Actually, it doesn't matter whether we use only Homo or Homo and Pan for the lineage of chimps&humans, since both genera include a monphyletic lineage. For phylogenetic taxonomy, it's matter of taste, mostly. MY taste is that there is no need to introduce changes.
Supergenus Gorilla
* Genus Gorilla
- Gorilla gorilla
Supergenus Homo
* Genus Homo
- Homo sapiens
- Homo neardenthalensisâ
- Homo habilisâ
- Homo erectusâ
[- Homo demens (e.g. Bush & al.)]
*Genus Pan
- Pan troglodytes
- Pan paniscus
[Caveat emptor: I did this from memory, there might be a mistake somewhere]
The fact is, it doesn't mean a thing to use genus, supergenus, or subgenus. What matters is that the lineage chimps&humans is monophyletic, that is, that chimps and bonobos are more closely related to us than to gorillas or orangutans.
I only wish this pirates^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hstudios and recording companies would die off already, since they are unwilling or incapable of finding a new business model.
Damm right. Quite a different ballpark. Miller's work---not to critizize it, just to clarify---is not biology at all. He proved nothing about life, only about planetary chemistry.
Life took time to form, a LOT of time.
This is mere cheap speculation to a myth. There is absolutely no indication of this, none. For all we know, life arose in 5 min. Indeed, the little evidence that there is point to a rapid emergence of life. I believe that life just `snapped' together as pretty much as soon as the conditions were right. Indeed, I believe that probably life originated many times over on Terra, but that previous lifes were obliterated because conditions were too violent still.
This can't even be done in the laboratory.
Weapons-grade speculation. AFIK and as I understand life (molecular autopoiesis), no one ever really tried. Miller's cooking in a flask is just biochemistry, that's not good enough [terrifid biochem but biochem and not more]. You need to provide conditions for molecular autopoiesis to emerge, and Miller never tried. I believe it could be done [but I hope no one is fool enough to try!]
I don't believe in spontaneous generation. The odds of it happening are beyond astronomical.
Now we have weapons-grade bullshit. Life, as other kinds of self-organizational processes, is not unlikely at all. At least there is nil proof for that, and a bloody lot of circumstancial evidence pointing to the contrary.
but we still do not see amino acids coming together and organizing into complex proteins or anything resembling life.
But we do see things very similar to that. E.g. viruses [which are NOT alive] pull that kind of trick every nanosecond.
The Sun provides the power that lets life go on.
Only partially true. Many Terran living systems are powered by geothermal processes and not the Sun, as probably were the original ones.
Finally, please, if you are going to debate with Creationists, do it with facts, not with myth.
blame the (pseudo)biologists
on
AI Going Nowhere?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The problem with AU lays in poor biology. As long as it is based on pre-cybernetic (i.e. traditional, neodarwinian) biology, AI will never go anywhere. The only known intelligent systems are biological systems. To create AI, you need to imitate biology, you need to reverse-engineer what it is exactly that make biosystems special. But traditional biology has totally misled computer science. Pre-cybernetic biology, the biology you find in most books and the one taught in almost any classroom, cannot even define life. This pseudo-biology is the `biology' of the non-living, and as such, of the non-intelligent.
To create AI, you need to understand natural intelligence (NI) and for this you need to understand life. What is life? Cybernetic biology defines life as molecular autopoiesis. Which is interesting, since this definition of life is based on computation. Autopoiesis is the key here. The self-re-computation of a system is the key to life, and the key to intelligence, because you need a self to be intelligent. With an artificial self, we could have AI, and probably self-awareness. But good biology is the key.
? Unfortunately, it's not going to happen anytime soon. Biology is totally stagnant, and the Neodarwinian Cabal precludes any progress and silences any dissent (sort of a M$ of the science market). `Official' bilogical sciences just won't deal with life. And that's not going to change for a while, I'm afraid, no matter how hard sone of us try.
PLOS only addresses free access. But it does not address the real hairy problem, the lack of peer-review in science and the abscence of free publication. PLOS still hangs on the obsolete idea that science must be censored to be good. Yes, censored, because there can be no re-view before publication, and because the decision is the editor's, not author's peer (most never find out!). What the scientific stablishment calls ``peer review'' is truly called censorship.
PLOS is better than the parasitic `scientific' journals, but it's not good enough. Too little, too late.
Hell, my condolences to these people. This sucks:(
Still, I'm not sure that I can agree with Theo's speculations. Yet that could be an excuse for DARPA. I think we have seen this kind of thing coming for a while now. What I think is that the whole US funding for sci-tech research that do not directly help the WarEffort(TM) is going to be cut, badly. That is, unless it kills people, no funding (almost).
Re:There is more than nucleic acids... OH YEAH!
on
Life Made to Order
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· Score: 0
To create an artificial molecular autopoietical system? When we have no clue how the natural ones work? No clue whatsoever?
