If your conspiracy theory is true, it's absolutely fantastic news. Consider this: the top leadership of a nuclear armed state decide to send out international assassins on a murderous rampage. The result: two home-made pressure-cooker bombs kill two random civilians, and a pitifully ineffective poison attack is caught before reaching the same city as the intended targets. If this level of threat is all we have to worry about when North Korea goes into full-fledged wacko murder mode, I'm immensely relieved; I'd think even a pitiful nation like that could pull off something a bit less amateurish.
A few people don't stop at stop signs; however, enough people do (or at least slow down a bit) that the mass carnage we'd get with 100% of drivers blasting though every intersection at full speed is significantly reduced. Enforcement --- that doesn't require catching every stop-sign offender, but enough people that most other drivers are wary about breaking the law --- increases the level of compliance. Similarly, firearm safety regulations (such as mandatory gun safes) won't stop 100% of doofuses from leaving loaded guns scattered all over the house when the neighbor's kid comes over to visit. However, 100% compliance isn't necessary to provide societal benefits --- if you can get 90% of people to store guns more safely, you'll cut down on a lot of "opportunistic" incidents. You won't stop the criminal masterminds with unlimited resources, but you might make it hard enough that 12-year-old Johnny Dimbulb won't be able to snag a pistol from Uncle Fred's house to settle a school grievance.
"A challenge for the inflationary paradigm in light of the Planck2013 data is to explain why no significant multiverse effects have been observed" Wuh? Maybe, um, because there might not be a multiverse at all?
I think that's exactly one of the solutions the authors are suggesting through statements like this. The authors "take aim" at a large class of inflationary models that do assume a multiverse situation to provide a "fine tuning" range for all the parameters --- noting that, while the Planck2013 data isn't inconsistent with these models, it's consistent with a "more fine tuned than necessary for anthropogenic arguments" tiny region of the theories --- hence there should be a "better" theory that explains the particular observed smoothness of the CMB without resorting to "we got unnecessarily lucky in the multiverse lottery."
The problem, as I understand it from the paper, is that there's a huge region of "not exactly in the dimple" solutions that would result in equally "livable" universes, just with a slightly less uniform CMB --- we didn't need to "land in the dimple" to survive our trip down to the present day, just to get the particularly pretty (uniform) view of the sky that we see now. Hence the "unlikeliness problems" of the model: why did we apparently "land right in the dimple," when it wasn't necessary for us to do so (and still be here today)?
Well, I doubt many physicists would disagree; however, "desperate mathematical band-aids" are where a lot of eventually solid theories start off. The concept of "inflation" started off fairly hand-wavy, "whoah, those ripples in the cosmic microwave background must've been really close together to smooth everything out, but they're really far apart where we see them... cosmic inflation, dude!". However, as time goes on, theorists get better at turning vague statements of "it was tiny... then it got big!" into specific, detailed, testable predictions (distributions of the CMB, pre-CMB gravitational waves, etc.) linked to physically plausible mechanisms (like, in this article, the general shape of potentials for fields composing the early universe). Eventually, that "band-aid" might get built up into a solid chunk of physics.
Any theory of the origin of everything has to start with nothing. Absolutely nothing. Otherwise, you're not talking about an origin, you're talking about something that already existed, and that means that you now have to figure out the origin of that thing before you can find the origin of everything.
Existing human metaphysical systems do not yet (and might not ever) sufficiently understand what terms like "existed," "origin," or "nothing" actually mean to make blanket statements like yours. We live in a universe controlled by causality (which makes physics possible), and thus often assume that the concept of "prior cause" is "universally" applicable: by this logic, "everything exists as a result of a prior causes; something that exists without a prior causes is not part of everything, therefor is nothing" (without deeply defining most of the terms in that phrase). However, it could be that our observable causally-ordered universe expanded from a boundary with a different "type of space" where time and causal ordering do not exist; where there is no meaning to the questions "what came before" or "what caused this state" because there is no time direction for "before" or "caused." The assumption that "origins are necessary" may simply be a quirk of our particular location in the cosmos, rather than a "universal" truth.
Stoned basement-dwelling teenage life dropouts should not be determining what we think is "news"
Don't worry. If this takes off, in a short while the news will be produced by teams of highly-trained sociologists, expert at formatting their corporate masters' propaganda to apparently come from, and be eagerly parroted by, basement-dwelling dropouts.
