>>Not really. There are *many* more variables than the two species and time. >>There isn't a fixed speed of evolution.
Yes and no.
Essentially, think about nothing more than the incidence rate of mutations upon a section of DNA. We actually know pretty well how often mutations occur, and where (it's not evenly distributed), and what kind.
If you take the original section of DNA (A) and compare it against the same section T years later (B), you can see if B matches your expected model of mutations given T years elapsing for a given level of confidence.
>>The important question is how do you know something was designed?
Who is talking about design? The pertinent question is interference.
If we take billions of samples from a casino, we can identify a slot machine that has been tampered with, even slightly. (To an arbitrary level of confidence.)
>>We can calculate the odds for the slot machines because we know how everything works. It is simple. Evolution on the other hand isn't simply some randomness generating new species.
At the most basic level, there is a certain incidence rate of mutations upon a section of DNA. You can construct a statistical model for how often and where these mutations will occur. (In fact, scientists have done exactly that in order to determine how far back two species diverged by looking at their genomes.) If a given species' genome is grossly out of line with the statistical model, the test will reveal it.
IIRC, Dawkins once said that he'd believe in creationism if one day a frog suddenly evolved wings. (Because it is so fantastically unlikely for it to happen naturally.) This is the exact same argument, from the statistics of mutations.
>>Or is "advanced, interesting" code for that absurd argument about information in the genome?
There's two different issues here: 1) If there's information within the genome. 2) What "advanced and interesting" means.
In re: to 1), yes, of course there is information within the genome. Whether you buy into Dembski's rather dubious claims about that information (the No Free Lunch Theory and all that) is a whole different matter, of course.
In re: to 2), I defined it somewhere else, but for simplicity, let's say the 500,000 higher animals.
As far as ignoring speciation events, Dembski basically differentiates between mutation/speciation/evolution involving an increase in supercoolness (or whatever term he uses, I don't really care) and one involving a decrease. For example, he presumably wouldn't be surprised by a bacteria that evolved the ability to process arsenic by a mutation that disabled something that disabled its already-existing arsenic-processing gene. He calls those things downward mutations, or something like that. But I prefer supercoolness as a technical term. It's always easier to reduce supercoolness in a genome than to increase it, so they ignore downwards speciation events.
Or to put it less sarcastically, they are mostly interested in beneficial mutations that increase a species capacity to do something super cool.
>>First, evolution involves tiny changes over a vast period of time, there is no 'jackpot'. >>Evolution happening quickly != ID.
The jackpot I'm talking about is a beneficial mutation, not punctuated equilibrium.
The vast majority of mutations either do nothing (because they are in an intron, or are silent mutations that simply change the coding of an amino acid to the same amino acid, etc.) or are harmful.
>>Their models and statistical methods deal a lot with what you are talking about in your post.
Right, I'm well aware of them. That's why I'm so amused by people jumping on me here - we already have models that can determine statistically how many years ago two species diverged. By counting the number of silent mutations for certain critical genes you can build a tree showing where every species diverged from each other.
The fact that the evolutionary record held up and worked quite well is one of the main reasons why I don't give much credence to ID. My main interest is in restating it in such a way that it can be tested, not in expecting it to actually hold water.
Basically, when you boil it down, ID does make a quantifiable claim. So, okay. Test it.
>>Except that the statistical technique would not work if the source of the interference was omnipotent and eternal. The interference could take place in the starting conditions of the Big Bang (eternal means God sees everything from the start of time to the end of time in His "now"), or within the normal random fluctuations.
The Weak ID hypothesis (which the RCC subscribes to) is no different from the Theory of Evolution. (I.e. the notion that God is sort of behind everything, even evolution.) It's not worth considering, since it has no differences from the Theory of Evolution anyway.
I'm talking about what I call the Strong ID hypothesis, which is that evolution is impossible** without interference of some sort.
>>I strongly disagree with the first half of this and agree with the second half. Ever heard of cdesign proponentsists?
Let's put it another way. Somebody believes strongly in A, but can't get it put into schools because it is religious. So he'll ascribe (publicly) to B, even though A and B are logically and factually incompatible, because B is more palatable to him than C.
ID and YEC are completely incompatible theories. You cannot have intelligent design of all those fossils over time if the earth is only 6000 years old and you don't believe in fossils. It simply doesn't work.