Give me a break. Better yet, give half a dozen breaks
Nonetheless, this is scary. they have no bloody clue about what they are doing, and their mistakes could, should, if they succeed at making it work at all (work as autopoietical system, not necesarily as intended), will be self amplifying mistakes. GREAT! And this time, we cannot expect that the wizard will come in time to save the apprentice from his own foolishness.
Is this progress? Give me yet another break! Is this Science(TM)? Then we need to replace science for something new.
[And yes, in case you were wondering and care about those things, I have a degree in biology.]
Just for the benefit of all our non spanish-speaking readers, "Inodoro" means "toilet".
Just for the benefit of those who care, Inodoro Pereyra is a famouns comic-strip character, a gaucho, created by graphic humorist Fontanarrosa. The name does mean ``toilet'', and makes fun of the custom of rural people of giving their kids weird names (weird for the city folk, that is).
The attack it aimed at all free people, anywhere. At you and me, for starters.
You got it right: fear. This `war' is terrorism. It's objective is to instill terror in the hearts of all the free people of the world, fear of the global corporatist regime that is using the US as a thug. It's mafia work; Uncle Enzo wants to set an example, capisci?. BANG BANG!!!
And yes, it will backfire. Indeed, it alreay has: Humanity is now united against the US. Right or wrong, the sentiment has cristallized.
I can only hope for the best---I already expect the worst, and that's bad enough.
The worst part will come after this massacre, whem the thorougly dehumanized US troops (AKA ``The Uruk-hai'') are taken back to the US and set loose on the local human population. Monsters who have given away their humanity (aka ``soldiers'') with crippled minds, killers trained never to think, never to question, never to feel, able to torch babies on commnad without as much as blinking. What human being would even board a transport to go and hurt the Iraqi people? What has murdering Iraqis to do at all with defending the US people and their homes? These are killer monsters who have surrendered their reason and their very humanity---and will never get it back.
Today is the Iraqi people. Tomorrow the US.
Battle-hardened prime material for the new US SS (aka ``Homeland Security''). Again, ready to machine-gun pacific protestors with a single word from the corporatist regime---children and all---right on command and without flinching. These Uruk-hai will nuke their mothers' homes and torture babies without ever questioning anything. Mr. Chancellor Hitler would have been very happy to have these stormtroopers at his call.
Or their wrecked minds will just snap and they will `go postal'. Unthinking trained murderers. I shudder at my mental images of the carnage.
At least in Iraq people can single out the monsters. I hope they send them all back in their bodybags. For the sake of both the Iraqi and the USan people---damn, for we all!---I hope no Uruk-hai comes back alive to the USA. The USA, where they will blend with the humans and be at the call of the regime. And I know how it feels to live with genocides and torturers. I know how it feels to live under a genocidal regime. And I know how it feels never to be sure whether the guy next to you in the supermaket is a mass-murderer and torturer, and what is he going to do next...
If there is a god after all---any god---I hope it will protect the USans. I have frieds there. I hope they'll be OK.
I agree. Neither are them reliable indicators. Indeed, revolutionary science often (read ``almost always'') happens in spite of the scientific stablishment.
Going straight to the media instead of the so-called ``peer review'' (read ``censorship'')? Often the only way to get your work known, specially if your work debunks a well-stablished theory/myth [See No Dissent; Hear No Dissent; Aknowledge No Dissent---the mantra of the scientific stablishment].
Suppression of claims? Oh yeah, often not by a Big Conspiracy, but by a few highly recognized `researchers' who have a lot invested in a debunked theory (see above).
Isolation? How else, when you get no funding, no positions, no publications (see above)? Check the history of science---most heavy-duty advances are done in the fringes, often by so called `mavericks': Einstein, Mendel, Darwin, Weneger, Lovelock, Bateson, Faraday, Semmelweiss... the list is long. The Big Names in the stablishment usually make a career of saying ``Wrong!!!!!'' and harassing real thinkers.
Proposing new explanations is bad? Gee, I thought that was a sign of real science, as opposed to the ivory-tower witch doctors and high priests that make up most of the stablishment in science.
And it's overdue. Science is over; these `editors' are just hastening its end.
For these Science Inc. apparatchiki, anything goes, as long as they get money and high-sounding titles [like ``Editor'' of a so-called ``scientific'' journal]. Now it turns out that Fighting Terrorism® is good for your career---the rest be damned, as always. In this case, science itselft (I mean real science, of course, the kind they never make). And after all, these is the same kind of people who brought you the Manhattan Project---ultimate terrorism.
I agree with you completely. How silly!!! I knew how to do much worse when I was an undergrad, as did all my school mates---and many of us were majoring in ecology!
We know that this `editors' have been out of touch with reality for a couple of decades now. What this truly means is: this is The End for Science Inc. itself. And it's about time, the journal system does no longer work anymore. It's obsolete. The whole Science Inc. is obsolete. And really advanced research you don't find in those journals anyway, and never have. Real science has alwas been on the fringes.
But these `editors' (self-appointed Gods of Science®) are pushing real research toward the fringes even more. Great job, assholes!
