andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> That probably implies that I am not a scientist.

  Not all scientists make predictions.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 8/01/2011 3:34 AM, Invisible wrote:
>
> A well-known writer once wrote "quod enim mavult homo verum esse, id
> potius credit". I think he was right.
>

That sounds like something I could believe is true - If only I knew what 
it meant.

>
> Trouble is, Behe will just claim that nobody will publish his research
> because it's "controversial". As if which scientific theories get
> accepted or rejected depends on which scientists are part of the "in
> club" or something.

Which is of course one of the signs of crackpot conspiracy theories. 
The reason you can't prove it is because the conspiracy is hiding the 
evidence!

>
> Unfortunately, there *have* actually been instances of scientists making
> genuine scientific discoveries and being laughed at by mainstream
> science for decades afterwards. Sometimes an idea is just so radical
> that nobody takes it seriously. Who an idea comes from should have no
> baring on its scientific validity, but sometimes that affects how
> willing people are to look at it. How similar a theory is to an existing
> one doesn't necessarily indicate how correct it is, but sometimes people
> act like it does.

The scientific process isn't as pure as perhaps it should be.  It is 
after all a construct of humans and subject to its share of prejudice, 
self interest and outright fraud.  Still the truth will come out and in 
much less time than through any other system going around.

The examples of initially rejected theories that are eventually accepted 
are out there.  Actually they are good illustrations that the system 
works.  Radical theories need strong evidence and should be subjected to 
assault by those who defend the accepted theories.  Don't expect to 
overturn the whole world of physics (or biology, or cosmology etc) in an 
afternoon.

Jumping to use those examples to support a new theory or ideology is a 
sign that it is weak in itself.

>
> I have no idea to what extent this problem has been solved in the modern
> era. I imagine there are probably still ideas that you would be
> hard-pressed to get people to accept, even with valid data to back it
> up. But then, I am not a scientist, so I couldn't say...
>
> Behe, of course, is just using all this as an excuse to get bibles into
> schools, as is transparently self-evident.
>

It is so transparent as to be ludicrous.  As compared to real science it 
is laughable.  Of course those who jump on board want to have it seen as 
an equal 'theory'.

>> In defence of the tree kangaroos of New Guinea and Northern Australia,
>> they quite likely are very well adapted to the same sort of niche as the
>> sloths. Live in trees, eat low nutrition leaves which need to be
>> fermented in order to extract energy, move slowly, conserve energy. If
>> it works then evolution doesn't care how stupid *you* think they look.
>> But you know that.
>
> Indeed.
>
> Actually, in general you find that low-energy habitats are populated by
> animals that move very slowly. (Take a look at the bottom of the sea,
> for example...)

Makes you wonder what life on a Kuiper Belt Object might be like.

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On 8/01/2011 11:34 PM, andrel wrote:
> On 7-1-2011 17:02, Paul Fuller wrote:
>
>> And yet, the uninformed masses have no problem saying that "it is
>> obviously too complex to come about by chance and therefore must have
>> been created".
>
> It is clearly too complicated to have been created.

That is an insight that makes sense to us.

Unfortunately once you believe in an omnipresent, all knowing, all 
powerful, arbitrary and apparently uncaring but malicious deity then 
anything is possible.

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On 08/01/2011 2:54 PM, Paul Fuller wrote:
> On 8/01/2011 3:34 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>
>> A well-known writer once wrote "quod enim mavult homo verum esse, id
>> potius credit". I think he was right.
>>
>
> That sounds like something I could believe is true - If only I knew what
> it meant.

Quod enim mavult homo verum esse, id potius credit. For what a man would 
like to be true, that he more readily believes.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 9/01/2011 2:20 AM, Stephen wrote:
> On 08/01/2011 2:54 PM, Paul Fuller wrote:
>> On 8/01/2011 3:34 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>>
>>> A well-known writer once wrote "quod enim mavult homo verum esse, id
>>> potius credit". I think he was right.
>>>
>>
>> That sounds like something I could believe is true - If only I knew what
>> it meant.
>
> Quod enim mavult homo verum esse, id potius credit. For what a man would
> like to be true, that he more readily believes.
>
> -Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
>

Thanks for that.

I never was good with irony.

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Paul Fuller <pgf### [at] optusnetcomau> wrote:
> Makes you wonder what life on a Kuiper Belt Object might be like.

  I don't think it would be physically possible for any kind of life to
form that far from the Sun.

  Chemicals need to react with each other, which means that there must be
some kind of solution where they can freely float or otherwise move.
This usually means some kind of liquid. Obviously some kind of energy is
also needed or else nothing will move.

  Water would be the liquid of choice because it has two very special
properties that basically no other liquid has: It's extremely common,
and its solid form has lessed density than its liquid form. Without these
two properties there would be no life on Earth (or anywhere else). (There
are probably also many other necessary properties, related to solubility
and how water reacts chemically with other compounds, but I do not know
enough about chemistry to say anything about that.)

  It's hard to imagine how life could form without water.

  Of course for the water to be any good, it has to be in liquid form.
If you are too far away from the Sun, all the water will be frozen solid.
This isn't a very fertile ground for life to form. There are little chemical
reactions going on, chemicals are not very free to move, and there are
probably a huge bunch of other properties necessary for *any* kind of
life to form which just aren't possible with deep-frozen ice.

  Now, perhaps if there was a liquid which remains an liquid form at those
temperatures, it could ostensibly happen. However, such liquids are both
extremely rare (iow. there wouldn't be enough of it in any given planet),
and their chemical properties are probably inadequate for any kind of
lifeforms. (Also, most liquids other than water get denser when they
solidify, which is a big problem.)

  (Conversely, a planet which is too *close* to the Sun cannot form life
either, this time because there's no water because it's all vaporized away.
It also makes forming a viable atmosphere quite hard, making it a very
hostile environment, where strong radiation hits directly the surface
of the planet, destroying any complex chemicals that might form by chance.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 08/01/2011 3:47 PM, Paul Fuller wrote:
> Thanks for that.
>
> I never was good with irony.


Oops! Sorry for that.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>> This is a rather fair assumption
>>> to make because it's the result of a measurement 
> 
>> Actually, I believe einstein hypothesized that because Maxwell's equations 
>> (amongst others) had it down as a constant.
> 
>   What I meant is that if you were to deduce the Lorentz transformations
> now (eg. for an article on relativity), you can refer to experiments such
> as the famous Michelson-Morley experiment (which predates special relativity
> by almost 20 years). Even if Einstein had never even heard of such an
> experiment (which I really find hard to believe, but whatever), it doesn't
> really matter. It's still a fair assumption to make because of that and
> many other experiments.
> 

I wasn't really disagreeing. Just pointing out where the hypothesis came 
from that the evidence turned into a theory.

-- 
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:
> like reversable instructions (the idea 
> being that its less costly to "undo" some things, in terms of heat and 
> power use, than to completely replicate an entire set of processes, when 
> only one step in the whole process differs),

FWIW, that's not at all what reversible computing is about. Reversible 
computing is a necessary prelude to quantum computing.

-- 
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 have been thinking that perhaps trying to find a unifying model is
> futile because gravity and quantum mechanics are *not* related to each
> other.

I sometimes argue that perhaps the universe is not logically consistent, in 
exactly this sense, and I usually get shouted down. Maybe there isn't any 
mathematical way to describe everything in the universe, and depending on 
what you measure, you will *always* have errors due to the fundamental 
nature of the universe.

Granted, I often raise this in the context of "scientists have faith that 
this isn't the case", in the sense that it would be very unlikely a smart 
scientist would give up looking, ever, for that elusive theory that applies 
everywhere.

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

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