Fundies aren't very smart, though, and most of them don't realize this. But you can't actually be both an IDer and a YECer without contradiction. Hence, most are YECers that just pretend to be IDers.
>>I assume that by 'statistical challenges' you mean the apparent 'almost-impossibility' of, say, a particular genetic sequence arising out of pure chance. That completely ignores the influence of natural selection.
The statistics of the mutations themselves. Not the selection process.
>>Lastly, you touch on another aspect of a good scientific theory, the ability to make testable predictions. ID does not have this ability at all, unless you count "the designer will make this culture of bacteria evolve faster than evolution 'predicts', but if he/she/it doesn't, never mind, he designed it to be the same anyway".
There's a difference between what I call Strong ID and Weak ID. Strong ID is the (testable, falsifiable) theory that evolution can't take place** without intervention. Weak ID is more of the wishy-washy, "Well God is behind everything, even evolution" stance that the Catholic Church takes. So we're "designed" but only in a way that is indistinguishable from the scientific Theory of Evolution.
I focus only on the Strong ID argument, because the second doesn't have any differences from the Theory of Evolution anyway.
>>I guess I have been trolled. This can't be serious.
Set the whole Intelligent Design thing aside. It is quite clear that we absolutely will need a statistical test for genetic engineering.
>>If you believe that species formation is like jackpots at a casino, then it's not strange if you skeptical of evolution.
Have you studied the statistics of a mutation? The vast majority of the time, the mutation either does nothing, or has a negative impact. That's the jackpot that I'm talking about. Once a genome has collected enough beneficial mutations, a bottleneck event or other stressor can lead to speciation.
>>First of all, if West Nile 2012 is well made, it may be impossible to tell that it is man made even if it is.
It may be. But more plausibly, if someone is engineering it to become weaponized, a statistical test would show it is highly unlikely to be natural.
>>Also, falsifying the presumed mechanism doesn't give ID the least bit of support. ID needs some substance before it can count as an explanation for anything, let alone become an explanation supported by evidence.
The substance ID is based on is the long odds for certain things evolving. Their argument goes along the lines that "the odds are too small for X to have evolved without interference", whereas the theory of evolution says "it's small, but not that small".
That's the mathematical difference that can be picked out, examined and expounded upon.
>>How are you going to prove that the odds are being violated by reality, when reality is our only clue as to what the odds are?
The odds aren't violated by "reality", which is an odd thing to say, but rather by a hypothetical entity. If we look at West Nile 2012 and see it required many simultaneous codependent mutations, we would conclude someone had engineered it instead of it being naturally evolved. That's why I say we're going to need a test for ID anyway as genetic engineering becomes more common... we'll want to know things like that.
Being able to apply such a statistical test - which relies on experiment based assumptions about the distribution of mutations through a genome over time, nothing more - to the evolutionary record is useful as a curiosity (as well as by being able to make ID falsifiable), but its real value lies in being able to tell if terrorists released a new disease on us or not in the future.
>>Your fantasy doesn't count because it's too vague and requires technology that doesn't exist and may very well be impossible.
Fantasy? There's a difference between thought experiments and fantasies. Vague? Giving a nutshell of an idea is intentionally being vague. If you want the details, I provided them in the past. Using your search-fu, you should be able to turn up how I proposed doing the math for the tests. Technology that doesn't exist? DNA sequencing is now mainstream science. We don't need a panopticon of ancient DNA for the method to work.
If you want to think about it another way, we can (and will) establish a panopticon of current DNA in species around the planet, and apply the test moving forward. If we see the evolution of a new, more advanced, interesting species, then ID is proven false.
We probably wouldn't have to even wait that long. If you multiply the generational time of evolution per species by the number of interesting species on the planet, we'd expect to see multiple new species within our lifetime. Especially with the evolutionary stress humans are placing on species.
>>That's why you wouldn't be able to publish it in a reputable evolutionary biology journal, but if this bill goes through maybe your chances will improve.
I don't think a reputable biology journal would publish anything relating to ID, even though it is technically a way of showing how to prove ID false. =)
>>Marble and other pseudoscientists also tend to babble endlessly about "black swans" and "Kuhnian paradigm shifts" in contexts where it seems like they're just playing the "Galileo card".
