If you have a lot of electronic components, it is hard to find a stand or cabinet to fit, most of them have lousy airflow, and many are flammable. The wireframe stand recommended by the OP looks nice, but I am a big fan of industrial wire shelving, which you can assemble to exactly the size, shelf spacing, etc. that you need. A light-duty consumer grade version is available in most hardware stores. It's probably OK (I haven't tried it), but the industrial version is heavier grade, available in more sizes and finishes, not appreciably more expensive, and available from many vendors over the internet. It will support a great deal of weight, and of course the airflow is great. It is easy to organize wiring with cable ties. It knocks together in minutes (invest in a rubber mallet). Your Taste May Vary, but I find it attractive (in an unobtrusive high-tech way).
Actually, you do. Free Will must be a conscious act for it to matter in all the senses that philosophy cares about -- if agency is to exist, it must exist in a conscious form. If some subconscious process is "making" your decisions prior to your "self" (where "self" is your conscious and self-conscious awareness), you don't really have Free Will, since conscious deliberation on possible actions has no effect on the resulting action you take.
If you haven't, I suggest looking into some Philosophy of Self and Philosophy of Mind books and essays, since I certainly don't have the time right now to get into it as deeply as a subject like this deserves. Not really. The fact that the immediate decision is made without the conscious mind being aware of it does not prove that the conscious mind has no effect on that decision. The input from the conscious mind to the unconscious processes that make the immediate decision could have occurred long before.
For example, the conscious mind could function like a company executive who sets policy. He may only find out about specific decisions a bit after the fact, but he will evaluate whether they are in accord with his intentions, and modify policies to take corrective action with respect to future decisions if they are not, so overall, the decisions made by the company are in response to his will.
... I don't get it. So peoples' reaction time was 500 milliseconds. Fingers don't move at the speed of light. How fast can you hit a button when I flash a light at you?
And I don't think tennis players wait for the ball to be hit before they "react". It's not the reaction time between deciding to act and doing it--it is the reaction time between the moment that your brain makes the decision (based on electrical activity) and the the time when the decision enters your conscious mind.
I've never understood what this is supposed to have to do with free will. Whoever said that "free will" (whatever that is) must be conscious?
So there is some delay before the final execution of a decision is logged by the conscious mind. So what? How could it possibly be otherwise?
I think the dismay at results like this comes out of a residual vestige of obsolete dualistic thinking about the mind and the brain, as though conscious awareness were some magical unitary phenomenon instead of the culmination of a probably complex and time consuming computational process--which pretty much has to be the case if consciousness is not entirely trivial (and if it were, we'd have had conscious computers long ago). If consciousness involves significant computation, then it stands to reason that it should be possible to detect early events of a decision before it enters the conscious mind.
That does not eliminate a role for the conscious mind in decision making, it just places it at a different level., The conscious mind may well program decision making in advance, basically setting the weights on the various inputs that ultimately determine the decision and its timing. In this view, consciousness becomes more like the programmer than like the "PRINT" routine that ultimately sends the output to the outside world.
Copyright does, however, protect the expression of those ideas--the order of presentation of those ideas, for example. So to the extent that the notes capture that expression, they may constitute infringement.
It's not their phone. It's MY phone, bought and paid for. (Assuming I had one, of course.:P) As a consumer, it's not up to Apple to decide what programs I can and can't run.
Of course it's your phone, and you are entitled to break with Apple and AT&T, and use your jailbroken phone to run whatever software you want.
But you don't get to have it both ways. You can choose to go it alone, but you can't then turn around and demand access to Apple's future system updates and AT&T's cellular network--those belong to Apple and AT&T, and if you want them, you need to accept Apple's terms.
I've been doing some Googling, and it seems that there is evidence that supports the claim that exposure to fictional violence can have adverse consequences
I've read quite a few of the original studies, and everything I've seen has had obvious methodological flaws, such as conflating aggression with violence or failing to adequately control for physiological arousal. I'm not surprising that they are defended by the people who do them, such as the author of the article that you link to. If you want to cite a particular study that you find convincing, then we can discuss the details. By the way, did you notice that he argues that cartoonish "violence" is a problem? Somebody defend our kids from the Road Runner! He also insists that violence rates have not declined, even though overwhelming evidence indicates they have (including numerous figures in the same report that he cites). See here, for example. Or this one, from the very reference that he cites. He ignores all of this and picks out self-reports of violence in just one grade, which probably measures how willing people are to admit to violent behavior. So this guy is clearly intentionally presenting a highly biased perspective that seems designed to promote his own research.
My 2-year old daughter was sufficiently traumatized from watching Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" that it gave her nightmares, and the toy monster we got at McDonald's yesterday looks enough like "The Beast" that it upset her. Now bad dreams are a long way from acting out violent behavior, but the point here is that audio/visual stimuli/can/ have deep, lasting mental impacts.
I'd agree that bad dreams are a long way from action out violent behavior. They are certainly a long way from PTSD. Have you ever known a kid that did not have bad dreams occasionally? And dreams generally incorporate recent experiences. As a child, I had a very upsetting bad dream about a coin operated ridable horse. Does that make mechanical amusement rides a danger to kids?
I found a link of a soldier who had a PTSD episode possibly triggered by CoD
Triggered by is not the same thing as caused by. A typical symptom of PTSD is intense anxiety triggered by benign environmental stimuli. Some of the most common triggers of PTSD episodes are thunder, lightning, firecrackers, or backfiring cars.
Now it could be that these people were unstable/before/ training, and the training simply made their condition worse. But then this is exactly what I expect to find with violent simulations - people closest to the edge will be the first to be pushed over it.
I don't think that anybody doubts that military basic training is a stressful experience--a real world one, not a simulation. People have occasionally died during military training.
Of what? Harmful stimuli? Of course, just Google "Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome". There is plenty of evidence regarding the harmful effects of harmful stimuli. I believe you are asking what real evidence to I have of any real harmful effects _from_video_games_, and I don't have any, because like I said, video games aren't realistic enough _yet_ to cause these kinds of problems.
So you agree that there is no evidence whatsoever to justify your belief that a realistic depiction of what is known to be a fictional event can cause harm. And if you think that video games aren't realistic enough, what about movies that are literally photorealistic?
What games do you see as being virtually photorealistic? I want to play them.:)
Gears of War comes pretty close, and I gather that some of the newer PC games go even further when played on a top end gaming PC. Any reports of PTSD from players of those games?
