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Sex Differences: Nature Or Nurture? Talking
about gender is much more optimistic than talking about sex. It's the
rags to
riches idea — you can become anything. But I've been very interested to go
back to the original notion of sex, as a biological characteristic, and to ask
if there are there any essential differences between males and females in the
mind. And to understand that if there are psychological differences, what are
the biological mechanisms that give rise to these? Are they genes, are they
hormones? Simon Baron-Cohen - 30 min
Intelligent Design? Intelligent
Design's core scientific principles have been thoroughly dismissed on the
grounds that Darwin's theories can account for complexity, that ID relies on
misunderstandings of evolution and flimsy probability calculations, and that it
proposes no testable explanations. Evan Ratliff - 18 min
Near Death Experiences Explained
As I got nearer to the end of the tunnel I seemed
to be surrounded by a wonderful warm glowing light.” GM Woerlee - 12
min
Evolutionary Psychology What
began in the early twentieth century as an assertion that human nature is driven
by “unconscious forces” and “vestigial impulses” has now been
transcended by the deeper pessimism of evolutionary psychology. William Hurlbut - 40 min
Consciousness Success
for our human ancestors must have depended on being able to get inside the minds
of those they lived with, second-guess them, anticipate where they were
going, help them if they needed it, challenge them, or manipulate them. To do
this they had to develop brains that would deliver a story about what it's like
to be another person from the inside. Nicholas Humphrey - 16 min
+ Responses by
various experts - 60 min
Inflation Of The Universe Inflation is
regarded as the most important development in cosmological thinking since the discovery that
the Universe is expanding first suggested that it began in a Big
Bang. John Gribbin - 30 min - not an easy read.
The Purpose Of Dreams
Some
scientists take the position that dreaming probably has no function. They
feel that sleep, and within it REM sleep, have biological functions (though
these are not totally established) and that dreaming is simply an epiphenomenon
that is the mental activity that occurs during REM sleep. I do not believe
this is the most fruitful approach to the study of dreaming. Ernest
Hartmann

Epicurus
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
...
Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?
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Note: There are many videos, podcasts
and lectures relating to numerous topics residing on the internet these days;
but I have selected below only those that I consider to be the best and the most
interesting. And many of them are truly mind-blowing.
Global
Warming Or Global Government?
Google video - 82 min - suggesting that the global warming hysteria is
being generated by a desire for funding and has precious little to do with
CO2
The
Evolution Of Religions -
YouTube lecture by
Jared Diamond concerned with the adaptive functions of religion - 45
min + 40 min Q/A session
Misusing
Darwin
Scientists sometimes complain about the introduction of religious ideas
into science. But many scientists, especially evolutionary biologists,
blatantly introduce materialism into science. Keith Ward - 50 min -
for those with a religious bent.
Keith Ward is a very engaging lecturer - and many of
his lectures at Gresham College are now online.
Also see fascinating
lectures About The Universe by John Barrow - famous physicist - about
60 min each
... and also
lectures by Ian Morison and by
Frank Close.
NOTE: most of the above lectures use Real Player, but some of
them are in .mp4 file format. If you cannot play these then try
downloading VLC Player - which
works well with many media formats.
SETI
The SETI Institute's Jill Tarter makes her TED Prize wish: to accelerate our
search for cosmic company. Using a growing array of radio telescopes, she and
her team listen for patterns that may be a sign of intelligence elsewhere in the
universe 21 min
The
Need For Experiment Biochemist Kary Mullis talks about the basis of modern science: the experiment.
30 min
Origin
of Life Lecture by John
Maynard Smith - YouTube video in 6 parts - 10 min each
The
Deep Oceans David
Gallo David Gallo takes us to some of Earth's darkest, most violent, toxic and
beautiful habitats, the valleys and volcanic ridges of the oceans' depths. -
14 min
Card
Magic Like your uncle at a family party, the rumpled Swedish doctor Lennart Green says, "Pick a card, any card." But what he does with those cards is pure magic
30 min
Some
Magic Keith Barry shows us how our brains can fool our bodies
20 min
Online Videos Of Philosophical
Lectures - a
really great collection!