It's amusing how you continue to linkspam without making a thesis statement, just using the links to make a sort of passive-aggressive attack on my statements. If you want to disagree with any of my statements, just say so.
I could copy and paste links from thread after thread where you had to be dragged kicking and screaming to make even the smallest admission that Watts' empirical station survey had any work. I could post all of those links, and make you look stupid. Or I could just say it outright. Which I just did.
So I recommend you do the same.
Look, it's quite clear at this point that you don't have the slightest understanding of the philosophy of science, and don't really want to. But I really wouldn't recommend reveling in your ignorance. Philosophy (and philosophy of science) underlies everything in life, and you just cost yourself face every time you boast about your ignorance of the subject.
You just misrepresented the ID view of evolution... they do not think that it is "mostly true". Their argument is that evolution does not exist. Their main argument against evolution is "Irreducible Complexity". You can't believe that evolution is "mostly true", while at the same time making claims that biological life forms seem to have "appeared" in perfect working order...
Due to cognitive dissonance, most IDers would rather have their fingernails pulled out than talk about all the cases where they think the theory of evolution works just fine (similar to how Khayman had to be dragged kicking and screaming to finally admit that *maybe* there was some *small* benefit to AGW-denier Watts' station survey work), you have to sort of look at the whole thing from a high level and see what sort of claims are actually being made.
In the case of West Nile 2012, the designer could be Russia, or Undead Hussein, or whatever.
The point is we need a statistical test developed for this sort of stuff regardless of the whole evolution debate, and when we have one developed, we could apply it to the DNA record for the past and see what it turns up.
I doubt it would support ID, but it does make ID falsifiable.
>>I might be a little dramatic, but the increase in cancer occurrence is statistically noticeable at over 100 mSv/yr.
I was listening to the radio yesterday, and was grinding my teeth when an "expert" was repeating the (wrong) claim that there's a linear response between radiation dosing and cancer incidence rates. While he's right that people tend to use that model, it is because it is simple, not because it is right. It's quite clear there's a thresholding system in regards to radiation, below which it poses no elevated risk. The only question is where that threshold should be set.
Empiric longitudinal studies of people exposed to radiation have completely disproven the LNT model. All the long-term cancers predicted by it just never materialize from very low radiation doses.
>>For instance, take the recent stuff in Wisconsin and the constant Retardican attacks on trade unions in general.
You're an idiot if you don't know the fucking difference between unions for private employees and public employees.
There's a reason why even FDR was against collective bargaining for government employees, and public unions in general, and why Reagan got all up in the grille of the ATC workers on strike.
It's because you can't have the rooster conspiring with the fox to guard the henhouse.
Here in California, teachers don't even have to pay into Social Security - they have an exemption for it, and get their own private retirement system (CalSTRS). But any politician trying to put teachers on an even playing field would get destroyed, politically. As the union makes explicitly clear, telling our legislators (on tape in congress): "We put you into office, we can get you out of there, too." The public unions destroyed Schwarzenegger.
I work with teachers every week, and know how hard they work, but you can't pretend they don't get special deals due to their immense political clout.
In 1943, a New York Supreme Court judge held: "To tolerate or recognize any combination of civil service employees of the government as a labor organization or union is not only incompatible with the spirit of democracy, but inconsistent with every principle upon which our government is founded. Nothing is more dangerous to public welfare than to admit that hired servants of the State can dictate to the government the hours, the wages and conditions under which they will carry on essential services vital to the welfare, safety, and security of the citizen. To admit as true that government employees have power to halt or check the functions of government unless their demands are satisfied, is to transfer to them all legislative, executive and judicial power. Nothing would be more ridiculous."
So politicians now define what an "alternate theory" is? Sorry, but ID is not a "theory". It's hogwash, bullshit, dumbfuck, nonsense, insanity or any of a selection of similar terms. It is not even a theory, and definitely not a scientific theory.
To cut a long discussion short, it lacks an important part: Falsifiability.
I posted on here a while back a way to make ID a scientific theory by making it falsifiable. A lot of people took that to mean that I supported ID, which wasn't what I was saying at all. I was just tired of hearing the above quote over and over when it was quite obvious how to make it falsifiable.
You can read the whole thing in my Journal, but in a nutshell: 1) ID is not Young Earth Creationism (YEC), though it is primarily used as a smokescreen by YECs.
2) ID is the belief that evolution is mostly true, but that something "interfered" with evolution, allowing it to overcome the statistical challenges to evolving more complicated life.
3) To put it in probabilistic terms, consider the world as being a giant casino filled with slot machines, and every time a jackpot is hit in a slot machine, a new species evolves. ID is the claim that someone is interfering with the odds on the machines, evolution is the stance that enough jackpots will be hit without interference.
4) Put in those terms, it becomes statistically falsifiable (to arbitrary levels of confidence). One simply needs to determine numbers for hitting jackpots / speciation and compare them against the record of events. Or even better, going forward, keep track of the genomes of all species on earth, and see if mutation and speciation rates match theory.
5) It is possible to develop a statistical method that determines to an arbitrary level of confidence, if species A could have evolved from species B given time duration T.
One very important point that got lost in all the noise is this: we will need a statistical method to determine intelligent design no matter what. Ignore the whole evolution thing - as our skills with genetic engineering move forward, it will be critical to be able to tell if West Nile 2012 is an intelligently designed species or not.
This... probably shouldn't be legal. Automatic subscription to a $45/month service seems like it violates very basic principles of how agreements work.
And to all you people that will be complaining on here, and not doing anything about it, here's something really simple you can do: Donate to the EFF. (www.eff.org/support/)
They're the only organization taking a stand against all this kind of stuff.
>>How do Americans put up with this crap, when other countries pay so, so much less for mobile?
Because our courts will tolerate an awful lot of shit, as long as it is in a contract.
While we do have alternative carriers that cost a *lot* less (Cricket / MetroPCS), people want their iPhones.
A "reasonable" stereo ? No. Here's what I think a modest, or bang-for-the-buck stereo would be:
$129 head unit $69 front speakers $49 rear speakers $100 installation
So under $350 installed, or $250 if you DIY (an hour or two with a screwdriver and socket wrench). I think that setup would satisfy about 95% of motorists out there. Where things get hairy is if you want a subwoofer. Even a $200 active sub is still pretty terrible, you generally have to set aside $500 or more for anything remotely decent.
Ten years ago when I bought a new car, I considered my first setup quite decent at roughly $1100 for a bi-amplified setup with a 10" sub, all entry-level Clarion gear. A music lover without my audiophile disorder could stop there and be very happy, but this is far beyond reasonable for the average person.
I later upgraded that thing to a ludicrous mobile PA/studio setup, but that's way off-topic. Point being, a "reasonable" system costs less than what most automakers charge for tinny garbage.
A $1000 factory installed system will have XM audio, integration with car audio controls, and a 9 speaker system. I've only had it on one car (inherited from my grandfather), and the sound quality was actually really good. Spoiled me enough that I went crazy with the default audio system on my new Altima. The new system was so muddled I couldn't hear entire instruments when listening to classical.
So with those requirements, I don't think you're going to get anywhere near $350 for an installed system.
The integrated XM audio alone is going to be somewhere around $100-$200, with a more expensive head unit to handle it (call it $300). You also need a harness to integrate with the car audio controls.
And if you're paying fifty bucks for two 4x6s, I can't imagine how bad the sound quality is going to sound. I think 3-way speakers are essential. My fosgates were something like $80/speaker, so with 4 speakers that's $320 alone.
>>They are *instructed in the law* by the judge, and are told to follow it.
Maybe that's how it should be done, but consider the Brian Aitken case.
New Jersey law allows you to have guns (locked in a case) in your trunk if you're moving. The police and the assistant DA both said it was obvious he was moving.
The judge told the jury they couldn't consider that exemption to the draconian New Jersey gun control laws (the judge deciding the fact he was not moving for the jury). Thus both dictating fact and to ignore law to the jury.
Brian, having his exemption stripped from him by the judge, was promptly sentenced to the minimum 3 years in jail, which was newly classified as a "violent offense", meaning he lost his child visitation rights and hasn't been able to see his kid in two years, even though he was pardoned by Christie.
You're right, of course, about them wanting to keep you coming into the dealership hoping to get more expensive repairs made / keep a good relationship for buying a new car in 5 years, but one very nice thing about getting oil changes at the dealership is that they have records of all your oil changes, which are required for car warranties these days. We got a pretty good price on a 7 year bumper to bumper on my wife's Honda, so it all works out pretty well.
