This is the same (public university) professor that liked to show us a petrified tree which ran through layers of rock that should have been millions of years apart.
"all new complex systems in his experience come from 'intelligent design', "
Not at all. Termite mounds are quite complex. I observe that humans design neat and tidy, but often fragile systems. Whereas natural ones tend to be messy but robust. The natural systems I'm aware of are not much like the designed ones at all.
I think you're making a false distinction here. Are the termite mounds not simply a party of the termite system? While we're on the subject, did you read that article about how the mars rovers have lasted so long? Did you see the "whining engineer" comments about how, because they lasted so long, they must have been wastefully over-engineered? Whether or not the flying spaghetti monster created the universe or not, you MUST find the parallel amusing.
Why? There's no reason for it; all that junk could be changed to just spell the desgners name over and over or something.
You're not seriously bringing out the tired old vestigal organs argument, are you? People used to think the thyroid didn't do anything either.
The odds are stupendously in your favor, unless of course cows and humans shared a common mamalian ancestor.
I'll concede common origin, but not necessarily ancestor. I can find immense commonality among all of DaVinci's paintings too.
But an invisible evolution-simulating super-hero is no problem?
At what point did I say I believed in this either. You can't make an argument FOR evolution as an origin of life by attacking creationism, at least not to me, because I'm not defending the creationists.
I noticed in some of your other posts you talk of origins. Evolution is no more about the origins of life than chemistry is about the origins of the elements.
Right, and if you read my posts in this thread carefully, you'll see that I confine my discussion to the application of evolution to the origins of life, to which, as you state, it does not apply. Darwin was very much correct when he noted, "Gosh, it sure is easy to breed animals for our own purposes." However, since this discussion is about whether it is reasonable to assert that evolution, or anything else, was the origin of life, I think I'm missing your point.
If you're up for an interesting study by an evolutionary biologist which indicates that the time required for change due to environmental stimuli grows exponentially the farther one drifts from the original "ideal," (such as would suggest that evolution as origin is mathematically problematic,) try:
You make an interesting distinction between evidence and experiment....
If you withold judgement about 90% of science, I think you're too cautious.
I probably am too cautious. Then again my college geology professor once put a candle under glass, and asked us all why it went out. When none of us offered a saturation of phlogistan as the answer, he explained that we'd all have failed the class just a few generations back. He did this to illustrate the point that one cannot rely too heavily on the popular scientific ideas of your day.
If you look carefully, however, I state that I withold judgment "from a scientific perspective." Indeed I believe from a strict scientific perspective, all must withhold such judgment.
why pick on evolution? The evidence for it is much more diretly available to the lay person than that for plate tectonics or heliocentrism.
For the lay person, or indeed for any idividual interested in resolving for themselves what to believe, the scope of "evidence" is not limited to that which can be derived from scientific analysis. Philosophy, for example, is also available. A reasonable person has no problem observing (a) that all new complex systems in his experience come from "intelligent design," and (b) that living things are complex systems.
Alternatively, from a scientific perspective, meteorology or astrophysics at least enjoy repetetive, observable phenomena. We do not need to extrapolate weather patterns from the movement of a few water molecules in a jar, we can observe whole hurricanes form and disperse. The origins of life do not provide us with such a handy reference. To date, we have not managed to watch single celled organisms form from inert matter, or develop into finches.
Perhaps what it boils down to is this: What I know of history, I learned from books. The origin of life, the universe, and everything, is history. The books on this subject conflict. As a reasonable person, the improbability of evolution on the grand scale is simply too great for me to believe it. From a scientific perspective, we can't test it any more than we can measure how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. The choice is yours, will you take the infinintely improbable, or the utterly unprovable?
When someone tries to pass laws requiring that what is taught in a public school science class be something different than the consensus amongst scientists in that field, they are over the line.
Fortunately, this discussion was not about the narrow issue of public school science classes, but the treatment of ID proponents in broad public discourse.
While we're at it, science never "proves" anything, so be as agnostic as you want.
Good point, I should have said, neither can be disproved by experiment. If a "theory" is not falsible, it does not fall within the realm of scientific analysis.
I don't care what your religion is or what you choose to believe, but when you try to force your worldview on me or society as a whole, I will attack you with whatever tactics I have at my disposal.
