Mark R. Kelly
» Founder in 1997 and site-runner for 20 years of Locus Online (Hugo Award winner in 2002). Founder in 2012 and still site-runner of sfadb.com (Science Fiction Awards Database). Retired in 2012 after 30 years as a software engineer for a certain rocket engine factory.
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Meta
Category Archives: Science
Steven Pinker: THE BLANK SLATE, post 5
After being distracted by Texas affairs, politics, Riven, and reading Brian Greene and others, let’s get back to this book and try to finish summarizing it and capturing key points. This and one more post. Earlier posts about this book: … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, MInd, Morality, Science, Steven Pinker
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More About Regression Toward the Mean
Thought for the day. On the other hand, rather than thinking we must be living in the worst of times (see last Wednesday’s post), perhaps we are merely experience regression toward the mean. I’ve mentioned this notion several times. The … Continue reading
You Are Here
If you know how to look, you can see amazing things, far vaster and more impressive than anything imagined by our ancient ancestors. But you have to know how, and be willing to. This is an image from an article … Continue reading
Steven Pinker: THE BLANK SLATE, post 4
Another five chapters, mostly addressing the fears people have with the idea of an innate human nature, as opposed to the idealized blank slate: concerning inequality, imperfectibility, determinism, and nihilism. Earlier posts about this book: post 1, post 2, post … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, MInd, Science, Steven Pinker
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How Language Changes, Sometimes for Political Purposes
Three items from the news the past few days. First, some quotes from a piece about how climate change deniers have refined their game. TNR, The New Republic, Genevieve Guenther, 24 Jun 2024: The New Climate Denial Is Based on … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Politics, Science
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Steven Pinker: THE BLANK SLATE, post 3
Summaries and comments about three more chapters of Steven Pinker’s THE BLANK SLATE; And YouTube tracks from one of my favorite film scores: Richard Robbins’ for The Remains of the Day. I’ll try to get through the rest of book … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, MInd, Music, Science, Steven Pinker
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Beware Intuition and Common Sense
Three tracks today: Steven Pinker on how democracy and enlightenment values are not intuitive (even though they’ve led to the betterment of humanity); Items about conservative meanings of ‘truth’ and ‘facts’; how evangelicals think sex is only for purposes of … Continue reading
Emergence, Complexity, and the Potential for Human Understanding
Here are a couple scientific topics that I don’t pretend to understand, at least not in any depth. What I find fascinating is how, while the big-scale scientific conclusions have been fairly stable for several decades (as noted two weeks … Continue reading
Visiting the Profound
Brian Greene on understanding reality as a collection of nested stories; Recalling analogous thoughts by Sean Carroll and others; Big Think’s Ethan Siegel on the success of modern fundamental science. Perhaps today we can step back from the paranoid, delusional … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Cosmology, Narrative, Physics, Science
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Floating
After three days summarizing recently read nonfiction books, today let’s capture recent items from the news. A conservative blames the unpopularity of an ice cream flavor on Biden; Conservatives are eager to impose Christian indoctrination in Florida and Texas; Paul … Continue reading
