The Templeton Prize always divides opinion. Personally I'm delighted to see Simon get it. His work, especially on convergent evolution, has been really important.
www.templetonworldcharity.org/blog/profess...
Yes!!
But bloody expensive. Bah!
This looks really interesting.
Very interesting essay review that discusses how modern historians of science tend to dismiss or ignore Thomas Kuhn, and the pros and cons of doing so.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Well, it's an example of why we assume everything is AI-generated these days. But if it's real, it is bloody spectacular.
This will be amazing. And free!!
An excerpt from the part of our book where we mustered all of our self-control and … took the category of “woke mind virus“ seriously.
Turns out it’s kind of revealing about how Musk and his brethren in the Silicon Valley leadership class see politics.
Gaia is right. I was very saddened and shocked to hear about Ruth, but so glad to see her remembered here.
Quite a range of views. I enjoyed the way all kinds of people felt boosted and inspired by Artemis II in dark times. I also worry about the longer-term political and economic agenda and the lack of scientific return. I'm not sure inspiration is enough - but it's not nothing.
Ed is correct. In fact Davy at first suggested "alumium" before switching to "aluminum". Anyway, nice to meet you too.
(People might say "But Lamarck *was* wrong!" But you'd only say that if all you know about Lamarck is giraffes. It's far more complicated.)
Well you've touched on something there - I'm currently reviewing a new biog of Lamarck which points out how the demonization of Lamarckism had rhetorical purposes.
If there was a real benefit in it, I've no doubt evolution would have found a way. But I can't easily see how any such benefit could arise.
Yes, although Dawkins' gene is not Crick's gene. (And it frustrates me that this is not more widely acknowledged, or even recognized.)
Oh, I do hope so!
Ooh, that sounds pretty profound when set like that! Like it must have been said by someone very wise 😉
Agreed!
Thanks so much. Evidently DRTs use this idea more widely. And this is a really interesting variation, with this apparent handoff between polyA and polyT-synthesizing enzymes. Wow!
Specifically, *sequence* information flow.
I didn't know that *aqueous* biochemistry was an option on Titan. I'm not holding my breath for that being discovered by Dragonfly, but am hugely looking forward to that mission anyway (if it survives NASA cuts).
arxiv.org/abs/2604.16249
*If* the CD were found to be violated in some process or another, it wouldn't upend molecular biology. It would just show the inventiveness and diversity of nature. (Same with modes of inheritance that could be seen as Lamarckian, or otherwise non-Darwinian.)
I suspect we only get so invested in whether the Central Dogma is broken or not because Crick called it that. If it had been "the principle of protein synthesis" or the "rules of transcription & translation" or something, it would seem less of a big deal. Remember, it's not a "dogma" at all.
In #9 of the thread, I meant to write "Drt3a uses an RNA template [not DNA] with a repeating ACACAC sequence to synthesize..." Apologies. The ACACAC sequence is in the ncRNA that forms part of the DRT3 complex.
Sorry, this was my error. I meant to write "RNA", not "DNA" there (hence the "an"), but my fingers misled me. Drt3a is using an ACACAC sequence in the ncRNA.
No, I think I see that too. That's why I call the ignorance aggressive. It's elective.
Regarding 21 and the fact that there is of course vast scholarship on the point it purports to make, I think we need now to be speaking of these Silicon Valley moguls in terms of "aggressive ignorance" - an assertive determination to renounce learning.
As the first comment points out, it begins with the total misrepresentation of Children of Men. "No, it was not a 'correct prediction of the birth rate collapse.' In the book, there's an unexplained fertility crisis - men have mysteriously become infertile."
