There is a concept, a meme if you will, that shows up a lot in critical-thinking circles, and I’ve even tackled it a few times before here. Commonly known as “Occam’s Razor” but also by the less folksy term of parsimony, it provides a very simple measuring stick: if multiple explanations can be advanced for any given facts or events, the simplest
Category: Science & Evolution
On capital punishment
Capital punishment yet remains a contentious topic, even while we’ve found comfortable positions on many of the moral issues we struggled with for centuries – slavery and racism, women’s rights, legal adulthood, and so on. Perhaps the biggest reason behind this is, there are too many factors that motivate a response, most of them emotional, and most of those have been
In old New York
So, in the recent trip to New York (the state, not the city,) the schedule was tight and there were several obligations, so I had only tentative plans to get out to a couple of areas to do some exploring and/or photography, and they never came to pass. One of those plans was fossil hunting, since there are several areas close to where I was that were surprisingly easy to find fossils within.
However,
You animal!
You know, there are a lot of misconceptions about animal psychology and behavior out there, and they’re all over the map. I’m going to address a few of the more prevalent ones here, with the hopes of at least promoting a little more perspective and forethought among the topics.
Let’s get one thing out of the way right from the start: “animal” is a simple
On the negative side 3
So, this is one of those regrets from my past – admittedly minor, and when examined it becomes more a matter of perspective than anything. Let me explain.
In 1993 I think, when visiting a friend who lived on the edge of a bog in Georgia, I had been wandering the bog in pursuit of the little crabs there when I stumbled across an odd object, and soon afterward another. They were lying right on
My fellow Earthicans
Yes, the holiday season is upon us, and I hope everyone is enjoying the day off work. What’s that? You don’t get Earth Day off? Man, what kind of an asshole do you work for?
Well, never mind that now. At some point, get out, relax, look around you, and soak in the nature. Or, if need be, visit Earth if you haven’t had the chance before – it’s probably the most interesting
Dogpile
A few days back, in the comments to an article regarding the really piss-poor showing of Americans in their acceptance of evolution, someone argued about the poll question which delivered these results by pointing out that the concepts of god and evolution “are not mutually exclusive.” For instance, god
On the horizon
From time to time, and surprisingly in some rather serious media sources, we hear about the technological singularity, the fast-approaching (so we’re told) point where artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence, and quite often right alongside we have speculations about the “machines taking over.” As over-dramatic as that sounds, some
Homey don’t play that
As a species, we like to occasionally speculate on extra-terrestrial life – what it would be like, how prevalent it is, what we could learn from it, and so on. More than speculate, really, because we’re actively looking for it (or at least some of us are,) and have done some interesting theoretical science along those lines. I’ve written a few posts about it myself (first of a
Friends with benefits
I’m not surprising anyone when I say humans are a social species, both from the biological definition and from our own self-description. But it goes further than that – we’re socially-influenced and socially-dependent, meaning we make a really stunning number of our decisions based on how we feel others will respond to them, often without any other consideration at all. This isn’t