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Mark Cuban said new grads should join small businesses for one reason
The billionaire said new grads can help small and medium businesses adopt AI agents, something big companies don't need them for.
Asus could produce DDR5 RAM to ease memory shortage and keep laptop prices reasonable
With DDR5 RAM prices out of control, Asus may have a strategy that will benefit laptop buyers and gamers. A new report suggests that it will begin manufacturing DRAM as soon as 2026. Even with this development, Asus would struggle to open factories without the help of Samsung, Micron, or SK Hynix.
Framework Announces Another Memory Price Hike; Says It Still Charges Far Less Than Apple
Framework has announced another price hike for DDR5 memories and has stated the reason in a new blog post.
This week in HS Sports: Always reason to celebrate at Christmas even through a few tears
Still a lot to celebrate at Christmas even if you have lost a loved one in 2025.
AI's Big Red Button Doesn't Work, And The Reason Is Even More Troubling
"It's going to be really bad for humans."
Trump reveals more about Gov. Jeff Landry’s envoy role: ‘Greenland’s a big deal’
The president said Greenland is important for national security reasons, and called Landry a “dealmaker-type guy.”
The disunity of science is a feature, not a bug
Mathematical models wield miraculous power, but mistaking them for reality has trapped science in a destructive quest for a “Theory of Everything.” Physicist and philosopher Ragner Fjelland argues that this leads to bloated, Frankenstein theories kept alive by clumsy, ad-hoc amendments, which reduce rather than boost science’s power. Fjelland calls for a radical shift in our attitude: we must reorientate towards creating entirely new theories, celebrating rather than lamenting disunity and diversity in science. Science, from the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century to the present day, has more or less developed in a “reductionist” way. The fundamental assumption is that all sciences may be ordered in a hierarchy that can be represented as an upside-down pyramid. At the top we find the human sciences, and at the bottom physics. Strong (or “ontological”) reductionism maintains that all theories at one level can be completely reduced to the lower level, all the way down to theories of atoms and elementary particles, or whatever is “at the bottom.” In the end, all diversity in the world can be unified in one fundamental theory. Hence it is called a final theory, or a Theory of Everything.One of the central figures in developing the idea of a Theory of Everything is the Dutch theoretical physicist Gerard 't Hooft, who received a Nobel Prize in physics in 1999 for his work. He emphasizes the non-empirical status of the theory:There exists no closely resembling alternative theory. This means that any slight change brought about in the rules would make the theory unlikely or inelegant. The theory will be a "package deal": take it, or leave it. This should hold both for the local laws and for the boundary conditions.This endeavor is not new. On the contrary, it goes all the way back to the birth of Western philosophy 2,500 years ago. The Babylonians made regular astronomical observations during a period of 600 years, from 747 BCE until 150 ACE. They developed mathematical techniques to predict astronomical phenomena, but they made no attempts at explaining them. However, the Greeks developed models, both material and theoretical, to explain the observed phenomena.The best example is Plato’s late dialogue Timaeus. Here he introduces a divine craftsman, the Demiurge, who has constructed the universe according to an original plan. Plato seems to have thought that the original plan is what is actually real, while the material world is merely an imperfect realization of it. He therefore does not, in the Timaeus, reconstruct the material universe, but the original plan, which can then be used to explain the material universe.Plato’s aim in producing a theoretical model is to reconstruct the original plan. That is what he carries out in Timaeus—and some modern physicists have embarked on the same project. For example, Einstein’s basic attitude is reflected in the title of Abraham Pais’ biography: “Subtle is the Lord...,” echoing Einstein’s comment, “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.” In an interview Einstein compared our situation to a child who enters a huge library. The child knows that someone has written the books, but he does not know the languages in which they are written. He suspects that there is a mysterious order, but he does not know what it is.___“We have all been working in what Husserl called the Galilean style; that is, we have all been making abstract mathematical models of the universe to which at least the physicists give a higher degree of reality than they accord the ordinary world of sensation.”Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize in Physics (1979)___This Platonist view is contrary to a widespread impression of science, symbolized by the picture of the “father” of modern science, Galileo Galilei, with his telescope. According to this impression, Galileo liberated himself from the dominating metaphysics of his day—basically Aristotelian philosophy—and constructed a telescope that he directed towards the sky, showing that Jupiter has four moons. He also performed experiments with bronze balls rolling down inclined planes and found the law of freely falling bodies.However, in other cases Galileo emphasized the unreliability of our senses. It is easy to see why. He defended Copernicus’ heliocentric hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, we are not at rest at the center of the universe, but moving at a tremendous speed through space. Why don’t we observe this motion? Galileo praises Copernicus because “with reason as his guide he resolutely continued to affirm what sensible experience seemed to contradict.” In other places he directly refers to Plato. SUGGESTED VIEWING The quest for a final theory With Michio Kaku Galileo’s Platonism goes back to his early writings. In The Assayer, published as early as 1623, Galileo compared the universe to a grand book that is written in the language of mathematics, and “its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.” Therefore, things that cannot be described by mathematics—for example, colors, smells and odors—are not real. They are merely subjective.This division into subjective and objective, advocated by Galileo and his younger contemporary René Descartes, is normally associated with a mechanistic world view, which is regarded as the opposite of Platonism. When we reduce something to, for example, molecules and atoms, we move “downwards.” In contrast, the Platonist moves “upwards,” to abstract entities. However, it only shows that when we address fundamental questions, we should be careful in applying everyday spatial metaphors like “up” and “down.”