In other words, the news will be filtered with equal expertise to conventional "old media" mainstream news sources.
As a cyclist and pedestrian, I can assure you: few American drivers are overly concerned about their cars mowing down bystanders, aside from the ones who would be disappointed to personally miss out on the fun.
Well, that part certainly isn't a new problem for autonomous cars (and I'd trust an autonomous car to already be more polite and careful than drivers around here). Added free road space and increased bicycle traffic would allow and encourage better solutions to the traffic-crossing problem, e.g. under/overpasses, or having road monitoring cameras that can warn oncoming autonomous cars in advance when cyclists are approaching crossings from other directions (imagine having the street light system change in your favor, whenever possible, wherever you bike!).
Except the "logic" of crippling fear from badly-estimated risks doesn't apply so much here. While the general public is easily convinced that a single nuclear failure might kill thousands and yield cities uninhabitable, it would be harder for the "anti-automatic-car lobby" (who the heck would that be? "big auto" would love to sell everyone new cars) to make the masses terrified of automatic cars going on mass-murder sprees. Especially since, unlike nuclear plants, cars are something the general public can own for themselves; as soon as they see their neighbors The Joneses with a shiny new toy, they'll discard any logic in getting their own.
on highways? Anyway, the solution is to require all autonomous cars (no jerk drivers intentionally trying to kill cyclists), which will be capable of moving a large and fast volume of traffic in far fewer lanes, and moving themselves to designated parking lots after passenger drop-off: hence turning all other lanes, including current streetside parking, into gigantic ubiquitous bicycle paths. Win!
While the technical side is indeed built up step-by-step, there is a sharp transition on the "legislative" side. Right now, Google would get in serious trouble for sending one of their cars out on the road with the driver curled up in back reading a newspaper (even though the car would likely do fine). You can add any number of "safety" features to a car (up to making it essentially self-driving), but a human driver is legally required to be fully alert and in control at all times. So, I think there will be a clear point at which we get a "self driving" car (as opposed to a car that practically could drive itself, but still requires an alert driver in the front seat, and is "software crippled" to discourage unauthorized autonomous operation), when legislation explicitly allows drivers to cede responsibility to their car. This may well itself happen in phases (e.g. "autopilot" only allowed at first in special freeway lanes), but the first time the driver is legally allowed to take a nap marks an important breaking point (and I hope legal license to sip a beer en-route will not follow far behind).
"Allusions to history"? You need me to cite historical examples of every day the value of gold has changed several percent without terrorist attacks, as if speculative market price fluctuations are an unprecedentedly rare? Gold prices jump up and down all the time; so do stock market prices (and if you need historical "proof" for those statements, fuck you). The burden of proof is on you to show how these are caused by global terrorist conspiracies (instead of normal market forces that jerk prices around every day). There aren't further useful "references from history" because the kind of conspiracy you're talking about hasn't historically happened --- so the only evidence is all of fucking history lacking such events. If you claimed cheese-eating moon monsters dropped the price of gold by pooping out gold bricks, how would I "historically" disprove that (aside from the blanket statement that such hasn't ever happened in history)? The burden of proof is on you to show how a historically unprecedented wacky conspiracy is true --- prove me wrong by giving well-established historical precedents for global-level markets being impacted by sales from terrorist cabals prior to an attack, or show why this instance specifically breaks from past historical precedent.
I bet that's also why Google has these people called "engineers" who worry about "miiiiiiinor details," like unsafe driving conditions (shallow water flowing across the road, and subsequent hydroplaning when an idiot human driver thinks "what harm can three inches of water do?" causes a lot of accidents); probably to a greater extent than even experienced drivers do. And, once a "detail" has been identified and solved, it's solved 100% of the time for 100% of the drivers (no matter how many people die a year from water across the road, other drivers don't learn; but a firmware update will instantly teach every driverless car to be more careful). At most, there will be one carload of deaths from each "unexpected" detail, rather than the same problem killing hundreds over and over again.
The "Why not" is Occam's Razor, which is what the GP poster ridiculously used to support his solution. True, Occam's Razor *proves* nothing --- perhaps the world was made 6000 years ago by a sadistic god who arranged fossils (and all of biology, chemistry, and physics) just to deceive us otherwise. However, the "simpler" assumption in this case is that clouds of weakly-interacting gravitationally bound dark matter are clouds of weakly-interacting so-far-unknown particles, not swarms of Dyson spheres arranged as a cosmic joke on our puny human intelligence.
