Some people seem to disapprove of Watson and consider him unworthy of the glory arising from his discovery because of his supposed theft of Rosalind Franklin's data and what he has said about the the human race. Firstly, he didn't steal the data. It was shown to him by her colleague Maurice Wilkins albeit without her knowledge. Other essential data from the Wilkins/Franklin lab were provided to Francis Crick by Max Perutz, Crick's supervisor. He didn't break into her lab to steal it, or sneak a peek at her notebooks when she wasn't around. I think the data was just too important for any one person to have exclusive rights over it. Anyway, the clues were already floating around and available to many. Chargaff's ratios, the X-ray diffraction results. But it was Watson who had the crucial insight about how adenine paired with thymine and guanine with cytosine. And for that and his other contributions, he deserves the glory of his astonishing discovery.
As for his opinions about what he thinks about human nature, our problems, possible solutions, etc, he's just being the very rational person that he is. And it's not very much different from that of many other gifted scientists (eg. Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate). For more about Watson, Crick, Franklin and their contributions to one of the most breathtaking scientific discoveries of all time, I would suggest the following:
Watson, The Double Helix
Crick, What Mad Pursuit
Watson, DNA
Judson, The Eighth Day of Creation
Or at least read Watson's two books before judging or denouncing him.
Any one particular contributor won't be able to write in a style that experts will approve of and yet be completely comprehensible to non-experts. And vice versa. But anyone who thinks that an article is too technical is welcomed to contribute a dumbed-down section. That's the great thing about Wiki. If anyone thinks an article can be improved in terms in readability (or accuracy ), he can just go ahead and do it. There's nothing to stop him.
Certainly not! I know enough to know we don't know enough to predict the results. (Apologies to Mr.Rumsfeld) I would be very interested in the results though if someone could do the experiment on chimps but I doubt if anyone could obtain the resources (funding) to do such an experiment in the near future.
It would add tremendously to its usefulness if they could include high quality pictures of the specimens in the great museum collections. Especially for stuff like birds, butterflies, beetles where there's a lot of diversity and variations. There's no mention of this being done in the EOL FAQ. I'm aware that it take plenty more resources to do this but it will be worthwhile. There's still new discoveries hidden in those vast museum collections.
The article says they introduced the mutation into chimp DNA. It does not necessarily mean the chimp DNA was in a living chimp. We'll have to read the actual journal article to find out whether a living chimp was involved. I'm guessing it was just the relevant bits of chimp DNA that was experimented with.
It seems inevitable that the old HDD will go the way of film in cameras. Maybe in another 5-10 years. Perhaps Seagate should start thinking of buying over Sandisk/Lexar.
Can someone copy and paste here Alain Aspect's comments on this in the same issue of Nature? The title is "To be or not to be local". Would like to read this but don't have a subscription of Nature. Thanks!
Just need some clarification on some of the terms/concepts mentioned in the paper. Does Realism = Hidden Variables = An external reality that exists independent of observation?
Most of the authors of this paper work at Austrian institutes. So we can assume that the taxpayers of Austria paid for the research and writing of this paper. Thus the copyright should belong to them, not NPG/Macmillan Publishers. If there are any Austrians reading this demand that the paper be made freely available!
I think it's not just intentions that can be detected with this technology but also whether a person is lying. Quite possibly, the intention to tell the truth or lie in response to a question can also be detected. Scary? Yes, but this may be inevitable.
papers, better written, better presented, and generally more relevant to the topic it covers. People spend time and resources in developing those results and then another amount of time and resrouces to write them, then another pack of people spend an amount of time and resources to review those wtitings and then some money to publish them. Why on Earth do people think the final product of this sometimes
It is not the interest of those people (academics) who spend time and resources to obtain and write up the results to limit their audience. Academics gain most through enhanced reputations when more people can access their findings. And I think the reviewers would want their unpaid work to benefit as many as is possible too. The objective of the final product is to increase human understanding and the reputations of the scientists, not the profits of the publishers. This is reason why 20,000 people signed the petition. They are the ones who do the research, write up the papers (and the grant applications!) and review and edit the papers, so I think their opinions do matter very much.
All the reasons made for the continuation of the status quo are just excuses that benefit only the owners of the journals.
One justification for the high cost of the journals is printing. But who really needs to go to the library to read the Journal of Biological Chemistry or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in their dead tree format anyway? If a library really needs a paper copy, perhaps they can just send out the PDFs to a third-party printer to print and bind it. I don't think we need Elsevier to do the printing and distribution. The internet already performs the distribution process very efficiently. So the traditional for-profit scientific journal publishers need to go the way of blacksmiths and scabbard makers.
As for the world's premier science journal, Nature, perhaps Google or the Gates Foundation or Warren Buffet can just ask them what is their projected profit from the sales of subscriptions and archived articles for the next 10 years, pay them twice that amount, secure the copyright to past articles and future publication the journal and hire the entire editorial board. I don't think it would cost a lot. Now that would be a service to mankind.
