Okay lets say we let them track us on the web (those of us that don't ad/trackblock as a policy).
Fine then they get to be personally liable for any harm that comes to us/our computers from the ads they send us.
Tracking goes wrong and we get hit by ads for Tween Lingerie? they go down for it
They start serving an ad that is a malware payload? they do the time for Computer Crimes.
Your site Your Ads YOUR PROBLEM
Considering the amount of companies that have not even been given a slap on the wrist for allowing hackers to compromise their databases and steal people's credit card numbers and personal information, I don't see this kind of thing happening. Also, I'm not sure I agree that a website owner should be forced to vet every ad they allow on their site. Even an expert in computer security is unlikely to be able to identify all malicious software, so making it a website owners responsibility to guarantee the safety of the ads will simply mean that all the small websites will have to shut down or find an alternate source of funding.
My personal objection to tracking is not that it is a malware vector (although it certainly can be), but that I don't want my personal data to be collected without my knowledge and consent in order to generate profit. I don't object to an opt-in, I use gmail all the time with full knowledge that it targets advertising. However I also want to be able to control what they do with my data, for example I don't want them to sell it to some shady third-person or continue to hold my information after I delete my account. Thankfully these feelings appear to be shared by European lawmakers.
Wait, weren't ads present and effective in the past, prior to tracking?
Someone mod this guy up. Television, radio, print magazines and free papers as well as traditional websites have been doing well for years without the need to invade people's privacy in order to aggressively target advertising.
That amount of power is sufficient for approximately 1.81 time-travelling DeLoreans.
True, but you'd have to take the reactor with you if you wanted to come back to the present again (unless you invent some way of freezing the passenger so they can wait it out).
What does the copyright holder lose when piracy happens? Exclusivity. Copyright is supposed to be be an exclusive right to decide who may copy a work. When somebody else does that without permission, they directly impact the copyright holder's exclusivity on their control of the work. Whether a person believes that the creator should never have had that level of control over the work in the first place is entirely irrelevant - the law still recognizes it.
Copyright is supposed to be a *temporary* exclusive right to decide who may copy a work *before it enters the public domain*. The natural state of any recorded work (book/movie/music) is the public domain, copyright is there only as an incentive to produce. In recent years the copyright holders have broken this social contract, with copyrights lasting longer than recorded music has existed. Clearly if the copyright holders no longer respect the contract, why should the public? I say screw 'em.
When you are in China, they enforce THEIR IP laws STRICTLY. They have ZERO issues with stealing from outside of the nation. However, if you steal within their nation and esp. if you are a westerner, then the punishment is severe. Apple is likely to get by. For now. However, once Foxconn has moved more work there and China has learned what they want from Apple, come the next IP issue, then China will charge them full price.
I agree that they are definitely not playing fair. However, let's be honest, the only people currently benefiting from the patent and copyright laws in the Western world are the IP lawyers and patent trolls. If China rises to dominance, and continues to ignore intellectual property claims from Western countries, I do not see that situation continuing for long.
Chinese gov. backs the theft of IP, reselling of copies, etc. Yet, all that happens is hand slapping. NOW, Apple could get 1.6 BILLION dollar over the use of the name. Amazing. Who knows. PERHAPS, it will lead to western, esp. American, companies re-thinking what they are doing in China.
Go China! Maybe the dominance of China will have a positive benefit in causing a real shake-up in IP laws, which in my opinion can only be a good thing.
I would have thought Slashdot would be supportive of attempts to allow people to control over their private personal data? In my opinion, people who give personal data to any organisation in order for them to provide a service should have the right to ensure that the data is not kept or sold when the person no longer requires the service. Also a person should be protected against organisations collecting data without them being aware for commercial gain. I can finally cancel my Facebook account and actually be sure that my information has been deleted. This is a Good Thing!