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>>They were looking into wireless solutions but frankly it seems unlikely they'll be able to do wireless and meet their main requirements:
Yes, because absolutely NO e-clicker software for cell phones exists.
>>Not really. There are *many* more variables than the two species and time.
>>There isn't a fixed speed of evolution.
Yes and no.
Essentially, think about nothing more than the incidence rate of mutations upon a section of DNA. We actually know pretty well how often mutations occur, and where (it's not evenly distributed), and what kind.
If you take the original section of DNA (A) and compare it against the same section T years later (B), you can see if B matches your expected model of mutations given T years elapsing for a given level of confidence.
>>The important question is how do you know something was designed?
Who is talking about design? The pertinent question is interference.
If we take billions of samples from a casino, we can identify a slot machine that has been tampered with, even slightly. (To an arbitrary level of confidence.)
>>We can calculate the odds for the slot machines because we know how everything works. It is simple. Evolution on the other hand isn't simply some randomness generating new species.
At the most basic level, there is a certain incidence rate of mutations upon a section of DNA. You can construct a statistical model for how often and where these mutations will occur. (In fact, scientists have done exactly that in order to determine how far back two species diverged by looking at their genomes.) If a given species' genome is grossly out of line with the statistical model, the test will reveal it.
IIRC, Dawkins once said that he'd believe in creationism if one day a frog suddenly evolved wings. (Because it is so fantastically unlikely for it to happen naturally.) This is the exact same argument, from the statistics of mutations.
>>You are not considering that the Ingelligent Designer might be intelligent enough to make his intervention unnoticeable.
I did talk about it in my journal entry. Search my comments above for Weak ID vs. Strong ID.
>>Or is "advanced, interesting" code for that absurd argument about information in the genome?
There's two different issues here:
1) If there's information within the genome.
2) What "advanced and interesting" means.
In re: to 1), yes, of course there is information within the genome. Whether you buy into Dembski's rather dubious claims about that information (the No Free Lunch Theory and all that) is a whole different matter, of course.
In re: to 2), I defined it somewhere else, but for simplicity, let's say the 500,000 higher animals.
As far as ignoring speciation events, Dembski basically differentiates between mutation/speciation/evolution involving an increase in supercoolness (or whatever term he uses, I don't really care) and one involving a decrease. For example, he presumably wouldn't be surprised by a bacteria that evolved the ability to process arsenic by a mutation that disabled something that disabled its already-existing arsenic-processing gene. He calls those things downward mutations, or something like that. But I prefer supercoolness as a technical term. It's always easier to reduce supercoolness in a genome than to increase it, so they ignore downwards speciation events.
Or to put it less sarcastically, they are mostly interested in beneficial mutations that increase a species capacity to do something super cool.
>>First, evolution involves tiny changes over a vast period of time, there is no 'jackpot'.
>>Evolution happening quickly != ID.
The jackpot I'm talking about is a beneficial mutation, not punctuated equilibrium.
The vast majority of mutations either do nothing (because they are in an intron, or are silent mutations that simply change the coding of an amino acid to the same amino acid, etc.) or are harmful.
>>Their models and statistical methods deal a lot with what you are talking about in your post.
Right, I'm well aware of them. That's why I'm so amused by people jumping on me here - we already have models that can determine statistically how many years ago two species diverged. By counting the number of silent mutations for certain critical genes you can build a tree showing where every species diverged from each other.
The fact that the evolutionary record held up and worked quite well is one of the main reasons why I don't give much credence to ID. My main interest is in restating it in such a way that it can be tested, not in expecting it to actually hold water.
Basically, when you boil it down, ID does make a quantifiable claim. So, okay. Test it.
>>Except that the statistical technique would not work if the source of the interference was omnipotent and eternal. The interference could take place in the starting conditions of the Big Bang (eternal means God sees everything from the start of time to the end of time in His "now"), or within the normal random fluctuations.
The Weak ID hypothesis (which the RCC subscribes to) is no different from the Theory of Evolution. (I.e. the notion that God is sort of behind everything, even evolution.) It's not worth considering, since it has no differences from the Theory of Evolution anyway.
