In the last few decades our understanding of human evolution has expanded considerably. We have identified numerous new species, fleshing out a complex branching bush of relationships among early humans. But these discoveries have also caused a problem – our taxonomical naming convention for all these species is basically broken. That is the argument made by paleontologist Ian Towle in a provocative paper – Clades, Grades, and the Genus Problem: A Case for Revising Hominin Taxonomy. Let me lay out the problem before I discuss his proposed solution.

There are basically two layers to the problem – the first is a tension between a cladistic approach to taxonomy and a traditional Linnaean approach (or what Towle refers to as clades vs grades). Cladistics is a classification system that is strictly determined by evolutionary branching points. A clade includes a common ancestor and all descendants (any taxonomic group with this feature is called monophyletic). Clades are nested within larger clades. Traditional taxonomy then maps ranks such as family, tribe, genus and species onto some of those branching levels, although there is no biologically fixed amount of evolutionary divergence corresponding to any particular rank, and not all branching points are ranked. This approach is potentially clean and reflects our understanding of evolutionary relationships. The primary challenge of the cladistic approach, especially when we drill down to the genus and species level, is that we do not always know exactly what the evolutionary branching points are. Further, those branching points may not be clean and different species can still exchange genetic material often for millions of years.

The traditional Linnaean approach uses a variety of criteria for its classification, including evolutionary relationship but also morphology and behavior.  A distinct group living in a particular place and time can be defined by specific morphological characteristics. The advantage here is that you don’t have to know the precise evolutionary branching points, you can identify species by features you can see. Perhaps the classic example of the difference between cladistics and the Linnaean approach is birds. Under a cladistic system, birds are dinosaurs. Under the Linnaean system, they could be a distinct group identified by their common derived features.  Continue Reading »

Terraforming, altering a planet’s atmosphere and surface to make it more Earth-like, has become a staple of science fiction. The benefit of successfully terraforming a planet are huge in that we now have an entire planet we can settle without the need for spacesuits and air-tight stations. We could also farm the surface for food, and would have access to liquid water. But how feasible is it? Is this something we could theoretically do with existing technology, and how long would it take?

The answer to these questions depends upon the planet in question. Right now the only planet for which it is even a discussion is Mars. Terraforming Venus is theoretically possible, at least on paper, but would likely be much more difficult, so let’s focus on Mars. What would it take to terraform Mars?

Mars is dry and cold with a wispy atmosphere – less than 1% the density of Earth’s atmosphere at sea level. We would therefore need to increase the thickness of the atmosphere, including greenhouse gases to help warm up Mars to a livable temperature. Average surface temperature is around -75 F / -65 C, but it can get quite balmy at the equator during the say, 70-80 F. But even there the temperature plummets to -100 F at night, because the lack of atmosphere cannot retain the heat.

Would the “Total Recall” approach work, simply melt the polar ice caps, which are mostly CO2 and water ice, to release a thick atmosphere? No. Melting the Martian icecaps would increase the atmosphere from 0.6% to 1.2% of an Earth atmosphere, which is negligible and would not result in runaway heating. But there is also CO2 and ice in the Martian regolith around the planet. What is we could melt all of the ice? https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/mars-terraforming-not-possible-using-present-day-technology/According to a NASA study, if we could release all that ice we would still only get up to 6.9% of an atmosphere. At that pressure the water in your body would boil and oxygen would leave your lungs. Humans require 20-25% atmosphere to survive without a pressure suit – not that it would be comfortable, but you would not quickly die.

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I saw the movie, Disclosure Day. I was not impressed. It was (mild spoiler alert) a completely unimaginative wet dream of what the UFO community fantasizes the government is hiding from all of us. There were no new interesting angles or plot twists or deeper story elements added to this now standard modern mythology. I kept waiting for the story to get actually interesting. It never did.

