If you say "Assume A,..., therefore A", you can translate this to "If A then A" (this is done in the "natural deduction" system as the introduction rule for if). And "If A then A" is equivalent to "not A or A" which is in fact a tautology. That or a similar rule exists in any sane system allowing the use of assumptions/premises.
In reply to the GP, a circular argument is very bad, but a tautology in general is OK; in fact all of the logical theorems are by definition tautologies. A circular argument is in fact a tautology, but a tautology is not a circular argument (since the circular argument is a tautology that would have one believe that the premises do not presume the conclusion)
that they actually *do* have their nuke(s). Because if they don't, we just might decide to invade them because they have WMD. On the other hand, if they can prove that they have nukes, we are going to be a lot more diplomatic about all this.
Also, what does Communist China have to say about all of this? Seeing as North Korea used to be their bitch.
Ending Iran's WMD programmes will not prevent invasion from a hostile foreign power. The only way to ensure their security is to have a suitable deterrent.
I think you are confused here. Researching WMD is a serious crime, and will likely result in powerful countries "asking" you to stop the research. Once you have your weapons, though, you have nothing to be ashamed of -- $powerful_country will no longer want to invade you since you can nuke them.
I'd love to hear the judge say "Liar, liar, pants on fire!"
I wouldn't. Much as I hate SCO, I would rather the judge not be (or even appear to be) biased against them, as this would mean restarting the lawsuit from scratch.
Advertizement is not worthless, its meaningless. Just because an item is advertized doesn't mean its good. On the other hand, things "advertized" by word-of-moouth tend to be good.
Along the same vein, the only costs associated with linux are training and salaries of admins, whereas the costs of Windows include money sent to Redmond. Since for a country, saleries have only an oportunity cost (rather than a monetary and opportunity cost), would the TCO of Linux for a country be less than that for Windows? How does the opportunity cost of Linux support compare to actual money paid to other countries for Windows itself, an AV, and paid support?
Will there ever be a free (as in beer) version of Windows, stripped bare of everything but IE and without any network server capabilities?
They have always had a free version of their products since MS-dos. Pirated Windows (TM) is officially frowned upon, but not to the extent that people who would get linux rather than a legal copy of windows would be forced to go legal.
Why doesn't linux just speak for itself instead of relying upon a few thousand nasal whines?
So, how much money is Linux, Inc. spending on advertizing? Advertizing == meaningless; word-of-mouth == good. The other reason that Linux people have to tell others about Linux is the simple fact that almost nobody has tried it, and a good many haven't even heard of Linux. (This would be quite similar to me telling you about the cherimoya (also called custard apple), which I think is "the most delicious fruit known to men", though Mark Twain said so first. But I bet you have never tried it so you don't give a shit.)
What, you've been to a third world country where people go hungry? Most are agrarian economies, so food is quite easy to come by (and yes, I usually get better food in my "underdeveloped" country than here in the great USA. I come from Paraguay.).
Now, expected value, which is what you are talking about. E(min) = P(min)*val = 1.553 minutes, in this case. So, you could look at it as you being right.
Glad we agree on this. The guy is wrong, it takes more than one minute, on average.
Or you could recognize that the other way to go about this, the realization that when the cdf crosses 0.5, you've hit the point at which 50% of the time you will have succeeded, yields a 1 minute average trial.
Well, it seems we disagree here. Just because more than 50% of the trials take one minute doesn't make the average time per trial one minute. Reread what he said average time to generate HHHH is now 1 minute., then realize that he said the average time to generate HHHH, not the time the average generation of HHHH takes (the latter would be useless anyways, given the context).
Your math sucks, by the way, or possibly you just can't read. He doesn't assume p=1 for anything in the coin example: if you can make 4 flips per minute, and you need a p(.5^4)=0.0625 event, it will on average take you eight trials (8 minutes, in this case). If you have 16 people doing this, on *average* at least one person will flip HHHH in the first minute. Where the fuck does a probability of one come in?
