Compassion is the inevitable result of empathy and empathy is the inevitable result of intelligence. You empathize because you have a sense of self, the more you see another lifeform as being the same as yourself the more devaluing them becomes devaluing yourself.
I agree that compassion is a consequence of empathy, but I'm not sure empathy is a consequence of intelligence. I think that compassion in people has a great deal more to do with being social animals. Yes, being social requires intelligence, but I think it is quite possible to imagine an intelligent species without compassion.
Ever wonder why the vegetarians don't want to eat animals and yet continue to eat nothing but other types of dead lifeforms? The ones they eat are simply less like themselves.
As someone who has been vegetarian for ethical reasons most of my life, this strikes me as a half-truth at best. I do not eat animals because they have an interest in not suffering. This is incidental to how similar they are in other respects to me, which are morally irrelevant. I still "eat nothing but other life forms" as I am an animal, and will die otherwise. This generally means plants or fungi because the best evidence I have available indicates they are incapable of suffering, and thus do not have interests of their own.
Obligatory meta-pedantry: the problem you allude to is not with the grammar in the post, but the word choice (flaunted and flouted are both regular transitive verbs in this context, and exchanging them would not affect the grammar of the sentence in question at all). You could perhaps have used 'obVocabularyNazi' or 'obLexiconNazi'.
You make some good points, but given everything you say, why do you choose to live and work in the USA?
I'm not particularly pro-USA. I haven't even been there in the best part of a decade. I do think there are some things they do well or have done well though. The culture of innovation and entrepreneurship is richer and stronger than in many places in the world. Their democracy has been, and in spite of recent setbacks and policy mis-steps, still is, a big net positive for the world, IMO. The USA has the largest economy in the world, and is its only superpower. I'm not saying American hubris, nationalism or exceptionalism are well-placed - but it is an extraordinary country in several ways.
Your assertion that windows is just as secure because it firewalls all the open ports is incorrect. A firewall is like a condom. The ports are like sperm. The random bar slut you are screwing is a connection with the same level of assurance as the ones you get from the network. Condoms (and firewalls) are easily and routinely compromised. The more sperm (open ports) in the condom, the greater the chance of getting the slut preggers (having an exploitable service available) when the condom (firewall) is compromised.
Wow, who'd have though security could be so salacious? Nice analogy!
Old experiments COULD HAVE BEEN tests on falsifiability if they were real scientific experiments, not just bone collection, paleozoology.
Oh dear. So is most of astronomy not science because it deals with observing light from events that happened thousands or more years ago? Is geology not science because most geological phenomena are too slow to observe within a human lifetime? Who decides what is a 'real' scientific experiment? You? The Discovery Institute?
There weren't any falsifiability experiemnts. The fossil data COULD NOT POSSIBLE disprove or prove macroevolution, because it is STATIC data. Macroevolution is a PROCESS. That is item 1.
Your claim that static data cannot prove or disprove a theory is half right - theories cannot be proved, only disproved. But the wrong half is more to the point. If the fossil evidence were different, it could disconfirm evolution. There is no theoretical reason to prefer observations from instances of processes we directly observed over processes whose results we observe. In fact in some cases (e.g. quantum phenomena and some parts of anthropology) attempting to observe a process directly changes the outcome.
There is no reason to prefer empirical evidence from contrived, human-induced experiments to empirical evidence from observations of the rest of the universe outside those experiments. In both cases, we devise a theory, make a prediction on the basis of that theory, and compare our observations to that prediction. The only difference is that in the case of experiments, we have to do some extra work to produce the circumstances where we can make that observation, albeit with the payoff that we can gather all the data we like. There is no reason that observing the Aurora Borealis is any less of a valid source of observation to compare against our predictions about the behaviour of charged particles and magnetic fields than performing experiments with a TV screen and a bar magnet.
The offspring of close species are not reproducible organisms. If anything, they only prove for now that the chances of producing new species in that way is slim. DNA similarity or dissimilarity in that case proves nothing but microevolution.
I think you may have misinterpreted my implication here. I do not think that new species are formed frequently by hybridisation between populations that have already diverged. Paleological and anatomical evidence leads us to believe that within the pairs of animals I mentioned, a common ancestor lived relatively recently. My point was that modern evolution predicts that in this circumstance there will still be some residual capacity to produce offspring. As there is general agreement that these animals are members of separate species, this is evidence for common descent (or in terms of falsifiability: were it not the case, it would be evidence against common descent). Distinct species having a common ancestor is a component of evolution, i.e. speciaition, and observations that confirm this could be falsifying evidence, were they otherwise.
Item 3. You are arbitrarily extracting on phenotype component from the whole ensemble of phenotypic differences. It is well known that very similar function of the protein could be performed by quite different protein folds. So similarities or dissimilarities in this case prove nothing.
What they show is that common descent is the determining factor in genetic similarity. This is a prediction of evolution, and if a pair of species whose inferred common ancestor lived longer ago were genetically more similar than a pair whose common ancestor lived more recently, this would be disconfirming evidence. I chose a convergent evolutionary pair to contrast the effect of descent on genetics with the effect of phenotype.
a. This is not what I say. Microevolution (read: genetic changes within species) happens.
b. I do n
By definition, falsifiability proof should not envolve experiments or observations that have been already done.
Sorry, but that is nonsense. Repeatability is a crucial part of the scientific method, and "experiments or observations that have already been done" must be repeatable to be reliable. Repeating potentially falsifying experiments is just as valid a test as doing them the first time. Are you saying that evolution was falsifiable, the experiments and observations that we have already made could have been disconfirming evidence if they had gone otherwise, but since they didn't, we can't do them again, and it's now not falsifiable?
Propose a scientific experiment capable of disproving macroevolution. So far what you wrote does not qualify.
I'll give you a few new experiments, expanding the examples I already used:
Dig up new fossils. If their stratification places descendents before ancestors without a plausible geological reason, this is disconfirming evidence
Take the DNA from two sets of animals from related species that can still have offspring, e.g; lion & tiger, horse & donkey. If the DNA similarity between animals from separate pairs is greater than within a pair, this is disconfirming evidence.
Again compare DNA, this time considering convergent species and their geographical/phylogentic relatives. Take for example echidna & platypus and hedgehog & shrew. If the echidna is more genetically similar to the hedgehog than the platypus, or the hedgehog is more similar to the echidna than the shrew, this is disconfirming evidence.
Now I've responded to your request, could you explain either (a) why you do not think microevolution happens, in spite of being observed routinely, or (b) what mechanism you propose prevents microevolution of populations of a single species in reproductively isolated environments with differing selection pressures from leading to large-scale differences (i.e. macroevolution) over time?
It is a great basis alright, sadly, macroevolution does not pass it.
[Macro]evolution is surely falsifiable. If it were the wrong explanation for why we observe species we do, we would merely need to catch whatever the correct explanation is in the act, and we have our falsifying example right there. However, no-one has ever suggested any other plausible mechanism, nor or is there any known inconsistency between the biological evidence we have and evolution.
There are already plenty of things that we have evidence for that would have disconfirmed evolution if they had been otherwise. Two major examples are the fossil record and the degree of genetic similarity amongst related species.
I take it that your beef with macroevolution in particular means you obviously accept that microevolution has been observed innumerable times. What mechanism do you propose suddenly jumps in to prevent the combination of reproductive isolation and a large number of microevolutionary steps from becoming macroevolution? How falsifiable is your invention?
What it all comes down to is: Most (50%+) of people are stupid.
That is a reasonable observation, but it is surely the case for every country, including all the other modern, developed ones. Although I don't have exact figures for the level of belief in creationism in other countries, I am quite confident that, at least for other industrial/developed/democratic countries it is far lower than in the USA. The interesting question (to me at least) is then "why is this viewpoint so widespread in the USA, as against other comparable countries?".
I don't necessarily have a simple answer. I suspect it is related to the much higher prevalence of devout religious belief, which is turn due to historical factors.
Some might say dinosaurs became extinct X years ago, where X is a number greater than 10 000. This is proved by there bones and carbon dating etc. My question is, why exactly couldn't the 'diety' have created the earth with dino bones burried in the earth. Maybe he just happened to know they would be useful for fuel or he wanted to give some geologist something to do or Y (where Y is some other reason).
It is logically possible that, if a deity created everything at some point in the recent past, they could have created things such that they look much older. This does not make it likely, and more to the point, does not make it testable. There are an infinite number of reasons that can be invented to explain any phenomena. Some people find it desirable to be able to have a better way to choose from among the available explanations than "the one that prevents me from having to re-evaluate what I already believe". Science is one such, very successful, methodology. It requires us to make testable (or more precisely, falsifiable) predictions if our explanations are to be assessed. It also means we must be ready to change our minds if the evidence requires it.
I'm not a scientist or high level scholor, but there are some holes in evolution just like there are some holes in creationism, but saying that just because there is some evidence to support evolution doesn't mean that creationism is bunk either.
Can you name some of these "holes" in evolution as the underlying theoretical framework that all of the rest of biology fits into? There are always details in any theory that are incomplete, but I am sure the scientific community would be very interested if you can point to some evidence you're aware of that falsifies evolution.
You are mostly right in saying that creationism isn't bunk just because there is some evidence to support evolution. Creationism is bunk all on its own. There is abundant evidence that falsifies pretty much all of its claims (such as the age of the universe/Earth, the fossil record, geological evidence against a recent global flood). The situation is not so much that evolution and creationism are two decent explanations for the life we observe, each with its own flaws; instead evolution is the only known explanation that fits the evidence, and creationism is a bronze-age hangover that, according to TFA, blocks 48% of Americans from realising this.
But then part of that very problem is the malpractice system in the first place. Why do you think so many women get C-sections? Because no one ever sues you for the C-section you do. But if you are more conservative, the one time the baby does badly and you don't do a section, you are fucked. Same thing with a cardiologist: say you have a patient with chest pain that has really weak indications for doing an angiogram. If you do one and its clean that's great. The patient incurs a slight risk from the cath, and it costs several thousand dollars, but you wont be faulted for being 'careful'. However if you don't do one, eventually you are going to send someone away and they will have a heart attack the next week, at which point you are again, fucked. The system is set up for people to me more aggressive, send too many tests, do too many procedures, and prescribe too many antibiotics. In the US we are set up to not reward the avoidance of false positives but we severely punish getting a single false negative. So its no wonder cardiologists are loose with the caths and gynecologists with the sections.
I have suspected for a while that this is the main reason why the US spends more on health care than any other country, yet seems to get a much worse return on that spending than most. Policies that basically force doctors towards arse-covering seem to be a very poor way of getting the best outcomes for everyone. The New Zealand system is an interesting contrast, as compared here.
At 5% interest, Bill could earn $2.5 Billion a year. He could live spectacularly well on $10 million. How much of the difference affects his quality of life? The money he spends on food probably has as big a direct impact on his quality of life as the rest of that $10 million. The benefits of higher quality food over lower quality food are pretty minimal in this vitamin fortified future.
I don't think that diminishing marginal utility is a particularly controversial idea; I'm sure the second billion makes much less difference to your lifestyle than the first one. But I am still far from convinced of the idea that even most people in the USA have lifestyles that are so similar to those of someone who earns even USD$10M a year.
Only about 10 million people earn the minimum wage in the US; it isn't 'typical'. It is less than 5 percent of our population. Inequality is certain to be a concern of theirs, but that does not make it good fiscal policy to try to give them more equality(nor does it make it good policy to ignore them). There are people who think that giving the bottom $1 costs everybody else $2; if this is true, you have to be very careful about how much you give the bottom.
Sure, but there will be very many more people who are either not fully employed or working at rates only slightly above the minimum wage. I was amazed to see when I did some research on this that people in service industries (i.e. who might get tips) can have wages as low as USD$2.75 an hour!
For me, talking about what is good "fiscal policy" is already assuming the "bigger pie" approach is correct. If you are always optimising towards increasing economic activity, you may well have many people with lower utility. Inequality is one way of measuring this.
As far as health care goes, I think it comes down to how you determine what adequate care is. The people I see and hear about all have access to pretty good medical care, so I don't have much information about people that are having difficulties. I also tend not to get strep throat and have not talked to a doctor about a sore throat/cold/flu in about 15 years(and I am in my 20s). I have had impatient surgery though, and even if it didn't wholesale save my life, it did me a great deal of good. I still don't begrudge Bill Gates for the fact that if someone came up with a way to make you live an extra day no matter what for $1000000 that he could live forever. His access to health care doesn't even fit on the same chart as mine, but it doesn't in any way lower my access, so I don't see it as a problem. Access to care should be improved simply because it is possible, not to reduce inequality.
Yeah, health care is a pretty tricky question. I agree with you that good health care for the very wealthy doesn't impact on most people, but I don't think that it necessarily follows that addressing inequality is not desirable. My understanding is that the US has the greatest proportion of wealth spent on health care, but achieves well below the world's best health outcomes judged on such things as longevity. I suspect this is partly due to things like lititgiousness, and resultant arse-covering, but also inequality: if we spend a million dollars on already wealthy and relatively healthy people, we won't improve overall health by as much as spending a million dollars on sick poor people who have difficulty paying for themselves.
No meaningful argument can be made about the typical quality of life of today being worse than any time more than 200 years in the past(based, essentially, on the incidence of slavery). 100 and 50 years are a little arguable, but my position is that today is better. The population in 1800 was less than a billion. In 1900, it was less than 2 billion. So the increase is not exclusively a result of the pie growing, but it is a darn fine thing that it is growing.
No disagreement from me here. The quality of life in developed countries for most people is much better than it was in the past.
To the extent that most Americans enjoy a quality of life 98% as good as that of Bill Gates, 'inequality' is not a convincing basis for measurement(at least to me). As long as my slice keeps getting bigger, I'm just not going to look at the size of my neighbors(sort of, mostly in a fiscal policy sense; circumstance of birth based health care is ridiculous in a society as wealthy as the US).
I'm surprised you can suggest that most Americans' quality of life is 98% as good as Bill Gates' in the same paragraph that you mention health care. My understanding is that many people in the US can not afford adequate health care. I find it difficult to believe inequality is irrelevant to someone on minimum wage (USD$5.15, right?). Even if people this far below the poverty line are a minority, I can't see "most" people living 98% as well as a billionaire. If this were true, why would anyone ever need a raise, or take a better paying job? Wealth still has a reasonably high correlation with utitlity.
Can you explain why you should find the claim that "trickle-down effects" will eventually permeate to the less-well-off is more believable than the idea that powerful liberals might sometimes act against their own self/class interest?
I would say, at least in terms of economic and welfare policy, most (anglophone, at least) developed nations have tended towards the conservative position for some time now. Despite being what Americans would call a 'liberal' myself, I acknowledge that some parts of these policies have been effective in fostering economic growth (or a "bigger pie", as you describe it). But most measures of inequality I have seen are also increasing, i.e. the division of the "pie" is heading in the wrong direction.
And I find it amazing that someone could think that because France attempted to dissuade the USA from an ill-advised war, it somehow makes them an 'enemy'. Someone who tries to talk you out of doing something stupid is doing you a favour.
I find it amazing you think France was against the war because they are a friend to the United States. The United States and France have entirely different policies towards the Middle East that have little to do with altruism or friendship and everything to do with controlling and exploiting resources. France simply uses different tools to pursue a different agenda.
Actually, I mostly agree with you on this point. I wasn't talking about their motivation, I was talking about their actions. I would argue though, that at least some of the reason for the French government's position came from the very vocal opposition to the war from the French people. Like a majority of people in almost every country in the world, most French people opposed the invasion.
You're essentially asking us to believe that the British (and Canadians) could have liberated Europe without the U.S., but that the U.S. could not have done so alone. Without U.S. involvement, the invasion of Europe would not have happened. Could the U.S. have done it alone? Almost certainly.