Mathemagics
Arthur Benjamin races a
team of calculators to figure out 3-digit squares in his head, performs a
massive mental calculation, and guesses a few birth days. 16 min
New Perspectives On Old Problems Noted
scientist Stephen Wolfram shares his perspective of how the unexpected results
of simple computer experiments have forced him to consider a whole new way of
looking at processes in our universe. - 90 min - fascinating
Learn
Out Loud Various
Science Podcasts - from many different sources
On
Consciousness Four
lectures hosted by the Skeptics Society - 2hr 40min - lecturers Michael
Sherman, Roger Bingham, Christof Koch, Alison Gopnik
The
Expanding Universe - YouTube
Lecture given to Berkeley students - by Professor Richard Muller - in four parts - 40
min (total)
New
Brain Theory Required To date, there hasn't been an overarching theory of how the human brain really works, Jeff Hawkins argues in this compelling talk. That's because we still haven't defined intelligence accurately. But one thing's for sure, he says: The brain isn't like a powerful computer processor. It's more like a memory system that records everything we experience and helps us predict, intelligently, what will happen
next. Jeff Hawkins - 20 min
An
Atheist's Call To Arms The session was titled "The Design of Life," and the TED audience was probably expecting remarks about evolution's role in our history from biologist Richard Dawkins. Instead, he launched into a full-on appeal for atheists to make public their beliefs and to aggressively fight the incursion of religion into politics and
education. Richard Dawkins - 30 min
The Decline Of Violence Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on
earth. Stephen Pinker - 8 min
The Third Culture Science is the most accurate way of gaining knowledge about anything, whether it is the human spirit, the role of great men and women in history, or the structure of DNA. Humanities scholars and historians who spurn it condemn themselves to second-rate status and produce unreliable
results. John Brockman - 4min
A Sample Of Modern Neuroscience I list here four major accomplishments in neuroscience in the past year that have inspired
me. Eric Kandel - 8 min
Why Are Jews So Brainy? From 1870 to 1950, Jewish representation in literature was four times the number one would expect. In music, five times. In the visual arts, five times. In biology, eight times. In chemistry, six times. In physics, nine times. In mathematics, twelve times. In philosophy, fourteen
times. Charles Murray - 10 min
Exposing Intelligent Design Propaganda "Ken Miller basically rips Intelligent Design apart in a
long exposé of the claims of intelligent design and the tactics that creationists employ to get it shoehorned into the American school
system". 90 min video lecture followed by 30 min question session.
Doubts About String Theory? Doubts About Scientists? Ben
Green talks to Lee Smolin - audio .MP3 - 23 min - from Guardian
science podcasts
Microbiology We have more microbes in our bodies than we have human cells. We fear them as the cause of disease, yet are reliant on them for processes as diverse as water purification, pharmaceuticals, breadmaking and brewing. In the future, we may look to them to save the planet.
In Our Time - Melvyn Bragg - BBC Audio - 40 min
Karl Popper Karl Popper is one of the most significant philosophers of the 20th Century, whose ideas about science and politics robustly challenged the accepted ideas of the day. He strongly resisted the prevailing empiricist consensus that scientists' theories could be proved
true. In Our Time - Melvyn Bragg - BBC Audio - 40 min
Global Warming Hokum? These
people [the IPCC - the International Panel on Climate Change] are openly declaring that they are going to commit scientific misconduct
that will be paid for by the United Nations. If they find an error in the
summary, they won’t fix it. Instead, they will ‘adjust’ the technical
report so that it looks consistent. Melanie Phillips
George Bush's Stem Cell Fiasco When George Bush banned funding he effectively put researchers into quarantine.
Ed Pilkington
The Strangeness Of Science - Video
Lecture By Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins is Oxford University's "Professor for the Public Understanding of
Science" suggests that the true nature of the universe eludes us, because the human mind evolved only to understand the "middle-sized" world we can observe.
