The Terrors of Sleep Paralysis

Imagine living in medieval times, when weird and unexplained phenomena, especially those related to strange subjective experiences (such as feeling that you're being suffocated by demons in your sleep), were seen as indications and evidence of malevolent spiritual forces at work. In the famous Bull of 1484, for instance, Pope Innocent VIII (don't you love the irony of these names?) declared that:

members of both sexes do not avoid to have intercourse with evil angels, incubi and succubi, and that by their sorceries, and by their incantations, charms and conjurations, they suffocate, extinguish, and cause to perish the births of women [among many other evil things].

As Carl Sagan recounts in his book, The Demon Haunted World, "with this Bull, Innocent initiated the systematic accusation, torture, and execution of countless 'witches' all over Europe." This would lead to the publication of the infamous Malleus Maleficarum (the "Hammer of Witches"), one of the most vile, irrational, fearsome and cruel documents in all of human history. There's a chance even Hitler might have shuddered at it... Yay religion!?

Fortunately, and as usual, science has helped to shed some light on this otherwise dark and obscure phenomenon, saving people from medieval persecution and from forced mental institutionalization by discovering some of the underlying mechanisms at work, as well as their ubiquity because, believe it or not, it happens to most of us...

If you know someone whose life has been affected by the fear that they are being visited by probing aliens or haunted by evil spirits in the middle of the night, you might want to show them this video and assuage those feelings of fear and anguish...

And in case you are not aware of the distinction between an incubus and a succubus, and assuming these demons were not gay, incubi were 'seducers' of women, while succubi were 'seducers' of men, although if they're having their way with you while you're paralyzed, I'm not sure that would really count as 'seduction'...

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John Searle - Our Shared Condition: Consciousness

Studying consciousness is notoriously difficult, and until only the last couple of decades, very few intellectuals (apart from philosophers and psychologists) dared to even think about how to try to understand it. But with the rise of new disciplines and technologies, consciousness is starting to become the hot topic among academics. One of the problems, however, is that we don't yet quite have a theory about what consciousness is, and without an answer to that question, it's not always clear what disciplines and methods are most appropriate to use to study it.

In the following TEDTalk presentation, philosopher of mind John Searle (famous among other things for his Chinese room thought experiment) makes the case for studying consciousness, and for his own understanding, not so much of what consciousness is, but of how to approach the question. In the process, he shoots down some of the most popular objections to try to study consciousness scientifically, arguing that regardless of its ultimate ontological status, it's a biological process with multiple levels of description.

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Laura Snyder - The Philosophical Breakfast Club

When we think about scientists, and especially the birth of science, our minds usually go straight to Galileo, Descartes, Kepler and Newton, and then to folks like Michael Faraday, Joseph Priestly, Antoine Lavoisier, Lord Kelvin, Darwin, etc. Or maybe for some of you it goes all the way back to Thales, Democritus, Empedocles and Aristotle...

What most people don't know, however, is that none of these people called themselves 'scientists.' The term was only invented by the philosopher/scientist William Whewell during Darwin's lifetime to demarcate the work of experimental 'natural philosophers' and naturalists from that of 'philosophers' more broadly construed. Whewell came up with the word 'scientits' as the equivalent of 'artists' to separate those philosophers who worked according to inductive reasoning based on observation and experimentation from those that engaged in reasoning from first principles.

But Whewell wasn't content with simply assigning a different name to these experimental philosophers. Along with his friends Charles Babbage (inventor of the difference and analytic engines, and mentor to Ada Lovelace, the enchantress of numbers), John Herschel and Richard Jones, Whewell wanted to change the very nature of what science is, how it works and what purposes it strives to achieve. In the following TEDTalk, historian Laura Snyder (and I'm guessing by her tone, former museum tour-guide) tells the story of this fascinating scientific revolution, about which you can also read in her book The Philosophical Breakfast Club.

If you ever get a chance, you ought to read up on John Stuart Mill and William Whewell's battle to determine the precise nature of inductive reasoning, and how Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution by natural selection got caught up right in the middle of it...

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Ken Jennings - Watson, Jeopardy and Me

During the industrial revolution, much of the manual labor that had hitherto been done by people was suddenly taken over by machines, who were faster, more accurate, cheaper, and didn't complain about safe working conditions, fair wages, paid sick days, maternity leave, holiday pay and so on, so they replaced people, who ended up losing their jobs.

