Free Will?

If you follow the Dilbert Blog at all, you'll know that Scott Adams has consistently denied the concept of free will. Here's the latest blog entry where he claims it's a superstition. See, this is where Carl Sagan's famous, and *very* subjective, statement "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" really shows its problems. To me, the claim that there is no free will is the extraordinary claim. (I will explain this later) However, to Scott Adams, obviously the claim that there is free will is the extraordinary claim.

Now see, I don't follow the strong form of free will as believed by, say libertarians, where an agent can always make a rational choice, any time, any where. (which would be an extraordinary claim indeed!) While I am a realist and believe that the number of choices can be constrained by prior conditions, I still do believe that there are choices to be made. To show me that free will doesn't exist will involve showing proof that no choices can be made, anywhere, any time, over the entire course of the universe. I believe that is the extraordinary claim. :)

Good(?) science, bad journalism

People reading Slashdot regularly would've no doubt seen this article, linked from this Slashdot entry, where Nature magazine talks about German scientists analyzing Wootz steel and finding carbon nanotubes. Now I'm not informed enough to talk about the idea of nanotubes in antique weapons - there are people who dispute that this finding is new. However, history-wise I found fishy stuff from the Nature article itself. For example:

The Crusaders felt the might of the tube when they fought against the Muslims and their distinctive, patterned Damascus blades.

Sabres from Damascus, now in Syria, date back as far as 900 AD. Strong and sharp, they are made from a type of steel called wootz.

Now I was surprised, since as far as I knew, the oldest known curved sword in the Islamic world is the sword of the (in)famous King Baybars, which dates from the 13th Century. So idea of "sabres" from 900 AD seems wrong. I found the original paper here, and finally figured out the truth:

The specimen used in the present investigation is a part of the genuine Damascus sabre produced by the famous blacksmith Assad Ullah in the 17th century.

Ah ha, so the Nature article was a bit muddled with their facts. Oh well at least it wasn't as bad as in this Royal Society of Chemistry article on the same paper:

To Europeans, Damascus steel blades seemed magical. Not only could they cut a piece of silk in half as it fell to the floor, they could cleave rocks and their own swords without losing sharpness.

Now seriously, I wonder about supposed scientific minds at the Royal Society who actually believe that swords can cut rock. (hint: which material is harder?) And of course, this article is titled "Carbon nanotubes: Saladin’s secret weapon." Saladin lived in the 12th Century!

What's the point of all this? Well, with journalism, even in fairly "respectable" papers, you have to take a "caveat emptor" attitude with the facts they present, and you should really dig a bit to get to the original sources.

The Renaissance Myth

An interesting (but old) article about how the idea that the Renaissance was a "great intellectual leap" is bunk. It's from an old (1980s) literary journal article so there are numerous transcribing errors. (many of them look like OCR problems.) It's a very interesting read.

New Blogger

Well, I've switched over from the old blogspot account to the new google account based one. The address and everything are still the same though. I'll see what new features this has.

The Logic Museum

I put in a new link to the right for the Logic Museum. This is an interesting website that has the online versions of a number of philosophical works that concern logic from ancient times to the time of Russell. It's currently fairly small, but is constantly growing.

Greatest Philosopher?

Holy crap! In a BBC poll on "the greatest philospher," Karl Marx actually got first place. Aristotle and Socrates each only got less than 5% of the votes. This is rather... disturbing.

Fun Math

Awesome solutions to math problems. I really like the first one. :)

Chad Vader

More adventures of Chad Vader. (Episode 4)

Thanksgiving Day

Wow... The official Thanksgiving Day in Canada has had a short but varied history.

Nietzsche Family Circus

This is a bizarre site that randomly combines a Family Circus cartoon with a Friedrich Nietzsche quote. Sometimes the combination seems to make a lot of sense...

3D Space Hulk

Remember the guy who cast his own 3D resin board for Space Hulk? He's finished painting enough for the first mission. Pretty impressive:

http://spacehulk.beckerf.de/SH_3D_Setup7.jpg

http://spacehulk.beckerf.de/SH_3D_Setup8.jpg

http://spacehulk.beckerf.de/SH_3D_Setup9.jpg

http://spacehulk.beckerf.de/SH_3D_Setup10.jpg

Compare to my much more pathetic card board ones :)

Full Map

Marines Entering the Hulk

Wow... This is interesting...

In yesterday's Scott Adams blog, in the "A philosophical question" post, he seems to be saying something under that silly allegory of his: Basically, "Muslims are irrational and violent." Hmm... interesting.

Churches in the West Bank

Well, in today's blog from Scott Adams, he asks the question "what the hell are churches doing in the West Bank?" Since I don't believe he's *that* ignorant, it must be another of his "yank people's chains" thing.

And of course, he accuses the Pope of calling Islam "evil and inhuman" indirectly through the East Roman Emperor's comments, even though the Pope was referring specifically to the practice of spreading religion by violence. Sometimes I think Scott Adams is just intentionally doing this stuff to see what kind of comments he gets.

Geoffrey Chaucer

The Geoffrey Chaucer blog is really good. I especially like the recent post "Serpentes on a shippe!" :)

The T-shirt section has some good stuff too.

New Star Wars Ending

I think someone might have posted this before, but this is an animated short of the way Star Wars (episode IV) should have ended. It makes much more sense than the original. :)

In defense of Wal-mart?

Wow... Open mouth, insert foot...
I bet Wal-mart didn't see this coming when they hired Andrew Young.

3D Space Hulk

Here is a guy who casts 3D Space Hulk corridors by himself with resin, using LEGO in the production too. :) That's pretty cool. Looks like you can get quite a bit of detail just from resin. Interesting...

The Glass Bead Game

The book "the Glass Bead Game" sounds really interesting to me now, after I read this review. I've always found Hesse to be unnecessarily mystical, but from this review, I could be wrong. Definitely a good addition to my "to read" list.

ATI's trade up program

Wow, I just recently found out that ATI has a pretty good deal going on. You can trade in your old video card, no matter what kind it is, for $80 Cdn in credit towards buying a small selection of newer ATI cards from their website. The link is here. There are only three cards to choose from, but the most interesting one is the All-In-Wonder X800XT. This card has all the capabilities of a regular X800XT, which is old but still quite good, plus all the All-In-Wonder TV functions. After the $80 credit it's only $120! That's pretty awesome considering I've seen plain X800XTs in Edmonton stores recently for around $300. This is probably a really good deal for people like me who still have an AGP motherboard but want a faster card without upgrading everything.

LCD Monitor

Okay, I finally broke down and bought a ViewSonic VX2025wm LCD monitor. This is a 20" monitor with 1680X1050 resolution that goes fo $370 at Best Buy, and it's supposed to be one of the better cheap 20" monitors. I've only had it for one day, but I'm liking it so far. There appears to be no dead pixels, and at 1680X1050 resolution with a DVI connection, the image is very sharp. I do have to turn on large types though - this monitor is farther away from my eyes than my old one, and I have trouble seeing small type. (this maybe a case of my needing new glasses) I also test-watched Lord of the Rings on the monitor and there seems to be little or no ghosting. The games that I currently play also seem to do okay, although they tend to be slower now because of my old graphics card. (Radeon 9600) "Dawn of War," one of the games that I play most often, doesn't support widescreen play, but it does give you black bars on the sides of the monitor so things don't look stretched. All in all, it's good so far, and I'm glad I don't have to deal with my old heavy CRT monitor anymore...