It’s snowing again on SMD!

I don’t have time to make a post about how spiders recently have supported my theory of the transbrain. Like the Octopus, the Spider has brains in its feet. See the history of posts tagged “brain studies.”

Are there any requests for topics during the holiday season?

When it comes to trans-brains, humans aren’t the only ones

Experimental zoologist and philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith has shown that, in octopi, the brain is everywhere, including but not limited to the arms.  HT: Three Quarks Daily, the blog for the e-intelligentsia.

Godfrey-Smith isn’t the only neurophilosopher to endorse my thesis. John Loftus did so here.

If you want to explore the full public record on this, see my initial publication here, and my discussion of the NYT study here. I give some crucial historical perspective here.

UPDATE: I have joined Google+! See my profile here.

Einstein = MCwrong; me = right

Science and Math Defeated Victorious!

You may recall several Internet trolls and haters doubting me here. That was almost exactly three years ago.  Well, just a few days ago the scholars at LAX and Time pointed out that, in fact, these trolls and haters should have been trolling and hating themselves, because, according to the scholars cited, Einstein was wrong.

An obscure source claims that scientists at “MIT” are dogmatically defending Einstein. Even if this is the case, I would just point out that “MIT” is the place that hired Noam Chomsky, whose major contribution to science is that it is possible to destroy mice testicles. Need I say more?

Science and Math Defeated scholarship for excellence in the sciences and maths?

I’ve been thinking about humanity recently and wondering: should I host an essay contest, for best path-breaking essay in the sciences or maths? The prize could include recognition on my blog, alongside a cash prize. It would almost certainly be modest, but nothing to sneeze at, perhaps $50 and a well-constructed certificate. After all, I do not (yet) have institutional support. I was looking at this “Fastweb” website and wondering also if I could post it on there, but I don’t know the rules! I will perhaps investigate this, but I just wanted to throw the idea out there.

NASA to announce discovery of alien life

Unlike the Church of Scientology and the U.S. Government, NASA is one cult yet to be breached by WikiLeaks. But it looks like NASA will be revealing one of its own secrets, this Thursday.

Readers may recall my trenchant criticism of NASA, here and here, which led to the Obama administration’s (wise) capitulation to my demands, here.

Well, if NASA demonstrates the existence of aliens, as indicated by the aforelinked link, then maybe the Outer Space program, virtually non-existent these days, can be redeemed. This also might finally give the SETI people something to do other than make movies.

Bad advice from disreputable people, i.e. studies by scientists

When scientists aren’t indulging in their weird fetish conferences, they are busy giving bad advice to young people.

This time around, scientists have given people even more incentive to become moderately intoxicated. Inebriation, they argue, will “lower” the risk of certain kinds of diseases. By the same logic, because drunkenness lowers inhibitions, and confidence raises attractiveness, and romantic partnerships increase lifespan, moderate drunkenness will “lower” the risk of death. But that is clearly nonsense!

And in any case, as anyone paying attention will know, buzzed driving is drunk driving. See for example this study.

You might be saying to yourself, “Wait a minute how can we reduce the risk of disease, when this guy Kevin says we are disease?” To this I say: Just because some lowly grad student named “Kevin” says something, doesn’t mean it’s true. After all, which is more likely: (1) That you are a person with free will, thoughts, feelings, and a body or (2) that some grad student on the Internet named Kevin has made an original contribution to science?

Weird Science

I have recently discovered, just now in fact, that there is another scientist who, like me, addresses topics that polite society chooses to ignore. In the case of the fittingly named Alex Wild, the topic is very, very small animals, derogatorily called bugs by scientists who choose to ignore the uncomfortable. See his daring blog here. I have added it to my links. I should say, by the way, that my links are a little stagnant. I am very, very tired these days, especially after having completed the move to Cambridge. Were it not for Cafe Pamplona, I would not know how to spend my time.

So, what is more creepy than bugs? Even I have trouble focusing my mind on them without beginning to plan for suicide. I just don’t know if there is anything as absolutely horrifying as this, this, this, this, this, this, or for Heaven’s sake this. There is maybe one thing more horrifying than insects.

