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Subatomic Darwinism
blamanj writes "In the beginning was Darwinism, then there arose Social Darwinism, now physicists are proposing Quantum Darwinism. According to the Nature article: "If, as quantum mechanics says, observing the world tends to change it, how is it that we can agree on anything at all? Why doesn't each person leave a slightly different version of the world for the next person to find?
Because, say the researchers, certain special states of a system are promoted above others by a quantum form of natural selection, which they call quantum darwinism. Information about these states proliferates and gets imprinted on the environment. So observers coming along and looking at the environment in order to get a picture of the world tend to see the same 'preferred' states."."
ertain special states of a system are promoted above others by a quantum form of natural selection, which they call quantum darwinism
I don't agree with that.
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... religious Darwinism. IOW, beliefs evolve as previous beliefs are shown to be "unfit," i.e. disproven by observation.
... but, um, see, there's all this little stuff you scientists haven't quite figured out yet about the specifics, and sometimes you argue about it, and THAT'S ABSOLUTE PROOF OF THAT GOD EXISTS AND HE WANTS YOU TO DO EXACTLY AS _____ (insert your preferred version of a frequently mistranslated, politically loaded anthology of folktales here) SAYS!"
"The Earth is flat, because this passage from the Bible talks about God stopping the Sun directly overhead!"
"Um, no, actually, it's a sphere, and here's the proof."
"Okay, okay! But the celestial bodies are little lights in the sky, and perfect and unblemished, and the go around the Earth!"
"Um, no, actually, they've got all kinds of flaws and blemishes, and they all go around the Sun, and here's the proof."
"Oh, damn! But the Earth was created a few thousand years ago, as we can determine from Biblical genealogies!"
"Um, no, actually, it's been around for a lot longer than that, and here's the proof."
"Aaargh! But humans were specially created by God in His image, and are absolutely unique!"
"Um, no, actually, we look an awful lot like other apes, and that's really not a coincidence, and here's the proof."
"*whimper* All right, so the Earth is round, and it and all the other lumpy rocks revolve around the Sun, and it's all really old, and humans are a lot like apes
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
i.e. genetic algorithms.
GA's are used to maximize arbitrary functions by a mixture of random mutation and crossover between the solution candidates with better aptitude.
It's hot stuff, and it comes up with good solutions for analytically untractable problems.
So maybe a First Post really does matter then.
Wow.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/
(Below this, on the bumper, is a sticker that says "if you can read this, you are too close or you are trying to see my Darwin deck-lid emblem")
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
the fact that observation changes a system doesn't require everyone sees massively different things, so an explanation of things being not massively different seems unnecessary.
if there is a box containing a red pen and a blue pen and I "observe" it (e.g. shake it about), it will have a different configuration but will still be a box containing a red pen and a blue pen.
So observers coming along and looking at the environment in order to get a picture of the world tend to see the same 'preferred' states.
Techno-speak for "rose-tinted-glasses"?
Seriously though, thinking about it makes your brain hurt: Did the scientists working on this create the necessary state "they preferred" inadvertently in order to discover the state they wanted to see?
It's time to Revisualize the universe.
Software Wars
Is that some quantum states are more stable and are more likely to occur at any given moment than others?
I didn't realize this was new. Maybe the news is that they have a "proof" of this now?
What's next... "market darwinism" when the products people buy survive?
/me needs more eggnog
No. "Darwinism" is about replicators, i.e. organisms that reproduce and that compete for resources.
When used for "Social Darwinism", the word implies that societies reproduce and compete for resources. In many ways this is accurate. You could use "darwinism" to describe many kinds of replicating, competing natural systems.
But quantums...? WTF?
Until we have evidence that quantums are actually lifeforms, the word "Darwinism" is simply not valid.
Anyhow, and on a different note, quantum mechanics is easy. Here's Ites' Dummies Guide to Quantum Physics: matter and energy are made of wavelets, a string of energy. Wavelets look like particles when they're compressed by time or distance. Measuring a wavelet changes it. Wavelets do not breed and they do not compete for resources.
The table is not solid because it's an agreed reality. The table is solid because your hand cannot pass through it.
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I'm not a physicist so you can shut me up at any time. But I thought the "observation changes the object" was only true because to observe you you have to toss energy at it and see what happens. Then the act of tossing the energy changed it. How does this mean that "looking at Buckinham Palace" would do anything ever? You just look at it. Being aware of an electron does not make it change. What you do to the electron to know it's there is what changes it. I suppose I don't really know, so I won't claim to.
Oh by the way if we all percieve that the reality of quantum physicists is to disappear, I think they would disappear... or at least make themselves disappear to prove their own points.
Just a boy doing unproffesional IT work that's way above his head.
So observers coming along and looking at the environment in order to get a picture of the world tend to see the same 'preferred' states.
Sounds a lot like Solipsism which is nothing new at all.
Solipsism is the belief that, because we can only verify our own experiences and no-one elses, only the self is real.
or to put that in Layman's terms: "Go away, you don't exist!"
Schrodinger's cat, it's going to be pissed.
It wasn't a troll until you looked at it. Nice going...
wow. my head hurts from reading that abstract..
I perfer Terry Pratchett's definition of 'quantum' where scientists label anything too confusing for them to understand as being 'quantum'
"What're quantum mechanics?" - "I don't know. People
who repair quantums, I suppose."
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
by Stephen Hawking:He goes on to talk about how time curves back on itself as it approaches zero (stuff I'll never understand). So, basically the Catholic Church has conceded the time since the Big Bang to Science, excepting the occasional divine meddling. Of course, such meddling would imply the Great One couldn't design a universe that ran according to The Plan without intervention - such impudence.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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How do they address this:
There's no way to know exactly how similar different people's perception of the same scenes is;
Quantum-level variations resulting from observation and whatever else are not likely to make a noticable difference in these scenes.
The idea that trees are tending to appear the same way because their particles find their way back to the same place after being displaced by observations isn't implausible, but without further establishing the potential for a contrary situation it seems like overkill!
Good thing they "mathematically proved" that they're right, heh heh.
This sort of thing has been a theory with me for years. All 'reality' is based on single and shared observation. Person A views everything a certain way, Person B views it another way. What we 'see' in our reality is the overlapping realms between persons A and B (for instance). In other words, the universe is touched and changed by observation. Humanity as a whole shares and expected result of reality which is the baseline norm.
Quantum physics is just the microcosm if the greater universe. Looking for a particle? Create it. Do the math, theories, etc... Then 'look' at it and there it is! The greater the number of believers that the particle exists, the greater chance the particle will be observed. The big question is "Did the particle exist before, or did it come into existance because shared reality expectations amoung observers cause it to come into existance?"
I know there will be those that totally don't understand, and those that will detract, but quantum physics is where science, philosophy, and religion tend to meet. There are few that feel comfortable with that thought.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
This is sounds like pseudoscience to me and someone feeling the need to invent some new crazy thing to get a PhD thesis going. This all stems from applying different intuitive "explanations" to the results of the quantum physics. The math works out alright but it seems that people have a need to understand and have an intuitive plan or schematics in their head. The computer scientist might imagine an array as a bucket or a counter with items on it. The electrical engineer might think of the current as water flowing through the wires etc. This seems to work up to a point. Quantum physics on the other hand doesn not seem to have any decent intuitive explanation that everyone's mom or uncle can read in a "how stuff works" book and have a clear grasp of what is going on. This hasn't stopped physicists from applying different interpretation to the quantum phenomena based on classical world. The authors from the article in Nature adopted what I believe is called Copenhagen Interpretation, where a state of the system is changed by measuring it. So there is a distinction between the macroworld where the measuring device is and the quantumwold where the system being measured is considered. The problem is that the measuring apparatus itself lives in a quantum world and everthing else is part of a larger quantum world. Check out wiki for Copenhagen interpetation, which the authers seem to adopt and the many-worlds interpretation which might not work out so well for these guys. (look around in here). So take these nice new ideas with a grain of salt. If you want to know that happens go through the math at least 3 times and then all you see is the math which everyone seems to agree on.
When I took physics, it was pretty clear that quantum effects are negligible at large scale. For instance, I have a wave form as I'm sitting in this chair at my office. I don't really notice my oscillation all that much.
So, for observation of the macroscopic environment it would follow that quantum effects can be ignored. But then again, I'm arguing against quantum physicists from Los Alamos, so maybe they're just explaining why quantum effects can be ignored at a large scale.
Yet it would seem as simple as "observation of the individual particles of the windows at Buckingham Palace are affected by observation, but statistically speaking, each change is just as likely as the next, so at a macroscopic level the odds of a visible change are infinitesimal." Sure, there's a chance that a window could move but it's so unlikely as to never happen during the life of the universe. I RRTFA and don't see this.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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The term "quantum darwinism" is really an unnecessary buzzword. There is a certain analogy about states which create many records of themselves surviving a robust pointer states where others are "selected against", but the analogy is really pretty limited and not very useful. It's better to stay away from using terms like darwinism for effect. I should note that I didn't see the word "quantum darwinism" in the title or abstract of either of the actual journal articles this news item references. For the lazy, the two papers in question seem to be this preprint and this article from the Nov 26 issue of Physical Review Letters.
This sounds like an interesting result and Zurek is a premenent figure in the field of quantum decoherence, but this looks like the tying up of some (important) details rather than the revolutionary developement the news article makes it out to be. Even as far back as the work of Everett we had an idea of why two observers who compared notes would always agree on the objective facts. In the many worlds interpretation, this comes down to the fact that if observer A measures system S, there will be many different possible results. So there will be many branches of the wavefunction with A observing each possible result. When observer B measures system S, he becomes entangled with S and A, and there are many possible outcomes, but in each branch of the wave function A and B agree on the outcome. Not sure if that clears anything up. :-) If you're talking about purely quantum systems, the same thing happens in the Copenhagen interpretation. The only tricky part is how to think about it when A and B are "classical observers". Still, I haven't read these papers yet and now I'm eager to.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
I suspect that somewhere it went wrong. Modern physicists are much like the ancient astronomers.
These astronomers, believing that planetary orbits were circular, developed much arcane math and explanation as to why they couldn't completely account for the observed data. They could not imagine such a thing as an elliptical orbit.
Modern physicists, believing that wavelets acted a particular way under certain observation arrangements, developed much arcane math and explanation as to why they couldn't completely account for the observed data. They could not imagine such a thing as a (insert reason here).
I believe that somewhere along the way, a key piece of information may have been missed that would make all of this very simple. Lord knows, I could be wrong...
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
it's funny, laught
it's a fitting example of darwinism taking place in the religious memesphere, each time the study of nature and reality shows that some silly religiously based idea can't be backed up, well then the idea gets appropriately modified to fit reality.
Religions claiming to have special knowledge eventually get challenged and many get shown out the door. It's a sad testimony for some religions. And upsetting for the stringent by-the-letter followers.
A fit religion will be one that sticks to the basics: faith, how to live with oneself, how to live with the world and other men. It will not made silly unnecessary assumptions about a reality that cares nothing for how we on the thin surface of a small planet see it.
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
Its similar to natural selection.
The more stable the configuration, the more likely it is to form and stay for long periods of time.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Darwinian history of boygroups
Well, don't boy bands work on similar principles to reproductive success? I'd suggest a large proportion of purchasers of boy band singles and albums wanted to reproduce with them. So past sales must measure percieved "fitness"
What of the strange costumes in the '80s? Well, Zahavi's handicap principle surely comes into play here. Throw in some songbird research and you're done.
I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
No, you can't figure out why it falls - you can only use scientific knowledge of gravity to predict how it should fall. And then you can observe whether or not it actually falls that way.
And if it doesn't fall the way you predicted, you need to go find a new theory.
You haven't answered why the value of G is what it is, or even why gravity exists at all. All you've done is predict the behavoir of two or more masses interacting and labelled the interaction "gravity".
Sure glad we avoided that problem.
Play Command HQ online
This sounds very interesting, but is it just simply a strange twist on words? Mathematics can work out to many wonderful things, but the challenge is how and why the mathematics is applied. Methinks (and remembers as a physics undergrad) that conceptual theories such as quantum and relativity are very different from everyday life because they are special cases. Whereas in biology we learned that Darwin's theory of evolution was a general case.
Let me explain: Quantum mechanics takes place in the realm of the extremely super small. Einstein's relativity takes place in the realm of extremely large values of velocity. There is a disconnect there in reconciling these two theories, thus the epic hunt for TOE, The Theory of Everything. The Holy Grail of physics is to find this super theory that unites relativity, quantum mechanics, electricity and magnetism, gravity, mechanics. Although relativity is used in quantum for calculations, there are some contradictions in reconciling the two theories, thus Einstein's famous quote (during his hunt to reconcile relativity with quantum), "God does not play dice with the universe!"
It is my understanding that Darwinism, whether social, economic or of natural selection, takes place in all biological situations. Look around, and everyone will see that quantum mechanics is not something that happens around us! Do you see quantum wells on your computer screen? As you observe the movement of the train, does the Heisenberg uncertainty principle come into play? No! This uncertainty principle does not conflict with everyday life chiefly because it only applies to the special case of extremely small and extremely fast particles.
So this comparison, extension and exercise of extending quantum mechanics to Darwinian proportions appears to me to be more than anything a philosophical exercise.
but she can cold roll them anytime.
... according to quantum mechanics we do all percieve things slightly differently. The effect is only 'noticable' on a quantum scale because Plancks constant is so 'small' as compared to say Avogadros number.
Seriously, IANAP but
>> "The environment is modified so that it contains an imprint of the pointer state," he says.
Which means that the photons (say) coming from one area and reaching another will statistically be similier at a level of accuracy attainable by the receptors(?)
Or are they implying that some 'resonance' (my word) is conserving information that should, according to Copenhagen, be lost. I'm trying to read the paper but I'm charitably near the bottom of the slashdot education graph so someone please explain. The phrase 'Environment monitors certain observables' sounds like a macroscopic pov in a microscopic (quantum) discussion.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
The article is muddy and confusing, and makes a number of problematic claims, the most important of which is the claim that measurement changes the system measured. Within the orthodox (Copenhagen) interpretation of QM this is exactly the type of claim we want to avoid: prior to measurement, we can't say much about the system. We certainly can't say it "is" in any particular state or superposition--only that the outcomes of various possible experiments will follow the predicted probability distributions. To say the system "is" something prior to measurement is to load it with ontological baggage that just isn't justified.
The article also makes a hash of the relation between collapse and decoherence, which are quite different things. Decoherence theory doesn't explain collapse--it replaces it by making it unnecessary. I'm a bit out of date on this stuff, but as near as I can tell decoherence theory is treading down the path to many worlds, and it's still an open question as to whether it will be able to avoid the well-known problems that await its arrival.
--Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Yes, Newtonian physics was ridiculously accurate, within the bounds of our ancestors' measurement precision. In fact, it was so accurate that we still use it today. When we looked closer, we found situations where it doesn't work so well, so we had to expand the theory to fit those situations. Specifically, we can't use Newtonian physics when there are extreme amounts of energy (relativity) or when the scale is extremely small (QM).
But that doesn't make Newtownian physics invalid; it's correct, as an approximation. The maths of relativity and QM do reduce to Newtownian math outside those extremeties.
To respond to your implication, no, this does not mean that QM is perfect. Just as we refined & expanded Newtownian physics, we may well have to refine & expand quantum mechanics. That's not a weakness, per se; QM still works almost everywhere we look. (The major exception is quantum gravity, the synthesis of relativity and QM; we don't have that figured out.) But QM still works astoundingly well. I can't imagine it will ever be shown wrong. Incomplete, sure, but not wrong.
Nobody has welcomed our Subatomic Darwinian Overlords yet!
And don't expect me to do it for you.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Seriously people. If you haven't taken a Quantum Mechanics class of some sort (or had some other real, solid exposure to the mathematics behind it) then don't even attempt to talk about it. Basically, 100% of all attempts I have ever seen to explain QM "conceptually" are complete and utter $hite, and have virtually no relationship to what the math really says. As far as I can tell, there is no good way to conceptually describe quantum mechanics. There are no good analogies. There are gillions of mediocre analogies, but if you really try to understand QM by means of these analogies, you're screwed. Because the analogies work for a small part of QM, and then break down if you try to get at all outside their range. So don't try to extrapolate anything from a conceptual discussion of QM. Don't try to take anything from it other than face value, because you will get it wrong. And in many cases, (such as this one) you will not even get it right from face value.
Case in point: TFA talks a lot about observations. But they also talk about people looking at trees and buildings. You looking at something really doesn't constitute an observation (Quantum mechanically). The photon interacting with the tree (building, etc) is the observation. The photon entering you eye, interacting with your cornea, your lense, and finally your retina is another "observation." But you looking at a tree does not change the tree.
Go read the actual papers referenced by the article, these will actually contain science, and not some journalist's misunderstanding of it.
BTW- IANA physicist... yet. I am halfway through my third year of undergrad physics work. One of the classes I just finished was Intro to Quantum Mechanics I. Just to establish my credentials. If anyone who is a physicist with more education in the subject disagrees with what I have said, I would be glad to talk to him. But if you haven't had any QM class.... shut up. Please. Trust me, unless you have had exposure to infinite dimensional linear algebra and partial differential equations, you do not know what you are talking about.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
There are a host of comments to the effect that Quantum Physics is ad hoc a la Ptolemaic epicycles, or that the research described is pseudo-science etc. First of all Quantum Physics is not ad hoc, nor does it have any relationship to Ptolemaic epicycles. It is grounded in well established axioms and which have proved themselves spectacularly successful in describing physical reality up to and including the physics of the semiconductor devices which commenters used to demonstrate their astounding ignorance and pride therein.
The problem modern physicists face is that the mathematics of Quantum Physics does not obviously lend itself to description in terms of everyday experience. Most people do not have every day experience with superpositions of states nor do they navigate their existence using that model which leads to a disconnect between the mathematics of Quantum Physics and "common sense". That doesn't make the math wrong, it merely indicates that we have adapted to living in a world in which quantum effects can be safely ignored, unless one is trying to make 0.6 micron scale transistors for Slashdotters to abuse.
The research in question actually goes a long way to explaining why it's OK to ignore the quantum nature of reality above certain scales. In short, among the states that a large ensemble of subatomic particles, like Buckingham Palace, can be in there are states which are relatively resistant to large perturbations by observation. Fortunately for the occupants of Buckingham Palace those states tend to describe a palace comoving with the Earth's surface in London, England, and not a palace hurtling towards the sun at a significant fraction of the speed of light. This is a brutally oversimplified plain English explanation of the results, which can only be precisely stated mathematically, and thus likely to lead to significant misunderstanding. Ironically, the research goes a long way to explaining why another reader and I can both agree on the form of the letters of this message.
There are different ways to be wrong. A decent mathematician today could easily work out a perfectly accurate theory of planetary orbits in which the Earth is at the center of the solar system. The predictions about orbits would all be perfectly correct. Like the epicycle-dependent orbital theories developed by the old astronomers, the system would be ridiculously complicated, but it would appear to be a perfect fit with observation. Would such a theory be wrong or right?
In light of this, all we can say about QM is that QM is right in the sense that it's an accurate model of certain phenomena. It could still be entirely "wrong" in the sense that it might be misleading us about the phenomena which it models, analogous to the way in which a theory of epicyclic orbits would mislead us about the solar system's structure.
Note that I'm not drawing any conclusions about QM in this respect, I'm just saying that the idea that QM could turn out to be wrong in some important ways is quite feasible.
Is the glass half-full or half-empty?
God, 1200 AD: "Big guy created the whole thing 5200 years ago."
God, 1800 AD: "Clever big guy created the whole thing 5800 years ago. And had to plunk some planets and set up an inverse square law for gravitation. And bury a bunch of weird lizard fossils to confuse us. Either that, or he's been doing some really weird tricks with biology that we're only beginning to guess at."
God, 1950 AD: "Really clever guy (way cleverer than us) created the whole thing out of, umm, something, we don't really know when, but it was a hell of a long time ago, and made particles that behaved like, umm, waves. It's weird and violates common sense, but we can use the math to make televisions. And BTW, now we know how the Sun works."
God, 2004 AD: "Supremely clever dude, existing completely outside of what we perceive as spacetime, may have tweaked an m-brane collision (the math for which only a few hundred of us on the planet can even begin to understand) that resulted in the setting of a few universal constants for the physics engine and the creation of a little bubble of spacetime. Sat back and watched the resulting fireworks for 13.8 billion years to see if sentient life would evolve in a little pocket of it and recognize Him."
Without taking a position either way on the existence or non-existence of God, I humbly submit that the more science we do, the smarter the "God of the Gaps" has to be.
i am not saying that the argument for quantum darwinism is as crackpot as the timecube guy, what i am saying is that both the timecube guy and the argument for quantum darnwinism are way over my head
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
All I really want to know is if we are any closer to the day when I can alter reality. Without drugs.
...
Curious, this is how I experienced the US election last November. I'll blame it on TV.
HPC for Primates. Read Cluster Monkey
You say there is proof that the world is older than 10,000 years, but you fail to consider that God could have made everything look like its that old. You also fail to realise that a day of God's time isn't the same as a day in man's time.
But this makes no sense even from a biblical perspective. Sure god could have made the world look old - but why? Either the bible is wrong and therefore a work of man, or "God is deceitful" (what else would you call making something look like what its not) and the whole notion of "choice" a facade.
"Hey have faith and believe in what I've said through my 'faulty creations' (remember, only 'god' is perfect, Moses et al are not) despite my also creating a world in which I've gone to great lengths to not just 'hide the truths' that I'm telling but also making it appear that the oppostite of what I say is true! Bwahahahaha!".
If the bible is fact, then one must come to the conclusion that God has created a system whereby only the deaf, blind, and ignorant are admitted to heaven. The "smart" ones who try to interpet what they "see" and "feel" in the world he created and get "suckered in" by God's own illusions, are denied admittance. Sounds pretty inane to me, and thus following the principle of "Occam's Razor" I reject this interpretation for the simpler one: The creation story given in the bible is 'wrong'.
Hell, even the Vatican (arguably the institution with the greatest vested interest in literal biblical interpretation) doesn't accept creationism anymore.
But if people insist on believeing in God then perhaps this explanation will suffice: God realized his creation at that moment in history was too primitive to grasp the truth and made up a "child-like" explanations just too satisfy their curiosity until they progressed enough to explore the truth for themselves.
There is an excellent novel by Australian Science Fiction author Greg Egan called Quarantine (Wikipedia entry/Amazon) on this subject. I cannot claim to understand even half the theories in there, but it is a fascinating read and a mindbender similar to what Stephenson's "Snow Crash" had to offer twelve years ago.
Someone quoted from Hawkin's "A Brief History of Time" to ridicule the Pope. He could have quoted from the introduction, where Hawkins states that the Einstein Metric requires an "admixture" of philosophy, which he then goes on to describe. Basically, you have to accept some of the Metric's terms on Faith, because they can't be proven. Then there is Godell's Law.
Over the years I've observed some things:
1) Physicists at the top of the theoretical latter, like Hawkins, readily admit to the strenghts AND weakness of their models, but those at the bottom don't seem to understand the weakenss. They often speak in term os absolute knowledge, usually displaying lots of arrogance and insulting those who hold different views. No smear seems to be beneath them. The NTY science writer who ridiculed Goddard for believing man could fly to the Moon and said rockets couldn't fly in space because there was nothing to 'push against'. But, sometimes the 'expert' is not above arrogantly ridiculing the less trained. Prof. Langley denounced the Wright brothers efforts to build a flying machine as mis-guided, while crashing into the sea on both of his efforts.
2) Science seems like a spiny sea urchin, with the spines representing specific areas of 'advancement' in knowledge. Some of those spines have only a handful of scientists at the tip, some only one, speaking in mathematical terms few others, if any, can understand. Are they right, or are they merely building castles out of clouds? Who can say?
3) Biology has made advancements in direct proportion to its utilization of chemisty, then physics, then math. But even now, I have yet to read of any Evolutionist making a non-trivial prediction about some future event in the same way that Einstein precticed the bending of light grazing the eclipsed Sun and making a specific star appear to move a specific distance from its normal position relative to nearby stars. Claddists still hold to successive minute changes occuring over long stretches of time (gradualism) even though other Evolutionists don't believe the geologic record support gradualism, something Dawkin's called "Evolution's dirty little secret" in order to advance a theory he and Gould called "Puncuated Equilibrium". Punk Eek states that life forms are static for LONG periods of time then explode in a burst of new forms for a short (50K years) period of time because, they think, that is more in tune with what they think the geologic record is showing them. Both camps still argue about whose interpretation of the geologic record is right but always come together to fight those with divergent views. It seems that either view is preferable when compared to one which includes the actions of a Supreme Being, suggesting that the common element in both theories is that God is not.
History is littered with the carcases of "missing Links" which turned out to be distortions of fact, mis-identified or even faked. It seems to me that if supporters of Evolution are so sure of its being factual one of its members could devise a sophisticated hypothesis that would predict specific facts of a non-trivial future event, something on the order of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativeity prediction.
Well, I am going to suprise a few readers and state that such a prediction will soon be made (not by me!) and will prove overwhelmingly, by the best science we have today (DNA?), that Evolution is true and God is not. Those that witnessed for God will be destroyed, certainly in influence if not physically. Atheists and others who favored the demise of God will exchange gifts with one another in celebration of their achievement. These celebrations will go on for a few years. Very few people will continue to cling to Faith in God, and religious Faith might even cease to exist. Then the celebrations will cease. Then we shall know.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
The observe effect at the micro level does not translate to the macro level being open to observer determination. The odd way the quantum level operates is used to justify all matter of nutty beliefs and ideas. Those who responded with some darwinian (at the quantum level yet) justification bordering on "consensus reality" should have their credentials as scientists lifted.
Anyone else remember Rupert Sheldrake's "Seven Experiments that could change the world"? Sheldrake has a lot of odd probably crackpot theories, but one of his better ones was the idea of a morphogenetic field theory, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphogenetic_field to explain both the shapes and behaviors of organisms, a sort of subatomic field effect that worked in conjunction with DNA. The best evidence he had involved the creation of new synthetic compounds that would be extremely unlikely to ever occur naturally. It turned out that the more often people created the compounds over time the molecules would appear to form more quickly. Most people had written this off as anomolous, or just a side effect of more experience in creating the compound. Sheldrake made the conclusion that the universe was building a "memory" of the atomic state of the new compound and was more prone to falling into such a state after it had been observed previously as it had "learned" the shape previously. Now this subatomic darwinism business is sure sounding a lot like these people are inferring a "memory" to the universe, so maybe the morphogenetic field theory isn't quite so odd as it sounds.