Well, that's physical labor, we laughed, and thought that machines could never replace our raw brain power: we know how to think, how to reason, how to solve problems, how to calculate and compute, etc. Well, guess what? As Watson, the powerful IBM supercomputer proved a couple of years ago, you might not want to feel so confident that you have job security just because your job requires mental power... the machines are coming, and unlike the terminator who was shooting for John and Sarah Connor, these machines are shooting for your job!

In the following TEDTalks presentation, Ken Jennings, all-star Jeopardy champion, tells the story of his experience of being the best Jeopardy player of all time and getting beaten by a computer, and reflects on what this might mean for the future of humanity.

How long until your job is taken over by a computer?

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The TEDTalks Woo-Woo Speech - The Science Delusion

When they first became publicly available, I instantly fell in love with TEDTalks (as you can tell from all the presentations I've posted in this blog). Having leading thinkers condense their various ideas and deliver them in powerful 18-minute presentations was a great way to introduce and inspire the general public with a vision of education, empowerment and cross-disciplinary cooperation from which everyone could benefit.

Unfortunately, since greatness and true innovation are limited resources, the day would come when TED would run out of the best and most interesting speakers, and would have to content itself with more questionable characters willing to deliver shoddy presentations that sacrifice truth and the discoveries of rigorous research for the sake of wanting to sound revolutionary, controversial or intellectually daring and interesting. And so the past year or two has seen a steep decline in the quality of their presentations, and it's gotten to the point, apparently, that they are happy to showcase the nonsensical pseudo-scientific views of a man who, aided by a pretty awesome British accent, willfully mischaracterizes serious science and philosophy in order to peddle his quackery about telepathy and crystals having memory...

In short: "woo-woo must exist because I can't explain some things and because I don't really understand how science works... even though I should, since I'm a scientist..."

Now, that's not to say that one cannot challenge science... nothing should be immune from question. but while we recognize science is the best means we have of attaining knowledge of the world, we also need to be aware of its limits precisely so that we can protect it from misuse and abuse by unscrupulous parties who demand of it that it do things outside of its proper domain. The consequence should be obvious: if we ask science to do things outside of its proper field of application, and science fails to get us those results, we are likely to make the mistake of assuming that such a failure is somehow science's fault. But this is a ridiculous position to adopt. It's as if you ask your plumber to perform brain surgery, the plumber botches the operation, and you think that obviously plumbing is useless...

It's one thing to criticize science, but it's quite another to mischaracterize it with straw man arguments in order to pretend to have beaten it into submission, and it's yet another to think you can replace it with pseudo-scientific bullshit simply because it doesn't conform to your woo-woo nonsense beliefs...

It would be awesome to see a real intellectual respond to Sheldrake in just the same way that Daniel Dennett took Rick Warren to task for his vacuous-driven talk... Can we rely on TED to deliver such a goodie?


Update: It looks like the folks at TED have listened to criticisms similar to mine, apparently from lots of people, and they have decided to pull Rupert's talk and one by Graham Hancock on consciousness. Let that be a lesson to anyone wanting to present: make sure you have done your homework, or be prepared to be ridiculed in the eternal land of the interwebs...

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Dan Ariely - The Truth about Dishonesty

If I were to ask you if you are an honest person, chances are that you'd say yes. Yet, if we look at the details of your everyday behavior with a magnifying glass, we'd most likely discover all sorts of ways in which you lie, cheat and steal, on a regular basis! Notice the irony? In answering a question about your own honesty, you behave dishonestly! Well, it's not quite that straightforward. It's not so much that you'd be lying to me; it's more that you'd be lying to yourself, and then to the rest of us as a consequence.

Our minds have an incredible capacity for compartmentalization: we separate into distinct groups instances of what ought to be logically identical situations, such as when you create the double standard that it's okay for you to take home some office supplies from work, but that it's not okay to steal an equivalent amount of money from the petty cash box. The other thing we're really good at in this context is rationalization: when confronted with our dishonesty, we are masters at justifying our behavior and turning it around to sound heroic: "it's okay for me to illegally download music because that means I'm standing up for freedom and fighting the corruption of multi-billion dollar music label companies, so if you think about it, I'm kind of a moral hero."

Well, in the following RSA animated presentation, Dan Ariely shares some of the fascinating findings of how everyday people like you and me cheat all the time, and what might be some useful mechanisms we can use to decrease our own corruption.

If you liked that, you might also like to check our our selection of TED Talk presentations.

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Adora Svitak - What Adults Can Learn from Kids

Have you ever wondered what could happen if you respected the intelligence and potential of your children, and read to them a little Aristotle, some history and science instead of just simple bedtime stories?

