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Based on the Jesus and Mo post yesterday, which commented on a British man fined for burning a Qur’an, a reader sent me a commentary that he/she wrote fifteen years ago about burning a Koran, and revised yesterday.  Given the ideological climate, the reader of course wishes to remain anonymous, so I’ve changed the name. It’s published below with permission.

Burning My Koran

by Jean Smith (name changed to protect the writer)

September 24, 2010, revised June 11, 2025

The short version:

The sooner everybody in the world burns a Koran, the sooner we can get back to things that really matter.

The longer version:

I’m here in the back yard of my house. I am holding a copy of the Koran which I purchased with money I earned — I have the receipt. This is not a rare edition — it is a cheap paperback copy, one among millions in the world today. I’m about to douse it with charcoal lighting fluid and set it on fire.

If you’re the kind of person who takes violent exception to this sort of activity, please note that I am alone. There is no one here who is either encouraging or trying to stop me, so if you are thinking about taking bloody vengeance, be sure that it is directed only at me.

If this were a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, or a biography of Einstein, or a telephone directory, burning it might seem like an odd thing to do, but it would have no great importance to anyone. Since I am an atheist, and therefore I don’t believe in the god described in this book, or in any other god, then as far as I am concerned this book is like any other – nothing but a mass-produced assembly of paper with ink on it. So one less Koran in the world is inconsequential to me.

I am not burning this book for the purpose of offending any person or group of persons, so if you do take offense, you are missing my point. I am doing this because I can, in response to a recent news item: the police in a town in England arrested six people for burning a Koran and posting a video about it on YouTube. Their so-called “crime” was not that they violated a fire code, nor that they destroyed a book which they didn’t own — but “inciting racial hatred”.

From the news reports, it appears that these Koran burners are crude racists. In other words, ignorant, fearful people. These are not people I admire or feel much sympathy for. But if anyone feels “racial hatred” towards me, as a white atheist Westerner burning my own paper with ink on it, then that person is every bit as much a crude racist.

I have my own reason for burning this book — not to express racism (which I do not feel), nor contempt for the ideas set forth in the book (which I do feel), but to demonstrate that no one’s personal choice of religious rules and beliefs is in any way binding on me or anyone else. If you have a book that you hold to be sacred, then you probably won’t burn it. That’s easy. But that’s all you get.

This book is not a sacred account of the words of God. After all, there is no god. And what would a god need with a book anyway? Books are made by people, for people. Books are paper with ink on it, this particular one belongs to me, and I am going to burn it.

I take the matches from my pocket. Are you starting to feel a bit uneasy? But what if you knew that a whole shipping container of Korans was about to be washed overboard in the middle of the ocean — would the harm be thousands of times greater? Would that diminish Islam in any way? Would the world even notice? Of course not. It would merely be a monetary loss to the publisher, and a trivial amount of pollution. And if the loss of a shipping container full of Korans wouldn’t diminish the faith, how can the loss of a single copy?

Do you call me intolerant of others’ beliefs, a racist, a bigot? Now it is you who are offending me (Because I am tolerant. Just not respectful) – should you therefore be forbidden to say that I am intolerant? Of course not. In this society, you have a right to express yourself, just as I do. But if you have a right to say things that I find offensive, it necessarily follows that you can’t invent a right not to be offended yourself.

Time to strike the match.

One other thing. Those guys in England who burned a Koran were idiots. From the news reports, they even managed to set their gas can on fire in the process, so they’re lucky they didn’t hurt themselves. But despite their ineptitude, they managed to pull it off. If there really were a god, an omnipotent creator and destroyer of worlds, a timeless master of every atom of the universe, and if this god had the slightest concern about the book, couldn’t he have sent a thunderbolt, or a rain shower, or at least caused these guys to forget to bring matches? What does a supreme being have to worry about anyway? And if all you want is what He wants, what do you have to worry about?

Whoosh!

 

See new addendum below.

