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This groove-heavy trio is bringing the dance party to the Bay Area

British trio Jungle brings its groove-heavy blend of funk, disco and neo-soul to the Greek Theatre in Berkeley behind its new album, “Sunshine.”

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Oct 4 • 7:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • sfchronicle.com
I have ALS. The promise and potential perils of AI are personal

OPINION: While concerns over AI safety are warranted, the technology could help us design bigger, smarter and more inclusive trials for people with diseases like ALS, Kevin J. Morrison writes.

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Oct 4 • 7:00 AM EDT • Science • sfchronicle.com
Blue Jays Receive Intriguing Take on Mets’ Francisco Lindor

The New York Mets and president of baseball operations David Stearns are back at the drawing board after missing the playoffs for the second straight season. Stearns has to find a way to improve the team and get it back to the postseason, and that means making tough decisions. Juan Soto is the face of […] The post Blue Jays Receive Intriguing Take on Mets’ Francisco Lindor appeared first on HEAVY.

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Oct 4 • 2:56 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Thousands run in 2026 Nike XC Twilight Invitational

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTWO/WAWV) — Thousands of runners from across the country participated in the 2026 Nike XC Twilight Invitational at Lavern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course. Terre Haute North’s Addyson Bautista took fourth place in the girls race. Terre Haute South’s Landon Crawn finished 17th in the boys race.

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Oct 3 • 11:42 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Can a civility pledge help address our toxic politics?

By Vince Bzdek It has been a tale of two cities in Colorado Springs in recent weeks. On Sept. 17, a nine-hour-long city council meeting on the merits of the Project Taurus data center devolved into violence when Colorado Springs Police brawled with several audience members after two men tried to shield a woman who […]

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Oct 3 • 8:04 PM EDT • Politics • gazette.com
Italy 1-1 France – Bastoni Delivers at Both Ends

Inter defender Alessandro Bastoni scored Italy’s equaliser in a 1-1 Nations League draw with France in Paris, then made a vital late intervention to help secure the result.According to Football Ital...

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Oct 3 • 7:35 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Boston Celtics Draw High Praise in Poll of Executives

Besides the Knicks, are the Celtics the team that's most likely to come out of the Eastern Conference?

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Oct 3 • 7:21 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Provocative, sexually suggestive ad by Hilton campaign condemned by political allies on the right

A provocative, sexually suggestive ad by GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is drawing heat from his fellow Republicans while drawing millions of viewers online. Two young women sit on a

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Oct 3 • 6:42 PM EDT • Politics • thederrick.com
UISD Gateway partnership expands employee health care access

UISD and Gateway Community Health Center signed an agreement expanding affordable health care access for employees through clinics, mobile units, pharmacy and preventive services.

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Oct 3 • 4:11 PM EDT • Health • lmtonline.com
School IB business management class: European carmakers warn EU-UK tariffs could be ‘catastrophic’

Growth and evolution

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Oct 3 • 11:46 AM EDT • Business • ft.com
School IB business management class: Cyber attack on UK’s largest airport group exposes data of 8.7mn customers

Crisis management

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Oct 3 • 11:45 AM EDT • Business • ft.com
Fast start for Texas Business Court fuels calls for statewide growth

With only five of the 11 divisions funded, West, East and South Texas are left without access to the business court.

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Oct 3 • 9:30 AM EDT • Business • dallasnews.com
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Rural MAHA followers say Trump health policies haven’t reached their communities

About half of rural voters identify with Make America Healthy Again, a sprawling political movement championed by the Trump administration.

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Oct 3 • 9:00 AM EDT • Health • dailykos.com
Our Best Stuff on Politics as the Midterms Draw Near

Could a blue wave prompt multiple impeachments?

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Oct 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Politics • thedispatch.com
Eagles legend Don Henley puts big money into turning Texas blue

The Texas native is top donor to several statewide Democratic candidates and a major player in super PACs helping James Talarico.

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Oct 3 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • houstonchronicle.com
Change to bankruptcy law may help speed up, give relief to small biz

Small businesses may get an easier path to restructure their debt faster while offering greater flexibility in negotiating with creditors under a change in law waiting President Trump's approval.

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Oct 3 • 7:00 AM EDT • Business • dallasnews.com
How Trump’s Deportation Policies Have Rocked a South Florida House Race

Representative María Elvira Salazar, a Republican, ran an ad criticizing the Trump administration. It may have jolted other Republicans — and drawn attention to her Democratic opponent.

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Oct 3 • 5:03 AM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com
Why Texas politicians survive scandals

Voters know Texas politicians have skeletons, but why doesn't it change anything?

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Oct 3 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • chron.com
Scientists are trying to decipher 'meow'

Cats, it turns out, are conversationalists. And good news for cat parents: Studies suggest they're often attempting to talk to us.

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Oct 3 • 1:22 AM EDT • Science • myjournalcourier.com
BC Roma taps former Mavs executive as president of global business

George Killebrew will bring his extensive sports business experience to Italian team BC Roma.

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Oct 2 • 8:07 PM EDT • Business • dallasnews.com
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Nightmare on Auburn Road to give downtown Utica businesses a boost

Nightmare on Auburn Road is expected to draw thousands of people Saturday for a day of Halloween activities.

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Oct 2 • 7:06 PM EDT • Business • wxyz.com
Apple says it will flag AI requests for Mac data after Meta's Muse draws complaints

Apple said on Friday that it plans to change its Mac operating system to make it more obvious when AI agents ask ​to access all of the data on Macs.

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Oct 2 • 6:42 PM EDT • Business • reuters.com
Rabiot impressed with Italy spirit and ‘extraordinary’ Donnarumma

Adrien Rabiot hails ‘extraordinary’ Gianluigi Donnarumma after France’s 1-1 draw with Italy and was impressed with Roberto Mancini’s side.The Azzurri had the best chances of the first half at ...

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Oct 2 • 5:55 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Disney cuts 300 workers, offers executives early retirement

Another round of job cuts comes as CEO Josh D'Amaro aims to consolidate the company's sprawling operations around a "One Disney" theme.

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Oct 2 • 5:25 PM EDT • Entertainment • latimes.com
The ‘WarGames’ Problem: Computer Science Has Long Understood What It Takes to Keep AI Under Control

The AI hacking events involving OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google underscore lessons that draw on years of computer science research.

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Oct 2 • 4:54 PM EDT • Science • singularityhub.com
Vote no on Prop 45 to Protect California’s environment and public health

This November, California voters will have a chance to push back against President Trump’s attacks on our clean air and water, public health, and open space by voting NO on Proposition 45. This deceptive ballot initiative is a 41-page recipe for pollution and sprawl. It would weaken California’s bedrock environmental law and make it easier to build data centers, warehouses and other polluting projects – with severely limited public oversight.

