Space Cadet Will Hutton is sadly misinformed.

[RogueMale]

It's worth asking whether there were people in past generations predicting the end of civilization (without any accompanying end of world) brought about by the actions of people. I can't think of any.

People may well have said that about their civilisation - especially if they were citizens of the late Roman empire, for example. The question you are asking only really applies to the age of modern global civilisation going back about 200 years. I reckon you might have found people who believed that WWI was going to be the end of civilisation, and you would definately have done so during the Cuban missile crisis. But none of those examples are like what is being predicted today because they were all stoppable by humans just stopping and taking a step back. Wars eventually end. If nobody pressed the button, no nuclear weapons go off. The difference is that we are now facing an unavoidable man-made global catastrophe and it is far too late for anyone to do anything to stop it from happening. This is new.

Yes, I should have mentioned the numerous predictions of nuclear holocaust. But it didn't happen, and it looks unlikely it will happen any time soon. (Human nature helped to prevent it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasiliy_Arkhipov, potentially http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -interview.)

I'm not sure that TEOTWAWKI due to peak oil (or, if that doesn't get us, climate change) is unavoidable. But avoiding it seems very unlikely, given what we know about human behaviour. It requires lots of people to agree, rather than one person to disagree. One example which occurred to me recently: we could have had an abundant food source, edible without any processing, had our ancestors thought to selectively breed oak trees for the edibility of their acorns. But that takes centuries of foresight and those who take part in the process see no improvement during their lifetimes. So, it didn't happen.

Another, more worrying thing, for me anyway, is this: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... arity.html. This should be understood in the context of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter. We're past an apparently difficult evolutionary step which turned out to be so easy that it was reproducible in a laboratory. Incidentally, a form of sexual reproduction occurred spontaneously in Tierra (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierra_%28 ... ulation%29). Life forms incorporated bits of virtual DNA from those which had recently died. Unless someone finds an evolutionary step which is really, really difficult, it looks increasingly likely that we haven't reached the Great Filter yet.

One good reason for taking predictions of doom seriously is that scientists (including even some astronomers) have very good reasons to believe that the end of civilization is imminent.

[Ludwig]

I admire your stamina, but I can't really see why you bother :\ In my experience, some people are temperamentally unable to understand arguments that make any appeal to the imagination, or that upset their rigid world-view. It doesn't matter how clearly you try to explain, they either don't understand your concepts, or they're subconsciously so horrified that their safe and rigid world-view might be deficient, that they won't take in what you say. It really is like banging your head against a brick wall - a futile and singularly unrewarding use of mental energy.

So in your world view anyone who disagrees with you is mentally defective?

Not defective, that's too strong a word. "Limited" is the word I'd use. I suppose I sound arrogant to you. But, with respect, I don't think you're any different: I would imagine that you think there's something fundamentally "wrong" with my way of looking at things - that I'm gullible, wishy-washy, unwilling to accept the essentially meaningless nature of existence.

The neurologist V S Ramachandran has described how the brain seems to split into a broadly "revolutionary" and a broadly "conservative" hemisphere. If I recall correctly, the left is the revolutionary, the right the conservative. At the same time, each brain hemisphere controls the physical nervous system of the opposite half of the body. A consequence of this division of labour is that patients who are paralysed in their left side, by damage to the right side of their brain, sometimes refuse to accept their paralysis as a fact. They will make up all kinds of reasons for why they can't move their left arm, for example, or even claim, against all the visual evidence, that they can move it. Their brain simply cannot accept a paradigm shift.

But patients with similar neurological damage to the left side of their brain have no problem accepting that they are paralysed.

These two different responses to experience are present in everybody in different measures. Each hemisphere's "outlook" brings advantages and disadvantages. The left's willingness to accept conceptual change, and to entertain the validity of any possibility, makes it flexible, but also at risk of instability: if you can't establish a consistent vision of the world, how do you lead a normal day-to-day life?

Meanwhile, the right hemisphere's conservatism makes it good at memory, routine, good at being able to plan for the long term on the basis of past experience. Its weakness is its lack of adaptability, and its tendency to refuse to accept possibilities not verified by concrete experience. It seeks stability and consistency above all else.