You mentioned a "vast body of work in philosophy and brain science". I must point out that the body of work in "brain science" (you probably should have said "cognitive sciences"), is
I am thinking specifically of studies involving electrodes and MRI scans of the brain in action when responding to stimuli and making decisions. That to me is brain science.
utterly irrelevant -this is strictly a philosophical issue. Having said that, it is worth noting that by no means is there consensus within the domain of philosophy with respect to freewill.
Philosophical arguments alone will never be able to provide the answers. You'll have to study the phenomenon of decision making in the object in question. The brain, that is. Yes, I am aware that there is no consensus on the matter.
freewill. "Choosing" is a cognitive act which is achieved by certain information processing agents. When an agent takes in sensory information, evaluates that information, and selects one of several behavioral options, it is said to be engaged in the process of choosing. It is in virtue of instantiating this process -which can be understood in entirely deterministic terms- that a creature is said to have possess freewill. In other words, as an information processing agent navigates through its world of various sensory percepts and so on, it chooses (deterministically) which options to take, based on its cognitive architecture and perhaps some grab bag of useful heuristics -this is freewill.
As I've said in a previous post, that would mean Stanley, the unconscious robot has free will. But Stanley can't possibly have free will, can he?
elaborate, I disapprove of using a column that doesn't cite its sources as a source. Considering Scott Adams occasionally makes fun of people who regard anecdotal evidence as a valid authority, perhaps he should be less quick to use it himself.
No one, not Scott Adams, not the scientists, not the philosophers, is using anecdotal evidence as authority. I think Scott Adams for all his humour, is a pretty sophisticated thinker and knows better than to do that.
Before I go back to the main conversation, I would like to argue that evolution is a fairly clear concept, and probably the one part of the sciences that we scientists understand best. I can't
Evolution is a fairly clear concept? But then why is it that so many seemingly educated people of above average intelligence just don't get it? It is clear enough to us but the evidence shows that in the general population, it is not.
A complex computer (brain) in control of a body creates random scenarios of potential outcomes of actions, evaluates the amount of benefit derived from each according to a complex set of rules consisting of a hereditary and learned instruction set, picks one of the actions that it predicts to result in the highest benefit and implements it, observes the outcome of the action and based on the amount of real benefit the action brings, and how well the scenario matches reality, it modifies both the learned instruction set for evaluating benefit and the circuitry by which it functions, working as a complete unit, without the interference of another entity to whom this definition applies.
Now one can argue that there are no random variables and so the scenarios are predefined, but that is wrong - there are random variables. (Quantum Mechanics contains true random aspects) Personally, I don't think that matters, pseudo random variables are enough for me. (A comptibilist standpoint - I think of will as no longer free if an outside entity alters it)
Here's a thought experiment. Let's take Stanley, the clever robot that made it's own way across the Mojave desert and throw in another 20 years of development to make him even cleverer. Then in the year 2027, put in an algorithm that will sometimes make the new Stanley choose either of the top two optimal decisions (if they are close enough) based on the result of a random number event every time he has to make a decision. This way the robot will not always take the same exact path even when the conditions are the same. Using your arguments above, the new and very clever but unconscious Stanley will then have free will! If you still think so, then we are probably talking about two different things. Not an uncommon problem in debates about free will and consciousness, of course.
That's ridiculous. The point of free will is not how you arrive at a decision or how you rationalise it, but rather that you can
This is neither a ridiculous nor trivial idea. There's a vast body of work in philosophy and brain science that tells us that it is so. While our intuition says it ain't so, history has shown that intuition isn't very good when it comes to the profoundest truths. "That's ridiculous!" was most probably the first response to the person who declared that the earth is not flat. Think also of the how our intuition fails us when it come to biological evolution, relativity and quantum mechanics.
And free will and consciousness being illusions are just catchphrases.
Catchphrases? Hardly. The idea has been a subject of much serious debate and study for a long time.
This sounds horrible. I find the idea of overriding another animal's free will very disturbing.
Free will is an illusion anyway, even in humans. So if the pigeon doesn't have free will to begin with, that's not a problem, right? We are just substituting one set of commands for another. It's just that the new commands are not in the animal's interest. In fact, nature has done this before. Many parasites are known to influence the behaviour of their hosts.
... my predecessor Pius XII had already stated that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man... new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis... It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory.
I see there are a few who disparage Michael Crichton because just he is a popular author. Well, as a celerbrity people pay attention when he speaks. Even the most eminent of biomedical researchers and patent law experts cannot hope to get the attention he can. You need publicity and money to get anything done in the political arena and celebrities are indispensable for both.
As for his expertise and the value of his opinions, it has been mentioned many times before that he does have a biomedical background and I don't doubt that he keeps up with the advances in science by reading the better magazines and journals. And I'm pretty sure he gets to talk with knowledgeable biomedical researchers and patent law experts who may or may not give you the time of the day.
As for the money part, I hope he can put some of his own where his mouth is and fund a lobby group against gene patents. No doubt he would be up against well-funded powerful lobbyists from those want gene patents. But that would be better than nothing, right?