I'm asking nothing of the sort. I'm simply saying that in actual history, the US didn't save France from the Germans; the Allies did. For example, if the Soviet Union hadn't been keeping most of the German military busy on the Eastern Front, would the Western Allies have been able to liberate France the way they did? Does this mean France now owes unquestioning allegiance to the USSR's successor states too?
But none of that is relevant and you know it. If one of your friends makes a "profound contribution" to digging you out of a hole, is he less of a friend because he didn't do it single-handedly? Of course not.
True. But if later, that same friend decides to dig himself into a new hole, you are far from obligated to pitch in. Advising a rethink is better.
Right or wrong, France has a poor ally to the United States - and it really is surprising considering our history together.
I would say right. Events have vindicated their stance. If they had convinced the US not to invade, America would be better off than it is. I think that the viciousness (like the OP's calling France an 'enemy' of the US) with which some sections of the American political establishment turned on France is rather more telling than French opposition to a spectacularly bad piece of US policy.
I personally find it amazing that America bailed them out of both World Wars and yet France continues to be a tacit enemy of the United States. They should have put more of that anti-American sentiment to good use against the Germans.
And I find it amazing that someone could think that because France attempted to dissuade the USA from an ill-advised war, it somehow makes them an 'enemy'. Someone who tries to talk you out of doing something stupid is doing you a favour.
Another thing I find amazing is the implicit idea that the USA single-handedly baled anyone out of either world war. The Americans entered WWI too late to have a major impact on the outcome (though they probably hastened the end), and the UK has at least as good a claim to resisting fascism when it counted in WWII. Which isn't to say that the USA didn't make a profound contribution to these struggles, but there were British and Canadian troops storming the beaches at Normandy too, you know.
That's quite interesting to see how it works in the classical world.
I know that for recording, lots of rock musicians tune their instruments down a half-step, which often makes the singing a little easier, but is rather annoying when you're trying to play along with a guitar in standard tuning!
On the other side of the coin, I would think the journals provide some level of oversight as to what actually gets published. Meaning i wouldnt want any fool publishing his/her theories on the world. The government would have to compensate in this role and have specialists performing this function for every discipline.
on another note, should the government regulate what is worthy of publication and who is worthy.
Specialists already provide the oversight about what is actually published. That's precisely what "peer-review" means. Amazing as it may seem, the privately-controlled, for-profit publishers get experts in the field to review every article for free. The reason that most journals have a low crackpot ratio is more due to the peer-review than vigilant editorship IMO.
The editors/editorial boards do have a role, in that they make the initial decision about what is sent out for peer review (particularly for journals with low acceptance rates like Nature or Science). They also make the final call about whether something is printed given the reviews it receives, which can often be mixed. I see no reason that some experts couldn't volunteer to perform this function, or even public servants if the state was providing funding. People working in the field effectively already fulfil this role for peer-reviewed conferences.
Wow, so someone actually used the KDE port on OS X? I also know someone who can eat soup with a spoon and their bare foot...
I know you're not even bothering to disguise your trolling AC, but I use the KDE port on OS X, and am very glad it is available. My favourite LaTeX editor (Kile) is a KDE app, and the with the KDE port it's easy to use it under X, whether or not I bother loading the KDE desktop.
Oh come on, the reasons to stick with perl are (1) the huge code base available on CPAN and (2) the perl programming culture.
These are great strengths of Perl. Perl has an active community with a great vibe, and CPAN has a wealth of code to do all manner of things. I guess the question for each hacker is whether the existing code on CPAN will be more of a help to you than the language's eccentricities will be a hindrance. I have found I only miss CPAN occasionally, but then I am doing research and many things I need aren't on CPAN anyway.
The most annoying people in the world have all switched to Python
Heh, I guess I'm one of the most annoying people in the world then. Are you sure it's not just that the grapes are probably sour anyway?
Perl's "TMTWWTDI" actually DOES keep it simple. It allows you to adapt a specific style, and consistently use it.
Fair enough. But if you are using another language without this 'feature' you consistently use a standard style anyway. The benefit in that case being that other people can read your code without having to adjust to your idiosyncratic style.
Perl is the only language I have used that I can walk away from for a year, and then use it again WITHOUT having to touch a book or online manual.
I suspect this is due to your familiarity with the language. I find that this is true of C for me (though not C++). I have not stopped using Python since I first switched to it (from Perl) around two years ago, but I can't imagine I would have any trouble picking it up again immediately, should someone force me off it against my will.
My recent experience with having to pick up Perl again is that Perl programs I wrote only two or three years ago are extremely difficult to understand now - and I tend to comment heavily, and to use a C-like style to keep it familiar.
BTW it's not just Perl that I find hard to pick up after a break. Java's syntax I am fine with, but you always need the API open in a browser, and I find myself checking it even for basic things if I haven't done much Java in a while. Prolog is very hard to re-adjust to (probably the whole non-imperative thing), and all the intricacies of C++'s syntax and the STL seem to wind up with me spending at a lot of time with Google and various (cryptic) documentation.
What, exactly, does Perl's use of non-text characters have to do with consistency? BTW, ever try to write C code without (){}+=-*? Thought so.
You are right about the C of course, all programming languages have non-alphanumerics throughout them. I think what he meant though, is that Perl is kind of extreme in this regard. The requirement for prefixing every variable with $ or @ or %, which changes depending not only on the variable, but also what you are doing with it, and allowing multiple variables that differ only in this changeable symbol... it's just not great for consistency. The default operations on $_ and such can also be very hard to follow when you are not inside the original coders head. I think that Perl's regular expressions are very powerful, and are largely responsible for upgrades to the regular expression capabilities of other languages. However, I think the way they are such a core part of the syntax does hurt intelligibility of the code. I would prefer they were in an external module with decent object-oriented semantics, such as in Java or Python.
And I know it seems like I'm plugging Python, (there's no zealot like a convert) but the lack of this level of unpronounceable ascii art helps readability immensely. Python has been called executable pseudocode, and it isn't that far off sometimes.
Slashdot Mirror
Compassion is the inevitable result of empathy and empathy is the inevitable result of intelligence. You empathize because you have a sense of self, the more you see another lifeform as being the same as yourself the more devaluing them becomes devaluing yourself.
I agree that compassion is a consequence of empathy, but I'm not sure empathy is a consequence of intelligence. I think that compassion in people has a great deal more to do with being social animals. Yes, being social requires intelligence, but I think it is quite possible to imagine an intelligent species without compassion.
Ever wonder why the vegetarians don't want to eat animals and yet continue to eat nothing but other types of dead lifeforms? The ones they eat are simply less like themselves.
As someone who has been vegetarian for ethical reasons most of my life, this strikes me as a half-truth at best. I do not eat animals because they have an interest in not suffering. This is incidental to how similar they are in other respects to me, which are morally irrelevant. I still "eat nothing but other life forms" as I am an animal, and will die otherwise. This generally means plants or fungi because the best evidence I have available indicates they are incapable of suffering, and thus do not have interests of their own.
Obligatory meta-pedantry: the problem you allude to is not with the grammar in the post, but the word choice (flaunted and flouted are both regular transitive verbs in this context, and exchanging them would not affect the grammar of the sentence in question at all). You could perhaps have used 'obVocabularyNazi' or 'obLexiconNazi'.
You make some good points, but given everything you say, why do you choose to live and work in the USA?
I'm not particularly pro-USA. I haven't even been there in the best part of a decade. I do think there are some things they do well or have done well though. The culture of innovation and entrepreneurship is richer and stronger than in many places in the world. Their democracy has been, and in spite of recent setbacks and policy mis-steps, still is, a big net positive for the world, IMO. The USA has the largest economy in the world, and is its only superpower. I'm not saying American hubris, nationalism or exceptionalism are well-placed - but it is an extraordinary country in several ways.
Let me give another analogy for a firewall.
Your assertion that windows is just as secure because it firewalls all the open ports is incorrect. A firewall is like a condom. The ports are like sperm. The random bar slut you are screwing is a connection with the same level of assurance as the ones you get from the network. Condoms (and firewalls) are easily and routinely compromised. The more sperm (open ports) in the condom, the greater the chance of getting the slut preggers (having an exploitable service available) when the condom (firewall) is compromised.
Wow, who'd have though security could be so salacious? Nice analogy!
I can see why parent was modded flamebait, but it gave me a laugh. I don't recall anyone other than Bush coming up with plausible new Bushisms before.
Oh, and good work on the cromulent use of the word embiggen there too!
Old experiments COULD HAVE BEEN tests on falsifiability if they were real scientific experiments, not just bone collection, paleozoology.
Oh dear. So is most of astronomy not science because it deals with observing light from events that happened thousands or more years ago? Is geology not science because most geological phenomena are too slow to observe within a human lifetime? Who decides what is a 'real' scientific experiment? You? The Discovery Institute?
There weren't any falsifiability experiemnts. The fossil data COULD NOT POSSIBLE disprove or prove macroevolution, because it is STATIC data. Macroevolution is a PROCESS. That is item 1.
Your claim that static data cannot prove or disprove a theory is half right - theories cannot be proved, only disproved. But the wrong half is more to the point. If the fossil evidence were different, it could disconfirm evolution. There is no theoretical reason to prefer observations from instances of processes we directly observed over processes whose results we observe. In fact in some cases (e.g. quantum phenomena and some parts of anthropology) attempting to observe a process directly changes the outcome.
There is no reason to prefer empirical evidence from contrived, human-induced experiments to empirical evidence from observations of the rest of the universe outside those experiments. In both cases, we devise a theory, make a prediction on the basis of that theory, and compare our observations to that prediction. The only difference is that in the case of experiments, we have to do some extra work to produce the circumstances where we can make that observation, albeit with the payoff that we can gather all the data we like. There is no reason that observing the Aurora Borealis is any less of a valid source of observation to compare against our predictions about the behaviour of charged particles and magnetic fields than performing experiments with a TV screen and a bar magnet.
The offspring of close species are not reproducible organisms. If anything, they only prove for now that the chances of producing new species in that way is slim. DNA similarity or dissimilarity in that case proves nothing but microevolution.
I think you may have misinterpreted my implication here. I do not think that new species are formed frequently by hybridisation between populations that have already diverged. Paleological and anatomical evidence leads us to believe that within the pairs of animals I mentioned, a common ancestor lived relatively recently. My point was that modern evolution predicts that in this circumstance there will still be some residual capacity to produce offspring. As there is general agreement that these animals are members of separate species, this is evidence for common descent (or in terms of falsifiability: were it not the case, it would be evidence against common descent). Distinct species having a common ancestor is a component of evolution, i.e. speciaition, and observations that confirm this could be falsifying evidence, were they otherwise.
Item 3. You are arbitrarily extracting on phenotype component from the whole ensemble of phenotypic differences. It is well known that very similar function of the protein could be performed by quite different protein folds. So similarities or dissimilarities in this case prove nothing.
What they show is that common descent is the determining factor in genetic similarity. This is a prediction of evolution, and if a pair of species whose inferred common ancestor lived longer ago were genetically more similar than a pair whose common ancestor lived more recently, this would be disconfirming evidence. I chose a convergent evolutionary pair to contrast the effect of descent on genetics with the effect of phenotype.
a. This is not what I say. Microevolution (read: genetic changes within species) happens.
b. I do n
By definition, falsifiability proof should not envolve experiments or observations that have been already done.
Sorry, but that is nonsense. Repeatability is a crucial part of the scientific method, and "experiments or observations that have already been done" must be repeatable to be reliable. Repeating potentially falsifying experiments is just as valid a test as doing them the first time. Are you saying that evolution was falsifiable, the experiments and observations that we have already made could have been disconfirming evidence if they had gone otherwise, but since they didn't, we can't do them again, and it's now not falsifiable?
Propose a scientific experiment capable of disproving macroevolution. So far what you wrote does not qualify.
I'll give you a few new experiments, expanding the examples I already used:
Now I've responded to your request, could you explain either (a) why you do not think microevolution happens, in spite of being observed routinely, or (b) what mechanism you propose prevents microevolution of populations of a single species in reproductively isolated environments with differing selection pressures from leading to large-scale differences (i.e. macroevolution) over time?
It is a great basis alright, sadly, macroevolution does not pass it.
[Macro]evolution is surely falsifiable. If it were the wrong explanation for why we observe species we do, we would merely need to catch whatever the correct explanation is in the act, and we have our falsifying example right there. However, no-one has ever suggested any other plausible mechanism, nor or is there any known inconsistency between the biological evidence we have and evolution.
There are already plenty of things that we have evidence for that would have disconfirmed evolution if they had been otherwise. Two major examples are the fossil record and the degree of genetic similarity amongst related species.
I take it that your beef with macroevolution in particular means you obviously accept that microevolution has been observed innumerable times. What mechanism do you propose suddenly jumps in to prevent the combination of reproductive isolation and a large number of microevolutionary steps from becoming macroevolution? How falsifiable is your invention?
Kid Rock.
What it all comes down to is: Most (50%+) of people are stupid.
That is a reasonable observation, but it is surely the case for every country, including all the other modern, developed ones. Although I don't have exact figures for the level of belief in creationism in other countries, I am quite confident that, at least for other industrial/developed/democratic countries it is far lower than in the USA. The interesting question (to me at least) is then "why is this viewpoint so widespread in the USA, as against other comparable countries?".
I don't necessarily have a simple answer. I suspect it is related to the much higher prevalence of devout religious belief, which is turn due to historical factors.
Some might say dinosaurs became extinct X years ago, where X is a number greater than 10 000. This is proved by there bones and carbon dating etc. My question is, why exactly couldn't the 'diety' have created the earth with dino bones burried in the earth. Maybe he just happened to know they would be useful for fuel or he wanted to give some geologist something to do or Y (where Y is some other reason).
It is logically possible that, if a deity created everything at some point in the recent past, they could have created things such that they look much older. This does not make it likely, and more to the point, does not make it testable. There are an infinite number of reasons that can be invented to explain any phenomena. Some people find it desirable to be able to have a better way to choose from among the available explanations than "the one that prevents me from having to re-evaluate what I already believe". Science is one such, very successful, methodology. It requires us to make testable (or more precisely, falsifiable) predictions if our explanations are to be assessed. It also means we must be ready to change our minds if the evidence requires it.
I'm not a scientist or high level scholor, but there are some holes in evolution just like there are some holes in creationism, but saying that just because there is some evidence to support evolution doesn't mean that creationism is bunk either.
Can you name some of these "holes" in evolution as the underlying theoretical framework that all of the rest of biology fits into? There are always details in any theory that are incomplete, but I am sure the scientific community would be very interested if you can point to some evidence you're aware of that falsifies evolution.
You are mostly right in saying that creationism isn't bunk just because there is some evidence to support evolution. Creationism is bunk all on its own. There is abundant evidence that falsifies pretty much all of its claims (such as the age of the universe/Earth, the fossil record, geological evidence against a recent global flood). The situation is not so much that evolution and creationism are two decent explanations for the life we observe, each with its own flaws; instead evolution is the only known explanation that fits the evidence, and creationism is a bronze-age hangover that, according to TFA, blocks 48% of Americans from realising this.
This is a great, concise statement of the legitimate basis for scientific theories, and the best I've seen in this thread at that.
But then part of that very problem is the malpractice system in the first place. Why do you think so many women get C-sections? Because no one ever sues you for the C-section you do. But if you are more conservative, the one time the baby does badly and you don't do a section, you are fucked. Same thing with a cardiologist: say you have a patient with chest pain that has really weak indications for doing an angiogram. If you do one and its clean that's great. The patient incurs a slight risk from the cath, and it costs several thousand dollars, but you wont be faulted for being 'careful'. However if you don't do one, eventually you are going to send someone away and they will have a heart attack the next week, at which point you are again, fucked. The system is set up for people to me more aggressive, send too many tests, do too many procedures, and prescribe too many antibiotics. In the US we are set up to not reward the avoidance of false positives but we severely punish getting a single false negative. So its no wonder cardiologists are loose with the caths and gynecologists with the sections.
I have suspected for a while that this is the main reason why the US spends more on health care than any other country, yet seems to get a much worse return on that spending than most. Policies that basically force doctors towards arse-covering seem to be a very poor way of getting the best outcomes for everyone. The New Zealand system is an interesting contrast, as compared here.At 5% interest, Bill could earn $2.5 Billion a year. He could live spectacularly well on $10 million. How much of the difference affects his quality of life? The money he spends on food probably has as big a direct impact on his quality of life as the rest of that $10 million. The benefits of higher quality food over lower quality food are pretty minimal in this vitamin fortified future.
I don't think that diminishing marginal utility is a particularly controversial idea; I'm sure the second billion makes much less difference to your lifestyle than the first one. But I am still far from convinced of the idea that even most people in the USA have lifestyles that are so similar to those of someone who earns even USD$10M a year.
Only about 10 million people earn the minimum wage in the US; it isn't 'typical'. It is less than 5 percent of our population. Inequality is certain to be a concern of theirs, but that does not make it good fiscal policy to try to give them more equality(nor does it make it good policy to ignore them). There are people who think that giving the bottom $1 costs everybody else $2; if this is true, you have to be very careful about how much you give the bottom.
Sure, but there will be very many more people who are either not fully employed or working at rates only slightly above the minimum wage. I was amazed to see when I did some research on this that people in service industries (i.e. who might get tips) can have wages as low as USD$2.75 an hour!
For me, talking about what is good "fiscal policy" is already assuming the "bigger pie" approach is correct. If you are always optimising towards increasing economic activity, you may well have many people with lower utility. Inequality is one way of measuring this.
As far as health care goes, I think it comes down to how you determine what adequate care is. The people I see and hear about all have access to pretty good medical care, so I don't have much information about people that are having difficulties. I also tend not to get strep throat and have not talked to a doctor about a sore throat/cold/flu in about 15 years(and I am in my 20s). I have had impatient surgery though, and even if it didn't wholesale save my life, it did me a great deal of good. I still don't begrudge Bill Gates for the fact that if someone came up with a way to make you live an extra day no matter what for $1000000 that he could live forever. His access to health care doesn't even fit on the same chart as mine, but it doesn't in any way lower my access, so I don't see it as a problem. Access to care should be improved simply because it is possible, not to reduce inequality.
Yeah, health care is a pretty tricky question. I agree with you that good health care for the very wealthy doesn't impact on most people, but I don't think that it necessarily follows that addressing inequality is not desirable. My understanding is that the US has the greatest proportion of wealth spent on health care, but achieves well below the world's best health outcomes judged on such things as longevity. I suspect this is partly due to things like lititgiousness, and resultant arse-covering, but also inequality: if we spend a million dollars on already wealthy and relatively healthy people, we won't improve overall health by as much as spending a million dollars on sick poor people who have difficulty paying for themselves.
Man pages were, however, (at least for me) the easiest way to find out what the flag in your sig meant!
No disagreement from me here. The quality of life in developed countries for most people is much better than it was in the past.
To the extent that most Americans enjoy a quality of life 98% as good as that of Bill Gates, 'inequality' is not a convincing basis for measurement(at least to me). As long as my slice keeps getting bigger, I'm just not going to look at the size of my neighbors(sort of, mostly in a fiscal policy sense; circumstance of birth based health care is ridiculous in a society as wealthy as the US).
I'm surprised you can suggest that most Americans' quality of life is 98% as good as Bill Gates' in the same paragraph that you mention health care. My understanding is that many people in the US can not afford adequate health care. I find it difficult to believe inequality is irrelevant to someone on minimum wage (USD$5.15, right?). Even if people this far below the poverty line are a minority, I can't see "most" people living 98% as well as a billionaire. If this were true, why would anyone ever need a raise, or take a better paying job? Wealth still has a reasonably high correlation with utitlity.
Can you explain why you should find the claim that "trickle-down effects" will eventually permeate to the less-well-off is more believable than the idea that powerful liberals might sometimes act against their own self/class interest?
I would say, at least in terms of economic and welfare policy, most (anglophone, at least) developed nations have tended towards the conservative position for some time now. Despite being what Americans would call a 'liberal' myself, I acknowledge that some parts of these policies have been effective in fostering economic growth (or a "bigger pie", as you describe it). But most measures of inequality I have seen are also increasing, i.e. the division of the "pie" is heading in the wrong direction.
I find it amazing you think France was against the war because they are a friend to the United States. The United States and France have entirely different policies towards the Middle East that have little to do with altruism or friendship and everything to do with controlling and exploiting resources. France simply uses different tools to pursue a different agenda.
Actually, I mostly agree with you on this point. I wasn't talking about their motivation, I was talking about their actions. I would argue though, that at least some of the reason for the French government's position came from the very vocal opposition to the war from the French people. Like a majority of people in almost every country in the world, most French people opposed the invasion.
You're essentially asking us to believe that the British (and Canadians) could have liberated Europe without the U.S., but that the U.S. could not have done so alone. Without U.S. involvement, the invasion of Europe would not have happened. Could the U.S. have done it alone? Almost certainly.I'm asking nothing of the sort. I'm simply saying that in actual history, the US didn't save France from the Germans; the Allies did. For example, if the Soviet Union hadn't been keeping most of the German military busy on the Eastern Front, would the Western Allies have been able to liberate France the way they did? Does this mean France now owes unquestioning allegiance to the USSR's successor states too?
But none of that is relevant and you know it. If one of your friends makes a "profound contribution" to digging you out of a hole, is he less of a friend because he didn't do it single-handedly? Of course not.True. But if later, that same friend decides to dig himself into a new hole, you are far from obligated to pitch in. Advising a rethink is better.
Right or wrong, France has a poor ally to the United States - and it really is surprising considering our history together.I would say right. Events have vindicated their stance. If they had convinced the US not to invade, America would be better off than it is. I think that the viciousness (like the OP's calling France an 'enemy' of the US) with which some sections of the American political establishment turned on France is rather more telling than French opposition to a spectacularly bad piece of US policy.
And I find it amazing that someone could think that because France attempted to dissuade the USA from an ill-advised war, it somehow makes them an 'enemy'. Someone who tries to talk you out of doing something stupid is doing you a favour.
Another thing I find amazing is the implicit idea that the USA single-handedly baled anyone out of either world war. The Americans entered WWI too late to have a major impact on the outcome (though they probably hastened the end), and the UK has at least as good a claim to resisting fascism when it counted in WWII. Which isn't to say that the USA didn't make a profound contribution to these struggles, but there were British and Canadian troops storming the beaches at Normandy too, you know.
That's quite interesting to see how it works in the classical world.
I know that for recording, lots of rock musicians tune their instruments down a half-step, which often makes the singing a little easier, but is rather annoying when you're trying to play along with a guitar in standard tuning!
On the other side of the coin, I would think the journals provide some level of oversight as to what actually gets published. Meaning i wouldnt want any fool publishing his/her theories on the world. The government would have to compensate in this role and have specialists performing this function for every discipline.
on another note, should the government regulate what is worthy of publication and who is worthy.
Specialists already provide the oversight about what is actually published. That's precisely what "peer-review" means. Amazing as it may seem, the privately-controlled, for-profit publishers get experts in the field to review every article for free. The reason that most journals have a low crackpot ratio is more due to the peer-review than vigilant editorship IMO.
The editors/editorial boards do have a role, in that they make the initial decision about what is sent out for peer review (particularly for journals with low acceptance rates like Nature or Science). They also make the final call about whether something is printed given the reviews it receives, which can often be mixed. I see no reason that some experts couldn't volunteer to perform this function, or even public servants if the state was providing funding. People working in the field effectively already fulfil this role for peer-reviewed conferences.
I know you're not even bothering to disguise your trolling AC, but I use the KDE port on OS X, and am very glad it is available. My favourite LaTeX editor (Kile) is a KDE app, and the with the KDE port it's easy to use it under X, whether or not I bother loading the KDE desktop.
Egad, you're right! Is it too late to come back?
These are great strengths of Perl. Perl has an active community with a great vibe, and CPAN has a wealth of code to do all manner of things. I guess the question for each hacker is whether the existing code on CPAN will be more of a help to you than the language's eccentricities will be a hindrance. I have found I only miss CPAN occasionally, but then I am doing research and many things I need aren't on CPAN anyway.
The most annoying people in the world have all switched to PythonHeh, I guess I'm one of the most annoying people in the world then. Are you sure it's not just that the grapes are probably sour anyway?
I suspect this is due to your familiarity with the language. I find that this is true of C for me (though not C++). I have not stopped using Python since I first switched to it (from Perl) around two years ago, but I can't imagine I would have any trouble picking it up again immediately, should someone force me off it against my will.
My recent experience with having to pick up Perl again is that Perl programs I wrote only two or three years ago are extremely difficult to understand now - and I tend to comment heavily, and to use a C-like style to keep it familiar.
BTW it's not just Perl that I find hard to pick up after a break. Java's syntax I am fine with, but you always need the API open in a browser, and I find myself checking it even for basic things if I haven't done much Java in a while. Prolog is very hard to re-adjust to (probably the whole non-imperative thing), and all the intricacies of C++'s syntax and the STL seem to wind up with me spending at a lot of time with Google and various (cryptic) documentation.
What, exactly, does Perl's use of non-text characters have to do with consistency? BTW, ever try to write C code without (){}+=-*? Thought so.You are right about the C of course, all programming languages have non-alphanumerics throughout them. I think what he meant though, is that Perl is kind of extreme in this regard. The requirement for prefixing every variable with $ or @ or %, which changes depending not only on the variable, but also what you are doing with it, and allowing multiple variables that differ only in this changeable symbol... it's just not great for consistency. The default operations on $_ and such can also be very hard to follow when you are not inside the original coders head. I think that Perl's regular expressions are very powerful, and are largely responsible for upgrades to the regular expression capabilities of other languages. However, I think the way they are such a core part of the syntax does hurt intelligibility of the code. I would prefer they were in an external module with decent object-oriented semantics, such as in Java or Python.
And I know it seems like I'm plugging Python, (there's no zealot like a convert) but the lack of this level of unpronounceable ascii art helps readability immensely. Python has been called executable pseudocode, and it isn't that far off sometimes.