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Oct 2 • 4:47 PM EDT • Health • paloaltoonline.com
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Studying Science in an Anti-Scientific Time

This Chronicle Review Deep Cut was first published in 2025. By Julianne Werlin Thanks for reading The Chronicle Review! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe The last two decades have not been kind to science studies. Already bruised and battered by the “science wars” of the 1990s, by the 2000s sociologists of science — who had long argued that science had to be understood in its human context — were encountering the funhouse-mirror version of their own views in right-wing critiques of climate scientists. It was enough to give some prominent scholars pause. “Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies?” asked Bruno Latour, the most famous sociologist of science in the world, in 2003. “Should we apologize for having been wrong all along? Or should we rather bring the sword of criticism to criticism itself and do a bit of soul-searching here: What were we really after when we were so intent on showing the social construction of scientific facts?” In response, Latour proposed a change of method and attitude. Science studies, now chastened and contrite, would no longer seek to strip facts of their authority, but to enrich and enhance them. What this meant in practice was never fully clear. But his diagnosis of problems resonated, even if his solutions did not. Latour’s exercise in public hand-wringing signaled a shift in mood. By 2016, with the first election of Donald Trump, the idea that skepticism of science was a right-wing position, not a left-wing one, had become a commonplace, discussed eagerly in The New York Times. For liberals, vaccine denial during the Covid era and Trump’s second-term attacks on the funding of scientific research, covered extensively in these pages, added a new urgency to the defense of science on both practical and principled grounds. There was little appetite for a sociology or philosophy of science that emphasized the messiness and missteps of the scientific process rather than its integrity and triumphs. The distinguished historian of science Peter Dear’s new book, The World as We Know It: From Natural Philosophy to Modern Science (Princeton University Press, 2025), which seeks to tell the story of 18th- and 19th-century science for a general public, may seem comfortably remote from these bitter contests. In its 16 short chapters, Dear draws swift, sure sketches of major discoveries from Newton to Einstein, ably guiding the reader through debates on stellar nebulae, animal taxonomy, atomic chemistry, evolution, and other flashpoints in the history of science. But though a work of history, Dear’s book must still negotiate our polarized present. In a blurb on its back cover, the historian of biology Lynn K. Nyhart alludes to the “present moment, when scientific knowledge is being swamped by misinformation and its institutions are under siege.” Dear himself, in his conclusion, refers to the “yard signs” and “bumper stickers” that proclaim “Science Is Real.” One antidote to both anti-science propaganda and to reductive slogans in science’s defense is a robust history and philosophy of science: exactly what Dear’s scholarship has long offered. But his new book illustrates how difficult such work has become. Dear, an emeritus professor of history at Cornell University, is best known as a creative and philosophically minded historian of the Scientific Revolution. His edited volume The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument (1991) analyzed the rhetoric of Galileo’s thought experiments to brilliant effect. Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (1995) was a major contribution to the analysis of scientific experiments in early modern Europe and beyond, while Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge in Transition, 1500-1700 (2001), now in its third edition, remains one of the best overviews of the profound epistemological upheavals of 16th- and 17th-century science. But Dear has also ventured into later periods. Nearly two decades ago, in The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World (2006), he turned to the 18th and 19th centuries to sketch a history and theory of scientific knowledge. Aimed at a generalist audience, Dear’s simple prose belied serious philosophical ambitions. Science, Dear argued, has two aspects: “natural philosophy,” the quest to understand the true nature of the universe, and “instrumentality,” the applied skills and technologies that allow us to manipulate the world for human advantage. Both strands are ancient, but the innovation of the phenomenon we call “science” was to yoke them together. As Francis Bacon wrote, “Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known, the effect cannot be produced,” an insight typically abridged to “knowledge is power.” Or, in Bertrand Russell’s characteristically blunt phrase, science has two functions, “1. to enable us to know things, and 2., to enable us to do things.” So far, so conventional. But Dear took issue with this familiar story in one respect. Bacon’s formula implied that theory and practice could be fused in a single method. In fact, Dear argued, the quest to understand nature and the desire to manipulate it were coupled only loosely. They could come together, but they could also pull apart. Focusing on natural philosophy, the “knowing” half of the scientific circle, he used a series of case studies from cosmology, taxonomy, chemistry, electromagnetism, and quantum theory to show how theories changed over time, in dialogue with practice, but never reducible to it. Take the case of matter, the basic substrate of the physical world. In the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists not only disagreed about what it was, but also about how well it could be known. In 1789, the chemist Antoine Lavoisier dismissed speculation about the atomic composition of chemicals as “discussions entirely of a metaphysical nature,” as he sought to orient chemistry away from philosophical abstraction and toward laboratory results. But in the 19th century, atoms returned with a vengeance in the atomic chemistry of John Dalton, who wanted to explain the underlying structure of nature. It was not just that Dalton and Lavoisier had a different set of experimental results, or even a different theory, Dear showed. What counted as an explanation had changed. In arguing that scientific theories depended on their intelligibility to human beings with complex arrays of beliefs and commitments, Dear was in sympathy with science studies. Key figures such as the sociologist Steven Shapin emphasized the importance of psychological mechanisms like trust in the formation and acceptance of scientific ideas. But in focusing on the scientific pursuit of knowledge, not its politics or economics, Dear resisted the more cynical perspective of some of his colleagues. The Intelligibility of Nature strikes a very different note than Shapin’s collection of a few years later, Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as If It Was Produced by People With Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority (2010), to name just one example. Walking a very fine line, Dear depicted science as driven at once by complex social dynamics and by the intellectual power of real discoveries. It was a testament not only to his own acumen but also to the vitality of the field that he was able to do so. Nearly two decades later, The World as We Know It returns to the questions broached in The Intelligibility of Nature. Like Dear’s earlier study, it begins with the Newtonian cosmos and ends with debates between Einstein and Bohr on quantum physics. Beyond its terminal figures, many of the same characters appear in both studies, including