The laws of ink and chemistry do not explain the arrangement of symbols that make up a play from Shakespeare or a symphony score from Beethoven.
Chemistry does not explain what we would call "information", but Shakespearean plays and symphonic scores are products of intelligence and creativity (which are fundamentally the same process, if the theory turns out fruitful). The brain is not some black box that requires magic to *poof* create consciousness and intelligence. Chemistry and physics are the laws by which the atoms and matter in the brain are constrained, but based on those laws the brain is able to wire itself into intricate, self-regulating, feeding-back patterns that are able to receive sensory input as well as feedback on themselves to create predictions. I'm currently rereading "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins (founder of Palm and the Graffiti writing system) and his theories on how the brain creates intelligence, prediction, and creativity are logical and intriguing. We we think of as "thought", I believe, ultimately can and will be described in terms of physics and chemistry, but more important in the patterns that can be created through these laws that are self-regulating.
The laws of physics do not explain the arrangement of the DNA programming inherent in all living organisms.
Don't they, though? The laws of chemistry tell us that certain atoms and molecules can only bond together in particular ways, and the molecules in DNA do so in a way that enables it to be self-replicating. Nothing magical about that. I understand that you may recognize all of this in your next point that follows:
The materialistic matter-energy components do not determine these laws, but are governed by them.
But the leap you've made after that in concluding that a complex, intelligent being must have been the Creator and definer of these laws is just that: a leap. Organization and order do not necessarily require an organizer or Watchmaker. Obviously the question of ultimate origins in the universe remains open. The difference is that science continues to probe for the answer to that question, whereas religion asserts that it already knows it.
A materialistic matter-energy universe does not invalidate our existance. IMHO, of course.:)
...something one could grow in ones backyard, for free... ...something else - usually not as good - that requires an entire industrial infrastructure...
Boom, answered your own question.
Re:Shouldn't there be a foot icon?
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It's so sad that I actually get that. *hangs head in shame*
However, I can tell you that most of the content I produce, as well as most of the content I use, are produced _without_ the financial incentive of copyright (Slashdot posts, open source software, Wikipedia articles, etc.)
Take into consideration, though, the cost of production (money and time) of that particular content, as well as the quality of said produced content.
That doesn't seem to make much sense; the appropriately-large block of matter would then itself be generating gravitons, not blocking pull of two masses but adding to it. The whole concept of a "graviton" has never made any sense to me. I see gravity as the curve in space-time; why need a particle to account for it? How could a particle that is being expelled by something work to pull something else closer? Unless the graviton harbored some kind of negative force, when being expelled from one mass and then striking another, normally you get equal but opposite reactions (expelling would push the expelling object away, striking would likewise do the same for the struck object).
Reversing the "polarity" of the force (make it so, number one) of the graviton to be opposite everything else would do it in the maths, but in reality? Granted, we do find some very strange stuff in the universe, but this just doesn't seem to work for me. Unless I'm just not wrapping my head around this at all, can anyone explain how a graviton would be supposed to work? (I understand that if anyone really could, there would probably be a Nobel prize and a gaggle of physicists waiting to talk to them.;)
Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood because my pet just died
If it was a cat, just stick it in a sealed box with some radioactive material next to it, and you'll have a 50/50 chance of ending up in a good mood. Or a worse mood, since now you've been hanging around some radioactive material.
What is under debate, is whether or not it is legal for Google to store a digital copy of copyright works on their servers without permission from the copyright holders.
IANAL either, so is this any different from me typing up a copy of a book I own and storing the text file on my computer? No, I'm not serving it out to anyone, but as you said before, what Google is doing by serving it out is already covered under fair use.
Using the Bible to "prove".... the Bible? I guess it doesn't get much more scientific than that, does it? Just what kind of science was used to cross-reference the Old Testament with the New Testament?
Science is always incomplete, that's why it marches on. I'm 25 years old. I can never observe in the strict sense anything that happened more than 25 years ago. For all I know, I can't observe anything that happened yesterday. But I can accept that reality is what it is and agree that what appears to have happened yesterday or 25 years ago probably did happen and I'm not living in some wickedly quantum universe that just suddenly snapped into existance 10 seconds ago in the particular state that makes history look like it really happened.
From what we can tell now, we may never approach an ultimate, fundamental "truth" to the universe (whatever that means anyway, even if there is one to be had). In the future that may change, and we may know, hey, below those quarks are this and that particle and strings do turn out to be "it" and we are all just the composite of the harmonics of an unimaginally vast symphony. I'm no philosophy buff, but it seems to me that most philosophy deals with questions that are unscientific in nature (morals, ethics, etc., although the evolutionary origins of these types of behaviors has the potential to be explained) or are begging the question ("what is man's place in the universe?" assumes that man has or must have some "purpose"). Ultimately though, all of the mental thought-wrangling means naught if cold, hard physical reality disagrees.