___Nature is complex, and we cannot in general construct mathematical models that adequately describe the world.___The endeavor of finding a Theory of Everything has been heavily criticized. In 2006, the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin published “The Crisis in Fundamental Physics.” He argued that one of the most fundamental principles of science is that we should only regard theories as scientific if we have the possibility to show that they are false by experiments. Although he did not refer to Karl Popper, other critics have referred to Popper and argued that a theory is not scientific if it cannot be falsified (see for example Ellis & Silk 2014).These were not the first physicists to be anti-reductionists. In 1972, the journal Science published an article by the physicist Philip Anderson with the title “More Is Different.” This is the kind of article a scientist would normally write only after he has won a Nobel Prize. However, Anderson won the Nobel Prize for physics five years later, in 1977. The article is amazing, not primarily because it argues in favor of anti-reductionism in general, but because it argues for anti-reductionism within physics itself. Anderson’s conclusion was:At each stage entirely new laws, concepts, and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry.We may say that Plato started the “unity of science movement,” based on Euclidean geometry as the model of all knowledge. A distinguishing mark of geometry is that all possible constructions can be reduced to a few fundamental principles. We have to acknowledge that this approach has limitations. In general, we can easily model technological systems. In addition, we may construct simplified and idealized models that capture important aspects of systems, from various perspectives and for various purposes. But nature is complex, and we cannot in general construct mathematical models that adequately describe the world. In a complex system, each level has its distinct, emergent, properties that are characteristic of this level. Therefore, a complex system should be investigated at different levels and from different perspectives. Instead of exclusively pursuing a scientific ideal based on the unity of science, we should acknowledge the diversity—or even the disunity—of science.
A Year of Health Science Under Siege
When leaders mirror Stalin by promoting false dogma, we must defend evidence-based reason. Lives depend on it.
Should You Use the Shiny or Dull Side of Foil? Reynolds Settles the Debate
While it doesn't matter which side of the foil you cook on, there is a reason one side is shiny and the other is dull. Read on to learn more.
‘Reason for the Season’ light show this weekend
VICKSBURG, Miss. (VDN) — This weekend, Dec. 20 and 21, the Encore Lights Christmas light show located at 806 Hickory Street, (Oak Park) in Vicksburg, will present a new show called “Reason for the Season”. Through the magic of computers, lights, sound, music, and props, you and your family will experience the events that surround […]
Thousands of gamers are installing Bazzite instead of sticking with Windows — and the reasons behind the shift are surprisingly compelling
With weekly installs rising and SteamOS-style usability, Bazzite is quietly carving out a space for gamers tired of Windows friction.
Science Central holiday events & Big Blue Blocks are coming
As kids get off the holiday season, Science Central gives them an reason to learn outside of the classroom.
He Started a Business Legally. Now Trump's Mass Deportations Threaten Him and Other Immigrant Entrepreneurs.
Immigrants start businesses at a higher rate than native-born Americans, benefitting not only themselves but also their American workers and customers.
I love the OnePlus 15, but here are 5 reasons I'd recommend the OnePlus 15R instead
OnePlus 15R offers 90% of the flagship experience, including great performance and display, for $200 less than the OnePlus 15.
The real reason incomes rise and why they drop
Getting ahead financially is mainly about what you earn at work, not what you make from investments. Researchers found that promotions, skills, and better jobs drive most upward income movement. But when people slip backward, falling investment income is usually the main reason. Labor builds income steadily; capital is riskier and more unpredictable.
Padres pitcher Michael King: "unfinished business" in San Diego
San Diego Padres starting pitcher Michael King says he has "unfinished business,", a big reason he signed a 3-year contract to return to Petco Park.
Justice Melissa Hart to step down from Colorado Supreme Court
Justice Melissa Hart will step down from the Colorado Supreme Court effective Jan. 5, the Judicial Department announced unexpectedly on Friday. Hart has been on an unexplained and unusual leave of absence from the court since Oct. 28. She told Colorado Politics in November that the leave was for “family and personal health reasons,” but provided no […]
Analysis: Trump’s shifting justifications on Venezuela and his boat strikes
Susie Wiles’ recently published interviews in Vanity Fair are remarkable for a multitude of reasons. But perhaps leading that list was what the White House chief of staff said about Venezuela.
