"You're trolling, aren't you?" Well i certainly am not trolling, and i am really sorry if the post came across that way.
"Well, I'm not going to do that. But you're wrong."
Am I? I don't mind being told that i am wrong, but i would appreciate an explination. Really. I don't mind considering other peolpe's arguments (how else would we learn?), but in order to learn, you must give me something to understand, not just a "you are wrong." I am supprised that you take issue with my conclusions. You are willing to accept that there are inifinities of differing sizes, but you are unwilling to accept the natural conclusion stemming from those results?
"You're astoundingly long-winded about it, and you have a knack for saying unreasonable things in reasonable language (are you an evangelical christian or something?), but at the end of the day, your post was less accurate than a Gulf war media briefing."
What does beinng an evangelical christian have to do with this discussion? I fail to see the relevance. Anyways, i would love to hear what you consider to be unreasonable in my post.
"Well, while I'm here, I should also say that a lot of you have missed the point about the monkey illustration, which is this: it's not about monkeys. Or, indeed Shakespeare. Or even typewriters."
Well, yes and no. The post has gotten off topic from article somewhat, but teh monkeys on a typwritter is just an illustration. An analogy if you will. It most certainly applies. It adresses the argument that "given an infinite amount of time, X must happen." WHich is a fallicy. Truly. There is not once reason why this must be true. Now of course, if you are talking about the same order of magnitudes of infinities, then teh probability of X happening approaches one. However, most of the stuff considered in the origin of life is not in the same infinity as that of countable time. SO this simplified situation does not even apply.
But i digress, the main point is that nothing is GARUNTEED to happen. To assume that ANYTHING has to happen, or MUST happen ever is a bad assumption. And whne you start trying to base your argument on infinities and such, it is even worse.
But like i said earlier, i would love to hear your thoughts on this. Just stating that someone is wrong does nothing to help anyone. Yeah, so i look forward to your reply =)
i am afraid that you are incorrect. I don't mean to be mean, but you are. Let me try to adress your post some....
I think this will have to be long, so please try to stick with it =)
"I don't see how this can be correct - infinite is infinite, there is no "large infinity" or "small infinity", if something has no end, it is infinite, if something is infinite it has no end."
There most centainly are larger and smaller infinities, although you must take some math to konw this. To demonstrate this, lets look at a few examples...
1) Consider all of the numbers that are possible between 0 and 1. Infinite right? Now, consider all of the possible integers. Also infinite. OK, now consider all of the possible numbers. That includes all of teh possible intigers (which are infinite), as well as all of the numbers in between the integers (also infinite). That means that all of the posssible numbers represent and infinity of infinities. Or that we have infinity raised to the infinity. This is larger than just plain old infinity.
2)Ok, so in case the last example was too much like the old infinity +1 argument for you, lets look at a more rigorous treatment. Lets supose that you have a funtion f(x)=(x^2)/(x). Right? Now lets see what happens to this function as x goes to infinity. Well, we can treat this just like a normal function, so we see that (x^2)/x is hte same thing as x. So we now have f(x)=x as x goes to infinity. Well, it should be obvious that as x goes to infinity, x becomes infinity. OK, so what is the point? The point is that one infninity [(x^2) as x goes to infinity], devided by another infinity(x as x goes to infinity) was equal to infinity. This could only happen in X^2 was infinitly larger than x. That is one infinity was larger than another.
Well, hopefully that helps some with the question of larger infinities. If not, read up in the beggining of any calculus book, it kinda covers the same idea, in depth.
Now for the next point. "If time has no end, there is no end to the number of things a monkey can do out of the endless set of possible things a monkey can do.
Thus - in infinite time, a monkey can do all of the infinite things it can do, IF IT WISHES TO DO SO.
Just because a monkey CAN do all the things it could possibly do, doesn't mean is WILL do all those things, it might spend infinity sitting on it's ass. So just because in infinite time a monkey CAN write shakespeare, doesn't mean it WILL."
WEll, lets return again to the point of the number of integers and teh number of numbers between integers, shall we?
Ok, now lets consider two monkey's, monkey A and monkey B. Monkey A will spend an enternity counting to infinity by 1's. Monkey B will spend the same eternity counting to infinity by all possible numbers. Now it will take monkey B and infinitly long amount of time to cover just the possible numbers from 0 to 1! Right? So if both monkeys start counting at teh same time and at the same rate, then there are cenrtain thing that CAN NEVER happen. Namely, monkey B will never count as high as monkey A. Never, it cannot happen. DO you see, that? THere is just one simple example.
HEre is another. Lets cosider another. WE have a monkey. This monkey will live forever. This monkey will behave randomly, preforming random acts for eternity. Now, lets see if it is possible for the monkey to do anything. First, there is an infinite amount of things that the monkey can do, right? So durring an infinite amount of time, the monkey can do them all. Perhaps. But we will asssume that. But then lets consider order of actions. That is the monkey can either fly to mars first and them drink a glass of water, or the monkey can drink a glass of water and then fly to mars. There is an infinte set of these ordered actions. Next there is a set of actions that conatain sets of 3 ordered actions, and so on, untile there is a set of infinite ordered actions. SO we see that there many many infiniteie
"Given the capacity of an infinite occurance of infinite events, some monkeys could very well write Shakespear."
Correct, some monkeys could write shakespear. In fact it is true that in the span of the next 24 hours a monkey could write shakespear. The operative work is COULD, not would. It is a fallicy to believe that given an infinite amount of time something will happen.
Consider this, fractals are infinitly deep. That is, you can continue to zoom into fractals infinetely and you will always have more and moree detail to look at. Thus there are an infinite number of pictures present within a fractal. Does this mean that everyfractal HAS to have a picture of the mona lisa? Of course not. Also by the reasoning of "given infinite time anything will happen" ever fractal is exactly the same. That is, the each contain every fractal.
The problem lies in the fact that there are different types of infinities. Infinite time is a COUNTABLE infinity, while the number of things that a monkey could do in an infinite time is a much larget infinity. Thus, in an infinite amount of time, a monkey could not possible do everything that he COULD do. Thus, he is not garunteed to do anything.
Azav raises a great point, although rather crudely. I myself am still amazed that so many people that consider themselves intellegent can belive the "given and infinte time" argument. I guess that the success of this argument is soely based on the fact that people have a hard time comprehending large numbers (else, the lottery would not exist). Sadly this is the case, and as such this example of poor reasoning will continue to prevail.
Also compounding the problem is the almost religious belife people have that there MUST be life out there. These same people that can berate the religious for beliving in some powerfull being that is "just out there" themselves belive that there is life somewhere "just out there". But i suppose that hypocrisy is only human....sigh
well i didn't really mean for this post to be so cinical, sorrry about that. But the fact remains that the "infinite time" argument is not a very good one.
Well, you are reasoning along the right lines, but your conclusions are incorrect. Isulators can be trasparent to some electromagnetic (EM) waves, but not nessesarily to the entire spectrum. That is, materials are trasparent to some frequencies but opaque to others. To demonstrate this point, lets look at the exaples you listed...
Yes, the radio works in your house. This is becuase most of the materials in your house are transparent to radio waves (and those that are opaque to radio waves are too small to affect them anyways). However, the walls of your house are opaque to visible and UV light.
The glass front of your CRT is trasparent to visible light. However, glass is opaque to high energy ultra-violet (UV) light and it is reflective to infared (IR) (this is why the inside of your car gets really hot when it sits in the sun).
As another example, the clouds around venus are opaque to visisble light and reflective to IR, but are trasparent to radio waves. This is why we can probe the surface of venus with radio waves, but we can't see the surface with traditional optic telescopes.
So you see, material can be transparent to a particulare wavelength of light, but opaque to others and reflective to still other waveleghts of light. As i mentioned above, glass is reflective to IR, but it is also a good isulator. Thus, perhaps the material in the article is well designed and reflects radio waves while at the same time, being a good isulator. I don't really know if this is the case, but it is a definate possibility. Just thought you would like to know the flaw in your reasoning =)
Dude, if the link is too comlex, you just gotta rotate your computer 90 degrees and try again;)
SWEET!
Re:How about radio waves?
on
Nanotechnology
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Actually, there has been some discussion of using small cubes of Iron and sulfur. On that contains 8 atoms to form a battery. Then you could link several of these together into a supramolecular assembly to create a larger (and more usefull) battery that is still on the nano scale.
This seems pretty exciting to me. Since it would run off of reduction/oxidation states, one could recharge in with a chemical reaction, light, or just by applying a voltage accross the solution that the machines are in. Yeah, so this seems pretty promising, although a long way off.
It may come as a suprise to you that not all creationists deny that evolution happens. I believe that their main problem is how this whole deal got started. They claim that science has no good explination as to how the first life form came to be (let alone all the complex chemicals needed!). And as far as this claim goes, it is quite valid. Anyone that belives that science has explained this fundamental problem is just deluding themselves and (sadly) is just as religious as those whom he critizises for being religious.
Anyways, i suppose you were trolling by lumping together all creationists into the same camp, but alas, you got one bite.
yeah, i agree that, alone, halo shouldn't be such a big deal now. However, i think that Halo has recived so much hype, that those people that didin't get a chance to play it on xbox, or those that don't like playing fps on consols, will prolly buy it, if for no other reason than to see what all the hype is about. Not the best of reasons, but nevertheless it will happen. I remember some of the games that my roomates and i got suckered into trying, just becuase they were such a big deal.
Anyways, Halo is another quality fps, and has some cool bungiesque quirks. Worth playing, prolly not worth the $50 price tag it will carry when released. =P
Re: I've used genetic algorithms
on
Digital Darwin
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· Score: 1
hmmmm...the chemicals in our body are EAGER to combine?
I think not. Most of the reactions in out body have such a high activation energy that their kenetics are extremely slow. Granted, most of the reactions are thermodynamically favorable. However, in ambeint temp and pressure, you would be hard pressed to measure the rate of many of the reactions that are common within our bodies.
The fact remains that there is just no good explination for how life (and the chemicals of life) arose out of nothing. Most "scientific" expliniations are just half-baked suggestions. To there credit, they are the best that science has come up with, but that does not mean that they are sound theories. THere is just too many crazy things that have to happen, from the formation of the basic chemical to the creation of protiens and DNA sequeces (let alone the protiens that read DNA!) That i think is where many people have their problem, NOT with evlolution.
Now about evolution. By the stict definition of evolution, no one can logically deiny that evolution is happening right now. HOWEVER, speciation, that is another thing entirely. I am not sure that we have ever witnessed specieation, but i could be wrong about this. Please let me know if i am.
wow, i think you have just stumbled upon a great plot for a sci-fi horror/thriller novel. It would certainly make a gripping plot. AND the general population is still eating up that DNA stuff (don't even get me started on that =P) yeah i think a book about a genetically engineer cold virus made to cure cancer, but eventually evovled to a brain eating disease would be a big seller. Get on it dude.
well there ARE no journals right now. Just like their site says, "We are accepting submissions for PLoS Biology as of May 1, 2003. The first issue is planned for October 2003."
Yeah, there may be a trend toward companies not publishing in it, at least in the begginning. This is more due to the fact that there will not be the name regognition that goes along with more traditioinal journals. However, if the idea takes off, there is no reason why anyone would not publish non-classified material in an open journal.
hopefully it will work out. There are so many hurdles to overcome. It has to gain popularity and now deal with all this censorship brewha that has come in teh sciences post 9/11.
Personally, i think that open journals are the way to go. It just seem rediculous that people can't learn about stuff becuase the cost is porhibitively high, but i guess that really isn't anything new. Nevertheless, it sux, and hopefull this jounal will help end this.
