On 1/8/2011 7:44 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> It was an "alternate" design to existing ones, which would allow more
>> speed, but at less cost.
>
> Errr, no, not really. The thing about reversible computing is that it
> takes just as much energy to run in the forward direction if you want to
> progress at the same speed. If you get half way through a calculation
> and stop applying a power gradient, you're equally likely to go either
> direction. You can use arbitrarily little energy, but you'll go
> arbitrarily slowly forward.
>
>> What, if anything, it had to do with quantum computing, from that
>> article, would be rather unclear, since it quite literally never
>> mentioned it at all.
>
> Quantum computing is the only *actual* reversible machines out there,
> afaik. (Well, reversible in the sense of actually saving power to do so.)
>
Think we may be talking about different things here... The idea I am 
talking about is that you programmaticaly do the equivalent of:

1 + 2 + 4 * 5 = result
roll back to 1 + 2
3 * 10 + 5 = result

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. The trick being how to 
know if the previous state *is* going to do that. Its an insanely mind 
boggling idea, but some limited experiments have been done with it, and 
it didn't require a quantum computer to do so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing

-- 
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();
}

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On 1/8/2011 2:12 AM, Warp wrote:
> Patrick Elliott<sel### [at] npgcablecom>  wrote:
>> This isn't the real problem. The real problem is that those who support
>> it **do not want a result that contradicts the idea that the first part
>> of the Bible is literally true**. The Vatican recently mumbled something
>> about how they believe, "god created the big bang." The answer of one of
>> the *major* proponents of the, "youngish earth, AiG, ID is real", dear
>> old Ken Ham, had to this was, roughly, "If the big bang happened, then
>> genesis would need to be wrong, or allegory, but if it was wrong, then
>> the first 'marriage' would be false, sin wouldn't be real, etc., and it
>> would fundamentally destroy everything from Christianity itself, to the
>> sanctity of heterosexual marriage. Therefor, the Pope is wrong!"
>
>> Its the first case of actual logic I have seen from the man. Yes Ken, if
>> Genesis, which is the basis of virtually every bit of bullshit
>> moralizing, persecution, and evil your religion has, or continues, to
>> institute, was wrong, so would your entire religion. Congratulations on
>> proving you can follow logic, even if you completely fail at accepting
>> its conclusions. lol
>
>    I think your view is biased. I don't see how "the story of Genesis is
> only an allegory, it did not happen literally" would discredit the entirety
> of christianity. For example the "sanctity of marriage" (assuming there is
> such a thing) doesn't become any less so if the story of creation is
> allegorical.
>
It would discredit ***his***, and pretty much the view of all of the 
people like him, on the subject. In any case, they are the ones claiming 
that proving that there where not X number of imaginary "kinds" on a 
non-existent Ark, and all the other gibberish in there, would rob their 
pathetic little lives of all hope and purpose.

Kind of like to know though.. If, as he claims, the whole Adam and Eve 
thing was the first "marriage", by which all others are based, where did 
I miss the ceremony and exchange of vows in there, and what where they 
exactly? lol

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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On 1/8/2011 12:25 PM, Warp wrote:
> Darren New<dne### [at] sanrrcom>  wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>>    I think your view is biased. I don't see how "the story of Genesis is
>>> only an allegory, it did not happen literally" would discredit the entirety
>>> of christianity.
>
>> What did Jesus die for, if there is no original sin? Indeed, why should
>> anyone worship YHVH if he *isn't* the creator?
>
>    The question is literal interpretation vs. allegorical interpretation.
> Just because something is written figuratively doesn't mean that it's not
> describing a real event. The details may be fictitious, but it may still
> be describing what happened.
>
Except, where the "event" is only described in one book of fiction, and 
no where else at all, and the only references to the event all seem to 
show up *after* it was written. You know, kind of like 100% of 
everything on the whole Jesus part of it...