Now as I said, we all have two cranial hemispheres, so we are all a mix of these tendencies. But most of us have a bias to one hemisphere or the other. I would argue (and I believe there is evidence for this) that the "scientific" mindset tends to be right-brain-dominated: conservative, "fact-oriented"'; while the "artistic" mindset tends to be left-brain-dominated: adaptive, "imagination-oriented".

Scientists often have weak imaginations. Artistic types often exhibit poor retention of factual detail. It is not arrogance, but simply a statement of fact, to say that people with relatively weak imagination are often simply not going to understand what people with imagination are on about. Conversely, left-brain types can't understand the right-brain types' capacity for detailed work: to hold a large store of unrelated information in their heads and "see" multiple facts all at once.

In general, I think I am a left-brain type. I am hopeless at following plots of crime dramas, and remembering long lists of information. At work, I have constantly to return to my "to do" list - I mean 6 or 7 times a day - to remind myself "where I am". The right-brain type has no difficulty remembering "where they are".

I may have got the detail of some of this wrong (which illustrates my point), but I'm sure the essence of it is accurate. It's described in Ramachandran's book "Phantoms in the Brain" - an excellent read, by the way.

[UndercoverElephant]

One example which occurred to me recently: we could have had an abundant food source, edible without any processing, had our ancestors thought to selectively breed oak trees for the edibility of their acorns. But that takes centuries of foresight and those who take part in the process see no improvement during their lifetimes. So, it didn't happen.

It may have been a disaster for British wildlife if it had happened. We may not eat those acorns, but a lot of other creatures do.

Another, more worrying thing, for me anyway, is this: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... arity.html. This should be understood in the context of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter. We're past an apparently difficult evolutionary step which turned out to be so easy that it was reproducible in a laboratory. Incidentally, a form of sexual reproduction occurred spontaneously in Tierra (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierra_%28 ... ulation%29). Life forms incorporated bits of virtual DNA from those which had recently died. Unless someone finds an evolutionary step which is really, really difficult, it looks increasingly likely that we haven't reached the Great Filter yet.

One good reason for taking predictions of doom seriously is that scientists (including even some astronomers) have very good reasons to believe that the end of civilization is imminent.

Hmmm....

I think the failure to find intelligent life (or any life at all) out there is very interesting, and that it does indeed suggest that something is wrong with the arguments people use to conclude that the universe should be teeming with life, but I don't think we can go much further than that without making very controversial claims based on little or no evidence. In other words, I can think of numerous other possible explanations for this failure, some of which I have other reasons for preferring.

[RogueMale]

It may have been a disaster for British wildlife if it had happened. We may not eat those acorns, but a lot of other creatures do.

You mean, like grey squirrels?

I think the failure to find intelligent life (or any life at all) out there is very interesting, and that it does indeed suggest that something is wrong with the arguments people use to conclude that the universe should be teeming with life, but I don't think we can go much further than that without making very controversial claims based on little or no evidence. In other words, I can think of numerous other explanations for this failure.

If you have any that are not on the Fermi Paradox/Great Filter wikipedia pages, let me know what they are. Only one I can think of that doesn't involve collapse is that intelligent life forms eventually turn in on themselves (not quite the Singularity, but similar). But that itself would almost certainly lead to collapse anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops.

[Ludwig]

Randi is a con artist. His rules state that if any test he sets up for psychic or paranormal phenomena yields positive resutls - and there is a long list of ones that have done - he can argue that his own experiment was flawed, and so deny the participant the $1m.

He has done this on numerous occasions - for example, one participant correctly guesed the contents of a sealed box, and Randi argued that, in spite of all the checks that he had put in place to prevent cheating, the participant must nevertheless have cheated.

You are not going to get away with that. Matt Blaze, the guy in question, figured out what was in the box using his cryptography skills. He admits to this. Here's the full story: http://www.crypto.com/blog/psychic_cryptanalysis/.

Thanks for pointing that out. I don't know if that is definitely the same incident I read about (I can't remember where I read it, and I could swear the incident I was thinking about was longer ago than 2007, but anyway, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for now), but still, it is a useful thing to know.

