On 1/9/2011 8:44 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> if the universe isn't logically consistent than science would have to
>> be wrong on a huge scale,
>
> I don't think so.
>
>> You would need to.. have an inconsistent universe, which never the
>> less, managed to be consistent on the large scale only. Like..
>> statistically stable, but completely unstable on the basic level.
>
> We have that already. It's called quantum mechanics. :-)
>
>> Mind, this wouldn't preclude it being consistent, it would only mean
>> that events where not predictable on the smallest scale, but that the
>> law of averages/big numbers both made it consistent once you had
>> enough events to look at.
>
> Again. :-)
>
But.. This only seems to be the case, isn't certain, and its not so 
random you can't create conditions where one result is **way** more 
probable than another. Still not "inconsistent".

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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On 1/9/2011 8:57 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Think we may be talking about different things here... The idea I am
>> talking about is that you programmaticaly do the equivalent of:
>
> Well, if you're talking about logical reversability, sure. But that's
> not all that much more interesting than memoization.
>
>> 1 + 2 + 4 * 5 = result
>> roll back to 1 + 2
>> 3 * 10 + 5 = result
>
> Pulling out the result is irreversible.
>
>> The point of the idea being that if you do not have to "turn on" a
>> switch, only shut some off, the cost is lower.
>
> That's not how it works. You have to drive the circuit backwards. You
> don't just turn off parts of it, as that's irreversible too. Unless
> you're talking about "logical reversibility", which isn't what I'm
> talking about.
>
Yeah, what I was talking about was a programmatic attempt at applying 
logical reversibility. The stuff you are talking about is completely 
different.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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On 10-1-2011 13:16, Warp wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> Well, there are plenty of other plants that are so mutated that they are
>> now incapable of reproducing for themselves but for some special animal
>> that farms them. (I might mention, for example, the fungi that
>> leafcutter ants culture, for example.) The natural world is full of
>> complex partnerships such as this. I don't think you could call the
>> banana "unatural".
>
>    Well, many people seem to think that anything that is man-made (or only
> possible because of human intervetion) is by definition artificial and
> unnatural (and hence obviously harmful).

Yes over-population is one of the biggest problems.

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> But.. This only seems to be the case, isn't certain,

It's as certain as anything. There's actually experimental evidence that 
it's not only unknowable, but actually random. We *know* it's not just a 
limitation in our knowledge or what we're measuring, but that the 
measurements really aren't even there until we look.

 > and its not so
> random you can't create conditions where one result is **way** more 
> probable than another.

Only statistically. For any given single interaction, the probability is 
always the same.  In QED, that's called "charge".

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Yeah, what I was talking about was a programmatic attempt at applying 
> logical reversibility. The stuff you are talking about is completely 
> different.

Logical reversibility hasn't anything to do with saving energy, altho it 
might have something to do with speeding up computations. obviously, logical 
reversibility is a necessary precursor to physical reversibility.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Warp wrote:
>   (I read somewhere that recently Barack Obama decided to announce the
> National Day of Prayer, or something like that, 

The "national day of prayer" has been around since we were fighting the 
godless communists (I kid you not) in the 1950's, passed by Congress at the 
time. That's the same time we got "under god" added to "one nation under 
god" in the pledge of allegiance.  Given that Obama keeps referring to 
atheists in all his speeches (which ticks off the religious folks) I would 
guess (without a cite) this is at least as much a lie as half the other 
things said about him.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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On 10/01/2011 06:22 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> You seriously expect me to believe
>
> That's a terrible argument. "I couldn't imagine how something as complex
> as predicting the future that way could have happened" is just as bad an
> argument as "I couldn't imagine how hemoglobin came about."

OK, well how about chaos theory? That puts hard bounds on what can and 
cannot be predicted. I should imagine that over the course of 4 billion 
years, one single stray photon would probably be enough to perturb the 
system sufficiently that it wildly diverges from your predictions. So 
you'd have to predict solar activity too. (Not to mention random stray 
comets colliding with Earth.)

On top of that, the effect of living organisms themselves is 
significant. So in order to work out what what types of organisms you 
need to design, you need to know what environments will be available, 
which *depends on* what types of organisms you design.

Seriously, you don't need to be a chaos theory expert to see that all of 
this is wildly impossible. (Not forgetting that the original premis is 
already impossible because the number of species wildly exceeds the 
information content of the first genomes.)



Now, Behe put forth the idea of "irreducible complexity". The idea being 
that a system is irreducibly complex if removing any single component of 
it breaks the system. Such systems, Behe asserted, cannot evolve.