I agree, a troll would not be able to allay your suspicions. Nor might any entirely rational and intelligent response; arguing with "birthers" or young-earth-creationists is similarly futile. Nonetheless, I'll make one brief attempt:
1) some classes of conspiracy are only amenable operation withing small tight-knit groups of "true believer" participants; 2) typical terrorist attacks are in this class: while there may be a huge number of after-the-fact "sympathizers," actual operational knowledge is kept within a very small "cell" of participants, because 3) spreading the existence of such plans to more than a tiny number of participants rapidly increases chances of intelligence leaks, with disastrous consequences for all conspirators involved.
5) while world wealth is strongly concentrated, it still takes a large number of players to swing world financial markets; 6) and, with the visibility of the pre-attack market swing, the "conspirators" are also drawing attention to themselves, thus need to ask the protection of an overwhelming majority of all other agents (financial regulators, journalists, other analysts) who might expose them. 7) this separates the "wild-ass conspiracy theory" from a "reasonable conspiracy theory" about the conspiracy of a small "cell" of players.
8) There are alternate mechanisms through which large numbers of investors/governments/journalists appear to "conspire," but these have different characteristics from "plunge the stock market with a terrorist attack"; 9) for example, the world power elite may "conspire" to install brutal dictators in coups, and other acts of murder-for-money; 10) however, in these cases there is a generally benefit, or lack of substantial harm, to the entire wealthy class (not just the "winners" extracting money from all the "losers" in a mini-crash); 11) furthermore, the actions will retrospectively be justified as positive in the media (the brutal dictators become "moderate reformers allied with the West"), 12) so that by the time lines of "conspiracy" are drawn in the public mind, it'll be "what's the big deal about Iran-Contra?," and the perpetrators will be able to openly continue their careers without being labeled murderous monsters
Based on these considerations, your conspiracy theory is of the "wild-assed" type, inconsistent with institutional patterns of "actual" conspiracy.
I also like this reply from the first reviewer of the referenced paper:
There is just one point corresponding to prokaryotes in Fig. 1, and there is, indeed, an excellent reason for that: we have no evidence whatsoever that the maximum genome size of prokaryotes increased during that enormous time span or in the time elapsed since.
In other words, if the author had included more points than his cherry-picked few, it would make the hypothesis of a generally exponential evolutionary trend (passing through and extrapolable back from early prokaryotes) appear patently ridiculous. As asserted in my post above, this paper wouldn't "pass peer review," except perhaps in "very open" journals like this with loose standards for what counts as "passing" peer review.
Ahh, I see, a reference to the author's own previous paper, in which he says basically the same stuff with a bit more detail. I like that the journal this one is published in shows the "open peer review" criticisms of the paper, including this statement from the second reviewer which neatly sums up the issues:
This paper is an example of how not to analyze data.
And I'm especially suspicious of wild-ass conspiracy theories that would require the cooperation of a massive number of players. Sure, a half dozen people could know about attacks and keep it secret. But enough people to significantly move the national exchange averages and world gold market (without all the sales coming from a suspiciously tiny number of sources), all conspiring together to keep a terrorist attack secret? Not a single whistle-blower unnerved by the thought of murdering civilians who might call in a tip in advance? Your blind paranoia, and deep misunderstanding of how actual institutions work, is astounding.
The NY Post also ran the (now thoroughly falsified) "news" that a Saudi suspect had been taken into custody early after the blast. That served as a great filter for identifying racist right-wing nutters, who were eager to pass along the NY Post's predictable uncorroborated tabloid Islamophobia as if it were an actual news source.
The extrapolation on the other axis is even more fun. "Let's extrapolate six orders of magnitude down from the simplest known life (twice the log range of the entire span of known life), assuming the mechanics of complexity works exactly the same in the region between 10^6 and 1 base pairs!"
I'm sorry, I don't consider "stringing together Sci-Fi plot device jargon for nonexistent magic devices" to be "close to breaking" relativistic theories on FTL motion.
Well, for one thing, there's zero explanation of why/how they chose the particular dots they connected (or even precisely what they refer to), other than "hey, if we cherry-pick these particular 6 points, they lie on a line that proves our hypothesis!".
Yep, and the ideas represented by the words we speak aren't remotely accurately portrayed by the shape of the letters we write. Symbolic thought is a deceptive bitch!
