"You don't see radio changing gradually and suddenly become radar. #Darwin's theory doesn't work for #technology, and we have to make a new observation."

- W Brian Arthur at SFI today

#evolution #innovation #invention

https://t.co/xvP6tVlIaE
Quite a surprise. Ferguson isn’t qualified to comment on such things. He lacks understanding of basic biological concepts, partly explaining why his predictions are often so extreme.

That said, I’ll take him as an ally. It’s clear we’re already at herd immunity. How can I be sure? London had a huge peak of excess deaths in spring. The timing of peak deaths showed clearly that the pandemic was self-limiting. Recall much debate about whether the interval...

...between lockdown & peak deaths was long enough for lockdown to have been the cause of reducing deaths? The answer was “no”. But it was close & I can understand people thinking “well, it’s close, so perhaps it was lockdown that did it?”, thereby establishing a foundational...

...myth favoured by those who genuinely believe lockdown saves lives (it clearly doesn’t).
I’ll get to London & here immunity. But those wavering about the evidence about lockdown in spring really will benefit from cogitating on this graph.

In blue are the 30 trusts with the earliest date of peak deaths in spring. In red, the 30 with the latest peak deaths. For me, this is proof that national lockdown, which began Mar 23, played no role whatsoever in turning the pandemic. You’ll see some areas had peak daily...

In Academia, people aren’t always supported when they need it. I want to share what @WesternU did when my husband died right after the pandemic shutdown. It should be shared with other uni’s as a model for empathy and proactive care when someone is in crisis.
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#AcademicChatter

Let's talk about Avi Loeb and his theory about alien

First, I should disclose that I work at the fame research facility as Dr. Loeb, though I work in a different department and to my recollection we've never met.

He's a scientist; I'm in computer support.

With that out of the way...
The interview above is worth a read, and a lot of serious thought, because there's an idea there that's really critical to science, and it isn't whether or not aliens have visited (exactly).

It's about how fashion and culture and taboo have an unfortunately strong effect on science.

In particular he compares his theory on alien visitation with the multiverse theory.

Which of these is more deserving of ridicule?

Science is fundamentally a structure for forming hypotheses and then (critically) testing these hypotheses to see if they should be kept, rejected, or modified.

What is MKULTRA? - THREAD 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
CIA MKULTRA / Mind Control

Project MKUltra—sometimes referred to as the CIA’s mind control program—was the code name given to an illegal program of experiments on human subjects, designed and undertaken by the United States Central