff, landing, and pinpoint navigation. An owl was the inspiration for the Zipline drone’s whisper-quiet propeller system. A hummingbird inspired their miniaturized and silent flight control. As I like to say, if the engineers can get their drones to lay eggs and hatch babies with the software and hardware already included, that can grow larger while maintaining function, and power themselves from the environment by ingesting worms, they will really have something to brag about. Bravo to the birds that once again inspired inventors from the Wright Brothers to the high-tech engineers of NASA and Zipline.
Trial and Error with Thinking
As Rober shows, Abdul and his crew had to try and fail many times. They succeeded through the failures and made progress because they applied their minds to problem solving. By thinking, and learning the principles of how things work, elucidated by great minds of the past, they could bring parts together to achieve a goal that first existed only in the mind’s eye. They could envision a concept, experiment, and test possibilities, making progress toward the goal by learning from their failures.
Darwinians tell us that is how natural selection works, but think about it. (In passing, note that thinking also requires a mind.) If nature is mindless and aimless, with no foresight, could it invent a Zipline delivery system, much less a bird as they claim happened? A fundamental ID principle first clearly enunciated by Michael Behe is that irreducibly complex systems defeat the Darwinian mechanism and give positive evidence for intelligent design. We see that in this story implicitly.
Altruistic Design
Another thing the Darwinians continue to teach (examples here and here) is that altruism evolved by natural selection. Indeed, they attribute every noble ideal in human society to this blind, aimless, purposeless “mechanism” that works in bacteria similarly to how (they say) it works in human societies. With their evolutionary game theory models, they divide up members of a population into cooperators and cheaters whose actions are genetically determined by the mechanism, not by morality or by human exceptionalism. But doesn’t this quote from the video knock the air out of that explanation? Rober shows battle scars from the Rwandan genocide, then says,
As horrific as that ways, it galvanized the country to a period of healing and solidarity as a single Rwandan people instead of divisive ethnic groups. For instance, on the last Saturday of the month, literally everyone spends the day picking up trash and volunteering in their local communities. And that’s one of the reasons you hardly see litter anywhere…. There was just a pervasive optimism everywhere. Everyone was moving with a purpose everywhere we went, not just working hard, but working smart with the resources on hand…
For over a decade, attending school up to age 16 has been both mandatory and free. And when you combine that with leapfrogging to new technologies like drone delivery, in the last decade their economy has been growing at four times the rate of the U.S. economy, while their violent crime rate has been 15 times less than the U.S.
Who can say with a straight face that these Rwandan people, recovering from a devastating civil war, are just pawns of evolutionary game theory? Who can say that Abdul, after his near escape from terror that took his family, is no better than a germ cooperating with other bacteria? To even suggest such a notion is to defeat it. That word purpose stands out as anti-Darwinian as anything in the whole video.
This calls for an occasion to promote the new Book Darwin Comes to Africa by Olufemi Oluniyi, who recounts the abominations wrought by the European imperialists who were mostly ardent believers in Social Darwinism. Would Darwinists today draw no distinctions between the altruistic, cooperative black Africans of Rwanda, whose behavior serves as a model for Westerners, than the colony of gorillas Mark Rober visited next in the video? Perish the racist thought. Westerners could learn some lessons from the morals of these friendly people who turned evil into good, and from Abdul whose noble soul did not take the evolutionary route of retaliation for his own personal fitness but instead is today saving the lives of distant people he hasn’t even met.
Teaching Design
Rober bypasses academia at one point. He shares his vision of getting children to build things and learn by doing, realizing that “thinking like an engineer” means breaking things to figure out what works and what doesn’t. How many of the happy children he shows trying to solve simple problems, like getting a ping pong ball to bounce into a boot, will be likely to end up Darwinists? The harder the problem, the more the student will learn that things don’t just happen. Teaching engineering at an early age may prove to be the antidote to Darwinism for the next generation
The Flaw
OK, so what is the lone criticism I have of the video? It’s a throwaway line when Rober claims that “with owls, there’s an evolutionary pressure to be as quiet as possible” as he shows an owl flying imperceptibly past a line of microphones. What can possibly be meant by “evolutionary pressure”? The Darwinist imagines that adaptations are caused by an organism’s surroundings. The Darwinist believes that innovations that are engineering marvels, like powered flight, can emerge this way. For those who maintain that environments have such power, consider a simple illustration. The desert pupfish in Nevada have faced environmental pressure from increasing salinity as their habitats dry up, and now survive high salt concentrations that would kill other fish. Isn’t that “evolutionary pressure” forcing them to adapt? There are several problems with this explanation.
For one thing, a chance mutation that helps a lone pupfish survive increasing salt is not going to aid the individual, but only its offspring. Standard neo-Darwinism teaches that the beneficial mutation needs to occur in the germline, not in somatic cells. Even if epigenetic benefits can be inherited, as has been shown more recently, they cannot happen gradually by random mutations, but involve rewiring of complex genetic circuits. Second, the neo-Darwinian explanation transfers the cause of adaptation to the environment instead of locating it in the organism. This borders on vitalism or personification, as if the environment is pressuring the organism in certain adaptive directions. The environment is mindless; it cannot care what happens. Extinction is a perfectly valid option, as the fossil record shows. Third and most important, the pupfish can only adapt if there is built-in engineering for adaptation prior to need. This presupposes an ability to sense the change, reprogram itself, and alter its own responses. Intelligent design for robustness in changing environments matches what engineers do when they build in redundancy and fail-safe mechanisms, as shown in the video. The owl that flies silently was not “pressured” by “evolution” to adapt its wing feathers. The cause of the adaptation was internal to the owl. That required foresight, not a randomly changing environment.
Enough on that minor flaw in the video. Everything else was spectacularly encouraging for ID advocates. By the way, signups are being taken for the next CELS event (Conference on Engineering in Living Systems) in Texas this June 3-10. Read about it here.
The Uplift
For an upbeat summary, Rober’s ending comment bears repeating.
Here you have Abdul, who bears a scar on his head from the same machete that killed his entire family as a child, not only using his engineering knowledge to save the lives of his people, but more importantly, to inspire the next generation of problem solvers to dream even bigger. It’s the type of thing that leaves you feeling a little bit of that contagious Rwandan optimism for the future and the incredible potential of us mere humans.
Human exceptionalism is real; it is part of our own experience and of human history. We thrive best when using our minds and morals unselfishly to solve problems for the improvement of our world.
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