FedEx calls for more profit this year as this key business turns around
FedEx gives investors more reason to believe its overhaul is taking hold.
Backlash over Larian CEO's AI comments is a leadership problem
CEO Swen Vincke angered developers with his description of how Larian Studios is using generative AI. There's good reason for it.
What Can U.S. Employers Do About Rising Healthcare Costs?
U.S. employers are grappling with surging healthcare costs as healthcare prices and service volumes rise. Provider consolidation, high drug prices, labor shortages, and growing chronic disease are fueling the cost increases. Employer have largely responded by shifting expenses to workers. Their track record in pursuing aggressive options—including collective purchasing, tiered plans, value-based care, and advocating for changes in government policies—is poor. The big question is whether they have the will to become more aggressive in pursuing remedies. The outlook is not promising. The reasons include the complexity of the problem, employee resistance to some solutions, and the fact that most employers just don’t have sufficient “skin in the game” to take on the disruption and risk that would be required to bend the healthcare cost curve significantly or sustainably.
Charlie’s Beat: Bringing poetry to the people
You know how there can be something going on right under your nose but you are unaware for some reason? And then you discover it and it’s just the coolest
Grizzlies hand Rampart first loss of the season
(FOUNTAIN, Colo) — There was a reason Mesa Ridge has been playing into March in the 5A ranks. The new squad finding a rhythm the last few games coming into a matchup with unbeaten Rampart. The Rams had won their first five games and were the top team in the 5A RPI standings coming into […]
Funding College Sports With Private Equity Is Way Better Than Hitting Students With Higher Fees
Plus: Fix the NBA Cup by blowing it up, World Cup ticket prices or lotteries, and more.
I shopped at Walmart and Target for my family's holiday gifts. For a few reasons, I'm sticking with the latter.
This December, I shopped for the holidays at Target and Walmart to see which chain had better sales and prices on presents for my kids and husband.
AI Is Getting Dangerously Good at Political Persuasion
For a while last year, scientists offered a glimmer of hope that artificial intelligence would make a positive contribution to democracy. They showed that chatbots could address conspiracy theories racing across social media, challenging misinformation around beliefs in issues such as chemtrails and the flat Earth with a stream of reasonable facts in conversation. But two new studies suggest a disturbing flipside: The latest AI models are getting even better at persuading people at the expense o
Dell and Lenovo may limit mid-range laptops to 8GB DDR5 RAM in response to rising memory prices
With DDR5 RAM prices skyrocketing, some mid-range laptops could soon ship with budget-level specs. TrendForce expects companies like Dell and Lenovo to stock more notebooks with 8GB of memory. These reasonably priced options may no longer handle intense office and gaming tasks.
Star Trek Fans Need To Watch This Underrated Sci-Fi Series On Peacock
This sci-fi series streaming on Peacock isn't trying to copy the Star Trek franchise, but it should appeal to Trekkies for many of the same reasons.
Five fighters transported to the hospital following UFC Vegas 112
Better to be safe than sorry … Following UFC Vegas 112 last night (Sat., Dec. 13, 2025) inside the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, company officials confirmed to MMAmania.com that five fighters were transported to a local “Sin City” hospital for precautionary reasons after their violent bouts. The fighters were Giga Chikadze, Kennedy Nzechukwu, Marcus […]
Kirby Air Riders team is disbanding soon, but game could get another balance patch
According to director Masahiro Sakurai, the team behind Kirby Air Riders will be disbanding soon. At this point there largely isn’t a reason to keep everyone together. Development is finished, and as previously announced, the game isn’t getting DLC. However, we’re likely to get one more balance patch. Sakurai shared the following on social media: “As discussed in Air Riders...
The real reason behind Trump’s nasty breakup with Europe
Jonathan Freedland speaks to the US military scholar Joseph Stieb about the Trump administration’s national security strategy
'We're not just going to want to be fed AI slop for 16 hours a day': Analyst sees Disney/OpenAI deal as a dividing line in entertainment history
"I think the reason this bidding is approaching $100 billion-plus is the content library and the potential to do a Disney-OpenAI type of deal."
Trump’s affordability argument just got the unlikeliest champion
The main reason Americans are upset about the economy: They are still adjusting to high prices that surged during years of runaway inflation that took place during former President Joe Biden’s term.
Trump calls reports questioning his health ‘seditious, perhaps even treasonous’
Trump calls reports questioning his health ‘seditious, perhaps even treasonous’
Back Bills to Win Super Bowl ... Because What Could Go Wrong?