There are many artificial scenarios that we create for training purposes that the people participating in know are not real - they know it is just training. And yet the training is still effective because it provides/mental conditioning/ to the trainee's mind so that they will be on familiar ground when they experience the event "in real life". Even though the participant knows that it is not real, there is some level of familiarity imprinted on the trainee - that is the whole point of the exercise. I guess the question is, can training become stressful enough to induce the same kinds of PTSD problems people get from the real experiences.
That's a good question. I've never heard of anybody experiencing PTSD from training scenarios in which the people participating know that they are not real--not even real life scenarios. Have you? On the other hand, I agree that it is plausible that experiencing such scenarios in a "safe" fictional context might to some extent immunize an individual so that they are less likely to experience PTSD after a real event. I don't know if there are any examples of that, but I do know that computer simulations are being used successfully to treat phobias and PTSD.
Obviously I provided no data to support my assertion. That is why I specifically said "probably". Nonetheless, if we agree that there are harmful stimuli, then again, I believe it is probably likely that the more realistic simulations of harmful stimuli become the more likely it is that people will experience the harmful effects.
I have no idea what the chances are of effect, and was not trying to make any assertion of such. I believe they are much greater than 1 in 5 million, however.
Even if it is "more probable" (and there is no actual evidence of that) that could mean very little if the base probability is low. As I said, twice a negligible risk can still be negligible. If you want to deal in reality rather than groundless hand-waving, you need to look at actual data, such as whether the incidence of violent crime has increased or decreased as entertainments have become more realistically violent.
First of all, you are making the assumption that violent acts are the only harmful result from harmful stimuli.
So what real evidence do you have of any real harmful effect? For that matter, aside from your personal bias, what evidence do you have that there are no beneficial effects?
Moreover, paramedics and emergency room physicians may be exposed to lots of blood and gore, but it usually in the context of a compassionate, merciful act, like saving lives. This is opposed to say, a simulation of chopping people up with chainsaws or mowing them down with machine guns.
They still, by your own argument, should be "desensitized" to the consequences of violence. So what harmful effects of that can you demonstrate in paramedics and ER doctors?
Like I said, even the most realistic video games today are still pretty unrealistic, so I wouldn't expect much psychological impact/today/.
Oh, I see. So there is no actual harm, even though games have become enormously more realistic and violent. So it is just about to start causing harm Real Soon Now.
The whole point of my original response is that it is not smart to dismiss such eventualities, with a wave of the hand, as many today do, saying, "It's just a VIDEO GAME!". Yes, it's a video game, and today, that's obvious. What happens when it isn't so obvious?
What makes it obvious that is is not real is not the realism of the display (and some modern games are virtually photorealistic, and it is hard to imagine how a movie can get any more realistic--3D perahaps?), but the fact that when one plays a game or attends a movie, one chooses to experience something that one knows is not real.
Let me ask you a not-so-hypothetical question. Do you think there would be harmful side-effects to people who could, through a live audio/video feed, direct acts of/real/ violence against/real/ people?
Very likely. People who have had such experiences simulated (where they were intentionally tricked into believing that it was real) have reported finding it quite traumatic. Yet people do not feel traumatized by considerably more violent experiences when they know it to be fictional. So it is hardly surprising that harmful side effects are critically dependent upon a person's knowledge that the experience actually is real (as opposed to merely realistic).
Some (but not all) chemical forms of mercury are eliminated so slowly that they can build up to toxic levels in the body if ingested over a long period of time at fairly low levels. But even mercury is harmless if the intake is low enough that the body is able to excrete it faster than it is being ingested.
This is not true at all. Depending on state of your health, age etc you have various reactions and allergies to different chemical compounds, dosage has very little to do with anything if person is already sick and won't / can't tolerate certain chemical compounds. In fact certain over the counter drugs can significantly weaken people that can't tolerate them even in smallest quantities. Basically what you saying is that if i feed you poison in very small quantities for a long time then it won't affect you and you should not worry about it at all. As long as dosage is small enough it will all come out? ridiculous...
Speaking as a pharmacologist, I can tell you that this is entirely a myth. For a compound to produce an effect on the body, it has to bind (stick) to something in the body. And it has to stick long enough, and to enough molecules in the body, to do some harm. This takes a lot of energy. Compounds that have that level of binding energy toward anything in the body are quite rare. So yes, poisons in small quantities are harmless, even over a long period of time. There are a very few heavy metals that are eliminated from the body so very slowly that they can accumulate to dangerous levels if the intake is greater than the excretion, so that the safe level is very low, but below this level they too are harmless. Even allergic reactions (which are some of the most sensitive reactions that your body can have to chemical) have a threshold below which nothing happens.
Give me a break! If I were to make a list of things in our water that one might choose to worry about, this would be at the very, very bottom?
You really have to be desperate for something to worry about to get concerned about compounds that have already been extensively tested in human populations at astronomically higher doses and shown to be at least reasonably safe. Waving your hands about and talking about "long term" exposure does not make them any more scary. Almost all drug effects have thresholds--which is to say a concentration below which they do nothing
It is hard to get effects at very low concentrations. Basically, to do anything to the body, a drug has to stick to something in the body for long enough to somehow damage it. To do so at low concentrations requires a lot of binding energy. Compounds with enough binding energy to produce effects at such low doses are very, very rare. The only real exception is mutagens--drugs that bind to DNA and damage it. In this case, there is at least a real, if tiny, chance that one molecule of the drug could hurt something in your body. But drugs that are able to do this at very low levels do it even more at high doses, producing damaging effects that lead to them being weeded out early in drug development.
So if you insist on worrying about something, worry about all of those industrial chemicals in the water, because you can be sure that any molecule that is made or used for any purpose is in your water at some level. Most of those haven't been tested in big clinical trials at much higher doses in human populations. The chance that those molecules will hurt you is probably pretty small, also, but it's not quite as ridiculous as worrying about traces of pharmaceuticals.
What I am saying is that as that the harmful stimuli become higher in fidelity, the more likely it probably is that the person experiencing it will experience the same harmful side effects.
That really says nothing unless you can put a number to that "probability." For example, it may well be that there is one chance in 10 million that a person will be harmfully affected by a particular scene, and twice as great a chance -- one in 5 million -- that a person will be harmfully affected by a more realistic depiction of the same scene. Twice negligible is still negligible.
Also, it has been well documented that the human brain does become conditioned to stimuli, like drugs, or pornography, and it requires more and more stimuli over time to achieve the same affect. It does not seem illogical that the shock value of violent stimuli may likewise wear off with exposure.
Quite likely. Here, the unstated assumption that you are making is that a major reason why people do not commit violent acts is because they find them shocking to look at, irrespective of whether they are real or fantasy. There is no doubt, for example, that paramedics and emergency room physicians become desensitized to the site of extreme blood and gore, yet I've seen no evidence that they are more prone to commit bloody crimes. One could just as well speculate (and with about as much factual basis) that a person who plays a lot of gory videogames would be more likely to be able to keep their wits about them and likely to render first aid to somebody severely injured an an accident.
It is worth noting that as movies and videogames have gotten more violent, the incidence of violent crime, including murder, has dropped and dropped most dramatically in the very demographic that is the most avid consumers of such entertainment. That doesn't necessarily prove that these entertainments prevent violence, but it does demonstrate that any hypothetical violence enhancing effect must be so small as to be completely swamped by other social and cultural factors affecting rates of violent crime.
What happens when the game becomes indistinguishable from reality? When it becomes photo-realistic? We know that people can become desensitized to stimuli by constant exposure.
If we had games that simulated warfare like, say, a "holodeck", would there be any debate as to the harmful effects it would have on the psyche of the players? Would we not see traumatic stress issues?
If you agree that we would see such problems with hyper-realistic games, then I think it is reasonable to debate and discuss what happens as we approach that level of realism.
But why do you expect anybody to agree to that? Basically, the argument you are making is, "It is self-evident that people will respond to things that look real in the same way that they respond to things that are real." It seems to me far more likely that a person will respond very differently to something that he believes is fantasy than to something that he believes is real. Certainly, people don't seem to be affected in the same way of a realistic depiction of an auto wreck in a movie as by seeing the same thing in real life. People who would likely get sick at their stomach if they saw the victims being brought into the emergency room will sit reasonably comfortably through a perfectly realistic depiction the same scene in a film that they know is fictional.
So don't you think that it is reasonable to consider the possibility that people actually do have the ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy, no matter how "realistic" it might look?
That populist sentiment misses a lot of the point of that kind of research. It may not have much to do with "banning" anything at all, but, for example, giving parents information that will help them decide if and when to bring videogame consoles into the home, or whether someone who is having trouble with violent behavior should be advised to stay away from videogames. That research is worthwhile even if there isn't a direct public policy connection.
Except that I doubt if the research in question does anything to help parents to make such a decision. I've looked at some of it, and from my standpoint as a scientist, it is mostly crap. The most common errors seems to be conflating aggression with violence (aggression may be a positive or negative behavior, depending upon social context; it does not equate to violence) and failing to control for the effects of overall arousal (i.e. the control for videogame play must be some other activity that is equally exciting, based upon e.g. blood pressure, heart rate, etc.).
The motion of the heavenly bodies is based on the precisely known LAW of gravity. The laws of electricity are experimentally and observationally defined. So are the laws of genetics.
Speaking as I scientist, it is difficult for me to convey the utter, abysmal stupidity of the notion that a "law" is more precise than a theory. The scientific usage of "law" is more along the lines of "rule of thumb." It means something that may or may not be exactly correct, but is simple and close enough for most practical purposes. The "law of gravity" refers to Newton's gravitational equation, which is known to be incorrect. For more accurate gravitational calculations, physicists use Einstein's general THEORY of relativity. And even that is known not to be entirely correct. The search for a more correct theory of gravity (and particle physics, including the electrons responsible for electronics) is a major goal of modern physics. The only things ever referred to as "laws" of genetics are those of Mendel, and those aren't correct either, because Mendel did not know about chromosomal linkage. Modern genetics is far more complex, and there are some aspects that are still in the process of being worked out.
One of these genetic laws state that there is no way to predict genetic mutations, because they are probabilistic (a nicer way of saying random).
There is nothing referred to in science as a genetic "law" of mutations. Mendel did not even know about mutations. Of course, it is known from quantum physics that pretty much everything, including gravity and the motion of electrons, is probabilistic. And yes, it is possible to make predictions about things that are probabilistic. If it weren't possible to make predictions about probability, then casinos would go broke.
A law of genetics is that there are certain genetic borders that cannot be crossed, at least not without the interference of intelligence.
Nobody has ever found any kind of genetic borders, and there is certainly no "law" of genetics describing anything of the sort. One of the discoveries of modern genomics is that all of the differences between species are due to an accumulation of small differences of the sort that occur as a result of known mutational mechanisms. The supposed "border" turns out to be as mythical as the edge of the flat earth.
Cats will always be cats and dogs always dogs. One can breed different varieties of cats or dogs, but they'll always either one or the other, never some in between creature.
There is no doubt that if a chihuahua and a great dane were found in nature, they would be considered completely different creatures--they differ from one another far more than a wolf differs from a coyote.
Nobody has ever made a herpes virus of an HIV virus. These are fundamentally diferent.
Scientists make hybrid viruses, and other life forms, all the time. The fundamental genetic components of life can be widely mixed and matched, even between species as widely separated as man and virus. The notion that there is such a thing as "fundamental differences" between life forms has been disproved over and over.
It seems clear to me that it is on-topic. If we end up with a President taking a strong pro-censorship stance, this is likely to impact the profits of games like GTA and affect the value of these properties.
There you have fallen back onto the magic ingredient of time. Evolution teaches that given enough time, a frog can turn into a prince.
There is nothing magical about time. Simply a consequence of the rate of genetic change, which can be measured in short term experiments, and the number of changes that divide species, which can also be measured. A straightforward prediction of the theory. It is no more magical than the way the motion of the stars in the galaxy over millennia can be predicted based upon their measured velocities. From the rate of genetic change, and the number of differences that divide the genes of different species, it is possible to calculate how long it took them to diverge from their common ancestor. And what do you know? That time scale happens to agree with what is deduced from the fossil record. It is precisely this ability to make predictions, and to test and refine them by observation, that distinguishes scientific thinking from magical thinking.
Science is about what we observe to be happening today, not what someone thinks may have happened over long periods of time, long ago.
This is nonsense. Science deals with fundamental principles of nature, valid at any time, and many sciences, including biology, astronomy, cosmology and geology, consider what has happened over long periods of time. All that the scientific method requires is that a theory makes strong predictions that can be verified today by experiment and observation.
VHS had longer recording times, and that is what the customers wanted. This is proved by the fact that VHS "won", and ergo VHS was "better". Betamax did have better video quality, but it was not "better" in every dimension.