Well, wonder no more. Here's a great example of the positive influence of intellectual stimulating your children's brains.

Now, pick up that dusty philosophy book that's been sitting in your book shelf for years and put it to good use :)

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Ben Goldacre - What Doctors Don't Know About the Drugs They Prescribe

Richard Feynman once defined science as that which we do to avoid fooling ourselves. We humans are universally prone to the cognitive bias known as selection (or confirmation) bias: instead of looking at the big picture, hits and misses alike, we have a natural tendency to look for evidence that confirms the things we already believe, and we tend to ignore and/or forget evidence that would contradict our view of the world.

This is why if you're a liberal, you watch MSNBC, and if you're a conservative, why you watch Faux News. In both cases, you're not really looking for information: you're looking for confirmation. You're listening to people who are going to tell you that the way you see the world is exactly how you think it is. Yes, it's extremely self-congratulatory. This is why you might believe in homeopathic remedies or alternative medicine: you count every time they "worked," and are completely unaware of the much greater amount of times when they don't, and so you think they count as real medicine.

And science, and scientific thinking in general, are supposed to be an antidote against confirmation bias, but as Ben Goldacre explains in the following chilling TEDTalk, there is a major problem with selection bias in the reporting and publishing of scientific studies regarding the health effects of various drugs: the studies that tend to get published are those that find a positive effect, while studies that find no effect, or even an adverse effect, tend not to see the light of day. And if your doctor is prescribing some medication based on this incomplete amount of information (through no fault of his own), it's your health that is ultimately at risk...

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Making Sense of Spelling

If you're a bibliophile and a lover of the beauty and sensuousness of the spoken and written word (like Stephen Fry in this fantastic animated essay), then you probably already know about the  sophistication, the richness, and the history (animated, no less) of the English language.

But if don't have a strong background on grammar and etymology, or if you're learning our language for the first time, you may sometimes find it frustrating, confusing and arbitrary. But let's put that notion to rest. If you can understand the distinction between syntax, semantics and the evolving history of a language, a whole new and fascinating world full of connections and ways of making sense of previously apparent random things starts to emerge. Here's a little taste involving the word "one":

Just beautiful :)

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5 Things Every Presenter Needs to Know about People

If you haven't already, at some point in your life you will most likely have to deliver some sort of presentation to an audience. And if you want it to go well, you need to make sure you know your material inside and out. But while mere knowledge and understanding of the material are necessary conditions for a successful presentation, they are not sufficient.

Remember that you are speaking to an audience, and for your presentation to make an impact on them, you have to understand some things about how their minds work, and find that sweet spot between saying the things you want to say and how those things will resonate with them, so here are 5 things to keep in mind:

If it's nervousness that gets you, just picture your audience naked... and if you're a guy, and your audience consists of really hot women, you might want to make sure there's a podium in front of you, just in case :p

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How to (and Why) Prove a Mathematical Theory

When it comes to the world of our sensory experience, the idea of "proof" is somewhat misplaced, since there is always the possibility of new evidence contradicting something we previously had every good reason to believe, not to mention the fact it could all be a dream or a simulation in The Matrix!

But in the world of abstract ideas, especially numbers, the kind of reasoning used there does lend itself to proofs because you get to specify exactly what you mean by a certain concept, and then all you have to do is follow a few rules of inference to deduce the logical consequences of your idea.

And we owe a debt of gratitude for the whole idea of theory and proof to the ancient Greeks, people like Pythagoras, Plato and Archimedes. But today we get to learn a little bit about the man who is widely considered the father of geometry, a title appropriate to the scope and importance of his work: he formalized the rules of geometry that mathematicians have relied upon for over two thousand years. That man was Euclid.

QED

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Electric Vocabulary

Why do we call electricity "electricity"? Why do we talk about its "charge"? Or talk about whether that charge is "positive" or "negative"? And why do we refer to a device to store electricity as a "battery"?

One great way to find out about the fascinating history of this strange phenomenon, and the one I would recommend, is to watch the excellent documentary series Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity, narrated by Jim Al-Khalili.

But if you don't have the time to watch that right now, here's a simple and short introduction to get you started with at least the etymology of these words:

But seriously, go watch Shock and Awe...

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Marco Tempest - The Electric Rise and Fall of Nikola Tesla

Today is the birthday of one of history's greatest genius: Nikola Tesla. It probably wouldn't be much of an overstatement to claim that the modern world wouldn't exist without him. He did invent, after all, things like the remote control, wireless communication, alternating current transmission, a death ray and a few other hundreds of things.

