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andrel <byt### [at] gmail com> wrote:
> A modern way would be to assume that there are 3 space dimensions and
> one time, with a distance between 2 points defined by x^2+Y^2+z^2-ct^2
> (though I am not sure if that was a necessary assumption, it has been a
> long time).
> Investigate what happens if in this universe laws have to be invariant
> for translation and rotation.
> That will give you Lorentz contraction and Maxwell's equations, and
> light that propagates with lightspeed. But that is just maths and not
> science. ;)
AFAIK you have to assume c to be constant to all (inertial) observers
in order to deduce the Lorentz transformations, not the other way around.
(The deduction isn't actually all that complicated.)
--
- Warp
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On 1/8/2011 11:24 AM, Darren New wrote:
> 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.
>
Actually, no, its not, really. The article I read on the subject was
*purely* as a means to reduce the amount of switching needed, to reduce
power usage and heat. It was an "alternate" design to existing ones,
which would allow more speed, but at less cost. 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.
--
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 8-1-2011 23:09, Warp wrote:
> andrel<byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> A modern way would be to assume that there are 3 space dimensions and
>> one time, with a distance between 2 points defined by x^2+Y^2+z^2-ct^2
>> (though I am not sure if that was a necessary assumption, it has been a
>> long time).
>> Investigate what happens if in this universe laws have to be invariant
>> for translation and rotation.
>> That will give you Lorentz contraction and Maxwell's equations, and
>> light that propagates with lightspeed. But that is just maths and not
>> science. ;)
>
> AFAIK you have to assume c to be constant to all (inertial) observers
> in order to deduce the Lorentz transformations, not the other way around.
> (The deduction isn't actually all that complicated.)
There are more ways to get the same result. You give the traditional
method. The one I described here works the other way around. You assume
a 4 dimensional universe and the rest follows from that. E.g. Maxwell's
equations and a constant light speed are a property of that space, as
strange as it sounds.
Note that it is all maths until the moment that you postulate (or
observe) that our universe actually has 3 space and 1 time dimension.
When my teacher did exactly this on the blackboard it was almost a
divine revelation for me. For days I was like 'wow' and Genesis 1:3 has
never had the same feeling again. I know people use Maxwell's equations
and add 'and there was light'; you can get t-shirts with that text. In
reality it is even much deeper, you only need space and time. Genesis
1:3 is a direct consequence of Genesis 1:1, it is totally superfluous.
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On 9/01/2011 3:19 AM, Warp wrote:
>
> It's hard to imagine how life could form without water.
>
I'm familiar with the view that water is important and perhaps essential
for life to develop and survive. It may well be correct or at least the
most likely environment for life by far.
But it is interesting to think about what truly different environments
might mean to life.
Rather than define liquid water as the essential requirement for life, I
think the criteria might be more like:
a) A medium that provides both persistence and variability with enough
complexity to support non-trivial patterns of organisation
b) An energy gradient that is neither too small nor too great for
whatever the medium is - at least in some local regime for some period
of time
c) Time
Given those factors it is possible to imagine life in all sorts of
situations where liquid water is not an important factor.
There isn't anything in the meta-mechanism of evolution that requires H2O.
Then there could be forms of life that started in a water rich
environment but evolved beyond that requirement.
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andrel wrote:
> one time, with a distance between 2 points defined by x^2+Y^2+z^2-ct^2
> OTOH if this is not observed in our universe, we either have more than 4
> space/time dimensions or laws are not invariant, both do not seem
> compatible with reality.
Except you just included "c" as a constant in that formula, which was the
point. If "c" varies depending on how fast you're going, that whole formula
falls apart.
--
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:
> The only problem with that is, it would have to only be non-logically
> consistent on a very small scale, since, otherwise, there is no evidence
> this would be the case. It also runs into the whole mess that *no* one,
> neither scientists, nor the religious (who love this argument as an "in"
> for their "faith"), would have any damn clue what is going on.
I'd love to address your points, if I could understand what you're saying.
--
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:
> 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.)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Warp wrote:
> 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.
No. I'm asking if God didn't create the universe and humans personally, why
humans would have any moral obligation to God. Why is it the case that we
*should* obey God, rather than just God imposing his will on us like the
ruler of an invading army would?
> Just because the story might be told with allegories doesn't necessarily
> mean that the gist of the story is not true.
I'm asking what parts you think is the essential "gist" that would lead to a
real actual Son Of God being sacrificed being necessary for the eternal
salvation of your soul.
You can't just say "it's not true, but you should believe the results of it
as if it was true." If it's an allegory for something that *actually*
happened and indeed *is* actually happening, you ought to be able to say
what it is that is *actually* happening that leads to the same conclusions
as the allegory. You can't say "it's just a metaphor for something else that
I can't describe, but you should come to the same conclusions anyway."
