Comments on: Intelligence ≠ Common Sense

By: whig

whig — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 06:24:29 +0000

You and I are sharing consciousness right now, by the fact that you are reading my words, and I am reading your words, and if they do not happen simultaneously in clock time there is a simultaneity of consciousness that transcends time. And if you don’t agree, then that is fine too. Namasté.

By: whig

whig — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 06:19:48 +0000

Watson is an asshole, I think we can all agree.

By: whig

whig — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 05:30:35 +0000

Link: FRANCIS CRICK, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced thedouble-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago. . . . The abrasive and unorthodox Crick and his brilliant American co-researcher James Watson famously celebrated their eureka moment in March 1953 by running from the now legendary Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge to the nearby Eagle pub, where they announced over pints of bitter that they had discovered the secret of life. . . . Crick, who died ten days ago, aged 88, later told a fellow scientist that he often used small doses of LSD then an experimental drug used in psychotherapy to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD, not the Eagle's warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize. . . .

By: whig

whig — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 05:25:32 +0000

Also, I understand that Crick first adduced the helical structure, not Rosalind Franklin, and perhaps the Nobel committee thought so too. He reportedly took LSD and visualized it.

By: whig

whig — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 05:23:11 +0000

Yes, it’s not a scientific statement I’m making, it is indeed a conjecture. It is Crick’s conjecture, however, and I happen to agree with it. It would certainly be a very different conversation than this one should become, but I assure you my position is more complex than argument from design.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 04:57:21 +0000

How unseemly is the whole controversy over whose discovery it was. How unlike Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, in which Darwin arranged to assure Wallace got coequal credit for the theory. I've read before about Rosalind Franklin, but unlike Wallace, she never really entered the public consciousness in relation to the DNA discoveries. Life truly isn't fair, and the damnable thing is that in this case the unfairness was avoidable. As to Watson, Badtux is absolutely right: he's been doing this for as long as I can remember. This incident just happened to be particularly egregious and embarrassing. Even brilliant people sometimes cannot overcome their pernicious cultural biases. Aside: whig, IMHO, whatever one's religious beliefs, the "argument from design" has some major flaws in the factual underpinnings alone. Another time, I'd be happy to discuss the matter with you. But we'd probably just come to the conclusion that we cannot agree on a definition of "consciousness," and hence your assertion comes down to a matter of religion, not science, because it is not testable. Interesting conjecture, though.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 03:09:08 +0000

I personally think that it’s pretty well established that Rosalind Franklin knew it was a double helix first, but that wasn’t what she was working on, and wanted to finish her work before getting into it.

Watson has been resting on his laurels for a very long time because of the nature of the research community, but he has made some contributions in his own field. The problem is that he believes his own press clippings and thinks he has a free pass to pontificate on everything, including pseudoscientific garbage like race.

It looks like he may have become too controversial to serve as director of anything by shooting his mouth off on a book tour. He should retire and raise flowers.

By: hipparchia

hipparchia — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 02:50:08 +0000

i [heart] badtux.

By: whig

whig — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 02:24:08 +0000

Crick has some very interesting thoughts on “directed panspermia” which would really twist the noodle of some so-called “intelligent design” theorists.

I happen to agree with Crick, too. I think life evolves consciously.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 01:49:39 +0000

This isn’t news for Watson. He has been making sexist and racist comments for literally decades, previously, for example, speculating on the “fact” that black men have “higher libidos”. Most folks in the field just shake their heads sadly whenever you mention Watson to them. And he didn’t even really discover the double helix. Maurice Wilkins invented the equipment used in the project and his co-worker, Rosalind Franklin, did all the legwork and discovered that it was a double helix (rather than a triple helix as had been thought at the time), and would have received the Nobel Prize along with Watson, Wilkins, and Crick if she’d been alive at the time of the award (unfortunately the Nobel is only awarded to living people). Watson is a zoologist, not a chemist, and hadn’t the foggiest notion how to sequence proteins, and has not himself done any science in the field for over forty years. He is a bureaucrat, not a scientist, nowdays, still trading on the lucky fact that he got ahold of Rosalind Franklin’s data without her permission in order to co-author that original report.