The fringe is becoming the strongest player in the game. Think Linux. What's next? Kazaa Biotech? Peer-to_peer, encrypted? Real peer-reiew. Gene hackers? May be it is time for ``Our Neural Chernobyl''?
[Yes, the poison is the good flavor.]
Anyway, the `scientific' era is over. These Big Name `editors' have been out of the real game for ages, and their journals are no longer cutting edge. Indeed, it's not happenig in science any more. Science Inc. is the backwaters.
There are, strictly speaking, no such thing as a dead fly; there are only corpses of fies. A corpse is not alive (doh). [Still, Neodarwinians seem to forget this!]. Evolution of non-living systems is not biological evolution. The difference is huge.
Still; what's the relationship of the experiment to what truly happens in nature? Guess what? The conditions of these experiments invaribly subject living systems to conditions they amost never find, to conditions that are not representative of those under those biological evoltion occurs. Under those extreme, brutally stressful conditions, does is really surprise anyone that a living system, stressed to the max, resembles most a simpler, non-living system? If you throw them from a high building, fishes behave not much different than plastic models. So what? Does it means that Newton's eqs for free-fall suffice to understand how fishes swim?
I do agree to this, though: under conditions of extreme stress, biological evolutions does resemble the simpler case of the non-biological evolution, i.e. evolution by Natural Selection. So what? What does this tell us about how life evolves? `Dead flies' don't evolve; kill life, and then you get even simpler behaviour, just like any other organic matter.
Great brains, these a-biologists, the students of life as a non-living system!
REAL biological evolution happens under much different conditions. Under those conditions, when was ENS ever tested?
You are right, that does not prove Natural Selection. It proves that mutations can be lethal.
To test the idea of Evolution by Natural Selection would require a test that shows that NS does in fact occur in nature and is indeed the cause and/or process of biological evolution, and not, as modern evolutionists argue (modern::after the Neodarwinians), the result of biological evolution.
AFAIK, such a test was never performed. All the `evidence' for NS is description of the result of biological evolution, which can often be described as resulting froma---hypothetical---selection. But this result of evolution also fits the description of the results of the Divine Will and the manipualtion of Marvin the Meddling Alien. That's not a test of a theory.
>Experimental tests in the realms of paleontology and embriology are carried out constantly. Again, textbooks are an invaluable source of information.
Sorry, those are test of evolution, not of evolution by Natural Selection. You confuse the two---a very common mistake. Please try again.
>[Modern theories of evolution] There isn't any that I know of - hence my support of evolution by natural selection.
My deepest respect for your free admission of ignorance---most rare nowadays, in this age full of pretenders with degrees and chairs. But I must be rude and suggest you read more. And this time, do go beyond the dogma. Ignorance is not a good reason to choose an alternative---at least that's my POV.
>[answer what is life?] No, but neither can you, or anybody else, in a completely unambiguous way.
Wrong again. We can, I think, since 1972. Read the papers.
>[Mothern evolutionary theories]Really? Which ones? Other than things in the same class as punctuationism, which do not change the bottm line. And accepted by whom? A large percentage of biologists? Or just some fringe ones?
No, not punctuationism, or neutralism, or any of those minor variations of ND. About acceptance: I don't care; you see, I was told that science was based on evidence, not authority, certainly not when `authorities' have so much invested in obsolete ideas.
>We are speaking about scientific theories, which, as you know, can only be proven false.
No, we are speaking about Neodarwinism, which is a myth.
>Now the relevant core of the scientific community
Relevant to whom?
>has accepted evolution by natural selection as the best theory available to explain the diversity and change of life on Earth.
Just as previously it has denied all evidence of evolution. And `proved' the Earth flat. Sciece has alwas progessed in spite of these people.
>You don't like that theory.
Not theory, myth.
>You say, among other things, that has not been tested for falsifiability. Fair enough.
Agreed then
>Show us. Or are we to accept your word for it? As a maverick, the burden of the proof rests on you, just as it rested on people like Copernicus, Galileo, Einstein, etc.
>Unlike those guys, however, so far you have just voiced out your personal incredulity. That's not enough. Show us. In detail. Write papers where you demolish, point by point, evolution by natural selection, while showing alternative theories just as compelling, or even more so. Point out the errors in the textbooks, discuss them with the relevant specialists. Or, if you can't do that, give us references that support your views, and let us see what the scientific community has to say about them.
``Show us?!!!'' Who the hell do you think you are? What made you presume that I will waste my time trying to convince people who refuse to think? That is what all true thinkers have accepted, those rules, that wicked game, that we should work for you. Such arrogance!
No, not me nor anyone who actually do science, the `mavericks', have to prove anything to the looters in science, that only have any relevance because we, those who think, oppose them. A true scientist must convince himself of the explanation that best fits the avalable evidence---that his job.
