But this simplest of organisms you describe has to compete with other organisms that have 4 billion years of evolution behind them. The first thing that was able to "reproduce on its own" certainly had plentiful fuel and no competition. So it probably wasn't in any real sense an "organism", it would be better described as a chemical chain reaction.
Idon't think that is the question that make evolution unintuitive.
Spend some time arguing with someone who asks "if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" or "why haven't we ever seen an animal born with an improvement?" You'll see that, for whatever reason, people have immense problems with the sort of evolution that happened AFTER the origin of life.
Also, while we don't have much evidence for how the origin of life happened (and we wouldn't expect to have evidence), I don't see that it is that hard to imagine how it might have happened. The first form of "life" (or "self-replicating chemical reaction" might be a better description) had one immense advantage...there wasn't competition. So it was certainly WAY simpler that anything alive today.
Actually, I've run into a lot of people who have problems with evolution even though they aren't Christian or religious.
Evolution is, to many, extremely unintuitive, aside from religion. I've noticed that people have a really hard time with lots of other concepts similar to evolution (market economics and such).
Doesn't evil sort of imply they had something to gain by it? What possibly could google have to gain by putting up inaccurate information? For that matter, what could anyone have to gain?
It seems obvious to me that this was some kind of oversight. Maybe they decided the pre-Katrina images were actually closer to how it looks now.
Why would they have changed them? Do you think that the city of New Orleans decided it would be better for tourism if people saw the old images, and made a clandestine deal with Google, possibly offering them money, to change it back?
I'm just having a hard time coming up with any reasonable explanation, other than basically an error.
Google has a pretty strong history of fighting attempts at marginalizing the information they serve. I can't believe they would knowingly put inaccurate information in there because of pressure from anyone. And I can't believe anyone has a whole lot to gain by having it showing out of date data.
I suspect Google management has better things to do than to sit around discussing whether to put up pre- or post-Katrina images. That seems like a reasonable thing for a manager within their maps division to discuss, to me anyway.
Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory, but I'd be willing to bet it was simply decided based on quality/resolution of images, and some underling working on it didn't really think about the fact that it the imagery in question is significantly different from how it looks now.
"Bad" moral decisions are simply anti-survival Well, I'm not sure I agree that they are always anti-your-own-survival. Giving your life to save someone unrelated to you is generally bad in Darwinian terms, but "good" morally.
I think humans came up with words to describe the sort of person who would do such altruistic things, and gave them the word "good" or "moral".
I think it's clear that in some cases there are Darwinian benefits to be "moral", but in as many if not more cases, it does not benefit someone. If it benefitted us in all cases, we'd all be moral, and there wouldn't be much need to make up a word for it.
If you just think of it as a cooperation strategy, with "moral" being defined as "behaving in a way that benefits others", it's all quite simple, and it should be obvious that animals have a form of morals too.
I don't think its a particularly new or creative idea. Considering that almost every professional mechanic that works on automobiles uses compressed-air-powered tools, I'm sure the idea of powering a car with air wasn't a recent flash of insight.
So they'll stay in academia, and will teach people to be teachers? Sounds a bit perpetual-motiony to me. I just don't see that continuing if there isn't a source of money.
You mention that academia "does a good job", but are you sure that would continue to be true if those phD candidates can't count on high paying jobs once they graduate?
The US legal system is strongly based on case law (a.k.a. common law), where courts have wide discretion in interpreting law, especially when there is no precedent set by a higher court. As opposed to most other places, which are based on statutory law.
So the fact is, the law isn't really known until a decision in this case is reached.
It doesn't need "fixing". Are you suggesting that the current design is going to be just fine in the year, oh, say, 2500? That we should just say "its as good as it will ever be, for as long as humanity exists on planet earth"?
Progress happens. Deal with it. You don't have to participate if you don't want. Seriously, don't worry, if we need you, we'll call you.
Anonymous is not an absolute. That is ridiculous. Like almost everything in the world, there are many shades of gray.
In this case, it can be determined that a search was within a group of 256 people, but they can't tell which one. What if they just stored the country of the user? Same thing, just larger group. More anonymous.
There are all kinds of degrees of anonymity. I'm not advocating any side to the issue, but if you are going to look at the issue intelligently, seeing it in simplistic black and white terms doesn't help.
You can be a "real" scientist and religious. Most of the ones that are religious don't deal with the stuff that gets close to religious questions. For instance, those who deal with biology and evolution and such tend to be far less religious, than, say, those who do metalurgy or whatnot.
Also, keep in mind that a lot of them don't like to rock the boat of their personal lives. Saying you don't believe in god is a good way to distance yourself from your family and or spouse -- so many either lie, or, more likely, just avoid thinking down that path a lot because it has no positive benefit.
Slashdot Mirror
you could, say, go outside. Toss a frisbee. Walk the dog. Strike up a conversation with a real world human being.
Seriously, you can survive one full day without regular Slashdot. You can.
