A great talk of morality Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions. Subscribed to the Coursera class Moralities of Everyday Life. It is one of two talks claimed to support opposite views. The other is Jonathan Haidt: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives. Not sure I see them as opposite. This 2nd one talks more of how to go about getting a discussion going while the first talks of human "universality truths"... having a discussion that is not based on authority alone but rather individual free choice.

Intelligence squared is a debate show where 2 teams of two debate over a proposition (motion). All four debatants get an opening and closing speech, and in the middle they must answer to questions from the show host and the audience. The audience makes an initial vote, and a new vote after the debate. The team able to change most minds (in %) is the winner of the show.

Watched these so far

Don't eat anything with a face

Chris Masterjohn, the author of "The Daily Lipid" was one of the debatants. I was hoping for some serous discussion between him and Neal Barnard, but unfortunately the focus was only on claims and discussions of causality. The case had several sides: The humanistic is it right to kill to eat when we know we don't have to? Animals will get killed in the nature anyway and perhaps it could be more humane it we did it right (not saying the way we do it now it good for the animals). Should we deny our human nature? We had the health aspect where claims that meat cause obesity and cancer. The best way to get optimal health would be going vegan. It was argued against the alternative interpretation that other things cause these diseases, especially industrialized processing and farming. It was an interesting debate with many good points on each side.

The FDA's caution is hazardous to our health

This debate was focused on development of drugs and to some extent apparatus such as walking aids and artificial organ support. Food recommendations were not a part of the debate. The FDA is tasked with protecting the public and does so by rigid testing before allowing products in to the marked. The defenders (saying it is hazardous) argues that we now have methods that can individualize treatment and that the FDA's "one size fits all" solution to the problem is getting in the way of development of needed medication. The opposition refers to cases of mostly generic drugs have gone very wrong because of a lack of rigid testing, and specifically unintentional side effects. It's a good thing to separate between drugs that only eases something, like pain, and drugs intended to cure lethal diseases. It's all about risk.

Spy On Me I'd Rather Be Safe

The discussion focuses on the recent breach where the NSA lied to congress about collecting phone call meta data proactively on the American population. The opposition of the motion focused on the principle of reasonable doubt before surveillance is initiated in order to support democracy. The defenders claim the task of having to wait for post mortem collection will fail and that existing access controls is enough for avoiding misuse of the information.

Congress Should Pass Obama's Jobs Plan

This one is old and the plan was down voted, but the debate was interesting. The argument was primarily of weather or not governmental help in the form of changing hands of money in economic crisis benefits the economy overall. Arguments against are that regulations like minimum salary and dis-allowance of discrimination makes it harder for businesses to hire people, while the defenders say this kind of acts is a kind of first aid kit that can bootstrap a failing economy.

The World Would Be Better Off Without Religion and Science Refutes God

Both of these are interesting because they highlight the world we live in now where scientific endeavors keep providing answers that conflict with the major religions. Science can never disprove a god, but it can say a lot about what a god isn't.

The scientific methodology is all about observation and prediction. We develop models and theories based on what we can observe. We then try to predict what we would observe in new situations, perform new observations and compare it to our predictions. Key to this process is to always look for new and more precise methods for direct or indirect observation and to always look for evidence disapproving of our current theories. Question every assumption and conclusion.



The scientific belief system is thus different from what is typically called a religious belief. A religious belief system is based on and enforced with authority. It is absent of verifiable observable evidence. As a consequence of not being restricted by this, religion tends to answer questions that are not relevant with scientific glasses on, like how matter can be created from nothing. If the answer is God then we're left where we started. We still don't know.

