A while back I listened to Lex Fridman’s podcast with Michael Levin (episode #325 Oct 1, 2022). I immediately wrote down some notes and recently

Owen: Summarize Nietzsche’s views on creative destruction. ChatGPT: Friedrich Nietzsche, a prominent 19th-century philosopher, did not explicitly discuss the concept of “creative destruction” as it

Illegal dumping is a widespread problem in cities throughout the world and differentially affects disadvantaged neighborhoods.  Brian Johnson is a software engineer who moved to

In a recent article, Bergstrom and Ogbunu (2023) argued that Chat GPT makes up bullshit. Particularly, they say that, “Algorithms bullshit when their creators design

In this episode, Jon and I discuss some of the background to the previous episode. We discuss generalized versions of Hamilton’s rule, Fisher’s fundamental theorem,

In this episode, my brother Jon and I discuss my work on the evolution of kin recognition. Jon is a software engineer and likes to

This evening I played with Chat GPT for the first time. Chat GPT is an artificial-intelligence chat bot. I found that it gave accurate summaries

https://youtu.be/Tiao3M1-3k8 I encourage concerned citizens to watch the Stanford Conference on Academic Freedom. This is a historically unique all-star cast of people. It is amazing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIPiLp9NwyY Characters Scientist (Ragnar) Historian (Seer) ****************** Scientist I was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences. Not because I pulled off a paradigm shift.

Last summer, I downloaded Richard Prum’s book The Evolution of Beauty from my local library and gave it a listen. I was quickly intrigued. Because

This is my first conversation with Chris Fortier, Vice President of the Web 3.0 company Rally. It begins when Chris questions me on what he

Today, my brother Jon Gilbert addresses problems of income inequality and rising costs of living in the USA. In the first half of this episode,

Andrés Vega is a native Costa Rican who has devoted his life to conservation, education, and research in Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica. In

https://archive.org/details/TheLysenkoAffair https://archive.org/details/TheLysenkoAffair This is a nice 1-hr Nova special (1974) on Lysenkoism based on David Joravsky book, “The Lysenko Affair” (1970). Anyone unaware of the

download mp3 References Range Pinning and Madagascar: Goel, N., Guttal, V., Levin, S. A., & Staver, A. C. (2020). Dispersal increases the resilience of tropical

Follow up with Komi German: reviewer’s reaction to her work Download mp3 In this episode, I speak with Dr. Komi German about a reviewer’s reaction

download mp3 In this episode, I speak with Dr. Komi German about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies in academia and related issues. Komi is

When in the course of scientific progress it becomes necessary for new students to dissolve the philosophical ties that have bound them to the worldview

In my paper, Natural reward drives the advancement of life, I begin with a brief discussion of a self-contradiction in Darwin’s theory. The self-contradiction is

One of my readers, Jake, recently asked whether I was doing good science by relying on metaphor (see comments in previous blog post). Initially, I

In contemplating the reactions to my natural reward paper on social media, I have found myself asking the question of who was more civilized in

In my paper, Natural reward drives the advancement of life, I begin by reviewing a contradiction in Darwin’s theory of evolution, and I move on

I have noticed that scientists who are the most stubbornly intolerant of the opinions of others within their field also tend to be intolerant of

“…we should be worried whenever there are no alternatives—whenever a dominant theory becomes too exclusive.” –Popper (1994), p. 15 Thomas Kuhn (1967) argued that dogmatism

UT OLLI Talk “On the­ Advancement of Life” Part 2 of 3 This is the second part of my talk for the Osher Lifelong Learning

UT OLLI Talk “On the­ Advancement of Life” Part 1 of 3 I had the pleasure of speaking for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI)

Evolutionists often claim that evolution is a fact. But whether evolution is a fact depends on the meaning of evolution. With reference to Darwin (1859),

Sapiens, by Yuval Harari, raises the question of why humans conquered planet earth. This is an important and timely question. We will have trouble planning

I have received two reviews of my natural reward manuscript (Gilbert 2019). The main objection is that the theory is not sufficiently developed. This is

Like winds and sunsets, scientific geniuses were taken for granted until the military-industrial-scientific complex did away with them. One need look no further than those

In this post I will summarize my talk and add a few additional comments. Before my talk, I sent out an email that said I

“Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations, and every fresh truth is received unwillingly. To expect the world to receive a

My initial sample was chosen haphazardly before May 30, 2018. On May 30, 2018 I also calculated the i scores of some other famous biologists.

SummaryI propose the index i, defined as the sum of the citations of a scientist’s top three single-authored works and the top three second-tier citations of

I am really excited to start communicating about my new theory of natural reward.  The purpose of this blog will be to give background information