I think religion seeks to pretend to solve these philisophical questions by asserting that it does, because they say so and you can't prove them otherwise. I don't believe in supernaturalism if that is what religion espouses, that doesn't mean I'm not a moral, ethical person just because religion pretends to have a monopoly on those qualities because it has a big made up sky fairy authority (or at least that's what our book says!) You can't observe God because he doesn't exist physically any more than you can't observe love except as a mental construct within our neural net wetware brains. You can't prove Christ was God because now you're assuming God. One step at a time, please.
Interesting. Well, no, not really. It's the same old theological fallacies, strawmen, ad-hominim attacks, and unfounded assertions on every other anti-evolution website. Yes, I read both of them. Just because religion and science can exist at the same time doesn't make them equally "correct" as far as describing or explaining anything.
Read this and get back to me. You may be particularly interested in definition #2, which while a bit simplistic for brevity's sake, is what is usually meant when someone says "science". Just in case you don't wanna click the link, here ya go:
Science - 2. systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
Please explain how you can integrate religion, which seeks to explain things based on supernatural premises which can't even be shown to exist, with science. First though, please show that the supernatural does exist. In which case, if that could be shown, it would only be able to be done so because it affects the physical world (otherwise how would you show it?). In which case it would then be subject to science.
Neither of those two articles do anything to show how religion can explain anything about the world. Wanting something to be does not make it so.
Yes, you can, but it takes 9 months to compile and requires a mixed gender team of programmers. May be more difficult for most of the/. crowd of programmers.
Check out The Singularity Is Near if you get a chance, he develops some of the ideas out a little further; it's an interesting read. In my opinion, he almost goes a bit too far making his case as there was one section I just had to completely skip over because it was graph after graph that all basically showed the same thing (exponential acceleration of technological progress), just in different fields over and over again.
I think if you read into it again, you'll find that he considers the hardware aspect (maybe a little more than necessary, hence your view on it) as well as the software side. IIRC, he sets 2029 as the estimated date for strong AI exploding us into the Singularity by taking into account advances in hardware AND software. Again, "necessary, but insufficent by itself".;)
The problem is that some - including the typically brilliant Ray Kurzweil - believe that AI is limited by computational power.
I see people say this all the time, but Ray continually states over and over again that raw computing power -,while a necessary condition - is insufficient by itself, and without the "software" to create intelligence, that computing power is just nothing but really fast unintelligent number crunching. He makes the case for that and repeats it numerous times.
I had a friend visit here (southern Louisiana) from CT one time, and she was absolutely amazed and dumbfounded when I showed her how you can go to a daiquiri shop and get a nice little alcoholic beverage at the drive-through window. She took the plastic cup home and kept it as a souvenir so her friends and family would believe it.
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Chemistry does not explain what we would call "information", but Shakespearean plays and symphonic scores are products of intelligence and creativity (which are fundamentally the same process, if the theory turns out fruitful). The brain is not some black box that requires magic to *poof* create consciousness and intelligence. Chemistry and physics are the laws by which the atoms and matter in the brain are constrained, but based on those laws the brain is able to wire itself into intricate, self-regulating, feeding-back patterns that are able to receive sensory input as well as feedback on themselves to create predictions. I'm currently rereading "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins (founder of Palm and the Graffiti writing system) and his theories on how the brain creates intelligence, prediction, and creativity are logical and intriguing. We we think of as "thought", I believe, ultimately can and will be described in terms of physics and chemistry, but more important in the patterns that can be created through these laws that are self-regulating.
Don't they, though? The laws of chemistry tell us that certain atoms and molecules can only bond together in particular ways, and the molecules in DNA do so in a way that enables it to be self-replicating. Nothing magical about that. I understand that you may recognize all of this in your next point that follows:
But the leap you've made after that in concluding that a complex, intelligent being must have been the Creator and definer of these laws is just that: a leap. Organization and order do not necessarily require an organizer or Watchmaker. Obviously the question of ultimate origins in the universe remains open. The difference is that science continues to probe for the answer to that question, whereas religion asserts that it already knows it.
A materialistic matter-energy universe does not invalidate our existance. IMHO, of course. :)
It would have 2000 years ago. :P
Boom, answered your own question.
