But that's what makes it so efficient! Why does nature insist on creating new lifeforms individually, rather than simply instantiating new objects of known classes?
If you want to keep you sooper-seekrit advantage, it's called a "trade secret" and you don't patent it.
If your technology is so non-useful that someone can easily design around it and capture the market in 18 months, it is either useless, or so trivial that it shouldn't be patented in the first place.
The problem is that a new invention (patentable) is often tied to a business idea (not patentable). Disclosing the invention means implicitly disclosing at least part of the idea. The inventor is forked: either his business idea is revealed to the market before time, and can therefore be copied approximately before launch; or he keeps it secret but foregoes all legal protection and the thing can be copied almost exactly after launch.
The problem is that Babbage didn't actually have any "computing babies" -- his computing genotype died out, and a new computer bloodline evolved years later. Turing was part of that family tree.
The Royal Navy frequently has a clue, the RAF complain, and the MoD tell the Royal Navy to stop buying better planes than the idiots at the air force....
Dawkins used to reason with them. After years of getting nowhere he gave up and now resorts to insults. And I don't blame him. There's little to be gained by having a discussion with someone who's brain has had its critical reasoning ability turned off.
Dawkins never attempted to reason with the religious. Dawkins always starts his argument with the premise that religion is wrong. It is not "reasoning" to start a debate with "you are deluded and wrong; let me tell you why."
Even before he started writing his anti-theistic polemics, he was actively anti-theistic. Isn't it in the first page of The Selfish Gene that he refers to the mistranslation of "young woman" as "virgin"? It's completely off-topic for the book and unnecessarily inflammatory.
In fact, I would say that Dawkins has done more than any other individual to turn religious people away from science. He has gone out there and actively promoted an irreconcilable division between science and faith. He has told people that if they educate themselves, they will cease to believe.
Dawkins is the antichrist of science. He comes in the guise of a saint and corrupts those who follow him, fomenting division.
He is also an unbearably smug and bitter individual.
Ah, this is where you have your terminology confused:
Agnostic - You are not sure whether to believe in a god.
Tis indeed you who have your terminology confused. The Greek agnostics didn't say "I don't know whether there are gods or not," but rather "I cannot know whether there is a god or not." The only intellectually sound standpoint is agnosticism. I was an agnostic when I believed in God (ie. the Christian one), and I am an agnostic now that I do not believe in God.
Was medicine "not science" when they believed in "bad blood" and treated people with leaches? A wrong theory is scientifically valid if no more plausible theory is available. When religion first emerged, no more plausible theory was available. At the time, it fitted the observed universe -- it is a very human thing (and not specific to religion) to anthropomorphise and assume someone's actively controlling events. (Consider how scarily believable the the College Humour God of Tetris sketch is. Who never found themselves believing there was something in the program "deciding" on the pieces rather than simply selecting them randomly.) It was a reasonable theory at the time, given the knowledge. Once it was widely accepted, it remained a reasonable theory for a while. Just because it isn't a reasonable theory now, doesn't mean it never was.
Except that God is said to be eternal and timeless. A recent experiment indicates that decisions on quantum entanglement propagate backwards through time. An omniscient deity not bound by "the arrow of time" could see through an extension of quantum entanglement. Imagine if every particle in the physical universe was entangled with one in "Godspace" (for wont of a better word). He would therefore be able to observe the results of the resolution of quantum states in our universe before the decisions had been made.
Of course, I'm not saying this as a genuine theory, but as a demonstration that the scientific disproof of the supernatural is a fool's errand....
And the (admittedly vast) majority of religious people who are religious simply because they're trying to fit in with some religious social context.
Are you an atheist? Are you one because of independent thought or because you're trying to fit in with some atheistic social context?
I ask this because I used to be a catholic. I now call myself "agnostic". I lost my faith because I was surrounded by atheists and because on some level I wanted to fit in in this social context. I cannot claim that my lack of belief is caused by increased reasoning or analytical thinking (I have never needed to think as analytically in my professional career as I had to do as a student), so I cannot project any notion of "correctness" onto it. It would be intellectual arrogance to ascribe any deeper cause to it than simple social dynamics.
Of course, to some people, anything that some guy in a big hat (or some ancient book) says seems to make sense without further evaluation, but those are the exception rather than the rule.
Nope -- they're the rule, not the exception. See the Milgram Experiment. We all defer to authority.
Don't talk for people other than yourselves. Before I "lost my faith", I felt stigmatised for having a religion. (living in urban Scotland)
Post-revolutionary French is world-renowned for it's "anticléricisme" -- the rejection of religious faith coupled with a massive antipathy towards the clergy.
Atheism appears to be quite broadly accepted in the Western world....
That was just a song. Generalísimo Francisco Franco had actually taken a bullet to the groin as a young soldier and allegedly did have only one ball. Of course, we didn't bother to depose that fascist dictator and left him to oppress and murder for almost 40 years. We have a long history of picking which countries we can be bothered to rescue....
So yeah, I believe what you say about an enormous guilt complex. But IMO it's better than constant denial, excuses, and back-blaming -- that's what most prevalent in other nations, including my own, when their various collusions and atrocities are discussed.
And disgustingly, when people talk of atrocities, we all point towards Germany. My country forcibly rounded up people of Italian descent and shipped them to Canada. Or rather "tried to ship them to Canada, but crashed the boat and drowned the lot of them in the middle of the night". Nice. Then we slaughtered the people of Dresden with horrific incendiary devices to stop East Germans fleeing the oncoming Soviet army, before helping round up the cossacks so that Stalin could have them all shot because there weren't enough trucks to transport them all to the gulags.
But the line of apples isn't a natural phenomenon -- someone has to consciously line them up. That makes even a physical line of apples an abstraction, rather than a natural phenomenon. An abstract representation of an abstract phenomenon is a second-order abstraction. A second-order abstraction is never intuitive.
I disagree with this statement. Intelligence is mostly controlled by your genes, it isn't even disputed in the science community. Has nothing to do with how you were raised.
"mostly controlled by genes", probably. "nothing to do with how you were raised", not true. The reason that the twins/adoption studies evidence isn't more widely discussed is that it is of zero practical use -- it tells us people are different, but it gives us no insight into how to identify or deal with different types of people.
A medical analogy (I don't drive, so I don't do car analogies).
There are two diseases. One won't kill you unless you attempt to treat it with aspirin. One will kill you unless you treat it with aspirin. Other than that, the symptoms of the two diseases are identical.
Until some clever doctor works out how to tell the two apart, there's nothing that can be done.
Nor do I know where the AC was getting his info, but he's right and you're wrong. IQ is highly heritable. WP has a detailed article on this.
Reference 7 in the WP article is to a 2004 meta-analysis that puts the heritability figure at about 85% (meaning that heredity explains about 85% of the variance in adult IQ).
Correlation is not causation. Latest news from the causation camp is that they have found the "intelligence gene". However, they say it's only responsible for 1.29 IQ points. That's 1.29% , not 85%.
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But that's what makes it so efficient! Why does nature insist on creating new lifeforms individually, rather than simply instantiating new objects of known classes?
one of the earliest forms of life requires a host for breeding.
really?
Pop-culture reference. Plus current zeitgeist.
If you want to keep you sooper-seekrit advantage, it's called a "trade secret" and you don't patent it.
If your technology is so non-useful that someone can easily design around it and capture the market in 18 months, it is either useless, or so trivial that it shouldn't be patented in the first place.
The problem is that a new invention (patentable) is often tied to a business idea (not patentable). Disclosing the invention means implicitly disclosing at least part of the idea. The inventor is forked: either his business idea is revealed to the market before time, and can therefore be copied approximately before launch; or he keeps it secret but foregoes all legal protection and the thing can be copied almost exactly after launch.
The problem is that Babbage didn't actually have any "computing babies" -- his computing genotype died out, and a new computer bloodline evolved years later. Turing was part of that family tree.
Sorry for the mildly mixed metaphor.
The Royal Navy frequently has a clue, the RAF complain, and the MoD tell the Royal Navy to stop buying better planes than the idiots at the air force....
It doesn't work.
Dawkins used to reason with them. After years of getting nowhere he gave up and now resorts to insults. And I don't blame him. There's little to be gained by having a discussion with someone who's brain has had its critical reasoning ability turned off.
Dawkins never attempted to reason with the religious. Dawkins always starts his argument with the premise that religion is wrong. It is not "reasoning" to start a debate with "you are deluded and wrong; let me tell you why."
Even before he started writing his anti-theistic polemics, he was actively anti-theistic. Isn't it in the first page of The Selfish Gene that he refers to the mistranslation of "young woman" as "virgin"? It's completely off-topic for the book and unnecessarily inflammatory.
In fact, I would say that Dawkins has done more than any other individual to turn religious people away from science. He has gone out there and actively promoted an irreconcilable division between science and faith. He has told people that if they educate themselves, they will cease to believe.
Dawkins is the antichrist of science. He comes in the guise of a saint and corrupts those who follow him, fomenting division.
He is also an unbearably smug and bitter individual.
To paraphrase Mark Twain - never argue with an idiot, first they take you down to their level and then they beat you with experience
Indeed. And there has never been a bigger idiot than Richard Dawkins. The man is a fool.
Ah, this is where you have your terminology confused:
Tis indeed you who have your terminology confused. The Greek agnostics didn't say "I don't know whether there are gods or not," but rather "I cannot know whether there is a god or not." The only intellectually sound standpoint is agnosticism. I was an agnostic when I believed in God (ie. the Christian one), and I am an agnostic now that I do not believe in God.
French is my point. It's basically the result of learning Latin badly. See also Spanish, Portuguese, etc...
Was medicine "not science" when they believed in "bad blood" and treated people with leaches? A wrong theory is scientifically valid if no more plausible theory is available. When religion first emerged, no more plausible theory was available. At the time, it fitted the observed universe -- it is a very human thing (and not specific to religion) to anthropomorphise and assume someone's actively controlling events. (Consider how scarily believable the the College Humour God of Tetris sketch is. Who never found themselves believing there was something in the program "deciding" on the pieces rather than simply selecting them randomly.) It was a reasonable theory at the time, given the knowledge. Once it was widely accepted, it remained a reasonable theory for a while. Just because it isn't a reasonable theory now, doesn't mean it never was.
Except that God is said to be eternal and timeless. A recent experiment indicates that decisions on quantum entanglement propagate backwards through time. An omniscient deity not bound by "the arrow of time" could see through an extension of quantum entanglement. Imagine if every particle in the physical universe was entangled with one in "Godspace" (for wont of a better word). He would therefore be able to observe the results of the resolution of quantum states in our universe before the decisions had been made.
Of course, I'm not saying this as a genuine theory, but as a demonstration that the scientific disproof of the supernatural is a fool's errand....
Or to put it another way, the Romans invaded most of Europe, and look how badly the conquered nations fared at trying to learn Latin...
And the (admittedly vast) majority of religious people who are religious simply because they're trying to fit in with some religious social context.
Are you an atheist? Are you one because of independent thought or because you're trying to fit in with some atheistic social context?
I ask this because I used to be a catholic. I now call myself "agnostic". I lost my faith because I was surrounded by atheists and because on some level I wanted to fit in in this social context. I cannot claim that my lack of belief is caused by increased reasoning or analytical thinking (I have never needed to think as analytically in my professional career as I had to do as a student), so I cannot project any notion of "correctness" onto it. It would be intellectual arrogance to ascribe any deeper cause to it than simple social dynamics.