Work for us, plead to us, write for us, waste your life's best efforts on us... Sorry, the evidence has been out there for decades---go and bloody read it. As for my own contribution, I will release it when it's ready. My job is to make it the best I can, and it's a tough job as it is. To have it accepted is not my job, sorry.
Copernicus, Galileo, Einstein... I certainly do not place myself among their ranks. But I have a suggestion to them: do not feed the looters by oposing them. I know I won't---I am too busy doing real science.
[And I for one did learn the ``SemmelweiÃY Lesson'']:-(
>If you are positive about your views, do write them up in the scientific tradition, do support them with your evidence, do subject them to peer reviewing, do discuss them in detail.
Agreed. But you see, I am not claiming those theories are my own, not at all. I just---unlike other so-called ``scientists'', did read other than the canons profered by the High Priests of Science, Inc.. Obviously, you didn't, or you would have recognized those ideas, and never assigned to myself. As for my own---minor---contribution, it won't be presented to feed the looters of Science, Inc., but for real peer review in an open fashion. Then, I'll gladly read your feedback. I suggest though, that you catch up with the previous literature, since I only climbed on those shoulders.
>Evolution by natural selection has so far passed all experimental tests.
WHAT experimental tests? There has never been such a thing, never has an observation been made, that if it hadn't, would have falsified the myth of Evolution by Natural Selection. If you know of such a falsification test, please refer me to the paper; if you can think of such an experiment youself, please do describe it.
>can you actually mention an alternative explanation that is more compelling, from a scientific point of view, than evolution by natural selection, when it comes to explaining the diversity and changeability of life on Earth?
Of course I can---an so can any mothern biologist who has not been ignoring the literature for the last 3 decades (most have).
Can you?
>an MS in biology does not necessarily make one an expert, or even conversant, on the details of evolutionary theory, just as an MS in physics would not necessarily make one an expert, or event conversant, on the details of general relativity.
That's just plain wrong. About 1/3 of any current degree-awarding program is based on (Neo)Darwininsm. Go check.
What are your qualifications, BTW? Are you even conversant on biology? Could you perchance even answer the most basic question in biology, what is life?
>the fact that you doubt the explanatory power of evolution by natural selection may just be a reflection of your ignorance of the subject.
As well as your apparently being unaware of any other modern evolutionary theories may be a reflection of your ignorance of biology.
>Hence my recommendation, that I repeat here, for you to study standard textbooks on the subject more thoroughly
To know the truth, just read the Texts? Why not read the Bible? You sound like any religious fanatic, except that you babble psuedoscience---a mystic of Science, a devote follower of Saint Charly and the Apostles of the Modern Synthesis, a firm believer in the Sacred Mystery of Differential Fitness and the Holy
Revelation of the Natural Substraction. Your faith is strong, my brother! Mine is not---sorry. You know, relentless questioning, not reliance on authority, is the way to debunk myth.
>Do study the subject before venturing such sweeping judgments
I have. I have a MS in biology. I passed all the test the Neodarwinians put in front of me, I correctly answered their questions. I still disagree, with them, with you, with the `theory', and with (Neo)Darwinism being a scientific theory. (Neo)Darwinism is a myth, as much of science is.
And no, it was never tested, there is a lot of observations that does agree with that theory. Those observation also agree with other alternative explanations. But agreement is no test. Any textbook on epistemology will show you this.
> There is no proof for evolution, you know.
>You don't prove scientific theories. You only disprove them, experimentally. You don't have to believe in them.
True! Theories can only be falsified or corroborated. But you must try to disprove them. Can you give me the ref of a paper describing a true attempt to falsify the idea of Evolution by Natural Selection? Not evolution itself, mind you, that is ``descent with modification'', but ``descent with modification because of Natural Selection''.
I bet you can't. And you can't because, to the best of my knowledge, there was never such an attempt. Not surprisingly, because (Neo)Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory. (Neo)Darwinism, as well as much of what we call ``science'' is just a myth.
And let's not talk about frauds:-(
Science is far more of a mythology than the scientist will like to accept. And don't believe me---go and check: you'll find that most scientists are totally ignorant about what science is, of it's history, and about just how scientist know (or believe they know) what they know. Do that, and you'll see that the difference between myth and science is not nearly as clear as scientists believe and would have you believe. Question scientists about science, and they start sounding not very different from the worst kind of religious fanatics.
No, it's time to critically examine science. I, for one, have done so---my conclusion is that we need a replacement, Version 2.0, so to speak.
Feyerabend quote is amazing! Yes, that's exactly how Scienceâ works! Thanks for the ref!
Time to read Feyerabend again. I've just read some chapters from him for an epistemology course, long ago; always liked his ideas, but never had time to read more. Time, time. Ars longa vita brevis, &c.:-/
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it doesn't matter whether we use only Homo or Homo and Pan for the lineage of chimps&humans, since both genera include a monphyletic lineage. For phylogenetic taxonomy, it's matter of taste, mostly. MY taste is that there is no need to introduce changes.
