Article: Undiscriminating Skepticism

Again, something I ran across after googling tribal signalling.

Main thesis: skepticism as tribal signalling versus rational, thought-out skepticism based on facts.

The problem is that most people have neither the trained intelligence nor the time/energy to learn enough about a subject and think deeply about it to have "discriminating skepticism."

We rely on opinions expressed by people we think meet the above criteria. This is why "talking points" exist. People who are otherwise ignorant of a topic can read a summary of the topic by a source accepted by the tribe. They can then signal their tribe that they are members by repeating them.

I'll conclude with some simple and non-trustworthy indicators that the skeptic is just filling in a cheap and largely automatic mockery template: 

1. The "skeptic" opens by remarking about the crazy true believers and wishful thinkers who believe in X, where there seem to be a surprising number of physicists making up the population of those wacky cult victims who believe in X.  (The physicist-test is not an infallible indicator of rightness or even non-stupidity, but it's a filter that rapidly picks up on, say, strong AI, molecular nanotechnology, cryonics, the many-worlds interpretation, and so on.)  

The amusing thing about this and the other 2 indicators is that they are true about Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming skepticism. For example, it is well known that a significant proportion of physicists are skeptics and meet the other two indicators as well.

Nobel Prizes: 2014

First is the prize in physics.
Article: Nobel Prize for physics goes to inventors of low-energy LED light

Three researchers figured out how to make a blue LED. Red and green LED's have been around for a while. However, to make white light, a blue LED was needed.

Their discovery allowed the manufacture of true white LED bulbs producing a long-lasting and efficient light bulb. They are more expensive than the incandescent bulbs that they are replacing.

This Nobel prize is unusual, because it is in a practical, rather than a theoretical, field.

Then, the prize in medicine (3 takes on the prize)
Article: Nobel Prize for medicine goes to discoverers of brain’s 'inner GPS'

John Stein, an emeritus professor of physiology at Oxford said that, as with so many Nobel Prize winners, the scientists' discovery was at first ridiculed and dismissed, only later to get the recognition it warrants.

Other takes on the same prize-winning research.
Article: Nobel discovery opens window onto Alzheimer's disease

Article: Norwegian couple joins elite few awarded Nobel Prize together

Finally, the prize in chemistry.
Article: Nobel Prize for seeing how life works at molecular level

Scientists, who have been looking down microscopes since the 17th century, had long thought there was a limit to what could be seen. In 1873, Ernst Abbe stipulated that resolution could never be better than 0.2 micrometers, or around 500 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

But the three Nobel winners bypassed this limit by tagging objects with fluorescent markers and scanning them to build up a far more detailed images. Today, such "nanoscopy" is used widely to visualize the internal molecular machinery of cells.

Modern nanoscale microscopes can follow protein interactions involved in diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and cancer, or watch the transcription and translation of DNA to make proteins, or track the development of fertilized eggs as they divide and become embryos.

And now, Nobel laureates using their prestige for (mostly) political purposes. 
Article: Nobel laureates call for a revolutionary shift in how humans use resources

Every few years, the neo-Malthusians announce that the "end is near." It used to be religious cults that did this.

New theory could kill the multiverse

Article: Radical New Theory Could Kill the Multiverse Hypothesis

I cannot summarize this article like I normally do and quoting will not work well.

Physicists want to understand the universe: its elementary particles, the forces that control them, where the universe came from, what were the earliest moments of the universe like, etc.

Create one hypothesis to answer one set of questions and it causes problems with another set.

A group of physicist are exploring, in math and discussions, a new idea that, if I am reading this correctly, mass and length are not fundamental properties, but emergent ones. That is, they emerge from something called "scale-symmetry breaking." This explains some things, like "inflation" shortly after the big bang, but it has its own issues.

Sorry, I do not understand it.

What I like is the ramifications. All the new (and new-old) ways of looking at all the different connections.

And the sad death of the idea of multiverses.

Let us observe a moment of silence for what one person called the "death of thousand SF plotlines."