Reader Scott Ritchie photographed a bird in Costa Rica that I also saw there. It’s nearly invisible and was pointed out to us by a boatman. Scott’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them:

A bird of the day from Costa Rica. The Great Potoo [Nyctibius grandis]. They are “related” to frogmouths, and certainly resemble them in looks and behaviour. They sit motionless atop branches, resembling a dead stump. And they have a bizarre nighttime call, ghost-like. Once thought by locals to be a spirit or ghost. At night, they take large insects on the wing.

Can you spot the potoo (an immature Great Potoo) in the 1st picture? I love the old stump festooned with bromeliads and orchids. Atop this the potoo surveys his paddock kingdom.

JAC: This is the most cryptic bird I’ve ever seen.  Note that natural selection has molded not only its appearance but also its behavior: it sits motionless at the end of a branch, looking just like the end of the branch!

But wait! Scott sent two more pictures of a similar species with this caption:

For comparison, here are Papuan Frogmouths (Podargus papuensis) from Cairns (OLD photo). Note chick in first shot.  They like sitting IN the forest in contrast to the Potoo.

Surveying nearby galaxies in the process of merging with other galaxies, astronomers have identified massive, dense star factories, unlike any found in the Milky Way. The findings provide a rare glimpse into processes shaping galaxies in the very early universe and possibly the Milky Way a few billion years from now.

The human brain is extremely good at problem-solving, at least relatively speaking. Cognitive scientists have been exploring how, exactly, people approach and solve problems – what cognitive strategies do we use, and how optimal are they. A recent study extends this research and includes a comparison of human problem-solving to machine learning. Would an AI, which can find an optimal strategy, follow the same path as human solvers?

The study was specifically designed to look at two specific cognitive strategies, hierarchical thinking and counterfactual thinking. In order to do this they needed a problem that was complex enough to force people to use these strategies, but not so complex that it could not be quantified by the researchers. They developed a system by which a ball may take one of four paths, at random, through a maze. The ball is hidden from view to the subject, but there are auditory clues as to the path the ball is taking. The clues are not definitive so the subject has to gather information to build a prediction of the ball’s path.

What the researchers found is that subjects generally started with a hierarchical approach – this means they broke the problem down into simpler parts, such as which way the ball went at each decision point. Hierarchical reasoning is a general cognitive strategy we employ in many contexts. We do this whenever we break a problem down into smaller manageable components. This term more specifically refers to reasoning that starts with the general and then progressively hones in on the more detailed. So far, no surprise – subjects broke the complex problem of calculating the ball’s path into bite-sized pieces.

What happens, however, when their predictions go awry? They thought the ball was taking one path but then a new clue suggests is has been taking another. That is where they switch to counterfactual reasoning. This type of reasoning involves considering the alternative, in this case, what other path might be compatible with the evidence the subject has gathered so far. We engage in counterfactual reasoning whenever we consider other possibilities, which forces us to reinterpret our evidence and make new hypotheses. This is what subjects did, h0wever they did not do it every time. In order to engage in counterfactual reasoning in this task the subjects had to accurately remember the previous clues. If they thought they did have a good memory for prior clues, they shifted to counterfactual reasoning. If they did not trust their memory, then they didn’t.

What this means is that human reasoning follows certain algorithms that work, but they are constrained by the limits of human cognition. The hierarchical approach is constrained by the fact that we cannot follow four parallel paths simultaneously. Therefore, this strategy often fails. The counterfactual approach is primarily limited by memory for prior evidence, so this strategy will also sometimes fail. What people did is shift back and fourth between these strategies depending on which they thought would work best within their cognitive constraints. All of this is interesting, but not that surprising.

However, the researchers then designed a machine learning algorithm to perform the same task. The AI, without any cognitive constraints, was able to perform 100%. It was able to follow all potential paths of the ball and use the information to determine which path the ball took. But, the researchers were able to program in constraints, such as limiting its ability to process different bits of information in parallel, and throwing in some limitations to its memory. When the AI had all of the constraints that human brains have, it then followed the same strategy as people – shifting back and forth between different cognitive approaches.