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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On 1/8/2011 1:53 PM, Warp wrote:
> Darren New<dne### [at] sanrrcom>  wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>> Darren New<dne### [at] sanrrcom>  wrote:
>>>> Warp wrote:
>>>>>    I think your view is biased. I don't see how "the story of Genesis is
>>>>> only an allegory, it did not happen literally" would discredit the entirety
>>>>> of christianity.
>>>
>>>> What did Jesus die for, if there is no original sin? Indeed, why should
>>>> anyone worship YHVH if he *isn't* the creator?
>>>
>>>    The question is literal interpretation vs. allegorical interpretation.
>
>> But we're not talking about the allegorical "sun rising" kind of thing (vs
>> Earth orbiting the Sun). We're talking about whether some supernatural being
>> intentionally created humans as they are, told them lies, then punished them
>> and all their descendants for believing some other third party that pointed
>> out the lies were lies. Then killed all but a handful because they disobeyed
>> him some more.
>
>> I don't see how you can turn that into an allegory that makes "sin" still be
>> a reasonable concept. What might have *really* happened that would make it
>> possible for the death of a rabbi a couple thousand years ago capable of
>> affecting what happens to you after you're dead? I just can't imagine what
>> would give YHVH any moral authority to dictate what humans do and to punish
>> them for failing to do so, if YHVH didn't actually create humans.
>
>    You are making many category mistakes here. The most prominent one is
> "either the story of genesis is literal and God created the universe and
> the principles we must obey, or the story is only an allegory and God did
> not create the universe nor the principles we must obey". It think this
> is called a false dichotomy.
>
It should be noted that if this *is* a false dichotomy, it is precisely 
the one that people like Ken Ham are scared to death of. They literally 
say that *everyone* has to be true, except if they so otherwise, or its 
all a lie. Examined purely from that stance, they are 100% correct. The 
problem, of course, is that, instead of reexamining their initial 
premise, they circle the wagons, and insist its all true anyway, and 
everyone else is wrong for pointing out to them that it can't be, or 
worse, that its not *necessary* for them to accept parts of it.

>    Just because the story might be told with allegories doesn't necessarily
> mean that the gist of the story is not true. Just because something is
> expressed as a metaphor doesn't make what the metaphor is referring to
> false.
>
We are not the ones making that argument. They are. So, by their 
standards, it can't be true *at all*, if the core part of it is 
allegory. I won't even bother with how many things are just plain stupid 
about it, or contradictory to physics, geology, biology, and human 
psychology, even if it is accepted as allegory.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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On 9-1-2011 20:26, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 1/8/2011 2:12 AM, Warp wrote:
>> Patrick Elliott<sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
>>> This isn't the real problem. The real problem is that those who support
>>> it **do not want a result that contradicts the idea that the first part
>>> of the Bible is literally true**. The Vatican recently mumbled something
>>> about how they believe, "god created the big bang." The answer of one of
>>> the *major* proponents of the, "youngish earth, AiG, ID is real", dear
>>> old Ken Ham, had to this was, roughly, "If the big bang happened, then
>>> genesis would need to be wrong, or allegory, but if it was wrong, then
>>> the first 'marriage' would be false, sin wouldn't be real, etc., and it
>>> would fundamentally destroy everything from Christianity itself, to the
>>> sanctity of heterosexual marriage. Therefor, the Pope is wrong!"
>>
>>> Its the first case of actual logic I have seen from the man. Yes Ken, if
>>> Genesis, which is the basis of virtually every bit of bullshit
>>> moralizing, persecution, and evil your religion has, or continues, to
>>> institute, was wrong, so would your entire religion. Congratulations on
>>> proving you can follow logic, even if you completely fail at accepting
>>> its conclusions. lol
>>
>> I think your view is biased. I don't see how "the story of Genesis is
>> only an allegory, it did not happen literally" would discredit the
>> entirety
>> of christianity. For example the "sanctity of marriage" (assuming
>> there is
>> such a thing) doesn't become any less so if the story of creation is
>> allegorical.
>>
> It would discredit ***his***, and pretty much the view of all of the
> people like him, on the subject. In any case, they are the ones claiming
> that proving that there where not X number of imaginary "kinds" on a
> non-existent Ark, and all the other gibberish in there, would rob their
> pathetic little lives of all hope and purpose.
>
> Kind of like to know though.. If, as he claims, the whole Adam and Eve
> thing was the first "marriage", by which all others are based, where did
> I miss the ceremony and exchange of vows in there, and what where they
> exactly? lol

You forget to mention that he first had to divorce from the unnamed 
woman in gen 1:27
But let's get back to molecular biology, much more interesting than a 
repeat of the bible discussions.