To learn about the man and his work, you should watch the documentary Nikola Tesla: Master of Lightning, but for the short version, Marco Tempest has a fascinating visual introduction to get you started:

Check out more TEDTalks.

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E.O. Wilson - Advice to Young Scientists

"The world needs you, badly." That's how celebrated evolutionary biologist and entomologist E.O. Wilson (also known as Darwin's heir, or the Lord of the Ants) begins this fascinating, amusing and inspirational TEDTalk presentation encouraging you, yes, you, to pursue a career in science and scientific research.

You may be apprehensive. You may think you're not smart enough, you may be uncomfortable with your own level of mathematical literacy, you may think that there's little you could discover, etc. Don't worry. Wilson himself is a prime example of modest beginnings overcoming adversity to achieve academic greatness, and as someone who's had to struggle with many things throughout his own professional life, he's gathered some tips and ideas that he's graciously willing to share with you, in the form of a few general principles, to help motivate you and guide you into the fascinating, meaningful and rewarding field of scientific research and discovery.

And in case you're wondering, yes, I am aware of the whole selfish-gene/inclusive fitness vs multi-level selection brouhaha that's recently exploded between people like E.O and D.S. Wilson on the one hand, and Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, PZ Myers and Steven Pinker on the other. My own ignorant take: E.O. Wilson is wrong to reject kin selection, and Dawkins and company are wrong to reject multi-level selection.

Still, the debate is fascinating, and as a public debate (and except when those involved resort to cheap ad hominem attacks), the ideas presented by both sides are raising the level of intellectual discourse to levels not common for the ordinary reader. Agree or disagree with his point of view, for instance, Dawkins' recent review of E.O. Wilson's latest book, while harsh, manages to provide a clear and powerful explanation of the nature of the debate, as well as his defense of the selfish gene hypothesis and inclusive fitness. Of course, things didn't end there, because then D.S. Wilson did his own review of Dawkins' review. Don't you just love it when things get meta? :)

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Diane Kelly - What We Didn't Know about Penis Anatomy

Penises... they're great. In my case, we're best friends. I never leave home without mine. Do you?

It may seem pretty obvious what they're for (what, with their relentless one-mind track), but there are still many mysteries surrounding these anatomical masterpieces. For instance, how come lots of species sport a bone in theirs while humans (and a few other mammalian species) do not? How come felines have barbed phalluses and ducks have... well, you can check out that weirdness for yourself.

But even if we stick with boring human subjects, how exactly do they work? How is erection achieved? Is it merely an inflatable tube? If so, why can't it bend? How come it's so hard? And how exactly does it stay erect?

If you've ever wondered about any of these questions, it seems that Diane Kelly can answer at least a few of them in the following TEDTalk presentation:

I think I'm going to go play with mine for a while, all in the name of science, of course :)

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Frans de Waal - Moral Behavior in Animals

As you probably know, one of the most popular arguments for the existence of God is known as the moral argument. There are variations on the theme, but one of the general ideas is that the human moral sense cannot be successfully explained by mindless naturalistic principles, partly because human morality seems to be an altogether unique phenomenon in the biological world, without any antecedents in our ancestors or parallels in our living cousins. Even some prominent biologists believe this!

But is it really true that there are no antecedents or parallels of a moral sense in other animals, or is that really just a straw man created by creationists and theologians to rationalize their beliefs? Well, whenever someone makes claims that can be easily verified empirically, we can simply turn to the evidence and see how such claims stand up to experimental scrutiny, and as world-renowned primatologist Frans de Waal shows in the following TEDTalk presentation, there are all kinds of examples of moral behavior in the animal world, often including two crucial components of morality: fairness and empathy.

And yes, since de Waal is a primatologist, you can expect to see plenty of examples of monkey moral behavior, and since we're dealing with monkeys, of course there will be some hilarity :)

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Hans Rosling - Religion and Babies

When Hans Rosling speaks, I listen. The nice thing about him is that he much prefers to base his beliefs and opinions on data and evidence than on ideology. So, when I saw the title of this talk about the relationship between religion and babies, I was sure he'd have something mind-blowing to say, something that few of us, if any, would have imagined based on prior presuppositions.