the naturalists John Ray and the Comte de Buffon; the chemists Étienne François Geoffroy, Antoine Lavoisier, and John Dalton; as well as Charles Darwin and Michael Faraday, among others. Its subject is nearly identical: As in The Intelligibility of Nature, The World as We Know It considers natural philosophy as opposed to instrumentality, here defined as the “desire to create a picture of what the world is really like — the world as God knows it — rather than simply having instrumental or operational control over it.” The two books also overlap in insights — and sometimes even in language. The reader who has learned in The Intelligibility of Nature that Buffon’s method of classifying animals “reflected his belief in the importance of the senses and empiricism in learning about nature (a doctrine associated with Newton and the philosopher John Locke)” will experience a sense of déjà vu on reading, in The World as We Know It, that the classification “reflects Buffon’s commitment to the epistemological stance of Newton and his philosophical underlaborer John Locke, who stressed the role of the senses in creating natural knowledge.” Later in the passage, we read that, “because of its stress on understanding the ways of life of animals in their environments, Buffon’s approach could almost be labeled (anachronistically) as ‘ecological.’” And again, “an anachronistic way of putting it would be to say that Buffon recommends an ecological mode of understanding.” Likewise, in The Intelligibility of Nature we read of Dalton that he was initially drawn to meteorology, and that: He did a bit of experimental work on these things, especially having to do with the water-holding capacity of gases, but his real interest lay in understanding what, at an underlying natural-philosophical level, was really going on physically.” Whereas, in The World as We Know It: He did experimental work on these things, especially concerning the water-holding capacity of gases — although not at a very refined level quantitatively — but he was continually trying to develop a theoretical conception of what was happening physically. The final full chapter of each book closes on the same resigned note. Intelligibility: These days, most serious work on the natural philosophical underpinnings and implications of quantum mechanics is performed not by physicists but by philosophers of science. Among scientific practitioners themselves, Bohr’s attempt to use instrumentality as sufficient grounds for a respectable science has met with a high degree of success. And again, in The World as We Know It: Bohr’s and Einstein’s concerns are now questions that are mostly discussed by philosophers of science rather than by physicists themselves. The marginalization of these sorts of questions amounts to the demise of natural philosophy, at least in physics, in the 20th century. Quantum mechanics “works,” and that’s good enough for most scientists who encounter it. Examples could be multiplied. When handling the same subject matter, some echoes are inevitable. Scholars should not feel that because they have written “Isaac Newton died in 1727” in one book, in the next they must describe him as perishing, expiring, or meeting his maker. But the repetitions of language and arguments (not to mention six reproduced images) threaded throughout The World as We Know It are more extensive than that. They should have been caught by Princeton University Press or its reviewers, and revised. Because the two books have so much in common, it is easy to see where they diverge. The World as We Know It is a less theoretical work than its predecessor. The sociology of knowledge that organized The Intelligibility of Nature has been reduced in scale and folded into readings and examples. The taut interplay between history and theory, which gave the earlier study so much interest, is there, but it is subtle. In the earlier book, the case studies demonstrated theoretical claims about the character and development of science. In the later work, each narrative of discovery is an end in itself. Insights emerge from the history, but they do not control the organization of the study. With the theory muted, it can be hard to understand the logic uniting Dear’s sprawling history of more than two centuries of scientific knowledge. The 16 brisk chapters cover an enormous amount of material. But the closer the volume edges to comprehensiveness, the more obvious the missing elements become. A chapter on “Institutions and Pedagogy,” describing the birth of the research university, illustrates the problem. Inserted roughly halfway through the book, the unnumbered chapter is designed as an “entr’acte,” in acknowledgement that it does not fit the study’s organization around scientific discoveries. Yet as Dear is well aware, no general history of the development of modern science can bracket its 19th-century institutionalization and professionalization. It was the 19th-century university, after all, that gave us the “scientist,” a term coined by the Cambridge philosopher William Whewell. Dear’s history of scientific discoveries implies a wider social and institutional history, but it remains largely subterranean, only occasionally extruded under the pressure of the narrative. It must be said that the balance is not all on the side of the earlier study. There are some advantages to the more historical, less theoretical organization of The World as We Know It. Dear’s accounts of paradigm shifts are remarkably lucid, no small accomplishment given that they span fields and centuries. He makes excellent use of the wealth of new scholarship on Darwin and his influences, to which he has himself contributed. It is satisfying to see puzzle pieces from Buffon’s natural history, Georges Cuvier’s animal taxonomy, Thomas Robert Malthus’s demography, and Charles Lyell’s geology recombined seamlessly in the Darwinian jigsaw. Likewise, Dear’s discussion of stellar nebulae, divided between chapters two and 15, shows vividly how Newton, Kant, Herschel, and Hubble reimagined insights and observations as they sought to discover whether the diffuse light that filtered through early telescopes was a glowing, gaseous substance or discrete but distant stars. Yet despite such pleasures, the book remains a more modest work than The Intelligibility of Nature. Dear has clearly not changed his views about the history of science. But in the two decades that have elapsed, the discipline and the world around it have changed, making it harder to write a sociologically and philosophically ambitious history of science for the general reader. That is a shame, because in the age of Silicon Valley and biotechnology, both the reciprocity and the tensions Dear identified between the epistemological and instrumental ambitions of science are more evident than ever. In recent years, some of the most exciting new books on the history of science in early modernity have focused precisely on this pressure point. Important studies such as Pamela H. Smith’s From Lived Experience to the Written Word (2022), James Poskett’s Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science (2022), and Vera Keller’s The Interlopers: Early Stuart Projects and the Undisciplining of Knowledge (2023) all shed new light on how early modern science negotiated the relationship between its instrumental and epistemological ambitions, or in Russell’s phrase, knowing and doing. There is every opportunity for a philosophically informed approach to draw new insights from this wealth of material. Dear, unfortunately, has not done so in The World as We Know It. But for future scholars of the history of science, his body of work over nearly four decades may provide just the model. Julianne Werlin is an associate professor of English at Duke University. Thanks for reading The Chronicle Review! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe

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Oct 2 • 2:52 PM EDT • Science • chronicleofhighereducation.substack.com
Bishop’s computer science chair says AI is eliminating ‘grunt work’ and reshaping digital jobs

Dr. Russell Butler, chair of Bishop’s University’s Department of Computer Science, says artificial intelligence is increasingly taking over routine digital “grunt work,” changing the skills students and workers may need in the years ahead. Photo courtesy of Bishop’s University. Click here to read our platform! Get local news like this every morning. Subscribe free below. Subscribe Pulse Newsroom Artificial intelligence is already taking over some of the routine digital work once performed by entry-level employees, according to Bishop’s University Computer Science chair Dr. Russell Butler — a shift he believes will make expertise, judgement and the ability to evaluate AI-generated work increasingly important. Butler described the change as automation reaching what he calls the “bottom of the cognitive pyramid” during an interview with The Pulse about AI, university education and the future of digital work. His argument is not that humans are disappearing from the workplace. Instead, he sees their role changing as AI becomes capable of handling more of the repetitive tasks involved in computer-based work. “Everything’s converging on just AI basically doing all the grunt work,” Butler said. The bottom of the cognitive pyramid Butler is from Lennoxville, completed his undergraduate studies at Bishop’s and later earned his PhD at the Université de Sherbrooke. He joined Bishop’s in 2019 and now chairs its Department of Computer Science. He uses AI in research, teaching and other creative work, and said the technology is increasingly capable of handling routine digital tasks that once required substantial human time. “You’ve got the grunt work, like moving things around in Excel, doing basic programming tasks,” Butler said. “That’s like the bottom grunt work that the entry-level worker would have done two or three years ago.” Butler went further, saying in his view that much of this type of work has already been absorbed by AI tools. He connected that change to a shift he sees taking place in computer science, where entry-level roles have declined while experienced workers can use AI to increase what they can produce. “A senior developer now has access to essentially an unlimited amount of junior developers on demand,” Butler said. He was describing AI systems metaphorically, not literal employees. His point was that one experienced developer can now ask AI tools to produce code or other technical work that might previously have been assigned to more junior workers. That raises a broader question for universities and employers. If some of the simpler work traditionally given to newcomers can now be done by machines, how do people gain the experience needed to become senior workers themselves? Students doing work that once required years of programming Butler said he is already seeing the change inside his classroom. He created a Bishop’s course called CS208, Coding in Plain English, to show students — including those without traditional programming backgrounds — what they can accomplish using AI. Some come from disciplines such as psychology or neuroscience with no previous programming experience. “What I’m finding is that students who have zero programming experience, they come in from another discipline like psychology or neuroscience or something, they are now able to get up and running with real data sets,” Butler said. Butler’s own doctoral work involved neuroimaging, and he said he has assigned students work he considers comparable to the kinds of analysis he performed during his PhD. He described giving students a real dataset, an expected result and instructions to use AI to complete the analysis. Butler said those students have been able to carry out work at a level he associates with tasks he once performed after years of programming experience. That does not mean a student using AI instantly acquires the same knowledge as an experienced computer scientist. But Butler sees it as evidence that AI can dramatically lower the technical barrier between having a problem to solve and producing a working result. The role of the person using the system then changes. They need to know what to ask for, understand enough about the subject to judge the answer and take responsibility for what is ultimately produced. What about AI hallucinations? One persistent concern surrounding generative AI is hallucination — when a system produces information that sounds convincing but is false or unsupported. Butler said that problem has improved substantially in newer systems and is not as severe as it was with earlier models. He pointed in particular to newer AI systems’ ability to search the web, consult scientific databases and return source links rather than simply generating a citation from their internal model. Butler nevertheless said users should verify what AI produces. “You should verify,” he said while discussing citations generated with AI. His position is that hallucinations have become less common in the systems he uses, not that incorrect AI output is impossible. Human checking remains part of the process. Hours of work compressed Butler offered another example from his administrative work at Bishop’s. The university has been comparing CEGEP courses with first-year Bishop’s courses to determine where students may qualify for advanced standing. Traditionally, Butler said, that means reviewing two sets of course descriptions and manually matching one institution’s courses with another’s. As department chair, that could require hours of reading and comparison. He said AI can now be given both sets of material and asked to generate an initial mapping automatically. “It saves me hours and hours of work,” Butler said. Butler said the AI-generated mapping can also produce a better result than he would produce himself. He sees similar opportunities in businesses. A company may receive specifications, drawings, emails or other digital material from customers and then have employees convert that information into an internal format before anything can be manufactured or delivered. AI can increasingly perform parts of that intermediate processing. In Butler’s view, the employee does not necessarily disappear. Instead, the job becomes more about checking the result. “The human is still there,” he said. Judgement could become more valuable That change is central to Butler’s view of where digital work may be headed. If AI can produce a first draft, write basic code, compare documents or process large amounts of information, he argues that knowledge and judgement become increasingly important. “The real scarce resource going forward is going to be domain knowledge, expertise, and… credentials, authority, the ability to work with other people,” Butler said. He is therefore encouraging students not only to learn AI tools but also to broaden their education. He mentioned acting, fine art and photography as examples of courses that can help develop what he described as taste and intuition — the ability to recognize what is good, what is not and what should be changed. “And that’s the skill that they need now because the grunt work has been automated and now it’s about evaluating what the AI produces and telling it how to improve or expand the output,” Butler said. That does not remove the need for technical knowledge. Butler’s argument is that the emphasis may shift away from manually completing every step of a task and toward directing, checking and improving work produced with AI assistance. He also stressed that humans remain responsible for final decisions. “At the end of the day, the human has to make the final call,” Butler said, pointing to the question of accountability. Physical work may be different Butler draws a distinction between digital work and jobs requiring people to manipulate the physical world. He expects AI to continue advancing quickly in tasks performed almost entirely on computers. He is more cautious about claims that humanoid robots will soon be able to replace workers such as plumbers or electricians. Butler said those trades would not be replaced “anytime soon” in his view and described some current robotics demonstrations as overhyped. He described the situation as counterintuitive. “It’s almost like we solved the highest level first,” he said, contrasting advances in digital AI with the harder problem of building robots capable of operating reliably in the physical world. Butler’s argument is that some digital occupations could face automation sooner than trades requiring complex physical work. The wider AI shift in the Townships Butler’s comments come as local institutions are increasingly grappling with how AI should be used. The federal government recently announced up to $162 million over five years for 10,000 AI-related placements through Mitacs. The Université de Sherbrooke told The Pulse that the number of its collaborative research and innovation projects supported through Mitacs has approximately doubled since 2018-19, while the number of placements has approximately tripled. UdeS also said it already has projects involving both AI adoption and the application of AI to other fields. At Bishop’s, Butler said part of his role involves building the Computer Science department’s local presence, connecting students with regional partners and strengthening relationships with the Sherbrooke technology ecosystem. Those developments put universities in a difficult position. They have to prepare students to use the tools employers increasingly have available while also making sure graduates understand enough to recognize when those tools are wrong, incomplete or being applied to the wrong problem. The risk of losing human skills Butler does not see AI as risk-free. Later in the interview, he raised a separate concern: as AI becomes better at reading, writing, programming and other cognitive tasks, people could lose some of the underlying skills that historically helped produce new ideas. “The other danger is that we’re going to lose the human skills,” Butler said. He specifically mentioned reading and writing and argued that people could lose some of the lower-level understanding that contributes to breakthroughs. Butler said AI systems are based on existing human knowledge and argued that they become much more powerful when paired with a capable person. That tension runs through his view of the technology. AI can remove hours of routine work. It can allow beginners to perform tasks that once required substantial technical training. It can give experienced workers significant leverage. But the more capable the technology becomes, the more important it may be for people to develop the judgement needed to decide what should be done in the first place. For Butler, that is where education may have to change. Students still need to understand their field. They still need to know when something is wrong. And they still need to be able to make the final decision. But if AI increasingly handles the bottom of the cognitive pyramid, the value of a worker may depend less on how quickly they can perform the grunt work and more on whether they understand what the work is supposed to accomplish. Don’t miss the next story that affects your community. Join thousands of readers getting The Pulse every morning—plus breaking news alerts when it matters most. If you value this kind of local journalism, consider supporting it. Subscribe, share and like! Subscribe Share

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Oct 2 • 1:57 PM EDT • Science • publisherpt.substack.com
JB MDL Leaders Briefs Businesses on Mission, Local Economic Impact

Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst leaders provided local business and government leaders with an overview of the sprawling military installation’s role in

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Oct 2 • 1:57 PM EDT • Business • njbia.org
Labor unions, business groups stand ready to fight Mayor Johnson’s data center moratorium

Mayor of Chicago Brandon Johnson (Getty)Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s headline-grabbing proposal to slap a one-year moratorium on data center construction is drawing the ire of members of the local ...

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Oct 2 • 1:00 PM EDT • Business • yahoo.com
UT launches $25M healthcare AI initiative with few public details

Experts say only a few university health systems have launched such comprehensive plans around AI, with the potential to impact millions of patients, students and faculty.

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Oct 2 • 11:00 AM EDT • Health • houstonchronicle.com
Sophie Cunningham’s playoff presence draws attention beyond the court

Sophie Cunningham turned heads before the WNBA playoffs with a striking all-white look featuring a mini dress, dark sunglasses and strappy heels. The Indiana Fever guard’s fashion statement added another memorable moment to her growing reputation for standout pregame tunnel style.

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Oct 2 • 10:45 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
We Fest announces 2027 summer lineup

MINNEAPOLIS — One longtime Nashville favorite, one newly famous TV star and one of country music’s hottest outlier bands top the decidedly mixed lineup for We Fest 2027. Tim McGraw,

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Oct 2 • 10:44 AM EDT • Entertainment • recorderonline.com
Rural MAHA followers say Trump health policies haven't reached their communities

About half of rural voters identify with Make America Healthy Again, a sprawling political movement championed by the Trump administration, but most said President Donald Trump’s healthcare policies have not benefited their communities, according to a new poll from The Associated Press in partnership with KFF.

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Oct 2 • 9:58 AM EDT • Health • mmm-online.com
White nationalism’s appeal runs deeper than partisan politics

Nearly 1 in 7 white men under 30 in the US support white nationalism, and partisanship alone doesn’t explain who’s drawn to it.

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Oct 2 • 9:04 AM EDT • Politics • gjsentinel.com
White nationalism’s appeal runs deeper than partisan politics

Nearly 1 in 7 white men under 30 in the US support white nationalism, and partisanship alone doesn’t explain who’s drawn to it.

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Oct 2 • 9:04 AM EDT • Politics • djournal.com
White nationalism’s appeal runs deeper than partisan politics

Nearly 1 in 7 white men under 30 in the US support white nationalism, and partisanship alone doesn’t explain who’s drawn to it.

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Oct 2 • 9:04 AM EDT • Politics • kten.com
White nationalism’s appeal runs deeper than partisan politics

Nearly 1 in 7 white men under 30 in the US support white nationalism, and partisanship alone doesn’t explain who’s drawn to it.

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Oct 2 • 9:04 AM EDT • Politics • cbs19news.com
White nationalism’s appeal runs deeper than partisan politics

Nearly 1 in 7 white men under 30 in the US support white nationalism, and partisanship alone doesn’t explain who’s drawn to it.

