I’m a radio addict, as you may have already guessed from earlier posts. I’ll probably recommend things I’ve listened to from time to time.
If you don’t already listen to NPR’s Science Friday, I do recommend it. They often have good interviews. I just listened to a podcast of Friday’s show and the main thing was an interview with Edward J. Larson about the ongoing discussion of the letters written by the previous Pope -essentially embracing evolution-, and the NYT op-ed piece from last month by Cardinal Schonborn, the archbishop of Vienna, in which he was considerably frosty to the whole thing. You may well have read lots of chatter about this already, but the Science Friday piece is worth a listen. Then you can get all lathered up all over again about the intelligent design issue.
Actually, it is worth looking through their database of podcasts of earlier shows. There are some good interviews and discussions there to take with you on your journey, or just listen to them on your computer.
Cheers,
-cvj
August 3rd, 2005 at 10:20 pm
Hi Clifford -
Science Friday is great fun to listen to, but I think the intelligent design “debate” is rather tiresome: the case for evolution via natural selection was compelling before the discovery of DNA, and for all practical purposes it is now tautologically correct (that said, the scientific arguments in the debates are often fascinating, as they lay out precisely how evolution takes place, from the genes on up). Still, various religious meme complexes have been competing with each other for thousands of years now, and they have evolved some very effective psychological hooks that compell people to believe in them and pass them on, despite the fundamental silliness of their claims.
I wonder how much longer they will manage to hang on in the face of continued scientific and technological progress. There are two primary breakthroughs looming on the horizon that I suspect will wash away humanity’s persistant, childish beliefs, and in general radically change life as we know it: the development of effective anti-aging medical techniques, and the creation of human level artifical intelligence. Many scientists implicitly assume that these advancements are hundreds of years away: “not in my lifetime…”. This is quite reasonable, as these are such complex problems: it has taken evolution several billion years to create us, highly advanced creatures with our 100 trillion cells, with each of those cells containing some 100 trillion atoms that compose all of the raw gigabits of data in the DNA and the thousands of proteins it codes for. Then there is the brain, responsible for all our conscious experiences, composed of some 100 billion neurons, each conected to thousands of others via highly balanced synapses, and all firing away at tens of hertz.
But this must be balanced against the exponential progress being made in the computer and biological sciences. The exponential growth in computing power is the most famous (Moore’s law…) and we now in 2005 have giant supercomputers with the information processing capacity of the human brain (~ 100 teraflops). In fact, highly specialzed graphics cards for video games now operate at about a teraflop, which is approaching the processing done by the V1 area of the visual cortex (the graphics card’s structure is much simpler, but they run much faster). While of course it is hard to predict the future, it is easily conceivable that we could have cheap 100 teraflop general purpose machines by the early 2020’s.
The progress in the biological sciences is just as impressive. It took 10 years from 1990 to 2000 for the Human Genome Project to be completed. Now with advances in microfabrication techniques it will be possible in several years to sequence an individual’s DNA in a couple hours for a few thousand dollars. And some of those 100 teraflop supercomputers are working out how our tens of thousands of genes fold, and thus elucidating their function.
These exponential advancements just lay the groundwork that allows true AI and anti-aging therapies to be possible, but it is quite reasonable to expect that those earth-shattering advancements would follow soon afterward, perhaps by the 2030s. As far as creating the AI programs go, one doesn’t have to hard code in the exact connectivity of all the billions of neurons in the program (which would be just about impossible), but rather evolves them up groups at a time with genetic algorithms operating on neural nets – just as the brain does it. The growing knowledge base of theoretical and experimental neuroscience will aid immensely in developing the correct learning algorithms for growing the neural nets.
Effectively fighting aging is also certainly not a pipe dream. We already understand many of the causes of aging: from the poor error correction capacities of mitochondrial DNA that leads to it’s degradation and the subsequent production of many free radicals, to the loss of telomeres sections in the DNA which protect genes from having their ends chopped off, to the accumulation of plaques in the body (such as in arterioslcerosis and alzheimers) which we don’t have the enzymes to break down, the loss of stem cell resources to repopulate our organs over time (most cells are replaced at most every ten years), and not loosing those cells that we should, i.e. cancer cells. There are plausible treatments for all of these, and as we learn ever more, they shall become ever more plausible.
Hmmm, well I got a little carried away there, but I like to debate really controversial and exciting stuff with smart people. Perhaps I shall soon reveal my thoughts on the landscape
. Oh yeah, and since you all are asking for physics blogs, you should link to mine, since it’s like really cool and stuff. In my current post I defend the proposal that the universe actually is a mathematical structure, and that all mathematical structures exist. I think that this would lead to testable consequences!
Oh yeah, one other quick thing – does Mike Kavic work for you? He was working for Louise Dolan for a while here at UNC, and then mysteriously dissappeared – rumor has it that he headed out there to USC. And oh yeah – thanks for the D-Branes book! I do numerical relativity for my day job, but it’s fun to read about strings on the side.
-Travis
August 4th, 2005 at 12:12 am
Hi Travis. The debate is important though. See several of Mark’s and Sean’s posts on the issue, and I’m sure there are others who can chime in too. I won’t reiterate the arguments all over again. Looked at your site. Has some interesitng discussion over there. thanks for your comments on the book. Glad you like it. I will not discuss a third party’s personals on this medium, however, so ask me over email about students you’re trying to track. Best,
-cvj
August 4th, 2005 at 3:08 am
Travis, happy to add your blog. Thanks for letting us know about it.
I’m not sure what you mean that natural selection is (for all practical purposes) “tautologically correct.” I would say that it is precisely not tautological; it is conceivably falsifiable by evidence. Like any scientific theory, it’s a description of the world that is plausible but certainly not necessary a priori.
August 4th, 2005 at 11:00 am
Hi Sean – Ok, fine, fine, mea culpa! The defense lawyer enters a plea of guilty to the charge of using overly flowery language.
[The defense lawyer paces in front of the jury, a grim look on her face] “And yet, before you judge my client and sentence him to his fate, I ask of you: Who among you doubts the fact that all species are able give birth to more than two children per parent, and are thus capable of geometric growth? Would any of you claim that any species is capable of unbounded geometric growth?” [Travis raises his hand and begins to say: "Actually if humans can keep up with scientific and technological growth...", but his lawyer silences him with a sharp glare] “As I was saying – clearly everyone would agree that once quasi-equilibrium is reached, no more than an average of two children per parent can survive long enough to successfully reproduce themselves. And who among you would argue with the claim that there is phenotypic variation among offspring, which is in large part due to the differences their genotypes? And that these phenotypic variations will either degrade or enhance an individual’s chances for successfully reproducing? Who would argue with the fact that over time these mechanisms, when coupled to a changing environment, will lead to shifts in the numbers and ratios of alleles within a species’ gene pool? Who indeed could argue with such obvious facts? Thus I tell you – of course evolution via the mechanism of natural selection is not tautologically correct. But given the overwhelming corrobating evidence, it might as well be!” [The courtroom goes wild with applause, and thanks to the impassioned defence, Travis' sentence is reduced to probation: he must never make a hyperbolic statement again, or else the entire planet will be destroyed with a giant asteroid].