Of course, that's a bit like buying a car, removing the engine 
management system, observing that the car no longer works, and arguing 
that the car cannot have been invented before computer technology became 
available. Which, obviously, is absurd.

Then again, that's not *quite* the same, since the designs of artificial 
devices can make sudden jumps. Evolution, in general, can't do that.

Dawkins showed that irreducibly complex systems can in fact evolve. For 
example, suppose protein A exists, and does something useful. Now 
suppose that a protein B comes along, which makes protein A slightly 
more efficient. Assuming whatever A does is beneficial, doing it better 
is obviously something that natural selection would favour.

What happens next is that A and B co-evolve. Any change in B which 
enhances its effect on A would tend to be favoured. Any change in A 
which enhances the effect of B on it would also tend to be favoured. 
Fast-forward a few million generations and I wouldn't be at all 
surprised if we now have a situation where A doesn't even *work* any 
more without B.

In other words, the system has become irreducibly complex. And of 
course, there's no particular reason why a protein C can't join the 
party at some point along the smooth continuous route to irreducible 
complexity. And then we would have 3 interrelated proteins that only 
function in combination with each other.

Behe also chose an unfortunate example of an irreducibly complex system: 
a cellular motor. He pointed out that it's a complex of 9 proteins, and 
removing any one of them breaks the motor, so therefore it could not 
have evolved. Except that somebody recently discovered a parasite that 
uses just 2 of these proteins to make holes in the cell walls of its 
host. So those 2 proteins on their own do something useful. They don't 
make a motor, but they /are/ useful (for something slightly different).

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On 10/01/2011 05:03 PM, Warp wrote:

>    The theory of evolution != the theory of life's origins.
>
>    The theory of evolution says nothing about how life first came into
> existence on Earth. That would be abiogenesis.

Quite. And while the theory of evolution is universally accepted, 
abiogenesis is essentially still at the stage of "well, we've got some 
ideas, but basically nobody /really/ knows".

>    Basically the only thing that the theory of evolution postulates is that
> the genes of large populations change over time (something even the most
> hardcore young-earth creationists don't deny) and that some changes get
> preserved while others disappear due to natural selection (again, something
> the creationists don't deny). That's about it.

Evolution asserts that species are not fixed; they /change/. And so the 
species we see today were not always there. And, in particular, not so 
much evolution itself, but molecular evidence says that all life on 
Earth has a single common ancestor.

That's about as much as evolution itself actually says about the origin 
of life; that life didn't originate as twenty billion species, but as 
just one. (Actually, it was probably a handful of species; it's just 
that only one of them left descendants. As far as we know.)

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On 10/01/2011 06:32 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> Actually I think you'll find it's that all tetrapods are descendants
>> of a single fish ancestor, which just happened to have 5 digits. By
>> now it would be far too difficult to change it.
>
> Sure. But we grew lungs, and new digestive systems, and homeostasis,

Just about every living organism has homeostasis. I presume you mean 
*temperature* homeostasis?

> scales and skin and fur and feathers, wings and hooves and talons, but
> we still all have five fingers, including the animals whose fingers are
> in a stiff and unbending mitten of cartilage. Look at the vast range of
> shapes out there, and tell me that it makes sense that none of them got
> rid of the pinky finger, or put on another bone somewhere.

Right. So what you're saying is that it's unusual that 5 digits is a 
conserved feature?

Well, horses and similar have finger/toe bones fused together. But then, 
actually the anatomy of a horse leg is quite interesting. A human arm 
has two straight bits, a wrist and then a bunch of fingers. In a horse, 
the first straight bit is actually inside the body, the second straight 
bit is the top of the visible leg, and the remaining bones of the leg 
are actually what would be knuckle and finger bones in a human. Weird.

I suspect what it boils down so is that there's no specific reason why 
some number other than 5 would be an advantage, so it hasn't changed. 
(This of course doesn't rule out random "neutral" changes I suppose...)

> No, that's the point. From what I read, you'd only have to change one
> gene. Except it's a gene in the middle of *another* sequence as well,
> which regulates development of the reproductive system.

Well, if that's the case, I haven't read about it myself. I would 
suggest though that something like this would require changing many, 
many genes, all at the same time, which is why it doesn't happen.

(Oh, you can probably make it happen by changing one of the cellular 
differentiation genes, which tell cells "where they are". But that would 
probably break stuff all over the place. Indeed, these genes tend to be 
extremely highly conserved.)

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On 10/01/2011 06:32 PM, Darren New wrote:

> It's entirely possible to teach adults. :-)

You haven't met my work colleges...

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