Where do you, personally, draw the line between an ID proponent "forcing" his or her ideas on you and simply telling you about them?*
*Disclaimer, from a scientific perspective, I don't buy into evolution or any other theory about how things got here. None can be proved by experiment. Perhaps you could call me origin agnostic.
Is his work passing over public lands? Were the wires that carry his signals installed with the power of eminent domain? Does the state help keep the electricity required to transmit his labor running?
Creating weblog entries on a regular basis often requires one to post thoughts, ideas, and opinions that have not been thoroughly thought out. They're like email, too easy to write, and impossible to recall. How many of us have sent an angry email and later wished we had not.
If we expect our policiticans to start web-logging their daily thoughts, we're going to have to be a lot less hard on them about what they say. Our politicians, like the rest of the human race, are going to have ideas that, when fully thought out, are really bad. In maintaining weblogs some of these bad ideas are going to see international publication.
Will we allow our politicians to recant later, and say "well, yes, I guess that article I wrote was racist/imperialistic/unconstitutional, now that I look at it again, please don't hold it against me?" More importantly, will the news media be willing to let things like that die or pass unnoticed?
(Yes, I used the preview button once, No, I didn't give this post a lot of thought.)
1. To keep the funding flowing, or to encourage space exploration by private enterprise, the rovers simply need to find some gold.
2. Now that we have the technology worked out to make a hardy, long lasting rover, can we do something about the cosmetics? Who are we kidding. These things are Imperial Probe Droids and should look the part.
States need to get funding from somewhere...and taxes are inevitable, so consider the following:
If your tax dollars go to Washington D.C., you have roughly one vote in 250 million to direct how it gets spent. If your tax dollars go to your State government, you vote is between One in 34 million (California) and one in 600 thousand (North Dakota.)* How much influence would you like to have? What do you want to fund today? A War? Stem Cell Research? Highways?
Although the price is high now, it warms my heart to think that one day all of these great, highly advanced games will be in the public domain. There will be joy and fun for people of all incomes.
Has China agreed to the terms of the Human Rights Charter? It seems to me the whole declaration is not a binding law, but a set of goals. Even the preamble to the Declaration suggests this:
THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
If this (like many UN publications, is nothing but a set of ideals,) we can't go making a legal argument against China or Yahoo! for violating it, can we?
1. Did yahoo violate any of their terms of service with the victim? 2. Did yahoo violate it's privacy policy?
If neither of the above is true, is the journalist not to blame for doing buisness with a service that would not protect him? In the alternative, are we now requiring that all major corporations take up the fight against oppression and censorship? I thought we had already decided that all corporations are evil, profit minded monsters. Why should Yahoo! be different?
Aha! good point, I forgot about the continuing cost. (I'm still thinking of games like StarCraft which provide online play without an additional fee to suck up the gamer's future income.)
On a side note, that 60 days/1400 hours of play is spread out over at least 10 years. Will people still be playing WoW in 10 years?
Last time I checked, my favorite MUD character had logged almost 2 months of time online over the years. That is months total, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
This investment had no impact on how many games I bought. Is there some difference between my MUD experience and that of WoW?
1. It may be legend, but I recall a story about a patent clerk working around 1900 who insisted that everything that could be invented pretty much had been.
2. Since patents expire in spans of time comprehensible to the human mind (unlike copyrights), life should be pretty good in about 15 years.
Good grief man! Why didn't you point me to that article a year ago when I lived 12 miles from Archimedes? I would surely like to have met the man. Then again, I did pick up a few hitchikers on the highway that runs through his home town. Maybe I already have.
Console systems can now be connected to the internet. How long before I can get a good MUD client for my X-box? I'd even settle for raw telnet if I could program the controller buttons. If anything needs to be "resurrected" its MUDs.
(Proudly NOT playing graphical MMORPGs since 1975)
I think, based on my personal experience, that Hotmail is already moving away from virus definitions to a more general measure of "traits." In the case of Hotmail, the primary trait used in determining whether a file contains a virus is whether or not it has a really long name and more than one "." (dot) in it.
I base this on the fact that, after exporting a document from StarOffice 7 directly to a.pdf file, and using a filename with two "dots." I send this document to a Hotmail user, who wrote me back that Hotmail had declared the file to contain an incurable virus. Reasonably sure that my Xandros linux box had no virii on it, I renamed the file something more Microsoft friendly. The file was received with no problems.
