> not vertically aligned in the same column, thus breaking > my the ability to quickly, visually align blocks
Those who use the KnR style look at the indentation rather than the braces. Because you need to indent the block anyway, having the brace denote the separation is redundant and looks superfluous.
> Few people who code that way will put the start > brace to a function in the same place
Placing the function opening brace on its own line is the KnR standard. I would guess it is because the function line is a declaration and produces no code, while the control statements like if, for, while, do. This visually separates the declaration from the definition, which IMO is the right thing to do.
> When you start a new block of code without a > conditional, where do you put the brace?
On its own line. Just pretend you had a conditional there and erased it with dt{
> If you want to test a block of code, you can > easily comment-out the conditional if the brace > has its own line
This is not exactly a common scenario. If you are testing your code, you should be testing the code as written, running through a scenario where it would be triggered. That way you'll find out how the code works when invoked in its proper context, instead of having your users do that.
> I find on-screen space to be a negligable concern, > I haven't coded on an 80x25 terminal since 1993
As someone who codes exclusively on the 100x30 console, I can tell you that vertical space is pretty important. Not everyone can stare at tiny fonts all day; I dislike coding with a headache.
> that bug becomes easily self-apparant with any modern > editor that supports good syntax highlighting.
Nope. Highlighting is exactly the same whether you have the semicolon at the end or not. In fact, I have a version of this problem all the time when I cut-n-paste function declarations from the header file to write the bodies. I forget the delete the semicolon occasionally, creating a few screens of strange errors:)
> I also find the BSD style ("my way") to be far > more common than the K&R-style
Yeah, I notice that all the time. All the code I see looks horrible to me:) Brace alignment is not the most irritating thing to me though: the 2-space indentation is. Nowadays every book has it and it just looks hideous to me after my perfect 4-space indents which make "golden rectangles" with my font.
> I like the orthogonality of the braces lining > up, it just looks clean and organized to me.
To me it looks like some schoolboy wrote it. Such inefficient use of space. Real programmers write compact code!;)
> bottom of this hole is only a scant 1000 feet > away from the firey liquid mantle of the Earth > itself...when I detonate a small nuclear device > at the bottom of this hole, Operation Glory-Hole > will create a gigantic super-volcano
Would any geologists care to comment whether it is possible to create an artificial island this way?
Everyone knows that when the elevator breaks, you take the stairs. In "The Golden Age" by John C.Wright, there is an episode where the protagonist has to do exactly that.
> One metric that many scientists accept is that > "if it predicts correctly, and every element in > the theory maps to an element in the universe, > then we assume the theory has physical meaning."
QM fails this criterium because its objects do not, by definition, map to elements in the universe. It states to the contrary, saying that wavefunctions do not and can not correspond to reality until measured. This is one its main insanities.
> we cannot verify QM to be "true" anymore than we > can verify any other theory to be "true."
I wasn't arguing for "absolute truth", only for logical consistency. By denying causality and physical existence independent of measurement QM becomes logically inconsistent.
> relativity, thermodynamics, Newtonian gravity, and so on. > They all contain things that seem counter-intuitive
Intuition is not a method of science. Logic is the method of science, and while relativity, thermodynamics, and Newtonian gravity are fully logical and can be demonstrated as well as explained, QM must be taken on faith because it denies the possibility of knowledge (HUP, superposition, etc.).
> All physical theories were, at first, seen to be > incompatible with "common sense" views of reality.
If you mean by the common sense of the uneducated, that is true. However, the change of perspective relativity (for example) required is not contradictory once understood, and in fact is readily recognized as an improvement on our view of the universe because it affirms our common sense notion that the laws of physics are the same everywhere.
> So whether or not you accept them as being "real" or > merely "predictive" is just a matter of personal taste.
That's the QM philosophy in a nutshell, and it can be restated as "as long as a theory is predictive, reality is irrelevant". Reality is not subjective. Its very definition is "the thing that exist whether you are looking at it or not, or whether you exist or not". Yes, the existence of existence must be a postulate, but it is a postulate absolutely necessary for any knowledge to exist. To deny it, is to deny the possibility of knowledge, and consequently of any theories, predictive or not. If you value knowledge, you have no choice in this matter. If you consider knowledge the good, as I do, the QM philosophy is an unspeakable evil.
> When you say that "probability clouds have no place in > reality" you are just making an unverifiable assumption about reality
No, I'm reasserting the correct definition of probability, which is "a measure of uncertainty of knowledge". Quantum mechanics make the erroneous assumption of equality between probability and frequency. Imagine the following scenario: an urn contains 100 balls of one color, and 10 of another. In separate trials each withdraws a ball and calculates the probability of a 100-red-ball urn, without knowing the result of the other man's trial. The first man draws a white ball and calculates a low probability, while the second man draws a red ball and calculates a high one.
One person with whom I discussed it actually thought this to be a contradiction in reality. The source of his confusion is called "the mind projection fallacy", which can be stated as: "if I don't know something, nature doesn't know it either", or the converse. Drawing a ball establishes a frequency, and is a physical fact. The calculated probability of the next draw is only a measure of our state of knowledge about it, not a description of reality in any form. Indeed, both men have a different state of knowledge, and if we assume that both are "real", as QM does, then reality becomes logically contradictory.
Here we come to the second necessary postulate of reason: "reality is non-contradictory". A red ball can not at the same time be a white ball. An urn can not be an urn containing 100 white/10 red and an urn containing 100 red/10 white simultaneously. This rule is how we validate
> Without them, there is no consistent explanation > for everyday electromagnetism (that doesn't come > into conflict with quantum mechanics)
As long as quantum mechanics is around, there will never be a consistent explanation for anything. Sure, QM, QED, and all those modern exotics might produce the correct results, but they do not do it properly. There are way too many ad-hoc decisions and no explanations of anything. QM is a religion; they tell you how they think things work and you get to take their word for it. Magic "actions at a distance", superpositions, and probability clouds have no place in reality, and if you have them in your theory, your theory is wrong, regardless of how many experiments you can predict. It's too bad that these days even trying to look for any sane alternative to QM is heresy.
> It is the force-carrying particle (gauge boson) of the quantized EM-field.
Considering that there is absolutely no experimental evidence to support these latest "gauge field", "force particle", etc. hypotheses, I'll stick with the "mere electromagnetic radiation packet" for now.
Because of this, it doesn't make sense to me to speak of a photon's "momentum", which in my view refers exclusively to "real" particles. The property you are describing looks like the same thing from the point of view of the object being hit, but I prefer using the word "energy transfer" rather than "momentum". Call it language nitpicking.
No they don't. A photon is nothing but electromagnetic radiation packet.
> the only thing the photon exchanges to transfer momentum is frequency. Weird.
Not really. "Momentum" for a photon is not the same thing as one for a particle. When a photon "hits" something, it can convert its electromagnetic energy into the mechanical energy of heat. Although it does not have momentum, it has energy, and can give momentum to absorbing particles.
Astronaut 1: Oops. I think I just dropped our navigation module. Houston: No problem. We'll just call it "nanosputnik" and everyone will think you did it because we told you to.
I doubt they'll touch it until they can figure out if it's a fish or a bird. Alien Abductor Rule Number One: if you don't know what it is - don't eat it.
> Energy can never be destroyed only change form, > our thoughts exist as electrical impulses
Then where do the "electrical impulses" go when the battery in your iPod dies? Electrical energy is basically a measurement of the difference in electron concentration between two places. Batteries work by chemically transferring electrons from one electrode (+) to the other (-). Then, as the electrons flow from - to +, you can build various devices in between that can make use of it. If you think of electrons as water, the "battery" would be an elevator that carries water in little buckets up a mountain (while taking rocks down), whence it flows downward, where waterwheels can be used to turn stones and grind your grain into flour.
So where does electricity go when the battery dies? Nowhere. Those electrons stay in the battery, they just don't move any more because you ran out of rocks on the mountain with which to counterbalance the elevator. The brain works the same way: you eat food and the stored energy moves the electrons. If you die, the electrons stop moving when they run out of energy, or more accurately, when they equalize the electron concentration in the system.
So what about thoughts? Thoughts are not physical things; they are information encoded in electrical signals. Just as a computer stores your vacation pictures, your brain stores your thoughts and memories. The electrons move and you think. The stop and you die. When the brain cells decompose, they destroy any stored thoughts and memories, just as your vacation pictures are lost when you use scissors to cut the CD on which they are stored. If we could make a "backup" copy of our brain cells, then we could live forever. The information that you would copy could be called your "soul". With this analogy, it becomes obvious exactly what it is, how to "save" it, etc.
> with all of the evidence i cant help feeling there is more to our existence
You can't say there is "more" to our existence until you know "more than what?". There is nothing mystical about how our brains work. All our thoughts, and, yes, our emotions too, are produced in a very logical and predictable fashion. That doesn't lessen our existence. It doesn't mean that what we do doesn't matter. Just because you are a machine, a biological machine, doesn't mean you are a toaster. The first step to understanding reason and consciousness is to admit that they can be understood, measured, and fully explained. That they are emergent properties of a complex mechanism that we can not only understand, but build anew and modify.
