Paul’s Blog

I’m certainly no expert on population genetics, but some things just seem logical to me, yet are apparently completely lost on others. It’s when something so obvious, is so easily overlooked that I’m tempted to imagine that perhaps human Ostriches marry positions, and abandon honesty inquiry.
For instance, the word “Species” is a human [...]

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Chimps have been observed by many to try and increase their social status/rank through service to others in the clan. Is it prejudiced to believe we are morally superior to primates who express such a phenotype less, who have been less successful reproductively (presumably due to lack of organizational effectiveness and cooperation).
Geneticists (in the last [...]

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I posted a question to my facebook page the other day, which was misunderstood by at least one person.  Like so few arguments, it began with an engaging distractor, before the final reveal.  Here is the question again, exactly as I posted it originally:
“Still no “complex” signals at SETI! Imagine though a signal at several [...]

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Let me preface this post by warning that I have very little understanding of this stuff.  If I’m dropping some major BS here which is very wrong-headed in some way, then by all means, please let me know.  I’m rather curious lately about these things, and don’t want to get too far out on [...]

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I’ve been doing alot of reading lately about the experiences of Aldus Huxley and others who have attempted to describe their experiences “outside of time”, when they could touch the ‘eternal’.  It’s really easy to whimsically castigate these guys as prone to ‘flights of fancy’ (epistemologically) or poopoo their prose as ’self-defense’ (psychologically).  How oft it is [...]

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First principles first, right? (that is, one should consider first principles in any serious academic endeavor, at least before a “Toward a Theory Governing [insert two-dollar words here] . Blah blah”)? Well, I would like to begin by stating that a simple definition does not meet the traditional scientific criteria for a theory. Although in [...]

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