And the relationships he shows really are impressive and somewhat surprising, but it seems to me that he screwed the pooch on this one. I say this, and am fully aware that I'm no statistician, but I'm seeing methodological flaws everywhere in this study that a first-year student should easily be able to pick up on. See if you can spot those problems:

Even if I didn't dispute the conclusions he draws from the data he uses, I would definitely question the validity and reliability of said data. Many people, for instance, and especially in developed nations, claim membership in particular religions only nominally. In such cases, religion almost certainly does not play any kind of causal role in their family planning decisions. But when you include these people with those for whom religion actually is an important motivating factor, you wash away the actual impact of the latter's religious beliefs and the causal influence on those choices. If there were some reliable way to distinguish religious believers from religious nominalists, I would not be surprised if the results of Rosling's studies changed quite dramatically.

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Brian Greene - Why Is Our Universe Fined-Tuned for Life?

Have you noticed that wherever Brian Greene goes, computer animations go with him? Well, this TEDTalk presentation is no exception :) I'm starting to wonder whether this might be the physicist equivalent of a comfort blanket...

In any case, and as you may expect if you're familiar with him, he lays down the case for string theory, and explains some of the fascinating implications if string theory and the cosmological theory of inflation were true. Even as mere hypothetical possibilities, these ideas merit our attention.

What I do have a major problem with, however, is his "explanation" for why our universe is fine-tuned for life. It's a version of the anthropic principle that is either completely backwards or completely question-begging (circular)... or both... I'll let you be the judge:

The analogy with our distance to the sun doesn't quite work because, despite his explicit claim to the contrary, it's asking one question but answering another. Our distance to the sun doesn't explain why Earth is  x-number of miles away from the sun (see what I mean by circular?). It doesn't tell us anything about astronomy or physics.

What it explains is why we live on Earth and get to ask that question, but it tells us nothing about the conditions that led to our planet being where it is... Similarly, the fact that we happen to inhabit the particular kind of universe that contains the conditions that allow for life-forms such as ours tells us nothing about why this particular universe happens to have those particular features.

In other words, you can't answer the question of why is our universe fine-tuned for life by answering that it's because our universe is fine-tuned for life... or am I missing something here?

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The Banned TED Talk - Rich People Don't Create Jobs

Over the past few years, TED has grown into a household name due to the amazing lectures and presentations that they've made publicly available to the entire world. TEDTalks are presentations about ideas that are worth spreading.

Well, Nick Hanauer decided to give a talk about an idea he considered worth spreading: how we've been brainwashed to believe, despite all the massive evidence to the contrary, that taxing the wealthy is what drives unemployment and economic collapse, and that therefore we should actually give the so-called 'job creators' big tax breaks. I think he's exactly right, but for some strange reason that they've been getting into pretzels over the past week, TED made the strange choice not to share Hanauer's talk, and when the story hit the light, it hit the fan...

The rationalization was that it was too politically charged, partisan and controversial, but when you consider previous presentations they've aired, controversial is not something that's ever been a problem for them. Anyway, here is the 'banned' presentation:

And here are The Young Turks discussing this weird turn of events.

What kind of weird world do we live in when stating facts is considered controversial or partisan?

Update: The story seems to be more complicated and overblown than at first appeared (thanks Xavier!). Here is Chris Anderson defending TED's decision not to air the video (and making a distinction between not airing and censoring or banning), and clarifying the issue, as he sees it. It is worth saying, however, that when Anderson claims that the audience wasn't particularly impressed with the presentation, that doesn't sound quite genuine since the video itself shows that a number of audience members did give him a bit of a standing ovation, but whatever.

For what it's worth, my interest in posting the video is about spreading the idea itself rather than with focusing on whether it was banned or censored.

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David Eagleman - The Brain and the Law

There is almost universal agreement among philosophers, neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, and other mind researchers that the mind has a physical basis in the brain. Sure, we don't yet understand the particular mechanism through which the brain produces conscious experience, but most serious researchers into the field no longer buy the antiquated notion of an immaterial soul.

But as philosophers have recognized for thousands of years, if the basis of consciousness is physical, then our minds are the result of physical laws of causality, and that creates all sorts of problems for the notion of free will. Whether we have any free will at all is debatable, but there is no doubt that, at the very least, there is a lot less of it than we normally imagine.

This is an interesting intellectual question, but it's also an important practical question everyone should care about because free will is directly tied to the question of moral responsibility: are people responsible for their actions? Suppose we have no free will; what do we do about the 'justice' system? Should we let criminals go free because they're not really culpable for what they've done? That's exactly the kind of question that David Eagleman tries to explore in the following fascinating presentation

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