Functional Evil and the Dysfunctional Brain/in /by

A bit of a neuroscience debate regarding where evil resides in the brain ran across a couple of publications this weekend. A bit in Slate regarding fMRIs ability to find evil acts in the brain pronounced:

The new neuroscience represents the latest chapter in a millennia-old and still divisive cultural conflict over the problem of evil, the latest chapter in the attempt by science to reduce evil to malfunction or dysfunction rather than malevolence. 

Will Wilkinson at the Big Think responded with a big simplistic tch-tch:

About evil specifically, it seems obvious that people with perfectly normal brains do evil all the time.

It seems inevitable that neuroscientists will eventually discover a pattern of neural activity that coincides with what we deem evil acts or evil thoughts.    If science can identify and address the neural activity that coincides with “evil”, it could also identify and intervene with the neural activity of the perception of “evil”.  Theoretically, evil, as we know it today, could go on and science could negate human capacity to perceive it just as easily as it could be used for a  prevention scenario a la “Minority Report”.

The question once again is:  how will science in the hands of humans be used and who will be using it?

Why I Write Science Fantasy These Days/in /by

Simply because there is math in everything and the more you see it, the more beautiful everything is.

A Solar Glimmer of Hope/in /by

It puts a little glimmer of hope in my heart to hear that the Department of Energy is following up on a potentially very good development in solar power. From the Boston Herald:

A Massachusetts company has won a conditional $150 million federal loan guarantee to develop a dramatically cheaper way to produce the silicon wafers that are the key component of solar panels.

The U.S. has a small but growing 5 to 7 percent market share of the world’s solar energy industry, according to a report for the Solar Energy Industries Association. China and Germany are leading players in the market.

The price of solar energy is a major competitive disadvantage, even compared to other renewable sources of electricity.

A U.S. Energy Information Administration projection of the cost of electricity from new plants coming on line in 2016 puts the cost of solar at 21.1 cents per kilowatt hour. It’s cheaper than offshore wind (24.3 cents) but much more expensive than land wind (9.6 cents) and conventional coal (9.5 cents), for instance.

But 1366 Technologies says its manufacturing process can chop the price of solar electricity down to about 4 cents per kilowatt hour by 2020.

It has been so disheartening and depressing to watch the market forces that be keep solar and wind priced prohibitively expensive by subsidizing oil, coal and gas and depriving clean energy of investment. If Germany can commit to getting rid of nuclear energy and China can take the lead in developing renewable, non-polluting energy, so can the U.S. It’s just a decision.