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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. :-)

-- 
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:
> 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.

> it didn't require a quantum computer to do so.

It doesn't necessarily need to be quantum entanglement. But the only 
mechanism people have used (at least that I've heard about) that worked is 
to do the computing with a chain of atoms that calculate what you're trying 
to calculate, with the calculation being driven along by a voltage gradient.

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

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>>> 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.

Let us not forget, Intelligent Design isn't about proving a novel 
scientific theory; it's about pretending that Genesis is science. The 
so-called scientific evidence and logical arguments are just window 
dressing.

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On 07/01/2011 08:59 PM, Darren New wrote:

> Googling "string theory test" brings up a bunch, but I haven't looked at
> many of them. Indeed, I myself thought it was a fundamental attribute of
> string theory that it could describe every possible set of physical
> laws, or some such.

String theory is one possible candidate for the Theory of Everything 
(ToE). Currently we have a theory of big things (general relativity) and 
a separate, incompatible theory of small things (QED). A ToE is not 
*literally* a theory that explains "everything", it just means a single, 
consistent theory that works over all scales.

So yes, the /idea/ is that eventually string theory should be able to 
explain and make predictions about the real world. And the day that 
happens, it will be science. But until that day, it is only 
proto-science, no matter how sciencey it looks.

The fundamental difference between ST and ID, of course, is that ST has 
a realistic possibility of becoming testable some day soon. ID does not.

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On 07/01/2011 10:00 PM, Warp wrote:

>    While I know virtually nothing about string theory (well, string theories,
> as there are many; the unified theory would be the so-called M-theory),
> I find it a bit "unlikeable" for one reason.

>    However, which observation or measurement is string theory based on?
> As I said, I know next to nothing about it, but it just sounds to me
> like string theory is based on *nothing* at all. It just throws a big
> bunch of extra dimensions from nowhere, based on no measurement,
> observation or other rational justification, and builds up a huge
> bunch of random hypotheses based on these unfounded assumptions.

It's in idea, a theory, and they're trying to see whether it plays out 
or not. Currently the math doesn't even work properly, but there's quite 
a lot of people working on fixing that. There have been plenty of 
scientific ideas in the past that people have come up with on a whim 
which turned out to be correct, or almost correct. And besides, I rather 
suspect that the basic assumptions of string theory aren't as arbitrary 
as they seem, it's just that string theory is so highly abstracted from 
the everyday world that most presentations of it for the general 
population get watered down to the point where it /seems/ arbitrary.

Then again, I know little about string theory (or should that be 
"theories"?) I'm content to just sit and wait to see if they eventually 
sort it out or not.

The fundamental idea of string theory is that each subatomic particle is 
actually a vibrating string (or possibly sheet), and each type of 
vibration corresponds to a different particle. Note that this is not the 
first time such an idea has been voiced; way back when the periodic 
table was discovered, Lord Kelvin suggested that perhaps each elemental 
atom was a different type of knot tied in the ether. The study of knot 
theory began because people thought that be enumerating all possible 
knots, they would discover the structure of the chemical elements. (But, 
apparently, it turns out atoms are different due to the combinations of 
subatomic particles they contain...)

And then, of course, there's Stephen Wolfram, who suggests that not just 
matter but time itself is quantum, and that the universe is actually a 
giant cellular automaton, and that the observed quanta are actually the 
cells of the cellular grid. (They guy probably needs to put down the CA 
simulator and go outside for a little while.)

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