Monday, December 03, 2012

Eschaton 2012

Had a great time at the Eschaton 2012 conference in Ottawa this past weekend.

Larry Moran exposed the appalling stupidity of the Discovery Institute and everybody laughed at them.

P. Z. Myers gave a good introduction to incomplete lineage sorting and coalescent theory for a general audience, and he explained why it is not at all surprising that part of the gorilla genome is closer to humans and chimps than humans and chimps are to each other. Along the way, Casey Luskin was exposed as a fool or a liar. Everybody laughed again.

P. Z. Myers talked about Canada's "neighbor to the south", but little did he know that his hometown Morris, Minnesota is actually north of Ottawa!

And here's my talk on numerology, if you're interested.

Congratulations to the Watsons and to CFI for a well-run conference!

12 comments:

Curt Cameron said...

That first link to the DI about ,appalling stupidity, isn't attributed to a particular author. Judging by the writing style, I'd say it has to be Denyse O'Leary. Is she the worst writer in the world or what?

Takis Konstantopoulos said...

Nice talk on numerology--I just went through your slides. However, I wouldn't blame the disease entirely to the pythagoreans who, after all, did so because they were astonished by the fact that they could explain some things on the basis of reason alone. According to some scholars, Pythagoras (assuming he existed) forms the basis of mathematics.

Gerry Myerson said...

So, is 8 x 13^i + 183 ever a prime?

Jeffrey Shallit said...

Apparently yes! For i = 32020, although we haven't proved it rigorously.

Talarant said...

Nice piece on numerology. I'm curious about one sentence:
"There’s a deep reason behind this, which has to do with the “class number” of Q(√-163 )."
Why is the reason "deep", as opposed to the phenomenon being just a great coincidence?

Jeffrey Shallit said...

It's not a coincidence because the underlying theory predicts that if Q(√-n) has class number one, then e^π√n will be close to an integer, and even predicts how close. So there is a "deep" reason behind it.

Talarant said...

I guess I thinking that even though there's a theory, deep or not, behind the phenomenon, the phenomenon itself is at its base a coincidence. But group theory is not my thing, so I don't know for sure.

Jeffrey Shallit said...

Well, Talarant, if I just explained the theory behind it and you still think it's a coincidence, then there's not much more I can say, can I?

I guess "coincidence" means something different to you than it does to me.

Talarant said...

Well, you stated what the theory predicts; you didn't explain why the thing that is predicted is what it is. Of course, I don't expect you to. I don't think we have different definitions of "coincidence"; I think we're talking about different things.

Jeffrey Shallit said...

Talarant: Perhaps this will help, but if not, then I really don't understand your point.

Talarant said...

Thanks again. I noticed that the link refers to Eulers lucky numbers and includes the phrase "This coincidence is explained by complex multiplication and the q-expansion of the j-invariant."
I don't mean anything different from what the wiki page means.

Jeffrey Shallit said...

Sorry, Talarant, I thought you were being serious. I didn't realize you were joking.