Brian Clegg

If you water musical instruments too much they can grow out of control. Look what happened to my auntie's piano:

Tom Griffiths - Five Way Interview Tom Griffiths introduces himself: I’m a cognitive scientist — a professor of psychology and computer science at Princeton University — so I ...

Interview: Cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths tells us about why we're at interesting moment, the relationship between AI and human decision making, and why the creation of intelligent machines is an exciting prospect. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2026/03/tom-... #AI #cognitivescience #decisionmaking

Flaxman Low: Occult Detective - E. and E. Heron **** It's an easy assumption (which I made) that this book is fantasy as it involves a ghost hunter, but I'm calling it SF, as at the time of pub...

Review (SF): Flaxman Low: Occult Detective: E and E Heron **** - surprisingly readable 1890s short stories featuring psychologist Flaxman Low encountering psychical research oddities then considered scientific. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2026/03/flax... #bookreview #sciencefiction

Nonesuch - Francis Spufford ***** This is a remarkable book. Set in London from the beginning of the Second World War and into the blitz, it could work well as a straight nov...

Review (historical fantasy): Nonesuch - Francis Spufford ***** - combines an atmospheric description of life in Second World War London for a young, aspirational woman with a beautifully realised urban fantasy: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/03/none... #bookreview #fantasy #historicalfiction

Either/or thinking and the monarchy I occasionally respond to surveys from a well-known online research company, and now and then they will ask if I think we should have a mona...

Should we have a monarchy or an elected head of state in the UK? I suggest this is entirely the wrong question, as it's a bad case of either/or thinking: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/03/eith... #solutions #eitherorthinking #decisionmaking #monarchy #republics

Do we really still have to say 'correlation is not causality'? I'm a big fan of the BBC - but sadly I say this more often than not to temper a criticism. In the past I've p ointed out confirmation bias ...

If there is one thing that scientists and science writers alike get fed up of saying it's that correlation is not causality. Yet what do we find on the BBC Top Comment podcast? Sigh... brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/03/do-w... #podcasts #causality #assumptions

Small (no, no-existent) prize for naming the lighthouse in the picture, and why it is significant, without reading the article first...

Blackstone Fell - Martin Edwards **** The third of Martin Edwards' novels featuring the mysterious Rachel Savernake and the anything-but-mysterious journalist Jacob Flint has a s...

Review (mystery): Blackstone Fell - Martin Edwards **** - a distinctly slow start to this Pennine-set mystery, but once Savernake gets properly on the case, from a seance to a locked room, it's impressively tangled: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/03/blac... #bookreview #murdermystery #periodnovel

Is this the royal 'we'. I have certainly never drawn parallels between ants and humans, or compared them to computers. I am yet to see an ant with a decent GUI.

The Weirdest Nobels Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has marked the highlight of annual achievements, notably in the sciences and medicine, though also in literature...

We all know that the Nobel science prizes are awarded for remarkable work. But just occasionally they raise an eyebrow. I highlight two particularly weird ones - one funny, the other shocking (and, yes, one involved lighthouses): brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-... #nobelprize #prizesurprise

Time to think about thinking...

Time Travel has made for fun SF since the early days - here's a new take on it:

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum **** This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a se...

Review: The AI Paradox: Virginia Dignum **** - Brilliant assessment of the problems and opportunities arising from the AI paradox (see review for definition), despite reading too much like a government report. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-... #bookreview #AI

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum **** This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a se...

Review: The AI Paradox: Virginia Dignum **** - Brilliant assessment of the problems and opportunities arising from the AI paradox (see review for definition), despite reading to much like a government report. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-... #bookreview #AI

Caleb Scharf - Five Way Interview Caleb Scharf received the 2022 Carl Sagan Medal while director of astrobiology at Columbia University and is currently the senior scientist ...