Moron. Learn some math before insulting my own. While on average it will take 16 flips to get one HHHH, on average it will take more than one set of 16 flips to get at least one HHHH. Because they are done in sets, what happens is that sometimes more than one person flips HHHH in the first set of 16 flips, and sometimes nobody does. And it will never take less than one set of flips to get HHHH but sometimes take more than one set of flips, so on average it will take more than one set of flips, which then translates to more than one minute. I hope that you can understand this now that I explained it without any math.
You seem to be particularly full of shit today. Atheism is not a religion. It is a either a lack of belief that God exists or a positive belief that God does NOT exist. This is just as much a religion as beliefing that I don't have 3 arms is a religion. I dont seem to have 3 arms, so I believe I dont have 3 arms.
You seem to have not defined religion and are also building a straw man argument (that any belief, supported or not, constitutes a religion). Religion is basically a bunch of beliefs relating to stuff like god(s), the afterlife, and where we came from. Please note that some religions don't believe in any gods (I think Hinduism or Buddism was one, they believe in reincarnation but not a god). So be careful not to define religion as belief in a god(s), if you ever do define it.
Your claims that any evidence to the contrary is discarded or reinterpretted is simply not true. In fact if evolution didn't work, we would not be able to breed specific breeds of dogs, cats, flowers, etc etc.
You've never heard of natural selection, have you? Few and stupid are those that dispute natural selection. Less obviously, mutations can cause inability to breed with one's former species, but I have yet to see anything useful evolve.
Do creationists believe that the Dodo bird is still alive in the wild? Either God never created a Dodo bird, or perhaps the Dodo bird was unfit.
Do evolutionists believe that the Dodo bird is still alive in the wild? Either evolution never created a Dodo bird, or perhaps the Dodo bird was unfit. Or maybe man wiped them out.
Interesting read. Has a lot more facts and references than my own posts, but its author fails math class. Here are two of his errors: At the moment, since we have no idea how probable life is, it's virtually impossible to assign any meaningful probabilities to any of the steps to life except the first two (monomers to polymers p=1.0, formation of catalytic polymers p=1.0). For the replicating polymers to hypercycle transition, the probability may well be 1.0 if Kauffman is right about catalytic closure and his phase transition models, but this requires real chemistry and more detailed modelling to confirm.
No, probability is never equal to one. Yes it can come really frigging close, but I don't see any error margins and I can't assume there are any since this is not a measurement but a pure number.
Let's go back to our example with the coins. Say it takes a minute to toss the coins 4 times; to generate HHHH would take on average 8 minutes. Now get 16 friends, each with a coin, to all flip the coin simultaneously 4 times; the average time to generate HHHH is now 1 minute.
Here he again assumes a probability of one. The probability of at least one of 16 people flipping 4 heads in a row on their first try is 1-(1-1/16)^16 ~= 64% although it is also likely that more than one person will flip 4 heads.
Overall worth a read, but he should get his math straight before accusing others of doing bad math.
Now, the problem here isn't your math, but your assumptions. You're doing a calculation assuming that somehow this entire bacterium, or at least its DNA, self-assembles from random.
I think it is a fair assumption. Something that self-replicates has to exist before evolution can make things easier. But you're right about my assumptions, I just pulled them out of my ass but I think they are reasonable.
First, evolution does not address the origin of life. It addresses the origin of species.
But "evolution" does address the origin of life, because that is how the word is used (most people think evolution makes god redundant, since it explains life). The Theory of Evolution is the more specific one regarding speciation. Sorry to be a nitpick, but you were also being a nitpick.
Presumably selection processes would have been involved and you don't do it all at once, and you don't do it from random.
Repeat after me, natural selection won't work unless you have something to select from. And yes, there is a minimum that you must do all at once and you must do it from random. Maybe this minimum is simpler than 1/10 of the simplest bacteria (it would have to be about 1/1000 of the simplest bacteria for my example assuming one try per atom in the visible universe per second since the big bang to fail). I've heard of self-repicationg clay structures, but they don't mutate, and aren't remotely related to DNA anyways. Oh, and you also want your proteins to match your DNA, I don't know how that works though.
I think the years of careful observation coupled to the twenty years Darwin spent working on his ideas prior to publication was a bit more important to the acceptance of evolution than their religous implications.