Sammy P surmises that there are no bad reasons to bet the Bills to win the Super Bowl.
Trump, 79, Insists It’s Treason to Talk About His Health Issues
The president said he’d be the first to notice any decline.
The scientific method: It’s not just for science anymore
The same exercises in logic and reason can extend to assignments in the social sciences, humanities and more.
Don't Wait for the iPhone 18, It's Fine to Buy the iPhone 17
Commentary: If you want a new iPhone within the next year, go ahead and buy the iPhone 17. Current iPhone 18 rumors don't provide enough compelling reasons to wait.
Trump Calls Reports on His Health ‘Seditious’
The President posted that he recently “aced” a cognitive exam and reports that demean him are “perhaps even treasonous.”
Trust in science is low among minorities for a reason, research finds
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a nationwide conversation in the U.S. about how much people trust scientists and trained medical professionals. But for some communities, distrust has been the norm.
Trust in science is low among minorities for a reason, research finds
Researchers at Northeastern trace distrust of scientists among certain groups to massive gaps in representation within science itself.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis says AI scaling 'must be pushed to the maximum'
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis says AI scaling is key to reaching AGI, a still theoretical version of AI that reasons as well as humans.
Footballer arrested on suspicion of assault and affray in London
An international footballer, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was arrested in central London on suspicion of assault and affray.
Passenger Jet Suddenly Dropped From Sky for a Wild Reason, Airbus Says
Apologies to our art director, who must depict a plane plunging after being blasted by cosmic rays, which is something that actually happened.
We Found the Truth: The Real Reason Your LED Lights Keep Dropping Dead
Tired of constantly changing expensive LED bulbs? We asked experts why they fail.
Threats, dysfunction and flying: Why quitting is all the rage in DC
More and more lawmakers are opting to retire or even resign early from their jobs amid death threats, gridlock and myriad other reasons.
If Betting on Vibes, 'No Team in Football has Better Vibes than the Bears'
Putting down some cash on Bears-Packers? There are reasons to pick both sides. But the vibes? They say roll with Chicago. Sammy P reports.
16 reasons why Philly is one of America's greatest sports cities
The Washington Post left Philly off its list of best sports cities. And Philly is letting 'em know about it.
The Rise of AI Reasoning Models Comes With a Big Energy Tradeoff
Nearly all leading artificial intelligence developers are focused on building AI models that mimic the way humans reason, but new research shows these cutting-edge systems can be far more energy intensive, adding to concerns about AI’s strain on power grids.
The surprising reason you should never skip your morning orange juice
Orange juice every day could help your cholesterol.
The Chicago Bears are winning for the first time in years. Their shirtless coach is a big reason why.
Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson acknowledged his burgeoning reputation as, according to his quarterback, a “man of the people” on Monday.
Horror game Horses removed from multiple storefronts as censorship scare continues
The horror game Horses has been banned from multiple digital storefronts, like Steam, for vague, ill-defined reasons.
Rand Paul is increasingly unplugged on Trump
In an interview with Reason magazine two weeks ago, Sen. Rand Paul of suggested that congressional Republicans were uncomfortable with much of what President Donald Trump was doing. But the senator said they were too “afraid” to do something about it.
The Cost of Confused Climate Science
A retracted blockbuster study shows the motivated reasoning that fuels climate hysteria.
The twisted reason why Trump is bombing Venezuelan boats
For this administration, war crimes are a feature, not a bug.
Nikon ZR review: A highly capable cinema camera at a reasonable price
Nikon’s ZR offers the best RAW video quality in any consumer camera, including models costing much more.
Eric Dane opens up about emotional battle of living with ALS: 'I have no reason to be in a good spirit'
Actor Eric Dane, 53, says he has 'no reason to be in a good spirit' amid his struggle with ALS.
3 reasons to watch Tennessee's special election
We've arrived at the sixth special election in the House this year. Here's what to know.
Google Phone adding ‘Urgent’ calling, Messages app getting ‘Unknown’ group chat alerts
In addition to Android 16 QPR2, Google is rolling out a pair of updates to the Messages (group chat warnings) and Phone (Urgent call reasons).
Android’s new ‘Call Reason’ flags important calls before you even pick up
When you really need to go get burritos.
An extra solar system planet once orbited next to Earth — and it may be the reason we have a moon
Earth may have a moon today because a nearby neighbor once crashed into us, a new analysis of Apollo samples and terrestrial rocks reveals.
Kevin Durant’s return brings dilemma to Rockets starting lineup
After missing two games due to personal reasons, superstar Kevin Durant returns to a team that has handled his absence superbly.
Five reasons your business needs to invest in executive education
Ready to unlock potential at every turn? Explore five reasons your business needs to invest in Executive Education at Marquette University.
Go (North) West, College Basketball
Lamenting the death of the truly-enjoyable MTE. I hadn’t planned on much basketball coverage here for a couple reasons: for one, the internet is a dying place, and, for two, that’s exacerbating the steady death of Off Tackle Empire dot blogspot dot biz. BUT! Looking over the (limited) options for basketball on this last snowy […]
Science must move from materialism to mystery
Theoretical physicist and neuroscientist Àlex Gómez-Marín argues that modern science has become trapped in a framework that mistakes matter for the whole of reality. In this wide-ranging interview, Gómez-Marín challenges the foundations of materialism, defends the scientific study of near-death experiences, and calls for a new type of science grounded in mystery and a renewed sense of the sacred. He suggests that abandoning materialism could open the door to a deeper understanding of consciousness, death, and the purpose of human existence. Simon Custer: You are both a theoretical physicist and a neuroscientist, and you have also been fiercely critical of materialist theories of mind and consciousness. What do you think the ultimate nature of reality is?Àlex Gómez-Marín: I don't know what the ultimate nature of reality is, but what I try to first assess is whether the stories that they [mainstream science] have told us about it are right, or maybe whether there are other alternatives. That's why I've been a fierce critic of materialism. As a scientist, I realized that they had sold us this idea that to be a good scientist you also had to subscribe to many other -isms, like materialism, reductionism, and even secularism. And so first I think one needs to unmount these -isms, and then, as is happening today in consciousness studies, we have a huge landscape where there isn't only one game in town, the idea that matter is the only thing that really exists. But because we are studying the hard problem of consciousness, it may be the case that other views of reality, like idealism, or even dualism, or other theories like dual aspect monism... these are philosophical ideas that now, I think, have room in science to be taken seriously. How does something like materialism relate to dualism or idealism? What is materialism in the first place?Well, materialism is the philosophical position that matter is the only really ‘real’ thing in the universe. And I think that worked kind of well because science started 400 years ago and Galileo made that split, I call it the foundational wound. It was a great business move.He said, let's start doing science on that portion of reality that lends itself more easily to mathematization and measurement. So, for some reason, the solidity of this table or the movement of planets lend themselves very well to this foundational idea of science. But as time went on, 400 years later, we realized that we had forgotten the other side, which is what really matters.What really matters is pain, is love, is feelings, sensation, consciousness, which is very hard to define, but very intimate. We all know what it is. It's that thing that disappears when we go into deep sleep and comes back in the morning. SUGGESTED VIEWING On the edges of knowledge With Michael Shermer, Rupert Sheldrake, Güneş Taylor It's what it is like to be, as Nagel said. It's the feeling of being alive. So, materialism is good to study certain things, but then when it ossifies into this ideology and then is dressed like science, now it's preventing us from understanding these key questions that are really that everybody wants to know.Why are we here? Why do we feel reality? Where do we go when we die? And so we need other ways. We need pluralism. I'm only asking for having more options on the table and taking them seriously. Why does materialism fail to explain consciousness? For example, if you were to lobotomize me, I would not be a functional human being. What do you say to someone who might think that materialism adequately explains the mind?Well, here we could speak about different things. We could talk about physics or about neuroscience. I happen to have training with both.For instance, for neuroscientists, 99% of them, I'm not included in that portion, believe that the brain can only be a productive organ. It's an organ that somehow, somewhere, consciousness emerges. It's like a lamp. And then something happens, magic happens, and then consciousness emerges.That's the position you need to be if you're a materialist because if the only really ‘real’ thing is matter, then you need to say, just give us some more time and money and we'll figure out how mind emerges or is produced from matter. There are many philosophically sophisticated ways of criticizing this.Now there's another option, which is the brain as a permissive organ. This was said by William James more than 100 years ago.Now then the brain wouldn't be like this machine, like for instance, a heat engine whose smoke is consciousness, which is what we would have in the first big model, the productive model. But in the permissive model, the brain would be a kind of a filter. And so the brain would still have a very important role in consciousness, but it wouldn't be a productive role.It would be permissive, much like a filter or much like a prism which would receive light. And - I'm speaking metaphorically - it would receive the light of the mind and then it could reflect it and refract it.Now, with these two big options on the table, I think we can make progress into what I call the edges of consciousness, which are all these experiences, weird experiences that many people have, but we don't talk about enough, like near-death experiences, precognitive dreams, synchronicities. These experiences are very important for humans and they have a place in the permissive hypothesis and they are literally impossible in the productive hypothesis. So that's yet one more reason to explore alternatives to materialism. There may be anecdotal evidence for near-death experiences, but is there robust evidence that would be accepted by the majority of scientists who subscribe to the scientific method?Sure. And the plural of anecdotes, someone said, is data.And there's a lot of data. Actually, this year is the 50th anniversary, half a century, since Dr. Raymond Moody realized that we have two ears and one mouth and started listening to what his patients had to say about their experiences while they were clinically dead.The heart had stopped, breathing had stopped in these patients. These patients would come back and tell him these amazing stories that some people may say are hallucinations, but for the patients were hyper-real, like seeing light at the end of the tunnels, seeing deceased family members waiting for them, feeling bliss.___I would say the evidence suggests that the mind can survive the death of activity of the brain.___And so he and others started taking them seriously and writing their accounts down. And then you can do a science based on that material of experience that people have. Now, on the more objective side, more recently people have started to measure what's going on in the brain when people are clinically dead and brought back. This has opened a proper field of study, which is near-death studies.Evidence is a difficult word, because sometimes people think that when you say evidence, this is just the final proof. Evidence is like in a jury. You bring testimony, you bring pieces of data that point in one direction or another.I would say the evidence suggests that the mind can survive the death of activity of the brain. When brains are broken or shut off, there can still be mind going on. And that's revolutionary.That would entail that when we die, it's not game over, which, by the way, is the thesis of materialism. If consciousness survives, materialism dies. It's game over for materialism if something of us continues after we die. Do you think that there is mental continuity after death?Well, I think so, and I believe so, and I could also say I may have experienced it myself, because four years ago I had a near-death experience. I was in the hospital, I lost a lot of blood, and I saw those beings at the end of the tunnel, three beings, and there was yellow light. I was in a well, I was looking upwards, and I hadn't read about NDEs by then, but when I came back from this experience, I decided I would try to integrate this also in my professional life. Not just my personal life, of course, but my professional life as a physicist and as a neuroscientist. So I may have had the experience of glimpses of what an afterlife would be, and I'm not ashamed to say it in this way, and then one can do science of it, and then one can do philosophy of it.One can think about what -isms we were discussing, what views on reality would allow those experiences to be really ‘real,’ as opposed to, well, poor guy, the brain was kind of broken, it must have been a hallucination. Do you have a view about whether individuality or “the ego” persists after death, or whether we sort of merge into some sort of cosmic consciousness instead?I don't know, but my view would be along those lines you're suggesting. I think we could speak about a kind of universal mind, and then the problem is not how we emerge from matter, but how we fragment from a more holistic consciousness into these individual eddies and then when we die, this kind of dissipates.But I'm not sure. For instance, idealism would promote that view, but then what would survive of us after these eddies just vanish and become again the big Consciousness, I'm not sure what that would be. I don't know for sure, but I would tell you I believe something of us survives.And there are other lines of research, not just near-death experience, that can address this really hard question of survival. For instance, there are children who remember previous lives. This was studied by Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia for more than 50 years.___Research takes place within a selection mechanism that also sometimes reinforces things that are not very scientific.___It's amazing research. He went all over the world, especially in the East, and collected all these case studies, all these stories. In plural, these were data of kids, very young age, who would describe up to 40 items that then he could go and verify.There was no internet. There was really no way the kid could know. Why would the kid say that when I was living in this other body and I was a woman and that's how my house would look like or that's how I would die, right? Again, there is evidence, not proof, but there's evidence not only that something weird and interesting is happening as we cross the threshold, but also when we come back to this life.Scientists should not be afraid of studying this, but they are because there's stigma. There's usually stigma upon the enigma, and this is so unfortunate. And one of the reasons is because of the ideology of materialism, because those things cannot be possible. What is wrong with the politics of science such that they have generated this stigma?So many things. Science is a human activity to begin with.So it falls prey to all our passions and ego and greed. That's one thing. Science is a job for the good and for the bad.You need to get a salary. You need to get grants. Research takes place within a selection mechanism that also sometimes reinforces things that are not very scientific.And then, we didn't have time to unpack this, but science for many years become entangled, as I was suggesting before, to other -isms, materialism, secularism. So anything that smells like the afterlife, people may think has to do with God, and then they freak out.Anything that suggests that there's something about the mind that may not need a physical material substrate to exist, it smells like non-materialism. So, all these -isms are ideologically blocking that kind of research, and then there are all these sociopolitical constraints as to what should be studied and what shouldn't be studied.I call it the backstage of science. Sometimes we scientists or science communicators seem to speak as if the data is the only thing that matters. We say, well, data and theory.But then there's a third leg of this stool, which is all the politics that goes behind the scenes. And we often don't speak about this, and it's quite vicious and petty, and it's very real. Why is materialism so attractive to most scientists?Well, an easy answer is because we've grown up with it.It's what the educational system promotes, and that's what you hear when you go to university. So it's like growing in a culture. It feels like the air in which you breathe.So it's very hard to begin with to detect, well, maybe there's another alternative. Maybe there are other ways of doing science, other environments in which one could do science. That's