Slashdot Mirror
Some people seem to disapprove of Watson and consider him unworthy of the glory arising from his discovery because of his supposed theft of Rosalind Franklin's data and what he has said about the the human race. Firstly, he didn't steal the data. It was shown to him by her colleague Maurice Wilkins albeit without her knowledge. Other essential data from the Wilkins/Franklin lab were provided to Francis Crick by Max Perutz, Crick's supervisor. He didn't break into her lab to steal it, or sneak a peek at her notebooks when she wasn't around. I think the data was just too important for any one person to have exclusive rights over it. Anyway, the clues were already floating around and available to many. Chargaff's ratios, the X-ray diffraction results. But it was Watson who had the crucial insight about how adenine paired with thymine and guanine with cytosine. And for that and his other contributions, he deserves the glory of his astonishing discovery.
As for his opinions about what he thinks about human nature, our problems, possible solutions, etc, he's just being the very rational person that he is. And it's not very much different from that of many other gifted scientists (eg. Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate). For more about Watson, Crick, Franklin and their contributions to one of the most breathtaking scientific discoveries of all time, I would suggest the following:
Watson, The Double Helix
Crick, What Mad Pursuit
Watson, DNA
Judson, The Eighth Day of Creation
Or at least read Watson's two books before judging or denouncing him.
Any one particular contributor won't be able to write in a style that experts will approve of and yet be completely comprehensible to non-experts. And vice versa. But anyone who thinks that an article is too technical is welcomed to contribute a dumbed-down section. That's the great thing about Wiki. If anyone thinks an article can be improved in terms in readability (or accuracy ), he can just go ahead and do it. There's nothing to stop him.
Certainly not! I know enough to know we don't know enough to predict the results. (Apologies to Mr.Rumsfeld) I would be very interested in the results though if someone could do the experiment on chimps but I doubt if anyone could obtain the resources (funding) to do such an experiment in the near future.
It would add tremendously to its usefulness if they could include high quality pictures of the specimens in the great museum collections. Especially for stuff like birds, butterflies, beetles where there's a lot of diversity and variations. There's no mention of this being done in the EOL FAQ. I'm aware that it take plenty more resources to do this but it will be worthwhile. There's still new discoveries hidden in those vast museum collections.
The article says they introduced the mutation into chimp DNA. It does not necessarily mean the chimp DNA was in a living chimp. We'll have to read the actual journal article to find out whether a living chimp was involved. I'm guessing it was just the relevant bits of chimp DNA that was experimented with.
It seems inevitable that the old HDD will go the way of film in cameras. Maybe in another 5-10 years. Perhaps Seagate should start thinking of buying over Sandisk/Lexar.
Can someone copy and paste here Alain Aspect's comments on this in the same issue of Nature? The title is "To be or not to be local". Would like to read this but don't have a subscription of Nature. Thanks!
Just need some clarification on some of the terms/concepts mentioned in the paper. Does Realism = Hidden Variables = An external reality that exists independent of observation?
Thanks!
Most of the authors of this paper work at Austrian institutes. So we can assume that the taxpayers of Austria paid for the research and writing of this paper. Thus the copyright should belong to them, not NPG/Macmillan Publishers. If there are any Austrians reading this demand that the paper be made freely available!
I think it's not just intentions that can be detected with this technology but also whether a person is lying. Quite possibly, the intention to tell the truth or lie in response to a question can also be detected. Scary? Yes, but this may be inevitable.
All the reasons made for the continuation of the status quo are just excuses that benefit only the owners of the journals. One justification for the high cost of the journals is printing. But who really needs to go to the library to read the Journal of Biological Chemistry or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in their dead tree format anyway? If a library really needs a paper copy, perhaps they can just send out the PDFs to a third-party printer to print and bind it. I don't think we need Elsevier to do the printing and distribution. The internet already performs the distribution process very efficiently. So the traditional for-profit scientific journal publishers need to go the way of blacksmiths and scabbard makers. As for the world's premier science journal, Nature, perhaps Google or the Gates Foundation or Warren Buffet can just ask them what is their projected profit from the sales of subscriptions and archived articles for the next 10 years, pay them twice that amount, secure the copyright to past articles and future publication the journal and hire the entire editorial board. I don't think it would cost a lot. Now that would be a service to mankind.
They should have done it on 666 people. Now that would make the news!
I see there are a few who disparage Michael Crichton because just he is a popular author. Well, as a celerbrity people pay attention when he speaks. Even the most eminent of biomedical researchers and patent law experts cannot hope to get the attention he can. You need publicity and money to get anything done in the political arena and celebrities are indispensable for both. As for his expertise and the value of his opinions, it has been mentioned many times before that he does have a biomedical background and I don't doubt that he keeps up with the advances in science by reading the better magazines and journals. And I'm pretty sure he gets to talk with knowledgeable biomedical researchers and patent law experts who may or may not give you the time of the day. As for the money part, I hope he can put some of his own where his mouth is and fund a lobby group against gene patents. No doubt he would be up against well-funded powerful lobbyists from those want gene patents. But that would be better than nothing, right?