> Not sure that I would use these [answersingenesis.org] guys as a credible referance.
Especially given their Statement of Faith. Notice in particular the final item:
By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record.
They excuse that position on the grounds that "evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information", though they do not seem to hold their particular interpretation of scripture to the same standard.
> > Umm, evolution is origin agnostic. It doesn't explain how life started, just what happened once it did.
> Actually, the idea of Universal Common Ancestry, which most people think of when they talk about evolution, is predicated on a specific notion of abiogenesis.
No, it isn't.
The notion of common descent doesn't say anything about how abiogenesis happened, nor even how many times it happened. It only says that we're all related to some common ancestor, which may or may not have been the only thing alive at the time.
> In a report titled "Scientists Discover T. Rex. Soft Tissue" distributed by NBC on its website, scientists have actually obtained the blood samples of the most famous dinosaur: Tyrannosaurus Rex.
No, just "blood vessels", and even that is controversial. The apparently solid result is the discovery of medullary bone in the leg. Notice the abstract of the paper at the bottom of the link: no mention of blood, or even vessels.
I think the claims about finding vessels is just a misunderstanding of the fact that bones have holes where the blood vessels run, and the medullary bone was found in those holes.
> Don't church-supported universities also engage in this kind of research?
I think most of them stick to real science. Even at Baylor U (affiliated with the Southern Baptists, IIRC) the science faculty threw a fit when the university president tried to set up one of the leading ID "researchers" with a position lending a false sense of scientific respectability to his views.
(FWIW, he finally landed in the Theology department at another university.)
> To be fair, not all biblical literalists think this 6000 year number is anywhere near accurate. Many accept values between 10 and 30 thousand years.
Wow, that means they're only... well, still 4.5 billion years off.
> In any case, while I don't buy into evolution personally... am origin agnostic, I haven't seen a good scientific theory yet for how things got here.
Why don't you buy into evolution? And when you mention "how things got here" are you talking about biology, or cosmology?
> I can't help but wonder why I don't ever see ID or creationist fossil research publications.
ID isn't interested in any kind of research. They just want you to hear their "proofs" that God^w some incredibly powerful intelligent being created us - no questions from the audience, please. (Though they have been stung enough by our pointing out that real scientists publish in the peer reviewed literature that they're trying to make some end runs on peer review so they can claim that they've published in it.)
As for other kinds of creationists, some do take interest in explaining dinosaurs. Everything from carving fake human footprints among the Paluxy dinosaur tracks to having clueless amateurs excavate priceless specimens. And I think Ken Ham has a dino museum now.
Though their notion of research publications is - hard to imagine - even worse than the IDists'.
> I see a lot of people on here that bash the brothers for their poor work after the Matrix. IMHO, it's really hard for anyone to live up to the Matrix, even it's own creators. I think we expect a movie coming from these two guys to be as original and amazing as the Matrix all over again, and that's not easy.
FWIW, I thought The Matrix was a third-rate film to begin with. I didn't even bother to see the sequels, which even fans of the original think suck.
Saying "done by the people who did The Matrix" means my default option is "don't waste your money on this one". I'll have to hear a lot of rave reviews to change that default.
> I remember seeing part of the first episode and thinking, "Eh, just a western set in the future."
Yeah, I remember after the first week of that season thinking that John Doe was going to be better than Firefly.
Didn't take long to change that opinion.
> I recently picked up the DVDs and was blown away by the quality of character development and story line! Light-years beyond what I'd thought when I saw the snippet when it originally aired.
I recently saw the DVDs for the first time, and was astonished to discover that it was even better than I remembered. Even that first episode they aired is interesting, given some context about the characters.
Unfortunately, all this sets some extremely high expectations for the movie.
> How many places do theoretical computer science research (i.e. real research, not just extremely novel programming)? I can't think of too many. Computer science research is essentially pure math research, and there's not much of that happening in industry, either.
There are fields of CS other than theoretical CS, and people get PhDs in them.