Supergenus Gorilla
* Genus Gorilla
- Gorilla gorilla
Supergenus Homo
* Genus Homo
- Homo sapiens
- Homo neardenthalensisâ
- Homo habilisâ
- Homo erectusâ
[- Homo demens (e.g. Bush & al.)]
*Genus Pan
- Pan troglodytes
- Pan paniscus
[Caveat emptor: I did this from memory, there might be a mistake somewhere]
The fact is, it doesn't mean a thing to use genus, supergenus, or subgenus. What matters is that the lineage chimps&humans is monophyletic, that is, that chimps and bonobos are more closely related to us than to gorillas or orangutans.
They make shit, I won't buy. What's the point?
I only wish this pirates^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hstudios and recording companies would die off already, since they are unwilling or incapable of finding a new business model.
It is a far leap from amino acids to life.
Damm right. Quite a different ballpark. Miller's work---not to critizize it, just to clarify---is not biology at all. He proved nothing about life, only about planetary chemistry.
Life took time to form, a LOT of time.
This is mere cheap speculation to a myth. There is absolutely no indication of this, none. For all we know, life arose in 5 min. Indeed, the little evidence that there is point to a rapid emergence of life. I believe that life just `snapped' together as pretty much as soon as the conditions were right. Indeed, I believe that probably life originated many times over on Terra, but that previous lifes were obliterated because conditions were too violent still.
This can't even be done in the laboratory.
Weapons-grade speculation. AFIK and as I understand life (molecular autopoiesis), no one ever really tried. Miller's cooking in a flask is just biochemistry, that's not good enough [terrifid biochem but biochem and not more]. You need to provide conditions for molecular autopoiesis to emerge, and Miller never tried. I believe it could be done [but I hope no one is fool enough to try!]
I don't believe in spontaneous generation. The odds of it happening are beyond astronomical.
Now we have weapons-grade bullshit. Life, as other kinds of self-organizational processes, is not unlikely at all. At least there is nil proof for that, and a bloody lot of circumstancial evidence pointing to the contrary.
but we still do not see amino acids coming together and organizing into complex proteins or anything resembling life.
But we do see things very similar to that. E.g. viruses [which are NOT alive] pull that kind of trick every nanosecond.
The Sun provides the power that lets life go on.
Only partially true. Many Terran living systems are powered by geothermal processes and not the Sun, as probably were the original ones.
Finally, please, if you are going to debate with Creationists, do it with facts, not with myth.
The problem with AU lays in poor biology. As long as it is based on pre-cybernetic (i.e. traditional, neodarwinian) biology, AI will never go anywhere. The only known intelligent systems are biological systems. To create AI, you need to imitate biology, you need to reverse-engineer what it is exactly that make biosystems special. But traditional biology has totally misled computer science. Pre-cybernetic biology, the biology you find in most books and the one taught in almost any classroom, cannot even define life. This pseudo-biology is the `biology' of the non-living, and as such, of the non-intelligent.
To create AI, you need to understand natural intelligence (NI) and for this you need to understand life. What is life? Cybernetic biology defines life as molecular autopoiesis. Which is interesting, since this definition of life is based on computation. Autopoiesis is the key here. The self-re-computation of a system is the key to life, and the key to intelligence, because you need a self to be intelligent. With an artificial self, we could have AI, and probably self-awareness. But good biology is the key.
? Unfortunately, it's not going to happen anytime soon. Biology is totally stagnant, and the Neodarwinian Cabal precludes any progress and silences any dissent (sort of a M$ of the science market). `Official' bilogical sciences just won't deal with life. And that's not going to change for a while, I'm afraid, no matter how hard sone of us try.
PLOS only addresses free access. But it does not address the real hairy problem, the lack of peer-review in science and the abscence of free publication. PLOS still hangs on the obsolete idea that science must be censored to be good. Yes, censored, because there can be no re-view before publication, and because the decision is the editor's, not author's peer (most never find out!). What the scientific stablishment calls ``peer review'' is truly called censorship.
PLOS is better than the parasitic `scientific' journals, but it's not good enough. Too little, too late.
Is there anything these assholes are going to fail to do to drive me out of the movie theaters?
Well, I guess I'd have to go on avoiding going to the movies for a long time. Not much to watch, anyway, not from them.
Hell, my condolences to these people. This sucks :(
Still, I'm not sure that I can agree with Theo's speculations. Yet that could be an excuse for DARPA. I think we have seen this kind of thing coming for a while now. What I think is that the whole US funding for sci-tech research that do not directly help the WarEffort(TM) is going to be cut, badly. That is, unless it kills people, no funding (almost).
To create an artificial molecular autopoietical system? When we have no clue how the natural ones work? No clue whatsoever?
Give me a break. Better yet, give half a dozen breaks
Nonetheless, this is scary. they have no bloody clue about what they are doing, and their mistakes could, should, if they succeed at making it work at all (work as autopoietical system, not necesarily as intended), will be self amplifying mistakes. GREAT! And this time, we cannot expect that the wizard will come in time to save the apprentice from his own foolishness.
