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The Origin of Life and the Hidden Role of Quantum Criticality
KentuckyFC writes One of the great puzzles of biology is how the molecular machinery of life is so finely coordinated. Even the simplest cells are complex three dimensional biochemical factories in which a dazzling array of machines pump, push, copy, and compute in a dance of extraordinarily detailed complexity. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how the ordinary processes of electron transport allow this complexity to emerge given the losses that arise in much simpler circuits. Now a group of researchers led by Stuart Kauffmann have discovered that the electronic properties of biomolecules are entirely different to those of ordinary conductors. It turns out that most biomolecules exist in an exotic state called quantum criticality that sits on the knife edge between conduction and insulation. In other words, biomolecules belong to an entirely new class of conductor that is not bound by the ordinary rules of electron transport. Of course, organic molecules can be ordinary conductors or insulators and the team have found a few biomolecules that fall into these categories. But evolution seems to have mainly selected biomolecules that are quantum critical, implying that that this property must confer some evolutionary advantage. Exactly what this could be isn't yet clear but it must play an important role in the machinery of life and its origin.
"Complexity" is a very subjective thing. It's solely determined by the intellectual capabilities of the person or people involved.
Just look at computer programming. We have smart people who understand C++. To them, it isn't complex. It's just a really powerful tool. Then we have less-smart people who use Ruby. They don't have the mental capacity or acuity to understand C++, so they see it as being complex. The complexity of C++ really just depends on who you are and what your mind is capable of working with.
It's totally the same for the SQL versus NoSQL issue. Some people are intelligent and totally capable of understanding and using SQL. They don't find it complex. But there are other people who lack the intellectual ability to comprehend SQL. To them, it's "complex". So to try to combat their inability to understand SQL, they come up with NoSQL and shenanigans like that. SQL itself isn't complex. It's just that some people find it to be complex, based on their limited intellect.
Complexity is subjective. While these biological phenomenon may appear difficult for some people to comprehend, they aren't really all that complex at all.
Random human observation of an effect may be on to something, but until it's repeatedly observed in a lab and the placebo effect discounted it's not science. It's just a very beautiful coincidence. Essentially, once The Field is explained by measurement people's reaction should be like this: "Oh, so THAT's what that is...". Of course, the actual reaction is usually "I told you so! God told ancients this before you scientific types even thought of looking into it!"
Yes, the gut reaction is call it pseudo science and get a good laugh out of it
No, the gut reaction would be to test the effect by placing a transmitter next to somebody's head, see that nothing happens, and then get a good laugh out of it.
I did my Ph.D. in physical chemistry, focusing on electron transport in DNA, proteins, and other organic molecules. I read the arxiv paper and found it almost incomprehensible from this perspective. There is no reference to existing models of electron transport in biological systems(*), and it's not clear that their "generalized fractal dimension" for a protein has anything at all to do with electron transport. While it's possible that this approach is just so revolutionary that it doesn't need to be grounded in what's already known/believed about this field, it's more likely that this is just pseudoscience. Further supporting this hypothesis is the existence of phrases like "Why life persists at the edge of chaos is a question at the very heart of evolution" in the text. Serious science doesn't need that kind of hype in the paper.
*except at the end where they reference a couple experimental papers that tangentially relate to this topic
Complexity is a real property of natural systems. Biological systems are highly complex by any measurable standard. Proteins and protein complexes are nanomachines that operate on principles that have no counterpart in modern technology, such as computers. Take a look at detailed maps of protein complexes like the ribosome, proteosome or F1/F0 particle in mitochondria, and how they operate and are regulated. They are extremely complex despite being only nanometers in size.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Yeah me too... I want to ask him/her how many failed attempts it took to evolve this great decision... It does look like an infinity or similar number of attempts before one of them stuck... And then those other things that don't stick are still attempted even though the right one has already been chosen...
Question for religious people: where do unrepentant masochists go when they die?
The reaction to seeing a tiger in the bushes is a mix of chemical and electrical. Electrical signals in the nerves are pretty fast. Release of stress hormones takes a little longer. Of course, at the microscopic level, pretty interesting stuff happens, with plenty of details that we don't fully understand yet. Nothing that involves unknown energy though. It's pretty much all the same electromagnetic force throughout.
If cells communicated instantly - and they don't - there would be no use for a central nervous system.
Meanwhile do you know about the History 2 channel? I think their content would suit you just fine.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Are you trying to claim that life was created like watches are and although seemingly endlessly complrx, all we have to do is understand the same physics the creator used?
The problem with arguments from personal incredulity is that the dumbest person in the room always wins.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Exactly, 'a split second' is actually a well defined thing called 'reaction time', which ranges in the tens to hundreds of milliseconds and is provably related to the distance between brain and the origin of the signal in the body.
'Quantum [whatever]' really brings out the Dunning-Kruger in the comment section.
We're pretty good at the microscopic (observable with an optical microscope) level. At the level Kauffmann is studying, the models he is using have thus far been rife with inaccuracies and pretty much incapable of making useful predictions of actual physical behavior. I think this paper is really at risk of being GIGO until they back it up observations that haven't already been predicted by the assumptions/fudge factors they built into their model.
"... it is just biological and chemical processes that get your body into fight or flight mode." Since that "biological" component seems vague to you, allow me - it's chemo/electrical. Fast stuff. Three hundred feet (100 meters) per second fast. Or, for a six foot tall individual, 1/50th second from the toes (not the eyes where it's more like 1/200th).
Of course, there's some processing and then sending the results back down. Fortunately, there's a lot of simple testing that is going on so we know it's pretty quick. From that site, 264 milliseconds (1/4 second) is average for simply clicking at a screen. No high level impetus there.
That's what triggers the fight or flight. The second or more it takes to either start fighting or fleeing is where the hormones come in, generating the feelings of rage or fear and upping performance. And yes, the system can be flooded in little over a second. The whole thing is not "split second". Only the nervous system part.
>>"But evolution seems to have mainly selected biomolecules that are quantum critical, implying that that this property must confer some evolutionary advantage. Exactly what this could be isn't yet clear but it must play an important role in the machinery of life and its origin."
A scientist should understand evolution sufficiently well to not use arguments like this.
Why are we carbon based and not silica based? Either works just fine. Evolution doesn't pick the "best" option, it picks a "functional" option. After something has proven to function, evolution stops caring (until it no longer functions). Why iron and not copper in our blood? Either works fine.
Why quantum critical "bio"molecules? Because they work. There is NO other criteria. They could be better than the alternative, they could be worse, they could be the same. But they work. That is all we can assert.
The Zoroastrians and Greeks called. They want their afterlife back. And it's not hard to imagine doing a better job of creation than Yahweh, especially with infinite power and knowledge to hand. Plus, sacrificing yourself to yourself to stop yourself from doing something you can freely chosse to do or not to do makes as much sense as a screen door on a spaceship, especially when it mostly doesn't work (and a bad weekend isn't much sacrifice...)
There ay be a God. I think there is. It's not the genocidal egomaniac of the abrahamic religions. If YOU want to spend eternity in Hell with it, be my guest, the sooner the better.
"However, if you happen to make it to heaven before I do, I'm going to insist on a room far away from yours." Which, since you will be exhibiting bigotry towards one of God's chosen, will get you dropped right down to hell. Nice journey.
Are you trying to claim that life was created like watches are and although seemingly endlessly complex, all we have to do is understand the same physics the creator used?
No, I'm saying that the theory of evolution is being called upon to explain increasingly complex layers of life's intricacies that are more simply explained by the existence of a creator.
No, I'm saying that the theory of evolution is being called upon to explain increasingly complex layers of life's intricacies that are more simply explained by the existence of a creator.
That's only true if you completely ignore the complexities of the creator itself.
Now ... researchers ... have discovered that the electronic properties of biomolecules are entirely different to those of ordinary conductors.
Ya, everyone already knows this - duh. That's why Voyager has bio-neural circuitry.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
my friend dr alex hankey - someone who is himself slightly err critically stable shall we say - has written several papers on exactly this subject, well ahead of their time. from my understanding of conversations with him, criticality of biological systems is critical to life as well as consciousness. from his training which includes two PhDs, one in mathematics and one in physics (MIT and Cambridge), dr hankey actually had to invent a new form of quantum mechanics in order to properly do this justice: one which he calls "self-referral" i.e. it has a feedback loop on the quantum equation itself (just like in neural networks). yes i have asked him if he could write it up as a separate paper (just the QM enhancements) and he is in the process of doing that, but it is going to take time (yes i have told him it's really really important because his work could open up so many different areas: he knows already! it's complicated, and he has a lot going on).
but in a nutshell, if you think of the difference between "normal" math and "chaos" math, the difference is the same between QM and QM-enhanced that he had to invent in order to deal mathematically with critical-instability systems. so for example where normally if you go down in the number of dimensions you are dealing with, when you get to zero dimensions, "normal" math and "normal" QM goes haywire because you get 0/0 or possibly infinity/infinity and it's impossible to determine which and even guessing what the hell is going on is completely out of the question: QM-enhanced is, from what i can gather, actually able to still operate under these insane type of conditions - conditions which are part and parcel every day in dealing with critical instability points.
i believe there was a paper published (and announced here on slashdot) which said that in a neural network (or other system) which is at "criticality", you only need to change *one* bit of information in *one* entity anywhere within the system and the *entire state* of the system may change (i.e. react). now if you think about it, for cells this is really *really* important. think of a cell being attacked by a virus, or going cancerous. you'd, obviously, want the *entire* immune system to react to that, instantly, wouldn't you? otherwise it could well be far too late by the time the virus spreads to more than one cell. so it would make sense from an evolutionary perspective that any system of cells which did *not* react as a whole, instantly, if even a single cell was attacked, would be penalised in terms of successful survival compared to those systems of cells which did.
the next phase will be that the "regular" scientific community begins to catch up with the work on consciousness, the effect of homeopathic medicine and more, and dr hankey's work will be much more widely understood and respected beyond the very small community that currently even understands it. i do have to point out that it is very unfortunate that the language that he uses makes even a highly renowned traditionally-trained physicist's mind freeze and lock up, but, honestly, that's just how it is: if people don't want to be open to new ideas, you just have to be patient....
i made a separate reply http://science.slashdot.org/co... but briefly, if you are interested, transporter_li, look up work by dr alex hankey.
One of the great puzzles of biology is how the molecular machinery of life is so finely coordinated.
Is it? Surely the answer is that if it wasn't so "finely coordinated," it wouldn't work and you'd have a lump of goo, not a hamster.
Sounds like the sort of "puzzle" the creationist types like to invent to give their god a gap to live in.
extraordinarily detailed complexity.
By whose standards?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The reason it's called pseudo science is because studies =shown there is no difference in effect between placebo groups and the group receiving EMF radiation.
As a former molecular biologist who happens to be in the middle of a course on the design/synthesis of biomolecular electronics (biological semiconductors, conductors, LEDs, solar etc.), I wonder if the solution isn't as simple as this:
Essentially all biomolecules are synthesized by enzymes. Most are acted upon by enzymes or have some enzymatic activity during their functional life. Quantum criticality could be a useful property to enhance binding and catalysis at enzyme clefts (or other active sites) by enhancing charge/electron transitions in/on a molecule. Criticality may allow transitions and thresholds to be sharper, snappier, more selective.
"Quantum criticality" is just a label we give to a group of mechanisms (and the structures that encourage them) based on some test. I might label the many things that scare my friend's neurotic but otherwise imposing German Shepard as "Fido-phobic". This category might even be scientifically interesting -- if pulling pranks or stealing from my friend were major scientific goals at this point in time. That doesn't mean that squeeze toys that groan, rubber cubes that bounce erratically, and electric toys that "awaken" at random or after a delay share a fundamental property. They simply have properties that have interesting effects toward a certain goal (keeping her dog from interfering in our hijinks)
that watches are not really all that complex. Nor do they ever evolve to better survive in a changing environment, or reproduce of their own accord. But (scientifically) the fact that we do not completely understand how something works does not mean that, a "God" must therefore have created it. The fact that we find something difficult to understand is not an excuse to abandon the Scientific Method, shrug our intellectually lazy shoulders, and attribute (said difficult to understand thing), to a creator...You are not suggesting we do...are you...really?
The USA is only 4X older than me...perspective
Or acknowledge His infinite nature.
As an engineer and computer scientist, I can tell you that there will always be mysteries to understand, and to which the scientific method can be applied. But the mystery of the origin of life has, so far, resisted that method. In fact, we are getting further from a satisfactory materialistic explanation all the time. When cells were considered simple blobs of jelly, the complexity of life was barely conceivable as deriving from evolution. When DNA was discovered, and the existence of multiple digitally-encoded databases and programmed machines (my field) became apparent, the complexity was overwhelming for evolutionists. Epigentics -- the mathematical layering of information streams in DNA -- is completely unexplainable through evolution.
Atheists want to preclude the existence of God, as a prerequisite to the scientific method. But science is failing to explain the origin of life, and it's failing harder as time passes.
But evolution seems to have mainly selected biomolecules that are quantum critical, implying that that this property must confer some evolutionary advantage. Exactly what this could be isn't yet clear but it must play an important role in the machinery of life and its origin.
Why talk as though evolution has a purpose, a mind , as if evolution itself is some sentient being?
Stop anthropomorphizing or deomorphizing evolution. Evolution hates such talk. :-)
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Same thing. You haven't explained the creator itself. You haven't explained the creation process. You can't predict anything.
I agree it's simple, but it's also meaningless. You have no answers. The only thing you've accomplished is that you've stopped asking questions.
Like every other apologist I've ever had the misfortune to deal with, his MO is 1) ignore anything inconvenient and 2) if he can't ignore it, either twist words or misdirect with non-sequiturs.
Hey Becker, did it ever occur to you that there may be an evil God? Or that you could be being deceived? Yahweh says in Ezekiel 14:9 that he can and has deceived others, and there are passages in 1 Thess. and 2 Kings speaking of the same, as well as Jeremiah complaining "Thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived."
You're also almost charmingly naive about your supposed afterlife. Do you really think anyone sadistic enough to torture people for all eternity will never, not once, ever, in all infinite time, decide to do it to you too? Kissing up to the biggest bully on the block only protects you until he decides to use your hide for target practice...
This fake paper seems to have fooled you.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Gentlemen, I submit to you another shining example of the Salem Hypothesis.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I don't have to explain anything
My point exactly. You haven't explained anything, and you've stopped trying.
The atheist's position that "it must be, because we reject any alternative explanation" is not science
I reject any explanation that requires unexplainable and untestable magic. I'm not aware of any reasonable alternative explanations that don't require magic.
Evolutionists want to claim their theory is "settled science". It's not. It's not even a testable theory
It's perfectly testable in lots of different ways. Maybe you're thinking of abiogenesis ?
And the solar system is completely unexplainable with quantum physics, and particles are completely unexplainable with relativity. It doesn't mean we should just say "God does it", and be done.
So does ordinary chemical reaction, especially in conductors specifically designed for fast propagation, such as nerves. In fact, even the exotic phenomenom called "sound" moves at 340+ meters per second, and will thus take all of 1/150 of a second to cross your body.
Ancient healing techniques, for the most part, don't work. It doesn't really matter what they're focusing on, since they fail to actually heal the patient, and in many cases actually cause harm. So, crazy or sensible, they're simply wrong.
Modern science, on the other hand, eradicated smallpox and has polio on the ropes. Even AIDS and cancer are on the retreat. The only things it seems unable to cure in foreseeable future are human evil and stupidity.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
And how would you know for certain that "wj0ighuagherapnv; u0cu" isn't a compressed form of "mary had a little lamb, who's fleece was white as snow"? In fact, any random data could be one or the other half of a one time pad. Once you try to assign external meaning to something, you have to deal with not just the thing in question but the entire universe as well. I've yet to find any good way to do so.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
And the solar system is completely unexplainable with quantum physics, and particles are completely unexplainable with relativity. It doesn't mean we should just say "God does it", and be done.
The idea that belief in God somehow interferes with scientific discovery is unfounded. Most scientists, until recent history, believed in God without conflict, and made great discoveries without seeing any inconsistency. Mendel, Kepler, Bacon, Descartes, Pascal, Newton, Faraday, Planck and many others handily disprove the idea that belief in God and science are mutually exclusive. Many living scientists today are happy to explain why they believe in God and don't see any conflict
So your statement "It doesn't mean we should just say "God does it", and be done." is actually true for both atheists and theists: we don't stop seeking truth because we believe in God, any more than atheist stops seeking truth because they have no reason for living.
You have to account for the fact that your theory's predictions have been disproved by evolution's better explanations again and again and again. Your god of the gaps is shown wrong every time a new gap is filled by science. Obviously there are always more gaps, but the fact that you were wrong the last thousand times is plenty strong evidence that you're wrong in plugging your god into the next gap, and is a strong motivation to abandon your concept of god as an active meddler.
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Well, that's the ugliest Islamophobic attitude I've seen modded up to +5 in a while. How did Slashdot come to this disgusting bigotry? You realize billions of people disagree with you, and you didn't even take their feelings into account?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Were that to be the process implemented by the body, how much information do you believe the communication would contain?
If you say "About 1 bit, and it means be more alert." I might consider this a plausible scemario to investigate. Quite dubious, but not totally beyond possibility. Once, however, you get as far as 2 bits I become considerably more skeptical. If you go as far as "There's a hungry tiger off to the right, and he's looking at me." I become totally incredulous.
FWIW, I also believe that much traditional medical practices had considerable value, and that there is considerable influence exerted by the mind over the body, including ability to stimulate the immune system to greater or lesser activity. This, however, doesn't depend on speedy quantum effects, and any claim that it does is quite strongly suspect, and renders any further claims from the same source as "consider carefully before taking this seriously". Not only is there no evidence in support of that, there are good theoretical reasons to doubt it. Also please remember that any use of the term "energy" in traditional beliefs has little in common with the definition of the term used by physicists (though I admit it has considerable in common with informal usages by those who don't commonly work in the physical sciences). Mana is a better translation than energy, though even that is suspect, as different cultures mean significantly different things by the analogous terms.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
What you don't understand is the reason for the puzzle. It's not that there's no way to do most of the things that happened, is that there are so many possibilities, and so little evidence, that you can't verifiably select which is the correct choice. (And Paley was an ignorant savage who was proud of being ignorant.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Correction. Evolution does not disprove anything, it just shows another viable path to the same goals. Saying anything in evolution disproves any other theory is like saying 3+1 disproves that 2+2 equals 4. This is especially true when something is created as the entire idea or concept of evolution can be a product of the creation and thereby incorrect but still useful to reality.
You might try understanding evolution before deciding it's false. Evolution and general relativity are the two most-tested theories in science, yet for some reason they're the two people seem to have the hardest time believing. I blame the schools.
The basic fallacy you're committing is to argue "I'm not smart enough to understand how X could be true, therefore X is not true", which of all the fallacies is the one that makes you appear the least smart.
To your deeper point, science is about useful predictive models, not about philosophical certainty. Evolution, like general relativity, makes many useful and accurate predictions - it's quite a good tool. "God did it" makes a few vague predictions, so people look for better, in the sense of more practical, explanations.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The scientific method starts from a hypothesis making predictions, which are then tested by experiments, leading to conclusions about the hypothesis. But evolution's hypothesis are not testable. The problem is that we know of NO mechanism for abiogenesis. There are zero possibilities so far, because the theory can not be tested.
.Nothing of the sort has occurred. It's all a sideshow, an intellectually dishonest presentation. The researchers may have been sincere, but their conclusions are not remotely warranted by the design of their experiment, which at its outset is not based on previously collected data.
Consider the theory that DNA contains information for cellular construction. Based on previously collected data, Pauling, Crick, and Watson hypothesized that DNA had a helical structure. From this hypothesis and the mathematics of the helix transform, they predicted that DNA's X-ray diffraction pattern would be X-shaped. Rosalind Franklin then crystallized pure DNA and took an X-ray diffraction image. The results showed the predicted X-shape. When Watson saw the detailed diffraction pattern, he immediately recognized it as a helix. He and Crick then produced a physical model of DNA based on this result and known molecular interactions.
The quantum criticality researchers hypothesized that selected chemicals presumed to be a primordial mixture, placed in a specific energetic environment, will spontaneously combine to create amino acids, components of DNA. But the researchers had no prior data that their primordial mixture is correct. So the best they can hope for, whatever their predictions and experimental methods, is to demonstrate that amino acids can be created by the careful arrangement of selected chemicals. They cannot say this happened in nature, and thus can draw no conclusions supporting evolution.
Yet people are trumpeting that something has been discovered about the actual origin of life
That's not science. It's an "activity".
Yes, but aside from being flamebait, it's also complete nonsense. Complexity is a mathematical concept that can be measured, by definition it's objective. It has nothing to do with varying degrees of human comprehension. There's a whole branch of mathematics devoted to it called "complexity theory", much of which is closely related to computer science.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Yes, your brain does not run the entire nervous system. For example, your gut has it's own nervous system that can function normally even when connections to the brain have been cut. A fresh corpse will orgasam if an electical current is applied to a bundle of nerves at the base of the spine. A heart may continue to beat after being separated from the body. Most fishermen have seen freshly cleaned fish fillets twitching or flapping around.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
You seem to have this idea that Darwin is a worshipped figure considered infallible.
It doesn't matter what Darwin got right or wrong. Darwin doesn't matter. He's not a prophet.
. The failure of evolutionary biology to provide detailed evolutionary explanations for the origin of complex biochemical features;
It hasn't failed.
In general though, a detailed evolutionary explanation is a question of history. The falsification would be showing that there cannot be such an explanation.
. The failure of the fossil record to provide the millions of intermediate forms Darwin predicted;
The fossil record is evidence for evolution. It has lots of intermediate forms. That it doesn't have more is not evidence against evolution, just as you not having the $20 in my pocket doesn't mean you have no money in your pocket.
. The failure of molecular biology to provide evidence for universal common descent;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
. The failure of genetics and chemistry to explain the origin of the genetic code;
Musical theory hasn't explained the origin of the genetic code either. Doesn't mean anything about musical theory.
Evolution isn't about the origin of the genetic code.
Fact is, nobody has a 100% clear answer on origins. If you go back to the genetic code, you can provide plausible mechanisms how that happened from primordial soup. But yes, you can't be sure. Likewise, if you go back to god, you instantly get the question "who made god?". Usual answer is "god always existed". Which means you haven't answered it, because you could just as easily say that "genetics always existed", much like some ancient cultures believed time was cyclical and infinite. Most scientists don't believe that -- it doesn't fit with observed evidence for the big bang theory and stellar evolution -- but it's perfectly consistent with biological evolution.
They should be considered falsifications of the theory.
How are they falsifications? Not explaining something isn't a falsification. A theory that makes predictions that consistently fail is a falsification. Evolution doesn't predict that you'll be able to figure out prehistory. Evolution predicts that organism population characteristics change over time due to natural selection mechanisms, especially in the presence of a source of mutation.
It doesn't predict anything about Darwin.
It doesn't predict that anybody will ever know *anything* about history.
It never predicted any of those things, so nothing about those things is a falsification.
But evolutionists have long since given up admitting any observation that would falsify their theory.
A good example of a falsification would be finding a far off planet that contained the exact same set of species that are on earth, and basically the same fossil record. Absent an extremely unlikely explanation (eg. ancient Stargates, time travel) that would be very strong evidence against evolution.
Something that wouldn't disprove evolution, but would throw a huge kink into the current understanding of the origin of species, would be finding human remains inside of the remains of a Tyrannosaurus Rex Uranium-dated at 70 million years ago.
An example of an unexpected thing that's not really a problem is finding a novel fossil we didn't predict.
any more than atheist stops seeking truth because they have no reason for living.
And here is where you reveal that you're trolling, rather than just making poor arguments.
too broad a brush. I am an Engineer, and can tell you that many of us hold to scientific discipline in solving engineering challenges. We do this without being atheist, or while being atheist as the individual case may be. Wanting something to be true, really badly wanting something to be true, in the absence of good, confirmed, triple checked, data, can be deadly. But really, anyone, of any profession, who attributes the unknown/unexplained to (a) God, are not (should not claim to be) scientists.
The USA is only 4X older than me...perspective
I don't think the Salem Hypothesis asserts all engineers are Creationists, just that as a professional group, engineering seems to produce more than its fair of Creationists.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Reread the sentence.
Darwin was quite some time ago, and while he had some remarkable deductions for his day, and deserves credit for establishing the field, he's practically speaking irrelevant to the science of evolutionary biology. Even in Darwin's day, however, before genetics, his theory made a remarkable prediction: that taxonomy would be cladistic (to use the modern term). That is, you could organize species in a hierarchy based on common features.
You can't do this with e.g vehicles: there are features common to all pick-up trucks, features common to all Fords, features common to all passenger vehicles made after a certain year, and so on: it's immediately obvious that you can't make any sort of hierarchy based on features with any predictive value. A pickup truck bed doesn't tell you who made the alternator, the Ford logo doesn't tell you whether a vehicle has airbags, and so on. Remarkably, you can do this with plant and animal species, and the millions of cataloged species all fit this model: extreme confirmation of the prediction made from the hypothesis of common ancestry.
But that's all old-school, pre-genetics naturalism: 19th century and early 20th century stuff.
"Evolution" means "the statistical distribution of alleles in a population changes over time". Evolutionary biology is about statistical models of dynamic systems: good, solid mathematical models used in research daily. There's even an engineering aspect, as it's sometimes preferred for research organisms to manipulate the genome without directly splicing genes, or to ensure a stable population with a given modification for long-term research.
TLDR: read the Talk.Origins FAQ I've linked to the best starting point, but there's a wealth of information there, that directly speaks to the claims of skeptics of evolution. The materials are 20 years old now, but they're very well written arguments with counter-arguments with all the flame wars removed.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
And yet engineers keep falling into the trap of thinking a. they're scientists and B. they have expertise and experience that give them some special insight into fields they really have no significant knowledge of.
It might be something if a chemical engineer with expertise in organic chemistry were to critique abiogenesis theories, but to have a guy with a degree in mechanical engineering and CS appealing to his own authority is precisely what the Salem Hypothesis speaks to.
It is dangerous enough when a scientist speaks to a field of research he has no expertise in, and some even brilliant career have ended on a sad note because of just that, but to have creationist engineers declaring that they have some special ability to declare a field of study wrongfooted is simply absurd.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
studies =shown there is no difference in effect between placebo groups and the group receiving EMF radiation
Which only goes to prove that the negative health effects of placebos can be as severe as the negative health effects caused by EMFs.
We need a law banning EMFs *and* banning placebos.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Let's say 30% of the population are creationists.
Let's say 10% of Engineers are creationists, because creationists are less likely to pursue the field and/or because their education convinced them to no longer be creationists.
Let's say 1% of scientists are creationists, because creationists are less likely to pursue the field and/or because their education convinced them to no longer be creationists.
Result: Any creationist claiming to have a "science degree" has something like a 90% chance of turning out to have an engineering degree.... even though engineers are unlikely to be creationists.
That's the Salem Hypothesis. Creationists claiming science degrees tend to be engineers, even though engineers tend not to be creationists.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
EIther that, or I'm some kind of genius, which a lot of folks here will assure you I'm nuttin' of da kind.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Saying that you can't test the theory is quite different from saying that the theory is false. And often it's just "we can't *yet* test the theory".
OTOH, I do agree that it will probably never be possible to prove that the origin of cellular life happened in a particular way. There will almost certainly be many ways it could have happened, and the evidence won't allow us to choose between them. Sorry. In physics the name of the answer to this is "sum over histories". But you still can't pick one path. Just a set of probabilities.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
DNA is software. It's my field.
Saying that you can't test the theory is quite different from saying that the theory is false. And often it's just "we can't *yet* test the theory".