Heh. Are you saying that working hard makes your theory true:-)</misread> Actually, though, I was talking about the scientific implications of there being no god. Specifically, I said scientists who didn't like god-did-it explanations and atheists (who would naturally like anything in support of their beliefs) were happy with evolution (and I don't think anything is wrong with that).
While there some may have believed in an infinite universe at the time, and I'm not at all sure that this opinion prevailed, it wasn't based on science.
This proves your point how? Was the existence of god based on science, since it was so popular before evolution came along?
So I'm calling crap. Especially if you "can't do the math." Cite some serious sources, not creationists or their lackeys.
OK, you do the math, or find someone who has. I haven't found any, and I also can't do it since I don't know what error percentage is acceptable, and even then an error in one place would not be as bad as an error in another, and that would require even more knowledge I don't have.
If you want some more math, assume a 10% error rate is acceptable, and use something one tenth as complex as the simplest known bacteria (60,000 base pairs) as the target. Then we have 54000^6000*4^6000 ~= 4^47162*4^6000 == 4^53162 correct combinations of 60000 base pairs. (explanation of figures 54000^6000 is the number of places you can put an error to the power of the number of errors, 4^6000 is the number of possible errors if placed in series ~= means approximately equal and if you don't know what I did there don't bother talking to me) Now 4^53162/4^60000 = 4^-6838 ~= 10^-4116 is the probability that a string of 60000 base pairs will be close enough. Again with a generous one try per atom in the known univers per second since the big bang, this is 10^106*10^-4116 == 10^-4010, which is still well within the "impossible" range. Of course, feel free to tell me I suck at math if you can correct me. Although I do think my little overestimate with regards to hom many trys chance gets should make up for any inaccuracies.
Why don't you think evolution was accepted on its merits?
It was, seing as it is the only explanation for life that doesn't involve god (and thus wins by Occam's Razor). I could also say, why don't you think Christianity was accepted by its merits? So don't go making ad populum arguments about this one.
More importantly, all the nonsense about probabilities and bases pairs is CRAP, since DNA was not recognized until the middle of the 20th century.
This is one of the best points you make. However, people were not quite ignorant at that time, having known somewhat of Gregom Mendel's work with genetics (not sure of my timeline here, but this was also one of the reasons Lamarkian evolution was rejected).
I'd like to clear up a misunderstanding you have about how evolution works. You seem to be making an analogy between the likelihood of a given DNA sequence being assembled by chance vs. the likelihood of the King James Bible being typed by chance.
No, I am explaining why an analogy used in support of evolution would have been so rediculous no one could have accepted it if the universe was not thought to be infinite.
But evolution isn't chance. It's inheritable change.
No, that only works when you already have a creature able to reproduce. Like I said, the simplest bacterium is 600,000 base pairs, which is nowhere near what would be necessary. I understand that the first creature is thought to have been much simpler, but they have yet to say how much simpler.
Crap should be shouted down, always. Evolution, no matter what you or 44% of Americans think about it, isn't religous or a bad scientific theory.
I'd just like to take the time to point out that the theory of evolution was only accepted for two reasons (speaking of the past, not now): 1: It was an explanation that did not involve a god. This was incredibly important because it got support from atheists and scientists who were sick of "God did it" being used as an explanation for something people didn't understand instead of doing research. It is also more in keeping with Occham's Razor (though some would argue this).
2: At that time, the universe was thought to be infinite. This is probably the most important reason because it means remotely-possible==certain. Hence a monkey randomly hitting keys could write the entire text of the Bible given an infinite amount of time (or an infinite number of monkeys in a very short time). Now that we know there are only 10^80 atoms in the universe, and that the univese is only about 15 billion years old (less than 10^20 seconds), such comparisons would be rediculous. Eg if 10^80 monkeys typed 3.5 million characters every second since the begining of the universe, they would have a chance of 3.5*10^6*10^80*10^20/26^3500000 10^106/10^350000 = 10^-3499993 of typing out the text of the King James version of the Bible. And that was being far more generous than possible. Mathematicians consider 10^-300 impossible. So without an infinite number of tries, monkeys typing out particular sequences is laughable.