What would have been a far more brilliant movie, in my opinion (but not one that Spielberg, a believer, would ever do) is if, at the end of the movie, when the government’s UFO files were finally released to the public, they showed exactly what the Pentagon’s UFO files actually show. It would have been wonderfully anti-climactic, forcing the audience to rethink everything they just watched and were lead to believe. Of course, the rest of the movie would need to be tweaked to be consistent with this ending, and if done well it would be like Sixth Sense – a brilliant twist ending that changes your perspective on the entire movie.

Imagining such an ending to a movie like Disclosure Day, I think, puts the real-world disclosures by the Pentagon into perspective. They are giant nothing-burgers. . They consist of blobs and dots and shadows, and we must be told what we are looking at. The descriptions can sound impressive, but they contain hidden assumptions and often bad analysis that do not hold up under scrutiny. I have to say, If I were a UFO believer, waiting a large chunk of my life for the “truth” about alien spaceships to finally come out, and then being fed nothing but a bunch of blobsquatch videos, I would be beyond disappointed.  Continue Reading »

It’s interesting to go back to see articles I wrote years ago to see how they held up. In 2019 I wrote a post about the “Challenges of Deepfakes“, which I just reread. What I discussed held up pretty well – deepfakes have both the effect of spreading misinformation and reducing confidence in real information. I think it’s fair to say that what I and others were warning about at the time is coming to fruition. However, what was interesting was what I did not discuss. ‘

I wrote that article just prior to the LLM revolution, and I didn’t even mention the potential for AI to transform the world of deepfakes. AI certainly makes deepfakes more convincing and harder to detect, especially for video, but that is not really the primary effect. The availability of AI tools incredibly lowers the bar for making deepfakes – that is their real impact. This makes it cheap and technically easy to create them, and this introduces potential uses that would otherwise not be feasible. It’s now possible to flood the zone with fake content, making any attempt at controlling or regulating such content perhaps impossibly difficult.

As I discussed at the time, the existence of deepfakes creates two problems – confusing fake content for real content (Type 1 problem) but also dismissing real content as fake (Type 2 problem). It turns out – the type 2 problem is far bigger, and the ease with which deepfakes can now be created dramatically exacerbates this. It is now a not-unreasonable assumption that any picture or video you might be seeing online is fake. It should be standard procedure to withhold judgement unless and until a video or picture has been vetted and verified. But this is work, and not everyone is going to be willing to do such work, especially for something that supports their narrative.

It is extremely important to note, however, we are not in the alleged post-truth world (not yet) – unless we believe that we are. If you believe you cannot trust any information, then you won’t, and there will not be any objective facts for you. You will be functioning as if we live in a post truth world. But most information online is still accurate, there are still trusted sources, and it is actually not that difficult to spend just a minute or two to verify most pieces of content you may be interested in. This simply has to become part of our information hygiene. And we must resist the temptation to just throw up our hands and conclude it’s all fake. Continue Reading »

I am back from an almost three week trip to LA, Sydney and Christchurch. Sorry I did not have time to keep up with my blog over that period – in which we recorded four live SGU shows, produced three days of conference content, put on two stage shows, and hosted several other events. It was a tremendous amount of fun, but also a great deal of work. I am now jet-lagged and fighting off the remains of a viral infection I picked up along the way.

Such trips always reinvigorate my dedication to science communication and scientific skepticism. I appreciate every conference-goer who came up to tell me about their personal journey and the role the content I have helped produce had played in it. I thought I would share some further observations from the trip.

First, while the skeptical movement, such as it is, has been through a lot, it is still alive and well. The crowds we are able to attract to these events remain robust, and in fact are larger than many past events. There is a lot of enthusiasm for science and critical thinking. There is also a deep hunger for developing the skills to navigate our increasingly complex world. How do we deal with what social media, growing misinformation, deep fakes, and now artificial intelligence has wrought?