So there you have it, any file with a suspicious name must contain a virus. Easy, reliable detection.
Come to think of it, I remember seeing a restraining order one of the local University computer labs had to take out to keep at least one MUD addict from stinking up the place 24/7.
Is the great Chinese network able to identify both big budget MMORPGS like World of Warcraft and smaller ones like the classic MUD? These I think are more prone to causing addiction than any "here today gone tomorrow" packaged MMORPG...
The first line of text I saw on my first mud was (roughly) "YES! 32 Hours nonstop and counting!!"
Aha, well that seems like a pretty decent plan, actually. Honestly though the Christian Coalition does not even represent a majority of Christians.
On a related note, however, what would such a group as you propose use as a focal point to "band together" around? One can't make a strong group based on a negative assertion of "Not being the Christian Coalition."
The US Constitution may limit how the government applies religion, but it cannot limit how the voting public does.
Err... what? I think what you're asking is, "How do I discern between the religious groups votes and others." Are you kidding me? I can answer that very simply, "Open-Mindedness.
Nope, I'm asking how you how you plan to maintain a democratic system of government while at the same time preventing religious people from voting for other religious people because they are religious people?
Only people you consider "open minded" get to vote? Those other wackos just get to pay taxes and shut up? Evidently you don't like the right to vote?
All you have to do is walk by an abortion clinic to see the religious wackos preaching hatred towards women using the service.
What, so those people can watch what they honestly think to be murder and just shut up? You're not a big fan of the right to free speech either?
A good portion of this country is very uneducated... ultra-paranoid religious groups are collectively working to sway votes in the whitehouse.
Uneducated, as in not aware that the voting you refer to takes place in Congress, and Congress does not convene in the White House?
I think what we do need is the same sort of counter-group to thwart their attempts at branding their religious/ personal beliefs on "the rest of us."
How do you distinguish between religious folks who are simply voting for people that won't spend money on projects they find objectionable those attempting to brand their beliefs on you?
Slashdot Mirror
Amen.
(I agree with MightyMartian?! I guess there's a first time for everything.)
You geo profs demonstration makes a good point.
This is the same (public university) professor that liked to show us a petrified tree which ran through layers of rock that should have been millions of years apart.
"all new complex systems in his experience come from 'intelligent design', "
Not at all. Termite mounds are quite complex. I observe that humans design neat and tidy, but often fragile systems. Whereas natural ones tend to be messy but robust. The natural systems I'm aware of are not much like the designed ones at all.
I think you're making a false distinction here. Are the termite mounds not simply a party of the termite system? While we're on the subject, did you read that article about how the mars rovers have lasted so long? Did you see the "whining engineer" comments about how, because they lasted so long, they must have been wastefully over-engineered? Whether or not the flying spaghetti monster created the universe or not, you MUST find the parallel amusing.
Why? There's no reason for it; all that junk could be changed to just spell the desgners name over and over or something.
You're not seriously bringing out the tired old vestigal organs argument, are you? People used to think the thyroid didn't do anything either.
The odds are stupendously in your favor, unless of course cows and humans shared a common mamalian ancestor.
I'll concede common origin, but not necessarily ancestor. I can find immense commonality among all of DaVinci's paintings too.
But an invisible evolution-simulating super-hero is no problem?
At what point did I say I believed in this either. You can't make an argument FOR evolution as an origin of life by attacking creationism, at least not to me, because I'm not defending the creationists.
I noticed in some of your other posts you talk of origins. Evolution is no more about the origins of life than chemistry is about the origins of the elements.
Right, and if you read my posts in this thread carefully, you'll see that I confine my discussion to the application of evolution to the origins of life, to which, as you state, it does not apply. Darwin was very much correct when he noted, "Gosh, it sure is easy to breed animals for our own purposes." However, since this discussion is about whether it is reasonable to assert that evolution, or anything else, was the origin of life, I think I'm missing your point.
If you're up for an interesting study by an evolutionary biologist which indicates that the time required for change due to environmental stimuli grows exponentially the farther one drifts from the original "ideal," (such as would suggest that evolution as origin is mathematically problematic,) try:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/98/16/9157
You make an interesting distinction between evidence and experiment....
If you withold judgement about 90% of science, I think you're too cautious.