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Oct 2 • 8:55 AM EDT • Politics • theconversation.com
Celebrity Traitors Season 2 Premiere Draws Record UK Audience of About 9 Million

The BBC's Celebrity Traitors returned Thursday with a record UK audience for a Traitors premiere, with viewership peaking at 9 million.

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Oct 2 • 7:52 AM EDT • Entertainment • northeasttimes.com
Stand-off over Protestant march pushes Northern Ireland politics to the brink

Crisis over attempted march down Catholic road may hasten reform of Stormont’s political institutions

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Oct 2 • 7:48 AM EDT • Politics • ft.com
Do dying people know the end is near? This is what science has discovered

People who work around death often describe an unsettling phenomenon: some dying patients seem to know the end is approaching before anyone explicitly tells them. They may start saying goodbye, giving instructions, withdrawing from ordinary routines or talking about deceased relatives. Research suggests that awareness of approaching death does occur in many patients—but it is far from universal, and scientists still cannot explain every way that awareness appears. Some people remain mentally cle

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Oct 2 • 7:43 AM EDT • Science • health.yahoo.com
Amendment 86 | Redrawing political maps in ‘off cycles’

Colorado voters will decide in November whether to put new constitutional limits on how and when the state’s congressional districts can be redrawn.

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Oct 2 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • denvergazette.com
Labor ready to block Johnson’s data center moratorium

The mayor’s proposed yearlong pause is drawing opposition from the same powerful coalition that helped stall earlier pieces of his environmental agenda.

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Oct 2 • 7:00 AM EDT • Business • chicagobusiness.com
Labor ready to block Johnson’s data center moratorium

The mayor’s proposed yearlong pause is drawing opposition from the same powerful coalition that helped stall earlier pieces of his environmental agenda.

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Oct 2 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • chicagobusiness.com
Amendment 86 | Redrawing political maps in ‘off cycles’

Colorado voters will decide in November whether to put new constitutional limits on how and when the state’s congressional districts can be redrawn.

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Oct 2 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • coloradopolitics.com
Greece Manager Gives Christos Tzolis Injury Update After Netherlands Draw

Ivan Jovanovic hopes Christos Tzolis suffered only a temporary problem after the Arsenal winger was forced off during Greece's draw with the Netherlands.

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Oct 2 • 3:40 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
S.F. House candidates spar over housing, AI in Chronicle-KQED debate

On most issues, the two Democrats vying to replace Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi articulated similar policy stances.

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Oct 2 • 12:49 AM EDT • Politics • sfchronicle.com
Brewer nets first goal as Cyclone in draw

Junior midfielder Breezie Brewer, a transfer from Alabama, scored her first goal as a Cyclone in a 1-1 draw with Utah Thursday night at the Cyclones Sports Complex. Both Iowa State and Utah now have a 4-5-3 record. In Big 12 play, the Cyclones are 0-3-1 and the Utes are 1-2-1. Shannon Davidson got an […]

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Oct 1 • 9:20 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Making Sense of Gen Z Politics: How Young America Thinks

The politics of Gen Z are drastically different from all other generations, and those from older age groups have a hard time understanding what changed. The distinction: Gen Z’s divide between left and right is no longer drawn along economic differences, but rather differences in national identity. The four

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Oct 1 • 8:56 PM EDT • Politics • stanfordreview.org
Orlando Magic's Nikola Vučević Draws Flattering Comparison for Sean Sweeney

The veteran center praises new head coach Sean Sweeney’s collaborative style, drawing a high-stakes parallel to the coach who sparked the best seasons of his storied career.

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Oct 1 • 5:33 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
San Juan Songwriters Festival draws accomplished artists for two days of entertainment

Nine local and regional singer/songwriters joined 15 national artists

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Oct 1 • 2:50 PM EDT • Entertainment • durangoherald.com
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Your voice may reveal how fast you're aging, new AI 'speech clock' suggests

A new machine-learning "speech clock" estimates a person's chronological age from their speech, drawing links between older-sounding speech and cognitive decline.

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Oct 1 • 2:15 PM EDT • Science • livescience.com
Confirmed lineups: Germany vs Serbia

After drawing 1-1 with the Netherlands and losing 0-1 to Greece, Germany are still searching for their first win under Jürgen Klopp heading into Thursday night's 2026/27 UEFA Nations League home game...

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Oct 1 • 1:39 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Sandow Birk’s San Francisco show takes on Trump and U.S. history

Sandow Birk’s work spans 35 years of painting, prints and political satire, including new Trump-inspired pieces.

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Oct 1 • 1:00 PM EDT • Politics • sfchronicle.com
10 Democrat-held House seats Republicans could flip to save their majority

President Donald Trump's margins in redrawn districts fuel Republican hopes of flipping 10 Democratic House seats in the battle for Congress.

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Oct 1 • 12:32 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
Christian Science practitioner Emra Farkas to speak in Midland

Farkas has been a Christian Science practitioner for many years, helping people on a daily basis through this scientific approach to prayer.

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Oct 1 • 12:05 PM EDT • Science • ourmidland.com
At Paris Fashion Week, Chloé bets on stars, lingerie and lace in a tougher luxury market

Chloé's latest show at Paris Fashion Week features lingerie, lace and fishermen’s coats, drawing attention amid a challenging time for luxury brands | WWJ Newsradio 950

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Oct 1 • 11:03 AM EDT • Entertainment • audacy.com
Ken Hersh: It’s time for Dallas' mayor to conduct business

Dallas has to have better governance to succeed. Let's start with changing the power of the mayor.

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Oct 1 • 10:44 AM EDT • Business • dallasnews.com
NFL pregame shows face growing criticism from fans in 2026

rafapress/Depositphotos Fans react to changing NFL pregame shows NFL pregame coverage is drawing fresh attention during the 2026 season. Familiar formats and longtime personalities are facing criticism from some viewers. FOX, ESPN, CBS, and Prime Video have also made lineup changes across their NFL coverage. Major programs continue to attract large audiences, adding another layer…

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Oct 1 • 10:15 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Crewe run frustrating but squad is confident

Crewe Alexandra midfielder Joe White says the run of six draws in a row is frustrating but has given them confidence they are hard to beat.

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Oct 1 • 8:21 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
New “plant armor” more than triples strawberry yields

A new protective fabric boosted strawberry yields by as much as 3.56 times while blocking insects and still allowing sunlight, rain, and airflow to reach the plants. Originally inspired by research on military clothing, Plant Armor could also help farms reduce pesticide and water use.

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Oct 1 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Good science requires much more than evidence