I bought my first VCR at the height of the VHS/beta wars. VHS supported slightly longer tapes, but both were easily long enough to record most movies. I ended up buying a beta because the sound was better (beta had hifi at the time, VHS did not, although it came a few months later) and the stop frame and slow motion were dramatically better. Also, the beta transport was noticeably faster in switching from fast forward to play (actually, I initially bought VHS, but was dissatisfied with the performance and returned it to get a beta). But I had to pay a premium, because the beta players were substantially more expensive than VHS players. Of course, Sony products traditionally cost more, as Sony's time-tested business strategy was to sell top-quality components to discriminating buyers at a high margin. Sony TVs weren't the top sellers, but they were among the best, and Sony did very well selling them at a premium price.
What Sony didn't anticipate was the emergence of a rental market for videotapes. Sony expected that most people would use their VCRs the way people now use TiVos, for time-shifting broadcast TV. Only extreme enthusiasts were expected to buy prerecorded videotapes, which sold at an exorbitant price ($80-90, which was real money back in those days). But rental shops changed everything. Initially the shops carried both formats, but it was expensive to support two different formats, and since the cheaper VHS machines had (at the time) a modestly larger user base, shops tended to buy more VHS copies than beta. Consumers noticed that it was easier to find the movies they wanted to rent in VHS than beta, which influenced their buying decision in favor of VHS machines. Which led the rental shops to buy even more VHS tapes and fewer beta tapes. Once the ball started rolling, it went very quickly, and within a few years rental shops were starting to drop their beta sections. An initially modest userbase advantage of VHS, due to a lower price, had amplified into a dominant advantage in the marketplace.
That is correct and in ALL cases there was never anything else but Drosophila produced. No other flies, let alone wasps, ants bees and other insects were ever made from all these experiments.
Which is a good thing for evolutionary theory, because whereas evolutionary theory predicts that new species can appear on a short time scale, it predicts that larger morphological differences take much too long to be observed. So if wasps, ants, or bees had been observed to be made in these experiments, it would have disproved evolution. On the other hand, evolution does predict that the descent of all of these insects from a common ancestor will be reflected in patterns of similarity of DNA described by a "family tree" corresponding to evolutionary descent. And it also predicts that the nature of the DNA differences between these different insects will be just the same as those observed in Drosophila speciation events that have been observed--just more of them. And these predictions, made before it was even possible to sequence DNA, have turned out to be exactly correct.
The similar probabilistic behavior of a number roulette wheels doesn't mean that one evolved from another.
No, it says that they are governed by the same statistical laws, just as the similarity in the statistical patterns and the nature of DNA changes that occur in short term experiments (such as the Drosophila experiments, or the many observed examples of speciation in plants) and those that distinguish species as divergent as ants and bees, support the theory that all of these changes occur by a common mechanism.
Statistical similarities don't show descent of one kind of life form to another
In science, a theory is judged by its ability to make testable predictions. These are testable predictions, and they were tested and found to be correct. You can stamp your feet and insist that the repeated confirmations of the theory of evolution do not show it to be correct, but that is bias, not science or logic.
So far all test to make new or combine different life forms into radically new and different life forms has failed.
And indeed, if a radically new and different life form were made in this way, it would disprove the theory of evolution, which predicts that such rapid change over such a short time scale cannot occur. On the other hand, we do know that selection acting upon naturally occurring variation can produce quite dramatic changes. We know this from artificial selection of dogs. The differences between a chihuahua and a great dane are much greater than the differences between a wolf and a coyote for example, to the point that these different breeds would undoubtedly be classed as different species if they were the product of natural rather than artificial selection.
In many ways, pigs are genetically more similar to humans that apes.
Untrue. At the genomic sequence level, apes and humans are more similar to one another than pigs.
You have enough faith to believe in evolution.
Science is not a matter of faith, it is a matter of theories that make testable predictions. Science works to increase our knowledge whether you believe in it or not. It does not matter whether or not we believe in our theories or not--a good theory that makes testable predictions will lead to discoveries and insights into nature. A dogma that does not make testable predictions is invariably a scientific dead end and an obstacle to scientific progress, no matter matter how emotionally appealing or how much one might wish to believe in it.
Of course there is, but nobody has made a fossil today, from a recently deceased life form. Go ahead, make me a fossil today.
Did you forget what we were talking about? The subject was predictions of evolutionary theory. The theory most certainly does not predict that fossils can be made in a day, so that is pretty ridiculous. The theory does, however, make predictions about the nature of fossils that will be found in the future.
When I study a computer program, I too can make predictions of how this code will likely show up in other, similar programs with the same goals and execution patterns. Same can be said for the DNA code.
Any time anybody makes a major discovery or invention, there is always a crowd of wannabe's saying, "That's nothing; I coulda' thought of that." Only they didn't. Oddly enough, all of the discoveries about DNA code have been made by people who based their investigations on the predictions of evolutionary theory.
So all the evidence shows that the processes that execute the DNA programs follow certain predictable rules, just like the processors in the computer in your computer. The designer of these processors is no more irrational than the the engineers at Intel that designed the x86 in your computer.
They are indeed predictable--if you base your predictions on the idea that changes from species to species are the result of selection for randomly occurring sequence changes in DNA. They don't make sense from any kind of standpoint of rational design. Once again, we have people saying after the fact, "I coulda' predicted that." Only they didn't
Any computer codes express and embody logical or mathematical algorithms. So of course also the codes stored in DNA express algorithms of protein and other molecular synthesis. Computer algorithms and the code that executes them always originate with a human programmer. Why is it so far fetched to theorize that DNA codes and algorithms also come from a higher, non-human programmer?
Wrong again. The computer codes used for genetic algorithms don't mimic algorithms of protein and molecular synthesis--they mimic the processes of evolution by mutation, recombination, and natural selection--the very processes that design advocates claim didn't happen and don't work. It was computer scientists who studied evolution, and predicted, "This should work in the computer, because the evidence shows that it worked in nature" who discovered and validated these genetic algorithms as a tool for design.
Even there, humans mimic nature. Human made virus code also inserts itself into other human generated code
That's not the point. We aren't talking about computer viruses. The point is that the same remnants of ancient viral infection (real viruses, not computer) are found in the same place in DNA of closely related experiments--just as was predicted based upon the theory of common descent.
So what will ducks, platypuses, fish, monkeys and people evolve into next?