People also have a deep desire for community – the kind of community that comes from getting physically together for a shared purpose, not just online.  The number of people we can reach in these physical conferences and meetings is much smaller than online, but I think it remains a critical complement to online content. It also reinforces what I think many of use have learned from the “social media” phenomenon. Online communities are not the same as in-person communities, just online. People interact differently in person and online. The dynamics of social media were simply not what many of us expected. I don’t think we should abandon social media (although I know people who make a reasonable argument that we should), but rather we need to have a more realistic view of its strengths and weaknesses, its vulnerabilities and psychological effects.  Continue Reading »

I have been a supporter of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) since I learned of its existence. Essentially, SETI is a search for technosignatures of alien origin, specifically using radio astronomy. However, I occasionally encounter skepticism toward SETI, and I love to engage with fellow skeptics on topic about which we disagree. I recently received an e-mail with a fairly typical skeptical perspective:

“I am sure we will eventually find signs or evidence of life outside our solar system but the likelihood of finding a life form that can communicate on a level that we can understand seems so unlikely as to be not worth pursuing from an economic point of view.”

His basic argument is that, in order for us to communicate with an alien technological species they would have to be very similar to us. This would require a degree of “parallel evolution” that is fantastically unlikely. Even given the vastness of the universe, he feels the probably is simply too close to zero to justify any investment. I disagree, however, with his core premise.

First let me say that we simply have no idea how common life, intelligent life, and technological civilizations are in the universe. That is one of the questions SETI is attempting to answer. We suffer from the so-called “N of 1” problem – we have only one example of life and a technological species. He agrees life is likely common, which I think is likely, but feels technological species are exceedingly rare, but we simply have no basis for this conclusion. The evolution of greater intelligence occurred in many clades on Earth. Many, of course, like insects, will never achieve technological status, but that doesn’t matter. Greater intelligence is a massive evolutionary advantage, and is likely to occur in many lines.

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When I was a child I would love looking up at the night sky. I became quite familiar with the northern sky, and how it changed from summer to winter. I could clearly see the Milky Way, which was always stunning. I took it for granted.

Today I rarely see the Milky Way. I live in the burbs and can still see a lot of stars at night, but it is nothing like 50 years ago. Even in small cities, you can only see the brightest stars. In order to get an experience like I had regularly in my youth you have to go to a dark sky location – the nearest one to me is a six hour drive. The first two times I visited the southern hemisphere I didn’t see the night sky once. On my third trip I had to make a dedicated trip to a semi-dark sky location to get my first view of the southern sky, which was magnificent.

If all of the currently proposed satellites are eventually launched, there may be no dark skies left anywhere. Ground-based astronomy might also become extremely difficult, to practically impossible. Right now there are over 16,000 satellites in orbit, about two-thirds of which are Starlink. There are current proposals for 1.7 million new satellites. You read that right – over a million. Space X did alter their satellites to make them less bright, which helps, but they are still a problem. Now they plan to launch a million more satellites for orbital data centers. Europe and China have other proposals that would add hundreds of thousands more.

Reflect Orbital is a company that wants to launch giant mirrors into orbit to reflect sunlight down to dark parts of the planet. They hope to launch 50,000 such satellites – each one would be 4 times brighter than the moon if you are  within its reflected light, and as bright as the planet Venus if you are outside that area.

A recent study concludes that if there are over 100,000 satellites in orbit ground based astronomy essentially becomes impossible. Imagine dozens of objects, much brighter than the distant objects you are trying to observe, crisscrossing every image. Essentially, satellites reduce the observing time that observatories have. The more satellites, the less time (as they wait for satellites to clear their view). With 1.7 million satellites (especially the Reflect Orbital ones) ground base astronomy is doomed.  Continue Reading »

It is now an accepted narrative within the media that the US has become increasingly polarized. We just had our 250th celebration, and it seems to have further polarized our nation rather than bring it together. It is important, however, to put this polarization into perspective. We discuss this topic on my (relatively) new podcast, Political Reality, which I host with political scientist, Andres Jones Rooy.