Nevertheless, if I've understood right, this doesn't actually invalidate the point I was making about Randi's disingenuous methods.

Besides - this is only one incident among several where people have demanded the $1m off Randi, and he's refused to pay up, not because he proved fraud, but because the clever wording of the agreement said he didn't have to.

For the avoidance of doubt, Randi himself has said, "I always have an out." What kind of statement is that from a supposed pursuer of truth?

[RogueMale]

The neurologist V S Ramachandran has described how the brain seems to split into a broadly "revolutionary" and a broadly "conservative" hemisphere. If I recall correctly, the left is the revolutionary, the right the conservative.

I think it's supposed to be the other way around, and is somewhat of a myth, or at least exaggeration, anyway:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateraliza ... n_function

http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy ... in_myt.php

I've just done one of the online tests and I'm bang in the middle of the corpus callosum, FWIW.

[UndercoverElephant]

It may have been a disaster for British wildlife if it had happened. We may not eat those acorns, but a lot of other creatures do.

You mean, like grey squirrels?

All sorts of things eat acorns. Deer, rabbits, foxes, badgers, boar, woodpeckers, jays, crows, quail.... Cows, sheep and horses will eat them but they get sick.

I think the failure to find intelligent life (or any life at all) out there is very interesting, and that it does indeed suggest that something is wrong with the arguments people use to conclude that the universe should be teeming with life, but I don't think we can go much further than that without making very controversial claims based on little or no evidence. In other words, I can think of numerous other explanations for this failure.

If you have any that are not on the Fermi Paradox/Great Filter wikipedia pages, let me know what they are. Only one I can think of that doesn't involve collapse is that intelligent life forms eventually turn in on themselves (not quite the Singularity, but similar). But that itself would almost certainly lead to collapse anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops.

One answer is that the Earth is much more unusual than we think it is. It's not just a small, rocky planet which is rich in water and just the right distance from the sun - there may well be lots of those. What is really unusual about Earth is that it is the result of a collision between two early planets - the Earth-Moon system is really a "twin-planet" system, but the Earth got nearly all of the heavy elements (and therefore has a very strong magnetic field and is still geologically active). It is conceivable that without this unusual history, life would not have evolved/survived. This theory is potentially falsifiable if/when we are capable of a detailed survey of planets in our galaxy - we'd need to know how common Earth-Moon-type systems are, and at the moment we have no idea.

Another (more controversial) explanation is if there is a teleological component to reality - that the cosmos only exists in order for life to exist and that life was "destined" to evolve. If this were so then it is almost as if the universe has "conspired" to produce conscious, complex creatures. This theory would require that consciousness is not the result natural selection, and naturally leads to the suggestion that we might be alone in the cosmos. I can explain more if you're interested.

[Ludwig]

The neurologist V S Ramachandran has described how the brain seems to split into a broadly "revolutionary" and a broadly "conservative" hemisphere. If I recall correctly, the left is the revolutionary, the right the conservative.

I think it's supposed to be the other way around, and is somewhat of a myth, or at least exaggeration, anyway:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateraliza ... n_function

http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy ... in_myt.php

Right, so it's one of the most renowned neuroscientists in the world versus Wikipedia and someone's blog, right?

It's a few years since I read his book, but I don't think Ramachandran was claiming a strict, unambiguous division of brain labour: he was reporting on observations from his own case studies.

One of the things I like about Ramachandran is that he dares to speculate. He doesn't present his ideas as dogma but merely follows what he finds interesting and sees where it leads him.

[UndercoverElephant]

The neurologist V S Ramachandran has described how the brain seems to split into a broadly "revolutionary" and a broadly "conservative" hemisphere. If I recall correctly, the left is the revolutionary, the right the conservative.

I think it's supposed to be the other way around, and is somewhat of a myth, or at least exaggeration, anyway:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateraliza ... n_function

http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy ... in_myt.php

Right, so it's one of the most renowned neuroscientists in the world versus Wikipedia and someone's blog, right?

It's a few years since I read his book, but I don't think Ramachandran was claiming a strict, unambiguous division of brain labour: he was reporting on observations from his own case studies.