The authors conclude that, essentially, evolution has accomplished the same thing that their AI programming has, finding the optimal problem-solving behavior within existing cognitive constraints. Our cognitive strategies are therefore both rational and optimal, but are limited by things like perception and memory. We have to make inferences from imperfect information.

Although the authors do not focus on this fact, this research is also in line with previous cognitive research in that, absent some overriding emotional motivation, people are generally rational by nature. We tend to follow rational heuristics and cognitive strategies. For example, people will use Bayesian analysis to update their conclusions in the face of new information. This all makes sense – why would evolution not optimize cognition and decision-making, given how critical such behavior is to our survival. What limits our ability to make decisions, reach conclusion, and solve problems is not reason but just the limitations of our cognitive ability.

However, we do have emotions. Emotions are also an evolved algorithm that acts as a short-cut to promote adaptive behavior. We feel fear in order to avoid danger. This is interesting because we can also calculate potential danger and make a rational decision about which behavioral path will limit that danger, so why do we need the fear (evolutionarily speaking)? I don’t know that we have a definitive experimental answer, but the simple answer is that it must be evolutionarily adaptive. We have multiple emotions that might affect our behavior in any given situation. We might be curious as to what that noise is, while we are engaged in searching for food to satisfy our hunger. But then we hear the sounds of a predator. So which emotion wins out – curiosity, hunger, or fear? At the same time we may be making calculations about probability and past experience, risk vs benefit. Maybe there is a predator, but if I can grab the food before it sees me it’s worth the risk. This is the system 1 vs system 2 thinking, analytical vs intuitive. We also shift back and forth between these strategies.

So why not, then, just trust evolution? Why not just go with the flow and do what comes naturally? Well, we may not like the trade-offs that are optimal for evolution. Evolutionary success does not care if we are happy or fulfilled, or that our society is fair, or that we protect the environment, only that we spread our genes to the next generation. We also evolved in an environment that is not the same as our current one (referring to every layer of our world, including technology, society, and culture). We are not necessarily adapted to the modern world, so our intuition may not serve us optimally.

What I think all this means is that we benefit from understanding our own decision-making and problem-solving. This includes identifying all the cognitive strategies we engage in, including their strengths and weaknesses, and also all the heuristics, biases, and emotional algorithms that affect our behavior and thinking. I also think we need to lean more heavily on analytical-rational thinking, because our old behavioral algorithms have not kept up with the modern world (evolution does not work that quickly). This, of course, is metacognition – thinking about thinking itself, and coming up with the best strategy for coming up with the best strategies. Such fun.

The post How Humans Solve Problems first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb showed how small, cheap drones can be smuggled into a country and used against expensive military hardware. Now, there are concerns that nations like the US and UK aren't ready to defend against a similar attack

All it takes is a coming-of-age consultancy and you, too, can morph from an average teenage Joe or Josephine to an instant "vaccine expert"

The post The Long Med Con: The Self-Styled Expertise and Expansive Invoices of Mark & David Geier first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

In a bold challenge to silicon s long-held dominance in electronics, Penn State researchers have built the world s first working CMOS computer entirely from atom-thin 2D materials. Using molybdenum disulfide and tungsten diselenide, they fabricated over 2,000 transistors capable of executing logic operations on a computer free of traditional silicon. While still in early stages, this breakthrough hints at an exciting future of slimmer, faster, and dramatically more energy-efficient electronics powered by materials just one atom thick.

A team of Danish and German scientists has launched a major project to create new technology that could form the foundation of the future quantum internet. They re using a rare element called erbium along with silicon chips like the ones in our phones to produce special particles of light for ultra-secure communication and powerful computing. With cutting-edge tools like lasers and nanotech, the researchers are working to make something that didn t seem possible just a few years ago: light that can both travel long distances and remember information.