This article [nasa.gov] from NASA suggests that muscle and bone loss would only really be a problem if you intend to go back into a higher gravity environment afterwards,
Oh, well that's all right then. Just choose people who don't want ever to come back to earth. I'm sure the volunteers will be queuing up. Or maybe just make it some sort of prison camp for lifers - I'm sure I've seen several sci fi films with that theme.
Missed the point I'm afraid. The discussion was about whether a pocket of humanity can survive a mega-disaster wiping Earth-based humanity out (in which case not being able to go back onto Earth's surface is not a big issue). The parent suggested that long-term survival is impossible due to muscle atrophy and bone loss, the article suggests otherwise.
As a side note, I would be very surprised if there weren't legions of volunteers for a one-way trip. I for one would certainly consider it.
Seriously? Many technologies we take for granted (likely including the computer you are viewing this on) were once science fiction. See this list for example.
That is until one of the many possible (and even likely) mega-disasters wipes us out and all of our culture and endeavours and civilization become just an archaeological study/ object lesson for another species that collectively figured out that putting all your eggs in one basket is a really bad idea!
This has to be one of the most colossally ignorant ideas I've ever heard. Not only do we not have the technology - we aren't even close.
Woah, hold on there, no need for name-calling. We're never going to develop the technology unless money and effort are spent in that direction. Also can you enlighten me as to what technology is so lacking? We demonstrated pretty conclusively in the 70s that it can be done (unless you're one of those people), all that is needed is the money and drive to do it again.
This article from NASA suggests that muscle and bone loss would only really be a problem if you intend to go back into a higher gravity environment afterwards, and even then I don't see why a regime of exercise and vitamin supplements could not restore what is missing. Also, the only reason the muscles and bone are lost is that the body decides that they are not needed; I doubt that it would lead to death.
The 'all eggs in one basket' argument is not about keeping alive the entire population of the Earth, it is simply an argument that we need to have a viable colony somewhere other than the Earth to prevent extinction. I agree that it is unlikely that our growth vs. environment problem will be solved by space industry/colonization.
ISS cannot support a large enough human population to be able to survive indefinitely without support from Earth. A Moon base might be able to, or at least it would act as a handy staging post to locations that are more able to independently support human life. You are correct that some of the mega-disasters would wipe out both the Moon and the Earth at the same time (death of the Sun / nearby supernova, etc) but most of them are confined to the Earth itself, in which case having a branch of humanity that survives the fall and keeps at least some of our culture and technology would be a massive boon.
That is until one of the many possible (and even likely) mega-disasters wipes us out and all of our culture and endeavours and civilization become just an archaeological study/ object lesson for another species that collectively figured out that putting all your eggs in one basket is a really bad idea!
Damn right! It's fortunate that on this issue some big corporation's interests lie parallel to the best interests of the citizen, but that is not always the case. The fact that corporations have so much influence on the politics in the US is a sickness that needs to be purged before it's too late.
Providing the wild variety has the slightest chance of mutating into something like this, I reiterate my point that I would rather have it studied now and not later. That's not to say I don't think caution is necessary.
Presumably sequencing the RNA (which is pretty quick these days I understand) along with some knowledge of the method by which the virus interfaces with the cells would allow the researchers to compare how similar the natural and lab varieties? I am not a biologist but I would think this kind of thing is pretty routine for things as simple as viruses.
...have someone studying it now rather than having them start when its already too late. It can take months or years to create a vaccine, then more time to manufacture/distribute it to the public. By this time a large proportion of the world's population could be infected.
Considering the fact that Obama recently signed away the right to trial for US citizens, do you think he will give a shit about a bit more bad press about the US govt? Most people are already aware that the 'content industry' makes handsome donations to the government in return for their legal protection of their outdated business model.
What he did was an offence under UK law. It would not infringe his human rights to be tried abroad. So what's the big deal? My only concern with this is that the UK Govt didn't prosecute him itself.
If it was an offence under UK law then he should be tried in the UK, period. America's governments have a history of coming down very harshly on file-sharers, arguably because of the large sums of money 'donated' to their campaigns by big media. Also recall that Obama recently signed in a law allowing indefinite detention without trial for foreign and domestic suspects.