Knowledge Is Power - Video Lecture
By David Deutch Legendary physicist David Deutsch
weaves a complex and captivating argument placing the study of physics at the center of our species' survival. (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 19:45)
Strange Claims - Video Lecture By
Michael Shermer
Skeptic Magazine founder Michael Shermer takes us on a hilarious romp through the strange claims we humans put forth as truth - from alien encounters to Virgin Mary sightings on pizza
pies,
On Religion - Video Lecture By Dan Dennett
Dan Dennett
responds to the presentation by Pastor Rick Warren, taking issue with claims in his book, The Purpose-Driven Life. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 25:29)
Famous Scientist is 'Embarrassing' The celebrity physicist is an inspiration to many but his grand statements embarrass the institution of
science. Bryan Appleyard
The End of String Theory? It’s hard to land a job in a high-powered department of theoretical physics if you don’t do string theory.
David Lindley - 5 min
Global Warming Hokum? The Stern report last week predicted dire economic and social effects of unchecked global warming. In what many will see as a highly controversial polemic, Christopher Monckton disputes the 'facts' of this impending apocalypse and accuses the UN and its scientists of distorting the truth.
6 min
The Goldilocks Enigma Professor Paul Davies' The Goldilocks Enigma tackles fundamental questions about the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it. Scientific breakthroughs, he argues, have brought us to the brink of comprehending the underlying structure of nature or "a final 'theory of
everything'".
Climate Change Deniers Demonised ‘The beauty of science is that no issue is ever “settled”, that no question is beyond being more fully understood, that no conclusion is immune to further experimentation. And yet for the first time in history, the Royal Society is shamelessly using the media to say emphatically: “case closed” on all issues related to climate change.’
Brendan O'Neill - 5 min
The God Delusion In The God Delusion, the scientist Richard Dawkins sets out to attack God "in all his
forms". - with 10-minute video of Jeremy Paxman interviewing Richard
Dawkins.

Evolution Is Losing? Evolution is losing the battle, says Ruse, and it's the fault of Dawkins and Dennett with their aggressive atheism: they are the creationists' best recruiting
sergeants. Madeleine Bunting
Future Science Science will continue to surprise us with what it discovers and creates; then it will astound us by devising new methods to surprises us. At the core of science's self-modification is technology. New tools enable new structures of knowledge and new ways of discovery. The achievement of science is to know new things; the evolution of science is to know them in new ways. What evolves is less the body of what we know and more the nature of our knowing.
Kevin Kelly - 9 min
The Most Beautiful Experiments Robert P. Crease, a member of the philosophy department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the historian at Brookhaven National Laboratory, recently asked physicists to nominate the most beautiful experiment of all
time.
Beware Design Accepting 'intelligent design' in science classrooms would have disastrous
consequences. Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne - 6 min
In Defence Of Common Sense Scientists'
contempt for common sense has two unfortunate implications. One is that
preposterousness, far from being a problem for a theory, is a measure of its
profundity; hence the appeal, perhaps, of dubious propositions like
multiple-personality disorders and multiple-universe theories. The other, even
more insidious implication is that only scientists are really qualified to judge
the work of other scientists. John Horgan - with comments from others - 9
min
Biocomputation Biologist
J. Craig Venter once raced the U.S. government to complete the decoding of the
human genome. Now, after a maverick career studying the code of life, Dr. Venter
has a new goal: life itself. J. Craig Venter, Ray Kurzweil, Rodney Brooks -
40 min
Along with two veteran collaborators, Dr. Venter hopes to become the first
to whip up a made-to-order bacterium. Normally, new life is created via
reproduction, with each generation passing its genes on to the next. But Dr.
Venter aims to bypass that process by manufacturing a complete set of genes, or
genome, of a single-cell bacterium in his laboratory. This man-made genome would
be installed inside a bacterium whose own genes have been removed.