To say "there must be more", is basically a refusal to think. It is to say "you can't explain me or measure me". It is to assert "I have limitless value because (I'm magical/God made me/my soul is eternal)". For a scientist, it is imperative to discard any such superstitions. To assert that "everyting is knowable", that "universe is rational and deterministic", and finally "I can know everything. No knowledge is sacred. Once I know, I can do." You speak of "feeble minds" and that is the most despicable lie of religion: to declare everyone to be stupid, to assert that "we can't really know anything", that we must "take things on faith". When people say this, they really mean: "do as we tell you, and don't question. Who do you think you are? Only God can know and do; your duty is to serve and obey."
> We are fairly sure that the best explination for the universe is the big bang
The Big Bang is not an "explanation for the universe":) It is simply a theory about what happened about 12 billion years ago that is causing everything around us to be flying apart so fast.
> I must ask where did the energy here origionate from
I don't know. Presently, that is the only correct answer, and anyone telling you otherwise is lying. The second answer is: it is not presently relevant. We shall study the universe, of course, and try to find out, but it isn't someth
> The contrary [no soul] has just as little basis for > scientific opinion and thus is a religious belife > untill we can garner some way of testing it
Science does not work this way. Every scientific hypothesis must be disprovable; i.e. you must show that there can be evidence both for and against it. The concept of a soul is defined in such a way as to be both unprovable and undisprovable, and is therefore an invalid hypothesis. By the scientific method you would be required to reject it.
It is also helpful to understand that science does not begin by assuming that "souls" exist. If you want to prove that they do, the burden of doing so is entirely on you. Until you offer some solid evidence, the world should assume there is no such thing. The same argument goes for all other similar imaginary unprovable concepts like God, Heaven, the Devil, creationism, etc. This is basically a restatement of the famous "Occam's razor", which is the basis of all scientific thought - "do not create unnecessary concepts". Everything you propose must be proven; start with as few assumptions as possible.
> The sun revolving around the earth was held as > scientific fact for a good long while
Because it was a provable fact. The sun really does revolve around the earth, from our frame of reference. The motion was directly measurable and quantifiable. It was only after the difficulties with describing planetary orbits that anyone needed to question the theory. That's how science works. You create a theory, you make predictions, and you verify those predictions with experiments. By this reasoning "Sun revolves around the earth" was a valid scientific theory, until it failed to explain retrograde motion in a satisfactory manner.
> leaving but a few people who suffer this disease > and the carriers in a small country alive
I'm a little confused by the example; let me paraphrase it as I understood it: certain genetic alteration create a vulnerability to some exotic future plague that kills off everyone who has been thus modified. Given our state of genetic knowledge, I would consider this unlikely. Unless the modification itself concerns the immune system, such as, for instance, an introduction of HIV immunity, it is difficult to believe that any weakness would be thus created.
If you are hacking the immune system, and don't know what you are doing, you still would not be able to make a prior differentiation between introduction of an immunity or a vulnerability. What if the reverse happened, and the modification made its recipients immune to your plague instead? So in the absence of other data you'd be forced to assign equal probability to all three outcomes (acquired immunity, no change, acquired vulnerability). Because you would also be getting other tangible benefits from the modification (else why do it?), it should be favorable unless you have specific data indicating vulnerability creation. You might want to look into Bayesian inferencing methods for a fuller explanation at how I arrived at this result.
> the moment it would develop its sence of self >... safe to assume 3-4 months
After birth, I assume. A newborn has no sense of self. In fact, if you've ever spent time around one, you'd notice that it hardly has a sense of the surrounding world either. It's all reflexes to pure, uninterpreted senses, for at least a few weeks.
> right now it is possible that i may have been or may not have existed before birth
Just as it is possible that there is an invisible Snorg reading this over your shoulder. Although indeed a possibility, it is so astronomically unlikely, the contrary possibilities take on the degree of certainty.
> All i am thinking is we currently dont have the > experiance in the field to start experimentation
How do you think one gains such experience? You'll never know anything until you try it, and considering that even our present attempts create tangible benefits in people's lives, it is clearly advantageous to start now.
> it would be incredibly naive to think we could and > wouldnt just make a larger mess of the whole situation
Like what? You're being afraid of ghosts here. Until there is evidence of something going wrong, there is no need to panic. Even then, you would learn from your failures and improve your procedures. That's how engineering works.
> I just have grave doubts over this situation
Perhaps you should think seriously about those doubts and describe to yourself their exact cause. Once you see it, you might not think it a valid one. Introspection is the only way to acquire maturity and wisdom.
> What else would you call selecting the birth to avoid a disability.