I have written a letter to my MP demanding that he stand up for the rights of a British citizen to be tried for crimes in a British court under British law.
The case of textbooks is special for many reasons. First, students (and I am talking University Students here) MUST buy them. No choice in the matter.
I don't know about that. I have a degree and doctorate in Physics, and I am halfway through my first postdoc - the only time I ever bought textbooks was in the first year of my undergrad before I realised that the university libraries almost always have multiple copies of any standard textbook that they will lend out for months at a time for free.
Well then, I suppose you have no concerns about advocating anything you choose to consider "scientific"--even if it's disproven. Luminiferous Ether was a scientific theory. Is it still "scientific", now that it has been disproven? Well, at minimum I'll stipulate that I am considering falsified theories to be unscientific, for the purposes of this discussion.
Luminiferous Aether is a scientific theory, the fact that it was shown to be incorrect does not take away that fact. If you do not accept that definition then that is up to you.
The problem with analogies is they are often disanalogous. It is known that there are black sheep. The closer analogy would be "there have never been any naturally purple sheep" as a hypothesis. Empirically, we can reasonably conclude there probably were not purple sheep by the fact none have been observed, but this is, strictly speaking, not a falsifiable test, and therefore not a -scientific- hypothesis.
A small child having never left his daddy's farm may postulate that black sheep do not and have never existed. Finding a black sheep on his travels, he finds that both aspects of his postulate, that of current and past non-existence have been disproven. His theory is therefore falsifiable. With purple sheep, one might find that the pigmentation cells cannot physically produce purple coloured wool. One might then reasonably conclude that purple sheep cannot and have never existed. This may not be correct (see below) but it is certainly a scientific postulate.
In the case of fluorescent ones, yes. They must be explained by design--as they were, as a matter of fact, recently designed by genetic engineers.
Not necessarily. Clearly fluorescence arose naturally in other species, it is therefore not unreasonable to assume that it could arise in cats given the right circumstances.
If I was seeking to falsify it, yes. That isn't my stance here. My position is that it is scientifically indeterminate, in the same sense as I don't have to falsify the Copenhagen Interpretation to allow the Everett Interpretation. If your were to propose that -only- Copenhagen is scientifically viable, then you would indeed have to falsify Everett, at minimum.
I don't disagree. Hence the reason my statements concern the falsifiability of the statements. By the way, if you read the wikipedia article on the Everett interpretation you will find several possible methods of testing this against the Copenhagen interpretation, although none are yet experimentally viable.
No, to be precise you are -not- making a testable prediction. You are saying, in effect, "nothing contradicting this will be found" as the closest thing to it.
Perhaps we will never agree on this issue, but I still do not see the issue here. The statement 'nothing contradicting this will be found' is a falsifiable prediction. Lots of experiments can test this. It is not outside of the realms of scientific inquiry.
Because, it depends on an infinite series of test cases and the determination of an -absence- of a given characteristic to all of them, in contrast to a finite set of tests that can be performed to back a hypothesis.
One can perform an infinite series of tests of Newtonian Mechanics. One would eventually conclude that it breaks down under certain circumstances. You find a counter-example. One can also perform an infinite number of tests of evolutionary theory in a similar attempt to find a counter-example. Nothing unscientific about this.
In an attempt to boil this discussion down to its essentials, is it correct to say that your stance is that there can be no experiment that allows us to determine whether Intelligent Design or evolution is responsible for the origin of the species? Perhaps this is true, but ultimately it doesn't matter. Evolutionary theory will continue to offer more and more falsifiable predi
We can however seek to *disprove* the theory - this is perfectly scientific, and thus puts the question within the realms of testability.
Not really, except in the sense it's already been disproven.
This is the statement that 'only evolution' occurs? Whether or not it has been disproven does not make it unscientific. It is a perfectly valid postulate, just like my 'all sheep are white' example.
