>I also think that you must have read somewhere that evolution >is "untestable" because you keep using that word.
Sigh. Everybody in this conversation "read somewhere", approximately none have done original research, and even the very very few who have depend on the work of others. So lets have done with this line.
Anyway, I've heard the word most from creationist-bashers. Apparently, science involves forming hypotheses and testing them experimentally (I knew that, of course, but pro-evolutionists are ever helpful in remedying my supposedly deficient knowledge).
So the irony was a bit inescapable... I'm still waiting for few trials of "single cell to all life on earth".
>I knew MS doc format was a very dumb hack, but never realized >how bad it was.
If I recall correctly from a few years ago (when I was trying to automatically extract some metadata from it), it's actually more of a dump of the memory state of your document than a file format.
Which admittedly is a clever way to save some programming hours, if what you're programming is Word. But that would explain why basically *nothing* (save the same version of Word) can load the file "correctly".
"This commercial product is highly successfully, and I bought one, therefore I shall sneer at you!" Somehow this just doesn't mesh with other/. stances...
Is it because it's a cool kid clique that slashdotters can actually get into?;)
Here's a quick and dirty way to check my viewpoint - try to disagree with any one of these three statements:
I'm game:)
1. We have data spanning millions of years that shows many intermediate forms of organisms that are similar in many ways to modern organisms.
Not really - we have things we can look at now. Our theory says that they span millions of years. You can't just assume what you're trying to prove.
This data can be arranged chronologically into a tree structure based on morphological similarity. (If you disagree about the existence of this physical evidence, then you can stop reading and go back to whatever it is you do.)
I don't disagree with the existence of physical evidence, but again, arranging it chronologically is not really something you can form testable hypotheses about. You do the best you can, but the claims of certainty (that are made in these discussions/debates) are not justifiable.
2. We have a theory that explains how organisms can change over time, and (as you mentioned yourself) said theory is well understood and quite easy to demonstrate.
Sure, to an extent. Unfortunately, nobody can run a trial or three of "single cell to planet full of biodiversity".
3. The theory of how organisms can change over time (evolution) is a possible explanation for the physical evidence that we have.
Yes.
In fact, the theory explains the evidence so well that most scientists accept it as fact, in the same way that we accept relativity as fact.
Well, no, not the *same* way, because we can do some experiments regarding relativity.
I wouldn't say that an untestable theory which requires a sort of deus ex machina to explain 1. inobservable and 2. absurdly improbable things "explains the evidence so well".
The deus ex machina of the evolution story is incredibly vast periods of time. We don't observe simple species turning into more and more complex species, so we explain that lack of observation by saying that this occurs over vast stretches of time, and is therefore inobservable. We don't see, and have no explanation for, life arising from unliving material. So we explain the absurdly low probability of spontaneous generation by stretching it over unimaginably vast periods of theoretical time. This trick, of course, could be used to make any implausibly low probability event seem plausible.
>Harming the Embryo is half the fun of Stem Cell Research!
You're being funny, but the sick thing is that this is true.
Look for stem cell research to get far less trendy and popular and for people to be far less gung-ho about it if this (getting the cells without killing the embryo) pans out. Something about destroying the embryo made this weirdly attractive to many.
But feel free to buy a zen or what ever else is out there. Feel free to waste your time fiddling with Windows explorer and copying files. My time is worth money. I pay Apple more for the iPod because it saves me a whole lot of time. THAT's what SanDisk and people such as yourselves will never understand.
Gracious, what pontificating:)
Everybody's needs are different, I guess. Most of what I listen to isn't even music, and I get it from a variety of sources. So I save it where I want to, and manage it like any other file. I'm not sure I see your point - you're doing *something* to organize them in iTunes (assuming they're organized at all) - so why is that so superior to managing them in the usual file manager?
I've used iTunes (though not with an ipod), and I wasn't that impressed with the UI (yeah, the catalog was great, but not the UI). I'm sure once you get used to it it's fine or even better for the special purpose, but I don't especially want a separate paradigm for all my filetypes, however theoretically superior each might be for its own niche.
