I am a materialist, in the sense that I believe the entire universe is made of matter that follows laws. I do not believe in the existence of anything supernatural or otherwise that can act in violation of the laws of science. As such, I do not think that the universe has any meaning in itself. The universe just is and any meaning that exists is what we construct. This does not bother me.
Jessica Tracy, a professor of psychology at the university of British Columbia, started out with beliefs similar to mine and was quite comfortable with them but then, at the age of forty, says that she suffered an existential crisis.
Suddenly, I was unable to stop thinking about the meaninglessness of my existence. Religious belief, the most obvious source of meaning available to many people when those big ‘Why are we here?’ questions come up, was not an option. As a scientist, I had always abided by the dictates of materialism: the central scientific doctrine holding that everything that matters is measurable. Materialism is largely responsible for the uncountable scientific advances our culture has accumulated over the past several centuries, from smartphones to vaccines. At the same time, it has placed a clear-cut kibosh on the possibility of a supernatural deity running the show.
In fact, one of science’s main draws for me was its airtight logic and appeal to rationality. I had no interest in seeking a source of meaning that requires abandoning – or at least setting aside – the critical thinking that my scientific background had instilled deep within me. And yet, as I hit midlife, I realised that science’s hardcore materialism was devastating me.
[UPDATE: The first vote has just been completed on the house floor and Jim Jordan failed to get 217 of the 432 members present and so has not become speaker and there will have to be another vote. The final results were Democrat Hakeem Jeffries 212, Jordan 200, and others 20. All 212 Democrats voted for Jeffries while the ‘other’ votes were Republicans who voted for people other that Jordan and thus have been able so far to resist the thuggery of Jordan and his allies. Nancy Pelosi and Mary Peltola of Alaska were present this time and got big applause from Democrats when they voted for Jeffries. Pelosi was absent for the McCarthy vote because she was attending Diane Feinstein’s funeral while Peltola was absent because of the death of her husband. When the final results were announced with Jeffries the top vote-getter, Democrats broke out in loud applause, no doubt to rub it in to the Republicans, who looked glum and were silent.
Lauren Boebert was seated between serial liar George Santos and Matt Gaetz who initiated the McCarthy removal but she seemed to have refrained from any hanky-panky, unlike when she was attending Beetlejuice.]
I have written many times before about how the Republican party has given up on pretty much all of the norms of democratic governing. They have abandoned the idea of winning people over to their point of view and instead gone full tilt into political thuggery as a means of achieving power. This is best exemplified by their whole-hearted adoption of serial sex abuser Donald Trump’s (SSAT) Big Lie that he actually won the 2020 election, a denying of reality that is so outrageous that it boggles the mind that any sane person could believe it. Indeed, one has to assume that many of the advocates of the Big Lie among the party’s representatives in Congress and its supporters in the media don’t actually believe it but have decided that it is the only way to gain he support of MAGA fanatics and the political costs of opposing it in terms of retribution are too high to pay.
In short, we have reached the point where political thuggery is the main tactic being used.
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There has been a great deal of buzz about the latest developments in AI such as ChatGPT. There have been practical considerations about how dangerous it might be to develop it, but there have also been concerns that the current incarnations of AI are overblown, that they are merely large language models that use massive databases of language to seek out patterns and then use those patterns to provide merely a facsimile of intelligence, similar in principle to Siri and Alexa and to the algorithms that autocorrect words or suggest the next words in our text messages, except that these are far more sophisticated.
Leaving aside those issues, Elizabeth Kolbert writes about a very practical application of large language models, and that is to try and decipher whale communication, because they seem to use regular patterns.
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Today (Sunday) saw two interesting quarter-final games. In the first England beat Fiji 30-24. It was a close game and Fiji had its chances but England were more disciplined while Fiji gave away away penalties at crucial moments and failed to convert two penalty goal attempts.
The other match between France and South Africa was a real thriller with South Africa edging out a 29-28 victory. France led 28-22 towards the end but South Africa took the lead with a goal and then their dogged defense held off a furious French attempt to get back the lead. This was another match that was worthy of a final.
One feels sorry for France. They have never won the World Cup since its inception, reaching the finals in 1987, 1999, and 2011 only to lose each time. This time they had a really good chance, especially since the tournament was being played in their home country.
The semi-final games will be Argentina v. New Zealand on Friday and South Africa v. England on Saturday. New Zealand and South Africa are favored to win. Each nation was won three times before, sharing equal honors in the last four World Cups.