Interview: Astrobiologist Caleb Scharf @calebscharf.bsky.social tells us why he sees science as a contemplative discipline, the link between space exploration and evolution, and how AI can be involved in space. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2026/02/cale... #spaceexploration #astrobiology #AI

The AI Paradox: How to Make Sense of a Complex Future Buy The AI Paradox: How to Make Sense of a Complex Future by Dignum, Virginia (ISBN: 9780691269085) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

I would strongly recommend the authors read Virginia Dignum's The AI Paradox (my review due next week but you can get a feel from the Amazon page amzn.to/4aNn7r7) which makes it pretty clear that AI's intelligence can not sensibly be considered human level.

Sense and Sensibility Here's a question. How many senses do humans have? There are plenty of senses we don’t have that other organisms do. For example, some birds...

Here's a question. How many senses do humans have? If your response is five (and it's hard not come up with this knee-jerk response even if you know better), you are way out. Time to think again: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/02/sens... #humansenses #fivesenses #schoolerrors

Stringy thinking REVISIT SERIES An updated post from February 2016 String theory is something that I've been highly sceptical about for some time, influenced...

In a revisit of a post from 2016 I try to understand and explain with an analogy why string theory excited so many theoretical physicists (and still clings on to this day) brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/02/stri... #stringtheory #theoreticalphysics #drivenbymaths

Interesting timey-wimey (which my computer keeps wanting to correct to timey-wimpy, a well known term) stuff...

Anotnia is a serious condition where a sufferer is unable to take notes. Please consider giving generously to the Anotnia Society, as much further research is required to find a cure.

The Laws of Thought - Tom Griffiths ***** In giving us a history of attempts to explain our thinking abilities, Tom Griffiths demonstrates an excellent ability to pitch information j...

Review: The Laws of Thought: Tom Griffiths ***** - The best I've seen at helping the reader understand how we think, and how technology produces similar results to intelligence without any understanding of what's involved. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-... #bookreview #popularscience #AI

The Third Rule of Time Travel (SF) - Philip Fracassi **** There are plenty of novels featuring time travel out there, but this is one of the more interesting ones. In a 2040s lab, owned by a tech bi...

The Third Rule of Time Travel: Philip Fracassi (SF) **** - A clever take on a time travel story. What first appears little more than a story of a technology producing a lived memory kicks up a gear as things begin to go wrong. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-... #bookreview #sciencefiction

Murder on the Levels - David Hodges *** The real mystery here is why the main character, Detective Constable Kate Hamblin, hasn’t already left the police force. She has a toxic rel...

Review (Crime): Murder on the Levels - David Hodges *** - more a thriller than a murder mystery. The police come out very badly (in a book by an ex-Detective Superintendent) but an interesting twist and a tensely horrible ending brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/02/murd... #bookreview #thriller

Let me just make a few little adjustments to that title…

“How a scientist with a PhD in Geology and 25 years of experience is helping lead California’s earthquake work”

Way to devalue my experience.

There are at least three things wrong here...

What is a paradox? It's paradoxical (revisited) REVISIT SERIES An updated post from February 2016 Is the definition of a paradox paradoxical? Before we get into a philosophical spiral, thi...

In reacting to a complaint that people misuse the term 'paradox' I discover that the 'misused' definitions are by far the oldest, so arguably perfectly acceptable: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/02/what... #logic #paradoxes

SF as pure vehicle for ideas - remarkable reading:

Reaching for the Extreme - Ian Stewart **** Ian Stewart is arguably the UK's best raconteur of mathematics - here he takes on some of the extremes of the mathematical world, and in doi...

Review: Reaching for the Extreme: Ian Stewart **** - The UK's best raconteur of mathematics takes on some of the extremes of the mathematical world, and in doing so gives us some real insights into what makes mathematicians tick. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2026/02/reac... #bookreview #popularmaths

I suppose the Italian review doesn't say 'I'd love this book, why isn't it published in Italy'?

Period TV makers: please give a little more thought to trains Every now and then I see something anachronistic in a period drama on TV and I can't stop nerd mode from firing up. It's quite often about t...

I have a bit of a rant faced with a TV drama in which this photo of an alleged London terminus in 1957 just didn't ring true: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/02/peri... - why can't film and TV makers put as much effort into trains as they do clothes and cars? #TVanachronism #historicalinaccuracy