Of course, to some people, anything that some guy in a big hat (or some ancient book) says seems to make sense without further evaluation, but those are the exception rather than the rule.
Nope -- they're the rule, not the exception. See the Milgram Experiment. We all defer to authority.
Don't talk for people other than yourselves. Before I "lost my faith", I felt stigmatised for having a religion. (living in urban Scotland)
Post-revolutionary French is world-renowned for it's "anticléricisme" -- the rejection of religious faith coupled with a massive antipathy towards the clergy.
Atheism appears to be quite broadly accepted in the Western world....
Then would the religious folks all go to hell? "all liars" lol
If the scripture is false, then there is no hell to which they can go. If the scripture is true, then they are telling the truth.
Pascal's wager, innit?
That was just a song. Generalísimo Francisco Franco had actually taken a bullet to the groin as a young soldier and allegedly did have only one ball. Of course, we didn't bother to depose that fascist dictator and left him to oppress and murder for almost 40 years. We have a long history of picking which countries we can be bothered to rescue....
So yeah, I believe what you say about an enormous guilt complex. But IMO it's better than constant denial, excuses, and back-blaming -- that's what most prevalent in other nations, including my own, when their various collusions and atrocities are discussed.
And disgustingly, when people talk of atrocities, we all point towards Germany. My country forcibly rounded up people of Italian descent and shipped them to Canada. Or rather "tried to ship them to Canada, but crashed the boat and drowned the lot of them in the middle of the night". Nice. Then we slaughtered the people of Dresden with horrific incendiary devices to stop East Germans fleeing the oncoming Soviet army, before helping round up the cossacks so that Stalin could have them all shot because there weren't enough trucks to transport them all to the gulags.
But the line of apples isn't a natural phenomenon -- someone has to consciously line them up. That makes even a physical line of apples an abstraction, rather than a natural phenomenon. An abstract representation of an abstract phenomenon is a second-order abstraction. A second-order abstraction is never intuitive.
Nope. A bar representing proportion is a first-order abstraction because the line is an abstract analogue of a physical unit.
A numberline is a second order abstraction because it takes an arbitrary abstract range and maps it onto an abstract analogue of proportion.
Just because the two things look the same does not mean they are conceptually the same.
I disagree with this statement. Intelligence is mostly controlled by your genes, it isn't even disputed in the science community. Has nothing to do with how you were raised.
"mostly controlled by genes", probably. "nothing to do with how you were raised", not true. The reason that the twins/adoption studies evidence isn't more widely discussed is that it is of zero practical use -- it tells us people are different, but it gives us no insight into how to identify or deal with different types of people.
A medical analogy (I don't drive, so I don't do car analogies).
There are two diseases. One won't kill you unless you attempt to treat it with aspirin. One will kill you unless you treat it with aspirin. Other than that, the symptoms of the two diseases are identical.
Until some clever doctor works out how to tell the two apart, there's nothing that can be done.
Nor do I know where the AC was getting his info, but he's right and you're wrong. IQ is highly heritable. WP has a detailed article on this. Reference 7 in the WP article is to a 2004 meta-analysis that puts the heritability figure at about 85% (meaning that heredity explains about 85% of the variance in adult IQ).
Correlation is not causation. Latest news from the causation camp is that they have found the "intelligence gene". However, they say it's only responsible for 1.29 IQ points. That's 1.29% , not 85%.
Oh, you see, you're resorting to personal attacks because you can't argue against his massive intellect.
Because everyone knows that you can't argue against something that doesn't exist.
Except Dawkins, who spends his entire life arguing against something that he says doesn't exist.
It's not like he's got anything better to do with his time, though -- he's only a biologist.
Because, of course, vocal outpourings of grief are frowned upon in modern society.
Perhaps one of the hunters was a cannibal, and so five went in but only 1 came out with a big ....