I probably am too cautious. Then again my college geology professor once put a candle under glass, and asked us all why it went out. When none of us offered a saturation of phlogistan as the answer, he explained that we'd all have failed the class just a few generations back. He did this to illustrate the point that one cannot rely too heavily on the popular scientific ideas of your day.
If you look carefully, however, I state that I withold judgment "from a scientific perspective." Indeed I believe from a strict scientific perspective, all must withhold such judgment.
why pick on evolution? The evidence for it is much more diretly available to the lay person than that for plate tectonics or heliocentrism.
For the lay person, or indeed for any idividual interested in resolving for themselves what to believe, the scope of "evidence" is not limited to that which can be derived from scientific analysis. Philosophy, for example, is also available. A reasonable person has no problem observing (a) that all new complex systems in his experience come from "intelligent design," and (b) that living things are complex systems.
Alternatively, from a scientific perspective, meteorology or astrophysics at least enjoy repetetive, observable phenomena. We do not need to extrapolate weather patterns from the movement of a few water molecules in a jar, we can observe whole hurricanes form and disperse. The origins of life do not provide us with such a handy reference. To date, we have not managed to watch single celled organisms form from inert matter, or develop into finches.
Perhaps what it boils down to is this: What I know of history, I learned from books. The origin of life, the universe, and everything, is history. The books on this subject conflict. As a reasonable person, the improbability of evolution on the grand scale is simply too great for me to believe it. From a scientific perspective, we can't test it any more than we can measure how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. The choice is yours, will you take the infinintely improbable, or the utterly unprovable?
When someone tries to pass laws requiring that what is taught in a public school science class be something different than the consensus amongst scientists in that field, they are over the line.
Fortunately, this discussion was not about the narrow issue of public school science classes, but the treatment of ID proponents in broad public discourse.
While we're at it, science never "proves" anything, so be as agnostic as you want.
Good point, I should have said, neither can be disproved by experiment. If a "theory" is not falsible, it does not fall within the realm of scientific analysis.
I don't care what your religion is or what you choose to believe, but when you try to force your worldview on me or society as a whole, I will attack you with whatever tactics I have at my disposal.
Where do you, personally, draw the line between an ID proponent "forcing" his or her ideas on you and simply telling you about them?*
*Disclaimer, from a scientific perspective, I don't buy into evolution or any other theory about how things got here. None can be proved by experiment. Perhaps you could call me origin agnostic.
Is his work passing over public lands? Were the wires that carry his signals installed with the power of eminent domain? Does the state help keep the electricity required to transmit his labor running?
Creating weblog entries on a regular basis often requires one to post thoughts, ideas, and opinions that have not been thoroughly thought out. They're like email, too easy to write, and impossible to recall. How many of us have sent an angry email and later wished we had not.
If we expect our policiticans to start web-logging their daily thoughts, we're going to have to be a lot less hard on them about what they say. Our politicians, like the rest of the human race, are going to have ideas that, when fully thought out, are really bad. In maintaining weblogs some of these bad ideas are going to see international publication.
Will we allow our politicians to recant later, and say "well, yes, I guess that article I wrote was racist/imperialistic/unconstitutional, now that I look at it again, please don't hold it against me?" More importantly, will the news media be willing to let things like that die or pass unnoticed?
(Yes, I used the preview button once, No, I didn't give this post a lot of thought.)
1. To keep the funding flowing, or to encourage space exploration by private enterprise, the rovers simply need to find some gold.
2. Now that we have the technology worked out to make a hardy, long lasting rover, can we do something about the cosmetics? Who are we kidding. These things are Imperial Probe Droids and should look the part.
I R'ed TFA, but I can't tell for sure what this law is supposed to shield journalists FROM. Can anyone enlighten me?
States need to get funding from somewhere...and taxes are inevitable, so consider the following:
If your tax dollars go to Washington D.C., you have roughly one vote in 250 million to direct how it gets spent. If your tax dollars go to your State government, you vote is between One in 34 million (California) and one in 600 thousand (North Dakota.)* How much influence would you like to have? What do you want to fund today? A War? Stem Cell Research? Highways?
*Disclaimer, I live in North Dakota.
Although the price is high now, it warms my heart to think that one day all of these great, highly advanced games will be in the public domain. There will be joy and fun for people of all incomes.
Oh, wait...
