Science and scientists can learn much from religion when it comes to how to deal with scientific fundamentalism.

Jane Goodall started asking people to consider whether we are alone on this planet.

A short tribute to an incredible scientist.

Linked above is part 1, here is the link to part 2, and here is the link to part 3. I’d also recommend topping the series off with his tour of the IceCube facility which is the largest experiment at the South Pole and an example of the science they can do there that would be impossible to do elsewhere.

Darwin showed that organisms are derived imperfectly from their history and it’s these imperfections, the radical historicity of life, that is our clue to it having evolved.

Analysis of work practices in imaging units and hospitals demonstrates how each image intertwines aspects of a patient’s body, socio-technical features, and economic priorities in locally specific ways to constitute the body in medical practice and social life.

Despite the tendency of popular narratives to position MRI examinations as objective knowledge, these images are not neutral nor are they equivalent to the physical body.

I think most people, who see and experience these statistics take them passively as just like, “That’s just concrete information.” They don’t think of it as a question of like, “Who’s the person you want to be?”

In this video, we’re going to look at some prominent climate deniers, what they have to say, why what they say is clearly wrong, [and] why they seem to believe it anyway

One of the greatest illusions in life is continuity…

For the fascinating story of how we learned about this special day, millions of years ago, see Preston, 2019.

And for an alternate theory of what killed the dinosaurs, see Kurzgesagt’s video on the Deccan Traps.

Picture the splash of a pebble falling into pond water, but on a planetary scale.

If as spiritual practitioners we ignore the discoveries of science, our practice is also impoverished…

Experimental reports rich in circumstantial detail were designed to enable readers of the text to create a mental image of an experimental scene they did not directly witness. I call this ‘virtual witnessing’, and its importance was as a means of enlarging the witnessing public. The notion of a ‘public’ for experimental science is, I argue, essential to our understanding of how facts are generated and validated. In these episodes, circumstantial reporting was a technique for creating a public and thus constituting authentic knowledge.

On how Robert Boyle’s 1660 letter New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall created modern science.

I feel it’s really important to reach the heart, because people have got to change from within. They’ve got to change because they want to change. And if you batter at them and try to blind them with science, they don’t want to listen to you. But if you can quietly tell a story, then you may reach the heart. And that’s when people change.

An interview with Jane Goodall, primatologist and anthropologist, on her research and what her findings can teach about human nature and the current climate crisis. Goodall highlights how humans are similar to chimps, being capable of both altruism and aggressive behavior. The interview also covers climate change, meat consumption, and how stories can help change people’s views.

After reviewing 18,753 citations, we included 47 trials with 3515 participants. Mindfulness meditation programs had moderate evidence of improved anxiety (effect size, 0.38 [95% CI, 0.12-0.64] at 8 weeks and 0.22 [0.02-0.43] at 3-6 months), depression (0.30 [0.00-0.59] at 8 weeks and 0.23 [0.05-0.42] at 3-6 months), and pain (0.33 [0.03- 0.62]) and low evidence of improved stress/distress and mental health-related quality of life.

Stronger study designs are needed to determine the effects of meditation programs in improving the positive dimensions of mental health and stress-related behavior.

… the most up-to-date, evidence-based information on science and health questions that affect the decisions we make each day

America’s top scientists give concise answers to the public’s most commonly asked questions, such as:

• Can earthquakes liquefy soil?
• Is there a link between infections and cancer?
• Is it possible to achieve net-zero emissions?
• Does using sunscreen cause a Vitamin D deficiency?

Everything we know is because somebody told their master, “you’re wrong.”

… studies gave statistically significant positive results indicating that people really could tell when they were being looked at from behind

A review of the studies investigating this common form of telepathy.

It is remarkable that there was a cosmology in Buddhism twenty-five centuries ago that doesn’t conflict with modern physics.

Ajahn Brahm explores how Buddhism and scientific inquiry aren’t opposed but complement each other.

They want to make clear that other ways of thinking about humanity that are based on conceptions of biological difference and hierarchy are wrong.

On the study of “human nature” after World War II.