But this simplest of organisms you describe has to compete with other organisms that have 4 billion years of evolution behind them. The first thing that was able to "reproduce on its own" certainly had plentiful fuel and no competition. So it probably wasn't in any real sense an "organism", it would be better described as a chemical chain reaction.
Idon't think that is the question that make evolution unintuitive.
Spend some time arguing with someone who asks "if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" or "why haven't we ever seen an animal born with an improvement?" You'll see that, for whatever reason, people have immense problems with the sort of evolution that happened AFTER the origin of life.
Also, while we don't have much evidence for how the origin of life happened (and we wouldn't expect to have evidence), I don't see that it is that hard to imagine how it might have happened. The first form of "life" (or "self-replicating chemical reaction" might be a better description) had one immense advantage...there wasn't competition. So it was certainly WAY simpler that anything alive today.
Actually, I've run into a lot of people who have problems with evolution even though they aren't Christian or religious.
Evolution is, to many, extremely unintuitive, aside from religion. I've noticed that people have a really hard time with lots of other concepts similar to evolution (market economics and such).
Um, I think we are still having evolution trials.
Doesn't evil sort of imply they had something to gain by it? What possibly could google have to gain by putting up inaccurate information? For that matter, what could anyone have to gain?
It seems obvious to me that this was some kind of oversight. Maybe they decided the pre-Katrina images were actually closer to how it looks now.
So what is your theory?
Why would they have changed them? Do you think that the city of New Orleans decided it would be better for tourism if people saw the old images, and made a clandestine deal with Google, possibly offering them money, to change it back?
I'm just having a hard time coming up with any reasonable explanation, other than basically an error.
Google has a pretty strong history of fighting attempts at marginalizing the information they serve. I can't believe they would knowingly put inaccurate information in there because of pressure from anyone. And I can't believe anyone has a whole lot to gain by having it showing out of date data.
I tend to agree with you that this is a waste of time....but the government actually can do more than one thing at once.
And I'm not sure I understand what you are implying they should be doing about credit card debt.
is going on.
Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory, but I'd be willing to bet it was simply decided based on quality/resolution of images, and some underling working on it didn't really think about the fact that it the imagery in question is significantly different from how it looks now.
back in the day, after buying two computers from them and having generally bad support experiences.
This makes me want to give them another chance.
That'd be pretty neat. Except that they'd never be able to tell the rest of us what it is like.
I think humans came up with words to describe the sort of person who would do such altruistic things, and gave them the word "good" or "moral".
I think it's clear that in some cases there are Darwinian benefits to be "moral", but in as many if not more cases, it does not benefit someone. If it benefitted us in all cases, we'd all be moral, and there wouldn't be much need to make up a word for it.
I think you refer to the concept of "empathy", and I'm not sure how being able to recognize yourself in the mirror plays into it.
But any animal that is able to care for its young is capable of some form of empathy.
with all kinds of religious ideas and such.
If you just think of it as a cooperation strategy, with "moral" being defined as "behaving in a way that benefits others", it's all quite simple, and it should be obvious that animals have a form of morals too.
Well the "why" tends to be pretty simple and straightforward, until you bring religion into it and then its generally pretty arbitrary.
I don't think its a particularly new or creative idea. Considering that almost every professional mechanic that works on automobiles uses compressed-air-powered tools, I'm sure the idea of powering a car with air wasn't a recent flash of insight.
The hard part is making it economical.
So they'll stay in academia, and will teach people to be teachers? Sounds a bit perpetual-motiony to me. I just don't see that continuing if there isn't a source of money.
You mention that academia "does a good job", but are you sure that would continue to be true if those phD candidates can't count on high paying jobs once they graduate?
Maybe that the next person considering doing something for charity will think twice?
You really think the "nagware" is paying for your copy of Windows? As in, Dell (or whoever) doesn't have to pay Microsoft a dime for Windows?
Wow. Just wow.
The US legal system is strongly based on case law (a.k.a. common law), where courts have wide discretion in interpreting law, especially when there is no precedent set by a higher court. As opposed to most other places, which are based on statutory law.
So the fact is, the law isn't really known until a decision in this case is reached.
Progress happens. Deal with it. You don't have to participate if you don't want. Seriously, don't worry, if we need you, we'll call you.
Anonymous is not an absolute. That is ridiculous. Like almost everything in the world, there are many shades of gray.
In this case, it can be determined that a search was within a group of 256 people, but they can't tell which one. What if they just stored the country of the user? Same thing, just larger group. More anonymous.
There are all kinds of degrees of anonymity. I'm not advocating any side to the issue, but if you are going to look at the issue intelligently, seeing it in simplistic black and white terms doesn't help.
Also, keep in mind that a lot of them don't like to rock the boat of their personal lives. Saying you don't believe in god is a good way to distance yourself from your family and or spouse -- so many either lie, or, more likely, just avoid thinking down that path a lot because it has no positive benefit.