For those who care, the simplest bacteria has 600,000 base pairs. In the case of life, it is unreasonable to expect a particular sequence, though nobody knows how likely it is that a particular sequence would form a living cell (or at least self-replicating). Also, the probability is drastically increased if the item is allowed to be created in chunks rather than whole, or if a certain amount of errors was tolerable, both of which apply to evolution but I can't do the math.
What about this: What if I put up a website dedicated to aid in tracking down copyright infringers? People who noticed a site hosting copyright infringing material could write a short report consisting of the host website and a link to the infringing material as proof. Then, they wait for the police to take down the infringing websites. And if other people happen to use my website to download illegal content, would it still be my fault? After all, the website is just there to aid global law enforcement.
on a PC my left hand never leaves the keyboard -- always ready to click shift or ctrl or alt.
Funny, on my linux PC I browse with just the mouse (barring Slashdot and Google and occasionally typing in a url). Because we have a three-button mouse. Middle-click to open in a new tab. Also being able to select-and-paste with just the mouse is a godsend. This is one feature that I miss the most in Apple or Windows, just select and middle-click.
America is still the most free country in the world
I'm from Paraguay, and I can tell you that there is much more freedom there than in the US (having lived in both). Its also more corrupt, and its law enforcement is not nearly as good, but there is still more freedom. If you want freedom, go to any third world country, I'm sure they (with a few exceptions) are more free than the US.
AC said: Ah! Wonderful ad hominem--and, of course, it leaves the actually issue totally undressed. If you have nothing to respond with, why waste the bandwidth?
My reply: Ah! Wonderful ad hominem--and, of course, it leaves the actual issue totally unadressed. If you have nothing to respond with, why waste the bandwidth?
This distinction is important because we will learn to telecopy objects and telecopy live organisms before we learn to teleport them.
Are you sure about this? At the very least you won't be able to copy a quantum state without destroying/rearranging the original. I don't know if the quantum state is important to people, but if it is, you won't be able to telecopy them.
Slashdot Mirror
If you say "Assume A, ..., therefore A", you can translate this to "If A then A" (this is done in the "natural deduction" system as the introduction rule for if). And "If A then A" is equivalent to "not A or A" which is in fact a tautology. That or a similar rule exists in any sane system allowing the use of assumptions/premises.
In reply to the GP, a circular argument is very bad, but a tautology in general is OK; in fact all of the logical theorems are by definition tautologies. A circular argument is in fact a tautology, but a tautology is not a circular argument (since the circular argument is a tautology that would have one believe that the premises do not presume the conclusion)
Opera and Firefox run *much faster* on Linux and Macs than IE does. I bet their only speed gains come from being integrated into the OS.
that they actually *do* have their nuke(s). Because if they don't, we just might decide to invade them because they have WMD. On the other hand, if they can prove that they have nukes, we are going to be a lot more diplomatic about all this.
Also, what does Communist China have to say about all of this? Seeing as North Korea used to be their bitch.
Ending Iran's WMD programmes will not prevent invasion from a hostile foreign power. The only way to ensure their security is to have a suitable deterrent.
I think you are confused here. Researching WMD is a serious crime, and will likely result in powerful countries "asking" you to stop the research. Once you have your weapons, though, you have nothing to be ashamed of -- $powerful_country will no longer want to invade you since you can nuke them.
I'd love to hear the judge say "Liar, liar, pants on fire!"
I wouldn't. Much as I hate SCO, I would rather the judge not be (or even appear to be) biased against them, as this would mean restarting the lawsuit from scratch.
Advertizement is not worthless, its meaningless. Just because an item is advertized doesn't mean its good. On the other hand, things "advertized" by word-of-moouth tend to be good.
intentionally or unintentionally violate any applicable local, state, national or international law..
Sure, I promise I won't unintentionally violate any laws. WTF?
Along the same vein, the only costs associated with linux are training and salaries of admins, whereas the costs of Windows include money sent to Redmond. Since for a country, saleries have only an oportunity cost (rather than a monetary and opportunity cost), would the TCO of Linux for a country be less than that for Windows? How does the opportunity cost of Linux support compare to actual money paid to other countries for Windows itself, an AV, and paid support?
FUD? What FUD? I don't see any FUD.
