In the 2018 NeurIPS conference, 4,845 papers were submitted. The paper I’m reviewing here by Chen et al, 2018, titled Neural Ordinary Differential Equations, won best paper award. The paper discusses using continuous Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE) for Neural Networks (NN) as opposed to the sorts of discrete layers used in the standard Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN).
Science
Quantum Mechanics qua Being
Aristotle defined metaphysics as the study of Being qua Being – or, one might say, studying Being being Being. He says in book VII of his Metaphysics that Being is the individual instances of essence, which is the substance that defines what a thing is in-itself. Now, in our present time, we’ve narrowed down the primary substance further than our everyday sensible objects, down to subatomic particles. Can Aristotle’s philosophy be a useful lens to think about quantum mechanics?
Transhumanist Virtue Ethics: Desirable Innate Preferences Determined by Reason
Natural rights don’t exist, except in the human mind. They are a way for a social species to maintain social cohesion. But, as useful as natural rights may be in deciding how to organize society, they are not fundamental; instead, they are derivative of what humans, in general, desire.
Should Futurists Support War?
Since at least World War 1 the idea of war as being all about glory and heroism has seen massive disillusionment. Most people, I think, would agree that war is not a good thing, even if some think it a necessary thing. But technological arms races, both during war and in peacetime, generate a plethora of technological advances. That raises the question: should futurists and transhumanists welcome war in order to usher in greater and faster technological advances?
Mesh Networks: Alternatives to the Internet?
Mesh networks figure extensively in my Incarnate series. They’re used by the forty-eights – and others – as a way to run parallel ‘internets’ so as not to be tracked on the original internet. But mesh networks are not all science fiction – they’re actually being used in the real world.
Augmented Reality: Not Science Fiction
Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that features heavily in my Incarnate novel series. This technology isn’t just a science fiction creation, though. Just like in my story, it’s becoming more and more a part of our lives and only promises to become a bigger part in the near future.
Supermassive Black Hole Image
A collaboration of hundreds of scientists using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) have been able to capture an image of a supermassive black hole in the Messier 87 (M87) galaxy.
Structure of the Mind
Consciousness and qualia are problems that are still unsolved by philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. My way of viewing consciousness and qualia is that consciousness is the process by which our brains organize the world into working models and qualia is the ‘stuff’ that consciousness uses to generate those models. For better or worse, both of these exist due to evolutionary forces. That means they’re fine tuned to a very specific sort of survival, not for any pure understanding of the world or ourselves. In order to understand the limitations of our own minds, we need to know the inner workings of how the world is organized in our minds on a fundamental level. That requires knowing the structure of our minds.
A Primer on Evolution pt 2: Evidence
In part two, I will give a brief overview of the evidence for the theory of evolution. This is not an exhaustive compendium of all the evidence in support of the theory of evolution. It is already a long post, so I keep all my descriptions brief. If you are interested in learning more, I provide plenty of links to websites and peer reviewed papers all throughout.
If you’re interested in how evolution relates to religion and whether it gives us any reason not to believe in God, check out this post. The current discussion will not touch on the subject, sticking strictly to the science.
Part 1: How Natural Selection Works
Part 3: Higher Concepts in Evolutionary Theory
A Primer on Evolution pt 3: Higher Concepts
What follows are more conceptual aspects of evolution that build on the ideas discussed in the part 1. It’s not absolutely necessary, but I would recommend checking out part 2 first as well. In this conclusion to my three-part primer on evolution, I will discuss things like reproductive isolation, the different ways that evolution occurs, sexual selection, ecology, chaos theory, and evolutionary equilibrium. That evolution by natural selection has occurred and is occurring is not controversial in biology, which means most biologists are not actively searching for evidence that evolution by natural selection is a true phenomenon – the evidence that it is occurring is in. This post, therefore, introduces you to some of the areas of active research in evolutionary theory.
Part 1: How Natural Selection Works
Part 2: Evidence for Evolution by Natural Selection
A Primer on Evolution pt 1: Natural Selection
Some people have anywhere from a slight misunderstanding to a complete lack of knowledge on how evolution by natural selection operates. I’m going to do a series on the subject to educate anyone who is confused by or interested in the theory of evolution.
Part 2: Evidence for Evolution by Natural Selection
Part 3: Higher Concepts in Evolutionary Theory
Journal Club: Harper et al 2017
It may be self-serving, but I thought it also apt for the first article I review for Journal Club be my own. My paper, titled Multiple substitutions lead to increased loop flexibility and expanded specificity in Acinetobacter baumannii carbapenemase OXA-239, is the culmination of my undergraduate research. I was looking at a clinical variant of the beta-lactamase enzyme OXA-23 which has 3 amino acid substitutions.