Empiricists believe that scientific theories are true only if they make correct empirical predictions: if we can't verify these predictions, then there is no reason to expect that they tell us anything about reality. However, Professor of Philosophy at King's College David Kyle Johnson argues that this is mistaken. In response to Bas van Fraassen, who has written on this subject for the IAI, he argues that we have many reasons for believing a theory to be true, such as it being parsimonious and having large scope — qualities which have been used throughout the history of science as criteria for judging theories. In 2024, Princeton philosopher Bas van Fraassen wrote a short article for IAI News entitled “Science Does not Describe Reality: The Limits and Benefits of Explanation.” At the time, I was working on two projects (a science book and a Great Course) that, when completed, would (among other things) defend science’s ability to describe reality. I wanted to write a response to van Fraassen, but the projects demanded too much of my attention. But now that those projects are complete, I am in a position to explain the objections to van Fraassen’s thesis. Summarizing van Fraassen’s argumentIn a nutshell, his argument is this: What scientists do is make predictions based on theories and then invite others to test to see whether those predictions are borne out. “If theory T is right, result R should happen in experimental condition C.” Many think that running an experiment that shows that R happens in condition C is proof that theory T is true (and should be believed). But, van Fraassen argues, that R happened in condition C is only a reason to think that R happens in condition C. That’s the only observable, or empirical, result we can actually see, so that is all that we are really justified in believing. (The underlying theory that made that prediction still may or may not be true.) That is why he calls those who accept his position “empiricists.”Before I explain what is wrong with this position, let me explain what it gets right. What van Fraassen Gets RightFirst, a theory correctly predicting the results of an experiment is not, strictly speaking, “proof” that the theory is correct. The basic line of reasoning is this:If the theory T is true, result R should happen. Result R did happen. Thus, theory T is true.In other words:“If T then R. R. Thus, T.”This is a deductively invalid, fallacious mode of reasoning, called “affirming the consequent.” Those premises do not guarantee that the conclusion follows. “If I am in Pennsylvania, then I am in the USA. I am in the USA. Thus, I am in Pennsylvania.” Clearly that argument doesn’t guarantee its conclusion; neither does the above argument.However, science is not a deductive method of reasoning; it is an inductive one. And inductive arguments merely try to raise the probability of their conclusion, not “prove” them for certain. Thus, the fact that an experimental result doesn’t prove a theory is true is irrelevant; it’s not supposed to. That is not what scientific reasoning is about.___If the hypothesis that something exists clearly provides the best explanation for what we can observe, then the belief that it exists is what is rational.___Second, it’s also true that a single experimental result doesn’t provide enough justification to believe that a theory is true. Scientists do not come to a consensus about whether a theory is true by looking at a single experiment; they look at all the evidence to determine where the preponderance of evidence points. The mere fact that I am in the USA raises the probability that I am in Pennsylvania, but not nearly enough to conclude that I am in Pennsylvania. However, if I am also regularly encountering people wearing Eagles and Phillies hats and seeing advertisements for Founding Father tours, I probably am. In the same way, a theory successfully predicting the outcome of one experiment is not enough to conclude that it is true; but if a theory makes a wide variety of predictions that are all vindicated by multiple experiments, performed by many different groups and people, all actively trying to prove the theory false (which is what good scientific experiments are designed to do)—that is a good reason to conclude that the theory is true. In other words, if you repeatedly try to prove something false but can’t, that is a very good indication that it isn’t. The problem of underdeterminationIn reply, those whom van Fraassen calls “empiricists” often point to the “problem of underdetermination.” For any given theory that makes successful predictions about what happens in experimental conditions, there are countless other possible theories that make exactly the same predictions—and since they do, the experimental evidence in question is just as much reason to accept any of those theories as it is to accept our original one. Thus, the argument goes, we have no way of knowing whether our original theory is true, or one of the other “predictively equivalent” theories is true. SUGGESTED VIEWING How Occam's Razor changed the world With Johnjoe McFadden As an example of underdetermination, philosophers often offer this example. The evidence of fossils seems to provide reason to conclude that the universe is quite old; ancient fossils are what the “ancient universe” hypothesis predicts. But it’s also possible that God created an ancient-looking universe 200 years ago, complete with a “fake” fossil record for us to find, to make it look old. The existence of fossils is what that theory predicts too. So, the argument goes, the fossil record can’t be used as evidence that the universe is ancient; the fossil record supports the “200-year-old ancient-looking universe” theory just as much. The problem of underdetermination points out that, for any theory with supporting evidence, we could invent another completely different theory that predicts exactly the same evidence, and thus undermine that evidence’s ability to support the original theory.But this “argument from underdetermination” betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what scientific reasoning is and how it works. To explain, let me use another rather strange (but very real and commonly discussed) philosophical thought experiment called “The Grue Problem.” The “Grue” ProblemSuppose I want to know what color emeralds are, so I observe a few, see that they all appear green, and form the theory that “all emeralds are green.” I thus predict that the next 100 emeralds I find will also appear to be green. And let’s say that happens, and so I thus conclude that my theory that all emeralds are green is true. Now, one might rightly point out that I don’t know for sure that all emeralds are green—I have not seen them all. Maybe some I haven’t found yet are blue. Fair enough. After all, we used to think that all swans were white, until we found some black ones. But let’s say that I go on a quest and collect every emerald in the universe—and, for the sake of the argument, let’s say I can do this, and can even know that I have every one of them. So, I collect them all, look at them all, and verify that they all appear green. Can’t I now rightly conclude that all emeralds are green?Inspired by the problem of underdetermination, a friend might argue that I cannot.Sure, they all appear green now—but there could be another kind of color called “grue.” Something is grue if it is green up to a certain point in time, but then spontaneously turns blue. And there could be an infinite number of “shades” of grue. Something that is one shade of grue will turn blue at noon today, but something that is another shade of grue will turn blue at noon tomorrow, etc. So yes, the emeralds appear green now; and since they haven’t turned blue yet, they are not some “past” shade of grue. But they might be some “future” shade of grue (e.g., they may turn blue at noon tomorrow). And since all future shades of grue are consistent with “being green up to this point in time,” the evidence you have is completely consistent with the notion that all emeralds are some future shade of grue, rather than green. Indeed, that they would appear green until now is what the “some future shade of grue” hypothesis predicts. So, we have just as much reason to conclude that all emeralds are some shade of grue as we do to conclude that they are green.You’re probably thinking “It’s not equally possible that the emeralds are grue; they are obviously green.” You are right! But explaining why your instinctive reaction to my friend’s argument is correct will help inform why van Fraassen’s “empiricist” is wrong and science actually does describe reality.The main mistake my friend makes is in thinking that the “empirical evidence” (of all the emeralds appearing green) is (or even should be) all I am using to draw the conclusion that all emeralds are green. It is not. I am also considering known facts about how colors typically work; things don’t usually change color, and when they do, they don’t do so suddenly, without cause, and all at once. So, even though the simple evidence of the emeralds all appearing green up to this point is consistent with them being some future shade of grue—that is even what the grue hypothesis “predicts”—it is still exceedingly unlikely that they are. The hypothesis that they are green is much more likely. Understanding science refutes the problem of underdetermination The misunderstanding about science that the “empiricist” pointing to “the problem of underdetermination” makes is similar to the one that my friend made. Science is not just about considering experimental evidence; in fact, it’s not even just about considering empirical evidence. As Ernan McMullin and many other philosophers of science have pointed out, the inference that makes science is “inference to the best explanation” (sometimes called “abduction” or “retroduction” by McMullin). While, depending on the circumstances, scientists use many different kinds of reasoning, science as a whole is, simply put, the process of considering multiple competing explanations and comparing them to certain criteria—explanatory criteria (the kinds of things explanations must be and do, by definition, to be a good explanation)—to see which explanation is the best.And these criteria do not deal only with empirical results. Yes, successful predictions raise the probability of a hypothesis, but it’s also the case that the more new assumptions a theory makes, the less likely it is to be true; every new assumption presents an opportunity for the theory to be false. (The fewer assumptions a theory makes, the simpler or “more parsimonious” it is said to be.) Likewise, the more existing evidence a theory contradicts, the less likely it is, because in order for a theory to be true, every piece of evidence it contradicts has to be somehow faulty. (The fewer established theories a new theory contradicts, the more “conservative” it is said to be.) And, obviously, the more something explains, the better explanation it is. (This is called having “scope.”) If a theory raises unanswerable questions, it’s not expanding our understanding, and thus is not wide-scoping. Scientists consider all these things when deciding which theory to accept, because the theory that adheres best to these explanatory criteria is most likely to be true.