Will there ever be a free (as in beer) version of Windows, stripped bare of everything but IE and without any network server capabilities?
They have always had a free version of their products since MS-dos. Pirated Windows (TM) is officially frowned upon, but not to the extent that people who would get linux rather than a legal copy of windows would be forced to go legal.
Why doesn't linux just speak for itself instead of relying upon a few thousand nasal whines?
So, how much money is Linux, Inc. spending on advertizing? Advertizing == meaningless; word-of-mouth == good. The other reason that Linux people have to tell others about Linux is the simple fact that almost nobody has tried it, and a good many haven't even heard of Linux. (This would be quite similar to me telling you about the cherimoya (also called custard apple), which I think is "the most delicious fruit known to men", though Mark Twain said so first. But I bet you have never tried it so you don't give a shit.)
Because a laptop is gonna fill a hungry stomach.
What, you've been to a third world country where people go hungry? Most are agrarian economies, so food is quite easy to come by (and yes, I usually get better food in my "underdeveloped" country than here in the great USA. I come from Paraguay.).
Now, expected value, which is what you are talking about. E(min) = P(min)*val = 1.553 minutes, in this case. So, you could look at it as you being right.
Glad we agree on this. The guy is wrong, it takes more than one minute, on average.
Or you could recognize that the other way to go about this, the realization that when the cdf crosses 0.5, you've hit the point at which 50% of the time you will have succeeded, yields a 1 minute average trial.
Well, it seems we disagree here. Just because more than 50% of the trials take one minute doesn't make the average time per trial one minute. Reread what he said average time to generate HHHH is now 1 minute., then realize that he said the average time to generate HHHH, not the time the average generation of HHHH takes (the latter would be useless anyways, given the context).
Your math sucks, by the way, or possibly you just can't read. He doesn't assume p=1 for anything in the coin example: if you can make 4 flips per minute, and you need a p(.5^4)=0.0625 event, it will on average take you eight trials (8 minutes, in this case). If you have 16 people doing this, on *average* at least one person will flip HHHH in the first minute. Where the fuck does a probability of one come in?
Moron. Learn some math before insulting my own. While on average it will take 16 flips to get one HHHH, on average it will take more than one set of 16 flips to get at least one HHHH. Because they are done in sets, what happens is that sometimes more than one person flips HHHH in the first set of 16 flips, and sometimes nobody does. And it will never take less than one set of flips to get HHHH but sometimes take more than one set of flips, so on average it will take more than one set of flips, which then translates to more than one minute. I hope that you can understand this now that I explained it without any math.
You seem to be particularly full of shit today.
Atheism is not a religion. It is a either a lack of belief that God exists or a positive belief that God does NOT exist. This is just as much a religion as beliefing that I don't have 3 arms is a religion. I dont seem to have 3 arms, so I believe I dont have 3 arms.
You seem to have not defined religion and are also building a straw man argument (that any belief, supported or not, constitutes a religion). Religion is basically a bunch of beliefs relating to stuff like god(s), the afterlife, and where we came from. Please note that some religions don't believe in any gods (I think Hinduism or Buddism was one, they believe in reincarnation but not a god). So be careful not to define religion as belief in a god(s), if you ever do define it.
Your claims that any evidence to the contrary is discarded or reinterpretted is simply not true. In fact if evolution didn't work, we would not be able to breed specific breeds of dogs, cats, flowers, etc etc.
You've never heard of natural selection, have you? Few and stupid are those that dispute natural selection. Less obviously, mutations can cause inability to breed with one's former species, but I have yet to see anything useful evolve.
Do creationists believe that the Dodo bird is still alive in the wild? Either God never created a Dodo bird, or perhaps the Dodo bird was unfit.
Do evolutionists believe that the Dodo bird is still alive in the wild? Either evolution never created a Dodo bird, or perhaps the Dodo bird was unfit. Or maybe man wiped them out.
Interesting read. Has a lot more facts and references than my own posts, but its author fails math class. Here are two of his errors:
At the moment, since we have no idea how probable life is, it's virtually impossible to assign any meaningful probabilities to any of the steps to life except the first two (monomers to polymers p=1.0, formation of catalytic polymers p=1.0). For the replicating polymers to hypercycle transition, the probability may well be 1.0 if Kauffman is right about catalytic closure and his phase transition models, but this requires real chemistry and more detailed modelling to confirm.
