I completely agree with this assessment. There is in the IT crowd a certain group of people that seem to think that intelligence is digital or can be mocked up by digital manipulation of various unknown systems. Real intelligence, i.e., the ability to know that one is knowing and to reflect upon that process requires a kind of identity that the IT enthusiasts (I was going to say pinheads) completely miss. If this capacity is ever duplicated it will have to be at the quantum level and will involve processes completely unknown today. I suspect that this won't be doable for another 200 or 300 years.
The section of the IT movement that focuses on machine intelligence would do well to study metaphysics and particularly ontology and the dynamics of epistemology. Trying to grasp intelligence without studying the conclusions of centuries of thinkers before them is short-sighted and ignorant.
The same moral and intellectual fanatics who are giving us global warming gave us hysterical anti-nuclear power warnings in the 70s and 80s. Result: the US continues to lose its technological edge in power generation. Ten or twenty more years of superstition and bullshit will reduce this country to the level of a banana republic..Sooner or later China or Russia will just tell the US to go F*&K itself. People are tired of listening to politicians blathering on and on about imaginary dangers that only help get them elected by an increasingly gullible electorate. What do you expect from a nation brought up on McDonalds and masturbation?
Here are some tantalizing tidbits that cast the shadow of doubt on evolutionary certitude:
Associate professor Dr Scott Woodward, from Brigham Young University, has published in the journal Science that he has isolated what may be dinosaur DNA. The DNA came from two pieces of ancient bone which he believes are dinosaurian, and which are assumed to be 80 million years old. The sequences, he says, are 'like nothing we've seen before.'
The DNA was more than 30 per cent different from that of modern mammals, reptiles or birds. If it is from dinosaurs (and others have yet to reproduce the results), this is surprising to evolutionists, who think that dinosaurs have evolved into birds.
The Sydney Morning Herald, November 19, 1994 (p. 15).
To be or not to be evolved
Palaeobiologist J. William Schopf has spent decades comparing fossils of blue-green bacteria with those of modern times (such as are found in pond scum). He says that whatever the geological 'age' he looks in, 'species after species, I find remarkable identity.'
Fossils of such bacteria in rocks supposedly a billion years old look 'exactly like modern species.'
If evolution were true, why would they stay the same over literally trillions of generations? Schopf says 'I think they've stopped (evolving).'
Stjepko Golubic at Boston University disagrees. Chloroplasts (green bodies within all plant cells which extract energy from sunlight) have similar DNA sequences to the blue-green bacteria.
Science News, March 12, 1994 (pp.168-169).
In the evolutionist's geological 'time' chart, crayfish were thought to have evolved around 140 million years ago. Now Steven Hasiotis, a palaeontologist at the University of Colorado, has found specimens of crayfish in rocks dated at 220 million years -- and they are almost identical to modern crayfish.
Hasiotis came to look for these fossils by noticing a particular type of fossil burrow in these supposedly ancient rocks. They were just like those dug by crayfish today -- but the notion was deemed heretical.
These crayfish fossils indicated that they were 'just as varied in body and burrow as they are today.' They had all the specializations of modern crayfish. Hasiotis says, 'If it weren't for being squashed flat and preserved in rocks, they'd look nearly identical to modern crayfish.'
Discover, January 1995 (p. 84).
These are only indications but what the creationists are looking at is an additional mechanism, aside from natural selection that may be at work in the process. Personally, I think that there is a kind of multi-dimensional or perhaps zero-point pressure mechanism/interface at work between matter and energy that has not yet been articulated or identified.
If you look closely at many of the arguments regarding "cladding" you will find that there is an enormous injection of wishful thinking going on. The notion that a whale might have had feet at some point is only an indication that one particular fossil or set of fossils appears to look like a precursor of the whale. Who knows what it was in actuality as the evidence is spread across a great many assumptions and wishes. I liken this to St. Irenaeus' "reasons of fittingness" If it seemed fitting, for example, that the Son of God be born from a Virgin then that was an argument in favor of the Immaculate Conception. The whole point of this, however, is that reasons of fittingness do not make anything true--they are only a set of predictive assumptions based on a direction of thought or conclusions that are wished for. Science is not immune from this sort of mumbo jumbo.
The concern and the assumption here seems misplaced. First of all, evolution is nowhere near an established and testable "fact" such as DNA testing. DNA testing is not a comprehensive theory about the origins of life, it is merely a test. A theory is just a compendium of facts that point in a certain direction and even though evolution is an established and widely-accepted theory, it remains just a theory. Regardless of the many instances where it appears that evolution is scientifically correct there are many critical areas where hard proof for the theory is lacking. The scientific record shows that new species seem to erupt out of nowhere with very few, if any, true transitional fossils being found. What this suggests is that the theory of evolution has become a one-size fits all thought pattern for things that don't fit. Evolution accounts for some changes within species and possibly changes that lead to new species but the hard evidence for this has yet to be found. Name more than one or two transitional fossils (between species) that have been found. You probably can't do it because they haven't been found.
Common sense would tell us that when science can actually duplicate life artificially (as in from scratch, not just by manipulating existing genomes) then the theory of evolution can be put to the test. Until then, it remains just a theory and creationism, while it has less evidence to support it, remains for some, a viable alternative.
Why would it matter what a politician thought about the matter? I can only assume that for truly liberal thinkers, belief in evolution is a kind of litmus test for politically correct thinking, i.e., if a politician doesn't believe in evolution that would be a warning sign that he might believe in (oh the horror) a woman's right to choose by not having sex rather than choosing the obliteration of her offspring. Or, even worse, such a believer might not buy into the global warming propaganda that has been seized upon by the left with the savage and uncritical fervor hitherto only seen in medieval times regarding religious beliefs.
There are far too many important issues facing humanity that require our immediate attention. Focusing on evolution as a political litmus test is about as silly as saying that a politician should not have any religious beliefs at all. As a final note, the amount of time spent by Democrats focusing on such goofy issues as gay marriage, evolution as fact and a woman's right to have sex with people she doesn't like (as Anne Coulter notes) wastes an inordinate amount of intellectual capital that might be better spent elsewhere in the forum of public ideas.
Humanity's potential will not be unleashed by promoting unchecked vice; it will be released by that ancient exercise of the will known as virtue or excellence--thinking and acting according to right reason--not by embracing unchecked appetitive indulgence. The resurgence of both freedom and higher living standards for the Third World requires the embracing of philosophies that recognize that the management of bad appetites is mankind's primary moral task. Look around you. Do you not see the evidence plainly? Are any of the world's problems caused by people controlling and managing their appetites? Is it not the opposite, viz., that those who whole-heartedly and uncritically embrace their appetites cause numerous problems for both themselves and their neighbors? Our jails are filled with such people.
Anyone interested in the management of bad appetites and the meaning behind the evolutionary impetus might want to read How to Manage Your Destructive Impulses with Cyber-Kinetics: Redirect Sexual Energy and Discover Your More Spiritually Enlightened, Evolved Self.
http://redbrazil.com/search.php?qt=1&qs=how+to+man age+your+dick
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I completely agree with this assessment. There is in the IT crowd a certain group of people that seem to think that intelligence is digital or can be mocked up by digital manipulation of various unknown systems. Real intelligence, i.e., the ability to know that one is knowing and to reflect upon that process requires a kind of identity that the IT enthusiasts (I was going to say pinheads) completely miss. If this capacity is ever duplicated it will have to be at the quantum level and will involve processes completely unknown today. I suspect that this won't be doable for another 200 or 300 years. The section of the IT movement that focuses on machine intelligence would do well to study metaphysics and particularly ontology and the dynamics of epistemology. Trying to grasp intelligence without studying the conclusions of centuries of thinkers before them is short-sighted and ignorant.
The same moral and intellectual fanatics who are giving us global warming gave us hysterical anti-nuclear power warnings in the 70s and 80s. Result: the US continues to lose its technological edge in power generation. Ten or twenty more years of superstition and bullshit will reduce this country to the level of a banana republic..Sooner or later China or Russia will just tell the US to go F*&K itself. People are tired of listening to politicians blathering on and on about imaginary dangers that only help get them elected by an increasingly gullible electorate. What do you expect from a nation brought up on McDonalds and masturbation?