Destruction of your own genetic material is not considered morally wrong even by the staunchiest of religious fanatics. Billions of men leave their sperm to die in the toilet on a regular basis. Selecting the ones you wish to use for impregnation is no different.
Furthermore, I do not share the Christian mentality of considering the fetuses "alive". Until the organism is capable of independent existence, I would not consider it alive and would consider its termination entirely justifiable if that is the choice of its owner - its mother. The mother owns the fetus, since it is simply a part of her body until it is born, and should have an uncontested right to terminate it at any time prior to birth.
> then suggest i may have been hapier not being born
This is a contradiction. If you hadn't been born, you'd have no ability to experience happiness, or anything else. I am suggesting that if you were not born, another child would have been born to your parents, and he would have carried your name and have had pretty much the same life experiences as you did. He would have effectively taken your place in the world, and would have been happier to remain in good health. Although he would not have been you, exactly, to the outside world the result would have been identical to replacing your body with a healthy one.
> but not by selectivly enginering them out of society,but by curing them.
Why would you want to expend effort to cure generations of disabled children when the entire disease could be eliminated completely and throughly, so that even a societal collapse into dark ages would be able to create a resurgence? Your illogic eludes me.
> in a society that *believes* that good genes make > you superior, you won't have to work hard
Still wrong. If everyone has good genes, you still have to work hard to be superior. Sure, you'll be favored over the "imperfect" people, but you still have plenty of your own kind to compete with. Even natural-born people have good genes, so you'll never lack competition. Secondly, competition is not a good thing to be motivated by. Everyone who has achieved anything knows that the first thing you do is stop caring what other people think and judge yourself by your own standards.
> Yeah i would of been hapier without a disability,but i would not be me.
Not as you are now, but you'd still be you. What if you were abandoned by your parents at the age of two and adopted by someone else? You'd still be "you", wouldn't you? Same with a disability; you'd still be you, even though your experiences would have been different. Happier, as you yourself admit.
> Just as i have a disability,you think im suffering > in some way , or that my life has been a missery
Perhaps not, but it is certainly not something you'd have if you had a choice, right? Why do you insist on preventing other people from making such a choice?
> I would like a cure not extermination,thank you very much
If no disabled children are ever born again, it will not affect you in any way. Nobody is talking about killing disabled people; you're just jumping to your favorite phobia.
> Girls and boys will have difrent lives you change > due to your enviroments and experiance, > inteligence is not pure genetics
True, but intelligence has a very large genetic influence. Yes, I have a sister, and although we are different, we have similar intelligence capacity. If she had the misfortune of being disabled, she'd still have it. The important part is what you decide to do with it. You still must make the decision to use your intelligence and to strive for accomplishment, and, I hate to break it to you, most disabled people do not make such a choice. Dr.Hawking is a big exception; all disabled people I've met were withdrawn, depressed, and stupid. I'm sure there are others who aren't, but I haven't seen them yet.
> I see no problem with genetic engenering to > remove the problem gene and repairing it, > though artificaly removing the people is sick.
Where did you hear me advocate "artificially removing the people"? Sheesh, you really are obsessed with the idea! Not that I blame you, but please try to avoid jumping to unwarranted conclusion that everyone wants to kill you, ok?
> As a person who has a Form of disability myself I find this highly unnerving.
So after having experienced life with a disability you want other people to have it too? You've got one sick mind.
> Do you think Steven Hawkins parents,given this > option would have taken it and deprived the world > of such a brilliant mind.
They wouldn't have deprived the world of a brilliant mind. They would have given the world a brilliant mind in a healthy body. I am sure Dr.Hawkins would have been much happier that way.
Gattaca was based on the erroneous concept that having good genes makes you stupid/lazy/unambitious/etc. It's all just sour grapes, just like the ridiculous common belief that looks and brains are mutually exclusive.
The problem with your argument is that religious fanatics are not just applying their ethics to themselves. They are most eager to force their ethical views down your throat because in case of abortion [they think] they value everyone's life infinitely. In case of designer babies you become a heretic for wanting to "play God", and therefore must burn at the stake. Surely, we can't allow science to keep encroaching on God's domain, no sir! If this continues, there wouldn't be anything left to attribute to God's work. Oh, wait...
Slashdot Mirror
> not vertically aligned in the same column, thus breaking
:)
:) Brace alignment is not the most irritating thing to me though: the 2-space indentation is. Nowadays every book has it and it just looks hideous to me after my perfect 4-space indents which make "golden rectangles" with my font.
;)
> my the ability to quickly, visually align blocks
Those who use the KnR style look at the indentation rather than the braces. Because you need to indent the block anyway, having the brace denote the separation is redundant and looks superfluous.