I'm talking about what I call the Strong ID hypothesis, which is that evolution is impossible** without interference of some sort.
**Numerous caveats to this statement apply.
>>I strongly disagree with the first half of this and agree with the second half. Ever heard of cdesign proponentsists?
Let's put it another way. Somebody believes strongly in A, but can't get it put into schools because it is religious. So he'll ascribe (publicly) to B, even though A and B are logically and factually incompatible, because B is more palatable to him than C.
ID and YEC are completely incompatible theories. You cannot have intelligent design of all those fossils over time if the earth is only 6000 years old and you don't believe in fossils. It simply doesn't work.
Fundies aren't very smart, though, and most of them don't realize this. But you can't actually be both an IDer and a YECer without contradiction. Hence, most are YECers that just pretend to be IDers.
>>I assume that by 'statistical challenges' you mean the apparent 'almost-impossibility' of, say, a particular genetic sequence arising out of pure chance. That completely ignores the influence of natural selection.
The statistics of the mutations themselves. Not the selection process.
>>Lastly, you touch on another aspect of a good scientific theory, the ability to make testable predictions. ID does not have this ability at all, unless you count "the designer will make this culture of bacteria evolve faster than evolution 'predicts', but if he/she/it doesn't, never mind, he designed it to be the same anyway".
There's a difference between what I call Strong ID and Weak ID. Strong ID is the (testable, falsifiable) theory that evolution can't take place** without intervention. Weak ID is more of the wishy-washy, "Well God is behind everything, even evolution" stance that the Catholic Church takes. So we're "designed" but only in a way that is indistinguishable from the scientific Theory of Evolution.
I focus only on the Strong ID argument, because the second doesn't have any differences from the Theory of Evolution anyway.
>>I guess I have been trolled. This can't be serious.
Set the whole Intelligent Design thing aside. It is quite clear that we absolutely will need a statistical test for genetic engineering.
>>If you believe that species formation is like jackpots at a casino, then it's not strange if you skeptical of evolution.
Have you studied the statistics of a mutation? The vast majority of the time, the mutation either does nothing, or has a negative impact. That's the jackpot that I'm talking about. Once a genome has collected enough beneficial mutations, a bottleneck event or other stressor can lead to speciation.
>>First of all, if West Nile 2012 is well made, it may be impossible to tell that it is man made even if it is.
It may be. But more plausibly, if someone is engineering it to become weaponized, a statistical test would show it is highly unlikely to be natural.
>>Also, falsifying the presumed mechanism doesn't give ID the least bit of support. ID needs some substance before it can count as an explanation for anything, let alone become an explanation supported by evidence.
The substance ID is based on is the long odds for certain things evolving. Their argument goes along the lines that "the odds are too small for X to have evolved without interference", whereas the theory of evolution says "it's small, but not that small".
That's the mathematical difference that can be picked out, examined and expounded upon.
>>How are you going to prove that the odds are being violated by reality, when reality is our only clue as to what the odds are?
The odds aren't violated by "reality", which is an odd thing to say, but rather by a hypothetical entity. If we look at West Nile 2012 and see it required many simultaneous codependent mutations, we would conclude someone had engineered it instead of it being naturally evolved. That's why I say we're going to need a test for ID anyway as genetic engineering becomes more common... we'll want to know things like that.
Being able to apply such a statistical test - which relies on experiment based assumptions about the distribution of mutations through a genome over time, nothing more - to the evolutionary record is useful as a curiosity (as well as by being able to make ID falsifiable), but its real value lies in being able to tell if terrorists released a new disease on us or not in the future.
>>Your fantasy doesn't count because it's too vague and requires technology that doesn't exist and may very well be impossible.
Fantasy? There's a difference between thought experiments and fantasies.
Vague? Giving a nutshell of an idea is intentionally being vague. If you want the details, I provided them in the past. Using your search-fu, you should be able to turn up how I proposed doing the math for the tests.
Technology that doesn't exist? DNA sequencing is now mainstream science. We don't need a panopticon of ancient DNA for the method to work.
If you want to think about it another way, we can (and will) establish a panopticon of current DNA in species around the planet, and apply the test moving forward. If we see the evolution of a new, more advanced, interesting species, then ID is proven false.
