Recent content by Freeman Dyson

Doesnt human behvaior and morality change and "evolve" must faster than biological evolution? The morals of humanity "evolve" and mutate at a much quicker rate. There are moral acts from even 200 years ago that would make a modern person puke his guts out, where a person of that time would not...

Freeman Dyson may be dispassionate but Richard Dawkins is not. Nor does my using his name on an internet site think I am "fit to assume" him. Anymore than wearing a professional athletes jersey is a statement that I am as capable of doing what that athlete does. I am a fan. Now that that...

The idea of evolution explaining altruism is just another "just so story". Stories that Dawkins has been peddling to the public and banking in on for years. And that is all they are, stories. And Dawkins loves telling them.Jerry Coyne:

I don't think that is true at all. It is still an assumption. There also millions of exampes of humans not being altruistic. More in certain environments than others.

Who even says that humans are altruistic, much less genetically wired for it? That is an assumption piled on another assumption. But the phenotype cannot simply be reduced and attributed to only the gene. It is the organism that brings together the gene and the environment, and therefore...

How can a gene be the unit of selection when it is never naked to selection? It is the organism that brings it all together. I am not an expert by any means but here is Mayr on this subject: http://www.pnas.org/content/94/6/2091.full Mayr again on this subject...

I think an afterlife showing to be true would be the biggest event in human history and totally change the way humans behave/live. It would be much bigger than evolution. Much bigger than alien contact. Much bigger than anything I can think of besides similar topics like God revealing "himself".

Most insightful and philosophical physicists alive...two names I think of are Freeman Dyson and Paul Davies. Dyson is particuarly good about the history and philosophy of science. I consider him the closest thing to the polymath scientists of old. Feynman is great of course, though dead, and...

A cultured person is somebody who shows interest and can grasp topics and ideas even though they are outside what his immediate environment provides or demands. It has nothing to do with travelling, visiting museums, or about knowing how to act around the higher classes, etc... It is more than...

Different people have different interests depending on their position/situation in the world. Free men arent equal and equal men arent free. The only way for a truly universal interest to exist would be if truly universal conditions exist.

I think it is much harder for a girl to be "different" in general. I mean a guy in the "special" class when young can shake that stigma easier. He can fit into more social groups. Especially as time goes by. It is at least slightly more accepted and expected. A girl in the special class...

I think Sagan said it better.

Thanks for that information. The news articles don't say really anything about details.

I was thinking that may be the case too. Just like a blue-ribbon commission in general. Kind of like how Feynman was a top guy on the panel investigating the Challenger shuttle. Just curious as to why so many nuclear physicists in particular.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7726142/Barack-Obama-sends-nuclear-experts-to-tackle-BPs-Gulf-of-Mexico-oil-leak.html I don't know a damn thing about nuclear physics so can anyone shed some light here? How does this apply to nuclear physics? What are some of...