Has China agreed to the terms of the Human Rights Charter? It seems to me the whole declaration is not a binding law, but a set of goals. Even the preamble to the Declaration suggests this:
THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
If this (like many UN publications, is nothing but a set of ideals,) we can't go making a legal argument against China or Yahoo! for violating it, can we?
I RTFA, and I can't tell:
1. Did yahoo violate any of their terms of service with the victim?
2. Did yahoo violate it's privacy policy?
If neither of the above is true, is the journalist not to blame for doing buisness with a service that would not protect him? In the alternative, are we now requiring that all major corporations take up the fight against oppression and censorship? I thought we had already decided that all corporations are evil, profit minded monsters. Why should Yahoo! be different?
Aha! good point, I forgot about the continuing cost. (I'm still thinking of games like StarCraft which provide online play without an additional fee to suck up the gamer's future income.)
On a side note, that 60 days/1400 hours of play is spread out over at least 10 years. Will people still be playing WoW in 10 years?
Last time I checked, my favorite MUD character had logged almost 2 months of time online over the years. That is months total, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
This investment had no impact on how many games I bought. Is there some difference between my MUD experience and that of WoW?
You raise two interesting points.
1. It may be legend, but I recall a story about a patent clerk working around 1900 who insisted that everything that could be invented pretty much had been.
2. Since patents expire in spans of time comprehensible to the human mind (unlike copyrights), life should be pretty good in about 15 years.
Good grief man! Why didn't you point me to that article a year ago when I lived 12 miles from Archimedes? I would surely like to have met the man. Then again, I did pick up a few hitchikers on the highway that runs through his home town. Maybe I already have.
Console systems can now be connected to the internet. How long before I can get a good MUD client for my X-box? I'd even settle for raw telnet if I could program the controller buttons. If anything needs to be "resurrected" its MUDs.
(Proudly NOT playing graphical MMORPGs since 1975)
I think, based on my personal experience, that Hotmail is already moving away from virus definitions to a more general measure of "traits." In the case of Hotmail, the primary trait used in determining whether a file contains a virus is whether or not it has a really long name and more than one "." (dot) in it.
.pdf file, and using a filename with two "dots." I send this document to a Hotmail user, who wrote me back that Hotmail had declared the file to contain an incurable virus. Reasonably sure that my Xandros linux box had no virii on it, I renamed the file something more Microsoft friendly. The file was received with no problems.
I base this on the fact that, after exporting a document from StarOffice 7 directly to a
So there you have it, any file with a suspicious name must contain a virus. Easy, reliable detection.
Come to think of it, I remember seeing a restraining order one of the local University computer labs had to take out to keep at least one MUD addict from stinking up the place 24/7.
Is the great Chinese network able to identify both big budget MMORPGS like World of Warcraft and smaller ones like the classic MUD? These I think are more prone to causing addiction than any "here today gone tomorrow" packaged MMORPG...
The first line of text I saw on my first mud was (roughly) "YES! 32 Hours nonstop and counting!!"
Aha, well that seems like a pretty decent plan, actually. Honestly though the Christian Coalition does not even represent a majority of Christians.
On a related note, however, what would such a group as you propose use as a focal point to "band together" around? One can't make a strong group based on a negative assertion of "Not being the Christian Coalition."
The US Constitution may limit how the government applies religion, but it cannot limit how the voting public does.
Err... what? I think what you're asking is, "How do I discern between the religious groups votes and others." Are you kidding me? I can answer that very simply, "Open-Mindedness.
Nope, I'm asking how you how you plan to maintain a democratic system of government while at the same time preventing religious people from voting for other religious people because they are religious people?
Only people you consider "open minded" get to vote? Those other wackos just get to pay taxes and shut up? Evidently you don't like the right to vote?
All you have to do is walk by an abortion clinic to see the religious wackos preaching hatred towards women using the service.
What, so those people can watch what they honestly think to be murder and just shut up? You're not a big fan of the right to free speech either?
A good portion of this country is very uneducated ... ultra-paranoid religious groups are collectively working to sway votes in the whitehouse.
Uneducated, as in not aware that the voting you refer to takes place in Congress, and Congress does not convene in the White House?
I think what we do need is the same sort of counter-group to thwart their attempts at branding their religious/ personal beliefs on "the rest of us."
How do you distinguish between religious folks who are simply voting for people that won't spend money on projects they find objectionable those attempting to brand their beliefs on you?