It's so sad that I actually get that. *hangs head in shame*
Take into consideration, though, the cost of production (money and time) of that particular content, as well as the quality of said produced content.
How about being told no, you can't, after asking at the dinner table if you can use their computer?
I know dragons and martial arts are often paired together, but that's just taking it a little too far.
Very informative post, that FAQ definitely helped me understand it better. Kudos to you, sir.
Reversing the "polarity" of the force (make it so, number one) of the graviton to be opposite everything else would do it in the maths, but in reality? Granted, we do find some very strange stuff in the universe, but this just doesn't seem to work for me. Unless I'm just not wrapping my head around this at all, can anyone explain how a graviton would be supposed to work? (I understand that if anyone really could, there would probably be a Nobel prize and a gaggle of physicists waiting to talk to them. ;)
If it was a cat, just stick it in a sealed box with some radioactive material next to it, and you'll have a 50/50 chance of ending up in a good mood. Or a worse mood, since now you've been hanging around some radioactive material.
But how do you get the sharks in orbit first for the bombardment?
So then it would really be "Pttawa"?
IANAL either, so is this any different from me typing up a copy of a book I own and storing the text file on my computer? No, I'm not serving it out to anyone, but as you said before, what Google is doing by serving it out is already covered under fair use.
Science is always incomplete, that's why it marches on. I'm 25 years old. I can never observe in the strict sense anything that happened more than 25 years ago. For all I know, I can't observe anything that happened yesterday. But I can accept that reality is what it is and agree that what appears to have happened yesterday or 25 years ago probably did happen and I'm not living in some wickedly quantum universe that just suddenly snapped into existance 10 seconds ago in the particular state that makes history look like it really happened.
From what we can tell now, we may never approach an ultimate, fundamental "truth" to the universe (whatever that means anyway, even if there is one to be had). In the future that may change, and we may know, hey, below those quarks are this and that particle and strings do turn out to be "it" and we are all just the composite of the harmonics of an unimaginally vast symphony. I'm no philosophy buff, but it seems to me that most philosophy deals with questions that are unscientific in nature (morals, ethics, etc., although the evolutionary origins of these types of behaviors has the potential to be explained) or are begging the question ("what is man's place in the universe?" assumes that man has or must have some "purpose"). Ultimately though, all of the mental thought-wrangling means naught if cold, hard physical reality disagrees.
I think religion seeks to pretend to solve these philisophical questions by asserting that it does, because they say so and you can't prove them otherwise. I don't believe in supernaturalism if that is what religion espouses, that doesn't mean I'm not a moral, ethical person just because religion pretends to have a monopoly on those qualities because it has a big made up sky fairy authority (or at least that's what our book says!) You can't observe God because he doesn't exist physically any more than you can't observe love except as a mental construct within our neural net wetware brains. You can't prove Christ was God because now you're assuming God. One step at a time, please.
Read this and get back to me. You may be particularly interested in definition #2, which while a bit simplistic for brevity's sake, is what is usually meant when someone says "science". Just in case you don't wanna click the link, here ya go:
Please explain how you can integrate religion, which seeks to explain things based on supernatural premises which can't even be shown to exist, with science. First though, please show that the supernatural does exist. In which case, if that could be shown, it would only be able to be done so because it affects the physical world (otherwise how would you show it?). In which case it would then be subject to science.
Neither of those two articles do anything to show how religion can explain anything about the world. Wanting something to be does not make it so.
Sure thing, we're working on it. By the way, let us know when religion explains anything.
Yes, you can, but it takes 9 months to compile and requires a mixed gender team of programmers. May be more difficult for most of the /. crowd of programmers.
Or they might just want to build an intergalactic superhighway and our planet might just be in the way.
You win the "best post of the day" award. Thank you. :)
I think if you read into it again, you'll find that he considers the hardware aspect (maybe a little more than necessary, hence your view on it) as well as the software side. IIRC, he sets 2029 as the estimated date for strong AI exploding us into the Singularity by taking into account advances in hardware AND software. Again, "necessary, but insufficent by itself". ;)
I see people say this all the time, but Ray continually states over and over again that raw computing power -,while a necessary condition - is insufficient by itself, and without the "software" to create intelligence, that computing power is just nothing but really fast unintelligent number crunching. He makes the case for that and repeats it numerous times.
Could be worse, you could be the goatse guy!
;)
I had a friend visit here (southern Louisiana) from CT one time, and she was absolutely amazed and dumbfounded when I showed her how you can go to a daiquiri shop and get a nice little alcoholic beverage at the drive-through window. She took the plastic cup home and kept it as a souvenir so her friends and family would believe it.