I guess if I had trouble with file managers, or understanding filesystems, and I basically just wanted commercial music, then the whole i-thang might be a benefit. Since that describes most users, I don't doubt ipod's continuing reign. In fact, I welcome it - just makes the other brands more affordable for me:)
Your point doesn't stand - the moon mineral composition is fundamentally different from Earth's for the straight forward reason that it was made up of materials from Earth's outer layers - it lacks the heavy elements that concentrate in the Earth's core.
Got it. We're dead certain that the moon was ripped out of the earth because its composition is so different;).
I mean, could be, but it's hardly so QED when you have to explain discrepancies like that.
It's still fascinating the degree of *certainty* placed in this theory. After all, the theory mostly "explains" why the composition of the Earth and Moon are so *different*, not alike.
For something that's completely untestable experimentally, the faith placed in it is astonishing.
I was a kid when I went to Gen Con in the 80s ...
on
Gen Con 2006 in a Nutshell
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I got my Dad to take me to Gen Con in those days when I was about... 10 or 12, maybe? I have no idea how I talked him into it now... I think maybe he was able to schedule some work thing in the area at the same time (in those days, you really could drop your kid off somewhere for a few hours, honest!).
What I was struck by was how *nice* everybody was to me. I was the youngest one in every group I played with, and though a few jokes went over my head (and they *thought* a few others went over my head...) everybody went out of their way to make me feel welcome and not be pissed off that I was there. It's still a fond (if fuzzy) memory.
I've seen photos of her dressed similar to Shirley Temple [konformist.com], dressed as a Vegas showgirl [crimemagazine.com], dressed as a school girl [kcci.com], a Nashville country queen [jonbenetindexguide.com], but I haven't found the "cheap whore" photos of her.
And judging by what I see many little girls wearing in public these days, dressing them as "cheap whores" isn't criminal (though I'm still not in favor of it).
>It's sad that most Christians base their faith on The Bible >and not the teachings of Christ.
(spits coffee)
Uh, what? Did you really type that?
Where exactly do you think we can find "the teachings of Christ", if not in the Bible? As written by those who knew Him (and the prophets who saw Him dimly in the future - yes, Jesus says in the gospels that the OT writers were writing about Him)?
Doors inherently allow multiple people. Whenever I swipe into a building, I hold the door for the people behind me. If I'm coming out of a building, I hold the door for anyone coming in. (This is on a college campus, though, not exactly a facility needing super-security.) Heck, I've opened doors to other buildings because someone was standing outside who forgot their card.
Unless you can convince me, and even harder, Joe Average, that letting a door slam in someone's face is okay, I think everyone's going to hold the door for people, or stop in the dead of winter to let what's presumably a fellow student / co-worker into their building.
That's why the last place I worked had security *revolving* doors. Man those were a pain, but you sure weren't going to hold the door for anybody. Kind of hard on me, who likes to carry a briefcase, a thermos of coffee, and a huge lunchbox full of snacks... if anything touches the walls of the door, it stops, makes a nasty announcement, and reverses!
Slashdot Mirror
>As to Spreadsheets... I can't even customize the
...
>cell formatting to include the Euro sign ()
>instead of US Dollar.
YET. Dude, it's *Google*. By next week, it'll
let you *print* friggin Euros for free
>I also think that you must have read somewhere that evolution
... I'm still waiting for few
>is "untestable" because you keep using that word.
Sigh. Everybody in this conversation "read somewhere",
approximately none have done original research, and even the very
very few who have depend on the work of others. So lets
have done with this line.
Anyway, I've heard the word most from creationist-bashers.
Apparently, science involves forming hypotheses and testing
them experimentally (I knew that, of course, but pro-evolutionists
are ever helpful in remedying my supposedly deficient knowledge).
So the irony was a bit inescapable
trials of "single cell to all life on earth".
>Farewell Dell! One market you can't take over by undercutting
>on price!
OK, I really don't get it. Why the identification with
Apple and the triumphalism? What do you get out of it?
What would be so awful about somebody else doing
well selling cheaper music players?
>I knew MS doc format was a very dumb hack, but never realized
>how bad it was.
If I recall correctly from a few years ago (when I was trying to
automatically extract some metadata from it), it's actually more
of a dump of the memory state of your document than a file
format.
Which admittedly is a clever way to save some programming hours,
if what you're programming is Word. But that would explain why
basically *nothing* (save the same version of Word) can load
the file "correctly".
