There are lots of examples of populations changing such that even though they could breed with each other, they don't. Sometimes it's physical (chihuahua and wolf) and sometimes it's because the two don't have characteristics that attract mates from the other population. A bird changing it's mating song, for example. Since those two populations then stay isolated (genetically) from each other, they drift apart until they form two species that can't interbreed.
There's no point in trying to change evolutionary theory to head off creationists. It's a losing battle. When faced with evidence of speciation events (even by the can't-interbreed-under-any-circumstances definition of species), creationists just claim that god created all the "types" and we've never seen a whale evolve into a racoon, for example.
I'm not sure why you replied to me. I was replying to a thread insisting that half of India's population is middle class (by western standards). It's demonstrably not.
This is a counter example of what exactly? It has nothing to do with evolution. Nor does it have anything to do with religion, except possibly for some kind of super extreme psychology that has a 100% external locus of control.
There are lots of great engineers who have plenty of irrational beliefs. So long as none of them are directly related to the practice of their trade, they don't matter. Engineers do not depend on their general critical thinking skills.
Never claim two high dimensional vectors, or complicated functions, are orthogonal unless you can find the dot product between them. Lots of religions discovered that their religious beliefs and science weren't so orthogonal after all. Creationists and evolution, for example.
Not ALL philosophy is bullshit. But the kind that starts with things like "if a tree falls in a forest..." and "how do you know you exist?" are interesting thinking exercises with very little applied value. Other kinds of philosophy, such as thinking about how we generate and validate knowledge, has proven to be very useful.
Clearly you've never done genetic engineering of the type the OP is talking about. It is not like building something. You spray around some mutations, impose a selective pressure, and repeat. It is just like natural evolution except you up the mutation rate (lots of things do that in nature as well) and you impose your own selective pressure instead of "survival of the fittest."
There's not a lot of intelligence involved, and certainly no design.
No, by the actual definition they are. You seem to be working via some definition of your own that requires speciation to be evolution.
Evolution through natural selection, which is the theory of biological evolution most people mean (a la Darwin), posits that biological systems change over time in response to selective environmental pressures. This CAN lead to speciation, but doesn't necessarily. Dark and light peppered moths can breed with each other, yet the change in colour is a classic example of evolution.
Your definition of species also needs work. Polar bears and grizzlies are considered different species, and if you saw a grizzly evolve into a polar bear you'd probably agree that you'd seen a speciation event. Yet polar bears and grizzlies can and (very occasionally) do breed.
Engineers aren't scientists, and they especially don't care about evolution. An engineer can take some formulae describing how a particular phenomenon works, because god wills it to be so or otherwise, and design stuff.
Even most biologists can probably get away with not believing in evolution with no more than the usual irrationality required to dismiss evolution in the first place. An evolution-dismissing evolutionary biologist would require some serious mental gymnastics.
"but I do know a sample size of less than 30 means the results are not useful"
You're right, you're not a statistician.
The central limit theorem refers to the tendency of the means of many samples to be normally distributed even if the original distribution is not. It's not really relevant here.
Yup. It's the colour of the light, and to some extent the intensity, not the source. An e-ink display read under a cheap (non-incandescent matching) florescent will have the same effect.
No, they used back lit displays with tinted glasses as a control group. Despite the claims of the summary, the study compares exposure to blue light (modern LED backlit displays, and backlit displays plus EXTRA blue LEDS) versus orange tinted light (achieved with glasses).
It's well known that blue light at bedtime is a recipe for sleep disruption. This study is just the same thing "with tablets."
If the pot smoking group were actually not progressing at all there would be no doubt. You'd be able to spot the pot heads by looking for the 18 year olds sitting in class sticking their crayons up their noses. But IQ stands for intelligence quotient, which is, roughly, what you can do cognitively divided by the mean cognitive abilities of your age group, multiplied by 100 and normalized to have a particular standard deviation. So the IQs actually dropped but the 15 year old pot heads were not the equivalent of 10.
Both the summary and the paper point out that there are other explanations than "smoking pot makes you dumb." So you're talking about what you assume the media is going to do sometime in the future?
"the burden of proof is so high when it comes to medical studies that you basically will never get to the point where you are sure of a conclusion, unless the entire sample in the study is dead."
What? Sounds like propaganda. Unless by "burden of proof" you mean "public perception."
The population levels off at 10 billion, and then drops. If you look at the population curves for the native population (so excluding immigration) for any developed country you see growth, "levelling off," then decrease. There's no reason to believe the world population will stop growing at 10 billion then stay there.
Yes, but we are beginning to see real possibilities of slowing the aging process. Gains in life expectancy so far aren't ALL due to improvements in infant mortality, but a lot of them are. Gains going forward will be due to other things.
MOST people don't "create content" at all, certainly not at home. PC sales have been artificially inflated for the last decade by people who just needed e-mail and web browsing, but bought a desktop PC because it was the only way to do that. Now there are better ways. PCs aren't going anywhere - everyone will still have them at work, but the market is going to undergo a correction because not everyone is going to have one (or more) at home anymore.
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There are lots of examples of populations changing such that even though they could breed with each other, they don't. Sometimes it's physical (chihuahua and wolf) and sometimes it's because the two don't have characteristics that attract mates from the other population. A bird changing it's mating song, for example. Since those two populations then stay isolated (genetically) from each other, they drift apart until they form two species that can't interbreed.
There's no point in trying to change evolutionary theory to head off creationists. It's a losing battle. When faced with evidence of speciation events (even by the can't-interbreed-under-any-circumstances definition of species), creationists just claim that god created all the "types" and we've never seen a whale evolve into a racoon, for example.