NASA s CODEX experiment aboard the International Space Station is revealing the Sun like never before. Using advanced filters and a specialized coronagraph, CODEX has captured images showing that the solar wind streams of charged particles from the Sun is not a smooth, uniform flow but rather a turbulent, gusty outpouring of hot plasma. These groundbreaking observations will allow scientists to measure the speed and temperature of the solar wind with unprecedented detail, providing critical insights for space weather forecasting and understanding how solar activity impacts Earth and space technology.

Astronomers have discovered the site of a newly forming exoplanet, probably with several times the mass of Jupiter. The image was captured by ESO's Very Large Telescope, seeing the young star system 2MASS 1612 in infrared light. The disk extends about 130 astronomical units from the star, but you can see a bright ring followed by a gap at about 50 AU. It's believed there's a new planet forming in that gap, pulling in material from the disk of gas and dust around it.

As worldwide temperatures continue to rise and conventional solutions aren't working fast enough, governments may turn to geoengineering solutions. One idea is to place a giant sunshade somewhat like an umbrella between the Earth and the Sun to block some of the sunlight that reaches our planet. A new mission proposes sending an 81 m² sail to Earth-Sun L1 to measure the effect of blocking a tiny fraction of solar energy.

When the Sun rages and storms in Earth's direction, it changes our planet's atmosphere. The atmosphere puffs up, meaning satellites in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) meet more resistance. This resistance creates orbital decay, dragging satellites to lower altitudes. One researcher says we can change the design of satellites to decrease their susceptibility.

Gas clouds in the Milky Way's Galactic Center contain copious amounts of star-forming gas. But for some reason, few massive stars form there, even though similar gas clouds elsewhere in the galaxy easily form massive stars. The clouds also form fewer stars overall. Are they a new type of molecular cloud?

Two huge movie studios are suing Midjourney, claiming the firm’s AI has been trained on their copyrighted material – the entrance of the Hollywood giants into this legal fight could be a watershed moment for AI and copyright

One of the sad parts about having lived through the best era of rock music is watching the musicians drop away, one by one, mown down by the Grim Reaper. The latest musician to go, and a great one, was Brian Wilson, who just died at 82 (the date and cause of death wasn’t revealed).

His family announced the death on Instagram but did not say where or when he died, or state a cause. In early 2024, after the death of his wife, Melinda Wilson, business representatives for Mr. Wilson were granted a conservatorship by a California state judge, after they asserted that he had “a major neurocognitive disorder” and had been diagnosed with dementia.

I have to run, but I do want to list and put up versions of what I think are his best songs. The guy was a fricking musical genius. I’ll post five, but I haven’t had time to ponder, so this is a gut reaction.  Feel free to add your own choices.

Caroline No (1966), performed at the Royal Festival Hall in London, England.

Don’t Worry Baby (1964), performed below in Japan in 2012. I think this is the best of the “early” Beach Boys songs, though it preceded God Only Knows by just two years.

Darlin’ (1967). This live version is from 1980:

Wouldn’t it Be Nice? (1966). This version was performed in 2012.

And his best song, the one Paul McCartney called his favorite song: God Only Knows (1966).  This is a fantastic and complex song that took days to record (you can find takes on YouTube). What amazes me is that Wilson had it all in his head to begin with.

There are so many more good songs, but no time to write about them.  RIP, Brian.

Lagniappe: George Martin, a big fan, meets Wilson, who talks about how he writes his songs. I’ve watched this video a gazillion times.

Recent research delves into our issues with "seasonal body image dissatisfaction", says David Robson, who has advice on how to combat it during the summer months

In Kaliane Bradley's The Ministry of Time, a young woman must help a naval commander snatched from death in 1847 adapt to the 21st century. Time travel thriller meets romance in this excellent novel

Images from a jellyfish-breeding facility in Germany showcase the luminous invertebrates' environmental challenges and medical promise

The story of the birth and growth of nuclear science is rebalanced in Destroyer of Worlds, which gives due prominence to the role of women

The universe will still be there to marvel at, despite brutal cuts set to hit NASA and the National Science Foundation's budgets. But the damage to future research will be long-lasting, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein