1) One time (for two samples) in all the millions of samples we've found, a weird chemical process happened.
2) This dinosaur fell over dead about a hundred years ago, thus disproving evolution.
I mean, am I even stating 2) right, here? What's your theory? HONESTLY - WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR THEORY? Answer this one simple question, PLEASE. Otherwise, I see no reason to continue my end of this discussion. Carry on, if you enjoy talking to yourself.
First, there's a huge difference between the origin of the first self-replecating organism, and the outcome of billions of years of a completely different process. In other words, you absolutely can have one without the other.
Is a lightning strike identical to the process of a forest fire burning? No.
If you're going to propose a kind of bizarre Creationism variant in which J Random Deity sets the ball rolling and then runs away and hides to see what happens, I'm going to start laughing again.
Bizarre? You've never heard of Deism? It's been around a lot longer than you have. As Handy would say on The Tick, "Read a book!"
Laugh all you want, you still haven't responded to my challenge of explaining what YOU think happened.
It's a big planet. 68 million years (yes, an interpretation) is a long time. We've been finding dinosaur bones for what, a hundred years now? We're bound to find, every now and then, something fairly remarkable, otherwise it would be a very boring world.
Apparently spontaneous human combustion (the "wick effect") can actually happen. That's freaking weird, not merely "fairly remarkable".
I'm just pointing out that people seem over-eager to throw out the baby with the bathwater here. If you want to make the case that evolution doesn't explain the origin of life, but does a good job of explaining the diversity of life, I'm not going to pick a fight with you. But when people attack the idea that evolution is happening today, right in front of our eyes, I get pissed. It is, and people often close their eyes to this obvious fact so they can prop up their precious creationist myth.
Transparent, flexible
Yeah, and? Have you seen the diversity of minerals in the world? Heck, asbestos looks pretty bizarre to me - I thought it was biological in origin until I learned more about it as a kid.
Instead of enjoying the Socratic method here of asking irritating questions (which I agree is a valid method - valid but irritating), do you wanna come right out and state your theory? What is it, that God created the Universe in 6 days about 4,000 years ago - and what - somehow soft tissue survived for 4,000 years? I agree that the onus is not on you to solve the riddle, but I'm guessing you have a theory. How about we prop up your theory, and let's see if we can poke some holes in it.
Your water wheel is "frozen in rock", not fossilised. Read your own articles.
How quickly do you think fossilization takes place, and how quickly do you think it takes bacteria to break tissue down?
most of the interpretation depends upon assumptions which are either known to break in a variety of ways, or have never been proven
Are you intentionally being ambiguous? You have not stated which interpretations you find objectionable! Let me list for you the interpretations which are on the board, and you tell me which (if any) you think are wrong:
1) The universe is billions of years old 2) The earth is billions of years old 3) The vast majority of dinosaurs died out in an extinction event millions of years ago 4) Evolution occurs, which might go an extremely long way towards explaining the diversity of life 5) Evolution explains the origin of life 6) Dinosaurs are not hiding around the corner, waiting to die and have their bones fossilize at a moments notice, possibly leaving blood and tissue behind
Okay, let's start with the article you directed me to read. If you're upset with what is said in the article, is it my fault?
What seems certain is that some fairly remarkable conditions must have existed at the Montana site where the T. rex died, 68 million years ago.
I don't see any evidence in that line that evolution cannot work.
Then, as the remaining bone material gets buried deeper and deeper in the mud, it gets heated, crushed and replaced by minerals - it is turned to stone. The form, and nothing else, is all that is left of the original. On the outside, the hindlimb fossil designated MOR (Museum of the Rockies specimen) 1125 has this appearance.
Okay, so on the outside, it looks like stone. Sounds good for evolution.
But when Dr Mary Schweitzer, of North Carolina State University, dissolved away the minerals, she found something extraordinary inside.
Who has wishful thinking, here? It did fossilise. (This is in direct conflict with when you said, and I quote, it "did not fossilise".)
She discovered transparent, flexible filaments that resemble blood vessels. There were also traces of what look like red blood cells; and others that look like osteocytes, cells that build and maintain bone.
So, you're saying if it quacks like a duck? Wow, that's a pretty grand claim of Dr. Schweitzer! Except, oh wait,
Dr Schweitzer is not making any grand claims that these soft traces are the degraded remnants of the original material - only that they give that appearance.
That seems to be directly counter to - EVERYTHING YOU'RE SAYING. You're refering to Mary's work, and completely ignoring what she's saying about it.
If you want me to read a different article, feel free to reference it. Because the one you sent me to doesn't support your position at all.
Also, even if everything you said is true, just because gravitation breaks down at the quantum level, or at extreme conditions of relativistic speeds, is that A) a clear demonstration that gravitation cannot work which disproves this Copernican sun-centered myth, or is it B) an example that observed phenomena do not always extend to every situation?
I say "B", and I know for sure that evolution is alive and well.
The onus is on you to show his random suspicion to be plausible, is it not?
*sigh* Imagine a murder trial: I have an alibi. You have to show that my alibi is implausible before I'm going to spend any extra effort on your bizarre theories.
So, please, tell me in specific terms why the explanation already on the table is implausible.
Yes, yes - clearly by taking your flippant responses seriously I deserve to have you deride my post without any attempt to understand my core sentiment:
Even a bad regesssion test is better than no regression test.
"Regression testing can be very handy as long as the tests reflect what the code is supposed to do." (Emphasis added.)
This statement is the crux of our disagreement. I assert that having regression testing is handy, regardless of whether the code is doing what it is supposed to be doing, whether the tests reflect what the code is supposed to do, or basically any other factor.
There are a few factors which make them valuable to me, even in the worst of conditions:
1) It provides kind of a minimal environment in which you can ensure that your code even compiles. I'm not saying that code that compiles (and is way wrong) is necessarily better than code that does not compile (but is closer to the truth), but it can be a very handy piece of information to know that one bit - does it currently compile (and link) or not? Regression tests can often answer that question more quickly than your production environment. The value of information decreases the longer you have to wait to get it, so regression tests have value. (Again, whether the code is doing what you want it to or not.)
2) To record what code currently does, you can read all of it, or you can look at some distilled format. If all I need is a small record of current behavior, a regression test can be quite handy. Again, whether the code does what it's supposed to do or not.
3) I guess I'd rather start with something than with nothing. It gives me a place to drop more test code quickly, and it's already wired in to the build environment.
4) Oh yeah, again it provides a minimal environment for you to run a debugger so you can step through the code - often very handy for quickly understanding code.
5) If nothing else, crappy code and crappy regression tests give you something to compare your new code against. You can quickly determine, "Well, the old code worked for test cases A and B, but not C and D, and I don't think they even thought of E. My code handles all those cases."
6) Finally, at one time, somebody thought the regression test had some amount of value. It's useful to try to understand why.
Even if you have a flawed process. Even if requirements are not documented. Even if the code is misbehaving. Even if the regression test is not exercising the code the way it should. You keep bringing those points up, and I'm shooting them down, because I assert that the regression tests still have value.
But what we're talking about is legacy code, where you probably don't even have requirements, or the requirements are so out of date that they're useless.
Now what?
Regression tests can help pinpoint the results of code changes - for good or bad. If the old behavior was what you wanted, then you undo your changes.
If you want to be purposefully obtuse, I can't stop you.
My only point, and I feel I was abundantly clear on this, is that regression tests provide a record of what source code used to do.
If you like what it used to do, then if the output is different, you can bet you did something wrong.
If you didn't like what it used to do, you can use the output to try to figure out if you changed the parts you wanted to. ("Passing" a regression test is a bad thing, if your test captured the fact that you used to have a bug.)
If you want to pour over every possible use case of the function you're just barely modifying, feel free. Most businesses don't have the time for Rain Man to read the phone book. Since your time (as a human) is more valuable than the computer's time (as a cheap piece of hardware), doesn't it make more sense to let the compiler check for compile errors, the linker check for link errors, and the regression tests to check for regression errors? Yes you could do it by hand - but isn't that a bit inefficient?
When someone changes the code, it can be very enlightening to see the cascade of side-effects (especially if you thought there weren't going to be any!) Having unit tests that merely document the current behavior of code in a format that a machine can rapidly reproduce from the source code (compile unit test, run unit test, compare output to old output) can help you identify... Regressions! Very handy.
The main way this helps you is by pointing out very directly what changed, when you made a source change. Then you can ask yourself - is that what it should be doing? Or: do I like the old behavior better than the new behavior? If so, time to undo and start over.
"It still has places where there are no secondary minerals."
Translation: some parts of this one sample appear to have gone through some weird polymerization, rather than what we consider to be normal fossilization. If you honestly think this refutes the entire body of evidence for evolution, and indicates instead that only Intelligent Design could explain this one rotting carcas, since (in your belief) it must have happened within a very short duration of time - then I say you're entirely too eager to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
"My suspicion is this process has led to the reaction of more resistant molecules with the normal proteins and carbohydrates which make up these cellular structures, and replaced them, so that we have a very tough, resistant, very lipid-rich material - a polymer that would be very difficult to break down and characterise, but which has preserved the structure."
Translation: He's an honest scientist, because he prefaced that entire thing with, "My suspicion is," and by the way, he's a freaking expert in this field so his suspicion is worth more than your strong conviction, and you haven't explained why his suspicion is implausible you just refute it out of hand and accuse him of being arrogant and dishonest.
So, tell me, Mr. Genius - what's wrong with his conjecture. Be specific. Tell me exactly what's wrong with his suspicion that this process has led to the reaction of more resistant molecules with the normal proteins and carbohydrates which make up these cellular structures, and replaced them, so that we have a very tough, resistant, very lipid-rich material - a polymer that would be very difficult to break down and characterise, but which has preserved the structure.
But don't forget, this weird process has only occured in places in this sample - not the entire sample. The rest of the sample has apparently fossilized just like we would expect it to.
So, the burden of proof is on you - by what process did the majority of this supposedly fresh carcas fossilize instantly?
I bet you have an answer, but you'll just be speculating wildly in the hope of looking knowledgeable and rebelious.
Nothing guarantees that science comes up with the correct answers. But the scientific method is a heuristic that comes up with extremely good theories over time.
Everything in your modern life is based on the progress of science. You can doubt it all you want to, but calling it a religion in an attempt to demonstrate that children would somehow be "better off" not understanding how the world works is kind of sick.
All knowledge is relative. Would you rather that we not teach children anything? Or are you more of an advocate that whatever parents think, they should be allowed to teach their children - and to stop their children from learning anything else?
Not that modern technology is its own justification, but would you rather be one of the prehistoric men who mastered fire, or one of the ones who was worried that teaching the use of fire in cave-man-school was dogmatically forcing combustive thinking down the throats of impressionable cave-children?
Okay, they're not at all "fresh", but have gone through a fine-scale replacement process rather than the normal large-scale mineral replacement that we're all used to.
But this it getting more in the realm of philosophy.
Of course it is.
Philosophy: The critical analysis of fundamental assumptions or beliefs.
Since we can not know anything about U0, all we can do is assume or believe in things. Some people assume or believe in U-1. I think that's kind of pointless.
I didn't say it was possible to gain absolute knowledge about any of the components. (In fact I was pretty careful to illustrate that that's difficult / impossible.)
Even if you could gain perfect knowledge about the compoents, you still can't know anything about U-1. That was my real point.
A theory is good information. =) That's a heuristic that works pretty good.
The universe at one time is equal to the laws of physics applied to the universe at some ridiculously small amount of time before then. Or something like that.
We have some pretty good information about Un for really, really small values of n. What the universe was like at almost the very beginning. But we *can not* know anything at all about Un for values of n less than 0 - earlier than the beginning of the universe. That's essentially what you're asking for.
In order to do that, you'd have to do two things - have a very accurate measurement of Un - understand what the universe is like now, and a very, very good understanding of P - the laws of physics. But there are two flaws - first, P does not preserve information - it gets lost as heat. As time goes on you can know less and less about what came before. Second, you have to use P in order to measure Un. You can't gain any knowledge about the universe except by using things allowed by the laws of physics. The laws of physics do not allow you to measure anything before the beginning of the universe.
Therefore, we'll never know where all the matter and energy in the Universe come from.
So, now what? I kind of view U0 as "God." It's the ultimate question, and we'll never know the answer. U0 is unknowable, in my belief.
Some people posit a Creator, which I would call U-1. But the laws of physics don't allow us to gain any information about U-1. I don't know why those people are happier positing U-1, since it doesn't add any value. But I suppose it makes them happy. You try to ask about U-2, and they get all pissy - but all of their arguments about why U-1 exists apply *exactly* to U0, in my mind. U-1 and U0 (the Creator, and the Creation) are almost identical in my mind. I know for sure U0 exists (otherwise U1, and all the other Un wouldn't exist - and I believe in the Big Bang, rather than an infinite universe), but I don't really see the point in imagining a U-1.
But maybe that's just me. [2]
[1] Thanks, Douglas Adams.:)
[2] I have no advanced degree in this stuff, but I'm guessing that's the kind of stuff those people would tell you.
Am I reading their Economny Web Hosting Plan correctly - that I get 100 email accounts with 10 MB of space each, in addition to the 500 MB of disk space I get for the web site, for a total of $3.16/mo if I buy 12 Months? That's not right, is it? What am I missing?
And why do I get only 50 forwarding email accounts? Seems odd that I can forward fewer email addresses than they'll host. Am I just reading this whole thing wrong?
Is the second year more expensive, or is that the price?
And finally a question that really proves how much of an idiot I am... I want to make web pages and images that are username/password protected. I'd like to have about 50 users have access to my website - friends of mine. Is there a simple way to do something like that for an entire website?
Peter Jackson reportedly said that he got the inspiration to work on Lord of the Rings when he finally realized that no one else was going to do it. What motivated you to get involved with Hitchhiker's? And secondly, what project would you love to see someone do?
I would guess that Cyc might be able to do it. If only because the time flies problem was decades ago, and Cyc has been in constant development for a long, long time.
When a Harvard natural language parser was given the phrase "Time flies like an arrow," in the 1960s it identified the following five parse trees in reponse.
1) Time proceeds as quickly as an arrow proceeds. 2) Measure the speed of flies in the same way that you measure the speed of an arrow. 3) Measure the speed of flies in the same way that an arrow measures the speed of flies. 4) Measure the speed of flies that resemble an arrow. 5) Flies of a particular kind, i.e. time-flies, are fond of an arrow.
I would guess the source code for those five different interpretations would be, well, different. (The fifth one is my favorite.)
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, Ockham, so tell me the simpler solution:
1) One time (for two samples) in all the millions of samples we've found, a weird chemical process happened.
2) This dinosaur fell over dead about a hundred years ago, thus disproving evolution.
I mean, am I even stating 2) right, here? What's your theory? HONESTLY - WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR THEORY? Answer this one simple question, PLEASE. Otherwise, I see no reason to continue my end of this discussion. Carry on, if you enjoy talking to yourself.
First, there's a huge difference between the origin of the first self-replecating organism, and the outcome of billions of years of a completely different process. In other words, you absolutely can have one without the other.
Is a lightning strike identical to the process of a forest fire burning? No.
If you're going to propose a kind of bizarre Creationism variant in which J Random Deity sets the ball rolling and then runs away and hides to see what happens, I'm going to start laughing again.
Bizarre? You've never heard of Deism? It's been around a lot longer than you have. As Handy would say on The Tick, "Read a book!"
Laugh all you want, you still haven't responded to my challenge of explaining what YOU think happened.
fairly remarkable
It's a big planet. 68 million years (yes, an interpretation) is a long time. We've been finding dinosaur bones for what, a hundred years now? We're bound to find, every now and then, something fairly remarkable, otherwise it would be a very boring world.
Apparently spontaneous human combustion (the "wick effect") can actually happen. That's freaking weird, not merely "fairly remarkable".
I'm just pointing out that people seem over-eager to throw out the baby with the bathwater here. If you want to make the case that evolution doesn't explain the origin of life, but does a good job of explaining the diversity of life, I'm not going to pick a fight with you. But when people attack the idea that evolution is happening today, right in front of our eyes, I get pissed. It is, and people often close their eyes to this obvious fact so they can prop up their precious creationist myth.
Transparent, flexible
Yeah, and? Have you seen the diversity of minerals in the world? Heck, asbestos looks pretty bizarre to me - I thought it was biological in origin until I learned more about it as a kid.
Instead of enjoying the Socratic method here of asking irritating questions (which I agree is a valid method - valid but irritating), do you wanna come right out and state your theory? What is it, that God created the Universe in 6 days about 4,000 years ago - and what - somehow soft tissue survived for 4,000 years? I agree that the onus is not on you to solve the riddle, but I'm guessing you have a theory. How about we prop up your theory, and let's see if we can poke some holes in it.
Your water wheel is "frozen in rock", not fossilised. Read your own articles.
How quickly do you think fossilization takes place, and how quickly do you think it takes bacteria to break tissue down?
most of the interpretation depends upon assumptions which are either known to break in a variety of ways, or have never been proven
Are you intentionally being ambiguous? You have not stated which interpretations you find objectionable! Let me list for you the interpretations which are on the board, and you tell me which (if any) you think are wrong:
1) The universe is billions of years old
2) The earth is billions of years old
3) The vast majority of dinosaurs died out in an extinction event millions of years ago
4) Evolution occurs, which might go an extremely long way towards explaining the diversity of life
5) Evolution explains the origin of life
6) Dinosaurs are not hiding around the corner, waiting to die and have their bones fossilize at a moments notice, possibly leaving blood and tissue behind
Okay, let's start with the article you directed me to read. If you're upset with what is said in the article, is it my fault?
What seems certain is that some fairly remarkable conditions must have existed at the Montana site where the T. rex died, 68 million years ago.
I don't see any evidence in that line that evolution cannot work.
Then, as the remaining bone material gets buried deeper and deeper in the mud, it gets heated, crushed and replaced by minerals - it is turned to stone. The form, and nothing else, is all that is left of the original. On the outside, the hindlimb fossil designated MOR (Museum of the Rockies specimen) 1125 has this appearance.
Okay, so on the outside, it looks like stone. Sounds good for evolution.
But when Dr Mary Schweitzer, of North Carolina State University, dissolved away the minerals, she found something extraordinary inside.
Who has wishful thinking, here? It did fossilise. (This is in direct conflict with when you said, and I quote, it "did not fossilise".)
She discovered transparent, flexible filaments that resemble blood vessels. There were also traces of what look like red blood cells; and others that look like osteocytes, cells that build and maintain bone.
So, you're saying if it quacks like a duck? Wow, that's a pretty grand claim of Dr. Schweitzer! Except, oh wait,
Dr Schweitzer is not making any grand claims that these soft traces are the degraded remnants of the original material - only that they give that appearance.
That seems to be directly counter to - EVERYTHING YOU'RE SAYING. You're refering to Mary's work, and completely ignoring what she's saying about it.
If you want me to read a different article, feel free to reference it. Because the one you sent me to doesn't support your position at all.
Also, even if everything you said is true, just because gravitation breaks down at the quantum level, or at extreme conditions of relativistic speeds, is that A) a clear demonstration that gravitation cannot work which disproves this Copernican sun-centered myth, or is it B) an example that observed phenomena do not always extend to every situation?
I say "B", and I know for sure that evolution is alive and well.
The onus is on you to show his random suspicion to be plausible, is it not?
*sigh* Imagine a murder trial: I have an alibi. You have to show that my alibi is implausible before I'm going to spend any extra effort on your bizarre theories.
So, please, tell me in specific terms why the explanation already on the table is implausible.
Yes, yes - clearly by taking your flippant responses seriously I deserve to have you deride my post without any attempt to understand my core sentiment:
Even a bad regesssion test is better than no regression test.
"Regression testing can be very handy as long as the tests reflect what the code is supposed to do." (Emphasis added.)
This statement is the crux of our disagreement. I assert that having regression testing is handy, regardless of whether the code is doing what it is supposed to be doing, whether the tests reflect what the code is supposed to do, or basically any other factor.
There are a few factors which make them valuable to me, even in the worst of conditions:
1) It provides kind of a minimal environment in which you can ensure that your code even compiles. I'm not saying that code that compiles (and is way wrong) is necessarily better than code that does not compile (but is closer to the truth), but it can be a very handy piece of information to know that one bit - does it currently compile (and link) or not? Regression tests can often answer that question more quickly than your production environment. The value of information decreases the longer you have to wait to get it, so regression tests have value. (Again, whether the code is doing what you want it to or not.)
2) To record what code currently does, you can read all of it, or you can look at some distilled format. If all I need is a small record of current behavior, a regression test can be quite handy. Again, whether the code does what it's supposed to do or not.
3) I guess I'd rather start with something than with nothing. It gives me a place to drop more test code quickly, and it's already wired in to the build environment.
4) Oh yeah, again it provides a minimal environment for you to run a debugger so you can step through the code - often very handy for quickly understanding code.
5) If nothing else, crappy code and crappy regression tests give you something to compare your new code against. You can quickly determine, "Well, the old code worked for test cases A and B, but not C and D, and I don't think they even thought of E. My code handles all those cases."
6) Finally, at one time, somebody thought the regression test had some amount of value. It's useful to try to understand why.
Even if you have a flawed process. Even if requirements are not documented. Even if the code is misbehaving. Even if the regression test is not exercising the code the way it should. You keep bringing those points up, and I'm shooting them down, because I assert that the regression tests still have value.
If you don't have regression tests, then you have a flaw in your development process.
That's what we're all talking about here.
You've ignored that from the beginning, and that's what I keep pointing out again and again.
But what we're talking about is legacy code, where you probably don't even have requirements, or the requirements are so out of date that they're useless.
Now what?
Regression tests can help pinpoint the results of code changes - for good or bad. If the old behavior was what you wanted, then you undo your changes.
Again - are you being purposefully obtuse?
If you want to be purposefully obtuse, I can't stop you.
My only point, and I feel I was abundantly clear on this, is that regression tests provide a record of what source code used to do.
If you like what it used to do, then if the output is different, you can bet you did something wrong.
If you didn't like what it used to do, you can use the output to try to figure out if you changed the parts you wanted to. ("Passing" a regression test is a bad thing, if your test captured the fact that you used to have a bug.)
If you want to pour over every possible use case of the function you're just barely modifying, feel free. Most businesses don't have the time for Rain Man to read the phone book. Since your time (as a human) is more valuable than the computer's time (as a cheap piece of hardware), doesn't it make more sense to let the compiler check for compile errors, the linker check for link errors, and the regression tests to check for regression errors? Yes you could do it by hand - but isn't that a bit inefficient?
"Code always does what it says it does."
Yes. Absolutely. 100%.
Until someone changes it.
When someone changes the code, it can be very enlightening to see the cascade of side-effects (especially if you thought there weren't going to be any!) Having unit tests that merely document the current behavior of code in a format that a machine can rapidly reproduce from the source code (compile unit test, run unit test, compare output to old output) can help you identify... Regressions! Very handy.
The main way this helps you is by pointing out very directly what changed, when you made a source change. Then you can ask yourself - is that what it should be doing? Or: do I like the old behavior better than the new behavior? If so, time to undo and start over.
Are you a chemist? A geologist?
"It still has places where there are no secondary minerals."
Translation: some parts of this one sample appear to have gone through some weird polymerization, rather than what we consider to be normal fossilization. If you honestly think this refutes the entire body of evidence for evolution, and indicates instead that only Intelligent Design could explain this one rotting carcas, since (in your belief) it must have happened within a very short duration of time - then I say you're entirely too eager to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
"My suspicion is this process has led to the reaction of more resistant molecules with the normal proteins and carbohydrates which make up these cellular structures, and replaced them, so that we have a very tough, resistant, very lipid-rich material - a polymer that would be very difficult to break down and characterise, but which has preserved the structure."
Translation: He's an honest scientist, because he prefaced that entire thing with, "My suspicion is," and by the way, he's a freaking expert in this field so his suspicion is worth more than your strong conviction, and you haven't explained why his suspicion is implausible you just refute it out of hand and accuse him of being arrogant and dishonest.
So, tell me, Mr. Genius - what's wrong with his conjecture. Be specific. Tell me exactly what's wrong with his suspicion that this process has led to the reaction of more resistant molecules with the normal proteins and carbohydrates which make up these cellular structures, and replaced them, so that we have a very tough, resistant, very lipid-rich material - a polymer that would be very difficult to break down and characterise, but which has preserved the structure.
But don't forget, this weird process has only occured in places in this sample - not the entire sample. The rest of the sample has apparently fossilized just like we would expect it to.
So, the burden of proof is on you - by what process did the majority of this supposedly fresh carcas fossilize instantly?
I bet you have an answer, but you'll just be speculating wildly in the hope of looking knowledgeable and rebelious.
Nothing guarantees that science comes up with the correct answers. But the scientific method is a heuristic that comes up with extremely good theories over time.
Everything in your modern life is based on the progress of science. You can doubt it all you want to, but calling it a religion in an attempt to demonstrate that children would somehow be "better off" not understanding how the world works is kind of sick.
All knowledge is relative. Would you rather that we not teach children anything? Or are you more of an advocate that whatever parents think, they should be allowed to teach their children - and to stop their children from learning anything else?
Not that modern technology is its own justification, but would you rather be one of the prehistoric men who mastered fire, or one of the ones who was worried that teaching the use of fire in cave-man-school was dogmatically forcing combustive thinking down the throats of impressionable cave-children?
Okay, they're not at all "fresh", but have gone through a fine-scale replacement process rather than the normal large-scale mineral replacement that we're all used to.
. stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4379577
So, is your beef with evolution in particular, or with science in general?
But this it getting more in the realm of philosophy.
Of course it is.
Philosophy: The critical analysis of fundamental assumptions or beliefs.
Since we can not know anything about U0, all we can do is assume or believe in things. Some people assume or believe in U-1. I think that's kind of pointless.
Two things:
I didn't say it was possible to gain absolute knowledge about any of the components. (In fact I was pretty careful to illustrate that that's difficult / impossible.)
Even if you could gain perfect knowledge about the compoents, you still can't know anything about U-1. That was my real point.
A theory is good information. =) That's a heuristic that works pretty good.
Evolution is *absolutely* disprovable.
The fact that it hasn't been disproven should mean something to you.
Hint: it's a good theory.
The additional fact that it makes strong predictions which time and time again have bourne out should mean something to you, too.
Hint: you're an idiot if you don't believe in it.
Yes, strong belief in existentialism pretty much precludes any discussion of the universe as an entity outside of you.
Nihilism would pretty much truncate the discussion, too.
Walter Sobchak: "Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."
42. [1]
:)
But seriously...
Un+1 = P(Un)
The universe at one time is equal to the laws of physics applied to the universe at some ridiculously small amount of time before then. Or something like that.
We have some pretty good information about Un for really, really small values of n. What the universe was like at almost the very beginning. But we *can not* know anything at all about Un for values of n less than 0 - earlier than the beginning of the universe. That's essentially what you're asking for.
In order to do that, you'd have to do two things - have a very accurate measurement of Un - understand what the universe is like now, and a very, very good understanding of P - the laws of physics. But there are two flaws - first, P does not preserve information - it gets lost as heat. As time goes on you can know less and less about what came before. Second, you have to use P in order to measure Un. You can't gain any knowledge about the universe except by using things allowed by the laws of physics. The laws of physics do not allow you to measure anything before the beginning of the universe.
Therefore, we'll never know where all the matter and energy in the Universe come from.
So, now what? I kind of view U0 as "God." It's the ultimate question, and we'll never know the answer. U0 is unknowable, in my belief.
Some people posit a Creator, which I would call U-1. But the laws of physics don't allow us to gain any information about U-1. I don't know why those people are happier positing U-1, since it doesn't add any value. But I suppose it makes them happy. You try to ask about U-2, and they get all pissy - but all of their arguments about why U-1 exists apply *exactly* to U0, in my mind. U-1 and U0 (the Creator, and the Creation) are almost identical in my mind. I know for sure U0 exists (otherwise U1, and all the other Un wouldn't exist - and I believe in the Big Bang, rather than an infinite universe), but I don't really see the point in imagining a U-1.
But maybe that's just me. [2]
[1] Thanks, Douglas Adams.
[2] I have no advanced degree in this stuff, but I'm guessing that's the kind of stuff those people would tell you.
Hilarious. I was going to say the same thing.
For some reason the opening scenes of Braveheart are in my mind...
Am I reading their Economny Web Hosting Plan correctly - that I get 100 email accounts with 10 MB of space each, in addition to the 500 MB of disk space I get for the web site, for a total of $3.16/mo if I buy 12 Months? That's not right, is it? What am I missing?
And why do I get only 50 forwarding email accounts? Seems odd that I can forward fewer email addresses than they'll host. Am I just reading this whole thing wrong?
Is the second year more expensive, or is that the price?
And finally a question that really proves how much of an idiot I am... I want to make web pages and images that are username/password protected. I'd like to have about 50 users have access to my website - friends of mine. Is there a simple way to do something like that for an entire website?
Why is that a poor motivation?
If you've dreamed of having the finished result of some effort, but no one has ever put in that effort, and then you decide to do it yourself...?
That's an awesome reason to do something. We should all be so lucky as to have the chance to chase our dreams.
Peter Jackson reportedly said that he got the inspiration to work on Lord of the Rings when he finally realized that no one else was going to do it. What motivated you to get involved with Hitchhiker's? And secondly, what project would you love to see someone do?
If you ask me, this contest should be over twenty six hours. As in, 26:00 on the clock.
But maybe that's just me.
I would guess that Cyc might be able to do it. If only because the time flies problem was decades ago, and Cyc has been in constant development for a long, long time.
Bummer that Cyc never "woke up." =)
Then again...
When a Harvard natural language parser was given the phrase "Time flies like an arrow," in the 1960s it identified the following five parse trees in reponse.
1) Time proceeds as quickly as an arrow proceeds.
2) Measure the speed of flies in the same way that you measure the speed of an arrow.
3) Measure the speed of flies in the same way that an arrow measures the speed of flies.
4) Measure the speed of flies that resemble an arrow.
5) Flies of a particular kind, i.e. time-flies, are fond of an arrow.
I would guess the source code for those five different interpretations would be, well, different. (The fifth one is my favorite.)