By creating such a life form, Dr. Venter's researchers think they may come
closer to understanding what life is and how scientists can manipulate it for
the benefit of humankind. New artificial species could open avenues for
industrial production of drugs, chemicals or clean energy.
The Glory Of Exploration We
are not born with knowledge of the antipodes, the rings of Saturn, or the
far-flung realm of the galaxies. We are born into a world that is scarcely older
than ourselves and scarcely larger than ourselves. And we are at its center.
Chet Raymo
Good Reasons To Shrink The Size Of The Moon We
all love the large, pale moon that hangs in our nighttime sky. A half-sized blue
and green one will definitely take some getting used to, especially when its
dark side starts lighting up with cities. Still, the prospect of a new world—large
enough to house the entire United States, accessible enough to serve as the
airline hub for an entire solar system, and yet safe enough to survive a
technological collapse—may be too good to pass up. Wil McCarthy - 6 min
Psychic Hotlines Those
corporations were making millions and millions of dollars. They had more than
1,000 psychics working for them. The psychics were paid 15 cents for every
minute they were on the phone, while callers were being charged $3.95 a minute.
Dougall Fraser - 5 min
Are We Alone? Science has helped answer some of the fundamental questions of our existence. Yet, as Paul Davies reminds us, we are still a long way from solving perhaps the most intriguing mystery of all: Are we alone in the
universe? Marianna Krejci-Papa interviews Paul Davies - 7 min
Argument From Improbability Carl
Sagan said: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Dr. Craig
has made the extraordinary claim that certain empirical facts require
supernatural explanations. Vic Stenger
The Theology of the Tsunami Let's get up off our knees, stop cringing before bogeymen and virtual fathers, face reality, and help science to do something constructive about human
suffering. Richard Dawkins - 4 min
Who Could Have 'Designed' Life? The insistence of "intelligent design" advocates that they are "agnostic regarding the source of design" is a bait-and-switch. They dangle out the groundless possibility of a "designer" who is susceptible of scientific study--in order to hide their real agenda of promoting faith in the
supernatural. Keith Lockitch

Visiting Aliens? I
suspect there is hardly anyone who watches and studies the sky more than I do,
and while I have almost continuously observed the sky for most of my lifetime, I
have yet to see a single object for which there was not a prosaic explanation.
Alan Hale
String Theory I
find myself spending most of my time staring out the window. I see blocks of
equations dancing in my head, and I spend hours trying to fit them together.
These blocks are as familiar to me as the back of my hand, and I spend much of
my waking time turning them inside out in my head. Michio Kaku - 8 min
On Creationism There
is clearly no sensible limit to what the human mind is capable of believing,
against any amount of contrary evidence. Richard Dawkins - 5 min
The End Is Nigh What
are the greatest threats to humans and can we do anything about them? 10
scientists talk about their greatest fears and explain how society could be
affected. 7 min
Escaping Religion For
centuries, you believed what the church taught or you were shunned
(excommunicated? executed?). It was dangerous to challenge dogma. Now the large religions lose countless adherents because people just don’t buy the old party lines.
James Underdown - 5 min
Begging The Question Begging
the question – assuming what needs to be argued for – is often a result of a
careless use of language. Julian Baggini

13 Things That Do Not Make Sense - from
the Placebo Effect to Cold Fusion. - 14 min

Is String Theory Worthless? The
most celebrated theory in modern physics faces increasing attacks from skeptics
who fear it has lured a generation of researchers down an intellectual dead end.
Keay Davidson - 6 min

Are We Alone? Are
we alone? Given the immensity of the Cosmos, a mathematical impossibility. But
should first contact occur today we could be in for a shock. 7 min
Time Travel The
intriguing notion that time might run backwards when the Universe collapses has
run into difficulties. Raymond Laflamme has carried out a new calculation which suggests that the
Universe cannot start out uniform, go through a cycle of expansion and collapse,
and end up in a uniform state. John Gribbin - 30 min - not the
easiest of reads
Tabloid Science Some
scientific journals are abandoning scientific neutrality in favor of policy
stances and headline-grabbing scare stories, favoring style over substance.
