Nothing we are going to learn will diminish our common humanity. Nothing we learn will justify rank-ordering human groups from superior to inferior — the bundles of qualities that make us human are far too complicated for that. Nothing we learn will lend itself to genetic determinism. We live our lives with an abundance of unpredictability, both genetic and environmental
Tag: science
Embryonic Selection
Embryos have been chosen to reduce disease risk using pre-implantation genetic testing for polygenic traits, and this has resulted in pregnancy
44 ka Figurative Art
We describe an elaborate rock art panel from the limestone cave of Leang Bulu’ Sipong that portrays several figures that appear to represent therianthropes hunting wild pigs and dwarf bovids; this painting has been dated to at least 44 ka on the basis of uranium-series analysis of overlying speleothems. This hunting scene is currently the oldest pictorial record of storytelling and the earliest figurative artwork in the world.
2021-11-13: The New Yorker has a nice background article, and it turns out newer research pushed the age 1 ka back:
The painting of the warty pig was at least 45 ka old. This makes it the oldest known example of figurative cave art in the world. The implications of these dates are profound. The famous animal paintings in the Chauvet cave, of France, are dated at 35 ka BP; the Sulawesi warty pig outdoes them by 10 ka. Many archeologists and anthropologists talk about a “great leap forward” in human culture, suggesting that it occurred 30-60 ka BP. During this “leap,” Homo sapiens initiated behaviors characteristic of modern humans. Such discoveries indicate that the leap may have occurred toward the more ancient end of that range. The warty pig also upends any lingering belief that figurative cave art was a European thing. “The early cave art in Europe is so spectacular that it was hard for archeologists to tear their eyes away from it”. This sometimes resulted in a “not fully conscious Eurocentrism.”
2023-01-06: Insights into the why of cave paintings
the number of marks on the cave paintings was a record, by lunar month, of the animals’ mating seasons. Ice Age hunter-gatherers were the first to use a systemic calendar and marks to record information about major ecological events within that calendar
Quantum Conservation Laws
Maybe energy can be created and destroyed, or maybe the notion doesn’t quite make sense. To reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity will require a quantum theory of gravity. Physicists disagree vehemently on what such a theory will look like, but most agree on one thing: The notion of spacetime will disappear at the fundamental quantum-gravity level. In that case, conservation laws lose their relevance completely. How can you say a certain quantity does not change with time if there is no time at the fundamental level?
Asymmetric conductors
A nanotube material conducts heat in just 1 direction
Asymmetric conductors could revolutionize cooling systems for computers and other devices.
Symptom, Condition, Cause
The saying goes: all models are wrong, some models are useful. I don’t think existing psychiatric diagnosis is particularly accurate, but I think it’s the most useful thing we have right now. And I don’t think talking about how each condition is probably made up of many root causes is a particularly damaging objection to it. We should keep the likely heterogeneity in mind and pull it out when we need it, but we shouldn’t use that as an excuse to abandon the whole nosology.
Declarative web apps
I still have nearly all the questions I started this piece with. At the same time, by engaging with the paper and the topic I’m getting clearer in my own mind as to what my requirements for a future application composition system would be. To quote Grady Booch one more time: “the whole history of computer science is one of ever rising levels of abstraction.”
Fiber topography
Spotting an undersea fault using fiber-optic cables
He and his team had disconnected the cable from all its usual sensors so they could use the fiber itself to sense vibrations on the ocean floor. By monitoring how light beamed and bounced through the transparent fiber, Lindsey’s team was able to describe the texture and topography of the earth it was buried in
Axions
Physicists have long searched for hypothesized dark matter particles called WIMPs. Now, focus may be shifting to the axion — an ultra-lightweight particle whose existence would solve 2 mysteries at once
Hawking radiation
the hologram within a hologram gives the desired answer to the question of what happens to a 2D black hole’s information. Most experts assume that if the reasoning is correct, it should carry over to higher-dimensional black holes like those in our universe. A common concern, however, is that the authors might be reading too much meaning into this abstract calculation
Gregor J. Rothfuss 