Is this progress? Give me yet another break! Is this Science(TM)? Then we need to replace science for something new.
[And yes, in case you were wondering and care about those things, I have a degree in biology.]
[from the bash-the-nekulturnyie detp.]
Just for the benefit of all our non spanish-speaking readers, "Inodoro" means "toilet".Just for the benefit of those who care, Inodoro Pereyra is a famouns comic-strip character, a gaucho, created by graphic humorist Fontanarrosa. The name does mean ``toilet'', and makes fun of the custom of rural people of giving their kids weird names (weird for the city folk, that is).
I don't smoke.
And this time it's different. There is always a first time. I'm afraid that you will see, and pretty soon.
The attack it aimed at all free people, anywhere. At you and me, for starters.
You got it right: fear. This `war' is terrorism. It's objective is to instill terror in the hearts of all the free people of the world, fear of the global corporatist regime that is using the US as a thug. It's mafia work; Uncle Enzo wants to set an example, capisci?. BANG BANG!!!
And yes, it will backfire. Indeed, it alreay has: Humanity is now united against the US. Right or wrong, the sentiment has cristallized.
I can only hope for the best---I already expect the worst, and that's bad enough.
And may the Force be with us all (HHOS :)
The worst part will come after this massacre, whem the thorougly dehumanized US troops (AKA ``The Uruk-hai'') are taken back to the US and set loose on the local human population. Monsters who have given away their humanity (aka ``soldiers'') with crippled minds, killers trained never to think, never to question, never to feel, able to torch babies on commnad without as much as blinking. What human being would even board a transport to go and hurt the Iraqi people? What has murdering Iraqis to do at all with defending the US people and their homes? These are killer monsters who have surrendered their reason and their very humanity---and will never get it back.
Today is the Iraqi people. Tomorrow the US.
Battle-hardened prime material for the new US SS (aka ``Homeland Security''). Again, ready to machine-gun pacific protestors with a single word from the corporatist regime---children and all---right on command and without flinching. These Uruk-hai will nuke their mothers' homes and torture babies without ever questioning anything. Mr. Chancellor Hitler would have been very happy to have these stormtroopers at his call.
Or their wrecked minds will just snap and they will `go postal'. Unthinking trained murderers. I shudder at my mental images of the carnage.
At least in Iraq people can single out the monsters. I hope they send them all back in their bodybags. For the sake of both the Iraqi and the USan people---damn, for we all!---I hope no Uruk-hai comes back alive to the USA. The USA, where they will blend with the humans and be at the call of the regime. And I know how it feels to live with genocides and torturers. I know how it feels to live under a genocidal regime. And I know how it feels never to be sure whether the guy next to you in the supermaket is a mass-murderer and torturer, and what is he going to do next...
If there is a god after all---any god---I hope it will protect the USans. I have frieds there. I hope they'll be OK.
I hope there is a god that will protect us all
I agree. Neither are them reliable indicators. Indeed, revolutionary science often (read ``almost always'') happens in spite of the scientific stablishment.
Going straight to the media instead of the so-called ``peer review'' (read ``censorship'')? Often the only way to get your work known, specially if your work debunks a well-stablished theory/myth [See No Dissent; Hear No Dissent; Aknowledge No Dissent---the mantra of the scientific stablishment].
Suppression of claims? Oh yeah, often not by a Big Conspiracy, but by a few highly recognized `researchers' who have a lot invested in a debunked theory (see above).
Isolation? How else, when you get no funding, no positions, no publications (see above)? Check the history of science---most heavy-duty advances are done in the fringes, often by so called `mavericks': Einstein, Mendel, Darwin, Weneger, Lovelock, Bateson, Faraday, Semmelweiss... the list is long. The Big Names in the stablishment usually make a career of saying ``Wrong!!!!!'' and harassing real thinkers.
Proposing new explanations is bad? Gee, I thought that was a sign of real science, as opposed to the ivory-tower witch doctors and high priests that make up most of the stablishment in science.
In short: this list is just so much BULLSHIT!!!
'Nuff said.
And it's overdue. Science is over; these `editors' are just hastening its end.
For these Science Inc. apparatchiki, anything goes, as long as they get money and high-sounding titles [like ``Editor'' of a so-called ``scientific'' journal]. Now it turns out that Fighting Terrorism® is good for your career---the rest be damned, as always. In this case, science itselft (I mean real science, of course, the kind they never make). And after all, these is the same kind of people who brought you the Manhattan Project---ultimate terrorism.
I agree with you completely. How silly!!! I knew how to do much worse when I was an undergrad, as did all my school mates---and many of us were majoring in ecology!
We know that this `editors' have been out of touch with reality for a couple of decades now. What this truly means is: this is The End for Science Inc. itself. And it's about time, the journal system does no longer work anymore. It's obsolete. The whole Science Inc. is obsolete. And really advanced research you don't find in those journals anyway, and never have. Real science has alwas been on the fringes. But these `editors' (self-appointed Gods of Science®) are pushing real research toward the fringes even more. Great job, assholes!