> Just because something is
> expressed as a metaphor doesn't make what the metaphor is referring to
> false.
I'm just asking what could possibly be the actuality that would lead to the
same conclusions.
> Another mistake you are doing is straw man argumentation: You are taking
> the (well, *a*) literal interpretation of the scripture and then mocking it,
> arguing that since it makes no sense, nothing of it can be true (not even
> the idea that is being expressed in allegorical form).
I'm not mocking anything. I'm sincerely asking for an interpretation of the
scripture that's consistent with the Big Bang and evolution wherein the
execution of a Jewish rabbi 2000 years ago has an effect on my eternal soul.
> Note that I'm not saying anything about the story is true. I'm just
> saying that your argumentation is fallacious.
It's not an argument. It's a question. You say "it's really an allegory,
it's not true, but the conclusions are the same." I'm asking what the truth
is that would lead to that allegory and the same conclusions.
I.e., you say "just because it's allegorical doesn't mean it isn't
describing a real event." Fine. What's the "real event" that Genesis is
describing? Then, given that real event, where does Jesus dying for your
sins come into it? I'm happy to listen to your description with an open
mind. But it's a cop-out for you to follow "it's just allegorical but
describing a real event" with "and by the way, you have to invent a
satisfactory real event for yourself."
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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On 9-1-2011 3:37, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> one time, with a distance between 2 points defined by x^2+Y^2+z^2-ct^2
>
>> OTOH if this is not observed in our universe, we either have more than
>> 4 space/time dimensions or laws are not invariant, both do not seem
>> compatible with reality.
>
> Except you just included "c" as a constant in that formula, which was
> the point. If "c" varies depending on how fast you're going, that whole
> formula falls apart.
?? I defined a metric on my space, that is all. OK, I added a 'c' to
keep consistent with ordinary people*. No self respecting theoretical
physicist would do that. (But then they sometimes don't know what their
formulas mean in real life as they lost track what the power of 'c' is
in their formulas; 'c' is in their system a constant of 1). That the c
turns out to have a meaning in real life is a surprise.
In fact it doesn't, remember we were just doing maths. All we know is
that there are coupled vector and scalar fields, with solutions that
propagate out with a speed 'c'. If we identify those with the E and B
field what propagates out is light, but then we are in the physical world.
A more consistent implementation of your proposal would be to define a
distance as (px)^2+(qy)^2+(rz)^2-(ct)^2 where p,q,r, and c depend on
position in space and/or velocity (and/or on higher orders derivatives).
I am sure there are some mathematicians studying those too. Perhaps some
of those can even be forced to be Galileo or Lorentz invariant too.
*) Note that I forgot to square it, the dimensions don't add up.
Probably my teacher first did it without this constant or with another
constant to remind us later that it had a dimension of (m/s)^2
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On 1/8/2011 7:38 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> The only problem with that is, it would have to only be non-logically
>> consistent on a very small scale, since, otherwise, there is no
>> evidence this would be the case. It also runs into the whole mess that
>> *no* one, neither scientists, nor the religious (who love this
>> argument as an "in" for their "faith"), would have any damn clue what
>> is going on.
>
> I'd love to address your points, if I could understand what you're saying.
>
?? I am saying, if the universe isn't logically consistent than science
would have to be wrong on a huge scale, but the morons that use that as
an excuse to claim anything else is better wouldn't have a leg to stand
on either. 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.
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.
--
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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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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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();
}
<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 1/8/2011 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 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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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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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 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 1/8/2011 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 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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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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On 07/01/2011 10:25 PM, Warp wrote:
> I think you are confused. The modern banana (that yellow one) is
> only something like 200 years old. It's the product of a mutation of
> a single wild banana plant which suddenly started growing that yellow
> sweet version. The wild banana is much smaller, green, full of seeds
> and almost inedible in raw form.
>
> The mutation in question is actually so severe that the modern banana
> plant is sterile: It cannot reproduce by itself, requiring human
> intervention for cultivation (this happens mainly by transplanting
> underground stems or tissue cultures).
>
> (Ironically, the modern banana is so mutated that it can be considered
> by all practical means "unnatural", as without human intervention it would
> have died right from that very first mutated plant 200 years ago, which
> makes it a perfect example of gene manipulation by humans, yet people who
> strongly oppose gene manipulation have usually no problems in eating
> bananas.)
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".
As for people who oppose genetic engineering, they will argue that
bananas are OK, because the gene alteration happened "naturally". If the
gene alteration had happened because of a man in a white coat, that
would obviously be "unatural", which is bad. Obviously.
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>> So mathematics is not science?
>
> No, math is not science.
I concur with Darren.
Science is the systematic investigation of the real world. Math is the
systematic investigation of abstract systems of axioms of an arbitrary
nature. Some of these systems may or may not be related to something
that happens in the real world, and as such may be "useful". But there
is no requirement for that in pure math. (Applied math is another
matter, of course...)