Here are some tantalizing tidbits that cast the shadow of doubt on evolutionary certitude: Associate professor Dr Scott Woodward, from Brigham Young University, has published in the journal Science that he has isolated what may be dinosaur DNA. The DNA came from two pieces of ancient bone which he believes are dinosaurian, and which are assumed to be 80 million years old. The sequences, he says, are 'like nothing we've seen before.' The DNA was more than 30 per cent different from that of modern mammals, reptiles or birds. If it is from dinosaurs (and others have yet to reproduce the results), this is surprising to evolutionists, who think that dinosaurs have evolved into birds. The Sydney Morning Herald, November 19, 1994 (p. 15). To be or not to be evolved Palaeobiologist J. William Schopf has spent decades comparing fossils of blue-green bacteria with those of modern times (such as are found in pond scum). He says that whatever the geological 'age' he looks in, 'species after species, I find remarkable identity.' Fossils of such bacteria in rocks supposedly a billion years old look 'exactly like modern species.' If evolution were true, why would they stay the same over literally trillions of generations? Schopf says 'I think they've stopped (evolving).' Stjepko Golubic at Boston University disagrees. Chloroplasts (green bodies within all plant cells which extract energy from sunlight) have similar DNA sequences to the blue-green bacteria. Science News, March 12, 1994 (pp.168-169). In the evolutionist's geological 'time' chart, crayfish were thought to have evolved around 140 million years ago. Now Steven Hasiotis, a palaeontologist at the University of Colorado, has found specimens of crayfish in rocks dated at 220 million years -- and they are almost identical to modern crayfish. Hasiotis came to look for these fossils by noticing a particular type of fossil burrow in these supposedly ancient rocks. They were just like those dug by crayfish today -- but the notion was deemed heretical. These crayfish fossils indicated that they were 'just as varied in body and burrow as they are today.' They had all the specializations of modern crayfish. Hasiotis says, 'If it weren't for being squashed flat and preserved in rocks, they'd look nearly identical to modern crayfish.' Discover, January 1995 (p. 84). These are only indications but what the creationists are looking at is an additional mechanism, aside from natural selection that may be at work in the process. Personally, I think that there is a kind of multi-dimensional or perhaps zero-point pressure mechanism/interface at work between matter and energy that has not yet been articulated or identified. If you look closely at many of the arguments regarding "cladding" you will find that there is an enormous injection of wishful thinking going on. The notion that a whale might have had feet at some point is only an indication that one particular fossil or set of fossils appears to look like a precursor of the whale. Who knows what it was in actuality as the evidence is spread across a great many assumptions and wishes. I liken this to St. Irenaeus' "reasons of fittingness" If it seemed fitting, for example, that the Son of God be born from a Virgin then that was an argument in favor of the Immaculate Conception. The whole point of this, however, is that reasons of fittingness do not make anything true--they are only a set of predictive assumptions based on a direction of thought or conclusions that are wished for. Science is not immune from this sort of mumbo jumbo.
The concern and the assumption here seems misplaced. First of all, evolution is nowhere near an established and testable "fact" such as DNA testing. DNA testing is not a comprehensive theory about the origins of life, it is merely a test. A theory is just a compendium of facts that point in a certain direction and even though evolution is an established and widely-accepted theory, it remains just a theory. Regardless of the many instances where it appears that evolution is scientifically correct there are many critical areas where hard proof for the theory is lacking. The scientific record shows that new species seem to erupt out of nowhere with very few, if any, true transitional fossils being found. What this suggests is that the theory of evolution has become a one-size fits all thought pattern for things that don't fit. Evolution accounts for some changes within species and possibly changes that lead to new species but the hard evidence for this has yet to be found. Name more than one or two transitional fossils (between species) that have been found. You probably can't do it because they haven't been found. Common sense would tell us that when science can actually duplicate life artificially (as in from scratch, not just by manipulating existing genomes) then the theory of evolution can be put to the test. Until then, it remains just a theory and creationism, while it has less evidence to support it, remains for some, a viable alternative. Why would it matter what a politician thought about the matter? I can only assume that for truly liberal thinkers, belief in evolution is a kind of litmus test for politically correct thinking, i.e., if a politician doesn't believe in evolution that would be a warning sign that he might believe in (oh the horror) a woman's right to choose by not having sex rather than choosing the obliteration of her offspring. Or, even worse, such a believer might not buy into the global warming propaganda that has been seized upon by the left with the savage and uncritical fervor hitherto only seen in medieval times regarding religious beliefs. There are far too many important issues facing humanity that require our immediate attention. Focusing on evolution as a political litmus test is about as silly as saying that a politician should not have any religious beliefs at all. As a final note, the amount of time spent by Democrats focusing on such goofy issues as gay marriage, evolution as fact and a woman's right to have sex with people she doesn't like (as Anne Coulter notes) wastes an inordinate amount of intellectual capital that might be better spent elsewhere in the forum of public ideas. Humanity's potential will not be unleashed by promoting unchecked vice; it will be released by that ancient exercise of the will known as virtue or excellence--thinking and acting according to right reason--not by embracing unchecked appetitive indulgence. The resurgence of both freedom and higher living standards for the Third World requires the embracing of philosophies that recognize that the management of bad appetites is mankind's primary moral task. Look around you. Do you not see the evidence plainly? Are any of the world's problems caused by people controlling and managing their appetites? Is it not the opposite, viz., that those who whole-heartedly and uncritically embrace their appetites cause numerous problems for both themselves and their neighbors? Our jails are filled with such people. Anyone interested in the management of bad appetites and the meaning behind the evolutionary impetus might want to read How to Manage Your Destructive Impulses with Cyber-Kinetics: Redirect Sexual Energy and Discover Your More Spiritually Enlightened, Evolved Self. http://redbrazil.com/search.php?qt=1&qs=how+to+man age+your+dick