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If your conspiracy theory is true, it's absolutely fantastic news. Consider this: the top leadership of a nuclear armed state decide to send out international assassins on a murderous rampage. The result: two home-made pressure-cooker bombs kill two random civilians, and a pitifully ineffective poison attack is caught before reaching the same city as the intended targets. If this level of threat is all we have to worry about when North Korea goes into full-fledged wacko murder mode, I'm immensely relieved; I'd think even a pitiful nation like that could pull off something a bit less amateurish.
A few people don't stop at stop signs; however, enough people do (or at least slow down a bit) that the mass carnage we'd get with 100% of drivers blasting though every intersection at full speed is significantly reduced. Enforcement --- that doesn't require catching every stop-sign offender, but enough people that most other drivers are wary about breaking the law --- increases the level of compliance. Similarly, firearm safety regulations (such as mandatory gun safes) won't stop 100% of doofuses from leaving loaded guns scattered all over the house when the neighbor's kid comes over to visit. However, 100% compliance isn't necessary to provide societal benefits --- if you can get 90% of people to store guns more safely, you'll cut down on a lot of "opportunistic" incidents. You won't stop the criminal masterminds with unlimited resources, but you might make it hard enough that 12-year-old Johnny Dimbulb won't be able to snag a pistol from Uncle Fred's house to settle a school grievance.
"A challenge for the inflationary paradigm in light of the Planck2013 data is to explain why no significant multiverse effects have been observed" Wuh? Maybe, um, because there might not be a multiverse at all?
I think that's exactly one of the solutions the authors are suggesting through statements like this. The authors "take aim" at a large class of inflationary models that do assume a multiverse situation to provide a "fine tuning" range for all the parameters --- noting that, while the Planck2013 data isn't inconsistent with these models, it's consistent with a "more fine tuned than necessary for anthropogenic arguments" tiny region of the theories --- hence there should be a "better" theory that explains the particular observed smoothness of the CMB without resorting to "we got unnecessarily lucky in the multiverse lottery."
The problem, as I understand it from the paper, is that there's a huge region of "not exactly in the dimple" solutions that would result in equally "livable" universes, just with a slightly less uniform CMB --- we didn't need to "land in the dimple" to survive our trip down to the present day, just to get the particularly pretty (uniform) view of the sky that we see now. Hence the "unlikeliness problems" of the model: why did we apparently "land right in the dimple," when it wasn't necessary for us to do so (and still be here today)?
Well, I doubt many physicists would disagree; however, "desperate mathematical band-aids" are where a lot of eventually solid theories start off. The concept of "inflation" started off fairly hand-wavy, "whoah, those ripples in the cosmic microwave background must've been really close together to smooth everything out, but they're really far apart where we see them... cosmic inflation, dude!". However, as time goes on, theorists get better at turning vague statements of "it was tiny... then it got big!" into specific, detailed, testable predictions (distributions of the CMB, pre-CMB gravitational waves, etc.) linked to physically plausible mechanisms (like, in this article, the general shape of potentials for fields composing the early universe). Eventually, that "band-aid" might get built up into a solid chunk of physics.
Any theory of the origin of everything has to start with nothing. Absolutely nothing. Otherwise, you're not talking about an origin, you're talking about something that already existed, and that means that you now have to figure out the origin of that thing before you can find the origin of everything.
Existing human metaphysical systems do not yet (and might not ever) sufficiently understand what terms like "existed," "origin," or "nothing" actually mean to make blanket statements like yours. We live in a universe controlled by causality (which makes physics possible), and thus often assume that the concept of "prior cause" is "universally" applicable: by this logic, "everything exists as a result of a prior causes; something that exists without a prior causes is not part of everything, therefor is nothing" (without deeply defining most of the terms in that phrase). However, it could be that our observable causally-ordered universe expanded from a boundary with a different "type of space" where time and causal ordering do not exist; where there is no meaning to the questions "what came before" or "what caused this state" because there is no time direction for "before" or "caused." The assumption that "origins are necessary" may simply be a quirk of our particular location in the cosmos, rather than a "universal" truth.
Stoned basement-dwelling teenage life dropouts should not be determining what we think is "news"
Don't worry. If this takes off, in a short while the news will be produced by teams of highly-trained sociologists, expert at formatting their corporate masters' propaganda to apparently come from, and be eagerly parroted by, basement-dwelling dropouts.
In other words, the news will be filtered with equal expertise to conventional "old media" mainstream news sources.
