In America, science is as polarized as politics. Corporate scientists, like at pharmaceutical companies, are criticized for working at unethical companies while academic scientists are criticized for 'chasing funding' rather than helping people.

Like many stereotypes, those images started with a kernel of truth.  So if you ask most people if the pharmaceutical industry can self-police its advertising policies, they will reply it is not possible, an outside force must do it.  But then if you ask people who are skeptical of medicine, they will say the FDA is also controlled by pharmaceutical companies. 
Most countries have an established system for self-regulation of pharmaceuticals advertising.

As a researcher in the fields of exact science and philosophy, I am obsessed with “truth”, which is a label of approval we assign to concepts that we judge to be consistent in a certain sense (Example 1 below). How we do that is thus important for the progress of these disciplines.

In watching a recent discussion about "free will", I was surprised as to how quickly the discussion got confused by conflating "free choice" with "free will".
[Day 2, Afternoon, First Session:  Free Will/Consciousness]

In this article, I will attempt to better define some of these concepts to illustrate why "free will" is an illusion.

To begin, let's define "choice" as an event that occurs in which a decision point is reached.  Regardless of how many apparent choices one has, they always reduce to one decision.  In addition, we may recognize that certain choices may eliminate other choices from further consideration or selection.

Those who know the meaning of ‘third culture’, know that since the days when it was lamented that the members of the intellectual elite would not even know the second law of thermodynamics, the land grab of science has been astounding and is indeed an ongoing coming to power by science. 

Philosopher Aaron Sloman claims that symbol grounding is impossible. I say it is possible, indeed necessary, for strong AI. Yet my own approach may be compatible with Sloman's.

Sloman equates "symbol grounding" with concept empiricism, thus rendering it impossible. However, I don't see the need to equate all symbol grounding to concept empiricism. And what Sloman calls "symbol tethering" may be what I call "symbol grounding," or at least a type of symbol grounding.

Firstly, as Sloman says about concept empiricism [1]:

Kant refuted this in 1781, roughly by arguing that experience without prior concepts (e.g. of space, time, ordering, causation) is impossible.

If 41 percent of the human genome is covered by longer DNA patents that often cover whole genes, and so many genes share similar sequences within their genetic structure that if all of the "short sequence" patents were allowed in aggregate they could account for 100 percent of the genome, then you don't own your genes.

Thomas Nagel wrote one lucky paper back almost half a century ago, titled “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?”.  That title went down so well, he has basically made a living from this alone ever since.  Recently, he went fully down the path trodden by many a noble prize winner: Pseudoscience!  I did also not believe this initially, but do read outtakes (e.g.

If you're a taxpayer in the UK, you get medical care for free - even if it's nothing at all.

A survey  conducted by the Universities of Oxford and Southampton found that 97% of UK doctors registered with the General Medical Council (GMC) have prescribed placebo treatments to patients at least once in their career. 

'Impure' placebos are treatments that are unproven, such as antibiotics for suspected viral infections, or more commonly non-essential physical examinations and blood tests performed to reassure patients. 'Pure' placebos are treatments such as sugar pills or saline injections which contain no active ingredients. 97% of doctors have used 'impure' placebo treatments while 12% have used 'pure' placebos.   

The title should be: Reformulating the Postmodern Core Insight versus Consistency as Absolute Meta-Truth:  Last Bastion against New Totalitarianism - or some such, however, the software does not support the length.  Anyway, let us start:

Can anything fundamental be described and what is the, potentially undesired, outcome if we should succeed?

 

Damon Linker at theweek.com laments yet another new atheist manifesto, this time by British “philosopher” Grayling with his forthcoming book “The God Argument”.  Damon is looking for me it seems, the title of his article asking:  Where are the honest atheists?

 

Damon’s article hits on many big names to get attention and fill volume; the gist is: