Vote now! 3 Jun 2010 I have a couple of posts nominated (one by me – it’s time to stop being humble) at the 3quarksdaily Science competition here. I won’t win, because that torrent of good science writing, Ed Yong, is nominated, not to mention Carl Zimmer and sundry others, and the Pharynguloids will of course vote for PZ, but you should either go vote reflexively for me, or actually read some of the nominations and vote sensibly… Administrative Science Administrative
Biology Downward Causation 9 Aug 201122 Jun 2018 The final claim for there being an ontological sense to emergence is “downward causation“, a phrase coined by the evolutionary epistemologist Donald Campbell in the 1970s. The idea here is that emergence is real because higher-level (or bigger, composite) entities cause changes in the properties and dynamics of their parts…. Read More
Philosophy You can’t explain a variable with a constant 12 Jan 2012 Courtesy of reader Jocelyn Stoller, comes this video, of respected philosopher of science Jim Woodward discussing whether or not religious beliefs explains things like suicide bombing and the moral right in the US. Answer: not likely. Watch part 2 at Youtube. Read More
Administrative Off to the wilds of Oxfordshire 14 May 2010 So, tomorrow I fly to Oxford (well, to Heathrow, and bus to Oxford) to this conference on religion and toleration. It looks to be an interesting conference, and I am commenting on a paper by one of my favourite anthropologist/psychologists, Ara Norenzayan from UBC. It includes such luminaries as Amartya… Read More
Well, I had to go back and read lots of complicated stuff with Big Words, many of which start with P. Then I chose your evolution thing. That Myzers guy will hypnotize his slavish golems, who gleefully punk anything that includes voting, so he will probably win. However, we know what he thinks of online votes: meaningless. So, even if he wins, does it matter?
Don’t forget that to “win” the voting round merely means to be in the top 25%. I actually glanced at all of the nominations, read all the promising ones, and voted sensibly. As you follow me on Twitter (GoldHoarder), you already know who I voted for. Other favourites will get blog links in due course. I left comments on a few, sometimes as Adrian Morgan, sometimes as outerhoard. Apparently I was the first person to point out (in a comment here) that two of the links were broken. This bothers me, because it implies that the vast majority of people don’t actually bother to peruse the list before voting, otherwise I never would have been first to report the error. My own view is that my vote would be illegitimate in principle if I didn’t give every candidate a fair go.