Iain Murray - 4 min
Synaesthesia When
Ingrid Carey says she feels colors, she does not mean she sees red, or feels
blue, or is green with envy. She really does feel them.
Cut Out The Bio-Hype A
common and disturbing feature of the ubiquitous bioethical commentaries is the
short shrift—often, complete inattention—given to the feasibility of the
technologies under discussion. ... What is especially disturbing is that,
on occasion, even when the failure of the procedure or technology is known and
clearly documented, commentators have continued to talk on about ethical issues
as though the science will still, somehow, inexorably succeed. Ruth Levy
Guyer and Jonathan Moreno - 10 min
Without Gravity Moss Grows In Spirals Moss
cultivated in space grew into surprising spiral patterns that scientists can't
explain. - a surprisingly interesting article.

Beliefs In God I
have long believed that religion will be educated out of humankind eventually.
It may take many centuries, but it seems probable. Guy Harrison
Failing War Against Bacteria And Viruses? We
are, to put it bluntly, locked in permanent evolutionary war with the earth's
bacteria and viruses. Robin McKie - 7 min
Talking To Aliens A
society outfitted with an infrared laser of sufficient power could send the
equivalent of the Encyclopedia Britannica to a million solar system targets in a
day. Seth Shostak
Richard Dawkins Here
are two recent news stories: we’ve found the genes that make people believe in
God and that make women unfaithful. At a stroke, scientists have scuppered
religion and taken the moral sting out of infidelity. Richard
Dawkins groans. Brian Appleyard
Human Animal Hybrids Let's
say you need a new liver. Zanjani would take some of your bone marrow stem
cells, and inject them into a fetal sheep at the proper moment. A few weeks
later the lamb would be born with a liver made up chiefly of your cells. The
lamb would be sacrificed and your new liver installed. Once installed, your
immune system would eliminate the lamb's liver cells, leaving behind a brand new
organ perfectly matched to your body. Ronald Bailey
Bio-Engineering Insects At least 300 million people contract malaria and nearly three million people die from it every year. Using interbreeding to replace wild populations of malaria-carrying mosquitoes with mosquitoes genetically modified to resist malaria would be a tremendous boon to
humanity. Ronald Bailey
Building New Organisms Building living
organisms from scratch is a tricky business. 3 min
Virtual Humans At
some point, there will be a merging of AI and the faking of consciousness.
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The Expanding Universe The
cosmos has three possible fates: Big Crunch (eventual collapse), Big Chill
(expansion forever at a steady rate), or Big Crackup (expansion forever at an
accelerating rate). Jim Holt - 23 min
Chinese
Rooms The Chinese Room
argument is intended to show that while suitably programmed computers may appear
to converse in natural language, they are not capable of understanding language,
even in principle.
50 min
Artificial Wombs
... a
world in which children are created in the laboratory, gestated in some
artificial womb-like environment, and brought “to term” without ever really
being “born.” Christine Rosen - 25 min
Evolution vs Intelligent Design Three
proponents of Intelligent Design present their views of design in the natural
world. Each view is immediately followed by a response from a proponent of
evolution. 24 min
Consciousness
There
is no agreement about whether any living creatures have minds apart from
ourselves. Anthony Campbell - 13 min
Are
We Computer Simulations? We might be able to discover clues to the real state of
affairs, planted there by whoever is responsible for the simulation. Anthony
Campbell - 10 min
Technology Really Is Embodied Humanity All objects have extended dimensions, but we normally acknowledge only a fractional part of their true extent because of constraints inherent in our perceptual apparatus and the coercive effects of time. Rather than regarding discernible objects in the world as integral and discrete we must recognise that they, and their repercussions, extend indefinitely through space and
time. ... Yet despite this unity, there are many futurologists, science fiction writers and movie-makers still attached to the idea of technology as an alien predator, a potential impostor with which we are destined to come into
conflict. Robert Peperell - 30 min - not an easy read
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