> Few people who code that way will put the start
> brace to a function in the same place
Placing the function opening brace on its own line is the KnR standard. I would guess it is because the function line is a declaration and produces no code, while the control statements like if, for, while, do. This visually separates the declaration from the definition, which IMO is the right thing to do.
> When you start a new block of code without a
> conditional, where do you put the brace?
On its own line. Just pretend you had a conditional there and erased it with dt{
> If you want to test a block of code, you can
> easily comment-out the conditional if the brace
> has its own line
This is not exactly a common scenario. If you are testing your code, you should be testing the code as written, running through a scenario where it would be triggered. That way you'll find out how the code works when invoked in its proper context, instead of having your users do that.
> I find on-screen space to be a negligable concern,
> I haven't coded on an 80x25 terminal since 1993
As someone who codes exclusively on the 100x30 console, I can tell you that vertical space is pretty important. Not everyone can stare at tiny fonts all day; I dislike coding with a headache.
> that bug becomes easily self-apparant with any modern
> editor that supports good syntax highlighting.
Nope. Highlighting is exactly the same whether you have the semicolon at the end or not. In fact, I have a version of this problem all the time when I cut-n-paste function declarations from the header file to write the bodies. I forget the delete the semicolon occasionally, creating a few screens of strange errors
> I also find the BSD style ("my way") to be far
> more common than the K&R-style
Yeah, I notice that all the time. All the code I see looks horrible to me
> I like the orthogonality of the braces lining
> up, it just looks clean and organized to me.
To me it looks like some schoolboy wrote it. Such inefficient use of space. Real programmers write compact code!
Not likely. They missed Hell by a 1000 feet...
> bottom of this hole is only a scant 1000 feet
> away from the firey liquid mantle of the Earth
> itself...when I detonate a small nuclear device
> at the bottom of this hole, Operation Glory-Hole
> will create a gigantic super-volcano
Would any geologists care to comment whether it is possible to create an artificial island this way?
Everyone knows that when the elevator breaks, you take the stairs. In "The Golden Age" by John C.Wright, there is an episode where the protagonist has to do exactly that.
> forces the hand of the government to choose between security and welfare
It is a hallmark of a good government to choose security (which is its only legitimate job) over welfare.
> One metric that many scientists accept is that
> "if it predicts correctly, and every element in
> the theory maps to an element in the universe,
> then we assume the theory has physical meaning."
QM fails this criterium because its objects do not, by definition, map to elements in the universe. It states to the contrary, saying that wavefunctions do not and can not correspond to reality until measured. This is one its main insanities.
> we cannot verify QM to be "true" anymore than we
> can verify any other theory to be "true."
I wasn't arguing for "absolute truth", only for logical consistency. By denying causality and physical existence independent of measurement QM becomes logically inconsistent.
> relativity, thermodynamics, Newtonian gravity, and so on.
> They all contain things that seem counter-intuitive
Intuition is not a method of science. Logic is the method of science, and while relativity, thermodynamics, and Newtonian gravity are fully logical and can be demonstrated as well as explained, QM must be taken on faith because it denies the possibility of knowledge (HUP, superposition, etc.).
> All physical theories were, at first, seen to be
> incompatible with "common sense" views of reality.
If you mean by the common sense of the uneducated, that is true. However, the change of perspective relativity (for example) required is not contradictory once understood, and in fact is readily recognized as an improvement on our view of the universe because it affirms our common sense notion that the laws of physics are the same everywhere.
> So whether or not you accept them as being "real" or
> merely "predictive" is just a matter of personal taste.
That's the QM philosophy in a nutshell, and it can be restated as "as long as a theory is predictive, reality is irrelevant". Reality is not subjective. Its very definition is "the thing that exist whether you are looking at it or not, or whether you exist or not". Yes, the existence of existence must be a postulate, but it is a postulate absolutely necessary for any knowledge to exist. To deny it, is to deny the possibility of knowledge, and consequently of any theories, predictive or not. If you value knowledge, you have no choice in this matter. If you consider knowledge the good, as I do, the QM philosophy is an unspeakable evil.
> When you say that "probability clouds have no place in
> reality" you are just making an unverifiable assumption about reality
No, I'm reasserting the correct definition of probability, which is "a measure of uncertainty of knowledge". Quantum mechanics make the erroneous assumption of equality between probability and frequency. Imagine the following scenario: an urn contains 100 balls of one color, and 10 of another. In separate trials each withdraws a ball and calculates the probability of a 100-red-ball urn, without knowing the result of the other man's trial. The first man draws a white ball and calculates a low probability, while the second man draws a red ball and calculates a high one.