one reason.And other reasons maybe are more profound, and I'm not qualified to explain them, but I could say, looking at this 400-year history of science, since it started around 1623 with Galileo's book The Assayer, that science went and coupled with all what's going on in the West.And so the fall of religion, you could say, and science presented us this new alternative that then could be coupled very well with other -isms, and this idea of growth, and then science losing its good twin brother, which was philosophy. There's a whole natural history of science starting as philosophy, kind of emancipating or breaking out from philosophy, and then marrying technology, and then marrying other social systems.From that point of view, materialism is a very convenient idea to propose. There were attempts, like the German idealists tried to do a more romantic science. But no, the idea prevailed, like Francis Bacon said: You should pursue nature through all her corners, he said, and make her spill her secrets.Our attitude towards nature in the science that dominates is very much reflecting how we treat nature in our society, in our culture, like a resource to extract secrets by force and then dominate it. How is materialism related to the notions of growth and progress? What's wrong with having a productive citizenry?This is another very interesting and very difficult question to answer.But there's this recent book coming out by Paul Kingsnorth. In it, he explains this idea of the machine and this idea of progress. And this, again, this conflation of more is better, of we need to go forward always, and convincing us that the way to do that is to continually extract more from nature. But because we don't have the religious context anymore, because God is dead, then what do we have? We have what we can do as humans with our own gadgets.It's kind of the story of the Promethean fire. We will just build anything to make ourselves God.A good example today is transhumanism. Transhumanism is this pseudo-religion dressed in technoscientific language whose goal is very religious. They promise immortality, they promise redemption, they promise transformation of the entire natural world, but it's done by human means through technology. Are you suggesting that we can't have ethics without religion?Well, we should have ethics with or without religion. That's another pruning that has happened in science. We say, forget about aesthetics, although some physicists still think that beautiful means probably true, and forget about politics. We pretend there's no backstage of science, and even let's forget about ethics.___Science needs to be in the service of mankind.___Scientists, when they become more like engineers, they're just thinking how to make things work so that they can go to the moon, go to Mars, make machines that think, but they don't think whether that's a good idea.And also consider metaphysics. Many scientists for a long time pretended, and maybe that comes from the stream of positivisms, that really one doesn't need metaphysics at all, except that materialism is always the metaphysics running the system.You see, it's not just ethics. It's the pruning of all of these, you could say, five main legs of philosophy that just makes a kind of unconscious science, a science that doesn't really know what it's doing. It's doing it very well locally, but it just doesn't know what it's doing globally. Do you think science has to have an ultimate vision and purpose behind it for it to be effective or for it to be meaningful and transformative?Yes, a way I would say that is that science needs to be in the service of mankind. And it hasn't been that. And we can see it through, you know, when we discovered the secrets of the atom, and all of a sudden, the Manhattan Project, and then we create nuclear weapons.And now we're trying to crack how machines may think, and now we're creating this mess, right? So science needs to be in service of mankind, not in service of a few ideas that maybe want to make more money or just dominate upon nature. What about planes, trains, automobiles, and modern medicine? Hasn't science served mankind by helping us develop those technologies?Yes and no. I see where you're going, and it's fair.I came here by plane, and it's a blessing. When I almost died, the surgeons did their job, and they saved my life. But these two forced choices between Luddites and Silicon Valley types, I think, of course, it's a false dichotomy.Progress, in a way, it's good, but we often don't speak about the dark side of the moon. We say the great things that progress has brought, and we don't speak about the disasters, the side effects that it has come with, and the same when we promise new technologies. We tend to think that any technology is great, that email is going to save us so much time because we don't need to write letters and send them anymore.Is that true? I spend so many hours a week writing emails. Let's just say there are great things about it and bad things about it. People like Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, for example, argue that we've made moral progress over time because of the Enlightenment. Do you think that's totally wrong-headed?I think he's emphasizing a side of the moon, and he does that very well, and you can find tons of plots where there's a slope going up and say it's great. But I think he should also tell the not-so-friendly story.But if your ideology is just to resist and continue to explain that the Enlightenment is the best thing ever and reason is the best thing ever… this feels to me like you're worshipping these abstractions.I'm very critical of it and also of these, again, science communicators and scientists that say, Oh, science says, in the name of science, experts say. It's like, come on, let's be careful because we can shoot ourselves in the foot by putting forth to the people an image of science that we know is not really true. Recently there's been a resurgence of spirituality and of people who say that they're spiritual but not religious, especially in the United States. If materialism is going away, what is going to fill that gap? Are we going to return to traditional religion? Do you see that being connected with the rise of the political right?I'm not a fortune teller, so I don't know what's going to happen. But, yeah, we could say we're in this post-materialist age and even post-secular age. One cannot come back to the past, but maybe just to contact with the roots is a good idea.What do I mean by that? I think we need to do a science 2.0, a science that says thank you to Galileo and thank you to materialism, but we need to reinvent even a new kind of scientific method. We need to do so in a culture where we realize humans cannot thrive in a vacuum where there's this idea that the sacred has to be removed.Now, how do we do that without bringing in back all the vices of religion? I don't know. I'm from a Catholic country.Here we are in England, so there are differences and interreligious dialogue has always been a challenge. But I think maybe a way of putting it is: after all these conflicts and branchings I was quickly alluding to, science from philosophy and then also from religion, now there's a time of reconciliation perhaps and maybe debates in the proper sense, like exchange of ideas in service of learning and getting into something higher than both poles. We need science to talk to religious people and it's interesting when people say they're spiritual and not religious.I think this is just a way of saying, no, I don't want to go back, I want to go forward. But at the end of the day, religions have offered us practices and grounding that we now desperately need. Everybody can and should just meditate or pray or do whatever they want, but we're in a crisis and it's time for reconciliation. What do you say to critics that say you are merely projecting our need for meaning onto a fundamentally indifferent universe?Yeah, I know that the typical science communicator says something like this. But we're not projecting. Human beings feed on meaning.It's the other way around. If you're a materialist, because the only thing that there is is matter, all that comes next, free will, consciousness, meaning, this is a kind of illusion that we need to explain.They're just craving for meaning, but there isn't really for them. I would also like to remind my materialist friends that for decades, if not centuries, they've said in the name of science, we know that this and this and this doesn't really exist. I think now they sense they're forced to say, well, actually, we don't know. We've been saying, for instance, that there's nothing after you die, and now probably they need to admit that they don't know the answer.___We need to do a science 2.0, a science that says thank you to Galileo and thank you to materialism, but we need to reinvent even a new kind of scientific method.___So it's a moment to open up possibilities and also to gently but fiercely critique these claims that I think harm society. If you say in the name of science, get on with it, when your father dies, you'll never see him again. Well, what the F do you know about it? You haven't studied the literature, you haven't had any of those experiences, and basically what you're doing is you're just doing marketing on ideology. This needs to stop. Do you think that it's scarier for some people to entertain the thought that there might be life after death, compared to a materialist worldview where you just die, given that there might be consequences for unsavory behaviour?Well, death and dying is scary. It's maybe the ultimate ending. It's a limit on life, and when we're in this conquest mode, we don't like limits.And it also has, there's a shockwave backwards, so I think if you change your notion of what death is or may be, you live differently. It also has consequences, as you're saying, for the future because this is not our only goal here and we come back in whatever form. And again, different religions would say different things. I the East, they are more happy with the idea of reincarnation, and here in the West, there are other preferences. But in any case, it changes how we live, and that's really what matters.It's not about just projecting or imagining what we'll be after, but how we live now and also how we treat those who are dying. So it goes from the individual to the families, to the hospitals.Now in the near-death research I do, this has ramifications at all these levels, all the way to society.But our society is thanatophobic. It has a phobia of death. We don't want to hear about death, and this is another thing we need to put on the table and be willing to talk about it. Do you think that we might get closer to answering ultimate questions like why is there anything at all if we jettison materialism?That’s an excellent question, Simon. Two things: we should stop treating reality, I believe, as a great sudoku, as an enigma, as something that with intelligence, money, and time that we will crack and instead treat reality more like a mystery. And what you do for in front of a mystery is not to be the clever guy in a class and say “I’ll solve you” but more like “I will bow and you will transform me.”I know this sounds a bit like a scientist speaking like a mystic. But I think this reorientation is needed. In the end, we won’t crack the big questions, but they will transform us. If we free ourselves from this prison of materialism, the way we will explore these questions will be freer, more creative, and in service of mankind. Do you think exploring mystery is the reason why we are here?I think we are here because, and this pseudo-theological argument I’m making off the cuff, But the One, the Absolute, if there is such a thing, had everything except limitation. We are that absolute experiencing that contingency. It’s like an act of divine proprioception. It’s a wonderful adventure, it’s just incredible to be alive. Perhaps we have forgotten why we are here and the whole point is to experience the flesh.Let me end by saying this. I criticize materialism harshly. I bang on this dead horse, because I think it’s dead. But matter is a great mystery. So maybe my invitation is as follows: hey materialist friends, come here, let’s work on materialism 2.0! Consciousness is a mystery, but matter is also a mystery. The fact that we can have an intersubjective experience consensus, the fact that we can apply mathematics, that we can measure things... the physical world we take for granted, but it is a great mystery too.Maybe that’s related to your last question: why are we here? Why did spirit decide to incarnate? Being in the flesh may be a great thing if spirit decided to do so.Àlex Gómez-Marín, thank you very much.My pleasure.
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