Also, the notoriety of 1-click patents shouldn't be allowed to obscure the fact that some companies are doing real research. For example, I know a guy who got a PhD in some obscure area of AI, and went to work for one of the big automakers. Even Microsoft funds interesting research; I've seen some of their researchers' presentations.
> More to the point: given that the vast majority of PhDs must go into industry (since the universe conserves tenure) what, praytell, are you suggesting a CS PhD do out there in the real world?
> Thats right. A PhD in CS does not make a great programmer. A PhD trains and qualifies you to carry out research. A PhD creates knowledge instead of regurgitating it.
And only an idiot would hire a PhD for a programming job. That's like hiring an M.D. to run urine tests, or an aerospace engineer to handle luggage at an airport.
> What, you think because you have a PhD, your feces doesn't stink? Guess what -- it does.
> When I worked for a particular company, we instituted a "programmer intelligence test". It didn't test nonsense like "Define Polymorphism", it had questions where they actually had to think like a programmer. I found that the more educated the person, the worse they did on the test!
I don't suppose it occurred to you that there's more to CS than programming.
Did you give these educated people a chance to ask you some questions that require thinking like a PhD?
> The plus side (in so far as there is one) is that other countries will want to show solidarity with the Brits. This could well help the British agenda, which is a good one, for a change.
If they don't screw up. On 9/12 the USA probably had more international solidarity than at any time since 1945, if not earlier, but within a couple of years had thrown all that away, and more, leaving us with probably the worst stench in the international community that we've ever had.
> > "In any case, we should bomb Mecca every time something like this happens."
> The capital of Saudi Arabia is Riyadh. All you're proposing is the random killing of random Muslism, who may or may not be Saudi (or even Arab), considering Mecca's status as a pilgrimage destination. Way to take the high road there.
At least the traditional "bomb Iraq" is off the table this time.
> Alright, it's fairly obvious that we're talking about terrorist attacks here, but what kind of terrorists? Rabid Islamists against the war in Iraq? Rabid anarchists against the G8 summit? Rabid Irish against anything English? I realize that blaming the Irish may be like Spain blaming the ETA, but the timing suggests it could be aimed more at the G8 than the UK in specific.
Doesn't seem to match the traditional mode of anti-G8 violence.
I suspect it's international, and it probably follows the award of the 2012 Olympics to London as a "we can get you" message.
> Authors: Volker Springel (1), Simon D. M. White (1), Adrian Jenkins (2), Carlos S. Frenk (2), Naoki Yoshida (3), Liang Gao (1), Julio Navarro (4), Robert Thacker (5), Darren Croton (1), John Helly (2), John A. Peacock (6), Shaun Cole (2), Peter Thomas (7), Hugh Couchman (5), August Evrard (8), Joerg Colberg (9), Frazer Pearce (10) ((1) MPA, (2) Durham, (3) Nagoya, (4) UVic, (5) McMaster, (6) Edinburgh, (7) Sussex, (8) Michigan, (9) Pittsburgh, (10) Nottingham)
Now you know why "et al." is one of the most important concepts in the natural sciences.
> > "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are -- if it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." -- R.P. Feynman
> I feel that this quote is appropriate, as I believe this type of simulation possibly cannot contain every essential physics that governs the evolution of the Universe. Some oversimplification must be present and some tweaks (e.g. dark matter) may go into the modeling to match whatever we see it today.
Yes, and figuring out why your model doesn't reproduce what you see is where the potential for real discoveries lies.
Slashdot Mirror
> Not sure that I would use these [answersingenesis.org] guys as a credible referance.
Especially given their Statement of Faith. Notice in particular the final item:
They excuse that position on the grounds that "evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information", though they do not seem to hold their particular interpretation of scripture to the same standard.
> > Umm, evolution is origin agnostic. It doesn't explain how life started, just what happened once it did.
> Actually, the idea of Universal Common Ancestry, which most people think of when they talk about evolution, is predicated on a specific notion of abiogenesis.
No, it isn't.
The notion of common descent doesn't say anything about how abiogenesis happened, nor even how many times it happened. It only says that we're all related to some common ancestor, which may or may not have been the only thing alive at the time.
You probably won't hear it on the evening news in the USA, but Microsoft is also actively engaged in helping China with political censorship.
> In a report titled "Scientists Discover T. Rex. Soft Tissue" distributed by NBC on its website, scientists have actually obtained the blood samples of the most famous dinosaur: Tyrannosaurus Rex.
No, just "blood vessels", and even that is controversial. The apparently solid result is the discovery of medullary bone in the leg. Notice the abstract of the paper at the bottom of the link: no mention of blood, or even vessels.
I think the claims about finding vessels is just a misunderstanding of the fact that bones have holes where the blood vessels run, and the medullary bone was found in those holes.
I forgot to respond to this:
> Don't church-supported universities also engage in this kind of research?
I think most of them stick to real science. Even at Baylor U (affiliated with the Southern Baptists, IIRC) the science faculty threw a fit when the university president tried to set up one of the leading ID "researchers" with a position lending a false sense of scientific respectability to his views.
(FWIW, he finally landed in the Theology department at another university.)
> To be fair, not all biblical literalists think this 6000 year number is anywhere near accurate. Many accept values between 10 and 30 thousand years.
Wow, that means they're only... well, still 4.5 billion years off.
> In any case, while I don't buy into evolution personally
Why don't you buy into evolution? And when you mention "how things got here" are you talking about biology, or cosmology?
> I can't help but wonder why I don't ever see ID or creationist fossil research publications.
ID isn't interested in any kind of research. They just want you to hear their "proofs" that God^w some incredibly powerful intelligent being created us - no questions from the audience, please. (Though they have been stung enough by our pointing out that real scientists publish in the peer reviewed literature that they're trying to make some end runs on peer review so they can claim that they've published in it.)
As for other kinds of creationists, some do take interest in explaining dinosaurs. Everything from carving fake human footprints among the Paluxy dinosaur tracks to having clueless amateurs excavate priceless specimens. And I think Ken Ham has a dino museum now.
Though their notion of research publications is - hard to imagine - even worse than the IDists'.
> I see a lot of people on here that bash the brothers for their poor work after the Matrix. IMHO, it's really hard for anyone to live up to the Matrix, even it's own creators. I think we expect a movie coming from these two guys to be as original and amazing as the Matrix all over again, and that's not easy.
FWIW, I thought The Matrix was a third-rate film to begin with. I didn't even bother to see the sequels, which even fans of the original think suck.
Saying "done by the people who did The Matrix" means my default option is "don't waste your money on this one". I'll have to hear a lot of rave reviews to change that default.
> I remember seeing part of the first episode and thinking, "Eh, just a western set in the future."
Yeah, I remember after the first week of that season thinking that John Doe was going to be better than Firefly.
Didn't take long to change that opinion.
> I recently picked up the DVDs and was blown away by the quality of character development and story line! Light-years beyond what I'd thought when I saw the snippet when it originally aired.
I recently saw the DVDs for the first time, and was astonished to discover that it was even better than I remembered. Even that first episode they aired is interesting, given some context about the characters.
Unfortunately, all this sets some extremely high expectations for the movie.
> Since when are riots considered peaceable assembly?
A more interesting question is, why is riot control a problem in a country just liberated from an insanely bloodthirsty dictator?
There's something wrong with this picture, and I don't think the trouble lies in my set.
How's that effort to keep the citizens of China from reading about "freedom", "democracy", and "human rights" going, Bill?
> So, what's the son of iPod going to be called?
O'iPod?
MaciPod?
Ben iPod?
iPodson?
BTW, think how different the world might be if the ancient barbarians along China's border had had skateboards...
> How many places do theoretical computer science research (i.e. real research, not just extremely novel programming)? I can't think of too many. Computer science research is essentially pure math research, and there's not much of that happening in industry, either.
There are fields of CS other than theoretical CS, and people get PhDs in them.
Also, the notoriety of 1-click patents shouldn't be allowed to obscure the fact that some companies are doing real research. For example, I know a guy who got a PhD in some obscure area of AI, and went to work for one of the big automakers. Even Microsoft funds interesting research; I've seen some of their researchers' presentations.
> More to the point: given that the vast majority of PhDs must go into industry (since the universe conserves tenure) what, praytell, are you suggesting a CS PhD do out there in the real world?
The same as a PhD in any other field: research.
> Thats right. A PhD in CS does not make a great programmer. A PhD trains and qualifies you to carry out research. A PhD creates knowledge instead of regurgitating it.
And only an idiot would hire a PhD for a programming job. That's like hiring an M.D. to run urine tests, or an aerospace engineer to handle luggage at an airport.
> What, you think because you have a PhD, your feces doesn't stink? Guess what -- it does.
> When I worked for a particular company, we instituted a "programmer intelligence test". It didn't test nonsense like "Define Polymorphism", it had questions where they actually had to think like a programmer. I found that the more educated the person, the worse they did on the test!
I don't suppose it occurred to you that there's more to CS than programming.
Did you give these educated people a chance to ask you some questions that require thinking like a PhD?
> The plus side (in so far as there is one) is that other countries will want to show solidarity with the Brits. This could well help the British agenda, which is a good one, for a change.
If they don't screw up. On 9/12 the USA probably had more international solidarity than at any time since 1945, if not earlier, but within a couple of years had thrown all that away, and more, leaving us with probably the worst stench in the international community that we've ever had.
> > "In any case, we should bomb Mecca every time something like this happens."
> The capital of Saudi Arabia is Riyadh. All you're proposing is the random killing of random Muslism, who may or may not be Saudi (or even Arab), considering Mecca's status as a pilgrimage destination. Way to take the high road there.
At least the traditional "bomb Iraq" is off the table this time.
> Alright, it's fairly obvious that we're talking about terrorist attacks here, but what kind of terrorists? Rabid Islamists against the war in Iraq? Rabid anarchists against the G8 summit? Rabid Irish against anything English? I realize that blaming the Irish may be like Spain blaming the ETA, but the timing suggests it could be aimed more at the G8 than the UK in specific.
Doesn't seem to match the traditional mode of anti-G8 violence.
I suspect it's international, and it probably follows the award of the 2012 Olympics to London as a "we can get you" message.
> Authors: Volker Springel (1), Simon D. M. White (1), Adrian Jenkins (2), Carlos S. Frenk (2), Naoki Yoshida (3), Liang Gao (1), Julio Navarro (4), Robert Thacker (5), Darren Croton (1), John Helly (2), John A. Peacock (6), Shaun Cole (2), Peter Thomas (7), Hugh Couchman (5), August Evrard (8), Joerg Colberg (9), Frazer Pearce (10) ((1) MPA, (2) Durham, (3) Nagoya, (4) UVic, (5) McMaster, (6) Edinburgh, (7) Sussex, (8) Michigan, (9) Pittsburgh, (10) Nottingham)
Now you know why "et al." is one of the most important concepts in the natural sciences.
> Since it's pretty obvious that "dark matter" is just a hack to make the maths work; there's almost certainly no such thing.
Like the cosmological constant?
> Oh, well.
Let us know when your Nature article comes out.
> > "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are -- if it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." -- R.P. Feynman
> I feel that this quote is appropriate, as I believe this type of simulation possibly cannot contain every essential physics that governs the evolution of the Universe. Some oversimplification must be present and some tweaks (e.g. dark matter) may go into the modeling to match whatever we see it today.
Yes, and figuring out why your model doesn't reproduce what you see is where the potential for real discoveries lies.
> But I don't want to be a futurist, and I don't have the time to study for the priesthood.
Besides, the Rapture of the Nerds is probably only a few years away anyhow.
> Is it news when somebody takes a bunch of existing documents and creates a PDF out of them?
It's a step toward the technological singularity...
> not all images are meaningful scientifically. In fact, one encounters [...] images that look nice but have no scientific import at all
Could you show that with a diagram or something?