Actually, he is not dreaming. Chemical reactions will (and already have) yeild massive parallel computations. DNA oligamers have already been used to solve for the solution to path problems in graph theory. The trick is designing the system. That is the hard part. The theory is that chemical reactions can be used for parallel processing is ALREADY practice.
yeah, i totally agree...solid state is SWEET! i mean its gotta go that way eventually. it is so easy to use and, as you say, fast. but there are aplications where speed is not the most critical aspect, and for stuff like that i think that storage devices that use small molecules will provide such amazing inforamtion density that they cannot be ignored..but that is just my two sense.
yeah, speed is important, but really only for high end stuff. I think that perhaps you are missing the point of super-high density information storage systems. I mean, sure you would want solid state storage for your desktop and laptop, where size isn't super critical, but what about the guy that wants to carry around the entire library of congress in his watch? i know that is kinda a stupid example, but i think the point is clear. Stuff like this will be great to carrying around mass amounts of information in a itty bitty living space.
no worries at all about talking your comments wrong, they CLEARLY were not ment in any holtile manner. i too love to debate and realize that people can pick apart eachothers arguments (or at least try) and not be attacking one another personally. that being said, lets see what i can say about your last post...
i agree that it is difficult to conceptualize good and bad seperatly, but being difficult does not mean it is impossible. perhaps an understanding of bad adds dimention (with out making more correct) to out understanding of good. building on your blind man example. a blind man certainly does not know light the exact way that we do. however, a blind man can learn about the physics of light, and, in this regard, can hold a discussion with a seeing person about light and the blind man will be at no inherent disadvantage. becuase he can only know about this one asoect of light (the physics of it) the same way that a seeing person does, does this mean that he has no idea as to what light is? certainly not. and even without his knowledge of physics he knows what light is, it is what warms him when he is outside. he knows what light is, and he can talk about it, just not quite in the same manner. he is not wrong when it comes to light, just different. thus, even without a concept of light and darkness, he can talk about light. just we a seeing people have a different perspective on it. (mmm...this is not a great argument, prolly owing to the fact that it is hard to seperate out good from bad, conceptually:) )
yeah, it does seem crazy that god damning people to eternal hell is looked upon as good. i guess it can be explained that since god must be the ultimate good, then what he does is by definition good. another argument that always intriuged me was Dante's, from "The Inferno". just in case you haven't read it. he stipulates that those people that go to hell had to make a chioce in life NOT to choose god and the gift that he was offering. SO, when people die, god just gives poeple what they want. those that chose him, he take to heaven, and those that chose they did not whant any part of god, well, he gives them what they want too, and he sends them aways form his presnece, or to hell. Granted that is a heavily christianized slant, but i still think that it is interesting.
as to locking up people. i would have to say that locking up people is "bad". i do not think that people should be locked up. However, i also think that innocent people should not suffer, so those that choose to break the law, and thus forefiet some of their rights (in this case the right to be free). therfore, in order to protect those that have not done wrong (in the eyes of the law) those that have done wrong are removed from soceity. It is a sad state of affairs, but i do belive that the innocent must be protected.
ah yes, the problem of truth. such a sticky subject. but let me ask you this, about what you did last tues night. last tues night, there was really only ONE sequence of events that you actually did. thus there IS a truth as to what you did last tues night. this truth is what actually happened. likewise there is a truth about how you view what you did last tues night. how you view last tues night, is truthfully how you view it. and by the same measure, how i view what you did last tues night is truthfully how i view last tues. SO, after all this, we see that if i ask you "what, in truth, did you do last night?" then there is only one true answer. it is what actually whent on, the actuall events of the night. now if i ask you "what are your views as to the events of last tues night?" the the only truth is what your views are. the same holds true for my views of last tues. thus we see that there really is an objective, inherent, unchanging truth. but in order to see this, you must carefully phrase what you are after.
the same aregument holds true for the oranges. truthfully, the two groups of 4 oranges have the same NUMBER of oranges. so if i
that is sweet! when i was in undergrad i had a couple week long section of a course that dealt with senesence (i think that is spelled right). both some of the biology behind ageing as well as some of the pressures that might account for naterual selection for senesence. it was really interesting. well...good luck in your future endevors:)
btw my docotral advisor used to be a prof at purdue, wild;)
yes, i too was in the buisness:) sweet! always fun to meet another person. i worked till just last year in the Biology and Biotechnology research program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
yes, do realize that there are some genetic manupulation going on. even some amazing stuff, however, i think that what the general public envisions is SO far out of our current league that it is just reddiculous. perhaps as one knowledgeable in the field you do not have these same delutions. we still have much to do, before we can reliably tinker with the genome. as you mentioned the proteomics project, this project will be CRITICAL to undersanding genetic modification. and that is only the tip of hte iceberge. once we have this large body of data collected, we must then understand how all these things interact with eachother. the will take FOREVER.
i mean really, how well do we undestand the genome, and teh proteom is so much more complicated. we can even really predict folding! but perhaps that is off-topic. i just think that people get caught up in the idea of genetic engineereing and don't really stop to consider how complicated it really is.
Everything comes faster than I think? What about teh rocket ships and interstellar travel that was invisioned by some of hte finest minds back in 60 and 70's. we were supposed to have that a long time ago. well...what happened was we ran into unforseen problems stemming from unaticipated political, economical environments, as well as dangers that no one thought of, so now it is still but a distant dream. the same could easily happen to genetic engineereing. now it does have the advantage of being billed in the pharmicuticals, so prolly $$$ won't be an issue, but i still think it is much farther off than the optomists, and the general public seem to think.
As far as Dolly goes, i don't really think that i was caught off gaurd, i don't think that it was a very important/challenging thing. but maybe i am just being arrogant. and as far as what is being done today and called "gene therapy". it is a basterdized, impotent version of what was orriganlally ment by gene therapy. i would go into it further, but i am sure you realize that.
that is just where i am comming from. Like i said earlier, always a pleasure to meet a fellow bio-dude:) (although i got out of that, and now am in inorganic chem) btw, does you company have a website, that would be cool to check out.
mmmm....good points, definately something for me to keep in mind. "City of God" is a great book btw:) but on to the debate...
the reason that i choose your example to attack was that you used it as support for your final point. i don't really disagree with your final point (ie smart needs stupid) but i took exception to how you arrived there. Why bother? becuase even an idiot can say the right thing, but only a intellegent person can come up with a good reason as to why it is right (umm...i am in no way implying that that you are dumb, in fact your reply was one of the better ones that i have encountered on the net). but i still don't agree that good needs bad to exist.
let us assume that good does require bad to exist..
if the existence of good requires that bad must exist, then without the existence of bad, good would not exist. thus, by doing bad things we allow good to exist. good existing is a good thing (at least i think so). therefore, causing good to exist is a good thing. now we reach a delima. those who do "bad" things really are doing something good, becuase without these bad things we would not have good. and now we see that bad is the same thing as good, not its opposite.
i suppose the real problem that i have with your argument is that it is rooted in the idea that good is somehow a relative concept. that there is no absolute good, and good is defined from situation to situation. i cannnot see this as a valid position.
if good was relative, then that would imply that other concepts relating to good, such as truth, are also relative. this simply is not the case. truth is not relative. if i ask you what 2+2 is then the correct answer is 4. if i ask you what you did last tuesday night, then if you tell me something other than what you did, it is not the truth. so, we see that truth is objective, not realtive. the fact that good is somehow rooted in other concepts, such as truth, that are not relative dictates that good itself is not relative.
anyways that is what i have thought up just now. thanks for you last reply, always good to have someone make me think:) hope you don't find my replies too poor
mmm....actually you won't take genetic engineering and bermline engineering, and neither will your children or their children, or even their children.
this ability or control, even a HINT or this ability is so far into the future that you wouldn't believe it. even now you are prolly wondering what i am talking about, but trust be, anyone that is involved in this stuff knows, we are no where near understanding this stuff enough to even start to make a scratch at the surface. there is just a bunch of people that think it sounds cool and like talking abuch, similar to the following that nanotech has created.
anyways, just like nanotech, it is fun to think about and imprtant to talk about for the funametal moral issues, but poraactically, we are no were near what you are insinuating
your claim that concepts can only be defined by there opposites is flawed. by your reasoning bad needs good to be definable. thus we find ourselves in a endless loop. "bad is the opposite of good" and "good is the opposite of bad" i do not mean to be mean, but such thinkng displays a not very thought out reaoning process.
consider this...
you are walking down a street and see an old lady carring groceries. she drops them and they spill everywhere. you stop and help her pick them and and she thanks you for being nice.
NOW, i think that we can all agree that was a good thing for you to do. yes? so, was this a good thing, just becuase you did not walk up to the little old lady and stab her to death? not hardly. it was a good thing to do, because it was a kind and decent act. it was not a good act just becuase it was devoid of badness, but becuase it WAS good.
similare arguments can be used for bad deeds. good and bad do not need eachother to exist, they are unto themselves. they are concepts that can be positively defined (as opposed to negativly defined) and as such, do not rely on the other to define them. the reason that it is so tempting to assume that good "needs" bad is that they mean opposite things, but meaning opposite things does not mean that without the other, one cannot exist.
ps. does something need nothing to be difined?
i disagree. natueral selection STILL works. it has too. it doesn't go, "oh gee wizz, those people, they are too smart now and look at the way they alter then environments. i guess i am no longer needed." it is always present.
to understand that natural selection is still around, we must examine what natural selection is. In essence, the idea is that genes that provide greater fitness to an organism will elevate in frequency in a population over time. well then, what does fitness mean? simply put it is the ability for an organism to pass on its genes to succesive generations. SO natural selection acts so that genes, that enable an organism to more sucsessfully pass on its genes, increases in freqency.
now lets look at the situationj today. perhaps sucessfull poeple do have less children, we will assume that, then there are two explanations as to how natural selection is working...
1) sucessfull peoples children are more likely to live and pass on genes than are the children of non-sucsessfull people, thus natureal slelction really IS selecting for sucsessful people.
2) sucessfull people really ARE less fit than non-secsessfull poeple, due to the fact that they have less children. then we see that natural selection DOES NOT select sucsesssfull peolple. sucssessfull people are actually selected AGAINST.
wild, you say? well, perhaps nature does not value the same things that our westeren socitey does. think back to teh stone ages, what was success then? probably surviving and feeding your family and really basic stuff. Stuff that is nesssary. now adays, people spend effort and time chasing after houses, cars, better food, all sorts of rediculous stuff, instead of concentateing on just surviving and having offspring. is it any wonder that those people are viewed as less fit by nature?
That was a press release, not a research project, as was ask for by the poster. Also, the press release used many words like "may cause" and "might cuase." Not very strong language. Furthermore, the acticle provides no meaningful statistics. It just thows out numbers, without any statistical analysis. The only numbers even presented are comparing two years. N=2 is not a very large sample size:( Anyways, the acticle provides nothing that any self-respecting scientist would cite, and only aludes to projects that may happen eventually, so i don't think it adresses the problem.
anywayz, so if you do know any reseach project that has linked feeding animals antibiotics to resistance of said antibiotics, then post it please. Don't worry i will be able to hang with the science:)
I hope that i am not seeming mean, i don't intend to, i just really want to be informed. and by a document that actually carries some authority with it.
hmmmm....perhaps you should have read my post more clearly...i did not mention anything about giving antibiotics to animals. This is clearly unessesary and irresponsible. Also, i said nothing about treating viral diseases with antibiotics. Now, i didn't expressly say that i wasn't talking about this, i just assumed you were smart enought to know that this was a given.
What i ment was this.... you said that we should only give antibiotics to people with "dangerous infection that is plausibly of bacterial origin." My point was that what counts as a "dangerous infection" no mater the definition it will most likely leave out some form of bacterial infection. This bacterial infection carries with it some danger of causing death, the danger is reduced with use of antibiotics. So, all i ment to point out is that denying people antibiotics also carries with a danger. That is all. I am sorry that you didn't get that from my post, perhaps i was assuming too much while writting it.:)
nature is not "fighting back" any more that is was when mammals took over for reptiles after thee climate changed. Nature does not fight back, it evolves:)
Slashdot Mirror
"You're trolling, aren't you?"
Well i certainly am not trolling, and i am really sorry if the post came across that way.
"Well, I'm not going to do that. But you're wrong."
Am I? I don't mind being told that i am wrong, but i would appreciate an explination. Really. I don't mind considering other peolpe's arguments (how else would we learn?), but in order to learn, you must give me something to understand, not just a "you are wrong." I am supprised that you take issue with my conclusions. You are willing to accept that there are inifinities of differing sizes, but you are unwilling to accept the natural conclusion stemming from those results?
"You're astoundingly long-winded about it, and you have a knack for saying unreasonable things in reasonable language (are you an evangelical christian or something?), but at the end of the day, your post was less accurate than a Gulf war media briefing."
What does beinng an evangelical christian have to do with this discussion? I fail to see the relevance. Anyways, i would love to hear what you consider to be unreasonable in my post.
"Well, while I'm here, I should also say that a lot of you have missed the point about the monkey illustration, which is this: it's not about monkeys. Or, indeed Shakespeare. Or even typewriters."
Well, yes and no. The post has gotten off topic from article somewhat, but teh monkeys on a typwritter is just an illustration. An analogy if you will. It most certainly applies. It adresses the argument that "given an infinite amount of time, X must happen." WHich is a fallicy. Truly. There is not once reason why this must be true. Now of course, if you are talking about the same order of magnitudes of infinities, then teh probability of X happening approaches one. However, most of the stuff considered in the origin of life is not in the same infinity as that of countable time. SO this simplified situation does not even apply.
But i digress, the main point is that nothing is GARUNTEED to happen. To assume that ANYTHING has to happen, or MUST happen ever is a bad assumption. And whne you start trying to base your argument on infinities and such, it is even worse.
But like i said earlier, i would love to hear your thoughts on this. Just stating that someone is wrong does nothing to help anyone. Yeah, so i look forward to your reply =)
i am afraid that you are incorrect. I don't mean to be mean, but you are. Let me try to adress your post some....
I think this will have to be long, so please try to stick with it =)
"I don't see how this can be correct - infinite is infinite, there is no "large infinity" or "small infinity", if something has no end, it is infinite, if something is infinite it has no end."
There most centainly are larger and smaller infinities, although you must take some math to konw this. To demonstrate this, lets look at a few examples...
1) Consider all of the numbers that are possible between 0 and 1. Infinite right? Now, consider all of the possible integers. Also infinite. OK, now consider all of the possible numbers. That includes all of teh possible intigers (which are infinite), as well as all of the numbers in between the integers (also infinite). That means that all of the posssible numbers represent and infinity of infinities. Or that we have infinity raised to the infinity. This is larger than just plain old infinity.
2)Ok, so in case the last example was too much like the old infinity +1 argument for you, lets look at a more rigorous treatment. Lets supose that you have a funtion f(x)=(x^2)/(x). Right? Now lets see what happens to this function as x goes to infinity. Well, we can treat this just like a normal function, so we see that (x^2)/x is hte same thing as x. So we now have f(x)=x as x goes to infinity. Well, it should be obvious that as x goes to infinity, x becomes infinity. OK, so what is the point? The point is that one infninity [(x^2) as x goes to infinity], devided by another infinity(x as x goes to infinity) was equal to infinity. This could only happen in X^2 was infinitly larger than x. That is one infinity was larger than another.
Well, hopefully that helps some with the question of larger infinities. If not, read up in the beggining of any calculus book, it kinda covers the same idea, in depth.
Now for the next point.
"If time has no end, there is no end to the number of things a monkey can do out of the endless set of possible things a monkey can do.
Thus - in infinite time, a monkey can do all of the infinite things it can do, IF IT WISHES TO DO SO.
Just because a monkey CAN do all the things it could possibly do, doesn't mean is WILL do all those things, it might spend infinity sitting on it's ass. So just because in infinite time a monkey CAN write shakespeare, doesn't mean it WILL."
WEll, lets return again to the point of the number of integers and teh number of numbers between integers, shall we?
Ok, now lets consider two monkey's, monkey A and monkey B. Monkey A will spend an enternity counting to infinity by 1's. Monkey B will spend the same eternity counting to infinity by all possible numbers. Now it will take monkey B and infinitly long amount of time to cover just the possible numbers from 0 to 1! Right? So if both monkeys start counting at teh same time and at the same rate, then there are cenrtain thing that CAN NEVER happen. Namely, monkey B will never count as high as monkey A. Never, it cannot happen. DO you see, that? THere is just one simple example.
HEre is another. Lets cosider another. WE have a monkey. This monkey will live forever. This monkey will behave randomly, preforming random acts for eternity. Now, lets see if it is possible for the monkey to do anything. First, there is an infinite amount of things that the monkey can do, right? So durring an infinite amount of time, the monkey can do them all. Perhaps. But we will asssume that. But then lets consider order of actions. That is the monkey can either fly to mars first and them drink a glass of water, or the monkey can drink a glass of water and then fly to mars. There is an infinte set of these ordered actions. Next there is a set of actions that conatain sets of 3 ordered actions, and so on, untile there is a set of infinite ordered actions. SO we see that there many many infiniteie
"Given the capacity of an infinite occurance of infinite events, some monkeys could very well write Shakespear."
Correct, some monkeys could write shakespear. In fact it is true that in the span of the next 24 hours a monkey could write shakespear. The operative work is COULD, not would. It is a fallicy to believe that given an infinite amount of time something will happen.
Consider this, fractals are infinitly deep. That is, you can continue to zoom into fractals infinetely and you will always have more and moree detail to look at. Thus there are an infinite number of pictures present within a fractal. Does this mean that everyfractal HAS to have a picture of the mona lisa? Of course not. Also by the reasoning of "given infinite time anything will happen" ever fractal is exactly the same. That is, the each contain every fractal.
The problem lies in the fact that there are different types of infinities. Infinite time is a COUNTABLE infinity, while the number of things that a monkey could do in an infinite time is a much larget infinity. Thus, in an infinite amount of time, a monkey could not possible do everything that he COULD do. Thus, he is not garunteed to do anything.
Azav raises a great point, although rather crudely. I myself am still amazed that so many people that consider themselves intellegent can belive the "given and infinte time" argument. I guess that the success of this argument is soely based on the fact that people have a hard time comprehending large numbers (else, the lottery would not exist). Sadly this is the case, and as such this example of poor reasoning will continue to prevail.
Also compounding the problem is the almost religious belife people have that there MUST be life out there. These same people that can berate the religious for beliving in some powerfull being that is "just out there" themselves belive that there is life somewhere "just out there". But i suppose that hypocrisy is only human....sigh
well i didn't really mean for this post to be so cinical, sorrry about that. But the fact remains that the "infinite time" argument is not a very good one.
Well, you are reasoning along the right lines, but your conclusions are incorrect. Isulators can be trasparent to some electromagnetic (EM) waves, but not nessesarily to the entire spectrum. That is, materials are trasparent to some frequencies but opaque to others. To demonstrate this point, lets look at the exaples you listed...
Yes, the radio works in your house. This is becuase most of the materials in your house are transparent to radio waves (and those that are opaque to radio waves are too small to affect them anyways). However, the walls of your house are opaque to visible and UV light.
The glass front of your CRT is trasparent to visible light. However, glass is opaque to high energy ultra-violet (UV) light and it is reflective to infared (IR) (this is why the inside of your car gets really hot when it sits in the sun).
As another example, the clouds around venus are opaque to visisble light and reflective to IR, but are trasparent to radio waves. This is why we can probe the surface of venus with radio waves, but we can't see the surface with traditional optic telescopes.
So you see, material can be transparent to a particulare wavelength of light, but opaque to others and reflective to still other waveleghts of light. As i mentioned above, glass is reflective to IR, but it is also a good isulator. Thus, perhaps the material in the article is well designed and reflects radio waves while at the same time, being a good isulator. I don't really know if this is the case, but it is a definate possibility. Just thought you would like to know the flaw in your reasoning =)
SWEET!
Dude, if the link is too comlex, you just gotta rotate your computer 90 degrees and try again ;)
SWEET!
Actually, there has been some discussion of using small cubes of Iron and sulfur. On that contains 8 atoms to form a battery. Then you could link several of these together into a supramolecular assembly to create a larger (and more usefull) battery that is still on the nano scale.
This seems pretty exciting to me. Since it would run off of reduction/oxidation states, one could recharge in with a chemical reaction, light, or just by applying a voltage accross the solution that the machines are in. Yeah, so this seems pretty promising, although a long way off.
It may come as a suprise to the creationists?
It may come as a suprise to you that not all creationists deny that evolution happens. I believe that their main problem is how this whole deal got started. They claim that science has no good explination as to how the first life form came to be (let alone all the complex chemicals needed!). And as far as this claim goes, it is quite valid. Anyone that belives that science has explained this fundamental problem is just deluding themselves and (sadly) is just as religious as those whom he critizises for being religious.
Anyways, i suppose you were trolling by lumping together all creationists into the same camp, but alas, you got one bite.
yeah, i agree that, alone, halo shouldn't be such a big deal now. However, i think that Halo has recived so much hype, that those people that didin't get a chance to play it on xbox, or those that don't like playing fps on consols, will prolly buy it, if for no other reason than to see what all the hype is about. Not the best of reasons, but nevertheless it will happen. I remember some of the games that my roomates and i got suckered into trying, just becuase they were such a big deal.
Anyways, Halo is another quality fps, and has some cool bungiesque quirks. Worth playing, prolly not worth the $50 price tag it will carry when released. =P
hmmmm...the chemicals in our body are EAGER to combine?
I think not. Most of the reactions in out body have such a high activation energy that their kenetics are extremely slow. Granted, most of the reactions are thermodynamically favorable. However, in ambeint temp and pressure, you would be hard pressed to measure the rate of many of the reactions that are common within our bodies.
The fact remains that there is just no good explination for how life (and the chemicals of life) arose out of nothing. Most "scientific" expliniations are just half-baked suggestions. To there credit, they are the best that science has come up with, but that does not mean that they are sound theories. THere is just too many crazy things that have to happen, from the formation of the basic chemical to the creation of protiens and DNA sequeces (let alone the protiens that read DNA!) That i think is where many people have their problem, NOT with evlolution.
Now about evolution. By the stict definition of evolution, no one can logically deiny that evolution is happening right now. HOWEVER, speciation, that is another thing entirely. I am not sure that we have ever witnessed specieation, but i could be wrong about this. Please let me know if i am.
SWEET!
wow, i think you have just stumbled upon a great plot for a sci-fi horror/thriller novel. It would certainly make a gripping plot. AND the general population is still eating up that DNA stuff (don't even get me started on that =P)
yeah i think a book about a genetically engineer cold virus made to cure cancer, but eventually evovled to a brain eating disease would be a big seller. Get on it dude.
SWEET!
well there ARE no journals right now. Just like their site says, "We are accepting submissions for PLoS Biology as of May 1, 2003. The first issue is planned for October 2003."
Yeah, there may be a trend toward companies not publishing in it, at least in the begginning. This is more due to the fact that there will not be the name regognition that goes along with more traditioinal journals. However, if the idea takes off, there is no reason why anyone would not publish non-classified material in an open journal.
hopefully it will work out. There are so many hurdles to overcome. It has to gain popularity and now deal with all this censorship brewha that has come in teh sciences post 9/11.
Personally, i think that open journals are the way to go. It just seem rediculous that people can't learn about stuff becuase the cost is porhibitively high, but i guess that really isn't anything new. Nevertheless, it sux, and hopefull this jounal will help end this.
SWEEET!
Actually, he is not dreaming. Chemical reactions will (and already have) yeild massive parallel computations. DNA oligamers have already been used to solve for the solution to path problems in graph theory. The trick is designing the system. That is the hard part. The theory is that chemical reactions can be used for parallel processing is ALREADY practice.
yeah, i totally agree...solid state is SWEET! i mean its gotta go that way eventually. it is so easy to use and, as you say, fast. but there are aplications where speed is not the most critical aspect, and for stuff like that i think that storage devices that use small molecules will provide such amazing inforamtion density that they cannot be ignored..but that is just my two sense.
yeah, speed is important, but really only for high end stuff. I think that perhaps you are missing the point of super-high density information storage systems. I mean, sure you would want solid state storage for your desktop and laptop, where size isn't super critical, but what about the guy that wants to carry around the entire library of congress in his watch? i know that is kinda a stupid example, but i think the point is clear. Stuff like this will be great to carrying around mass amounts of information in a itty bitty living space.
SWEET!
no worries at all about talking your comments wrong, they CLEARLY were not ment in any holtile manner. i too love to debate and realize that people can pick apart eachothers arguments (or at least try) and not be attacking one another personally. that being said, lets see what i can say about your last post...
:) )
i agree that it is difficult to conceptualize good and bad seperatly, but being difficult does not mean it is impossible. perhaps an understanding of bad adds dimention (with out making more correct) to out understanding of good. building on your blind man example. a blind man certainly does not know light the exact way that we do. however, a blind man can learn about the physics of light, and, in this regard, can hold a discussion with a seeing person about light and the blind man will be at no inherent disadvantage. becuase he can only know about this one asoect of light (the physics of it) the same way that a seeing person does, does this mean that he has no idea as to what light is? certainly not. and even without his knowledge of physics he knows what light is, it is what warms him when he is outside. he knows what light is, and he can talk about it, just not quite in the same manner. he is not wrong when it comes to light, just different. thus, even without a concept of light and darkness, he can talk about light. just we a seeing people have a different perspective on it. (mmm...this is not a great argument, prolly owing to the fact that it is hard to seperate out good from bad, conceptually
yeah, it does seem crazy that god damning people to eternal hell is looked upon as good. i guess it can be explained that since god must be the ultimate good, then what he does is by definition good. another argument that always intriuged me was Dante's, from "The Inferno". just in case you haven't read it. he stipulates that those people that go to hell had to make a chioce in life NOT to choose god and the gift that he was offering. SO, when people die, god just gives poeple what they want. those that chose him, he take to heaven, and those that chose they did not whant any part of god, well, he gives them what they want too, and he sends them aways form his presnece, or to hell. Granted that is a heavily christianized slant, but i still think that it is interesting.
as to locking up people. i would have to say that locking up people is "bad". i do not think that people should be locked up. However, i also think that innocent people should not suffer, so those that choose to break the law, and thus forefiet some of their rights (in this case the right to be free). therfore, in order to protect those that have not done wrong (in the eyes of the law) those that have done wrong are removed from soceity. It is a sad state of affairs, but i do belive that the innocent must be protected.
ah yes, the problem of truth. such a sticky subject. but let me ask you this, about what you did last tues night. last tues night, there was really only ONE sequence of events that you actually did. thus there IS a truth as to what you did last tues night. this truth is what actually happened. likewise there is a truth about how you view what you did last tues night. how you view last tues night, is truthfully how you view it. and by the same measure, how i view what you did last tues night is truthfully how i view last tues. SO, after all this, we see that if i ask you "what, in truth, did you do last night?" then there is only one true answer. it is what actually whent on, the actuall events of the night. now if i ask you "what are your views as to the events of last tues night?" the the only truth is what your views are. the same holds true for my views of last tues. thus we see that there really is an objective, inherent, unchanging truth. but in order to see this, you must carefully phrase what you are after.
the same aregument holds true for the oranges. truthfully, the two groups of 4 oranges have the same NUMBER of oranges. so if i
that is sweet! when i was in undergrad i had a couple week long section of a course that dealt with senesence (i think that is spelled right). both some of the biology behind ageing as well as some of the pressures that might account for naterual selection for senesence. it was really interesting. well...good luck in your future endevors :)
;)
btw my docotral advisor used to be a prof at purdue, wild
yes, i too was in the buisness :) sweet! always fun to meet another person. i worked till just last year in the Biology and Biotechnology research program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
:) (although i got out of that, and now am in inorganic chem) btw, does you company have a website, that would be cool to check out.
yes, do realize that there are some genetic manupulation going on. even some amazing stuff, however, i think that what the general public envisions is SO far out of our current league that it is just reddiculous. perhaps as one knowledgeable in the field you do not have these same delutions. we still have much to do, before we can reliably tinker with the genome. as you mentioned the proteomics project, this project will be CRITICAL to undersanding genetic modification. and that is only the tip of hte iceberge. once we have this large body of data collected, we must then understand how all these things interact with eachother. the will take FOREVER.
i mean really, how well do we undestand the genome, and teh proteom is so much more complicated. we can even really predict folding! but perhaps that is off-topic. i just think that people get caught up in the idea of genetic engineereing and don't really stop to consider how complicated it really is.
Everything comes faster than I think? What about teh rocket ships and interstellar travel that was invisioned by some of hte finest minds back in 60 and 70's. we were supposed to have that a long time ago. well...what happened was we ran into unforseen problems stemming from unaticipated political, economical environments, as well as dangers that no one thought of, so now it is still but a distant dream. the same could easily happen to genetic engineereing. now it does have the advantage of being billed in the pharmicuticals, so prolly $$$ won't be an issue, but i still think it is much farther off than the optomists, and the general public seem to think.
As far as Dolly goes, i don't really think that i was caught off gaurd, i don't think that it was a very important/challenging thing. but maybe i am just being arrogant. and as far as what is being done today and called "gene therapy". it is a basterdized, impotent version of what was orriganlally ment by gene therapy. i would go into it further, but i am sure you realize that.
that is just where i am comming from. Like i said earlier, always a pleasure to meet a fellow bio-dude
SWEET!
mmmm....good points, definately something for me to keep in mind. "City of God" is a great book btw :) but on to the debate...