As a cyclist and pedestrian, I can assure you: few American drivers are overly concerned about their cars mowing down bystanders, aside from the ones who would be disappointed to personally miss out on the fun.
Well, that part certainly isn't a new problem for autonomous cars (and I'd trust an autonomous car to already be more polite and careful than drivers around here). Added free road space and increased bicycle traffic would allow and encourage better solutions to the traffic-crossing problem, e.g. under/overpasses, or having road monitoring cameras that can warn oncoming autonomous cars in advance when cyclists are approaching crossings from other directions (imagine having the street light system change in your favor, whenever possible, wherever you bike!).
Except the "logic" of crippling fear from badly-estimated risks doesn't apply so much here. While the general public is easily convinced that a single nuclear failure might kill thousands and yield cities uninhabitable, it would be harder for the "anti-automatic-car lobby" (who the heck would that be? "big auto" would love to sell everyone new cars) to make the masses terrified of automatic cars going on mass-murder sprees. Especially since, unlike nuclear plants, cars are something the general public can own for themselves; as soon as they see their neighbors The Joneses with a shiny new toy, they'll discard any logic in getting their own.
I think "inibriation" indicates drunk typing.
But I like riding my bike.
on highways?
Anyway, the solution is to require all autonomous cars (no jerk drivers intentionally trying to kill cyclists), which will be capable of moving a large and fast volume of traffic in far fewer lanes, and moving themselves to designated parking lots after passenger drop-off: hence turning all other lanes, including current streetside parking, into gigantic ubiquitous bicycle paths. Win!
While the technical side is indeed built up step-by-step, there is a sharp transition on the "legislative" side. Right now, Google would get in serious trouble for sending one of their cars out on the road with the driver curled up in back reading a newspaper (even though the car would likely do fine). You can add any number of "safety" features to a car (up to making it essentially self-driving), but a human driver is legally required to be fully alert and in control at all times. So, I think there will be a clear point at which we get a "self driving" car (as opposed to a car that practically could drive itself, but still requires an alert driver in the front seat, and is "software crippled" to discourage unauthorized autonomous operation), when legislation explicitly allows drivers to cede responsibility to their car. This may well itself happen in phases (e.g. "autopilot" only allowed at first in special freeway lanes), but the first time the driver is legally allowed to take a nap marks an important breaking point (and I hope legal license to sip a beer en-route will not follow far behind).
"Allusions to history"? You need me to cite historical examples of every day the value of gold has changed several percent without terrorist attacks, as if speculative market price fluctuations are an unprecedentedly rare? Gold prices jump up and down all the time; so do stock market prices (and if you need historical "proof" for those statements, fuck you). The burden of proof is on you to show how these are caused by global terrorist conspiracies (instead of normal market forces that jerk prices around every day). There aren't further useful "references from history" because the kind of conspiracy you're talking about hasn't historically happened --- so the only evidence is all of fucking history lacking such events. If you claimed cheese-eating moon monsters dropped the price of gold by pooping out gold bricks, how would I "historically" disprove that (aside from the blanket statement that such hasn't ever happened in history)? The burden of proof is on you to show how a historically unprecedented wacky conspiracy is true --- prove me wrong by giving well-established historical precedents for global-level markets being impacted by sales from terrorist cabals prior to an attack, or show why this instance specifically breaks from past historical precedent.
I bet that's also why Google has these people called "engineers" who worry about "miiiiiiinor details," like unsafe driving conditions (shallow water flowing across the road, and subsequent hydroplaning when an idiot human driver thinks "what harm can three inches of water do?" causes a lot of accidents); probably to a greater extent than even experienced drivers do. And, once a "detail" has been identified and solved, it's solved 100% of the time for 100% of the drivers (no matter how many people die a year from water across the road, other drivers don't learn; but a firmware update will instantly teach every driverless car to be more careful). At most, there will be one carload of deaths from each "unexpected" detail, rather than the same problem killing hundreds over and over again.
The "Why not" is Occam's Razor, which is what the GP poster ridiculously used to support his solution. True, Occam's Razor *proves* nothing --- perhaps the world was made 6000 years ago by a sadistic god who arranged fossils (and all of biology, chemistry, and physics) just to deceive us otherwise. However, the "simpler" assumption in this case is that clouds of weakly-interacting gravitationally bound dark matter are clouds of weakly-interacting so-far-unknown particles, not swarms of Dyson spheres arranged as a cosmic joke on our puny human intelligence.
