“Darwinism”

I made a comment on a YouTube video yesterday that I liked so much I am recording it here. “They” refers to Christian apologists who are trying to discredit evolution. (Edited slightly to correct an autocorrect error.)

As I think further about it, I have a similar problem with the term “atheism”. Christian apologists frequently talk about atheism as a doctrine in and of itself, while atheists describe it as an absence of belief, without any implications about what any given atheist does believe.

I suggest that part of this misunderstanding might stem from the word itself. Wikipedia defines “-ism” as a construction “used to create abstract nouns of action, state, condition, or doctrine”. If we don’t want a lack of belief to become an abstract noun, to represent something rather than the absence of something, perhaps we shouldn’t consent for it to become an ism.

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Infinity can be a number

Someone I respect and read every day, Seth Goden, came out today with a howler: “infinity is not a number“. This is a very 19th century way of thinking.

In fact if somebody says “There are no numbers that …”, well, maybe there are. Why don’t we assume there are, and see what happens? People have been doing this since Pythagoras.

Humanity has a long history of being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the realization they needed new kinds of numbers: fractions or fractured numbers or broken numbers; negative numbers, irrational numbers, imaginary numbers. People hated to extend the number system. But they did it anyway, because it helped them understand the world better, and build themselves a better life.

So now we come to infinite numbers. Up to the 19th century, infinity was not a number, it was the limit of a process. This became so ingrained that the first person to challenge it, Georg Cantor, was ruthlessly mocked and eventually confined to an insane asylum for the rest of his life. But today mathematicians accept Cantor’s “transfinite” numbers and have used them to infer that transcendental numbers must exist.

But Seth’s conclusion is not wrong here. Infinite numbers have not integrated themselves into our technology and our lives the way other kinds of numbers have. (Yet.) I agree completely with him that if you are chasing infinity, get used to disappointment. That is not the right way to deal with infinite numbers. We don’t know the right way. We’ve only had about a century and a half to deal with this new kind of number and history shows that other kinds of numbers have needed centuries to be accepted and used. But efforts like nonstandard analysis and surreal numbers show that both infinite and infinitesimal numbers (think 1/infinity) can be potentially useful ways of thinking about this. And that means they exist, just as much as the number 1 exists. (Does it? Can you point to it? No. Can you use it? Yes.)

This also relates to the question whether mathematics is discovered or invented. It’s invented, because it is human inventiveness that has created all these numbers. But you can’t just create willy-nilly. You have constraints, and those constraints must be discovered. So the answer is, it is both.

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Finally a tourist

After two weeks on the road, yesterday was the first time I got to play tourist. At first, given my uneducated planning efforts, I was rushing, driving 1800 miles to get to a family wedding on time. Easy in a car; not so much in a high-top camper van. After the wedding, and a much needed day of rest, But yesterday I got to Midland TX, home of both the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum and the I-20 Wildlife Preserve. Opposite ends of the spectrum, so to speak.

After a family history in the oil business, I was interested to see the museum. It did what I expected in promoting and glorifying the oil industry.

The words “climate change” are not to be found there. They do however have a room full of awesome and beautiful crystals, another interest of the museum’s founder, including this huge amethyst.

The wildlife preserve was more interesting and fun. I had no idea it was there until I camped in the RV park across the street. The have an 86 acre “urban playa” lake. Some open water, but surrounded by wildlife habitat. There is a 1.5 mile path around it, with blinds you can stand behind and be much less seen by the wildlife. I needed the long walk after so many days on the road.

The people at this preserve have developed the iNaturalist app for the iPhone. Point your phone at any living thing, take a picture and it will tell you what it is. If the quality of the image is not quite good enough, it might tell you, “that’s a bird!” as opposed to what kind of bird. But birds are small and far away and usually backlit, all of which make identification difficult. The lizards ware impossible for me: small, constantly moving, and almost the same color as the path they scurried along. But for plants it works great. You can also use a better camera setup and feed those images into the app. (I haven’t tested this.) I also haven’t tested how it works in some other environment, such as upstate NY for example. I will report back about this.

I’m having issues with the photos in WordPress, possibly related to my old theme.

More later.

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For those of us of a certain age, May 4 will never be about Star Wars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

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Has someone been really shitty to you?

https://www.shitexpress.com/

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Road Trip, day 1

Kingston, NY to Intercourse, PA: 1285 mi, 5:42. 37 mph, mostly on back roads. Through the Delaware Water Gap, but I haven’t figured out how to get video off of my dash cam. It was late when I started, and it was getting dark when I arrived. Picture taken at very beginning of the trip. A lovely day in the rolling hills of New York and Pennsylvania.

As for the name of the town, it is where the Amish designated to have economic intercourse with the English, so clean up those thoughts. And I am sure the towns named Virginville, Bird in Hand, Paradise, and Blue Ball have perfectly innocent explanations. I just don’t know what they are.

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Exposing Secrets

https://www.threads.net/@sars_cov.2_covid_19/post/DIffN-mvxHc

There is an account on Threads that posts information that the government doesn’t want you to see. The next pandemic is knocking at the door, and Bobby Kennedy is throwing that door wide open and saying, “Come on in!”

Specifically (since social media posts are ephemeral):

“11 new H5N1-infected dairy cattle herds confirmed across 3 U.S. states, raising serious concern about the spread of avian flu in livestock.

Meanwhile, several farm workers show bird flu like symptoms, but my sources say HHS Secretary RFK Jr. told CDC not to test them.”

I tried posting this on Facebook, and they put it on my home page, but not on my public timeline. Yet another reason to de-emphasize Facebook in my online life.

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Happy 22nd day of Spring

For those who celebrate

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Happy Birthday to me!

Sun rising in partial eclipse at Kingston Point, March 29, 2025

To me. Birthday present #1 was a sun rising in partial eclipse. I didn’t catch the eclipse part, but I got the sunrise.

Then on to communing with the ancestors. On the left my mother, who died on March 26, 2003. On the right, my great-great-grandmother Catharine Jones Newcomb, who died on March 29, 1844.

Then to commune with favorite bodies of water: Notch Lake and the Ashokan Reservoir.

Finally, dinner with the family and a lesson in violin-playing basics from my granddaughter.

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New Baby Brain Scans Reveal the Moment We Start Making Memories

My earliest memory comes from when I was about 3. When my younger daughter was 2, I asked her if she remembered being born and she said yes. I asked her again at 4 and she didn’t remember being born or being 2. Anyway, today we see from SingularityHub: https://singularityhub.com/2025/03/20/new-baby-brain-scans-reveal-the-moment-we-start-making-memories

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