No, probability is never equal to one. Yes it can come really frigging close, but I don't see any error margins and I can't assume there are any since this is not a measurement but a pure number.
Let's go back to our example with the coins. Say it takes a minute to toss the coins 4 times; to generate HHHH would take on average 8 minutes. Now get 16 friends, each with a coin, to all flip the coin simultaneously 4 times; the average time to generate HHHH is now 1 minute.
Here he again assumes a probability of one. The probability of at least one of 16 people flipping 4 heads in a row on their first try is 1-(1-1/16)^16 ~= 64% although it is also likely that more than one person will flip 4 heads.
Overall worth a read, but he should get his math straight before accusing others of doing bad math.
Now, the problem here isn't your math, but your assumptions. You're doing a calculation assuming that somehow this entire bacterium, or at least its DNA, self-assembles from random.
I think it is a fair assumption. Something that self-replicates has to exist before evolution can make things easier. But you're right about my assumptions, I just pulled them out of my ass but I think they are reasonable.
First, evolution does not address the origin of life. It addresses the origin of species.
But "evolution" does address the origin of life, because that is how the word is used (most people think evolution makes god redundant, since it explains life). The Theory of Evolution is the more specific one regarding speciation. Sorry to be a nitpick, but you were also being a nitpick.
Presumably selection processes would have been involved and you don't do it all at once, and you don't do it from random.
Repeat after me, natural selection won't work unless you have something to select from. And yes, there is a minimum that you must do all at once and you must do it from random. Maybe this minimum is simpler than 1/10 of the simplest bacteria (it would have to be about 1/1000 of the simplest bacteria for my example assuming one try per atom in the visible universe per second since the big bang to fail). I've heard of self-repicationg clay structures, but they don't mutate, and aren't remotely related to DNA anyways. Oh, and you also want your proteins to match your DNA, I don't know how that works though.
I think the years of careful observation coupled to the twenty years Darwin spent working on his ideas prior to publication was a bit more important to the acceptance of evolution than their religous implications.
:-)</misread> Actually, though, I was talking about the scientific implications of there being no god. Specifically, I said scientists who didn't like god-did-it explanations and atheists (who would naturally like anything in support of their beliefs) were happy with evolution (and I don't think anything is wrong with that).
Heh. Are you saying that working hard makes your theory true
While there some may have believed in an infinite universe at the time, and I'm not at all sure that this opinion prevailed, it wasn't based on science.
This proves your point how? Was the existence of god based on science, since it was so popular before evolution came along?
So I'm calling crap. Especially if you "can't do the math." Cite some serious sources, not creationists or their lackeys.
OK, you do the math, or find someone who has. I haven't found any, and I also can't do it since I don't know what error percentage is acceptable, and even then an error in one place would not be as bad as an error in another, and that would require even more knowledge I don't have.
If you want some more math, assume a 10% error rate is acceptable, and use something one tenth as complex as the simplest known bacteria (60,000 base pairs) as the target. Then we have 54000^6000*4^6000 ~= 4^47162*4^6000 == 4^53162 correct combinations of 60000 base pairs. (explanation of figures 54000^6000 is the number of places you can put an error to the power of the number of errors, 4^6000 is the number of possible errors if placed in series ~= means approximately equal and if you don't know what I did there don't bother talking to me) Now 4^53162/4^60000 = 4^-6838 ~= 10^-4116 is the probability that a string of 60000 base pairs will be close enough. Again with a generous one try per atom in the known univers per second since the big bang, this is 10^106*10^-4116 == 10^-4010, which is still well within the "impossible" range. Of course, feel free to tell me I suck at math if you can correct me. Although I do think my little overestimate with regards to hom many trys chance gets should make up for any inaccuracies.
Why don't you think evolution was accepted on its merits?
It was, seing as it is the only explanation for life that doesn't involve god (and thus wins by Occam's Razor). I could also say, why don't you think Christianity was accepted by its merits? So don't go making ad populum arguments about this one.