The fringe is becoming the strongest player in the game. Think Linux. What's next? Kazaa Biotech? Peer-to_peer, encrypted? Real peer-reiew. Gene hackers? May be it is time for ``Our Neural Chernobyl''?
[Yes, the poison is the good flavor.]
Anyway, the `scientific' era is over. These Big Name `editors' have been out of the real game for ages, and their journals are no longer cutting edge. Indeed, it's not happenig in science any more. Science Inc. is the backwaters.
Time to move on.
I've read this `equation' that makes this very clear:
Deutschland 1933 + Oceania 1984 == USA 2001
Nuff said :-(
>Dead flies don't breed true.
There are, strictly speaking, no such thing as a dead fly; there are only corpses of fies. A corpse is not alive (doh). [Still, Neodarwinians seem to forget this!]. Evolution of non-living systems is not biological evolution. The difference is huge.
Still; what's the relationship of the experiment to what truly happens in nature? Guess what? The conditions of these experiments invaribly subject living systems to conditions they amost never find, to conditions that are not representative of those under those biological evoltion occurs. Under those extreme, brutally stressful conditions, does is really surprise anyone that a living system, stressed to the max, resembles most a simpler, non-living system? If you throw them from a high building, fishes behave not much different than plastic models. So what? Does it means that Newton's eqs for free-fall suffice to understand how fishes swim?
I do agree to this, though: under conditions of extreme stress, biological evolutions does resemble the simpler case of the non-biological evolution, i.e. evolution by Natural Selection. So what? What does this tell us about how life evolves? `Dead flies' don't evolve; kill life, and then you get even simpler behaviour, just like any other organic matter.
Great brains, these a-biologists, the students of life as a non-living system!
REAL biological evolution happens under much different conditions. Under those conditions, when was ENS ever tested?
To test the idea of Evolution by Natural Selection would require a test that shows that NS does in fact occur in nature and is indeed the cause and/or process of biological evolution, and not, as modern evolutionists argue (modern::after the Neodarwinians), the result of biological evolution.
AFAIK, such a test was never performed. All the `evidence' for NS is description of the result of biological evolution, which can often be described as resulting froma---hypothetical---selection. But this result of evolution also fits the description of the results of the Divine Will and the manipualtion of Marvin the Meddling Alien. That's not a test of a theory.
>Experimental tests in the realms of paleontology and embriology are carried out constantly. Again, textbooks are an invaluable source of information.
Sorry, those are test of evolution, not of evolution by Natural Selection. You confuse the two---a very common mistake. Please try again.
>[Modern theories of evolution] There isn't any that I know of - hence my support of evolution by natural selection.
My deepest respect for your free admission of ignorance---most rare nowadays, in this age full of pretenders with degrees and chairs. But I must be rude and suggest you read more. And this time, do go beyond the dogma. Ignorance is not a good reason to choose an alternative---at least that's my POV.
>[answer what is life?] No, but neither can you, or anybody else, in a completely unambiguous way.
Wrong again. We can, I think, since 1972. Read the papers.
>[Mothern evolutionary theories]Really? Which ones? Other than things in the same class as punctuationism, which do not change the bottm line. And accepted by whom? A large percentage of biologists? Or just some fringe ones?
No, not punctuationism, or neutralism, or any of those minor variations of ND. About acceptance: I don't care; you see, I was told that science was based on evidence, not authority, certainly not when `authorities' have so much invested in obsolete ideas.
>We are speaking about scientific theories, which, as you know, can only be proven false.
No, we are speaking about Neodarwinism, which is a myth.
>Now the relevant core of the scientific community
Relevant to whom?
>has accepted evolution by natural selection as the best theory available to explain the diversity and change of life on Earth.
Just as previously it has denied all evidence of evolution. And `proved' the Earth flat. Sciece has alwas progessed in spite of these people.
>You don't like that theory.
Not theory, myth.
>You say, among other things, that has not been tested for falsifiability. Fair enough.
Agreed then
>Show us. Or are we to accept your word for it? As a maverick, the burden of the proof rests on you, just as it rested on people like Copernicus, Galileo, Einstein, etc.
>Unlike those guys, however, so far you have just voiced out your personal incredulity. That's not enough. Show us. In detail. Write papers where you demolish, point by point, evolution by natural selection, while showing alternative theories just as compelling, or even more so. Point out the errors in the textbooks, discuss them with the relevant specialists. Or, if you can't do that, give us references that support your views, and let us see what the scientific community has to say about them.
``Show us?!!!'' Who the hell do you think you are? What made you presume that I will waste my time trying to convince people who refuse to think? That is what all true thinkers have accepted, those rules, that wicked game, that we should work for you. Such arrogance!