Most of the ursid hybrids seem to be fertile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursid_hybrid
I'm not sure why you replied to me. I was replying to a thread insisting that half of India's population is middle class (by western standards). It's demonstrably not.
This is a counter example of what exactly? It has nothing to do with evolution. Nor does it have anything to do with religion, except possibly for some kind of super extreme psychology that has a 100% external locus of control.
There are lots of great engineers who have plenty of irrational beliefs. So long as none of them are directly related to the practice of their trade, they don't matter. Engineers do not depend on their general critical thinking skills.
Never claim two high dimensional vectors, or complicated functions, are orthogonal unless you can find the dot product between them. Lots of religions discovered that their religious beliefs and science weren't so orthogonal after all. Creationists and evolution, for example.
Not ALL philosophy is bullshit. But the kind that starts with things like "if a tree falls in a forest..." and "how do you know you exist?" are interesting thinking exercises with very little applied value. Other kinds of philosophy, such as thinking about how we generate and validate knowledge, has proven to be very useful.
Clearly you've never done genetic engineering of the type the OP is talking about. It is not like building something. You spray around some mutations, impose a selective pressure, and repeat. It is just like natural evolution except you up the mutation rate (lots of things do that in nature as well) and you impose your own selective pressure instead of "survival of the fittest."
There's not a lot of intelligence involved, and certainly no design.
"perhaps in some liberal definition they are"
No, by the actual definition they are. You seem to be working via some definition of your own that requires speciation to be evolution.
Evolution through natural selection, which is the theory of biological evolution most people mean (a la Darwin), posits that biological systems change over time in response to selective environmental pressures. This CAN lead to speciation, but doesn't necessarily. Dark and light peppered moths can breed with each other, yet the change in colour is a classic example of evolution.
Your definition of species also needs work. Polar bears and grizzlies are considered different species, and if you saw a grizzly evolve into a polar bear you'd probably agree that you'd seen a speciation event. Yet polar bears and grizzlies can and (very occasionally) do breed.
Engineers aren't scientists, and they especially don't care about evolution. An engineer can take some formulae describing how a particular phenomenon works, because god wills it to be so or otherwise, and design stuff.
Even most biologists can probably get away with not believing in evolution with no more than the usual irrationality required to dismiss evolution in the first place. An evolution-dismissing evolutionary biologist would require some serious mental gymnastics.
"but I do know a sample size of less than 30 means the results are not useful"
You're right, you're not a statistician.
The central limit theorem refers to the tendency of the means of many samples to be normally distributed even if the original distribution is not. It's not really relevant here.
It's the colour of the light. The study compares LCD to LCD+blue LED and LCD+orange glasses. Orange glasses is the control.
Sitting reading a book under a daylight balanced lamp will have the same effect as a tablet.
Yup. It's the colour of the light, and to some extent the intensity, not the source. An e-ink display read under a cheap (non-incandescent matching) florescent will have the same effect.
No, they used back lit displays with tinted glasses as a control group. Despite the claims of the summary, the study compares exposure to blue light (modern LED backlit displays, and backlit displays plus EXTRA blue LEDS) versus orange tinted light (achieved with glasses).
It's well known that blue light at bedtime is a recipe for sleep disruption. This study is just the same thing "with tablets."
You shouldn't be reading in true dark anyway. Just because you can do it with a backlit display doesn't mean you should.
If the pot smoking group were actually not progressing at all there would be no doubt. You'd be able to spot the pot heads by looking for the 18 year olds sitting in class sticking their crayons up their noses. But IQ stands for intelligence quotient, which is, roughly, what you can do cognitively divided by the mean cognitive abilities of your age group, multiplied by 100 and normalized to have a particular standard deviation. So the IQs actually dropped but the 15 year old pot heads were not the equivalent of 10.
Both the summary and the paper point out that there are other explanations than "smoking pot makes you dumb." So you're talking about what you assume the media is going to do sometime in the future?
"the burden of proof is so high when it comes to medical studies that you basically will never get to the point where you are sure of a conclusion, unless the entire sample in the study is dead."
What? Sounds like propaganda. Unless by "burden of proof" you mean "public perception."
Yup. But PCs are unrealistically cheap at the moment anyway. That's why all the PC makers are going out of business.
Personally I've found that it's worthwhile to pay a little extra and get a little more quality. The $300 cheap laptops are just that - cheap.
Regardless of what you might have been promised when you were a child, medical science now has come a long way since the 80s.
The population levels off at 10 billion, and then drops. If you look at the population curves for the native population (so excluding immigration) for any developed country you see growth, "levelling off," then decrease. There's no reason to believe the world population will stop growing at 10 billion then stay there.
Yes, but we are beginning to see real possibilities of slowing the aging process. Gains in life expectancy so far aren't ALL due to improvements in infant mortality, but a lot of them are. Gains going forward will be due to other things.
Know what happens after the global population "levels off" at ten billion?
MOST people don't "create content" at all, certainly not at home. PC sales have been artificially inflated for the last decade by people who just needed e-mail and web browsing, but bought a desktop PC because it was the only way to do that. Now there are better ways. PCs aren't going anywhere - everyone will still have them at work, but the market is going to undergo a correction because not everyone is going to have one (or more) at home anymore.
Fortunately nobody claimed correlation OR causation! Did you hit the wrong button on your meme post generator?
"If not for third-world markets, the PC would be in complete freefall."
Strange, Apple keeps selling record numbers of Macs. Perhaps there's something wrong with the rest of the PC industry.
I forgot to mention: when discussing patents on Slashdot, qualifiers are not allowed to be part of the max five word summary of a patent.