Some have asserted that "mathematics is the language of science" (which
is not the same as "mathematics *is* science").
On the other hand, more recently some have suggested mathematics
becoming an experimental discipline. (After, e.g., the fiasco with the
4-colour map conjecture and its proof.)
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On 07/01/2011 04:51 PM, scott wrote:
> For someone with no chemistry or biology education past basic
> school-level, that was really interesting, thanks. It answered some of
> the questions I had, and made me hungry to find out more...
The mark of a well-written piece. ;-)
Yes, I too have little chemistry knowledge, beyond what I could get from
The Osborne Introduction to Chemistry. In particular, the idea of
catalysis seems bizarre and inexplicable.
If you read a typical encyclopaedia entry, at best you'll discover that
DNA makes proteins, and proteins do chemical reactions, and that's how
cells work. It might even mention that there's an RNA step in between,
tell you which organelles do all this work, and perhaps even show you
the table of amino acids and which codons code for them.
The reality of the situation, as I wrote, is far, far more complex (and
interesting).
If a human being had designed the cellular machinery, they would
redoubtably have designed it as a set of independent little compartments
that all do their own thing in an orthogonal way, signalling to each
other as appropriate. But when you read about how /actual/ living cells
work, you find a tangled mess of haphazard interactions and fortuitous
reuses of molecules and structures for multiple simultaneous purposes -
/exactly/ as evolution would predict. It's really a very striking
demonstration, to me.
If you read a brick-thick tome like The Molecular Biology of the Gene,
it talks about Daltons and thermodynamic equilibria and van der Waals
forces and so forth as if you have any idea what the hell it's talking
about. Only Behe describes proteins as "the motors, gears, pulleys and
scaffolding of the cell". This explains what it's all about far more
vividly than any discussion of activation energy levels.
Still, not being an expert chemist, I find myself lacking an intuition
for how individual molecules of a substance behave. You can sort of
imagine an amino acid chains as being like a string of beads on a
necklace. The books tell us that some of these beads are watery, some
are oily, some electrically changed negative or positive, some are
acidic or basic, the beads are all different sizes... but it's difficult
to really visualise exactly how that makes them move. Or, for that
matter, how some RNA molecules can fold up and edit themselves, chopping
out introns automatically.
Basically, I lack an intuition for how these molecules float around in
their environment.
Then again, protein folding is one of the great problems of this decade.
(Remember folding@home, anyone?) So maybe the chemists don't yet
understand it either...
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> Amazing to see how molecular biology uncovers how the operating
> mechanisms of living cells are not so much chemical as they are
> nano-mechanical.
>
> The "nanobots" are out there already.
The wheel? Nature did it first.
Explosives? Nature did it first.
Powered flight? Nature did it first.
Sonar? Nature did it first.
Electricity? Nature did it first.
Turing-complete computers? Nature did it first.
...and you're surprised that nature has already done nanobots? ;-)
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>> The more I read about molecular biology, the more interesting it becomes.
>
> Really incredible stuff goes on. I'm never sure whether I'm more amazed
> that it works like this, or that we can figure out that it works like this.
Indeed. It's not surprising that people win Nobel prises for this kind
of work.
Take a look at the paper I linked to. Just look at how much statistics
went into merely checking whether human opioid receptors have changed at
all, and if so whether it's by chance or due to selection pressure.
(The idea of the human brain containing receptors for opium has always
bothered me. Opium is a foreign substance that doesn't belong there; why
the hell would every single walking human have receptors for responding
to it? The answer, of course, is that they aren't *opium* receptors at
all! They're endorphin receptors. They respond to the endorphins that
the human brain itself naturally produces. And yet, even the word
"endorphin" means "endogenous morphine". How backwards can you get?)
>> Mutations that are fatal are vigorously eliminated by natural
>> selection. And indeed, you can find genes that have barely changed for
>> billions of years. These are the so-called "highly conserved sequences".
>
> I remember reading somewhere that there's a gene that controls how many
> fingers you have *and* something about the reproductive system, so any
> mutation in that gene tends to keep you from reproducing for entirely
> unrelated reasons. Hence the reason why everything from fish to bats to
> birds to people have five finger bones.
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.
Incidentally, you may have heard about the theory that embryos retrace
their ancestry as they develop. For example, a human embryo initially
looks not unlike some kind of bizarre fish. Similarly, baleen whales
initially grow teeth before later reabsorbing them (since their
ancestors had teeth, but they do not).
Actually this theory is wrong. Embryos do not /literally/ retrace their
evolutionary history. What /is/ true is that alterations to the early
parts of embryology tend to bugger up more things than do alterations to
the later parts of embryology. Not as an absolute rule, just a general
tendency. The net result is that typically animals change their final
body plan by changing the later stages of their embryology rather than
the early ones.
In short, I suspect that tetrapods all have 5 digits because there are
now highly complex, well-developed and extensively inter-dependent
systems of gene regulation for building 5 digits. You'd have to change a
hell of a lot of stuff to make it, say, 6. If you just changed one
chemical gradient, for example, you'd break so much stuff... it just
wouldn't work.
If you look at things that aren't tetrapods, you find that 5 isn't so
special.
>> Speaking of which, here's a thing: Every single living cell in the
>> human body (with a few exceptions) has the exact same genome.
>
> Every single *human* cell. About half (or more) of the cells in your
> body aren't human, tho.
Humans are eukaryotes. Eukaryote cells are apparently *way* bigger than
bacterial cells. So it's not difficult for bacterial cells to outnumber
human cells; they're smaller. And while we're on the subject, everybody
thinks of bacteria as "those things that make you ill". But the vast
majority of bacterial species have no effect on human health at all. And
a large number of them are /beneficial/.
(For example, E. coli is well-known for making people ill. But it's a
normal resident of the human body, and it even "communicates" with the
human digestive system, telling it for example how much nutrients it
needs. The human digestive system then absorbs all but that amount,
leaving enough behind for E. coli (and friends) to stay fed. They are
symbionts.)
Then of course, there's the theory (presented by Richard Dawkins as if
it's an accepted scientific /fact/) that most of the organelles of the
eukaryote cell are actually symbiotic bacteria which have become reduced
almost to nothing, retaining only their key chemical processes that
benefit the cell. If it were true, it would mean that basically the
entire chemistry of visible life is possible due to bacteria.
> I'm not sure why you have a job in IT instead of a job in teaching.
I'm not sure why I have an honours degree in computer science, and yet
my sister actually gets paid to write computer programs. o_O
Then again, she works in London, so...
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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).
There seems to be this notion that "mother nature" protects people from
harm as long as humans don't tamper with her ways. In other words, as
long as something is deemed as "natural" (the product of natural processes
without human intervention) it's good and harmless, while anything that is
deemed as "artficial" is harmful (to both people and nature).
--
- Warp
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> So mathematics is not science?
> >
> > No, math is not science.
> I concur with Darren.
> Science is the systematic investigation of the real world. Math is the
> systematic investigation of abstract systems of axioms of an arbitrary
> nature.
Aren't you confusing "science" with "natural sciences"? Natural sciences
study the natural world, but "science" in general can encompass more than
that.
As for math, would you say that, for example, the branch of mathematics
called geometry studies how the real world works or not?
--
- Warp
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On 10/01/2011 12:16 PM, Warp wrote:
> There seems to be this notion that "mother nature" protects people from
> harm as long as humans don't tamper with her ways. In other words, as
> long as something is deemed as "natural" (the product of natural processes
> without human intervention) it's good and harmless, while anything that is
> deemed as "artificial" is harmful (to both people and nature).
But of course. It's not as if millions of lives around the world have
been saved by the synthetic compound Tamiflu, not that every year people
are killed by toxic mushrooms, spiders, snakes and jellyfish.
In fact, you know what? Mankind has spent decades trying to perfect more
and more powerful nerve toxins. And after years of creating such
deliberately poisonous artificial chemicals, the most toxic nerve poison
known to man is /still/ 100% natural. It's called botox. It isn't even
hard to find.
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>> I concur with Darren.
>
>> Science is the systematic investigation of the real world. Math is the
>> systematic investigation of abstract systems of axioms of an arbitrary
>> nature.
>
> Aren't you confusing "science" with "natural sciences"? Natural sciences
> study the natural world, but "science" in general can encompass more than
> that.
Well, I suppose if you wanted to be really pedantic about it, science is
the study of that which can be experimentally verified (or falsified).
Mathematics is /usually/ about what can be logically proven, which isn't
exactly the same, but... there's perhaps some overlap there.
> As for math, would you say that, for example, the branch of mathematics
> called geometry studies how the real world works or not?
Which geometry? Euclidean geometry? Elliptic geometry? Hyperbolic
geometry? Some sort of non-homogeneous geometry?
Pure mathematics studies these geometries purely for their own sake. One
or other of them /may/ correspond to the real world.
(For example, Euclid presumably proposed Euclidean geometry because he
thought it corresponded to real figures drawn on real flat surfaces. But
of course today we know that the universe actually has negative
curvature, so hyperbolic geometry is probably a better match.)
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > As for math, would you say that, for example, the branch of mathematics
> > called geometry studies how the real world works or not?
> Which geometry? Euclidean geometry? Elliptic geometry? Hyperbolic
> geometry? Some sort of non-homogeneous geometry?
> Pure mathematics studies these geometries purely for their own sake. One
> or other of them /may/ correspond to the real world.
The very word "geometry" means "measuring land" (from ancient greek
geo = earth/land, metri = measurement). Geometry is one of the oldest
branches of mathematics (probably only preceded by elementary arithmetic)
and was, indeed, motivated by real-world applications (such as measuring
the area of a piece of land and dividing land into equal parts by area).
If that's not science, I don't know what is.
--
- Warp
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>>> As for math, would you say that, for example, the branch of mathematics
>>> called geometry studies how the real world works or not?
>
>> Which geometry? Euclidean geometry? Elliptic geometry? Hyperbolic
>> geometry? Some sort of non-homogeneous geometry?
>
>> Pure mathematics studies these geometries purely for their own sake. One
>> or other of them /may/ correspond to the real world.
>
> The very word "geometry" means "measuring land" (from ancient greek
> geo = earth/land, metri = measurement).
And the very word "atom" means "cannot be cut". Not without a particle
accelerator, anyway...
(For that matter, "electron" means "amber". Science and technology is
littered with terms made up of Greek or Latin words, the literal meaning
of which are utterly inappropriate considering what the term means today.)
> Geometry is one of the oldest
> branches of mathematics (probably only preceded by elementary arithmetic)
> and was, indeed, motivated by real-world applications (such as measuring
> the area of a piece of land and dividing land into equal parts by area).
>
> If that's not science, I don't know what is.
Personally, I would make the separation that "Euclidean geometry" is a
mathematical theory, while "the real world conforms to Euclidean
geometry" is a scientific theory.
(And, for that matter, a scientific theory which has been falsified as
thoroughly as Newton's laws of of motion have been falsified. In other
words, it's incorrect, but it's close enough to being correct as to be a
useful simplification, most of the time...)
Mathematical theories exist independent of the physical world. For
example, the Manhattan geometry surely doesn't describe any real-world
situation (except something really abstract like network topology).
Certainly it doesn't describe the physical shapes we see with our eyes.
And yet, it is a perfectly valid and self-consistent mathematical theory.
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On 1/7/2011 9:28 AM, Invisible wrote:
> No sane Designer would have designed it this way.
Other than your belief that you would have done things differently, what
is the basis for this claim?
Regards,
John
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On 1/7/2011 11:02 AM, 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".
This claim does not come strictly from uninformed masses. It is also
made by people more knowledgeable than you and I put together.
Regards,
John
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On 1/7/2011 11:51 AM, Invisible wrote:
> I've seen a lot of arguments for and against whether ID should be taught
> in schools alongside evolution. For me, these all miss the main point:
> ID is not a scientific theory. It may or may not be correct, but it's
> not testable. Because it doesn't /predict/ anything.
Actually, it does. It predicts, among other things, that the genetic
code for organisms may have features of no present use, but which may be
of use by descendant creatures. An intelligent designer, especially one
of the intellect required to design a eukaryotic cell, would have some
capacity for anticipating future changes to the environment and can
front-load the genetic code in preparation for this.
Be that as it may, I am against the teaching of life's origins on the
public dime, because it is a matter of public debate, and is therefore
incompatible with the principles that underlie a free society. What
invariably happens, when the government is allowed this power, is that
the people who are in the wrong will go running to the government to
have their view imposed by fiat, and all conflicting views suppressed to
one degree or another. At the present moment a person who is skeptical
that natural selection is sufficient to explain the entirety of
observable living systems is subject to exclusion from participating in
scientific and educational endeavors, even when the topic has no bearing
on the origin of life. But in times past it was the other way around.
"But we're not ignorant like they were then." Actually, it's because of
a shift in political connections.
As a practical matter, I of course oppose the teaching of views I
disagree with, but I also oppose the forced teaching of views that I
agree with, because that breeds resentment--especially if someone gets
drunk with power and exceeds his authority--and I don't want my views
getting blamed for some idiot's power trip.
Regards,
John
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>> No sane Designer would have designed it this way.
>
> Other than your belief that you would have done things differently, what
> is the basis for this claim?
OK, well sanity is something that medical professionals cannot strictly
define, even for human subjects. So let's leave that out.
What I can say is this: If we had some idea *why* the designer designed
life, we might be in a position to debate whether the way life works
matches this goal or not.
ID helpfully omits to specify what the motivation was. With no design
goal, we can't say a lot. Similarly, ID helpfully omits to specify
anything about the designer (or designers) at all, so we have nothing to
go on.
What we /can/ say is that no /human/ designer would have designed life
this way. But that's probably obvious from the fact that humans have
never designed anything even approaching the complexity of life. But,
more particularly, artefacts designed by humans exhibit certain specific
qualities.
Most obviously, man-made devices are highly discrete in their design.
The task to be performed is split up into separate subtasks, which are
performed by lots of little independent, orthogonal units, even if
that's a less efficient way of doing things.
Compare the computer and the human brain. (No, the don't do the same
thing. The resemblance is vague at best. But, very loosely, you could
claim that both are giant signal processors, essentially.)
A computer has a CPU, connected by a narrow bridge to a completely
separate RAM. It has several I/O devices, sometimes with their own CPUs
and RAMs, needlessly duplicating functionality already present. In
short, it is a collection of complex systems connected by simple
interfaces. (Here "complex" and "simple" are obviously relative terms.)
Now consider the human brain. Rather than having one lump of tissue that
receives sensory inputs, and a separate lump that stores memories, and a
separate bit that compares one to the other, and another bit that
generates motor outputs, what you /actually/ find is that all these
circuits are all tangled up together. There are no "memory neurons" and
"comparison neurons". Rather, the brain's ability to compare things or
to remember things is an emergent property of a large network of more or
less identical neural components, wired up in different combinations.
A human designer would have built a brain with lots of separate
compartments. Evolution has built one with lots of related and some
unrelated functions all tangled up together.
So, we can conclusively say that a human wouldn't have designed this
organ this way. If we actually knew something about the hypothetical
designer of ID, we might be able to test that claim as well. (But,
helpfully, we cannot.)
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On 1/7/2011 1:05 PM, Darren New wrote:
> I'm not sure why you have a job in IT instead of a job in teaching.
I taught computer literacy to fifteen-year-olds.
Teaching requires, in addition to subject matter competency, skill in
classroom management and lesson planning and presentation. I was hired
having a CIS degree, but with no training in the other areas. If you
don't know what to watch for, the kids will go crazy. Toss in the kids
who weren't raised right (for whatever reason), and the situation
becomes unmanageable.
Additionally, a typical school teacher takes an enormous amount of work
home. That takes its toll as well.
I quit after seven months. My replacement worked for less than two
years before moving on as well.
Regards,
John
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On 10/01/2011 04:01 PM, John VanSickle wrote:
> Teaching requires, in addition to subject matter competency, skill in
> classroom management and lesson planning and presentation. I was hired
> having a CIS degree, but with no training in the other areas. If you
> don't know what to watch for, the kids will go crazy. Toss in the kids
> who weren't raised right (for whatever reason), and the situation
> becomes unmanageable.
I would have thought the biggest problem is that kids don't want to
learn anything, don't give a damn what you're talking about, and will
basically go to any lengths to avoid being taught.
_That_ is why I'm not a teacher.
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> Mathematical theories exist independent of the physical world. For
> example, the Manhattan geometry surely doesn't describe any real-world
> situation (except something really abstract like network topology).
Err, you do realise why it's called Manhattan geometry?
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>> I've seen a lot of arguments for and against whether ID should be taught
>> in schools alongside evolution. For me, these all miss the main point:
>> ID is not a scientific theory. It may or may not be correct, but it's
>> not testable. Because it doesn't /predict/ anything.
>
> Actually, it does. It predicts, among other things, that the genetic
> code for organisms may have features of no present use, but which may be
> of use by descendant creatures. An intelligent designer, especially one
> of the intellect required to design a eukaryotic cell, would have some
> capacity for anticipating future changes to the environment and can
> front-load the genetic code in preparation for this.
ID asserts that "life was designed by an intelligent, concious entity".
That's all it says.
Now, if you mean "life was designed by an intelligent, concious entity
AT THE START OF EARTH'S HISTORY", then you start to be able to make some
predictions.
The first prediction is that the genome of every creature that has ever
existed and will ever exist must have been somehow encoded into the very
first lifeform(s) that the designer seeded the planet with.
By a trivial pigeon-hole argument this is laughably impossible.
It also pre-supposes that the designer knew exactly what habitats would
exist in 4 billion years' time, which is also absurdly impossible.
(The best human scientists, equipped with mountains of measurement data,
cannot even predict what the weather will do in 5 days' time, never mind
what it will do over geological time. And you're suggesting that the
designer /could/ predict all of this with /no measurement data at all/?
I think not.)
To see how severe the problem is, consider the video I watched the other
day. D. Attenborough visited an ancient lava flow in New Zealand. In one
place, it had cut off an area of forest about 300 yards across. And in
this one tiny island of green surrounded by barren rock, there lives an
entire ecosystem of plants and animals. There are species of fruit flies
there that live in this 300 square yard patch of ground, and live
nowhere else on the face of the Earth.
You seriously expect me to believe that some designer 4 billion years
ago could have predicted that the lava flow would move in this exact
direction to leave this specific patch of green free for colonisation?
Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
> Be that as it may, I am against the teaching of life's origins on the
> public dime, because it is a matter of public debate, and is therefore
> incompatible with the principles that underlie a free society.
Well, that's a nice idea, but do we not teach children about World War
II, because some lunatic claims that it didn't happen? Do we not tell
them that the world is round, because a few lone idiots claim that it's
flat?
Isn't part of the job of education to get the facts straight, so that
kids know what to believe?
Now, that's not always possible of course. There are cases where we
really aren't sure what the facts actually are. And IMHO that is a
useful lesson too. If you're talking about the /origin/ of life on
Earth, nobody has really conclusively figured that out yet. There's a
bunch of plausible theories, but nobody is really anywhere near sure.
But if you're talking about the /evolution/ of life... apart from a few
lone crackpots, everybody unanimously agrees on the matter. So that's
what we should teach.
Personally, I think they /should/ teach ID in schools. As an example of
how to tell the difference between scientific fact and crude falsehood.
(Apparently some people can't do this yet...)
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On 10/01/2011 03:59 PM, scott wrote:
>> Mathematical theories exist independent of the physical world. For
>> example, the Manhattan geometry surely doesn't describe any real-world
>> situation (except something really abstract like network topology).
>
> Err, you do realise why it's called Manhattan geometry?
Because it applies to the topology of the streets of Manhattan?
Like I said, I'm sure there's lots of other, similarly abstract things
to which it also applies. It does /not/ however apply literally to the
three-dimensional space that we all see around us.
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On Mon, 10 Jan 2011 10:38:58 -0500, John VanSickle wrote:
> This claim does not come strictly from uninformed masses. It is also
> made by people more knowledgeable than you and I put together.
But in all the cases I've found, it comes from them when they reach the
limit of their knowledge - then they fall back on "God did it" because
they can't explain any further.
Jim
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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Jan 2011 10:38:58 -0500, John VanSickle wrote:
> > This claim does not come strictly from uninformed masses. It is also
> > made by people more knowledgeable than you and I put together.
> But in all the cases I've found, it comes from them when they reach the
> limit of their knowledge - then they fall back on "God did it" because
> they can't explain any further.
While there most probably are such people in existence, I think it's
pretty rare for somebody to have the opinion "I have no idea how complex
life came into existence, but I don't think it was by natural processes"
without also believing that some kind of god or other intelligence did it
as a conscious and deliberate act. I have never heard of a hardcore atheist
proclaiming that he doesn't believe that life could have formed by natural
processes (although I'm pretty sure there a few of those as well, but as
said, the are probably are very small minority).
Attributing unexplained phenomena to a god (much less to the Christian
God of the Bible) is one of the oldest fallacies, and one which gets
narrowed down more and more as science progresses. Nobody in their right
mind, not even the most hardcore fundamentalist believers, would claim
nowadays that eg. the flu is caused by supernatural demons or that lighting
bolts are supernatural manifestations of a god. Why? Because nowadays we
know exactly what causes them, so there's no need for a supernatural
explanation. The "God did it" explanation recesses further and further to
the more basic elements of nature. Some hundreds of years ago almost
everything was caused by some supernatural phenomenon, but nowadays the
argument has had to recess so much that there's almost nothing left. The
only couple of things left are the tired old "where did the universe come
from" and "how did life from on Earth", and that's about it. About everything
else has already been explained by science so clearly that not even the
most fundamentalist of believers can resort to them anymore.
This is basically the "god of the gaps" argument, and it's getting pretty
flimsy.
--
- Warp
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >>> As for math, would you say that, for example, the branch of mathematics
> >>> called geometry studies how the real world works or not?
> >
> >> Which geometry? Euclidean geometry? Elliptic geometry? Hyperbolic
> >> geometry? Some sort of non-homogeneous geometry?
> >
> >> Pure mathematics studies these geometries purely for their own sake. One
> >> or other of them /may/ correspond to the real world.
> >
> > The very word "geometry" means "measuring land" (from ancient greek
> > geo = earth/land, metri = measurement).
> And the very word "atom" means "cannot be cut". Not without a particle
> accelerator, anyway...
So what you are implying with that sentence is that the concept of geometry
being used to measure and describe the real world is bogus?
(And if what you are implying is that geometry is not an accurate
representation of the real world, making it a non-science, then by the
same logic Newtonian mechanics is not science. Heck, General Relativity is
most probably not science by the same argument.)
--
- Warp
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On Mon, 10 Jan 2011 11:47:40 -0500, Warp wrote:
> About everything else has already been explained by science so clearly
> that not even the most fundamentalist of believers can resort to them
> anymore.
Except that they do, of course.
Heck, Bill O'Reilly (one of the FOX News guys) just recently tried to say
that nobody understands how tides work, and that's proof that God exists.
Of course, he's no astrophysicist (unlike Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who
answered that question for him on The Colbert Report last week <g>), but
even I know how tides work. And I understand how the sun goes up and
down every day, too (which O'Reilly didn't seem to know, either).
Jim
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John VanSickle <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Be that as it may, I am against the teaching of life's origins on the
> public dime,
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.
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.
> because it is a matter of public debate,
The public doesn't get to decide the truth. That's just silly.
> What
> invariably happens, when the government is allowed this power, is that
> the people who are in the wrong will go running to the government to
> have their view imposed by fiat, and all conflicting views suppressed to
> one degree or another.
So now teaching the theory of evolution is a government conspiracy. Right.
Guess what happened to your credibility just now.
> At the present moment a person who is skeptical
> that natural selection is sufficient to explain the entirety of
> observable living systems is subject to exclusion from participating in
> scientific and educational endeavors, even when the topic has no bearing
> on the origin of life.
Would you also allow holocaust-deniers, 9/11 conspiracy theorists and
anti-vaccinationists to teach at public schools, just for "balance"?
--
- Warp
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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> Heck, Bill O'Reilly (one of the FOX News guys) just recently tried to say
> that nobody understands how tides work, and that's proof that God exists.
It seems that "nobody knows how this works" and "science has no explanation
for" are pretty common claims among young-earth creationists and conspiracy
theorists. What makes them rather egregious is that there most often *is*
a pretty good explanation for those things, but the person making the claim
has either been duped by someone that there isn't (and he lacks even the
most basic of independent critical thinking), he deliberately refuses to
accept the explanation (no matter how simple and understandable it might be)
or he is outright lying (which, I suspect, is a very common case).
The sad thing is that this kind of claims will be believed by many who
already have a basic bias to accepting such claims. You can claim almost
anything to person holding a belief, and the person will accept the claim
completely uncritically if it supports his belief, without ever even
bothering to try to find out if it's actually true.
--
- Warp
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On Mon, 10 Jan 2011 12:10:35 -0500, Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> Heck, Bill O'Reilly (one of the FOX News guys) just recently tried to
>> say that nobody understands how tides work, and that's proof that God
>> exists.
>
> It seems that "nobody knows how this works" and "science has no
> explanation
> for" are pretty common claims among young-earth creationists and
> conspiracy theorists.
Indeed that does seem to be the case.
> What makes them rather egregious is that there
> most often *is* a pretty good explanation for those things, but the
> person making the claim has either been duped by someone that there
> isn't (and he lacks even the most basic of independent critical
> thinking), he deliberately refuses to accept the explanation (no matter
> how simple and understandable it might be) or he is outright lying
> (which, I suspect, is a very common case).
I would tend to agree. That's the problem with religious (or any
superstitious, for that matter) belief. Anything that flies in the face
of that deeply held belief tends to be discarded (unless the person is
perfectly willing to accept the dogma as being incorrect - and in
fairness, some religions do seem to promote critical thinking - Judaism
comes to mind). Some people just can't accept that things don't work the
way they think they work, even if they have absolutely no scientific
background that would help them understand the actual science of how it
works.
In O'Reilly's case, he seems to have flunked basic physics and/or
geometry. Take two spherical objects, rotate one around the other while
spinning it, and see how the objects look in relation to each other.
OMG, the sun goes up and down regularly because there's an actual
physical explanation! Who would have known that?
(Well, in Galileo's time, certainly, that was questionable - but it's
frightening to think that someone living in the modern world has only the
scientific understanding that was popular several hundred years ago).
> The sad thing is that this kind of claims will be believed by many who
> already have a basic bias to accepting such claims. You can claim almost
> anything to person holding a belief, and the person will accept the
> claim completely uncritically if it supports his belief, without ever
> even bothering to try to find out if it's actually true.
Yes. Belief presupposes proof, because with proof, one doesn't need
belief.
But I accept that some people aren't content with there being things they
don't know - so if they have to belief in a big guy in the sky in order
to be content, that's fine with me, so long as they don't prevent the
rest of us from sharing how things *actually* work with those who want to
know how things actually work. For example, pushing creationism as
"science" in the classroom. I'm sorry, but "God did it" isn't a
scientific principle, and it doesn't belong in a science classroom. You
want to teach that in church, fine. Go ahead. Knock yourself out. Oh,
and give kids the choice to decide for themselves whether they want to
bury their heads in the sand and just accept "God did it" as an
explanation for everything or if they want to learn how it really works -
even if *nobody* knows. Hell, *especially* if nobody knows.
But keep it out of the public school classroom.
Jim
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Warp wrote:
> without also believing that some kind of god or other intelligence did it
Interestingly enough, all the "evidence" for ID is equally explained by
evolved outer-space aliens doing genetic engineering on Earth. Even *if* you
accept that evolution couldn't have produced the eye, or flagellum, or
whatever, you *still* don't get to say it must have been God, unless you
also rule out life anywhere else in the universe.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Invisible wrote:
> 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.)
He's far from the first person to come up with that idea. And I'm also
pretty sure Wolfram thinks the network connections between cells are far
smaller than an individual particle or quark or whatever.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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Invisible wrote:
> 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.
ID is testable. It just failed the tests. But it's certainly testable.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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