First, we have to define what we mean by political polarization – mainly a divergence of ideology and policy preferences. How similar or far apart are Americans on average in terms of their political beliefs and preferences? It certainly feels as if such polarization is increasing, but political scientists have been confronted with a dilemma  – they cannot find this polarization in the data. Left and right (Democrat and Republican) do differ in many policy preference, but those differences are a lot less than most people think, and they are not increasing over time. It turns out, most people favor common sense policies that are somewhere in the middle on most issue, with Democrats skewing a little left and Republican skewing a little right. Further, people’s core concerns are all just about the same. We all want relative safety, fair prices, and good job opportunities.

There are a few exceptions to this lack of increasing polarization, including two policy issues – abortion and global warming. Over the last 20 years there has been a little increase in the policy differences on these issues. But that’s it. Another exception is a demographic one. There has been increasing polarization within our elected officials. Senators and Representatives are becoming more polarized, even while their constituents are not.

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I often get questions like the one below:

“I live part time in Japan. Everyone sees hydrogen powered generators, trains, trucks, etc regularly. High density population means it’s easy to get enough synergy to justify the infrastructure. So sad we aren’t doing more to utilize this great tech. Hydrogen combustion engines emerge as cheap alternative to fuel cells.”
https://asia.nikkei.com/business/energy/hydrogen-combustion-engines-emerge-as-cheap-alternative-to-fuel-cells

This is often how news about advances in hydrogen tech are framed. The problem is – the limitations with hydrogen technology have nothing to do with the tech itself, so tech advances are mostly irrelevant. Also, hydrogen combustion is not a better solution for most use cases then hydrogen fuel cells. Fuel cells use an electrochemical process to combine hydrogen and oxygen, producing electricity and water. They are about 60% efficient, produce no pollution, and have no moving parts. Hydrogen combustion operates more like a regular engine, but with hydrogen as the fuel. They are about 40% efficient, produce nitrogen oxides as pollution, and have moving parts that operate at high pressure and temperature. They can be, however, more powerful for heavy applications and are cheaper to build.

For cars hydrogen combustion is a terrible idea. Maybe there is a use case for large generators, trains, and heavy trucks. Even there, however, there are current limitations that the technology of hydrogen engines or fuel cells do not address.

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I recently installed a new printer on my system. Now, before you have an “OK, Boomer” knee-jerk reaction – I am a fairly tech-savvy user. I am not an IT professional, but have used computers literally since the 1970s and have kept up with the tech enough to be a confident user. I was therefore frustrated when the experience was…less than enjoyable. I was lured into installing the printer via the app. I falsely assumed that such apps serve the same function that “wizards” (remember those) did in the past, walking you effortlessly through the installation process. I also have had the experience of just plugging a printer into a USB port and having it automatically be recognized, installed, and then function just fine.

It’s been a while since I needed a new printer (I don’t use them much anymore, but I do occasionally need to print something), so I was surprised and frustrated at how long and complicated the process was. I felt I was entering in the same information multiple times, looking up numbers, following QR codes, and answering ambiguous questions. I got it to work, but it took up a far bigger chunk of my life and my mental resources than I was happy with. I later learned that the app is not there to make my life easier, but to lock me in as a customer to upsell me more stuff.

This is not an isolated incident. Again – I am trying really hard not to become an old curmudgeon. I am trying to be objective. But I do think that as one gets older, you can more easily see patterns, and your tolerance for recurrent incompetence and stupidity fades away. As a computer user, I lived through the early years of IRQ settings, manually installing drivers, and compatibility nightmares. But I was a somewhat early adopter and I pushed the limit with upgrades, so I put up with it. Then the industry evolved, with helpful wizards, then plug-and-play, then universal connectors. I did not fully realize, however, that we were past peak-convenience. It’s still much better than in the early days, and you can still have a good user experience, but there seems to be increasing unnecessary complexity, bloatware, and simply horrible user interfaces. I am constantly fending off attempts at sending me push notifications, gathering my data, solicitation for in-app purchases, and intrusive ads. Forget about spam and scams, which are a daily nuisance. Yeah, I know there are ways to handle such things – but that is still my point. It’s all on me, and it’s a constantly evolving landscape.

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