When scientists talk of "creating matter from nothing", they probably mean "matter from energy". Einstein showed us that energy and mass are two properties of the same thing given that the total amount of and maximum speed of energy is constant. If you move faster, more mass will change form into energy and if you move even faster then time will slow down in order to "protect the formula". This is a strong hint of something more complex going on behind the scenes. The big bang was not when matter and energy was "created" from nothing. Everything we have around us and consist of must have existed before the big bang, although not in it's present form. Another thing that fascinates me is how time is affected by gravity. A strong gravitational field will slow down time compared to weaker fields. Our models predict this, but they are based on a definition of time being:

The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter2/2-1/second.html

This means that time is defined in terms of a physical phenomena and if time slows down that means that the rate of radiation has decreased. If very high speeds or gravity can affect the rate of this atoms radiation, then the assumption must be that all atoms are "slowed down". Could claiming that time can run with different speeds in separate locations be a matter of definition, not actual change in the flow of events? Time travel into the future is a proposal that is built on slowing time down compared to the location we want to travel in to. If time moves twice as fast outside the time machine then you could travel 10 years in 5 years. Naturally, we don't have any experimental data that suggest that a human would survive in such conditions (high speed or high gravitational pull. If you move with the speed of light and thus become energy, can you turn back into a human by slowing down?).

Evolution is our best explanation of how we humans ended up where we are. Evolution is simple and elegant, but without any purpose or goal. The question of a God or higher meaning tends to come back when we humans are faced with situations without meaning. Science can not answer questions regarding a God because we can't definite what a God or even existence is. In order to define existence we would have to define not existing and we have no observation of it (if we had, it would exist, right?).

As a society we rely on moral, ethics, laws and regulation. One could say evolution needs these things and that evolution currently evaluates collaboration and coexistence as most fit. Whether or not there is a universal concept of "good" and "evil" or if it is dependent on the context is an interesting thought. Being restricted to current scientific knowledge means everything we do has no intrinsic meaning or value, except for enjoying the "now". Can you believe in that?

Q&A with Tim Keller - Reason for God?
Something from nothing - Richard Dawkins
"Science Refutes God" Debate - Intelligence Squared

Found some interesting recordings from the university of Arizona the other day.

"Origin of the universe: The Big Bang" by Dr. Christopher D. Impey

"Origins of Black Holes: Gravity at Its Extreme" by Dr. Feryal Özel

"The Oldest Question: Is There Life Beyond Earth?" by Dr. Christopher D. Impey



Khan Academy also got a very good series on cosmology. I use the iPad application and by signing in I'm able to track my progress. Go to "Science" - "Cosmology and astronomy" and start watching. He has great videos on how large the (observable) universe is, our existence versus the time since the big bang, hos starts and planets form, Earth's history and seasons, animal evolution, and also a series on other life in the universe.

• Ryan Holladay: To hear this music you have to be there. Literally: Imagine walking in a park and having a sound track change as you go, determined by your location.
  
• Sandra Aamodt: Why dieting doesn't usually work: How the brain determines our weight, how it is futile to resist because of internal set-points and thermostat like dynamics. Instead try to eat "mindfulness".
  
• Maysoon Zayid: I got 99 problems... palsy is just one: A funny and interesting talk of her life as a comedian and how it was affected by her cerebral palsy.
  
• Andrew Solomon: Depression: the secret we share: "The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality".
  
• Boyd Varty: What I learned from Nelson Mandela: A talk dedicated to the late leader Nelson Mandela.
  
• Suzana Herculano-Houzel: What is so special about the human brain?: A talk that explains that it is not the size, but the number of neurons that makes us "special".
  
• Peter Doolittle: How your "working memory" makes sense of the world: The importance and limitations of working memory.
  
• Arthur Benjamin: The magic of Fibonacci numbers: Fibonacci numbers, golden ratio. "Math is not only for solving for x, but to figure out (y) why"
  
• Mikko Hypponen: How the NSA betrayed the world's trust -- time to act: A call for open source initiatives across European states.
  
• Grégoire Courtine: The paralyzed rat that walked: Stimulating healing of cut nerve connections in rats with new technologies.
  
• Parul Sehgal: An ode to envy: "What is jealousy? What drives it, and why do we secretly love it?"
  
• Alessandro Acquisti: Why privacy matters: Privacy as a key ingredient for democracy.