I agree, a troll would not be able to allay your suspicions. Nor might any entirely rational and intelligent response; arguing with "birthers" or young-earth-creationists is similarly futile. Nonetheless, I'll make one brief attempt:
1) some classes of conspiracy are only amenable operation withing small tight-knit groups of "true believer" participants;
2) typical terrorist attacks are in this class: while there may be a huge number of after-the-fact "sympathizers," actual operational knowledge is kept within a very small "cell" of participants, because
3) spreading the existence of such plans to more than a tiny number of participants rapidly increases chances of intelligence leaks, with disastrous consequences for all conspirators involved.
5) while world wealth is strongly concentrated, it still takes a large number of players to swing world financial markets;
6) and, with the visibility of the pre-attack market swing, the "conspirators" are also drawing attention to themselves, thus need to ask the protection of an overwhelming majority of all other agents (financial regulators, journalists, other analysts) who might expose them.
7) this separates the "wild-ass conspiracy theory" from a "reasonable conspiracy theory" about the conspiracy of a small "cell" of players.
8) There are alternate mechanisms through which large numbers of investors/governments/journalists appear to "conspire," but these have different characteristics from "plunge the stock market with a terrorist attack";
9) for example, the world power elite may "conspire" to install brutal dictators in coups, and other acts of murder-for-money;
10) however, in these cases there is a generally benefit, or lack of substantial harm, to the entire wealthy class (not just the "winners" extracting money from all the "losers" in a mini-crash);
11) furthermore, the actions will retrospectively be justified as positive in the media (the brutal dictators become "moderate reformers allied with the West"),
12) so that by the time lines of "conspiracy" are drawn in the public mind, it'll be "what's the big deal about Iran-Contra?," and the perpetrators will be able to openly continue their careers without being labeled murderous monsters
Based on these considerations, your conspiracy theory is of the "wild-assed" type, inconsistent with institutional patterns of "actual" conspiracy.
I also like this reply from the first reviewer of the referenced paper:
There is just one point corresponding to prokaryotes in Fig. 1, and there is, indeed, an excellent reason for that: we have no evidence whatsoever that the maximum genome size of prokaryotes increased during that enormous time span or in the time elapsed since.
In other words, if the author had included more points than his cherry-picked few, it would make the hypothesis of a generally exponential evolutionary trend (passing through and extrapolable back from early prokaryotes) appear patently ridiculous. As asserted in my post above, this paper wouldn't "pass peer review," except perhaps in "very open" journals like this with loose standards for what counts as "passing" peer review.
Ahh, I see, a reference to the author's own previous paper, in which he says basically the same stuff with a bit more detail. I like that the journal this one is published in shows the "open peer review" criticisms of the paper, including this statement from the second reviewer which neatly sums up the issues:
This paper is an example of how not to analyze data.
And I'm especially suspicious of wild-ass conspiracy theories that would require the cooperation of a massive number of players. Sure, a half dozen people could know about attacks and keep it secret. But enough people to significantly move the national exchange averages and world gold market (without all the sales coming from a suspiciously tiny number of sources), all conspiring together to keep a terrorist attack secret? Not a single whistle-blower unnerved by the thought of murdering civilians who might call in a tip in advance? Your blind paranoia, and deep misunderstanding of how actual institutions work, is astounding.
The NY Post also ran the (now thoroughly falsified) "news" that a Saudi suspect had been taken into custody early after the blast. That served as a great filter for identifying racist right-wing nutters, who were eager to pass along the NY Post's predictable uncorroborated tabloid Islamophobia as if it were an actual news source.
The extrapolation on the other axis is even more fun. "Let's extrapolate six orders of magnitude down from the simplest known life (twice the log range of the entire span of known life), assuming the mechanics of complexity works exactly the same in the region between 10^6 and 1 base pairs!"
I'm sorry, I don't consider "stringing together Sci-Fi plot device jargon for nonexistent magic devices" to be "close to breaking" relativistic theories on FTL motion.
What's wrong with connecting dots?
Well, for one thing, there's zero explanation of why/how they chose the particular dots they connected (or even precisely what they refer to), other than "hey, if we cherry-pick these particular 6 points, they lie on a line that proves our hypothesis!".
Yep, and the ideas represented by the words we speak aren't remotely accurately portrayed by the shape of the letters we write. Symbolic thought is a deceptive bitch!