___the mere fact that a theory’s predictive success is why it “sticks around” or “becomes accepted” in the scientific community is not a reason to be skeptical about its truth.___The reason the grue hypothesis is no good is because it invents an entirely new kind of color—not just a new shade, but an entirely different category of color (a different way colors work)—and thus is not parsimonious. It raises unanswerable questions about how and why emeralds would just spontaneously change from green to blue (and thus does not have wide scope). And it contradicts what is already well established about how color works (and thus is unconservative).The theories that the problem of underdetermination points to do the same thing. Yes, the theory that God created an “ancient-looking universe” (complete with an ancient-looking fossil record) two hundred years ago is also consistent with the empirical evidence (of a fossil record) that presently exists; but that theory is monumentally unparsimonious (it requires many extra assumptions about infinite entities) and not wide-scoping (it raises unanswerable questions about why God would do such a thing). So, I can rationally conclude that it is false.Indeed, the history of science includes many examples of theories that were rejected because they lacked parsimony and/or scope, even before their falsity (and the truth of their competing theory) was confirmed by observation. As I point out in my book, geocentrism was rejected by the scientific community because it lacked parsimony, almost 200 years before the observation of parallax confirmed that the Earth moves around the sun. And the continuum theory of matter was completely rejected by 1860, because it couldn’t explain chemical reactions or organize matter into a periodic table, even though the experiments that eventually confirmed atomic theory weren’t even proposed until the 1870s. Solving the best of a bad lot problemIn response, the “empiricists” are likely to object, this time pointing to the “best of a bad lot” problem. “We have no reason to conclude that an explanation that has been shown to be better than others is true because we have no guarantee that the true theory was among those that we were considering.” If you have a “lot” (a collection) of poor explanations, even the best one is not true.The responses to this problem, however, are numerous. Peter Lipton argues that the set of hypotheses that scientists consider are not just randomly selected and thus unlikely to contain a theory that is true; they use existing knowledge to home in on what is most likely to be true. A doctor trying to explain abdominal pain is not going to bother wondering whether demons are causing it; they are going to stick with things like appendicitis and kidney stones, because they are most likely. Further, despite its name, inference to the best explanation is not just the process of comparing hypotheses and accepting the best one; we also want one that is a good explanation in its own right. If it’s not, we are going to keep looking until we find an explanation that is. And while that process does not guarantee that we will come across the exact truth, it’s very likely that the theory that emerges as the best will be at least approximately true, and thus we will be justified in believing it. And lastly, as I point out in my book, although many theories not based in scientific evidence (like geocentrism and continuum theory) have been completely overturned, science almost always progresses by the refinement of scientifically established theories—not their replacement. (Although our sun is not the center of the universe, heliocentrism was our first step in understanding the Earth’s true place in the universe.) So even if a theory we accept today may not be completely right, accepting it is a step on the journey toward the complete truth. The example of atomic theoryNow, it’s worth pointing out that most empiricists are not skeptical of all scientific theories; they are only skeptical of the ones that hypothesize the existence of “unobservables.” It’s not like they think that round Earth, heliocentrism, and germ theory are just useful (but untrue) “instruments” for making predictions about how to most efficiently navigate the seas, predict planetary motion, and treat diseases. They admit that the Earth actually is round, that the planets revolve around the sun, and that germs exist and cause disease. These facts and entities can be observed; the theories that suggest they exist are true. It’s only when theories start hypothesizing the existence of unobservables—like electrons, or quantum fields—that can’t be observed directly, that we should start doubting the theories’ truth. And to be fair to van Fraassen, in this published work, he doesn’t really say that we should doubt the truth of such theories. Only that scientific reasoning does not rationally force us to accept them as true. Skepticism, or agnosticism, he argues, is warranted. SUGGESTED READING Science is based in metaphor By Andrew Reynolds But the history of atomic theory throws a monkey wrench into that argument. Atoms used to be unobservable; again, scientists first accepted the theory that they exist because it had such grandiose explanatory power. But then atoms were seen with electron microscopes. They thus moved into the category of the observable. But this didn’t substantially change anything about what scientists were justified in believing; it certainly didn’t change any “atomic skeptics’” minds. It just confirmed what everyone already knew! If the hypothesis that something exists clearly provides the best explanation for what we can observe, then the belief that it exists is what is rational. The fact that the thing itself is not technically observable does not make doubting its existence rational.What’s more, the atoms were seen with an electron microscope. But electrons are themselves unobservable. How can an electron microscope reveal an atom if electrons are not real? This leads us to what is famously known as Hilary Putnam’s “miracle argument.” It’s (not) a miraclePhilosopher Hilary Putnam’s miracle argument is somewhat famous. Basically, he argued that a scientific theory being able to repeatedly make successful predictions—even about unobservables—without being at least approximately true would require a “miracle.” In other words, it would be such an improbable occurrence that it could not rationally be believed—the better explanation for why scientific theories about unobservables make the right predictions is because the unobservable entities and structures they hypothesize exist.Van Fraassen has addressed this argument. Indeed, in his original article, where he references Alison Gopnik’s point about orgasms not being “necessary for procreation” even though the desire for orgasm “drives the creation of progeny,” he is pointing to his own argument about how organisms are not naturally selected by evolution to get true beliefs; to the extent that belief-forming processes are selected for, the ones that are selected are the ones that are useful for survival—not the ones that produce true beliefs. In the same way, van Fraassen argues, scientific theories are accepted, not because they are true, but because they aren’t falsified; they make successful predictions; that’s what makes them “stick around.” So, the fact that they make successful predictions (and thus became accepted) is not a reason to think they are true.This argument is similar to C. S. Lewis’s “argument from reason,” which he used to argue against evolution: “The truth of evolution undercuts our ability to know that it is true.” Lewis’ argument famously failed; Elizabeth Anscombe, by Lewis’s own admission, demolished Lewis in a debate on the topic, and I have explained elsewhere why modified versions of the argument fail as well. In short, it’s because it fails to recognize that a belief-forming process can make an organism more likely to survive because it reliably produces true beliefs. It is therefore not the case that beliefs generated by naturally selected belief-forming processes are automatically false or unjustified.In the same way, the reason a theory “sticks around” could be because it’s not falsified, because it “makes correct predictions.” But the reason it makes correct predictions is most likely because it is true. (In pointing this out, I am echoing the arguments of Musgrave, Lipton, Psillos, and Kitcher, who refuted van Fraassen’s argument and analogy long before his 2024 article.) It would be a huge coincidence that it could do so without being true. And that is the point of Putnam’s miracle argument. Thus, contrary to van Fraassen’s suggestion, the mere fact that a theory’s predictive success is why it “sticks around” or “becomes accepted” in the scientific community is not a reason to be skeptical about its truth. ConclusionLet me close by saying something about the fact that empiricists don’t doubt the truth of all scientific theories, just the ones that hypothesize unobservables. In today’s society, this theory is dangerous to espouse publicly. The nuance between being skeptical about all of science, and just the highly technical theories about unobservables, is guaranteed to be lost to the average reader. And there is so much unjustified skepticism and doubt about the findings of science and experts that a headline like “Science Does Not Describe Reality” could easily fuel the anti-science movement, worsen climate change denial and cause the next pandemic.This is why I believe it was important to still respond to van Fraassen’s article, a full two years after he wrote it. Not only, as I have argued, does it represent a philosophically inaccurate view of how scientific reasoning works and what scientific reasoning can do, but it is a dangerous view to boot. It should thus be rejected.