One person with whom I discussed it actually thought this to be a contradiction in reality. The source of his confusion is called "the mind projection fallacy", which can be stated as: "if I don't know something, nature doesn't know it either", or the converse. Drawing a ball establishes a frequency, and is a physical fact. The calculated probability of the next draw is only a measure of our state of knowledge about it, not a description of reality in any form. Indeed, both men have a different state of knowledge, and if we assume that both are "real", as QM does, then reality becomes logically contradictory.
Here we come to the second necessary postulate of reason: "reality is non-contradictory". A red ball can not at the same time be a white ball. An urn can not be an urn containing 100 white/10 red and an urn containing 100 red/10 white simultaneously. This rule is how we validate
> Without them, there is no consistent explanation
> for everyday electromagnetism (that doesn't come
> into conflict with quantum mechanics)
As long as quantum mechanics is around, there will never be a consistent explanation for anything. Sure, QM, QED, and all those modern exotics might produce the correct results, but they do not do it properly. There are way too many ad-hoc decisions and no explanations of anything. QM is a religion; they tell you how they think things work and you get to take their word for it. Magic "actions at a distance", superpositions, and probability clouds have no place in reality, and if you have them in your theory, your theory is wrong, regardless of how many experiments you can predict. It's too bad that these days even trying to look for any sane alternative to QM is heresy.
> It is the force-carrying particle (gauge boson) of the quantized EM-field.
Considering that there is absolutely no experimental evidence to support these latest "gauge field", "force particle", etc. hypotheses, I'll stick with the "mere electromagnetic radiation packet" for now.
Because of this, it doesn't make sense to me to speak of a photon's "momentum", which in my view refers exclusively to "real" particles. The property you are describing looks like the same thing from the point of view of the object being hit, but I prefer using the word "energy transfer" rather than "momentum". Call it language nitpicking.
> They have zero-rest mass
No they don't. A photon is nothing but electromagnetic radiation packet.
> the only thing the photon exchanges to transfer momentum is frequency. Weird.
Not really. "Momentum" for a photon is not the same thing as one for a particle. When a photon "hits" something, it can convert its electromagnetic energy into the mechanical energy of heat. Although it does not have momentum, it has energy, and can give momentum to absorbing particles.
> Scientist Bill: I guess this is the time to tell you I did your wife...
CEO: Yeah, right. Tell me another one.
"Grey Goo" already happened, except that it's green, and we call it the "biosphere". I don't know about you, but I like it this way.
Astronaut 1: Oops. I think I just dropped our navigation module.
Houston: No problem. We'll just call it "nanosputnik" and everyone will think you did it because we told you to.
I doubt they'll touch it until they can figure out if it's a fish or a bird. Alien Abductor Rule Number One: if you don't know what it is - don't eat it.
Firiona is not a bad name. I rather like the sound of it. In fact, it is a substantially better choice than, say, "Apple".
> Energy can never be destroyed only change form ,
:) It is simply a theory about what happened about 12 billion years ago that is causing everything around us to be flying apart so fast.
> our thoughts exist as electrical impulses
Then where do the "electrical impulses" go when the battery in your iPod dies? Electrical energy is basically a measurement of the difference in electron concentration between two places. Batteries work by chemically transferring electrons from one electrode (+) to the other (-). Then, as the electrons flow from - to +, you can build various devices in between that can make use of it. If you think of electrons as water, the "battery" would be an elevator that carries water in little buckets up a mountain (while taking rocks down), whence it flows downward, where waterwheels can be used to turn stones and grind your grain into flour.
So where does electricity go when the battery dies? Nowhere. Those electrons stay in the battery, they just don't move any more because you ran out of rocks on the mountain with which to counterbalance the elevator. The brain works the same way: you eat food and the stored energy moves the electrons. If you die, the electrons stop moving when they run out of energy, or more accurately, when they equalize the electron concentration in the system.
So what about thoughts? Thoughts are not physical things; they are information encoded in electrical signals. Just as a computer stores your vacation pictures, your brain stores your thoughts and memories. The electrons move and you think. The stop and you die. When the brain cells decompose, they destroy any stored thoughts and memories, just as your vacation pictures are lost when you use scissors to cut the CD on which they are stored. If we could make a "backup" copy of our brain cells, then we could live forever. The information that you would copy could be called your "soul". With this analogy, it becomes obvious exactly what it is, how to "save" it, etc.
