Mark R. Kelly
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Recent Posts
- Nonfiction Notes: Michael Shermer’s HOW WE BELIEVE
- Links and Comments 19 Feb 2021
- Notes and Quotes: Ray Bradbury on Good, Evil, and Knowledge
- Links and Comments: Reality as a Common Ground
- Links and Comments: RL, as despicable as DJT
- Links and Comments: Republicans and Doing the Right Thing, Not; Religion as LARP
- Links and Comments: Astronomical Photos from APOD
- Nonfiction Notes: Matthew Hutson’s The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking
- Nonfiction Notes: Alex Rosenberg’s THE ATHEIST’S GUIDE TO REALITY
- Links and Comments: Political Matters This Week: 11 Feb 2021
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Meta
Category Archives: Evolution
Links and Comments: The Game of Life; Authoritarianism; Conservatives and the Feudal System
NYT, from last week’s Tuesday Science section: The Lasting Lessons of John Conway’s Game of Life. (Print title: “Life, In All Its Glory” with subtitle “Fifty year on, a game still offers lessons about simplicity, complexity and uncertain.”) The article … Continue reading
Posted in Evolution, Mathematics, Politics
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The Afterlives, Part 2
I read a striking insight somewhere recently, but don’t remember where it was or who said it. The insight flips inside out the standard belief (at least among Christian faiths) that living a good life gets you into heaven, so … Continue reading
Notes for the Book: Magical Thinking, Cognitive Dissonance, Group-Thinking
Extending thoughts from previous posts about the future of enlightenment and similar matters. About group-thinking and how people get along in their lives just fine without understanding how the world actually works (as well-established by physics, chemistry, biology including evolution, … Continue reading
Posted in Evolution, Psychology, Religion, The Book
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Links and Comments: Loners, Law and Religion, Our Anti-Science Leaders, the Roots of Science Denial
Atlantic: How Loners Are an Evolutionary Insurance Policy This echoes my comments about how diversity is needed in the human race because different attitudes and skills may be needed in situations that require different ways to survive. Though the article … Continue reading
Yuval Noah Harari, HOMO DEUS: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2017; 2015 in Israel)
This is, in effect, a sequel to SAPIENS. Top level summary: It opens with a long prologue: now that humanity has largely overcome famine, plague, and war, what next? Three possibilities: immortality, happiness, divinity. However these are predictions; this book … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Evolution, Human Progress, Religion, Science
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Yuval Noah Harari, SAPIENS: A Brief History of Humankind (2015)
Yuval Noah Harari, SAPIENS: A Brief History of Humankind (2015) This is a history of the human species in the context of “Big History” – the first page sketches the history of the entire universe as a backdrop – and … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Evolution, Human Progress, Religion, Science
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Peter Watts essay: “Understanding Sarah Palin, or, God Is In the Wattles”: Summary and Comments
From the book Peter Watts Is An Angry Sentient Tumor: Revenge Fantasies and Essays (Tachyon, November 2019), a selection of posts from the blog of Peter Watts, which has been running since 2007. Watts is the noted author of high … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Conservative Resistance, Evolution, Religion
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Carel Van Schaik & Kai Michel, THE GOOD BOOK OF HUMAN NATURE: An Evolutionary Reading of the Bible (2016): Introduction
This is a fascinating book because it describes how there really is some rationale (if not reason or logic) to the stories in the Bible. It’s a set of answers to the general question, a sort of meta-question that one … Continue reading
Posted in Bible, Book Notes, Evolution, Religion
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Links and Comments: Trump vs California; Rural America vs the big cities
Here’s another. Paul Krugman, Sept. 20th: Trump Declares War on California. Subtitled: “It’s a liberal state, so it must be punished.” I’m on a number of right-wing mailing lists, and I try to at least skim what they’re going on … Continue reading
Dawkins v Wilson on Group Selection
A minor irritant in Dawkins’ book just discussed is that he several times describes claims by other scientists and then patiently explains why they are wrong. In one case it’s a recently published paper in a journal. In another he … Continue reading