CRISPR/Cas9 Crash Course
I enjoy writing (or, at least, the idea of writing) about a veritable plethora of topics: philosophy, religion, politics, economics, society. However, my education is actually in the sciences – I am a published biochemist. This has made me strive for scientific accuracy, or at least scientific plausibility, in my fiction writing. For science fiction, the CRISPR/Cas9 system of gene editing leads to all sorts of possibilities, some of which I explore in my Incarnate novel series (shameless plug – book 2 coming soon!). In my novel, people use CRISPR/Cas9 to modify their somatic cells in order to give themselves practical biochemical upgrades (ie having one’s fingerprint pattern shift slowly over time so that the person cannot be tracked) to more aesthetic ones (ie giving oneself a series of subdermal bioluminescent vessels that can be lit up at will).
But if one wants to know how to better understand the possibilities and limitations to CRISPR/Cas9 (at least in its current state in August of 2018 – my novel series takes place in the future where some of the practical limitations will hopefully be overcome), it is necessary to understand how it actually works. Here, I am going to lay out in hopefully simple terms (although this may be somewhat technical at times) what CRISPR/Cas9 is, how it works, and what people are currently using it for (or debating whether they ought to use it for these things, anyway). This will not be an exhaustive review of everything CRISPR/Cas9 related, but it will hopefully make it understandable enough for the interested laity to know what it is and for fellow sci-fi writers to use it more effectively in their writing.
Mind Over Matter
Are the mind and body separate substances, or are they one-and-the-same?
Mind-Body Dualism is a philosophical question at least as old as Descartes, and possibly older. Most people tend to have an intuitive sense that they are a mind that has a body – that our mind resides within this physical thing we call a body. What I’m interested in here is whether it is useful to think about the mind and body as separate and what this could mean for humans and society going forward. This article is not meant to be an exhaustive exegesis on the entirety of the mind-body problem or even a summary of every facet. What I will do here is discuss three different ways to conceptualize the mind-body relationship, some practical concerns that arise, and then a theoretical analysis of responses to these practical concerns.
Is Human Suffering Bad For Humanity?
I think if you ask most people, regardless of their race, religion, sex, gender, orientation, socioeconomic status, nationality, etc. that if they could wave a magic wand and make the world such that everyone had food, clothes, medicine, a loving family, and a sense of well-being at the expense of nobody else, they would do so without a second thought. Why wouldn’t you? Who wouldn’t want to end suffering and create happiness? One of the biggest reasons some people have for doubting their religion is the problem of evil – if there is a benevolent god, then why does suffering exist? Why do bad things happen to otherwise good (or at least, innocent) people?
Well, I’m here to make the case that maybe human suffering makes humanity as a whole better. This isn’t a political or religious statement, nor do I even endorse the idea that suffering is good, but I’d like to propose sort of a thought experiment. So humor me, if you will.
People who suffer offer an artistic perspective we would never have without suffering.
It’s somewhat of a truism that artists are often people who have endured hardship. The experience of hardship is often what gives them material for their art. People who are able to focus their pain into something productive create some of the greatest works of art. Kurt Godel may have suffered from delusions. Michelangelo may have been autistic. Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo produced art based on the struggle of Mexicans (and themselves). The people who created blues and jazz struggled with slavery and racism. Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur, Robin Williams, Mitch Hedberg and the list goes on. The idea being, if these people didn’t suffer, would they have created the diversity, novelty, and quality of art that they had? If everyone in the world grew up with all of their needs fulfilled, a loving family, and an accepting society, would they have made the impact that they had? Is it necessary for people to suffer in order to gain some insight or ability to create amazing art? Or could someone have done this without having the experiences they did?
Helping those who suffer makes people with the means to help better humans.
One of the tenets of many religions is helping the poor. The bible says “But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.” One of the Five Pillars of Islam is “Giving Zakat” which is giving to the poor. Many other religious have ideas like this. These are considered not only moral acts, but virtuous acts. Doing this makes you a good person and can earn you a place in God’s grace. But what happens if there is no poor to help? What happens if nobody is wanting and everybody is equal? Is there any theology that tackles the idea of the end of suffering? What happens when there is something akin to heaven on earth? How will the meek inherit the earth if there is no more meek? Is it good to have the less fortunate around so that the more fortunate can become moral by helping them?
“The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.” -Jean-Paul Sartre
Combating suffering brings us great technological advances.
The mother of invention is necessity. Many of our modern technologies have come about because someone realized there was a problem, and then invented a solution. Scientific advances are often made in attempts to solve a problem – an enormous majority of biochemistry and cell biology research is funded by grants awarded to cancer research. How many advances might we have made if cancer wasn’t a problem that needed fixing? How much would we understand about bacteria if we didn’t have the problem of antibiotic resistance and vaccinations? How much would we know about the brain if there weren’t such thing as mental illness? And maybe mental illness even creates scientific, mathematical, and engineering insights we wouldn’t have otherwise? How much technology has been produced by places like DARPA in order to keep a wartime advantage? Would NASA have come about if it wasn’t for the Cold War?
These questions can be strange to ask, but it’s difficult to deny that much of the art, science, technology, and even morality that we enjoy and take pride in has been a result of suffering of one kind or another. Would it be worth it to eradicate all suffering if it were to reduce artistic output, slow progress, and take away something meaningful from many people?