Here you misunderstand what prediction means in science. A scientific theory must make testable predictions, but that does not mean that a theory should be able answer any arbitrary question that you pose to it. Statistical theory makes very powerful predictions--reliable enough for casinos to make consistent profits day in and day out--yet they still can't answer the question "If I flip this coin, will it come up heads or tails." Evolution is a statistical process, and just like a casino, the theory of evolution predicts trends and patterns, not individual outcomes.
Has the theory of evolution ever predicted an organism that came into being from some other organism, that we have actually seen occurring today?
I also don't see how this can be a tie. If you are looking for an ultralight, the X300 is larger, heavier, slower, and more expensive, with shorter battery life.
On the other hand, if you are looking for ports, DVD drive, and other features rarely used by travelers, then the proper comparison is to the MacBook--which is much cheaper and faster as well.
Keyboard? Mouse? It already has a full-sized keyboard. This isn't one of those dinky subnotebook microkeyboards that you can't stand to type on for long. And you really think that somebody up-to-date enough to get a MBA will want to use a wired keyboard or mouse, anyway? Everybody I know uses bluetooth, particularly with laptops. Webcam? Apple laptops, including the MBA, already come with that built in. Ipod? You plug it in for a few minutes to sync, and then you unplug it. You don't leave it plugged in long unless you are recharging it, and iPods hold a charge well, so you don't have to do it often. I usually let it recharge overnight when I'm not using my computer, so one port is plenty.
That is not a prediction for the future. It is just something we find. Btw, nobody has ever made a fossil today. Nowadays, when an organism dies it doesn't make a fossil, but simply decays.
That's nonsense. There is every reason to expect that fossils will be found in the future. Novel fossils are found almost every year. And evolutionary theory makes quite definite predictions about what kinds of fossils will be found in what strata.
The natural selection baloney in this case is just an INTERPRETATION of the genetic data. Is it not possible, that just as any good programmer, the writer of the genetic code was careful to write it in such a way that snippets could be used over again in various applications. He wrote extensive code libraries that are use repeatedly in all life forms where applicable. Clever I'd say!
Sure a "DNA programmer" could choose to re-use code for completely different applications. Or not. There is no way to make any kind of prediction, which is why "designer" theories are considered unscientific. On the other hand, evolutionary theory makes detailed predictions as to just how close the DNA sequences will be in different species. It even makes predictions about sequence changes that have no effect on gene function. There is no rational reason for a designer to make changes in this kind of pattern. But who knows? Maybe the "designer" is irrational. Once again, there is no prediction that can be made.
That use of the word "evolution" is not the same as when it is used to fool people into believing that birds came from reptiles and people descended from apes. That sort of evolution I call adaptation. We all know that is tested and real.
The use of the word "evolution" in science to refer to changes in function that arise via natural selection, mutational drift, and other evolutionary mechanisms is uniform. The types of DNA changes that result in observed evolution of new functions in microorganisms in the laboratory and in the wild are exactly the same kind as those that underly differences between birds and reptiles, just as predicted by the theory of evolution. So all of the evidence supports the prediction of evolutionary theory that it is all part of the same process.
It shows that the writer of the genetic code also knows a lot about engineering and design in physics and chemistry. I wonder where he got His degree?
The genetic algorithms don't use the genetic code--they use the evolutionary processes of natural selection. So if you think that life was designed rather than evolved, then there is no reason to believe that algorithms based on natural selection would be able to solve design problems in engineering and math. But they do.
Again, the reuse of code for similar functions. There is no need to re-invent the wheel for each protein or other construct. Just re-use different parts of the same code base already known to be debugged and working. Smart human programmers do this all the time. Why should the Author of the life code not be even much smarter?
He might. Or he might not. If evolution is correct, these things have to be true. Advocates of designer theories have to fall back on the argument that the designer just happened to design things in the way that they are required to be if evolution is correct.
That sounds like debugging code that was not removed by the author, but simply commented out so it is no longer executed. Human programmer do that also sometimes.
These aren't "debugging code." They are recognizable viruses--diseases--that are known to insert themselves into the DNA. And they aren't "commented out" by any uniform mechanism the way any rational programmer does it--they show mutational damage. So why would they be in the same place in closely related species? I suppose a designer could
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If you have a lot of electronic components, it is hard to find a stand or cabinet to fit, most of them have lousy airflow, and many are flammable. The wireframe stand recommended by the OP looks nice, but I am a big fan of industrial wire shelving, which you can assemble to exactly the size, shelf spacing, etc. that you need. A light-duty consumer grade version is available in most hardware stores. It's probably OK (I haven't tried it), but the industrial version is heavier grade, available in more sizes and finishes, not appreciably more expensive, and available from many vendors over the internet. It will support a great deal of weight, and of course the airflow is great. It is easy to organize wiring with cable ties. It knocks together in minutes (invest in a rubber mallet). Your Taste May Vary, but I find it attractive (in an unobtrusive high-tech way).
The brand that I have is Nextel.
If you haven't, I suggest looking into some Philosophy of Self and Philosophy of Mind books and essays, since I certainly don't have the time right now to get into it as deeply as a subject like this deserves. Not really. The fact that the immediate decision is made without the conscious mind being aware of it does not prove that the conscious mind has no effect on that decision. The input from the conscious mind to the unconscious processes that make the immediate decision could have occurred long before.
For example, the conscious mind could function like a company executive who sets policy. He may only find out about specific decisions a bit after the fact, but he will evaluate whether they are in accord with his intentions, and modify policies to take corrective action with respect to future decisions if they are not, so overall, the decisions made by the company are in response to his will.
... I don't get it. So peoples' reaction time was 500 milliseconds. Fingers don't move at the speed of light. How fast can you hit a button when I flash a light at you?And I don't think tennis players wait for the ball to be hit before they "react". It's not the reaction time between deciding to act and doing it--it is the reaction time between the moment that your brain makes the decision (based on electrical activity) and the the time when the decision enters your conscious mind.
I've never understood what this is supposed to have to do with free will. Whoever said that "free will" (whatever that is) must be conscious?
So there is some delay before the final execution of a decision is logged by the conscious mind. So what? How could it possibly be otherwise?
I think the dismay at results like this comes out of a residual vestige of obsolete dualistic thinking about the mind and the brain, as though conscious awareness were some magical unitary phenomenon instead of the culmination of a probably complex and time consuming computational process--which pretty much has to be the case if consciousness is not entirely trivial (and if it were, we'd have had conscious computers long ago). If consciousness involves significant computation, then it stands to reason that it should be possible to detect early events of a decision before it enters the conscious mind.
