Thursday, 8 July 2010

A couple of BIG mistakes in James Martin's - The Meaning of the 21st Century

Page 178 he is describing the impact of nanotechnologes with Non-Human Like Intelligence.

Vast bodies of data with NHL intelligence tools may convert homeopathic medicine from what some view as a black art into an engineering-like discipline


This is a very worrying statement as it suggests that there is some basis for homeopathy beyond the placebo effect. This underlines the weakness of NHL intelligence and the Google idea of a world free from hypothesis. You end up with correlation and not causation. You need to couple this with deductions about mechanism.

Page 229 he is describing the need to prevent terrorism

/It will be essential that religions recognize the goodness in other religions and accept the necessity to live with one another (as they do in the First World). It's critical to prevent the perversion of religions with philosophies that promote suicide killers.


Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of the 7/7 attacks on the London Underground, by redicalised British muslims. My objection is to his use of the First World. The First World has had many religious wars and they have been quite recent (Ireland comes to mind). I would agree with everything else, it is just the bit in brackets which is first world arrogant.

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