I didn't say it was false. I said it is not science. Like many religions, it may be true. But its adherents must take that on faith. Science can't *yet* prove evolution, just as it cannot *yet* prove God. The two beliefs are on an equal footing, philosophically. Yet evos keep trying to say "it's settled science". Anyone is allowed to call bogus on that position. It is the evos' duty to prove their assertion.
Are there any existing models of electron transport in biological systems?
Or.........
as a computer scientist you could look into the field of evolutionary algorithms, discover that evolution is an applied science used by half of Fortune 500 companies, discover how evolution does work, and write your own code and witness first hand that evolution works.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I actually do work with genetic and evolutionary algorithms, since routing on the Internet is a variant of the NP-hard Traveling Salesman Problem. But EAs are only inspired by Darwinian evolution, and just one aspect of evolutionary theory: natural selection. EAs perform their automated selection function in an ideal environment, where there is no loss of information, no friction, and no entropy. The selection function, however, is the crux of EA, and it must be devised by an intelligent programmer. EA selection algorithms do not "evolve" on their own.
In the end, nothing in EA proves anything about evolution, or vice-versa. The experimental realms are totally different.
A much more interesting application of biology to CS is DNA itself, as an information store, and protein construction as programmable machines. No evolution is involved, but the complexities of DNA has given great insight into practical massive computation methods. In particular, a novel proof of concept for solving an NP- hard path problem was devised by computer scientist Leonard Adleman, who employed the massive parallelism of polymerase chain reaction to simultaneously evaluate all possible paths. The final answer was literally spun out of the computation reaction with a centrifuge. This launched the field of DNA Computing.
It's not a matter of not keeping up with the field. This unreviewed manuscript just doesn't jive with what's already known about electron transfer in biomolecules, an area with five decades of empirical work completely ignored in the manuscript.
.: Semper Absurda
Tunneling (mostly of electrons) is actually widespread in proteins, and its not hard to see why that is when you consider that the de Broglie wavelength of a 10 kJ electron is around 18 angstroms (these are relevant energy/distance scales in enzymes). Search "Marcus theory" for more information...
What's really cool is that some enzymes actually boost tunneling probabilities (e.g. through particular short-timescale motions) as an essential component of catalysis. In some cases, tunneling even occurs for larger particles like protons/hydrogens/hydrides. I really like this paper, for example, which shows how proton tunneling is essential in a light-activated enzyme involved in an early stage of chlorophyll synthesis in some plants.
Unfortunately, the unreviewed manuscript from TFA seems like nonsense to this biochemist. It doesn't seem to line up with, or even reference, any of the five decades of existing science in the area.
.: Semper Absurda
As a current biochemist, I do wonder why the paper doesn't even mention Marcus theory or other previous work in enzymatic charge transfers. There really are some sweet quantum effects in biology, like enzyme-catalyzed proton tunneling, but I think the unreviewed manuscript under discussion here is hokum.
.: Semper Absurda
Tell me, what experiments do astronomers make? There are sciences that are observational, because we don't have the ability to control what we're studying, rather than experimental.
And, in fact, biologists do experiments, including some that test evolution. We have witnessed the creation of a new species in the lab. We have seen natural selection at work all over the place, although splitting into different species in any life-form we can see takes too long to be conveniently observed in a lab. Biologists have made experiments in the creation of life, starting with their best guess of the likely conditions and observing the formation of more complex molecules usually associated with life. The researchers had information on primordial conditions, not experimentally tested but based on the best planetary science theories.
We're highly unlikely to see life formed in a lab the way it formed in real life. With conditions to create life extending far beyond what the lab can do, geographically, it may take hundreds of millions of years for life to form and get established once.
And, finally, evolution and abiogenesis are two different things. One explains how life came to be, one explains what happened with this life. Neither theory depends on the other.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
And the nonsense string carries more information than the nursery rhyme. If you're using lowercase letters and digits in your alphabet, that's more than five bits per character. Comprehensible English is more like one bit per character, or a little more. Any information content difference in your examples is because you deliberately made a semi-random string with no information actually in it, not because it couldn't carry information. Even so, the first would make a much safer encryption key than the second, because it has more information in it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes