Well, Brown is apparently still favoring the theory that Ortiz Moreno never did his own observations and 'stole' all the data from Brown's observing logs. But Brown himself admits there is no firm evidence for this. The IAU's decision to accept joint discovery was probably inevitable; either that or directly accuse Ortiz Moreno of scientific misconduct.
If you have evidence, then put up. Otherwise, stop accusing people of fraud and shut up. Either way, what Ortiz Moreno did was impolite and dishonest, but if you are accusing him of scientific misconduct, then you need to show proof. I'm sure the IAU would be thrilled to hear from you. As would Brown himself.
By "popular press", I mean the various press agencies commonly read by the proletariat that reported the spat between Brown and Ortiz Moreno. From what I recall, most of them did report it.
Not really. Moreno had also been looking at the object for a while, they only looked at Brown's observing logs the day before their announcement, to check whether they were actually looking at the same object as Brown. Brown didn't follow the standard procedure for claiming discovery of a minor planet (but had published an abstract signifying their intention to announce the discovery), which left the door open for Moreno to get in first. If Brown had followed procedure, there would have been no problem.
It was very impolite of Moreno though. The polite action would have been for Moreno to (1) contact Brown directly, rather than googling through his observing logs, and (2) come to a friendly agreement on who gets to claim the discovery. The astronomy community is (or was, until this event) very good natured. That good nature was probably the biggest casualty in all of this. But Moreno's reputation took a hammering too, at least in the popular press.
The way the HHGTTG universe works is basically what it would be like if god (or multiple gods) had a really warped sense of humour and loved a good joke. From what I remember there are not so many points in the books where something happens that contradicts our experience but without a backstory. When Adams talks about small green pieces of paper that are, on the whole, not the ones that are unhappy, well, this is because the small green pieces of paper are just projections onto our universe of some 10-dimensional hyper-intelligent lego brick. The universe is set up to allow more or less anything, as long as it has some kind of purpose.
The infinite improbability drive, for example, even though it is a bit ridiculous, plays on some of the more bizarre aspects of quantum mechanics, and it isn't so far from being plausible, if you imagine Zarquon has a surreal sense of humour.
In comparison, videos leaving a residue sounds, by itself, a bit dumb. Adams would have invented some reason for them to leave a residue, even if it was just something like they were echoing cries of pain from of a previous universe where videos were used as a weapon of mass destruction. (Yeah OK so I'm not DNA. But hopefully I managed to convey the point?)
Whoa, for a start, it was just some example (as one might do in a genetic algorithm on a computer), I wasn't referring to real DNA. And secondly, my point was that if you have a population that has a limited amount of diversity, there may be some genes that you cannot ever get to without a mutation. For example, suppose that every organism in your population has a DNA sequence that starts with the same set of proteins (say, for example 'GATTCA'). Then no amount of hereditary mixing will produce a different sequence for those particular proteins.
Now it may be that the population is big enough that every possible sequence can be constructed. (Actually I have no idea on that). But even if this is the case, there is still way to add or remove entire chromosomes for example. And the number of chromosomes certainly varies among species.
To get variation in DNA makeup of a population, it is not necessary to have mutation. Mere preference in selection of mates is sufficient.
Inheretance of traits is an important evolutionary mechanism, however I didn't mention it in my post because it would have been a complication. In particular, mixing of genes within a population (with no mutations) only mixes existing genes among the population, it does not lead to the formation of completely new genes. For example, if a pair of organisms contain genes ABC and DEF, then there are 6 possible different offspring, AEF, ABF, AEC, DBC, DBF, DEC. Without mutations you are never going to get a completely new gene (H) that is surely a precondition for the eventual formation of a completely new species.
No, information and energy are completely different in their properties. To be clear, the word 'information' has lots of meanings. In the technical sense, 'information' is usually described by the quantity called 'information entropy' (or 'Shannon entropy'). The information entropy of a system is the number of bits (binary digits) needed to describe its state. Even in an isolated system this can change (up or down) over time. The information entropy determines how efficient a compression algorithm will be.
This is quite a different concept to the thermodynamic entropy, that is famous from the Second Law of Thermodynamics (in an isolated system the thermodynamic entropy always increases). In specific situations there are some relationships between these two forms of entropy, but in general they can have completely different properties.
There is yet another definition of entropy that occurs in quantum mechanics, which is often referred to as the '(quantum) information entropy', or 'von Neumann entropy'. This is the quantum analogue of the Shannon entropy of classical systems. But it is important to remember that quantum information is fundamentally different in some major respects to classical information. It is true however that the quantum information entropy of a mixed state (such as a thermal system) can never decrease under the action of a quantum operation. In particular, this means that a system that evolves in time obeys a quantum version of the second law of thermodynamics and the quantum information entropy always increases (or at best, stays constant). But this certainly does not mean that the quantum information entropy always has this property. Like the second law, it requires very special circumstances.
Hawking's bet refers to the quantum information entropy of a black hole. The thermodynamic entropy of a black hole had already been resolved many years earlier (with the discovery of Hawking radiation), the remaining problem was with what appeared to be quantum information loss.
In summary, you are correct that, in a very precise sense, quantum information is not destroyed in an isolated system (but it is not conserved either; in particular it is allowed to increase!). But 'information' here is used in a different technical sense to the Shannon entropy of classical information theory. But even in the precise technical sense, there is no problem at all with a physical process that generates information. Such as a device that calculates the boundaries of the Mandelbrot set, or even a pseudo-random number generator.
I don't think I really understood evolution in a deep sense until I read "The Blind Watchmaker".
For me, the punch line is that evolution is the mechanism by which species stay approximately the same, and only change very slowly. The reason is that the natural mutation rate for DNA is fairly high, so that if there was no natural selection (ie, every organism that is born survives until it reproduces) then the planet would be filled with bizarre mutations and there would be no stable species. Instead, almost all of the time a mutation is quite harmful for the survival of an organism, and typically the creature will die before reproducing. On a very rare occasion though, a mutation will be useful, and be a genuine improvement. I regard this as self-evident, which leads to a big mental disconnect whenever I try and debate a creationist who simply don't get it.
In this sense, evolution does the opposite of what creationists suppose it does; rather than causing organisms to change form over time, it is actually causing them to stay the same and only change over enormously long time scales!
The reason why the rest of science comes into this, beyond just evolution, is that science forms a coherent whole, and very many different branches of science are involved in the details of evolution. For example, without evolution there would need to be some alternative mechanism to slow down or stop mutations of DNA. Mutations have two main causes: (1) mistakes caused when a cell copies the DNA in preparation for cell division. (2) environmental effects such as UV radiation, cosmic rays, nuclear radiation etc. Both of these are significant, so to slow down or eliminate DNA mutations both causes would have to be eliminated. But changing these involves changing the underlying rules of chemistry and physics, and this would flow on to change all other areas of chemistry and physics as well. So you cannot change the reaction rate of some chemical reaction without changing the properties of the molecules involved, and you cannot change the properties of a molecule without changing the atomic structure of the elements (and so on, down to the fundamental properties of quarks etc, but this is far enough for now). Once you change the atomic structure of elements, everything changes, not just the rate of DNA mutations. Anything you can possibly imagine about the natural world would have different properties, and exactly how different is virtually impossible to judge. Most likely, the universe as we see it simply couldn't exist.
Information is not a conserved quantity. Have you ever heard of the Mandelbrot set? A very complicated object that encodes an infinite amount of information in the equation z = z^2 + c.
I'm sorry you got modded a troll, I for one thought it was funny. And yes, that is exactly what a creationist would claim.
I expect you pissed off the creationists by the references to Jebus and the hovering rigatoni creature. According to surveys, this encompassas at least 50% of the american population, so presumably also many slashdot moderators.
But there is zero evidence for macro evolution of any species.
So, 99% of DNA shared by Humans and Chimps doesn't qualify?
No that doesn't. There has yet to be an actual proven link.
We were discussing evidence, not proof. Do you understand the difference?
Seriously - point out just one proven macro evolution of any species into another that resulted in a non-sterile new species - and it must be something like a rat into a cat (cross kind) - or even a horse+donkey into a non-sterile mule.
That isn't how evolution works. You seem to be confusing 'evolution' with 'cross-breeding'.
Macro evolution is just micro-evolution but repeat it for thousands and thousands of generations, so that the small changes from one generation to the next accumulate and you end up with something that is completely different from how you started. Have you played the game 'Chinese Whispers' before?
Cross-breeding, on the other hand, is sexual reproduction between organisms of two different species. Normally this doesn't happen (but there are exceptions!), and the reason why has a plausible evolutionary explanation, if you are prepared to open your mind to it.
Natural selection is based around the idea that a heriditary trait that is useful in a particular environment will lead to that animal (or plant) to be more likely to survive and reproduce than a specimen in the same environment that doesn't have that particular trait. On the other hand, a less useful trait (such as not being able to run as fast, or having legs that are too short, for example) puts you at a disadvantage and you are more likely to get killed before being able to reproduce.
An important point is that whether a particular trait is an advantage or a disadvantage depends critically on the function of the organism and how it interacts with other traits. For example, for a Giraffe to have an unusually long neck may be an advantage, because they eat the tender leaves near the top of the tree anyway, so a giraffe that can do this better than its siblings has an advantage. But for a ladybird, having an unusually long neck isn't an advantage, and may well be a disadvantage - that head sticking out is a prime target for a passing predator!
So, I hope you will find it easy to believe that, if cross-species breeding did happen, it would most likely result in an animal that would not function very well. For example, consider the cross-breeding of a giraffe and a pig. What traits would it have? What would it eat? It is very hard to imagine that any kind of giraffe-pig cross-breed could survive and be successful. So there is an evolutionary pressure towards making animals that don't cross-breed, since the resulting offspring would likely would not survive to pass on their DNA down the generations.
There are some exceptions though. Already mentioned are horses and donkeys, similar enough to each other that they can cross-breed, but the offspring are sterile. The other example, of the huge variety of squash plants, is another interesting case. There are lots of very different looking varieties of squash, that unless you were very careful you would sometimes think they are a completely different species. But nevertheless they can interbreed, and their offspring is viable. They are just often very weird hybrids that produce weird fruit (often not very nice to eat!), but from a natural selection perspective they can still be successful.
I don't know that explanation creationism has for the general absence of cross-breeding. Do you have any explanation, other than resorting to "that is the way god did it, and god works in mysterious ways" arguments ?
Creationism does hold that God created the earth as recorded in Genesis 1 and 2 _but_ not in the form it is today, namely because of the events in Genesis 6 to 8, e.g. the Great Flood. A true, honest Creationist would have to admit that the environment of the Earth is unknown prior to the Great Flood - other than that it could sustain life fairly well. From what little we do know Biblically, it was likely more of a tropical paradise, but that is only what we can deduce - not what we know for sure. What we know for sure is that the Earth was greatly different prior to the flood. How, we can't say - though conditions were more amiable towards prolonged human life.
Well, the fact that it could sustain life must mean that it wasn't so very different from how it is today. Compare this with the geological history of the Earth, where far more dramatic changes have occurred over a very long period of time - such as no oxygen in the atmosphere until relatively recently ('relatively' means many millions of years, in this context).
On the other hand, geology is very clear that the time-scale for these changes is very long, and a big global event such as a flood could not have happened, certainly not as recently as 5000 years ago. Such a big global event would be obvious in the geology everywhere, but the signs are just not there. For example, there are ice core samples that extend for longer than 5000 years - but no sign of a layer of sediment that would be an inevitable product of a global flood. Instead creationists just focus on one or two ambiguous events and try and confuse their followers into believing that constitutes a 'proof'.
Your previous example about the 'new evidence' that the Grand Canyon was formed more-or-less instantaneously, by the bursting of a large lake, is a prime example of this. Even if there was a very large lake, why is that important? What does that have to do with a global flood? But no doubt this story is trotted out to the followers every week as an example of 'proof' that evolution is wrong and therefore biblical creation is right. Each of the clauses in that last sentence are logical fallacies, by the way.
A question: you say that the Earth was 'very different' prior to the great flood, maybe more 'tropical' than the Earth today, but at minimum rather different in some way, and it was more suited to Human life back then. But suitability for Humans is not the same as suitable for animal species. For example, some animals that thrive today only in tropical climates near the equator would have presumably thrived in regions that are now much cooler. So, after the great flood, it is reasonable to suppose that the distribution of animals was completely changed; perhaps the Kangaroos of Australia used to live in what is now the Sahara desert, for example. So then why is there an amazing coincidence that the locations of fossilized animals (which were presumably laid down when they died during the great flood) generally coincide exactly where the modern animals live?
To continue the Kangaroo example, the fact that kangaroo fossils (laid down in the great flood!) appear in Australia, must mean that prior to the great flood Kangaroos used to live there. So the environment prior to the great flood can't have been dramatically different from what it is today. Now presumably the Kangaroo survived because somehow a mating pair managed to get to the middle east and get rescued by Noah. Two further questions: (1) How on earth did they manage to make that trip? and (2) having survived the great flood, why on earth would they travel all the distance back to Australia, when they could have found a perfectly acceptable habitat much closer to Mt Ararat?
What if the speed of light was also one of these changing "constants"?
That is also a possibility, which would be visible in astronomical observations. For example, the speed of light determines the relationship between frequency and wavelength. Frequency is itself related to energy, via Planck's constant. So, if the speed of light was changing then light emitted at a particular wavelength would change wavelength as time progressed, similar to (observed!) Doppler shift for example. Such an effect is not seen.
What about the possibility that the speed of light is changing in such a way as to exactly compensate for changes in the properties of star light due to changing nuclear decay rates? I'm not sure whether this possibility can be categorically excluded, however it sounds very unlikely. In particular, decay rates are not just a simple linear relationship with the fundamental constants. Change a few 'constants' and various nuclear reactions will be affected in different ways; for example one reaction might speed up, while another slows down.