When we have to randomly but fairly choose between two outcomes, we instinctively reach for the coin toss. It is because it is an article of faith that the two outcomes of heads and tails are equally likely. But the two sides of the coin are not identical, and hence that slight difference may make a difference in outcome probabilities. In fact, there are four possible forms of bias that may exist. It is possible that either heads or tails may come out on top slightly more frequently or that there is a same-side bias (i.e., the side that is on top when flipped is more likely to be on top when it falls) or an opposite side bias.
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The quarter-final game between top-ranked Ireland and #4 New Zealand was an excellent game, closely fought and displaying a high standard of play by both teams. New Zealand won 28-24, defending a ferocious Ireland attack in the last five minutes. It was a game worthy of a final but due to the unfortunate seeding, these two teams met far too early in the tournament.
In the other semi-final game, Argentina beat Wales 29-17. Argentina had a good second half. Argentina has benefited from this draw that placed them in the weakest pool D where England was the only top eight team in it. Wales (#7) also had an easy path to the quarter-finals, having just Fiji (#8) and Australia (#9) as their most serious contenders. Argentina now meet New Zealand in the semi-finals, which is going to be very tough for them, and one does not expect a close game.
The other two quarter-finals on Sunday involve France (#3) v. South Africa (#3) and England (#6) v. Fiji (#8). The first match is another pairing of teams that should not meet this early. The winners of these two games will play each other in the semi-finals and that too may not be a close game.
After majority leader Steve Scalise withdrew from the race of House speaker late Thursday evening following his failure to get enough support from his party members to ensure that he would get the necessary majority on the House floor, it seemed like Jim Jordan, the person whom he had defeated just a little earlier, had a clear shot at getting the nomination and the required House vote.
The rules require a speaker to get a majority of people present in the chamber and voting, which means that anyone who is present but just votes ‘present’ does not count towards any of the totals. That opens up various mathematical possibilities. One is that if the party persuades enough extremists to vote ‘present’ to enable a Republican to get 213 votes (out of their 221), that will be just enough to defeat the 212 Democratic votes that will go to their leader Hakeem Jeffries. In January, McCarthy became speaker on the 15th ballot, after six Republican holdouts finally agreed to vote ‘present’, leaving him needing just 216 to win which he was finally able to get.
But on Friday, things went awry again. Just minutes before the vote behind closed doors, Austin Scott, a congressperson from Georgia threw his hat into the ring and while Jordan got 124 votes, Scott got a surprising 81, even though he is hardly a household name. Then they took a second vote on the crucial question of whether the members would vote for Jordan on the floor of the House and he got only 155 votes in favor, with 55 against. This 155 is less than the 188 that McCarthy got in his first round of voting in January, which means that Jordan has to work even harder to get people to switch their minds.
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The 2023 World Cup rugby tournament has entered the quarter-final knock out stage and one thing that had puzzled me all along was the draw that placed the 20 teams that started out into four groups (called ‘pools’), in which the five teams in each pool that would play every other team, with the top two going to the quarter-final stage. You would expect that the teams would be seeded so that the top eight teams would be split equally among the four groups in such a way that, in the absence of upsets, the top four would meet in the semi-finals and the top two would meet in the finals.
But when you looked at the pools, you see that pool A had France (#2) and New Zealand (#4), while pool B had Ireland (#1), South Africa (#3), and Scotland (#5), pool C had Wales (#6) and Fiji (#8) along with Australia (#9), while pool D had just England (#6). (These rankings were those just before the current tournament started and may have changed as a result of the matches already played.) As a result, Scotland did not qualify for the last eight, even though they are ranked #5, because their pool B also had the two of the top three teams of Ireland and South Africa. Even though England is ranked lower than Scotland at #6, they easily made it to the quarter-finals. Their toughest opponent is when they meet Fiji in the quarter-finals and the first time they have to play any team that is higher ranked than them, assuming they get by Fiji, is in the semi-finals.
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It appears that winning the majority of votes for speaker within the Republican conference by a margin of 113-99 and then being endorsed by his rival Jim Jordan was not enough for Steve Scalise to get 217 votes (from the total of 221 Republicans) to enable him to become speaker. There were enough hard ‘no’s to force him to withdraw his name from further consideration. The House adjourned last evening and it is not clear when it will meet again to try and get this essential piece of business done.
Here are some of the people who are opposed to Scalise.
CLINE is for JORDAN pic.twitter.com/mVW4dEDRYO
— Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotcnn) October 12, 2023