One of the things I like about Ramachandran is that he dares to speculate. He doesn't present his ideas as dogma but merely follows what he finds interesting and sees where it leads him.

Ramachandran is an odd one. He claims to be a neutral monist, but most of the time he sounds indistinguishable from a materialist. He claims that the central metaphysical tenets of Hinduism "aren't correct, but they are onto something important." I'd say one thing for him - these combinations of positions certainly get people thinking, asking interesting questions and exploring new ideas.

[RogueMale]

One answer is that the Earth is much more unusual than we think it is. It's not just a small, rocky planet which is rich in water and just the right distance from the sun - there may well be lots of those. What is really unusual about Earth is that it is the result of a collision between two early planets - the Earth-Moon system is really a "twin-planet" system, but the Earth got nearly all of the heavy elements (and therefore has a very strong magnetic field and is still geologically active). It is conceivable that without this unusual history, life would not have evolved/survived. This theory is potentially falsifiable if/when we are capable of a detailed survey of planets in our galaxy - we'd need to know how common Earth-Moon-type systems are, and at the moment we have no idea.

Yes, we're getting more and more information on extrasolar planets, so we can have a better idea of the value of some of the unknowns in the Drake Equation.

Another (more controversial) explanation is if there is a teleological component to reality - that the cosmos only exists in order for life to exist and that life was "destined" to evolve. If this were so then it is almost as if the universe has "conspired" to produce conscious, complex creatures. This theory would require that consciousness is not the result natural selection, and naturally leads to the suggestion that we might be alone in the cosmos.

There are two issues bound up there.

I'm highly critical of all but the weakest forms of the Anthropic Principle. I think the laws of physics are the way they are because that's the only form they could possibly take. We don't have a Theory of Everything yet, but e.g. the accepted law of gravity is the result of a mathematical identity (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_tensor). This means that the universe, or to be more precise, ground reality, is a given, cannot have different laws from whatever they are, and so there's no need to explain the values of the fundamental constants by invoking the niche that life inhabits. It simply couldn't have been otherwise. The universe then didn't require a creator to fine tune things, nor did it evolve, as if it did it wouldn't be ground reality.

That's not to say that the universe we experience is ground reality. It might be a simulation, running on a computer in the real universe, guided by the hand of a deranged Perl programmer.

Then there's the question of consciousness. We don't really know what it is, and there are good arguments for believing it can't have evolved, i.e. zombies are conceivable. I think it's related to quantum mechanics, as that appears to require the presence of a conscious observer, but it's really anybody's guess.

I can explain more if you're interested.

Please do.

[RogueMale]

Scientists often have weak imaginations.

I missed this point: it depends what type of scientist. If they're doing research they'd better have very good imaginations, like Newton, Maxwell, Einstein or Dirac had. (No disrespect for scientists from other disciplines intended: I'm best qualified to comment on physicists.)

[Ludwig]

Ramachandran is an odd one. He claims to be a neutral monist, but most of the time he sounds indistinguishable from a materialist. He claims that the central metaphysical tenets of Hinduism "aren't correct, but they are onto something important." I'd say one thing for him - these combinations of positions certainly get people thinking, asking interesting questions and exploring new ideas.

I felt the weakest part of "Phantoms in the Brain" was when R. speculated on the nature of consciousness - or rather, declined to speculate, instead saying, "It's too elusive to define in any terms other than patterns of brain activity." Without really admitting it, he resorts to full-on behaviourism. It's equivalent to the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics: "This is just the way things are, and the scientific approach is to say that when a mystery by its nature precludes its own resolution, it must simply be regarded as a fact, and not as a mystery."

[Ludwig]

That's not to say that the universe we experience is ground reality. It might be a simulation, running on a computer in the real universe, guided by the hand of a deranged Perl programmer.

IMO computer models of reality are off the mark, and an example of the understandable, but misguided, tendency to model reality on the latest technology: "The universe is not fully understood, and hugely complex, so if we model it on the most complex thing we DO understand, we'll make progress."