We probably wouldn't have to even wait that long. If you multiply the generational time of evolution per species by the number of interesting species on the planet, we'd expect to see multiple new species within our lifetime. Especially with the evolutionary stress humans are placing on species.
>>That's why you wouldn't be able to publish it in a reputable evolutionary biology journal, but if this bill goes through maybe your chances will improve.
I don't think a reputable biology journal would publish anything relating to ID, even though it is technically a way of showing how to prove ID false. =)
>>Marble and other pseudoscientists also tend to babble endlessly about "black swans" and "Kuhnian paradigm shifts" in contexts where it seems like they're just playing the "Galileo card".
It's amusing how you continue to linkspam without making a thesis statement, just using the links to make a sort of passive-aggressive attack on my statements. If you want to disagree with any of my statements, just say so.
I could copy and paste links from thread after thread where you had to be dragged kicking and screaming to make even the smallest admission that Watts' empirical station survey had any work. I could post all of those links, and make you look stupid. Or I could just say it outright. Which I just did.
So I recommend you do the same.
Look, it's quite clear at this point that you don't have the slightest understanding of the philosophy of science, and don't really want to. But I really wouldn't recommend reveling in your ignorance. Philosophy (and philosophy of science) underlies everything in life, and you just cost yourself face every time you boast about your ignorance of the subject.
That's... incorrect.
Read http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1153, for example.
Due to cognitive dissonance, most IDers would rather have their fingernails pulled out than talk about all the cases where they think the theory of evolution works just fine (similar to how Khayman had to be dragged kicking and screaming to finally admit that *maybe* there was some *small* benefit to AGW-denier Watts' station survey work), you have to sort of look at the whole thing from a high level and see what sort of claims are actually being made.
In the case of West Nile 2012, the designer could be Russia, or Undead Hussein, or whatever.
The point is we need a statistical test developed for this sort of stuff regardless of the whole evolution debate, and when we have one developed, we could apply it to the DNA record for the past and see what it turns up.
I doubt it would support ID, but it does make ID falsifiable.
>>I might be a little dramatic, but the increase in cancer occurrence is statistically noticeable at over 100 mSv/yr.
I was listening to the radio yesterday, and was grinding my teeth when an "expert" was repeating the (wrong) claim that there's a linear response between radiation dosing and cancer incidence rates. While he's right that people tend to use that model, it is because it is simple, not because it is right. It's quite clear there's a thresholding system in regards to radiation, below which it poses no elevated risk. The only question is where that threshold should be set.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_model
Empiric longitudinal studies of people exposed to radiation have completely disproven the LNT model. All the long-term cancers predicted by it just never materialize from very low radiation doses.
>>For instance, take the recent stuff in Wisconsin and the constant Retardican attacks on trade unions in general.
You're an idiot if you don't know the fucking difference between unions for private employees and public employees.
There's a reason why even FDR was against collective bargaining for government employees, and public unions in general, and why Reagan got all up in the grille of the ATC workers on strike.
It's because you can't have the rooster conspiring with the fox to guard the henhouse.
Here in California, teachers don't even have to pay into Social Security - they have an exemption for it, and get their own private retirement system (CalSTRS). But any politician trying to put teachers on an even playing field would get destroyed, politically. As the union makes explicitly clear, telling our legislators (on tape in congress): "We put you into office, we can get you out of there, too." The public unions destroyed Schwarzenegger.
I work with teachers every week, and know how hard they work, but you can't pretend they don't get special deals due to their immense political clout.
Read FDR's speech here: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15445
In 1943, a New York Supreme Court judge held: "To tolerate or recognize any combination of civil service employees of the government as a labor organization or union is not only incompatible with the spirit of democracy, but inconsistent with every principle upon which our government is founded. Nothing is more dangerous to public welfare than to admit that hired servants of the State can dictate to the government the hours, the wages and conditions under which they will carry on essential services vital to the welfare, safety, and security of the citizen. To admit as true that government employees have power to halt or check the functions of government unless their demands are satisfied, is to transfer to them all legislative, executive and judicial power. Nothing would be more ridiculous."
I posted on here a while back a way to make ID a scientific theory by making it falsifiable. A lot of people took that to mean that I supported ID, which wasn't what I was saying at all. I was just tired of hearing the above quote over and over when it was quite obvious how to make it falsifiable.