No, not me nor anyone who actually do science, the `mavericks', have to prove anything to the looters in science, that only have any relevance because we, those who think, oppose them. A true scientist must convince himself of the explanation that best fits the avalable evidence---that his job.
Work for us, plead to us, write for us, waste your life's best efforts on us... Sorry, the evidence has been out there for decades---go and bloody read it. As for my own contribution, I will release it when it's ready. My job is to make it the best I can, and it's a tough job as it is. To have it accepted is not my job, sorry.
Copernicus, Galileo, Einstein... I certainly do not place myself among their ranks. But I have a suggestion to them: do not feed the looters by oposing them. I know I won't---I am too busy doing real science.
[And I for one did learn the ``SemmelweiÃY Lesson''] :-(
>If you are positive about your views, do write them up in the scientific tradition, do support them with your evidence, do subject them to peer reviewing, do discuss them in detail.
Agreed. But you see, I am not claiming those theories are my own, not at all. I just---unlike other so-called ``scientists'', did read other than the canons profered by the High Priests of Science, Inc.. Obviously, you didn't, or you would have recognized those ideas, and never assigned to myself. As for my own---minor---contribution, it won't be presented to feed the looters of Science, Inc., but for real peer review in an open fashion. Then, I'll gladly read your feedback. I suggest though, that you catch up with the previous literature, since I only climbed on those shoulders.>Evolution by natural selection has so far passed all experimental tests.
WHAT experimental tests? There has never been such a thing, never has an observation been made, that if it hadn't, would have falsified the myth of Evolution by Natural Selection. If you know of such a falsification test, please refer me to the paper; if you can think of such an experiment youself, please do describe it.
>can you actually mention an alternative explanation that is more compelling, from a scientific point of view, than evolution by natural selection, when it comes to explaining the diversity and changeability of life on Earth?
Of course I can---an so can any mothern biologist who has not been ignoring the literature for the last 3 decades (most have).
Can you?
>an MS in biology does not necessarily make one an expert, or even conversant, on the details of evolutionary theory, just as an MS in physics would not necessarily make one an expert, or event conversant, on the details of general relativity.
That's just plain wrong. About 1/3 of any current degree-awarding program is based on (Neo)Darwininsm. Go check.
What are your qualifications, BTW? Are you even conversant on biology? Could you perchance even answer the most basic question in biology, what is life?
>the fact that you doubt the explanatory power of evolution by natural selection may just be a reflection of your ignorance of the subject.
As well as your apparently being unaware of any other modern evolutionary theories may be a reflection of your ignorance of biology.
>Hence my recommendation, that I repeat here, for you to study standard textbooks on the subject more thoroughly
To know the truth, just read the Texts? Why not read the Bible? You sound like any religious fanatic, except that you babble psuedoscience---a mystic of Science, a devote follower of Saint Charly and the Apostles of the Modern Synthesis, a firm believer in the Sacred Mystery of Differential Fitness and the Holy Revelation of the Natural Substraction. Your faith is strong, my brother! Mine is not---sorry. You know, relentless questioning, not reliance on authority, is the way to debunk myth.
>Do study the subject before venturing such sweeping judgments
I have. I have a MS in biology. I passed all the test the Neodarwinians put in front of me, I correctly answered their questions. I still disagree, with them, with you, with the `theory', and with (Neo)Darwinism being a scientific theory. (Neo)Darwinism is a myth, as much of science is.
And no, it was never tested, there is a lot of observations that does agree with that theory. Those observation also agree with other alternative explanations. But agreement is no test. Any textbook on epistemology will show you this.
> There is no proof for evolution, you know.
>You don't prove scientific theories. You only disprove them, experimentally. You don't have to believe in them.
True! Theories can only be falsified or corroborated. But you must try to disprove them. Can you give me the ref of a paper describing a true attempt to falsify the idea of Evolution by Natural Selection? Not evolution itself, mind you, that is ``descent with modification'', but ``descent with modification because of Natural Selection''.
I bet you can't. And you can't because, to the best of my knowledge, there was never such an attempt. Not surprisingly, because (Neo)Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory. (Neo)Darwinism, as well as much of what we call ``science'' is just a myth.
And let's not talk about frauds :-(
Science is far more of a mythology than the scientist will like to accept. And don't believe me---go and check: you'll find that most scientists are totally ignorant about what science is, of it's history, and about just how scientist know (or believe they know) what they know. Do that, and you'll see that the difference between myth and science is not nearly as clear as scientists believe and would have you believe. Question scientists about science, and they start sounding not very different from the worst kind of religious fanatics.
No, it's time to critically examine science. I, for one, have done so---my conclusion is that we need a replacement, Version 2.0, so to speak.
'Nuff said.
Feyerabend quote is amazing! Yes, that's exactly how Scienceâ works! Thanks for the ref!
Time to read Feyerabend again. I've just read some chapters from him for an epistemology course, long ago; always liked his ideas, but never had time to read more. Time, time. Ars longa vita brevis, &c. :-/
What you mean is research not science. Science is free and public.