I leave you with this nightmare:

"A Disgusting Instance of Nature," titled by me, photographed by Alex Wild

The other other Harvard scandal

Several of you are familiar with the bestiality controversy surrounding Marc Hauser, right here in Cambridge.

Less reported by the media is the embarrassing revelation, now viral on over 100,000 Youtubes, that Harvard has been using video games, spliced with scenes from the more recent installments of the Star Wars franchise, to teach its students subatomic biology. See the offending video here, leaked by the Swedish watchdog organization Ardalan Biology:

This shameful behavior is indicative of the increasingly hot water in which subatomic scientists find themselves drowning. Believing in non-observational objects is one thing; believing in video games and Star Wars is another.

Can the elimination of humans foster human wellbeing?

So says this new research done by Science Daily. Thus we are now beginning to see the fruits of Sam Harris, who says that science can answer moral questions.

Well here’s an answer of science – eliminate the birthrate.

But if you eliminate the birthrate, then modus ponens you eliminate childhood, but then fortiori you eliminate adults! And what are we, if not adults?

Yet wellbeing is part of the fabric of the universe, as Brian Greene has vomited.* So you can’t have wellbeing without having the universe, and you can’t have the universe without adults.

The Vienna University of Technology should have its accreditation revoked by NIH.

*Yes, I know. A rare instance of my agreement with this Melchizedek of nonsense.

Science fail

Mr. Tomato Man, who has always been a friend to me when closest comrades have deserted, posts this link to a blog containing wonders. Sadly, the transportation specialist who maintains that blog has been absent for some time, pursuing other projects. I think personally that he should continue his noble quest to undermine the scientific establishment.

Chunkdz confirms the foundation of all my positions

If I am admitting, I admit that sometimes I give the impression that I am a lone star against the stream in a crowd of scientists. But that’s not so. A prominent intelligent design advocate has also professed the results of my own research, that science is defeated not only by the evidence, but by itself. See her sagely post here. Notice of course that although Chunkdz and I presumably disagree about intelligent design itself (see my publications here), we can still count ourselves on the same team, which is against the scientific establishment.

For those interested in the research done by Chunkdz and others like her, see their main blog, called Telic Thoughts.

Lessons from 17th century optics

Those of you who have noticed will have noticed, eventually, that I have been increasingly focused on my theory of the trans-brain which says – if I may avoid nomenclature for a minute – that your brain is everywhere. My theory was originally stated here, gained momentum thanks to the New York Times here, saw the desperation of its opponents here, and was supported by a budding neurophilosopher here.

Instead of continuing to focus on the present and future, I think it is important for me to show how my theory is grounded in the scientific tradition. Two views of the brain dominated the pre-, during-, and post-Englightenment period. One was defended by Descartes and Newton. The other view was developed by someone no one has heard of, Thomas Reid. Thomas Reid pointed out that the Descartes of the world believe that the brain has things in it that it perceives. In other words: I am not seeing a tree in the world, I am seeing a tree in my brain. That’s what the Descartes and Newtons think.

To this, Reid issued a resounding “Nein!” Allow me to quote Reid.

[T]he brain has been dissected times innumerable by the nicest anatomists; every part of it examined by the naked eye, and with the help of microscopes; but no vestige of an image of any external object was ever found. The brain seems to be the most improper substance that can be imagined for receiving or retaining images, being a soft moist medullary substance” (Inquiry into the Intellectual Powers of the Human Mind II, iv [256b], quoted in another book, pg. 80).

The other book goes on to quote Reid again: “We are so far from perceiving images in te brain, that we do not perceive our brain at all; nor would any man ever have known that he had a brain, if anatomy had not discovered, by dissection, that the brain is a constituent part of the human body” (ibid ibid, ibid [257a], quoted in ibid, pg. ibid).

