Truly, don't miss it (if you can get it at all). Fantastic topic, and great panel (Buzz will be excellent, I've no doubt).
Ha, thank you Suzie! You probably know that Bohr was central to the founding of CERN.
As for the covers: yes, I had that response to the US one, but of course that's sort of the point: it breaks our brain/reality.
"Metaphors are beginning to double back on themselves". I can see why you liked this @bnerlich.bsky.social ! (So do I.)
Absolutely this. I made this programme 6 years ago to make the case that green policies are as much about national as international interests now. The right still hasn't woken up to this. Vulnerability to dependence on oil is one more strand of the wider argument.
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
I've seen lots of arguments in science where the rival parties simply are not interested in understanding one another, and so the result is a boring argument that gets nowhere and serves no productive purpose.
...your job is to identify the people in that school who are open to good-faith discussion where each party listens to and tries to understand the other, and then to have that discussion. Identifying those people is the hard part; after that, it's great, even if you won't agree on everything.
I've been reminded more than once recently of something I think should be part of a start-of-career scientist's training: If you find yourself in disagreement with another school of thought, your job is not to write papers showing why the adherents of that school are all benighted fools. Rather...
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All the same, I am persuaded by (what I take to be) Arvid's argument that such a framing (even if IMO it is too extreme to be biologically plausible) can be a stimulus for posing and exploring good questions.
Here's one way (I believe a correct way) to frame this issue: It was only and precisely because Dawkins made the organism a passive vehicle enslaved to its genes that it came to seem like a paradox. When we realise the first is not true, we see that the second isn't either.
You'll see that some follwin the thread, but only as an indication of how I'm going into this. I expect (and hope) to have more and perhaps even different ones when I've read it!
But then the resolution in that case is not an evolutionary one, but a molecular biology one. And the problem is unrelated to our "genes" in the usual sense (ie the genes we hear about in genomics).
..."selfish replicators" are the norm. There was never any reason to suppose that, and it is evidently not the case. Having said that, "selfish" transposons would indeed mess up the germline very fast if we did not have a defence system (involving PiwiRNAs and Argonaute proteins) to protect us.
If that understanding is right, this seems like a valid, important and interesting issue, and I'm keen to learn more about it. But it would fit too with my feeling that Dawkins' characterization of the problem was vastly overblown, and arose only because of his commitment to the view that...
And here's the book's take on it - as I understand it, that the "paradox" is not really that at all, but nonetheless internal conflicts do arise among genetic elements, and are an important aspect of the gene's-eye view of evolution.
Here's the basic problem...
Thank you @arvidagren.bsky.social - I'm really looking forward to delving into this.
Just wanna point to this good piece, since the wholly valid point is that it's not for me to tell you what message to take from it.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
I've been looking forward to this arrival. It's a wonderful project by composer Quinsin Nachoff, inspired by my writings on pattern formation. Jazz-inflected modern classical, and if you like that kind of thing (I do), you should like this. More here: quinsin.com/patterns-fro...
The right answer, IMO! (Not sure if I have a preference, but only after I imagine myself browsing in the Harvard Bookstore).
So, which do you prefer - UK (left) or US (right)? I like both, so there. And what is inside will be the same in any event.
It's out in the autumn - or is that the fall?
Here's an engaging & accessible introduction to our studies of individual differences in how people respond to poetry, art, & music. @kristenfrench.bsky.social interviewed @giacomobignardi.bsky.social about the research he's leading to decipher the mysteries of “aesthetic chills”.
@nautil.us
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We are thrilled to share that our Human Authored scheme is now live.
This scheme has been designed for the benefit of SoA members, to help identify works written by humans in a market increasingly flooded by AI-generated books.
The right call. No scientific meeting (even real ones) should be expecting non-US scientists to come into the country now (if not already committed to that).
Ok. But any discussion of ‘useless’ knowledge should also appreciate scientists’ incentives to claim uselessness. The history of performative irrelevance (e.g. Faraday claiming he could see no uses for the electron; Polanyi saying the same about Einstein while the bomb was being built) is rich.
Reposting as this seems to be resonating.
I have just re-read the entire article to see if perhaps there was a satirical aspect so deadpan than even this Brit failed to detect it. There is not. The piece is strongly critical of Trump, but as a sane person with a faulty strategy: eg an "old man in a hurry". I think my reading was right.