Without all of those stories—without the physicist’s story, without the philosopher’s story, without the artist’s story—you’re telling an incomplete narrative.

A renowned physicist on his current view of the cosmos and our place within it.

… the belief that we humans occupy a realm of being separate from the rest of nature encourages what he all-too-politely refers to as “environmentally irresponsible behavior.”

A history of modern conceptualizations of “nature” and an early defense of the so-called “first/second nature” split—a concept we now call “the anthropocene.”

The original book can be read in its entirety online here

The world is not a logic puzzle.

After you listen, be sure to check out the book they discuss at the end, All Yesterdays and its sequel, All Your Yesterdays.

… to create a healthy indoor space, make it more like the outdoors

… a book about people trying to solve problems created by people trying to solve problems

A few case studies of humanity setting out to fix the environment.

By zooming in on tiny fish and out to the entire stratosphere, it beautifully captures the staggering scope of climate change and its challenges. In highlighting the scientists and engineers working on it, the book offers a somewhat more hopeful picture of our possible future: less apocalyptic but still incredibly strange. See 99pi’s “Model Organism” for a taste.

The book also makes a strong case for being skeptical that we even can engineer our way out of climate change. While it nods to the “but what other choice do we have” counterargument, I hope that readers come away from this tension in the book more confident than ever in our need for decarbonization and I hope that readers won’t leap to even worse ideas than those highlighted in the book, such as fatalism or population control. As one character in the book memorably put it:

Pissing your pants will only keep you warm for so long.

… the trick that has helped me squint at the bleakness and see them more clearly is to admit, with every breath, that you have no idea what you are looking at.

Half a history of, and accessible meditation on the philosophy of, science and half memoir of the author’s grappling with depression, this pleasantly easy read captures something of “emptiness.” It shows how Buddhism still has much to add in the West’s ongoing struggle to reconcile its extremes of naive, Christian eternalism and cynical, “scientific” nihilism.

Death is the moment when the system that maintains the far-from-equilibrium state ceases to exist.

We found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do […] and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts.

How much evidence do we need of the harmfulness of something before we act?

In 94 B.C., the Chinese historian Sima Qian wrote, “In the area south of the Yangtze the land is low and the climate humid; adult males die young.”

In which the hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, acquainting himself with the customs and dialects of previously unknown and unchronicled folk … and other material pertaining to the business and technology of Undersea Fiber-Optic Cables, as well as an account of the laying of the longest wire on Earth

A riveting account of what it takes to make the internet work.

It isn’t just that Bohr’s atom with its electron “orbits” is a false picture; all pictures are false, and there is no physical analogy we can make to understand what goes on inside atoms. Atoms behave like atoms, nothing else.

A metaphysical exploration of the possible interpretations of quantum mechanics.

The universe doesn’t allow perfection.

A classic of popular science books, A Brief History of Time—along with its sequel, The Universe in a Nutshell (Bantam Spectra, 2001)—provides a whirlwind tour of modern physics from one of the field’s preeminent minds.

There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.

We know a lot about the world. For example, that it weighs about 5.97×10²⁴ kg. But how do we know that?! You can’t just put it on a scale!

To answer this question (and many more), Bill Bryson interviewed a few scientists and uncovered the fascinating, brilliant, and often absurd history of modern science.

If we accept that there will always be sides, it’s a nontrivial to-do list item to always be on the side of angels. Distrust essentialism. Keep in mind that what seems like rationality is often just rationalization, playing catch-up with subterranean forces that we never suspect. Focus on the larger, shared goals. Practice perspective taking. Individuate, individuate, individuate. […] You don’t have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate.

A magisterial and heart-felt survey of neuroscience, psychology, and biology which paints a broad but rigorous picture of how and why humans act the way they do–for better or for worse–and what we (individual meatbags) can do to be our best selves.

The book is based on Sapolsky’s Stanford course, “Human Behavioral Biology”, available for free on YouTube.

Interesting to note: one of the methods mentioned was tried recently, with results exactly as reported.

We wouldn’t say “this is proof of reincarnation,” but I would say it’s strong evidence of something like it.