But there is zero evidence for macro evolution of any species.
So, 99% of DNA shared by Humans and Chimps doesn't qualify? Nor do adaptions of isolated species, such as the sea Iguanas on the Galapagos Islands (no other species of Iguana is known to be able to swim)? What about hereditary traits in plant populations? This has been well-tested for many years now - ask any amateur gardener what happens if you cross-pollinate different varieties of squash, for example.
Please be realistic. You can believe in creationism as strongly as you like, and you are free to disbelieve evolution as strongly as you like, but to say that there is zero evidence for macro evolution is, to be blunt, crazy.
I don't believe in creationism, but I am certainly prepared to acknowledge that complex life could be seen as evidence for creationism. This is evidence that, on closer examination, can be refuted (by the alternative explanation, that the mechanism of natural selection is capable of producing complex life out of simpler constituents over the course of many generations). But still, I wouldn't say that there is zero evidence for creationism. Just the same as I would not say that there is zero evidence that the moon is made of cheese. I mean, the moon looks like cheese, right? So in the absence of any other evidence then the moon/cheese hypothesis is reasonable. But to keep on believing that the moon is made of cheese after understanding something about how the moon formed compared with how cheese is made is living in a dream world.
For example - suppose the oxygen content was at one point higher, the barometric pressure lower, average temperature higher, and a near consistent atmosphere across the entire earth (e.g. no ice in the poles, lower amount of water on the surface, higher water content below surface - e.g more land mass).
You seem to have ignored next sentence of the quote, which was "The ratios of C12 and C13 retained by plants is determined by things like climate and moisture.". This is well-known, and that is why there is an ongoing discussion as to how to interpret C12/C13 ratios!
There's also another cause, and it's a basic flaw in the assumptions made in science - everything in the environment we are currently in was true then - it doesn't allow for environmental changes on massive scales,...
huh what? The Earth was formed around 5 billion years ago out of the remenants of some older stars, and started out as a blob of hot, molten rock. It subsequently cooled over many years and acquired an atmosphere. If that doesn't count as an;environmental change', then I don't know what does! I don't know where you got the idea that scientists think that "everything in the environment we are currently in was true then", but it wasn't from any scientist!
Ironically, I thought one of the tenents of creationism was that god created the Earth in pretty much the form it is in today, therefore precluding such major changes.
For example - the Grand Canyon has been held by science to have been created by erosion; however, recent observance has shown that a lake could blow out and create the same thing in a matter of weeks or less. (They've also looked at the GC geographically and seen it is highly likely it was in this new time scale and not due to erosion.)
Umm, let me guess; you've been reading Creation Science Weekly or something like that? The signs are all there: 'recent' new discovery shows that some well-established piece of science is wrong; this 'new discovery' just happens to prove that the biblical creation myth is correct (even if the 'new discovery' doesn't actually have anything to do with creation, as in this case). Presumably the discovery was made by some 'creation scientist', because all of the evolutionist scientists have overlooked the vital evidence and the news of this breakthrough is being suppressed by the evil evolutionist scientists because they don't want to admit that they are wrong?
We've seen this many times - Grand Canyon, Helio-Geo Centrism, origin of species, etc. Some may continue to remain that way as scientists refuse to admit any other possibility...
The sad thing though is that current scientific processes pretty much are designed to keep thinking the same and banish anyone that wants to really shake up the scientific world
Heh, the first sentence contradicts the second. All of these are examples where science made dramatic breakthroughs, in overthrowing the long-established myths that had never been tested. People were even executed by the catholic church for professing a belief in heliocentrism, for example.
You should spend some time reading up on the Nobel prize citations. All of the Nobel prizes have been awarded to research that was contrary to some theory (not necessarily an established theory, but perhaps deciding between two competing theories. For example, there were some alternate theories of gravity aside from Einstein's, but some experiments showed quite conclusively that Einstein's theory made the correct predictions and the other theories did not). Twice in the 20th century, physics was completely overturned for example. Not in the sense that old theories were demonstrated to be flawed, but just incomplete in extreme situations. If you throw a tennis ball at someone, it will always follow Newton's laws of motion, and the discovery of Relativity doesn't change that - but if you travel very close to the speed of li
But there is no evidence for that. In fact, all of the evidence points in the other direction; we have a perfectly plausible theory about how humans evolved without the need for alien intervention.
An 'alien artifact' needs to be something that could not have arrived here through a natural process. For example, suppose I give you a can of coca-cola. I could tell you that it is actually an alien artifact that came from an alien who gave it to me. But it is indistinguishable from an ordinary can of coca-cola. Would you accept the can of coca-cola as proof that aliens exist? My guess is, you would not believe me. So what else would you require in order to believe that the can of coca-cola is a real alien artifact?
Astronomers know this and mention it often, but they tend to say things like 'The Universe is getting bigger' or 'Galaxies are moving away from each other as the space between them grows'...ie. mass is getting smaller.
Sorry, that doesn't follow. Yes everything is moving apart, which means that the average density of the observable universe is decreasing, but that has nothing to do with the total mass. For example, I could give you a solid block of lead weighing say 1000lbs, that would be a small-ish object, maybe about 1 cubic foot (I'm just giving some example numbers). Then I could melt it and re-form it into a honeycomb structure that contained lots of gaps and was, say, 10 foot across. It has gotten bigger, but the mass hasn't increased!
But I have a suspicion that there is a variable factor involved in the decay rate that physics has overlooked.
While it is possible that some physical 'constants' are actually changing value in time, there are lots of experiments in this area and there are quite rigorous bounds that show that, if there is any variation, it is on time-scales of ~ billions of years, and of no consequence to carbon dating methods. For example, if there was some changing physical constant that caused nuclear decay rates to change over time, then this would change in the rate of nuclear fusion in the sun (which depends on the same physics as nuclear decay), and this would be observable in astronomical observations of distant stars. In fact, that no such effect is seen is one of the experiments that puts a bound on how fast the physical constants can be changing over time.
There may also be some biological reasons why the C12/C13 ratios in particular, could change in time. But this would be due to changes in biology as species have evolved, not changes in the underlying physical laws. The ratios of C12 and C13 retained by plants is determined by things like climate and moisture. Both of these isotopes are stable, it is just the slightly different sizes and masses cause them to act slightly differently in chemical reactions. This has nothing to do with radioactive decay (which is C14 radiocarbon dating, which is based on the notion that unstable radioactive C14 is made in the upper atmosphere by cosmic ray collisions, so while a plant is living it absorbs some fraction of C14 from the atmosphere, and this stops when the plant dies. So by seeing how much of the C14 has decayed into a stable atom [into nitrogen-14 in fact] and how much of it remains, you can determine how long ago the plant died.)
And also: it is possible that I misunderstood the idea of ID, but I never had the impression that it was arguing that the 'intelligent designer' was constrained by physical laws. On the contrary, I thought the whole argument was that life (and in particular, 'higher' forms of life such as humans) is too complex to have spontaneously appeared by itself, and therefore must have been created by some divine being. (The logic doesn't follow, but logic was never a strong point of ID advocates anyway).
You seem to be suggesting that ID is advocating a much weaker position, that some being that is not omnipotent, but could be some kind of alien with advanced technology, was responsible for the formation of life by intervening in the development of the Earth in ways consistent with (our incomplete knowledge of) the physical laws. This implies the possibility that, with sufficiently advanced technology, humans could repeat a similar task ourselves on some other planet. Basically, that the only difference between humans and god is technology (well, presumably this god is quite intelligent; but surely given some not-too-much-advanced technology we could produce a modified human with a bigger brain and higher intelligence, or even interfacing an artificial-intelligence computer with an otherwise unmodified human brain may well result in an intelligence to rival this 'god').
This contradicts with a lot of what I have heard about christianity. Sure the ID advocates say it is nothing to do with christianity, but they always emphasize that the christian god is one possible explanation for who the 'intelligent designer' is. But if the designer is constrained by physical laws, then as far as I can tell that all but rules out the christian god.
Anyway, it seems that the overwhelming majority of ID advocates also say that the mechanism by which the 'intelligent designer' created humans follows (surprise surprise!) the story of young-Earth biblical creationism. This story contains many elements (such as a 'great flood' some 5000 years ago), that, even if you accept that they were caused by the intervention of some intelligent technologically advanced alien, are simply incompatible with what we see today. Geological strata, and the fossil record, are simply incompatible with a global flood 5000 years ago; if there was such an event it would be obvious in our geology, and this kind of information about how the geology of the Earth developed would be essential for many fields, such as oil exploration. Strangely, I don't know of any 'creation geologists' that work for the oil industry;-)
If you want to argue that the 'intelligent designer' planted fake evidence to trick us into thinking that the Earth was 5 billion years old when it is really ~5000 years, then I wouldn't call him an 'intelligent designer' so much as an 'asshole'. Or maybe we were created by an alien during a weekend bender, playing with daddy's toys while his parents were out of the house? Or by some intern that didn't mix the chemicals in the Lifeform and Geology Creator(TM) machine correctly? That still makes him an asshole, from our perspective.
I've never heard of anyone (except perhaps for some fringe nutjob cults) trying to use the SETI project to communicate with god.
Except, you know...nearly everyone who believes in God. They all try to communicate with God.
With SETI? Please provide a citation, that is new to me. As far as I know, everyone who claims to talk to god (from a 'mainstream' religion, at least) also say that the mechanism by which they do so is not explainable by scientific means. I've never heard of anyone trying to build an automatic prayer machine however (Buddhist prayer wheels are pretty close though!). Can I get an add-on card for my computer to use it to talk to god? Can I connect it to my mobile phone so I can talk to god when I'm driving and can't get my hands into the 'prayer' position (which presumably acts as some kind of antenna to heaven)?
You can't have it both ways. If it works out with aliens, then it works out with God.
No, the fundamental difference is that aliens obey the laws of physics, and are therefore a legitimate source of scientific enquiry. In most religions (and especially christianity, which presumably this thread is about), god is assumed to be omnipotent and unconstrained by physical laws. The basis of science is that useful laws on the behavior of the universe can be obtained by testing and repeated observation. Given an isolated system with inputs a,b,c, the output will be x,y,z (modified somewhat for quantum mechanics of course, but in its own way quantum mechanics is very precise). This approach to figuring out how the world works gave us the discovery of radio waves, with which we could hope to communicate with aliens one day. I don't recall any christians rejoicing at the discovery of radio waves for enabling them to communicate better with god.
On the other hand. if you are going to reduce god to merely the status of some super-intelligent being that is no different to any other alien (if indeed there are any 'other' aliens out there), which you seem to be arguing for, then you are in real philosophical trouble. For a start, if god is constrained by the laws of physics, then you had better find scientific explanations for all of the miracles in the bible. Lets start with a physics problem, the parting of the red sea, and a biology problem, the virgin birth. There is absolutely no mechanism whereby a female (with 2 X chromosomes and no Y chromosome) can give birth to a male child (one X chromosome and one Y chromosome) without getting a Y chromosome from somewhere.
If you are going to say something along the lines of this alien god dude has lots of advanced technology and he just did some gene therapy on Mary to make her pregnant with a male child, then I find it hard to believe that god is something worth looking up to; rather he's an alien asshole making fun of us.
And you still need to explain the mechanism of how he knocked her up. Someone will want to patent that device someday.
That smacks of bullshit. Anyone who has done even an introduction to geology would be able to tell very quickly between a fossil and the bone of a recently dead chicken.
Let's say for the sake of argument that some advanced alien space travelling race created life on earth and guided its advancement over time through genetic engineering.
There's no reason in principle why this fact, if it was a fact, could not be subjected to scientific investigation.
If we substitute divine being for alien being, nothing changes in principle.
Err, if you substitute divine being for alien being, then everything changes. It isn't creationism anymore, since that explicitly attributes everything to an omnipotent god, there is no room to substitute an alien being. If you made this suggestion to a creationist they would either laugh at you or smack you.
Besides, I would agree with you that the hypothesis "an alien race created life on earth" is something that could, in principle, be tested scientifically (eg, by searching for the aliens and trying to communicate with them, or trying to find some alien artifacts they left behind, or testing the rate of genetic change to see if it matches what biology/chemistry/physics would predict), but the same cannot be said for creationism. I've never heard of anyone (except perhaps for some fringe nutjob cults) trying to use the SETI project to communicate with god. Indeed, I think pretty much all creationists would be very clear that creationism isn't a science in this sense. To them, god exists, and simply isn't subject to what we call the laws of physics. Whereas of course an alien race WOULD be subject to the laws of physics!
What some creationists do claim is that there is scientific evidence that demonstrates that the biblical creation myth is correct, especially in details such as the great flood etc. The biblical creation myth is indeed testable by science, but the result isn't what the creationists like! So they ignore it and just pretend.
Sure, it is quite likely the placebo effect evolved. Well, in a tautological sense, the placebo effect seems to actually exist therefore it certainly evolved, either directly or it is some side-effect of something else evolving. I wouldn't be surprised if it evolved directly, through a survival advantage to people that show a placebo effect. I don't know when it happened, or whether the effect works for any other animals, but I would be interested in finding out (if anyone does indeed know - do any other animals practice any kind of medicine?).
But I can even think of a plausible way it might have evolved (but, like most evolutionary hypothesis, very difficult to test!), which is very much connected with superstition. Suppose you get injured hunting. Then you get taken to the village shaman who waves his magic stick over you. Since the shaman holds a lot of power, it would be a very bad idea to admit that nothing happened as a result of the magic stick. The shaman has support from (and is feared by) the rest of the village, so if you say "heh, that did nothing, the shaman is a fraud!" you will likely get killed for blasphemy. Ergo, evolutionary pressure towards NOT exposing the shaman and faking it. So, one more point in the ability to lie as an evolutionary advantage. But even more so, if you happened to have some wiring in your brain such that you get a placebo effect which masks the symptoms (ie, so you don't feel as much pain) then this is an evolutionary advantage - and you don't even have to lie. And this can do more than just mask symptoms, eg if you can trick the brain into operating some subsystems at higher efficiency it could also make a difference in how quickly you recover (or even if you recover at all) from a disease.