You can read the whole thing in my Journal, but in a nutshell:
1) ID is not Young Earth Creationism (YEC), though it is primarily used as a smokescreen by YECs.
2) ID is the belief that evolution is mostly true, but that something "interfered" with evolution, allowing it to overcome the statistical challenges to evolving more complicated life.
3) To put it in probabilistic terms, consider the world as being a giant casino filled with slot machines, and every time a jackpot is hit in a slot machine, a new species evolves. ID is the claim that someone is interfering with the odds on the machines, evolution is the stance that enough jackpots will be hit without interference.
4) Put in those terms, it becomes statistically falsifiable (to arbitrary levels of confidence). One simply needs to determine numbers for hitting jackpots / speciation and compare them against the record of events. Or even better, going forward, keep track of the genomes of all species on earth, and see if mutation and speciation rates match theory.
5) It is possible to develop a statistical method that determines to an arbitrary level of confidence, if species A could have evolved from species B given time duration T.
One very important point that got lost in all the noise is this: we will need a statistical method to determine intelligent design no matter what. Ignore the whole evolution thing - as our skills with genetic engineering move forward, it will be critical to be able to tell if West Nile 2012 is an intelligently designed species or not.
>>Pay up or we force you to pay.
This... probably shouldn't be legal. Automatic subscription to a $45/month service seems like it violates very basic principles of how agreements work.
And to all you people that will be complaining on here, and not doing anything about it, here's something really simple you can do:
Donate to the EFF. (www.eff.org/support/)
They're the only organization taking a stand against all this kind of stuff.
>>How do Americans put up with this crap, when other countries pay so, so much less for mobile?
Because our courts will tolerate an awful lot of shit, as long as it is in a contract.
While we do have alternative carriers that cost a *lot* less (Cricket / MetroPCS), people want their iPhones.
A $1000 factory installed system will have XM audio, integration with car audio controls, and a 9 speaker system. I've only had it on one car (inherited from my grandfather), and the sound quality was actually really good. Spoiled me enough that I went crazy with the default audio system on my new Altima. The new system was so muddled I couldn't hear entire instruments when listening to classical.
So with those requirements, I don't think you're going to get anywhere near $350 for an installed system.
The integrated XM audio alone is going to be somewhere around $100-$200, with a more expensive head unit to handle it (call it $300). You also need a harness to integrate with the car audio controls.
And if you're paying fifty bucks for two 4x6s, I can't imagine how bad the sound quality is going to sound. I think 3-way speakers are essential. My fosgates were something like $80/speaker, so with 4 speakers that's $320 alone.
Violent crime rates have been falling pretty consistently for 20 years now.
>>What does any of this have to do with the case at hand?
Discussion of judges and jury instructions, and some of the absurdities we deal with today.
In the meantime, Aitken is a pardoned felon who still can't visit his kid.
I've had great luck with Hitachis. One DOA, but the rest lasting for ages under heavy load.
All of my WDs and my friends WDs have died.
Perhaps we should set up a Slashdot poll so we can all pool together our small sample sizes.
>>They are *instructed in the law* by the judge, and are told to follow it.
Maybe that's how it should be done, but consider the Brian Aitken case.
New Jersey law allows you to have guns (locked in a case) in your trunk if you're moving. The police and the assistant DA both said it was obvious he was moving.
The judge told the jury they couldn't consider that exemption to the draconian New Jersey gun control laws (the judge deciding the fact he was not moving for the jury). Thus both dictating fact and to ignore law to the jury.
Brian, having his exemption stripped from him by the judge, was promptly sentenced to the minimum 3 years in jail, which was newly classified as a "violent offense", meaning he lost his child visitation rights and hasn't been able to see his kid in two years, even though he was pardoned by Christie.
>>Network traffic has moved 8 feet to the east.
On a serious note, I wonder what this will do to GPS navigation systems.
Heh, that's hilarious.
You're right, of course, about them wanting to keep you coming into the dealership hoping to get more expensive repairs made / keep a good relationship for buying a new car in 5 years, but one very nice thing about getting oil changes at the dealership is that they have records of all your oil changes, which are required for car warranties these days. We got a pretty good price on a 7 year bumper to bumper on my wife's Honda, so it all works out pretty well.