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There’s a simple way to test. Open a pre-2022 essay and copy-and-paste it into a new file.
At the risk of self-advertising:… You claim “AI is unusual in degree, not in kind” and “It is not clear…
Apropos of Sagar’s wish to foist the A.I. industry by its own petard, this article appeared in print in yesterday’s…
I teach both large courses, like Jurisprudence and Critical Legal Thinking (a.k.a Legal Argumentation), and small seminar-based courses at Edinburgh…
Surely there is an answer to the problem of AI cheating which averts the existential threat. . It’s not great,…
I’d like to pose a question. Let’s be pessimistic for the moment, and assume AI *does* destroy the university, at…
Hear hear
I'd be curious to hear from philosophers of biology and other biologically-informed readers about this New Yorker piece. Accurate? Misleading? Links to better or other discussions of epigenetics accessible to non-biologists welcome.
P.Z. Myers has a number of posts on epigenetics: A lengthy introduction is at
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/22/epigenetics/
A less long introduction with a discussion of typical misconceptions is at
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/11/18/the-magical-world-of-epigenetics/
Whether he is right, though, I cannot say.
Massimo Pigliucci (a biologist and philosopher) has commented on this many times. He rules "misleading".
https://philosophynow.org/issues/71/The_Evolution_of_Evolutionary_Theory
I read the article and it pretty much squared with what I remember from university biology: DNA methylation and histone modification control gene expression and these signals can be heritable but do not violate the Central Dogma in the way that neo-Lamarckism would allow. Mukherjee is a practicing physician, and the article warns against neo-Lamarckism. So everything seems fair here.
Another perspective, just out in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences:
http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.library.nd.edu/science/article/pii/S1369848616300206
Apologies; here's the working link:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369848616300206
Here's an interesting piece by Nautilus on epigenetics: http://nautil.us/blog/epigenetics-has-become-dangerously-fashionable
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