Do simulacrums of my pathbreaks get any more fortuitous? Gleaming from these difficult passages are truths Reid gleaned which were far ahead of his, as it was, Sits im Leben. First, Reid is quite right that the brain is unsuited to receive images. We know from the theory of the trans-brain, and from an elementary application of Pascal’s razor, that it is quite enough to say that the eyes are what see objects. It is remarkable that Reid was able to know this through pure reason alone. We today only know it because animal rights organizations have allowed us to experiment on dogs and rats, which have remarkably similar visual systems to apes, which are similar to us. The transitive genomic principle will get you the rest of the way. Anyhoozle, Reid points out that we really don’t perceive “our brain” at all – because we use it itself to perceive! The subject of perceiving cannot be its own object, according to the widely accepted Universal Grammar. Yet – and here Reid reveals himself as a scathing rhetoricalist - because of “anatomy” we now “know” we have brains, which are “constituent part[s] of the human body”!

Reid’s point is this: If the brain is a mere constituent of the human body, and perception happens in brains looking at themselves, and yet this is impossible, then we can’t actually see! But we couldn’t see anyway because we’re really just looking at our brains! But if we are looking at our brains, then we can see after all! But if we can see, then it can’t be with our brains! But if it is not with our brains, and it is with our brains, then our brains must be more than we have supposed them to be. Hence, if I may return to the vulgar colloquial, your brain is everywhere.

For those of you who don’t understand words, here is a zenn diagram of the differences between Reid and his discontents.

Thomas Reid was effervescent enough to foresee that the brain must at least include the eyes.

Neurophilosopher John Loftus investigates brain studies

Many of you will have, as of late, noticed, my many preoccupations with the burgeoning field of brain studies. See, i.e. here, and i.e. here.

There is a brilliant man named John Loftus who has a blog, called Debunking Christianity. But really I see Loftus as being primarily a kind of scientist. Not one in the academy per se (to his penultimate credit) but as an independent scientist and intellectual, in the tradition of Aristotle, Descartes, and Buckminster Fuller. For example, Loftus’ scholarly refutation of so-called Intelligent Design is almost as good as mine, which is a high compliment to him coming from me. For good measure, I’ll also add my two take-downs of seventh day adventist theologian William Dembski.

To get back to brain studies, Loftus has recently investigated the mind/body problem.

Unless you can solve [the mind/body] problem for me I cannot take seriously any beliefs in gods, spirits, poltergeists, out of body experiences, or miracles performed in the physical world by a spiritual God.

As I have shown, in an important sense the brain is the body, as demonstrated by especially pain studies, and even further especially the amygdala. And insofar as the brain is not the body, it is part of and through the body.

Like Loftus, I think the current attempts to solve this “problem” are way off base. Scientists are too quick to just assume an occult phenomenon like pain-at-a-distance (called “projection”), akin to gravity, in order to localize the human brain in the skull. This is patently absurd, as daily human experience demonstrates.

This John Loftus fellow is also similar to me in that he gets frustrated when people hear a “noise in the night” and invoke something mystical to solve it, ’cause they’re scared. Is this not my exact point in refuting Brian Greene on dark matter? Twice?

Latest in brain science

Some frauds at the journal Science Daily have published a study seeking to show that what they call “the brain” (the wrinkly thing in skull) has to “spit” to stay alive. It oozes blood every now and then to get rid of “debris.”

This fantastical brain-of-the-gaps theory is an attempt to keep traditional brain science alive while the evidence becomes ever clearer that the human brain is located throughout the human body.

The silliest thing about this so-called breakthrough is that it actually only applies to mice. However, cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky has demonstrated why studies of mice are inapplicable to studies of humans:

Obama heeds my criticism of NASA

In March of 2009, I publicly lambasted President Obama for appointing an outer space fanatic to head NASA. The President called for another mission to the moon (yawn), but instead NASA bombed it for no reason. I got a lot of flack from the experts, including one commenter named “Basdv.”

Yet in response to my trenchant criticism (and NASA’s going off the deep-end), Obama changed his mind, basically eliminating NASA altogether. The space lobby even trotted out Neil Armstrong to make some statements, despite his suspicious identity. Without a manager, hopefully Houston will have another problem sooner than later.

UPDATE: Thousands of readers wrote in to condemn me for wishing that NASA would repeat the incident involving Jim Lovell. On the contrary, by “another problem” I mean an existential crisis for NASA itself.