More importantly, all the nonsense about probabilities and bases pairs is CRAP, since DNA was not recognized until the middle of the 20th century.
This is one of the best points you make. However, people were not quite ignorant at that time, having known somewhat of Gregom Mendel's work with genetics (not sure of my timeline here, but this was also one of the reasons Lamarkian evolution was rejected).
I'd like to clear up a misunderstanding you have about how evolution works. You seem to be making an analogy between the likelihood of a given DNA sequence being assembled by chance vs. the likelihood of the King James Bible being typed by chance.
No, I am explaining why an analogy used in support of evolution would have been so rediculous no one could have accepted it if the universe was not thought to be infinite.
But evolution isn't chance. It's inheritable change.
No, that only works when you already have a creature able to reproduce. Like I said, the simplest bacterium is 600,000 base pairs, which is nowhere near what would be necessary. I understand that the first creature is thought to have been much simpler, but they have yet to say how much simpler.
Crap should be shouted down, always. Evolution, no matter what you or 44% of Americans think about it, isn't religous or a bad scientific theory.
I'd just like to take the time to point out that the theory of evolution was only accepted for two reasons (speaking of the past, not now):
1: It was an explanation that did not involve a god. This was incredibly important because it got support from atheists and scientists who were sick of "God did it" being used as an explanation for something people didn't understand instead of doing research. It is also more in keeping with Occham's Razor (though some would argue this).
2: At that time, the universe was thought to be infinite. This is probably the most important reason because it means remotely-possible==certain. Hence a monkey randomly hitting keys could write the entire text of the Bible given an infinite amount of time (or an infinite number of monkeys in a very short time). Now that we know there are only 10^80 atoms in the universe, and that the univese is only about 15 billion years old (less than 10^20 seconds), such comparisons would be rediculous. Eg if 10^80 monkeys typed 3.5 million characters every second since the begining of the universe, they would have a chance of 3.5*10^6*10^80*10^20/26^3500000 10^106/10^350000 = 10^-3499993 of typing out the text of the King James version of the Bible. And that was being far more generous than possible. Mathematicians consider 10^-300 impossible. So without an infinite number of tries, monkeys typing out particular sequences is laughable.
For those who care, the simplest bacteria has 600,000 base pairs. In the case of life, it is unreasonable to expect a particular sequence, though nobody knows how likely it is that a particular sequence would form a living cell (or at least self-replicating). Also, the probability is drastically increased if the item is allowed to be created in chunks rather than whole, or if a certain amount of errors was tolerable, both of which apply to evolution but I can't do the math.
What about this: What if I put up a website dedicated to aid in tracking down copyright infringers? People who noticed a site hosting copyright infringing material could write a short report consisting of the host website and a link to the infringing material as proof. Then, they wait for the police to take down the infringing websites. And if other people happen to use my website to download illegal content, would it still be my fault? After all, the website is just there to aid global law enforcement.
on a PC my left hand never leaves the keyboard -- always ready to click shift or ctrl or alt.
Funny, on my linux PC I browse with just the mouse (barring Slashdot and Google and occasionally typing in a url). Because we have a three-button mouse. Middle-click to open in a new tab. Also being able to select-and-paste with just the mouse is a godsend. This is one feature that I miss the most in Apple or Windows, just select and middle-click.
America is still the most free country in the world
I'm from Paraguay, and I can tell you that there is much more freedom there than in the US (having lived in both). Its also more corrupt, and its law enforcement is not nearly as good, but there is still more freedom. If you want freedom, go to any third world country, I'm sure they (with a few exceptions) are more free than the US.
AC said: Ah! Wonderful ad hominem--and, of course, it leaves the actually issue totally undressed. If you have nothing to respond with, why waste the bandwidth?
My reply: Ah! Wonderful ad hominem--and, of course, it leaves the actual issue totally unadressed. If you have nothing to respond with, why waste the bandwidth?
This distinction is important because we will learn to telecopy objects and telecopy live organisms before we learn to teleport them.
Are you sure about this? At the very least you won't be able to copy a quantum state without destroying/rearranging the original. I don't know if the quantum state is important to people, but if it is, you won't be able to telecopy them.