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Oct 1 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • iai.tv
Troubled Gateshead fail to pay September wages

Gateshead's players and staff do not receive their September wages on time in the same week major funding is withdrawn from the club.

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Oct 1 • 7:35 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
The AI Shift: Is AI supercharging science?

Productivity gains in analysis are getting stuck in physical-world bottlenecks

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Oct 1 • 7:30 AM EDT • Science • ft.com
A high-stakes fight for state political power heats up, with Trump's agenda on the line

Political power in state legislatures and governors’ offices is at stake in the November elections in more than one-third of the states. Democrats and Republicans are spending millions to control...

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Oct 1 • 6:01 AM EDT • Politics • nhregister.com
‘Mega-Industrial’ Trawlers Threaten Europe’s Ocean Health

Europe’s floating factories make up just one percent of the fleet but catch more than half the fish—and they cause the majority of environmental damage.

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Oct 1 • 5:00 AM EDT • Health • insideclimatenews.org
Trump’s White House visitor screening center poised for approval

The project, which would revamp how visitors enter the White House grounds, is one Trump construction effort that has drawn wide agreement.

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Oct 1 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
Anthem Draws on Behavioural Science for New “Healthy Influence”

The new approach draws on research into social and behavioural science that focuses on attention, emotion and trust.

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Oct 1 • 3:46 AM EDT • Science • provokemedia.com
Wesley to return to Gasperini’s disposal next week

Roma has started the season almost perfectly: four wins and a draw against Inter in the first five matchdays. Where can the team improve? Some individuals haven’t yet shown their best form, includin...

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Oct 1 • 3:35 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Seminoles Secondary Performing Well Despite Defensive Woes

While the Seminoles struggle with high-scoring losses and defensive rankings, standout playmakers Ja’Bril Rawls and CJ Richard Jr. provide a glimmer of hope within an embattled backfield.

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Oct 1 • 1:39 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Former Wallabies hooker Nathan Charles diagnosed with MND after health decline

Former Australia rugby international Nathan Charles, who overcame cystic fibrosis to play a contact sport professionally, has been diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND). The 37-year-old Charles, who made his test debut in 2014 and earned four caps for the Wallabies, including a 12-12 draw against New Zealand, revealed he has been diagnosed with the same illness as recently retired National Rugby League star Jai Arrow. MND is an umbrella term for a group of progressive neurological conditions where the motor neurones degenerate.

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Sep 30 • 11:18 PM EDT • Health • sports.yahoo.com
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Trump’s Mobile rally could be about more than Alabama politics, political columnist says

MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) — President Donald Trump is coming to Mobile on Friday for a rally expected to draw thousands of supporters. One political columnist says the president’s visit is less abo…

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Sep 30 • 8:38 PM EDT • Politics • wkrg.com
UN Decade of Healthy Ageing midpoint report finds progress, calls for greater investment

New evidence in the Secretary-General's report to the 81st UN General Assembly, prepared by the World Health Organization (WHO) in coordination with the UN system, finds more countries acting on healthy ageing than ever before – but longer lives will not become healthy, dignified ones without faster, more sustained investment at country level.(NEW YORK, 28 September 2026) The Secretary-General transmitted to the 81st session of the UN General Assembly the mid-term progress report on the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030), marking the midpoint of the ten-year global effort to improve the lives of older people. The report was prepared by the World Health Organization (WHO) in coordination with the UN Inter-Agency Group on Ageing and with inputs from thirteen UN entities, the World Bank Group and civil society partners. It finds real progress in countries – and persistent gaps that must close before 2030.The number of people aged 60 and over passed 1 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach 2.1 billion by 2050, with the fastest growth in low- and middle-income countries. Longer lives are not automatically healthy ones: globally, the gap between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy at age 60 widened between 2000 and 2023, and an estimated 71% of excess deaths from COVID-19 between 2020 and 2023 were among people aged 60 and over. “Longer lives are one of humanity’s great achievements, but we cannot congratulate ourselves while leaving millions without health and support,” said Dr Pascale Allotey, Director, Department of Sexual, Reproductive, Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing, WHO. “The first half of the Decade has shown what is possible. The second half must be about scaling and financing the progress to meet the needs and rights of older persons.”Real progress, unevenly sharedThe report finds that more countries than ever now have legislation against age-based discrimination – up from 44.5% in 2018 to 57.7% today – and over half now have national long-term care policies, up from 49% in 2023 to 56.7%, dedicated programmes to build age-friendly environments (54.6%), and comprehensive health and social assessments of older people (54.6%). New WHO guidance on services for long-term care and for Integrated Care for Older People (ICOPE) delivered in communities is enabling systemic change as an increasing number of countries incorporate these services within national universal health care benefit packages. A host of UN agencies and other partners support training, increasing health workforce competencies and use of digital health tools.“This report shows the Decade of Healthy Ageing is working,” said Dr Ritu Sadana, Head of the WHO Secretariat for the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing. “More countries are legislating against ageism, providing integrated care, strengthening long-term care systems, and creating age-friendly environments than ever before, in all regions and income levels. But progress is uneven and in one area, regressive: fewer countries report active multi-stakeholder forums on ageing, down from 53.1% in 2020 to 43.3% today. The second half of this Decade must turn commitments into results, in every country.”The financing gap: this Decade's binding constraintFinancing remains the binding constraint: more than a third of reporting countries (33.8%) have very little or no dedicated resources to develop long-term care, with similar shortfalls across the Decade’s other priority areas. Less than half of countries (45.4%) have legislation providing access to assistive devices (including hearing aids, spectacles or rollators), which are key to enabling older people to maintain productive, independent and dignified lives. Only 22.7% of countries can track older people’s health over time – the largest gap across the Decade’s core progress indicators. Nationally representative information is needed in each country, as policies and interventions cannot be designed as if all older adults of a given age share similar needs and capacities. The report calls for sustained investment through national budgets, country-owned plans, development cooperation and innovative financing mechanisms to fully close these gaps by 2030.“The Decade was designed as a whole-of-UN effort, and this report shows it in action,” said Amal Abou Rafeh, Chief of the Programme on Ageing Section at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), and Permanent Co-Chair of the UN Inter-Agency Group on Ageing. “Thirteen UN entities, the World Bank group and civil society organizations contributed to this report, with WHO as the lead technical and implementing agency. That is the model of coordination the second half of the Decade will need to scale, with countries leading legislation, funding and implementation, engaging older people.”“Investing in healthy ageing is not simply a cost; it is one of the highest-return investments a government can make,” said Fiona Stewart, Global Lead for Ageing and Pensions at the World Bank Group. “Countries that invest early in integrated and long-term care see savings that outweigh the upfront cost many times over. The evidence in this report makes the economic case; what is now needed is predictable financing at country level to act on it, along with efforts to support older entrepreneurs and the silver economy.”Older people's own voicesThe report also draws on the direct experience of older people themselves, including a multilingual global survey conducted by the International Federation on Ageing that reached more than 1000 older people across 58 countries. WHO and UN partners called on Member States to use the second half of the Decade to accelerate implementation, strengthen data systems, and secure the financing needed so that the gains of longer lives reach older people everywhere. About the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030)Proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in December 2020, the Decade is a global collaboration bringing together governments, UN agencies, civil society, the private sector, academia and older people themselves to improve the lives of older people, their families and communities. It is coordinated by the World Health Organization together with the UN Inter-Agency Group on Ageing. The Decade's mid-term progress report was transmitted to the General Assembly by the Secretary-General, prepared by WHO, and is available in 6 languages.Full Report available: A/81/366 Implementation of the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030): Note by Secretary-General [ العربية | 中文 | English | Français | Pусский | Español

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