For a long time it used to be that creating a thread in NT was slower than creating a process in Linux. This probably isn't true anymore for recent Windows kernels. But I vaguely remember reading something about some Windows mechanism that amounts to a 'light-weight thread', to try and overcome this penalty. I can't remember what they called it, and it seems to be hard to search for.
There is an interesting discussion at http://blog.extracheese.org/2008/05/processes-spawn-faster-than-threads.html lots more benchmarks for various systems in the comments. For some OSX systems, it seems that spawning threads is slow, and also some comments suggest on some Linux systems also (perhaps pre-NPTL?). But Python threads are bound to one processor, so many of those results are due to running the benchmark on multi-core machines (the 'process' benchmark uses all of the cores, the 'thread' benchmark uses only one).
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Well, Brown is apparently still favoring the theory that Ortiz Moreno never did his own observations and 'stole' all the data from Brown's observing logs. But Brown himself admits there is no firm evidence for this. The IAU's decision to accept joint discovery was probably inevitable; either that or directly accuse Ortiz Moreno of scientific misconduct.
If you have evidence, then put up. Otherwise, stop accusing people of fraud and shut up. Either way, what Ortiz Moreno did was impolite and dishonest, but if you are accusing him of scientific misconduct, then you need to show proof. I'm sure the IAU would be thrilled to hear from you. As would Brown himself.
By "popular press", I mean the various press agencies commonly read by the proletariat that reported the spat between Brown and Ortiz Moreno. From what I recall, most of them did report it.
How do you define "popular press" ?
Not really. Moreno had also been looking at the object for a while, they only looked at Brown's observing logs the day before their announcement, to check whether they were actually looking at the same object as Brown. Brown didn't follow the standard procedure for claiming discovery of a minor planet (but had published an abstract signifying their intention to announce the discovery), which left the door open for Moreno to get in first. If Brown had followed procedure, there would have been no problem.
It was very impolite of Moreno though. The polite action would have been for Moreno to (1) contact Brown directly, rather than googling through his observing logs, and (2) come to a friendly agreement on who gets to claim the discovery. The astronomy community is (or was, until this event) very good natured. That good nature was probably the biggest casualty in all of this. But Moreno's reputation took a hammering too, at least in the popular press.
But would it count as probable cause to obtain a warrant to search it legally?
The way the HHGTTG universe works is basically what it would be like if god (or multiple gods) had a really warped sense of humour and loved a good joke. From what I remember there are not so many points in the books where something happens that contradicts our experience but without a backstory. When Adams talks about small green pieces of paper that are, on the whole, not the ones that are unhappy, well, this is because the small green pieces of paper are just projections onto our universe of some 10-dimensional hyper-intelligent lego brick. The universe is set up to allow more or less anything, as long as it has some kind of purpose.
The infinite improbability drive, for example, even though it is a bit ridiculous, plays on some of the more bizarre aspects of quantum mechanics, and it isn't so far from being plausible, if you imagine Zarquon has a surreal sense of humour.
In comparison, videos leaving a residue sounds, by itself, a bit dumb. Adams would have invented some reason for them to leave a residue, even if it was just something like they were echoing cries of pain from of a previous universe where videos were used as a weapon of mass destruction. (Yeah OK so I'm not DNA. But hopefully I managed to convey the point?)
Whoa, for a start, it was just some example (as one might do in a genetic algorithm on a computer), I wasn't referring to real DNA. And secondly, my point was that if you have a population that has a limited amount of diversity, there may be some genes that you cannot ever get to without a mutation. For example, suppose that every organism in your population has a DNA sequence that starts with the same set of proteins (say, for example 'GATTCA'). Then no amount of hereditary mixing will produce a different sequence for those particular proteins.
Now it may be that the population is big enough that every possible sequence can be constructed. (Actually I have no idea on that). But even if this is the case, there is still way to add or remove entire chromosomes for example. And the number of chromosomes certainly varies among species.
Inheretance of traits is an important evolutionary mechanism, however I didn't mention it in my post because it would have been a complication. In particular, mixing of genes within a population (with no mutations) only mixes existing genes among the population, it does not lead to the formation of completely new genes. For example, if a pair of organisms contain genes ABC and DEF, then there are 6 possible different offspring, AEF, ABF, AEC, DBC, DBF, DEC. Without mutations you are never going to get a completely new gene (H) that is surely a precondition for the eventual formation of a completely new species.
No, information and energy are completely different in their properties. To be clear, the word 'information' has lots of meanings. In the technical sense, 'information' is usually described by the quantity called 'information entropy' (or 'Shannon entropy'). The information entropy of a system is the number of bits (binary digits) needed to describe its state. Even in an isolated system this can change (up or down) over time. The information entropy determines how efficient a compression algorithm will be.
This is quite a different concept to the thermodynamic entropy, that is famous from the Second Law of Thermodynamics (in an isolated system the thermodynamic entropy always increases). In specific situations there are some relationships between these two forms of entropy, but in general they can have completely different properties.
There is yet another definition of entropy that occurs in quantum mechanics, which is often referred to as the '(quantum) information entropy', or 'von Neumann entropy'. This is the quantum analogue of the Shannon entropy of classical systems. But it is important to remember that quantum information is fundamentally different in some major respects to classical information. It is true however that the quantum information entropy of a mixed state (such as a thermal system) can never decrease under the action of a quantum operation. In particular, this means that a system that evolves in time obeys a quantum version of the second law of thermodynamics and the quantum information entropy always increases (or at best, stays constant). But this certainly does not mean that the quantum information entropy always has this property. Like the second law, it requires very special circumstances.
Hawking's bet refers to the quantum information entropy of a black hole. The thermodynamic entropy of a black hole had already been resolved many years earlier (with the discovery of Hawking radiation), the remaining problem was with what appeared to be quantum information loss.
In summary, you are correct that, in a very precise sense, quantum information is not destroyed in an isolated system (but it is not conserved either; in particular it is allowed to increase!). But 'information' here is used in a different technical sense to the Shannon entropy of classical information theory. But even in the precise technical sense, there is no problem at all with a physical process that generates information. Such as a device that calculates the boundaries of the Mandelbrot set, or even a pseudo-random number generator.
I don't think I really understood evolution in a deep sense until I read "The Blind Watchmaker".
For me, the punch line is that evolution is the mechanism by which species stay approximately the same, and only change very slowly. The reason is that the natural mutation rate for DNA is fairly high, so that if there was no natural selection (ie, every organism that is born survives until it reproduces) then the planet would be filled with bizarre mutations and there would be no stable species. Instead, almost all of the time a mutation is quite harmful for the survival of an organism, and typically the creature will die before reproducing. On a very rare occasion though, a mutation will be useful, and be a genuine improvement. I regard this as self-evident, which leads to a big mental disconnect whenever I try and debate a creationist who simply don't get it.
In this sense, evolution does the opposite of what creationists suppose it does; rather than causing organisms to change form over time, it is actually causing them to stay the same and only change over enormously long time scales!
The reason why the rest of science comes into this, beyond just evolution, is that science forms a coherent whole, and very many different branches of science are involved in the details of evolution. For example, without evolution there would need to be some alternative mechanism to slow down or stop mutations of DNA. Mutations have two main causes: (1) mistakes caused when a cell copies the DNA in preparation for cell division. (2) environmental effects such as UV radiation, cosmic rays, nuclear radiation etc. Both of these are significant, so to slow down or eliminate DNA mutations both causes would have to be eliminated. But changing these involves changing the underlying rules of chemistry and physics, and this would flow on to change all other areas of chemistry and physics as well. So you cannot change the reaction rate of some chemical reaction without changing the properties of the molecules involved, and you cannot change the properties of a molecule without changing the atomic structure of the elements (and so on, down to the fundamental properties of quarks etc, but this is far enough for now). Once you change the atomic structure of elements, everything changes, not just the rate of DNA mutations. Anything you can possibly imagine about the natural world would have different properties, and exactly how different is virtually impossible to judge. Most likely, the universe as we see it simply couldn't exist.
Information is not a conserved quantity. Have you ever heard of the Mandelbrot set? A very complicated object that encodes an infinite amount of information in the equation z = z^2 + c.
I'm sorry you got modded a troll, I for one thought it was funny. And yes, that is exactly what a creationist would claim.
I expect you pissed off the creationists by the references to Jebus and the hovering rigatoni creature. According to surveys, this encompassas at least 50% of the american population, so presumably also many slashdot moderators.
We were discussing evidence, not proof. Do you understand the difference?
That isn't how evolution works. You seem to be confusing 'evolution' with 'cross-breeding'.
Macro evolution is just micro-evolution but repeat it for thousands and thousands of generations, so that the small changes from one generation to the next accumulate and you end up with something that is completely different from how you started. Have you played the game 'Chinese Whispers' before?
Cross-breeding, on the other hand, is sexual reproduction between organisms of two different species. Normally this doesn't happen (but there are exceptions!), and the reason why has a plausible evolutionary explanation, if you are prepared to open your mind to it.
Natural selection is based around the idea that a heriditary trait that is useful in a particular environment will lead to that animal (or plant) to be more likely to survive and reproduce than a specimen in the same environment that doesn't have that particular trait. On the other hand, a less useful trait (such as not being able to run as fast, or having legs that are too short, for example) puts you at a disadvantage and you are more likely to get killed before being able to reproduce.
An important point is that whether a particular trait is an advantage or a disadvantage depends critically on the function of the organism and how it interacts with other traits. For example, for a Giraffe to have an unusually long neck may be an advantage, because they eat the tender leaves near the top of the tree anyway, so a giraffe that can do this better than its siblings has an advantage. But for a ladybird, having an unusually long neck isn't an advantage, and may well be a disadvantage - that head sticking out is a prime target for a passing predator!
So, I hope you will find it easy to believe that, if cross-species breeding did happen, it would most likely result in an animal that would not function very well. For example, consider the cross-breeding of a giraffe and a pig. What traits would it have? What would it eat? It is very hard to imagine that any kind of giraffe-pig cross-breed could survive and be successful. So there is an evolutionary pressure towards making animals that don't cross-breed, since the resulting offspring would likely would not survive to pass on their DNA down the generations.
There are some exceptions though. Already mentioned are horses and donkeys, similar enough to each other that they can cross-breed, but the offspring are sterile. The other example, of the huge variety of squash plants, is another interesting case. There are lots of very different looking varieties of squash, that unless you were very careful you would sometimes think they are a completely different species. But nevertheless they can interbreed, and their offspring is viable. They are just often very weird hybrids that produce weird fruit (often not very nice to eat!), but from a natural selection perspective they can still be successful.
I don't know that explanation creationism has for the general absence of cross-breeding. Do you have any explanation, other than resorting to "that is the way god did it, and god works in mysterious ways" arguments ?
Well, the fact that it could sustain life must mean that it wasn't so very different from how it is today. Compare this with the geological history of the Earth, where far more dramatic changes have occurred over a very long period of time - such as no oxygen in the atmosphere until relatively recently ('relatively' means many millions of years, in this context).
On the other hand, geology is very clear that the time-scale for these changes is very long, and a big global event such as a flood could not have happened, certainly not as recently as 5000 years ago. Such a big global event would be obvious in the geology everywhere, but the signs are just not there. For example, there are ice core samples that extend for longer than 5000 years - but no sign of a layer of sediment that would be an inevitable product of a global flood. Instead creationists just focus on one or two ambiguous events and try and confuse their followers into believing that constitutes a 'proof'.
Your previous example about the 'new evidence' that the Grand Canyon was formed more-or-less instantaneously, by the bursting of a large lake, is a prime example of this. Even if there was a very large lake, why is that important? What does that have to do with a global flood? But no doubt this story is trotted out to the followers every week as an example of 'proof' that evolution is wrong and therefore biblical creation is right. Each of the clauses in that last sentence are logical fallacies, by the way.
A question: you say that the Earth was 'very different' prior to the great flood, maybe more 'tropical' than the Earth today, but at minimum rather different in some way, and it was more suited to Human life back then. But suitability for Humans is not the same as suitable for animal species. For example, some animals that thrive today only in tropical climates near the equator would have presumably thrived in regions that are now much cooler. So, after the great flood, it is reasonable to suppose that the distribution of animals was completely changed; perhaps the Kangaroos of Australia used to live in what is now the Sahara desert, for example. So then why is there an amazing coincidence that the locations of fossilized animals (which were presumably laid down when they died during the great flood) generally coincide exactly where the modern animals live?
To continue the Kangaroo example, the fact that kangaroo fossils (laid down in the great flood!) appear in Australia, must mean that prior to the great flood Kangaroos used to live there. So the environment prior to the great flood can't have been dramatically different from what it is today. Now presumably the Kangaroo survived because somehow a mating pair managed to get to the middle east and get rescued by Noah. Two further questions: (1) How on earth did they manage to make that trip? and (2) having survived the great flood, why on earth would they travel all the distance back to Australia, when they could have found a perfectly acceptable habitat much closer to Mt Ararat?
That is also a possibility, which would be visible in astronomical observations. For example, the speed of light determines the relationship between frequency and wavelength. Frequency is itself related to energy, via Planck's constant. So, if the speed of light was changing then light emitted at a particular wavelength would change wavelength as time progressed, similar to (observed!) Doppler shift for example. Such an effect is not seen.