That does not eliminate a role for the conscious mind in decision making, it just places it at a different level., The conscious mind may well program decision making in advance, basically setting the weights on the various inputs that ultimately determine the decision and its timing. In this view, consciousness becomes more like the programmer than like the "PRINT" routine that ultimately sends the output to the outside world.
Copyright does, however, protect the expression of those ideas--the order of presentation of those ideas, for example. So to the extent that the notes capture that expression, they may constitute infringement.
2001 is major Kubrick, but minor Clarke. I would place several of Clarke's novels above it, particularly "Childhood's End."
Of course it's your phone, and you are entitled to break with Apple and AT&T, and use your jailbroken phone to run whatever software you want.
But you don't get to have it both ways. You can choose to go it alone, but you can't then turn around and demand access to Apple's future system updates and AT&T's cellular network--those belong to Apple and AT&T, and if you want them, you need to accept Apple's terms.
I've read quite a few of the original studies, and everything I've seen has had obvious methodological flaws, such as conflating aggression with violence or failing to adequately control for physiological arousal. I'm not surprising that they are defended by the people who do them, such as the author of the article that you link to. If you want to cite a particular study that you find convincing, then we can discuss the details. By the way, did you notice that he argues that cartoonish "violence" is a problem? Somebody defend our kids from the Road Runner! He also insists that violence rates have not declined, even though overwhelming evidence indicates they have (including numerous figures in the same report that he cites). See here, for example. Or this one, from the very reference that he cites. He ignores all of this and picks out self-reports of violence in just one grade, which probably measures how willing people are to admit to violent behavior. So this guy is clearly intentionally presenting a highly biased perspective that seems designed to promote his own research.
I'd agree that bad dreams are a long way from action out violent behavior. They are certainly a long way from PTSD. Have you ever known a kid that did not have bad dreams occasionally? And dreams generally incorporate recent experiences. As a child, I had a very upsetting bad dream about a coin operated ridable horse. Does that make mechanical amusement rides a danger to kids?
Triggered by is not the same thing as caused by. A typical symptom of PTSD is intense anxiety triggered by benign environmental stimuli. Some of the most common triggers of PTSD episodes are thunder, lightning, firecrackers, or backfiring cars.
I don't think that anybody doubts that military basic training is a stressful experience--a real world one, not a simulation. People have occasionally died during military training.
So you agree that there is no evidence whatsoever to justify your belief that a realistic depiction of what is known to be a fictional event can cause harm. And if you think that video games aren't realistic enough, what about movies that are literally photorealistic?
Gears of War comes pretty close, and I gather that some of the newer PC games go even further when played on a top end gaming PC. Any reports of PTSD from players of those games?
That's a good question. I've never heard of anybody experiencing PTSD from training scenarios in which the people participating know that they are not real--not even real life scenarios. Have you? On the other hand, I agree that it is plausible that experiencing such scenarios in a "safe" fictional context might to some extent immunize an individual so that they are less likely to experience PTSD after a real event. I don't know if there are any examples of that, but I do know that computer simulations are being used successfully to treat phobias and PTSD.
Even if it is "more probable" (and there is no actual evidence of that) that could mean very little if the base probability is low. As I said, twice a negligible risk can still be negligible. If you want to deal in reality rather than groundless hand-waving, you need to look at actual data, such as whether the incidence of violent crime has increased or decreased as entertainments have become more realistically violent.
So what real evidence do you have of any real harmful effect? For that matter, aside from your personal bias, what evidence do you have that there are no beneficial effects?
They still, by your own argument, should be "desensitized" to the consequences of violence. So what harmful effects of that can you demonstrate in paramedics and ER doctors?
Oh, I see. So there is no actual harm, even though games have become enormously more realistic and violent. So it is just about to start causing harm Real Soon Now.
What makes it obvious that is is not real is not the realism of the display (and some modern games are virtually photorealistic, and it is hard to imagine how a movie can get any more realistic--3D perahaps?), but the fact that when one plays a game or attends a movie, one chooses to experience something that one knows is not real.
Very likely. People who have had such experiences simulated (where they were intentionally tricked into believing that it was real) have reported finding it quite traumatic. Yet people do not feel traumatized by considerably more violent experiences when they know it to be fictional. So it is hardly surprising that harmful side effects are critically dependent upon a person's knowledge that the experience actually is real (as opposed to merely realistic).
Some (but not all) chemical forms of mercury are eliminated so slowly that they can build up to toxic levels in the body if ingested over a long period of time at fairly low levels. But even mercury is harmless if the intake is low enough that the body is able to excrete it faster than it is being ingested.
Speaking as a pharmacologist, I can tell you that this is entirely a myth. For a compound to produce an effect on the body, it has to bind (stick) to something in the body. And it has to stick long enough, and to enough molecules in the body, to do some harm. This takes a lot of energy. Compounds that have that level of binding energy toward anything in the body are quite rare. So yes, poisons in small quantities are harmless, even over a long period of time. There are a very few heavy metals that are eliminated from the body so very slowly that they can accumulate to dangerous levels if the intake is greater than the excretion, so that the safe level is very low, but below this level they too are harmless. Even allergic reactions (which are some of the most sensitive reactions that your body can have to chemical) have a threshold below which nothing happens.
Give me a break! If I were to make a list of things in our water that one might choose to worry about, this would be at the very, very bottom?
You really have to be desperate for something to worry about to get concerned about compounds that have already been extensively tested in human populations at astronomically higher doses and shown to be at least reasonably safe. Waving your hands about and talking about "long term" exposure does not make them any more scary. Almost all drug effects have thresholds--which is to say a concentration below which they do nothing
It is hard to get effects at very low concentrations. Basically, to do anything to the body, a drug has to stick to something in the body for long enough to somehow damage it. To do so at low concentrations requires a lot of binding energy. Compounds with enough binding energy to produce effects at such low doses are very, very rare. The only real exception is mutagens--drugs that bind to DNA and damage it. In this case, there is at least a real, if tiny, chance that one molecule of the drug could hurt something in your body. But drugs that are able to do this at very low levels do it even more at high doses, producing damaging effects that lead to them being weeded out early in drug development.
So if you insist on worrying about something, worry about all of those industrial chemicals in the water, because you can be sure that any molecule that is made or used for any purpose is in your water at some level. Most of those haven't been tested in big clinical trials at much higher doses in human populations. The chance that those molecules will hurt you is probably pretty small, also, but it's not quite as ridiculous as worrying about traces of pharmaceuticals.
That really says nothing unless you can put a number to that "probability." For example, it may well be that there is one chance in 10 million that a person will be harmfully affected by a particular scene, and twice as great a chance -- one in 5 million -- that a person will be harmfully affected by a more realistic depiction of the same scene. Twice negligible is still negligible.
Quite likely. Here, the unstated assumption that you are making is that a major reason why people do not commit violent acts is because they find them shocking to look at, irrespective of whether they are real or fantasy. There is no doubt, for example, that paramedics and emergency room physicians become desensitized to the site of extreme blood and gore, yet I've seen no evidence that they are more prone to commit bloody crimes. One could just as well speculate (and with about as much factual basis) that a person who plays a lot of gory videogames would be more likely to be able to keep their wits about them and likely to render first aid to somebody severely injured an an accident.
It is worth noting that as movies and videogames have gotten more violent, the incidence of violent crime, including murder, has dropped and dropped most dramatically in the very demographic that is the most avid consumers of such entertainment. That doesn't necessarily prove that these entertainments prevent violence, but it does demonstrate that any hypothetical violence enhancing effect must be so small as to be completely swamped by other social and cultural factors affecting rates of violent crime.
But why do you expect anybody to agree to that? Basically, the argument you are making is, "It is self-evident that people will respond to things that look real in the same way that they respond to things that are real." It seems to me far more likely that a person will respond very differently to something that he believes is fantasy than to something that he believes is real. Certainly, people don't seem to be affected in the same way of a realistic depiction of an auto wreck in a movie as by seeing the same thing in real life. People who would likely get sick at their stomach if they saw the victims being brought into the emergency room will sit reasonably comfortably through a perfectly realistic depiction the same scene in a film that they know is fictional.
So don't you think that it is reasonable to consider the possibility that people actually do have the ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy, no matter how "realistic" it might look?
Except that I doubt if the research in question does anything to help parents to make such a decision. I've looked at some of it, and from my standpoint as a scientist, it is mostly crap. The most common errors seems to be conflating aggression with violence (aggression may be a positive or negative behavior, depending upon social context; it does not equate to violence) and failing to control for the effects of overall arousal (i.e. the control for videogame play must be some other activity that is equally exciting, based upon e.g. blood pressure, heart rate, etc.).
Speaking as I scientist, it is difficult for me to convey the utter, abysmal stupidity of the notion that a "law" is more precise than a theory. The scientific usage of "law" is more along the lines of "rule of thumb." It means something that may or may not be exactly correct, but is simple and close enough for most practical purposes. The "law of gravity" refers to Newton's gravitational equation, which is known to be incorrect. For more accurate gravitational calculations, physicists use Einstein's general THEORY of relativity. And even that is known not to be entirely correct. The search for a more correct theory of gravity (and particle physics, including the electrons responsible for electronics) is a major goal of modern physics. The only things ever referred to as "laws" of genetics are those of Mendel, and those aren't correct either, because Mendel did not know about chromosomal linkage. Modern genetics is far more complex, and there are some aspects that are still in the process of being worked out.
There is nothing referred to in science as a genetic "law" of mutations. Mendel did not even know about mutations. Of course, it is known from quantum physics that pretty much everything, including gravity and the motion of electrons, is probabilistic. And yes, it is possible to make predictions about things that are probabilistic. If it weren't possible to make predictions about probability, then casinos would go broke.
Nobody has ever found any kind of genetic borders, and there is certainly no "law" of genetics describing anything of the sort. One of the discoveries of modern genomics is that all of the differences between species are due to an accumulation of small differences of the sort that occur as a result of known mutational mechanisms. The supposed "border" turns out to be as mythical as the edge of the flat earth.
There is no doubt that if a chihuahua and a great dane were found in nature, they would be considered completely different creatures--they differ from one another far more than a wolf differs from a coyote.
Scientists make hybrid viruses, and other life forms, all the time. The fundamental genetic components of life can be widely mixed and matched, even between species as widely separated as man and virus. The notion that there is such a thing as "fundamental differences" between life forms has been disproved over and over.
It seems clear to me that it is on-topic. If we end up with a President taking a strong pro-censorship stance, this is likely to impact the profits of games like GTA and affect the value of these properties.
There is nothing magical about time. Simply a consequence of the rate of genetic change, which can be measured in short term experiments, and the number of changes that divide species, which can also be measured. A straightforward prediction of the theory. It is no more magical than the way the motion of the stars in the galaxy over millennia can be predicted based upon their measured velocities. From the rate of genetic change, and the number of differences that divide the genes of different species, it is possible to calculate how long it took them to diverge from their common ancestor. And what do you know? That time scale happens to agree with what is deduced from the fossil record. It is precisely this ability to make predictions, and to test and refine them by observation, that distinguishes scientific thinking from magical thinking.
This is nonsense. Science deals with fundamental principles of nature, valid at any time, and many sciences, including biology, astronomy, cosmology and geology, consider what has happened over long periods of time. All that the scientific method requires is that a theory makes strong predictions that can be verified today by experiment and observation.
I bought my first VCR at the height of the VHS/beta wars. VHS supported slightly longer tapes, but both were easily long enough to record most movies. I ended up buying a beta because the sound was better (beta had hifi at the time, VHS did not, although it came a few months later) and the stop frame and slow motion were dramatically better. Also, the beta transport was noticeably faster in switching from fast forward to play (actually, I initially bought VHS, but was dissatisfied with the performance and returned it to get a beta). But I had to pay a premium, because the beta players were substantially more expensive than VHS players. Of course, Sony products traditionally cost more, as Sony's time-tested business strategy was to sell top-quality components to discriminating buyers at a high margin. Sony TVs weren't the top sellers, but they were among the best, and Sony did very well selling them at a premium price.
What Sony didn't anticipate was the emergence of a rental market for videotapes. Sony expected that most people would use their VCRs the way people now use TiVos, for time-shifting broadcast TV. Only extreme enthusiasts were expected to buy prerecorded videotapes, which sold at an exorbitant price ($80-90, which was real money back in those days). But rental shops changed everything. Initially the shops carried both formats, but it was expensive to support two different formats, and since the cheaper VHS machines had (at the time) a modestly larger user base, shops tended to buy more VHS copies than beta. Consumers noticed that it was easier to find the movies they wanted to rent in VHS than beta, which influenced their buying decision in favor of VHS machines. Which led the rental shops to buy even more VHS tapes and fewer beta tapes. Once the ball started rolling, it went very quickly, and within a few years rental shops were starting to drop their beta sections. An initially modest userbase advantage of VHS, due to a lower price, had amplified into a dominant advantage in the marketplace.
Which is a good thing for evolutionary theory, because whereas evolutionary theory predicts that new species can appear on a short time scale, it predicts that larger morphological differences take much too long to be observed. So if wasps, ants, or bees had been observed to be made in these experiments, it would have disproved evolution. On the other hand, evolution does predict that the descent of all of these insects from a common ancestor will be reflected in patterns of similarity of DNA described by a "family tree" corresponding to evolutionary descent. And it also predicts that the nature of the DNA differences between these different insects will be just the same as those observed in Drosophila speciation events that have been observed--just more of them. And these predictions, made before it was even possible to sequence DNA, have turned out to be exactly correct.
No, it says that they are governed by the same statistical laws, just as the similarity in the statistical patterns and the nature of DNA changes that occur in short term experiments (such as the Drosophila experiments, or the many observed examples of speciation in plants) and those that distinguish species as divergent as ants and bees, support the theory that all of these changes occur by a common mechanism.
In science, a theory is judged by its ability to make testable predictions. These are testable predictions, and they were tested and found to be correct. You can stamp your feet and insist that the repeated confirmations of the theory of evolution do not show it to be correct, but that is bias, not science or logic.
And indeed, if a radically new and different life form were made in this way, it would disprove the theory of evolution, which predicts that such rapid change over such a short time scale cannot occur. On the other hand, we do know that selection acting upon naturally occurring variation can produce quite dramatic changes. We know this from artificial selection of dogs. The differences between a chihuahua and a great dane are much greater than the differences between a wolf and a coyote for example, to the point that these different breeds would undoubtedly be classed as different species if they were the product of natural rather than artificial selection.
Untrue. At the genomic sequence level, apes and humans are more similar to one another than pigs.
Science is not a matter of faith, it is a matter of theories that make testable predictions. Science works to increase our knowledge whether you believe in it or not. It does not matter whether or not we believe in our theories or not--a good theory that makes testable predictions will lead to discoveries and insights into nature. A dogma that does not make testable predictions is invariably a scientific dead end and an obstacle to scientific progress, no matter matter how emotionally appealing or how much one might wish to believe in it.
Did you forget what we were talking about? The subject was predictions of evolutionary theory. The theory most certainly does not predict that fossils can be made in a day, so that is pretty ridiculous. The theory does, however, make predictions about the nature of fossils that will be found in the future.
Any time anybody makes a major discovery or invention, there is always a crowd of wannabe's saying, "That's nothing; I coulda' thought of that." Only they didn't. Oddly enough, all of the discoveries about DNA code have been made by people who based their investigations on the predictions of evolutionary theory.
They are indeed predictable--if you base your predictions on the idea that changes from species to species are the result of selection for randomly occurring sequence changes in DNA. They don't make sense from any kind of standpoint of rational design. Once again, we have people saying after the fact, "I coulda' predicted that." Only they didn't
Wrong again. The computer codes used for genetic algorithms don't mimic algorithms of protein and molecular synthesis--they mimic the processes of evolution by mutation, recombination, and natural selection--the very processes that design advocates claim didn't happen and don't work. It was computer scientists who studied evolution, and predicted, "This should work in the computer, because the evidence shows that it worked in nature" who discovered and validated these genetic algorithms as a tool for design.
That's not the point. We aren't talking about computer viruses. The point is that the same remnants of ancient viral infection (real viruses, not computer) are found in the same place in DNA of closely related experiments--just as was predicted based upon the theory of common descent.
Here you misunderstand what prediction means in science. A scientific theory must make testable predictions, but that does not mean that a theory should be able answer any arbitrary question that you pose to it. Statistical theory makes very powerful predictions--reliable enough for casinos to make consistent profits day in and day out--yet they still can't answer the question "If I flip this coin, will it come up heads or tails." Evolution is a statistical process, and just like a casino, the theory of evolution predicts trends and patterns, not individual outcomes.
There are num
I also don't see how this can be a tie. If you are looking for an ultralight, the X300 is larger, heavier, slower, and more expensive, with shorter battery life.
On the other hand, if you are looking for ports, DVD drive, and other features rarely used by travelers, then the proper comparison is to the MacBook--which is much cheaper and faster as well.
Keyboard? Mouse? It already has a full-sized keyboard. This isn't one of those dinky subnotebook microkeyboards that you can't stand to type on for long. And you really think that somebody up-to-date enough to get a MBA will want to use a wired keyboard or mouse, anyway? Everybody I know uses bluetooth, particularly with laptops. Webcam? Apple laptops, including the MBA, already come with that built in. Ipod? You plug it in for a few minutes to sync, and then you unplug it. You don't leave it plugged in long unless you are recharging it, and iPods hold a charge well, so you don't have to do it often. I usually let it recharge overnight when I'm not using my computer, so one port is plenty.
That's nonsense. There is every reason to expect that fossils will be found in the future. Novel fossils are found almost every year. And evolutionary theory makes quite definite predictions about what kinds of fossils will be found in what strata.
Sure a "DNA programmer" could choose to re-use code for completely different applications. Or not. There is no way to make any kind of prediction, which is why "designer" theories are considered unscientific. On the other hand, evolutionary theory makes detailed predictions as to just how close the DNA sequences will be in different species. It even makes predictions about sequence changes that have no effect on gene function. There is no rational reason for a designer to make changes in this kind of pattern. But who knows? Maybe the "designer" is irrational. Once again, there is no prediction that can be made.
The use of the word "evolution" in science to refer to changes in function that arise via natural selection, mutational drift, and other evolutionary mechanisms is uniform. The types of DNA changes that result in observed evolution of new functions in microorganisms in the laboratory and in the wild are exactly the same kind as those that underly differences between birds and reptiles, just as predicted by the theory of evolution. So all of the evidence supports the prediction of evolutionary theory that it is all part of the same process.
The genetic algorithms don't use the genetic code--they use the evolutionary processes of natural selection. So if you think that life was designed rather than evolved, then there is no reason to believe that algorithms based on natural selection would be able to solve design problems in engineering and math. But they do.
He might. Or he might not. If evolution is correct, these things have to be true. Advocates of designer theories have to fall back on the argument that the designer just happened to design things in the way that they are required to be if evolution is correct.
These aren't "debugging code." They are recognizable viruses--diseases--that are known to insert themselves into the DNA. And they aren't "commented out" by any uniform mechanism the way any rational programmer does it--they show mutational damage. So why would they be in the same place in closely related species? I suppose a designer could