> with all of the evidence i cant help feeling there is more to our existence
You can't say there is "more" to our existence until you know "more than what?". There is nothing mystical about how our brains work. All our thoughts, and, yes, our emotions too, are produced in a very logical and predictable fashion. That doesn't lessen our existence. It doesn't mean that what we do doesn't matter. Just because you are a machine, a biological machine, doesn't mean you are a toaster. The first step to understanding reason and consciousness is to admit that they can be understood, measured, and fully explained. That they are emergent properties of a complex mechanism that we can not only understand, but build anew and modify.
To say "there must be more", is basically a refusal to think. It is to say "you can't explain me or measure me". It is to assert "I have limitless value because (I'm magical/God made me/my soul is eternal)". For a scientist, it is imperative to discard any such superstitions. To assert that "everyting is knowable", that "universe is rational and deterministic", and finally "I can know everything. No knowledge is sacred. Once I know, I can do." You speak of "feeble minds" and that is the most despicable lie of religion: to declare everyone to be stupid, to assert that "we can't really know anything", that we must "take things on faith". When people say this, they really mean: "do as we tell you, and don't question. Who do you think you are? Only God can know and do; your duty is to serve and obey."
> We are fairly sure that the best explination for the universe is the big bang
The Big Bang is not an "explanation for the universe"
> I must ask where did the energy here origionate from
I don't know. Presently, that is the only correct answer, and anyone telling you otherwise is lying. The second answer is: it is not presently relevant. We shall study the universe, of course, and try to find out, but it isn't someth
> The contrary [no soul] has just as little basis for
> scientific opinion and thus is a religious belife
> untill we can garner some way of testing it
Science does not work this way. Every scientific hypothesis must be disprovable; i.e. you must show that there can be evidence both for and against it. The concept of a soul is defined in such a way as to be both unprovable and undisprovable, and is therefore an invalid hypothesis. By the scientific method you would be required to reject it.
It is also helpful to understand that science does not begin by assuming that "souls" exist. If you want to prove that they do, the burden of doing so is entirely on you. Until you offer some solid evidence, the world should assume there is no such thing. The same argument goes for all other similar imaginary unprovable concepts like God, Heaven, the Devil, creationism, etc. This is basically a restatement of the famous "Occam's razor", which is the basis of all scientific thought - "do not create unnecessary concepts". Everything you propose must be proven; start with as few assumptions as possible.
> The sun revolving around the earth was held as
> scientific fact for a good long while
Because it was a provable fact. The sun really does revolve around the earth, from our frame of reference. The motion was directly measurable and quantifiable. It was only after the difficulties with describing planetary orbits that anyone needed to question the theory. That's how science works. You create a theory, you make predictions, and you verify those predictions with experiments. By this reasoning "Sun revolves around the earth" was a valid scientific theory, until it failed to explain retrograde motion in a satisfactory manner.
> leaving but a few people who suffer this disease
> and the carriers in a small country alive
I'm a little confused by the example; let me paraphrase it as I understood it: certain genetic alteration create a vulnerability to some exotic future plague that kills off everyone who has been thus modified. Given our state of genetic knowledge, I would consider this unlikely. Unless the modification itself concerns the immune system, such as, for instance, an introduction of HIV immunity, it is difficult to believe that any weakness would be thus created.
If you are hacking the immune system, and don't know what you are doing, you still would not be able to make a prior differentiation between introduction of an immunity or a vulnerability. What if the reverse happened, and the modification made its recipients immune to your plague instead? So in the absence of other data you'd be forced to assign equal probability to all three outcomes (acquired immunity, no change, acquired vulnerability). Because you would also be getting other tangible benefits from the modification (else why do it?), it should be favorable unless you have specific data indicating vulnerability creation. You might want to look into Bayesian inferencing methods for a fuller explanation at how I arrived at this result.
> the moment it would develop its sence of self ... safe to assume 3-4 months
>
After birth, I assume. A newborn has no sense of self. In fact, if you've ever spent time around one, you'd notice that it hardly has a sense of the surrounding world either. It's all reflexes to pure, uninterpreted senses, for at least a few weeks.
> right now it is possible that i may have been or may not have existed before birth
Just as it is possible that there is an invisible Snorg reading this over your shoulder. Although indeed a possibility, it is so astronomically unlikely, the contrary possibilities take on the degree of certainty.
> All i am thinking is we currently dont have the
> experiance in the field to start experimentation
How do you think one gains such experience? You'll never know anything until you try it, and considering that even our present attempts create tangible benefits in people's lives, it is clearly advantageous to start now.
> it would be incredibly naive to think we could and
> wouldnt just make a larger mess of the whole situation
Like what? You're being afraid of ghosts here. Until there is evidence of something going wrong, there is no need to panic. Even then, you would learn from your failures and improve your procedures. That's how engineering works.
> I just have grave doubts over this situation
Perhaps you should think seriously about those doubts and describe to yourself their exact cause. Once you see it, you might not think it a valid one. Introspection is the only way to acquire maturity and wisdom.
> What else would you call selecting the birth to avoid a disability.
,but by curing them .
Destruction of your own genetic material is not considered morally wrong even by the staunchiest of religious fanatics. Billions of men leave their sperm to die in the toilet on a regular basis. Selecting the ones you wish to use for impregnation is no different.
Furthermore, I do not share the Christian mentality of considering the fetuses "alive". Until the organism is capable of independent existence, I would not consider it alive and would consider its termination entirely justifiable if that is the choice of its owner - its mother. The mother owns the fetus, since it is simply a part of her body until it is born, and should have an uncontested right to terminate it at any time prior to birth.
> then suggest i may have been hapier not being born
This is a contradiction. If you hadn't been born, you'd have no ability to experience happiness, or anything else. I am suggesting that if you were not born, another child would have been born to your parents, and he would have carried your name and have had pretty much the same life experiences as you did. He would have effectively taken your place in the world, and would have been happier to remain in good health. Although he would not have been you, exactly, to the outside world the result would have been identical to replacing your body with a healthy one.
> but not by selectivly enginering them out of society
Why would you want to expend effort to cure generations of disabled children when the entire disease could be eliminated completely and throughly, so that even a societal collapse into dark ages would be able to create a resurgence? Your illogic eludes me.
> in a society that *believes* that good genes make
> you superior, you won't have to work hard
Still wrong. If everyone has good genes, you still have to work hard to be superior. Sure, you'll be favored over the "imperfect" people, but you still have plenty of your own kind to compete with. Even natural-born people have good genes, so you'll never lack competition. Secondly, competition is not a good thing to be motivated by. Everyone who has achieved anything knows that the first thing you do is stop caring what other people think and judge yourself by your own standards.
> a cursory examination would reveal them to be, at
> the least, not quite prone to mixing.
You must have a strange concept of "looks" then. What I call "good looks", correlates with brains quite well.
> Yeah i would of been hapier without a disability ,but i would not be me.
,you think im suffering
,thank you very much
,
, .
Not as you are now, but you'd still be you. What if you were abandoned by your parents at the age of two and adopted by someone else? You'd still be "you", wouldn't you? Same with a disability; you'd still be you, even though your experiences would have been different. Happier, as you yourself admit.
> Just as i have a disability
> in some way , or that my life has been a missery
Perhaps not, but it is certainly not something you'd have if you had a choice, right? Why do you insist on preventing other people from making such a choice?
> I would like a cure not extermination
If no disabled children are ever born again, it will not affect you in any way. Nobody is talking about killing disabled people; you're just jumping to your favorite phobia.
> Girls and boys will have difrent lives you change
> due to your enviroments and experiance
> inteligence is not pure genetics
True, but intelligence has a very large genetic influence. Yes, I have a sister, and although we are different, we have similar intelligence capacity. If she had the misfortune of being disabled, she'd still have it. The important part is what you decide to do with it. You still must make the decision to use your intelligence and to strive for accomplishment, and, I hate to break it to you, most disabled people do not make such a choice. Dr.Hawking is a big exception; all disabled people I've met were withdrawn, depressed, and stupid. I'm sure there are others who aren't, but I haven't seen them yet.
> I see no problem with genetic engenering to
> remove the problem gene and repairing it
> though artificaly removing the people is sick
Where did you hear me advocate "artificially removing the people"? Sheesh, you really are obsessed with the idea! Not that I blame you, but please try to avoid jumping to unwarranted conclusion that everyone wants to kill you, ok?
> As a person who has a Form of disability myself I find this highly unnerving.
,given this
So after having experienced life with a disability you want other people to have it too? You've got one sick mind.
> Do you think Steven Hawkins parents
> option would have taken it and deprived the world
> of such a brilliant mind.
They wouldn't have deprived the world of a brilliant mind. They would have given the world a brilliant mind in a healthy body. I am sure Dr.Hawkins would have been much happier that way.
Gattaca was based on the erroneous concept that having good genes makes you stupid/lazy/unambitious/etc. It's all just sour grapes, just like the ridiculous common belief that looks and brains are mutually exclusive.
The problem with your argument is that religious fanatics are not just applying their ethics to themselves. They are most eager to force their ethical views down your throat because in case of abortion [they think] they value everyone's life infinitely. In case of designer babies you become a heretic for wanting to "play God", and therefore must burn at the stake. Surely, we can't allow science to keep encroaching on God's domain, no sir! If this continues, there wouldn't be anything left to attribute to God's work. Oh, wait...