Woman sees 'iron Jesus'

A Massachusetts woman who recently separated from her husband and had her hours cut at work says an image of Jesus Christ she sees on her iron has reassured her that “life is going to be good.”

American religious allegiances diversify, jumble

Among the new findings of the National Opinion Research Center, Americans are in an illogical jumble:

Nonetheless, belief in God has slipped a little, and more Americans, though still believing, acknowledge some uncertainty about God’s existence. A growing number of Americans no longer identify themselves with any particular religious group. Those who do belong are less likely to say they are strong members. Regular attendance at religious services has declined, and the numbers never worshiping have increased.

Yet more Americans believe in a life after death and pray daily than in the 1970s. And to complicate things, most of these trends have had their ups and downs, leaving open the possibility of future spurts or reversals.

The NORC also claims there's only a weak correlation between science knowledge/study and irreligion:

“In sum,” the report says, “the proposition that science leads people in general and scientists in particular away from religion is only weakly supported by the available evidence.”

Problem here, though. It appears the study did NOT differentiate between Ph.D. scientists and those at a lower level. Many, many other studies have indicated Ph.D. achievement DOES correlate pretty strongly with lessened religious belief.

In other interesting findings, in post-Communist Eastern Europe, belief levels are dramatically different from country to country.

AI, computers, minds, algorithms, evolution, Dennett

If even artificial intelligence advocates have largely abandoned the idea that AI is ultimately algorithmic, it’s time to question a lot of related assumptions, some of which I already have.

First, the human mind, then, is clearly not algorithmic. And, it’s likely even less algorithmic than a computer.

Second, being “kludged” together by evolution, it’s most surely not a black box, like a modern software program, routine, or subroutine.

Third, running off that point, contra Dan Dennett, evolution is most assuredly not algorithmic, either, as I’ve said before.

Fourth, the Turing test, as stipulated by Alan Turing himself, was NOT about whether a machine could think, but about whether a machine could simulate thinking. In other words, in modern philosophy terminology, Turing was a functionalist, as is Dennett (on this issue, at least), even as he continues to deny it.

Anyway, read the full story linked above.

A serious look at anxiety

The NYTimes mag has a long story, focused on the work of Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan, of much of our current knowledge about anxiety.

Religious belief, mundane matters have different thought processes

As extensively shown by MRI, religious belief-thought is heavily emotionally laden, as well as more agency focused.

A Strad by other means still sounds as sweet

A modern violin, specially treated with a fungus solution, beat a Stradivarius in a blind test.

This ought to drive down violin, and violin insurance, costs.

Has ‘false memory syndrome’ been proven or not?

People like Elizabeth Loftus claim ‘repressed memories’ simply don’t exist.

Their existence is again being challenged in court.

But, Ms. Loftus isn’t totally credible on the subject.

She was knocked out of being an expert witness Scooter Libby’s trial over the Valerie Plame CIA leak.

Why? In part because Judge Reggie Walton ruled that jurors should be able to decide for themselves on the reliability of a particular person’s memory without Scooter using Loftus as an expert witness precisely to make himself look more fallible.

But, during a hearing before Walton’s ruling, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald gave Loftus a once, and twice over.

And? He “picked apart the psychologist's testimony until she acknowledged errors and misstatements in her findings.”

That included admitting that some of her own findings were unscientific. Specifically:

Fitzgerald got Loftus to acknowledge that the methodology she had used at times in her long academic career was not that scientific, that her conclusions about memory were conflicting, and that she had exaggerated a figure and a statement from her survey of D.C. jurors that favored the defense.

Now, I don’t view this as a sudden victory for touters of repressed memories. I do see it as a caveat that EVERY expert in the social sciences may be whistling in the dark at times.

We might have a way to test the idea further, and scientifically. The brain shows similar activity patterns even when details of an event can’t be recalled.

At the same time, showing how malleable memory is, a false video can affect real memory.