Hence, during the 18th Century, the universe was regarded as a giant clockwork mechanism. Clocks were simply the cleverest, most intricate inventions there were at that point, and people made the mistake that they therefore told us something fundamental about the universe. If we hadn't gone down that blind alley, who knows, relativity and quantum mechanics might have been discovered 50 years earlier.

Computers can model nature, but they can tell us nothing fundamental about it, otherwise they'd have emerged in nature. They can simulate things that look to us like "worlds", but in fact the simulation happens in our heads, not in the computer.

At bottom, saying "The universe is a giant computer" is little different to saying, "The universe is a giant photograph." The only thing thing that can make any connection between a photograph and the scene it portrays is the human mind. Ditto with a computer simulation, whether of weather patterns or "Eliza"-style human interaction.

The universe is no more made up of bits and bytes than it is made up of patterns of coloured ink on gloss paper.

[AndySir]

Randi and his ilk (Dawkins, Dennett, Shermer) aren't exactly mentally defective, but they are unintentionally misleading people because of an abject failure to understand how their scientistic belief system is not the only valid one. That belief system, they think, is based only on science. They are wrong. It is based on a strong set of metaphysical and epistemic assumption which are either completely unacknowledged or wrongly believed to be based on science or rational thought. In short, their grasp of philosophy is so poor that they don't have any idea just how poor it is. They tend to think of philosophy as pointless pontificating, on the grounds that it has been around for thousands of years and doesn't appear to have "proved" anything. So they end up doing bad philosophy and calling it science and rationalism.

...

I am an ex-Dawkinsian who has spent a great deal of time trying to help those people to understand why I rejected their way of thinking about reality and knowledge. Some will listen. Most get angry.

That's a fairly incredible statement. I think I might be justified in repeating my query as to what benefit, advance or knowledge has been obtained that was not derived by the scientific method? Or is the claim here that tangible results of that belief system are irrelevant?

I think, to borrow and mangle Dawkins famous example, if someone has a feeling, a belief that there is a teapot orbiting the Sun (it may or may not be magical) is there any reason to treat that as 'valid' as any other belief system?

Ludwig - The Randi quote that you are quoting out of context is "I always have an out: I'm right." Substantially changes the meaning don't you think, in a way which might suggest that you are better off not simply believing the last thing you were told?

[Ludwig]

Randi and his ilk (Dawkins, Dennett, Shermer) aren't exactly mentally defective, but they are unintentionally misleading people because of an abject failure to understand how their scientistic belief system is not the only valid one. That belief system, they think, is based only on science. They are wrong. It is based on a strong set of metaphysical and epistemic assumption which are either completely unacknowledged or wrongly believed to be based on science or rational thought. In short, their grasp of philosophy is so poor that they don't have any idea just how poor it is. They tend to think of philosophy as pointless pontificating, on the grounds that it has been around for thousands of years and doesn't appear to have "proved" anything. So they end up doing bad philosophy and calling it science and rationalism.

...

I am an ex-Dawkinsian who has spent a great deal of time trying to help those people to understand why I rejected their way of thinking about reality and knowledge. Some will listen. Most get angry.

That's a fairly incredible statement. I think I might be justified in repeating my query as to what benefit, advance or knowledge has been obtained that was not derived by the scientific method? Or is the claim here that tangible results of that belief system are irrelevant?

I think, to borrow and mangle Dawkins famous example, if someone has a feeling, a belief that there is a teapot orbiting the Sun (it may or may not be magical) is there any reason to treat that as 'valid' as any other belief system?

Ludwig - The Randi quote that you are quoting out of context is "I always have an out: I'm right." Substantially changes the meaning don't you think, in a way which might suggest that you are better off not simply believing the last thing you were told?

The shorter statement is the one that Dennis Rawlins quoted in his article in "Fate" magazine. Randi claims that the quote was taken out of context. Of course this is possible. However, I'm certainly not going to assume that this is the case; Randi has made numerous unguarded statements and outbursts over the years, and if this was one of them, if he were sensible he'd try to take steps to put it right, wouldn't he?

And anyway, the clear fact is that he does always have an out. If you deny this, I suggest you read the actual terms of challenge.

This is one person's word against another, so p*** off with the condescending "last thing you read" statements.