I'm a non-scientist trying to understand a bit about climate science and the state of it. It's mysterious to me why so many people (some on both sides of most debates I see!) seem to treat this as though it were a religious issue and not a scientific one.
1. My understanding is that the...
Thanks for the pointer. I've been reading Peter Woit's blog for a few months, but not far back enough to see much discussion on anthropic ideas. I also read Lubos' blog, or what I can understand of it.
In his talk, Susskind seemed pretty fair about stressing that there was heavy debate...
I could imagine that we could make progress figuring out how conscious behaviour emerges. For example, looking at feedback loops in the brain to the senses, or the 'self' as a symbol, or things along those lines.
But I don't see how science could ever distinguish between things that act in...
I just listened to a talk by Leonard Susskind on "Landscape" ideas. He obviously is a big believer in these ideas, and also clearly he knows much more physics than I do by an order of magnitude comparable to electromagnetism versus gravity:) So I'm interested in why people, especially...
A few questions from a non-scientist:
From what I've read there is a dipole in the microwave background radiation. Does anyone consider this to be very significant? Were any scientists very surprised that there was such a dipole? Would it have been considered weird if the background...