What about the possibility that the speed of light is changing in such a way as to exactly compensate for changes in the properties of star light due to changing nuclear decay rates? I'm not sure whether this possibility can be categorically excluded, however it sounds very unlikely. In particular, decay rates are not just a simple linear relationship with the fundamental constants. Change a few 'constants' and various nuclear reactions will be affected in different ways; for example one reaction might speed up, while another slows down.
So, 99% of DNA shared by Humans and Chimps doesn't qualify? Nor do adaptions of isolated species, such as the sea Iguanas on the Galapagos Islands (no other species of Iguana is known to be able to swim)? What about hereditary traits in plant populations? This has been well-tested for many years now - ask any amateur gardener what happens if you cross-pollinate different varieties of squash, for example.
Please be realistic. You can believe in creationism as strongly as you like, and you are free to disbelieve evolution as strongly as you like, but to say that there is zero evidence for macro evolution is, to be blunt, crazy.
I don't believe in creationism, but I am certainly prepared to acknowledge that complex life could be seen as evidence for creationism. This is evidence that, on closer examination, can be refuted (by the alternative explanation, that the mechanism of natural selection is capable of producing complex life out of simpler constituents over the course of many generations). But still, I wouldn't say that there is zero evidence for creationism. Just the same as I would not say that there is zero evidence that the moon is made of cheese. I mean, the moon looks like cheese, right? So in the absence of any other evidence then the moon/cheese hypothesis is reasonable. But to keep on believing that the moon is made of cheese after understanding something about how the moon formed compared with how cheese is made is living in a dream world.
You seem to have ignored next sentence of the quote, which was "The ratios of C12 and C13 retained by plants is determined by things like climate and moisture.". This is well-known, and that is why there is an ongoing discussion as to how to interpret C12/C13 ratios!
There's also another cause, and it's a basic flaw in the assumptions made in science - everything in the environment we are currently in was true then - it doesn't allow for environmental changes on massive scales,...
huh what? The Earth was formed around 5 billion years ago out of the remenants of some older stars, and started out as a blob of hot, molten rock. It subsequently cooled over many years and acquired an atmosphere. If that doesn't count as an ;environmental change', then I don't know what does! I don't know where you got the idea that scientists think that "everything in the environment we are currently in was true then", but it wasn't from any scientist!
Ironically, I thought one of the tenents of creationism was that god created the Earth in pretty much the form it is in today, therefore precluding such major changes.
For example - the Grand Canyon has been held by science to have been created by erosion; however, recent observance has shown that a lake could blow out and create the same thing in a matter of weeks or less. (They've also looked at the GC geographically and seen it is highly likely it was in this new time scale and not due to erosion.)
Umm, let me guess; you've been reading Creation Science Weekly or something like that? The signs are all there: 'recent' new discovery shows that some well-established piece of science is wrong; this 'new discovery' just happens to prove that the biblical creation myth is correct (even if the 'new discovery' doesn't actually have anything to do with creation, as in this case). Presumably the discovery was made by some 'creation scientist', because all of the evolutionist scientists have overlooked the vital evidence and the news of this breakthrough is being suppressed by the evil evolutionist scientists because they don't want to admit that they are wrong?
Heh, the first sentence contradicts the second. All of these are examples where science made dramatic breakthroughs, in overthrowing the long-established myths that had never been tested. People were even executed by the catholic church for professing a belief in heliocentrism, for example.
You should spend some time reading up on the Nobel prize citations. All of the Nobel prizes have been awarded to research that was contrary to some theory (not necessarily an established theory, but perhaps deciding between two competing theories. For example, there were some alternate theories of gravity aside from Einstein's, but some experiments showed quite conclusively that Einstein's theory made the correct predictions and the other theories did not). Twice in the 20th century, physics was completely overturned for example. Not in the sense that old theories were demonstrated to be flawed, but just incomplete in extreme situations. If you throw a tennis ball at someone, it will always follow Newton's laws of motion, and the discovery of Relativity doesn't change that - but if you travel very close to the speed of li
But there is no evidence for that. In fact, all of the evidence points in the other direction; we have a perfectly plausible theory about how humans evolved without the need for alien intervention.
An 'alien artifact' needs to be something that could not have arrived here through a natural process. For example, suppose I give you a can of coca-cola. I could tell you that it is actually an alien artifact that came from an alien who gave it to me. But it is indistinguishable from an ordinary can of coca-cola. Would you accept the can of coca-cola as proof that aliens exist? My guess is, you would not believe me. So what else would you require in order to believe that the can of coca-cola is a real alien artifact?
Sorry, that doesn't follow. Yes everything is moving apart, which means that the average density of the observable universe is decreasing, but that has nothing to do with the total mass. For example, I could give you a solid block of lead weighing say 1000lbs, that would be a small-ish object, maybe about 1 cubic foot (I'm just giving some example numbers). Then I could melt it and re-form it into a honeycomb structure that contained lots of gaps and was, say, 10 foot across. It has gotten bigger, but the mass hasn't increased!
While it is possible that some physical 'constants' are actually changing value in time, there are lots of experiments in this area and there are quite rigorous bounds that show that, if there is any variation, it is on time-scales of ~ billions of years, and of no consequence to carbon dating methods. For example, if there was some changing physical constant that caused nuclear decay rates to change over time, then this would change in the rate of nuclear fusion in the sun (which depends on the same physics as nuclear decay), and this would be observable in astronomical observations of distant stars. In fact, that no such effect is seen is one of the experiments that puts a bound on how fast the physical constants can be changing over time.
There may also be some biological reasons why the C12/C13 ratios in particular, could change in time. But this would be due to changes in biology as species have evolved, not changes in the underlying physical laws. The ratios of C12 and C13 retained by plants is determined by things like climate and moisture. Both of these isotopes are stable, it is just the slightly different sizes and masses cause them to act slightly differently in chemical reactions. This has nothing to do with radioactive decay (which is C14 radiocarbon dating, which is based on the notion that unstable radioactive C14 is made in the upper atmosphere by cosmic ray collisions, so while a plant is living it absorbs some fraction of C14 from the atmosphere, and this stops when the plant dies. So by seeing how much of the C14 has decayed into a stable atom [into nitrogen-14 in fact] and how much of it remains, you can determine how long ago the plant died.)
And also: it is possible that I misunderstood the idea of ID, but I never had the impression that it was arguing that the 'intelligent designer' was constrained by physical laws. On the contrary, I thought the whole argument was that life (and in particular, 'higher' forms of life such as humans) is too complex to have spontaneously appeared by itself, and therefore must have been created by some divine being. (The logic doesn't follow, but logic was never a strong point of ID advocates anyway).
You seem to be suggesting that ID is advocating a much weaker position, that some being that is not omnipotent, but could be some kind of alien with advanced technology, was responsible for the formation of life by intervening in the development of the Earth in ways consistent with (our incomplete knowledge of) the physical laws. This implies the possibility that, with sufficiently advanced technology, humans could repeat a similar task ourselves on some other planet. Basically, that the only difference between humans and god is technology (well, presumably this god is quite intelligent; but surely given some not-too-much-advanced technology we could produce a modified human with a bigger brain and higher intelligence, or even interfacing an artificial-intelligence computer with an otherwise unmodified human brain may well result in an intelligence to rival this 'god').
This contradicts with a lot of what I have heard about christianity. Sure the ID advocates say it is nothing to do with christianity, but they always emphasize that the christian god is one possible explanation for who the 'intelligent designer' is. But if the designer is constrained by physical laws, then as far as I can tell that all but rules out the christian god.
Anyway, it seems that the overwhelming majority of ID advocates also say that the mechanism by which the 'intelligent designer' created humans follows (surprise surprise!) the story of young-Earth biblical creationism. This story contains many elements (such as a 'great flood' some 5000 years ago), that, even if you accept that they were caused by the intervention of some intelligent technologically advanced alien, are simply incompatible with what we see today. Geological strata, and the fossil record, are simply incompatible with a global flood 5000 years ago; if there was such an event it would be obvious in our geology, and this kind of information about how the geology of the Earth developed would be essential for many fields, such as oil exploration. Strangely, I don't know of any 'creation geologists' that work for the oil industry ;-)
If you want to argue that the 'intelligent designer' planted fake evidence to trick us into thinking that the Earth was 5 billion years old when it is really ~5000 years, then I wouldn't call him an 'intelligent designer' so much as an 'asshole'. Or maybe we were created by an alien during a weekend bender, playing with daddy's toys while his parents were out of the house? Or by some intern that didn't mix the chemicals in the Lifeform and Geology Creator(TM) machine correctly? That still makes him an asshole, from our perspective.
With SETI? Please provide a citation, that is new to me. As far as I know, everyone who claims to talk to god (from a 'mainstream' religion, at least) also say that the mechanism by which they do so is not explainable by scientific means. I've never heard of anyone trying to build an automatic prayer machine however (Buddhist prayer wheels are pretty close though!). Can I get an add-on card for my computer to use it to talk to god? Can I connect it to my mobile phone so I can talk to god when I'm driving and can't get my hands into the 'prayer' position (which presumably acts as some kind of antenna to heaven)?
No, the fundamental difference is that aliens obey the laws of physics, and are therefore a legitimate source of scientific enquiry. In most religions (and especially christianity, which presumably this thread is about), god is assumed to be omnipotent and unconstrained by physical laws. The basis of science is that useful laws on the behavior of the universe can be obtained by testing and repeated observation. Given an isolated system with inputs a,b,c, the output will be x,y,z (modified somewhat for quantum mechanics of course, but in its own way quantum mechanics is very precise). This approach to figuring out how the world works gave us the discovery of radio waves, with which we could hope to communicate with aliens one day. I don't recall any christians rejoicing at the discovery of radio waves for enabling them to communicate better with god.
On the other hand. if you are going to reduce god to merely the status of some super-intelligent being that is no different to any other alien (if indeed there are any 'other' aliens out there), which you seem to be arguing for, then you are in real philosophical trouble. For a start, if god is constrained by the laws of physics, then you had better find scientific explanations for all of the miracles in the bible. Lets start with a physics problem, the parting of the red sea, and a biology problem, the virgin birth. There is absolutely no mechanism whereby a female (with 2 X chromosomes and no Y chromosome) can give birth to a male child (one X chromosome and one Y chromosome) without getting a Y chromosome from somewhere.
If you are going to say something along the lines of this alien god dude has lots of advanced technology and he just did some gene therapy on Mary to make her pregnant with a male child, then I find it hard to believe that god is something worth looking up to; rather he's an alien asshole making fun of us.
And you still need to explain the mechanism of how he knocked her up. Someone will want to patent that device someday.
That smacks of bullshit. Anyone who has done even an introduction to geology would be able to tell very quickly between a fossil and the bone of a recently dead chicken.
Err, if you substitute divine being for alien being, then everything changes. It isn't creationism anymore, since that explicitly attributes everything to an omnipotent god, there is no room to substitute an alien being. If you made this suggestion to a creationist they would either laugh at you or smack you.
Besides, I would agree with you that the hypothesis "an alien race created life on earth" is something that could, in principle, be tested scientifically (eg, by searching for the aliens and trying to communicate with them, or trying to find some alien artifacts they left behind, or testing the rate of genetic change to see if it matches what biology/chemistry/physics would predict), but the same cannot be said for creationism. I've never heard of anyone (except perhaps for some fringe nutjob cults) trying to use the SETI project to communicate with god. Indeed, I think pretty much all creationists would be very clear that creationism isn't a science in this sense. To them, god exists, and simply isn't subject to what we call the laws of physics. Whereas of course an alien race WOULD be subject to the laws of physics!
What some creationists do claim is that there is scientific evidence that demonstrates that the biblical creation myth is correct, especially in details such as the great flood etc. The biblical creation myth is indeed testable by science, but the result isn't what the creationists like! So they ignore it and just pretend.
Sure, it is quite likely the placebo effect evolved. Well, in a tautological sense, the placebo effect seems to actually exist therefore it certainly evolved, either directly or it is some side-effect of something else evolving. I wouldn't be surprised if it evolved directly, through a survival advantage to people that show a placebo effect. I don't know when it happened, or whether the effect works for any other animals, but I would be interested in finding out (if anyone does indeed know - do any other animals practice any kind of medicine?).
But I can even think of a plausible way it might have evolved (but, like most evolutionary hypothesis, very difficult to test!), which is very much connected with superstition. Suppose you get injured hunting. Then you get taken to the village shaman who waves his magic stick over you. Since the shaman holds a lot of power, it would be a very bad idea to admit that nothing happened as a result of the magic stick. The shaman has support from (and is feared by) the rest of the village, so if you say "heh, that did nothing, the shaman is a fraud!" you will likely get killed for blasphemy. Ergo, evolutionary pressure towards NOT exposing the shaman and faking it. So, one more point in the ability to lie as an evolutionary advantage. But even more so, if you happened to have some wiring in your brain such that you get a placebo effect which masks the symptoms (ie, so you don't feel as much pain) then this is an evolutionary advantage - and you don't even have to lie. And this can do more than just mask symptoms, eg if you can trick the brain into operating some subsystems at higher efficiency it could also make a difference in how quickly you recover (or even if you recover at all) from a disease.
For a long time it used to be that creating a thread in NT was slower than creating a process in Linux. This probably isn't true anymore for recent Windows kernels. But I vaguely remember reading something about some Windows mechanism that amounts to a 'light-weight thread', to try and overcome this penalty. I can't remember what they called it, and it seems to be hard to search for.
There is an interesting discussion at http://blog.extracheese.org/2008/05/processes-spawn-faster-than-threads.html lots more benchmarks for various systems in the comments. For some OSX systems, it seems that spawning threads is slow, and also some comments suggest on some Linux systems also (perhaps pre-NPTL?). But Python threads are bound to one processor, so many of those results are due to running the benchmark on multi-core machines (the 'process' benchmark uses all of the cores, the 'thread' benchmark uses only one).
I would trust 3.11 a hell of a lot more than XP or Vista...