Here's a couple cats. Can Natural Selection account for all their biological attributes? I'm not specifying yet whether or not the cats are fluorescent.
I don't see any reason why natural selection + 6 billion years of evolution cannot produce cats. Can you give me a biological attribute that cannot be explained by natural selection? Don't say eyes - there are plenty of articles that explain how these can arise (cf. this for example). Do we have any reason to suspect that something as outlandish as a 'designer' is necessary to explain cats?
What are you proposing as your differentiator between features caused by natural selection versus those caused by design?
I guess meeting the designer would allow me to put this to rest - of course He could be lying. I may also be seeing things.
Okay, outside of the sense in which it has been disproven, what would qualify as disproof of -exclusive- causal claims?
Well, just like any scientific postulate, you would have to show that the claim is not sufficient to account for the observation. I have yet to see anyone do this for evolution. Intelligent Design of course cannot be disproved because acts of God are not reproducible.
There is no need, that I can see, to overextend claims as to what we scientifically know into what we do not, and claim as a scientific premise that we "will know it applies in all cases", presciently.
Wait! What you are describing is the very definition of science! We make an observation, postulate a theory, use the theory to make a prediction then falsify the prediction. 'Overextend[ing] claims as to what we scientifically know into what we do not' is what science is all about.
Secondly, you are equivocating "scientific" with "true" here, it seems--the two are not synonyms.
I disagree. I am equivocating 'scientific' with 'can be tested using the techniques of the scientific method'. 'Truth', well, I discussed previously how I hold that proving something is impossible.
I'm afraid I do not understand your following point regarding how 'only evolution occurs' is unscientific. Clearly it is accessible to science; one has only to find a valid (scientific) alternative theory that can account for it. Do you have one of these? Regardless, even if you do, it *is still a scientific prediction*.
Regarding your final point, I too find it irritating that people make claims of any sort with absolute certainty. This is why I have been careful with my wording not to make you think I am claiming anything with absolute certainty. I don't think I have erred.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay lets say we let them track us on the web (those of us that don't ad/trackblock as a policy). Fine then they get to be personally liable for any harm that comes to us/our computers from the ads they send us.
Tracking goes wrong and we get hit by ads for Tween Lingerie? they go down for it They start serving an ad that is a malware payload? they do the time for Computer Crimes.
Your site Your Ads YOUR PROBLEM
Considering the amount of companies that have not even been given a slap on the wrist for allowing hackers to compromise their databases and steal people's credit card numbers and personal information, I don't see this kind of thing happening. Also, I'm not sure I agree that a website owner should be forced to vet every ad they allow on their site. Even an expert in computer security is unlikely to be able to identify all malicious software, so making it a website owners responsibility to guarantee the safety of the ads will simply mean that all the small websites will have to shut down or find an alternate source of funding.
My personal objection to tracking is not that it is a malware vector (although it certainly can be), but that I don't want my personal data to be collected without my knowledge and consent in order to generate profit. I don't object to an opt-in, I use gmail all the time with full knowledge that it targets advertising. However I also want to be able to control what they do with my data, for example I don't want them to sell it to some shady third-person or continue to hold my information after I delete my account. Thankfully these feelings appear to be shared by European lawmakers.
Wait, weren't ads present and effective in the past, prior to tracking?
Someone mod this guy up. Television, radio, print magazines and free papers as well as traditional websites have been doing well for years without the need to invade people's privacy in order to aggressively target advertising.
That amount of power is sufficient for approximately 1.81 time-travelling DeLoreans.
True, but you'd have to take the reactor with you if you wanted to come back to the present again (unless you invent some way of freezing the passenger so they can wait it out).
What does the copyright holder lose when piracy happens? Exclusivity. Copyright is supposed to be be an exclusive right to decide who may copy a work. When somebody else does that without permission, they directly impact the copyright holder's exclusivity on their control of the work. Whether a person believes that the creator should never have had that level of control over the work in the first place is entirely irrelevant - the law still recognizes it.
Copyright is supposed to be a *temporary* exclusive right to decide who may copy a work *before it enters the public domain*. The natural state of any recorded work (book/movie/music) is the public domain, copyright is there only as an incentive to produce. In recent years the copyright holders have broken this social contract, with copyrights lasting longer than recorded music has existed. Clearly if the copyright holders no longer respect the contract, why should the public? I say screw 'em.
When you are in China, they enforce THEIR IP laws STRICTLY. They have ZERO issues with stealing from outside of the nation. However, if you steal within their nation and esp. if you are a westerner, then the punishment is severe. Apple is likely to get by. For now. However, once Foxconn has moved more work there and China has learned what they want from Apple, come the next IP issue, then China will charge them full price.
I agree that they are definitely not playing fair. However, let's be honest, the only people currently benefiting from the patent and copyright laws in the Western world are the IP lawyers and patent trolls. If China rises to dominance, and continues to ignore intellectual property claims from Western countries, I do not see that situation continuing for long.
Chinese gov. backs the theft of IP, reselling of copies, etc. Yet, all that happens is hand slapping. NOW, Apple could get 1.6 BILLION dollar over the use of the name. Amazing. Who knows. PERHAPS, it will lead to western, esp. American, companies re-thinking what they are doing in China.
Go China! Maybe the dominance of China will have a positive benefit in causing a real shake-up in IP laws, which in my opinion can only be a good thing.
I would have thought Slashdot would be supportive of attempts to allow people to control over their private personal data? In my opinion, people who give personal data to any organisation in order for them to provide a service should have the right to ensure that the data is not kept or sold when the person no longer requires the service. Also a person should be protected against organisations collecting data without them being aware for commercial gain. I can finally cancel my Facebook account and actually be sure that my information has been deleted. This is a Good Thing!
This article [nasa.gov] from NASA suggests that muscle and bone loss would only really be a problem if you intend to go back into a higher gravity environment afterwards,
Oh, well that's all right then. Just choose people who don't want ever to come back to earth. I'm sure the volunteers will be queuing up. Or maybe just make it some sort of prison camp for lifers - I'm sure I've seen several sci fi films with that theme.
Missed the point I'm afraid. The discussion was about whether a pocket of humanity can survive a mega-disaster wiping Earth-based humanity out (in which case not being able to go back onto Earth's surface is not a big issue). The parent suggested that long-term survival is impossible due to muscle atrophy and bone loss, the article suggests otherwise.
As a side note, I would be very surprised if there weren't legions of volunteers for a one-way trip. I for one would certainly consider it.
Ever heard of a generation ship?
Yes. I read science fiction.
Seriously? Many technologies we take for granted (likely including the computer you are viewing this on) were once science fiction. See this list for example.
This has to be one of the most colossally ignorant ideas I've ever heard. Not only do we not have the technology - we aren't even close.
Woah, hold on there, no need for name-calling. We're never going to develop the technology unless money and effort are spent in that direction. Also can you enlighten me as to what technology is so lacking? We demonstrated pretty conclusively in the 70s that it can be done (unless you're one of those people), all that is needed is the money and drive to do it again.
This article from NASA suggests that muscle and bone loss would only really be a problem if you intend to go back into a higher gravity environment afterwards, and even then I don't see why a regime of exercise and vitamin supplements could not restore what is missing. Also, the only reason the muscles and bone are lost is that the body decides that they are not needed; I doubt that it would lead to death.
The 'all eggs in one basket' argument is not about keeping alive the entire population of the Earth, it is simply an argument that we need to have a viable colony somewhere other than the Earth to prevent extinction. I agree that it is unlikely that our growth vs. environment problem will be solved by space industry/colonization.
ISS cannot support a large enough human population to be able to survive indefinitely without support from Earth. A Moon base might be able to, or at least it would act as a handy staging post to locations that are more able to independently support human life. You are correct that some of the mega-disasters would wipe out both the Moon and the Earth at the same time (death of the Sun / nearby supernova, etc) but most of them are confined to the Earth itself, in which case having a branch of humanity that survives the fall and keeps at least some of our culture and technology would be a massive boon.
That is until one of the many possible (and even likely) mega-disasters wipes us out and all of our culture and endeavours and civilization become just an archaeological study/ object lesson for another species that collectively figured out that putting all your eggs in one basket is a really bad idea!
Damn right! It's fortunate that on this issue some big corporation's interests lie parallel to the best interests of the citizen, but that is not always the case. The fact that corporations have so much influence on the politics in the US is a sickness that needs to be purged before it's too late.
Providing the wild variety has the slightest chance of mutating into something like this, I reiterate my point that I would rather have it studied now and not later. That's not to say I don't think caution is necessary.
Presumably sequencing the RNA (which is pretty quick these days I understand) along with some knowledge of the method by which the virus interfaces with the cells would allow the researchers to compare how similar the natural and lab varieties? I am not a biologist but I would think this kind of thing is pretty routine for things as simple as viruses.
...have someone studying it now rather than having them start when its already too late. It can take months or years to create a vaccine, then more time to manufacture/distribute it to the public. By this time a large proportion of the world's population could be infected.
yes, you can be arrested and put in jail before being found guilty.
Even better, since a few weeks ago Americans can be put in jail *for an unlimited time* without having been found guilty!
Considering the fact that Obama recently signed away the right to trial for US citizens, do you think he will give a shit about a bit more bad press about the US govt? Most people are already aware that the 'content industry' makes handsome donations to the government in return for their legal protection of their outdated business model.
What he did was an offence under UK law. It would not infringe his human rights to be tried abroad. So what's the big deal? My only concern with this is that the UK Govt didn't prosecute him itself.
If it was an offence under UK law then he should be tried in the UK, period. America's governments have a history of coming down very harshly on file-sharers, arguably because of the large sums of money 'donated' to their campaigns by big media. Also recall that Obama recently signed in a law allowing indefinite detention without trial for foreign and domestic suspects.
I have written a letter to my MP demanding that he stand up for the rights of a British citizen to be tried for crimes in a British court under British law.
The case of textbooks is special for many reasons. First, students (and I am talking University Students here) MUST buy them. No choice in the matter.
I don't know about that. I have a degree and doctorate in Physics, and I am halfway through my first postdoc - the only time I ever bought textbooks was in the first year of my undergrad before I realised that the university libraries almost always have multiple copies of any standard textbook that they will lend out for months at a time for free.
Interesting question: did you see a boost in sales as a result of Google adding your book to their searches?
Well then, I suppose you have no concerns about advocating anything you choose to consider "scientific"--even if it's disproven. Luminiferous Ether was a scientific theory. Is it still "scientific", now that it has been disproven? Well, at minimum I'll stipulate that I am considering falsified theories to be unscientific, for the purposes of this discussion.
Luminiferous Aether is a scientific theory, the fact that it was shown to be incorrect does not take away that fact. If you do not accept that definition then that is up to you.
The problem with analogies is they are often disanalogous. It is known that there are black sheep. The closer analogy would be "there have never been any naturally purple sheep" as a hypothesis. Empirically, we can reasonably conclude there probably were not purple sheep by the fact none have been observed, but this is, strictly speaking, not a falsifiable test, and therefore not a -scientific- hypothesis.
A small child having never left his daddy's farm may postulate that black sheep do not and have never existed. Finding a black sheep on his travels, he finds that both aspects of his postulate, that of current and past non-existence have been disproven. His theory is therefore falsifiable. With purple sheep, one might find that the pigmentation cells cannot physically produce purple coloured wool. One might then reasonably conclude that purple sheep cannot and have never existed. This may not be correct (see below) but it is certainly a scientific postulate.
In the case of fluorescent ones, yes. They must be explained by design--as they were, as a matter of fact, recently designed by genetic engineers.
Not necessarily. Clearly fluorescence arose naturally in other species, it is therefore not unreasonable to assume that it could arise in cats given the right circumstances.
If I was seeking to falsify it, yes. That isn't my stance here. My position is that it is scientifically indeterminate, in the same sense as I don't have to falsify the Copenhagen Interpretation to allow the Everett Interpretation. If your were to propose that -only- Copenhagen is scientifically viable, then you would indeed have to falsify Everett, at minimum.
I don't disagree. Hence the reason my statements concern the falsifiability of the statements. By the way, if you read the wikipedia article on the Everett interpretation you will find several possible methods of testing this against the Copenhagen interpretation, although none are yet experimentally viable.
No, to be precise you are -not- making a testable prediction. You are saying, in effect, "nothing contradicting this will be found" as the closest thing to it.
Perhaps we will never agree on this issue, but I still do not see the issue here. The statement 'nothing contradicting this will be found' is a falsifiable prediction. Lots of experiments can test this. It is not outside of the realms of scientific inquiry.
Because, it depends on an infinite series of test cases and the determination of an -absence- of a given characteristic to all of them, in contrast to a finite set of tests that can be performed to back a hypothesis.
One can perform an infinite series of tests of Newtonian Mechanics. One would eventually conclude that it breaks down under certain circumstances. You find a counter-example. One can also perform an infinite number of tests of evolutionary theory in a similar attempt to find a counter-example. Nothing unscientific about this.
In an attempt to boil this discussion down to its essentials, is it correct to say that your stance is that there can be no experiment that allows us to determine whether Intelligent Design or evolution is responsible for the origin of the species? Perhaps this is true, but ultimately it doesn't matter. Evolutionary theory will continue to offer more and more falsifiable predi
We can however seek to *disprove* the theory - this is perfectly scientific, and thus puts the question within the realms of testability.
Not really, except in the sense it's already been disproven.
This is the statement that 'only evolution' occurs? Whether or not it has been disproven does not make it unscientific. It is a perfectly valid postulate, just like my 'all sheep are white' example.
Here's a couple cats. Can Natural Selection account for all their biological attributes? I'm not specifying yet whether or not the cats are fluorescent.
I don't see any reason why natural selection + 6 billion years of evolution cannot produce cats. Can you give me a biological attribute that cannot be explained by natural selection? Don't say eyes - there are plenty of articles that explain how these can arise (cf. this for example). Do we have any reason to suspect that something as outlandish as a 'designer' is necessary to explain cats?
What are you proposing as your differentiator between features caused by natural selection versus those caused by design?
I guess meeting the designer would allow me to put this to rest - of course He could be lying. I may also be seeing things.
Okay, outside of the sense in which it has been disproven, what would qualify as disproof of -exclusive- causal claims?
Well, just like any scientific postulate, you would have to show that the claim is not sufficient to account for the observation. I have yet to see anyone do this for evolution. Intelligent Design of course cannot be disproved because acts of God are not reproducible.
There is no need, that I can see, to overextend claims as to what we scientifically know into what we do not, and claim as a scientific premise that we "will know it applies in all cases", presciently.
Wait! What you are describing is the very definition of science! We make an observation, postulate a theory, use the theory to make a prediction then falsify the prediction. 'Overextend[ing] claims as to what we scientifically know into what we do not' is what science is all about.
Secondly, you are equivocating "scientific" with "true" here, it seems--the two are not synonyms.
I disagree. I am equivocating 'scientific' with 'can be tested using the techniques of the scientific method'. 'Truth', well, I discussed previously how I hold that proving something is impossible.
I'm afraid I do not understand your following point regarding how 'only evolution occurs' is unscientific. Clearly it is accessible to science; one has only to find a valid (scientific) alternative theory that can account for it. Do you have one of these? Regardless, even if you do, it *is still a scientific prediction*.
Regarding your final point, I too find it irritating that people make claims of any sort with absolute certainty. This is why I have been careful with my wording not to make you think I am claiming anything with absolute certainty. I don't think I have erred.