"This commercial product is highly successfully, and I bought one, therefore I shall sneer at you!" Somehow this just doesn't mesh with other /. stances ...
;)
Is it because it's a cool kid clique that slashdotters can actually get into?
Here's a quick and dirty way to check my viewpoint - try to disagree with any one of these three statements:
I'm game :)
1. We have data spanning millions of years that shows many intermediate forms of organisms that are similar in many ways to modern organisms.
Not really - we have things we can look at now. Our theory says that they span millions of years. You can't just assume what you're trying to prove.
This data can be arranged chronologically into a tree structure based on morphological similarity. (If you disagree about the existence of this physical evidence, then you can stop reading and go back to whatever it is you do.)
I don't disagree with the existence of physical evidence, but again, arranging it chronologically is not really something you can form testable hypotheses about. You do the best you can, but the claims of certainty (that are made in these discussions/debates) are not justifiable.
2. We have a theory that explains how organisms can change over time, and (as you mentioned yourself) said theory is well understood and quite easy to demonstrate.
Sure, to an extent. Unfortunately, nobody can run a trial or three of "single cell to planet full of biodiversity".
3. The theory of how organisms can change over time (evolution) is a possible explanation for the physical evidence that we have.
Yes.
In fact, the theory explains the evidence so well that most scientists accept it as fact, in the same way that we accept relativity as fact.
Well, no, not the *same* way, because we can do some experiments regarding relativity.
I wouldn't say that an untestable theory which requires a sort of deus ex machina to explain 1. inobservable and 2. absurdly improbable things "explains the evidence so well".
The deus ex machina of the evolution story is incredibly vast periods of time. We don't observe simple species turning into more and more complex species, so we explain that lack of observation by saying that this occurs over vast stretches of time, and is therefore inobservable. We don't see, and have no explanation for, life arising from unliving material. So we explain the absurdly low probability of spontaneous generation by stretching it over unimaginably vast periods of theoretical time. This trick, of course, could be used to make any implausibly low probability event seem plausible.
>Uh, you're aware that the organisms that cause disease evolve?
And nobody disputes that. People have known about selective breeding for ages.
But you don't need to believe this huge untestable historical theory of single cells evolving into all life on earth to understand that, either.
>Harming the Embryo is half the fun of Stem Cell Research!
You're being funny, but the sick thing is that this is true.
Look for stem cell research to get far less trendy and popular and for people to be far less gung-ho about it if this (getting the cells without killing the embryo) pans out. Something about destroying the embryo made this weirdly attractive to many.
But feel free to buy a zen or what ever else is out there. Feel free to waste your time fiddling with Windows explorer and copying files. My time is worth money. I pay Apple more for the iPod because it saves me a whole lot of time. THAT's what SanDisk and people such as yourselves will never understand.
Gracious, what pontificating :)
Everybody's needs are different, I guess. Most of what I listen to isn't even music, and I get it from a variety of sources. So I save it where I want to, and manage it like any other file. I'm not sure I see your point - you're doing *something* to organize them in iTunes (assuming they're organized at all) - so why is that so superior to managing them in the usual file manager?
I've used iTunes (though not with an ipod), and I wasn't that impressed with the UI (yeah, the catalog was great, but not the UI). I'm sure once you get used to it it's fine or even better for the special purpose, but I don't especially want a separate paradigm for all my filetypes, however theoretically superior each might be for its own niche.
I guess if I had trouble with file managers, or understanding filesystems, and I basically just wanted commercial music, then the whole i-thang might be a benefit. Since that describes most users, I don't doubt ipod's continuing reign. In fact, I welcome it - just makes the other brands more affordable for me :)
>I don't use my iPod + iTunes because it is cheaper
;)
;)
>than anything else. I use it because it "just works".
My Creative Zen nano "just works" too. It uses
this arcane file format called "mp3" with no DRM!
I use this crazy thing called "Windows Explorer"
to manage the files on it.
It even comes with super cool white earbud headphones
But I guess I'm just doomed to eternal uncoolness, since
it's not an ipod. And paying 1/3 of the price (or whatever).
You made fun of kids who wore Tuffskins jeans too,
didn't you?