:) hope you don't find my replies too poor
the reason that i choose your example to attack was that you used it as support for your final point. i don't really disagree with your final point (ie smart needs stupid) but i took exception to how you arrived there. Why bother? becuase even an idiot can say the right thing, but only a intellegent person can come up with a good reason as to why it is right (umm...i am in no way implying that that you are dumb, in fact your reply was one of the better ones that i have encountered on the net). but i still don't agree that good needs bad to exist.
let us assume that good does require bad to exist..
if the existence of good requires that bad must exist, then without the existence of bad, good would not exist. thus, by doing bad things we allow good to exist. good existing is a good thing (at least i think so). therefore, causing good to exist is a good thing. now we reach a delima. those who do "bad" things really are doing something good, becuase without these bad things we would not have good. and now we see that bad is the same thing as good, not its opposite.
i suppose the real problem that i have with your argument is that it is rooted in the idea that good is somehow a relative concept. that there is no absolute good, and good is defined from situation to situation. i cannnot see this as a valid position.
if good was relative, then that would imply that other concepts relating to good, such as truth, are also relative. this simply is not the case. truth is not relative. if i ask you what 2+2 is then the correct answer is 4. if i ask you what you did last tuesday night, then if you tell me something other than what you did, it is not the truth. so, we see that truth is objective, not realtive. the fact that good is somehow rooted in other concepts, such as truth, that are not relative dictates that good itself is not relative.
anyways that is what i have thought up just now. thanks for you last reply, always good to have someone make me think
SWEET!
mmm....actually you won't take genetic engineering and bermline engineering, and neither will your children or their children, or even their children.
this ability or control, even a HINT or this ability is so far into the future that you wouldn't believe it. even now you are prolly wondering what i am talking about, but trust be, anyone that is involved in this stuff knows, we are no where near understanding this stuff enough to even start to make a scratch at the surface. there is just a bunch of people that think it sounds cool and like talking abuch, similar to the following that nanotech has created.
anyways, just like nanotech, it is fun to think about and imprtant to talk about for the funametal moral issues, but poraactically, we are no were near what you are insinuating
your claim that concepts can only be defined by there opposites is flawed. by your reasoning bad needs good to be definable. thus we find ourselves in a endless loop. "bad is the opposite of good" and "good is the opposite of bad" i do not mean to be mean, but such thinkng displays a not very thought out reaoning process. consider this... you are walking down a street and see an old lady carring groceries. she drops them and they spill everywhere. you stop and help her pick them and and she thanks you for being nice. NOW, i think that we can all agree that was a good thing for you to do. yes? so, was this a good thing, just becuase you did not walk up to the little old lady and stab her to death? not hardly. it was a good thing to do, because it was a kind and decent act. it was not a good act just becuase it was devoid of badness, but becuase it WAS good. similare arguments can be used for bad deeds. good and bad do not need eachother to exist, they are unto themselves. they are concepts that can be positively defined (as opposed to negativly defined) and as such, do not rely on the other to define them. the reason that it is so tempting to assume that good "needs" bad is that they mean opposite things, but meaning opposite things does not mean that without the other, one cannot exist. ps. does something need nothing to be difined?
i disagree. natueral selection STILL works. it has too. it doesn't go, "oh gee wizz, those people, they are too smart now and look at the way they alter then environments. i guess i am no longer needed." it is always present.
to understand that natural selection is still around, we must examine what natural selection is. In essence, the idea is that genes that provide greater fitness to an organism will elevate in frequency in a population over time. well then, what does fitness mean? simply put it is the ability for an organism to pass on its genes to succesive generations. SO natural selection acts so that genes, that enable an organism to more sucsessfully pass on its genes, increases in freqency.
now lets look at the situationj today. perhaps sucessfull poeple do have less children, we will assume that, then there are two explanations as to how natural selection is working...
1) sucessfull peoples children are more likely to live and pass on genes than are the children of non-sucsessfull people, thus natureal slelction really IS selecting for sucsessful people.
2) sucessfull people really ARE less fit than non-secsessfull poeple, due to the fact that they have less children. then we see that natural selection DOES NOT select sucsesssfull peolple. sucssessfull people are actually selected AGAINST.
wild, you say? well, perhaps nature does not value the same things that our westeren socitey does. think back to teh stone ages, what was success then? probably surviving and feeding your family and really basic stuff. Stuff that is nesssary. now adays, people spend effort and time chasing after houses, cars, better food, all sorts of rediculous stuff, instead of concentateing on just surviving and having offspring. is it any wonder that those people are viewed as less fit by nature?
NO. that FDA press release will not do.
:( Anyways, the acticle provides nothing that any self-respecting scientist would cite, and only aludes to projects that may happen eventually, so i don't think it adresses the problem.
:)
That was a press release, not a research project, as was ask for by the poster. Also, the press release used many words like "may cause" and "might cuase." Not very strong language. Furthermore, the acticle provides no meaningful statistics. It just thows out numbers, without any statistical analysis. The only numbers even presented are comparing two years. N=2 is not a very large sample size
anywayz, so if you do know any reseach project that has linked feeding animals antibiotics to resistance of said antibiotics, then post it please. Don't worry i will be able to hang with the science
I hope that i am not seeming mean, i don't intend to, i just really want to be informed. and by a document that actually carries some authority with it.
hmmmm....perhaps you should have read my post more clearly...i did not mention anything about giving antibiotics to animals. This is clearly unessesary and irresponsible. Also, i said nothing about treating viral diseases with antibiotics. Now, i didn't expressly say that i wasn't talking about this, i just assumed you were smart enought to know that this was a given.
:)
What i ment was this....
you said that we should only give antibiotics to people with "dangerous infection that is plausibly of bacterial origin." My point was that what counts as a "dangerous infection" no mater the definition it will most likely leave out some form of bacterial infection. This bacterial infection carries with it some danger of causing death, the danger is reduced with use of antibiotics. So, all i ment to point out is that denying people antibiotics also carries with a danger. That is all. I am sorry that you didn't get that from my post, perhaps i was assuming too much while writting it.
nature is not "fighting back" any more that is was when mammals took over for reptiles after thee climate changed. Nature does not fight back, it evolves :)