>>observed phenomena consistent with a theory that
>>claims dark matter's existence
>Or "evidence," for short.
Or, OJ Simpson Defense Team methodology, for short.
They came up with a theory to explain observed evidence. They were willing to tweak and modify it as needed to explain new observed evidence.
Your point doesn't stand - the moon mineral composition is fundamentally different from Earth's for the straight forward reason that it was made up of materials from Earth's outer layers - it lacks the heavy elements that concentrate in the Earth's core.
Got it. We're dead certain that the moon was ripped out of the earth because its composition is so different ;).
I mean, could be, but it's hardly so QED when you have to explain discrepancies like that.
It's still fascinating the degree of *certainty* placed in this theory. After all, the theory mostly "explains" why the composition of the Earth and Moon are so *different*, not alike.
For something that's completely untestable experimentally, the faith placed in it is astonishing.
>or if it's the result of living in a part of the world
>that is often exploited for the good of wealthier nations.
Do you actually think that people in that part of the world weren't
being exploited before wealthier nations came along?
>(That's a great video, btw)
What's a great video?
I got my Dad to take me to Gen Con in those days when I was about ... 10 or 12, maybe? I have no idea how I talked him into it now ... I think maybe he was able to schedule some work thing in the area at the same time (in those days, you really could drop your kid off somewhere for a few hours, honest!).
...) everybody went out of their way to make me feel welcome and not be pissed off that I was there. It's still a fond (if fuzzy) memory.
What I was struck by was how *nice* everybody was to me. I was the youngest one in every group I played with, and though a few jokes went over my head (and they *thought* a few others went over my head
I've seen photos of her dressed similar to Shirley Temple [konformist.com], dressed as a Vegas showgirl [crimemagazine.com], dressed as a school girl [kcci.com], a Nashville country queen [jonbenetindexguide.com], but I haven't found the "cheap whore" photos of her.
And judging by what I see many little girls wearing in public these days, dressing them as "cheap whores" isn't criminal (though I'm still not in favor of it).
>Ahh, but humans didn't evolve from apes; they shared a common
>ancestor [bbc.co.uk] (who no longer exists).
Which in common speech, if we met one, would surely be called an ape.
>It's sad that most Christians base their faith on The Bible
>and not the teachings of Christ.
(spits coffee)
Uh, what? Did you really type that?
Where exactly do you think we can find "the teachings of Christ", if not in the Bible? As written by those who knew Him (and the prophets who saw Him dimly in the future - yes, Jesus says in the gospels that the OT writers were writing about Him)?
A bunch of radiation (electromagnetic and particulate) falls on the Earth. We analyze it, and form theories about why it looks the way it does.
We sure as hell can't expermimentally test our theories. Yet most people have rock-solid faith in them, bordering on religious.
>This summer I read C.S. Lewis's masterpiece The Abolition of Man.
The Abolition of Man
See parent ... I gotta remember to change subject lines ...
>Don't think we Baby Boomers are going to get out of :)
;)
>your way, kiddies. We're here for the long haul.
You will eventually die. And you will meet your Maker.
And if your main focus in life was keeping yourself around
longer, you're going to have some 'splainin' to do
Doors inherently allow multiple people. Whenever I swipe into a building, I hold the door for the people behind me. If I'm coming out of a building, I hold the door for anyone coming in. (This is on a college campus, though, not exactly a facility needing super-security.) Heck, I've opened doors to other buildings because someone was standing outside who forgot their card.
Unless you can convince me, and even harder, Joe Average, that letting a door slam in someone's face is okay, I think everyone's going to hold the door for people, or stop in the dead of winter to let what's presumably a fellow student / co-worker into their building.
That's why the last place I worked had security *revolving* doors. Man those were a pain, but you sure weren't going to hold the door for anybody. Kind of hard on me, who likes to carry a briefcase, a thermos of coffee, and a huge lunchbox full of snacks ... if anything touches the walls of the door, it stops, makes a nasty announcement, and reverses!
>Ok... I was looking for something yesterday on
... might have to install their FF toolbar ...
>Google, but couldn't find it.
>Tried out the clusty solution, and found what I
>was looking for very rapidly.
Same here. Couldn't find anything reliable for something
on Google, just tried Clusty and the categories made it easy.
Hmm