Evolution

[BaM]

Molar comparisons? WTF does dentistry have to do with it?

[[oOalienOo]]

"What about time. Anyone figured that time never started and never could have?"

Randomly disagreeing with established concepts doesn't make you a deep thinker.

[SumJaun]

Fred

Has anyone come up with a unified equation yet to explain it all? Is that what E=mc^2 is trying to describe?

[Yautja]

Well there's problems with your theory that the universe has existed forever and that there is infinite space PK, that implies that there is also infinite stars,galaxys etc and the light has had infinite time to get to us.

So if this is true there would be light in every direction you look in at night sky, because there would be a star/galaxy blocking you view in every direction. Last time i looked at the night sky it looked more dark than light.

You can write that off as an act of god if you want, it makes no difference to my beliefs.

(BTW thank's - you got me interested in science again )

[This message has been edited by Yautja (edited 20 July 2000).]

[FB]

Endy: "Of course the universe is made up of atoms."

Proove it.

Thats the point I was trying to make - its no more provable than Evolution, yet PK probably believes in it.. (correct me if im wrong PK)
So how can you believe in that but discredit science when it comes to other areas...
If you had said to someone that everything was made up of little particles (as im sure einstein did) before atoms were common knowledge, do you know how much you would be laughed at... its the same with evolution.. just wait till the evidence stacks against you (creationists)..

Im not saying it IS true, im just saying its more probable than us being created by an almighty being. - And thats what science is all about - probability...

Thinking about it tho.. if you gave the characters in a game AI as advanced as our thoughts - lets say - halo (grin) - the characters may well be able to discover they are made by poligons (sp?) - and on an even lower level, pixels... but how could they ever possibly comprehend that some higher beings (the programmers) created their entire world and everything in it...
OOOooo matrix'y

Spose I sorta switched sides there for a mo :P

anyway - 4c (shame all you poor 2c'ers)
FB

[This message has been edited by FB (edited 20 July 2000).]

[Yautja]

I think that artifical intelligence will be the biggest test's for religion (if it don't kill us first ). Can't decide if when you convice it in beleiving in god, if it proves or disproves his exsistence though :/ (doubt if they'd take any more notice about it than evolution anyway)

Bah by then we would of converted or breed religion out anyway. We may not convert u creationist's now , but can you say that about your children or you children's children

(all my granparent's went to church every sunday, my grandmother's even picked/arranged flower's for it.)

True AI is a bad thing. Very bad thing.

AI in hardware? Windows is bad enough, but imagine true AI trying to bugger things up.

cl_mayor_whimby 1
And ahh, space is not ahh, made up of atoms, it is made up of.. very small... ice creams
cl_mayor_whimby 0



Bam, I was meaning proving atoms and the like exist, you know, thats very on the job and has plenty of evidence.

But you never see your bio teacher with a half ape, half human in a cage to show do you?

oOalienOo, I did not say I was.
But time did not have a start, and will not have an end. Its been round a while, for ever in fact. There cant be a start to it either. Because time is that.. time.. so its not like, click, and the watch is on, its always been on. Little weird to understand, but I cannot see how it could be any other way, and I am sure if you looked at it in different ways, you would realise it cannot have had a start, and that time has been around for ever.

And space and distaint solar systems?

And space and distaint solar systems?

Yautja, space does go on for ever. There are infinite stars, planets, and so on. So what if you cannot see them, there is a limit as to how far away you can see torch light too. Same diff with stars, there are dim ones, and there are bright ones. And there are stars that are too far away to see the light from.

And considering the majority of scientists and organisations that support the evolution theory, its not going to be easy for anyone who supports otherwise to show the truth, is it?

Nobody but god can give life, thats the bottom line, and no man will ever make life, from scratch, not using any existing life parts. They can use other hosts and things, yep, but they cannot make it them selves.
So as many times as anyone might try to simulate the start of life here on earth, or anywhere else, they will never succeed. Mark my words, in 50 years time, they will still have failed. If I live 100 more years, bet you tokes that they still have not.

And what do you call evolution, exactly?

Because you can say that failure of mucles causes mucles to evolve, and skin damage causes skin to grow harder and thicker, or, evolve, shaving causes hair to grow faster and thicker, or, evolve.

But humans from apes, monkeys, or anything that aint human, doesnt matter over what time period, is a fairytale for adults.

[BaM]

PK: How can you completely miss the point so many times? It's astounding....

[Eagle64]

Wheew this topic is long, i have avoided it till now but i thought iid have a read. Its taken me nearly an hour to get through and i've had to take notes to remember what things i wanted to comment on

Creatsionism vs. evolutionism, i fall very much on the evolution side so that might bias my views in some things.

So from the top...


The Bilble, a short story book, part of a ruling groups atempt to control ppl by religion, an actual relgious text based on encounters with a true god? who knows? Personally i think its just a story book but there are any number of explanations.

Necro said about space being infinite while matter is not, which is what i was thinking by the time i got to that particular post.

So i put forward this theory, space is infinite. Space is by very deffinition nothing/a vacum(sp?)/a place where nothing exsists.

Therefore where the universe doesn't exsist space must exsist.

BUT where a universe exists within space is finite. Assuming the expansion and then contraction of the universe from a singularity is true then you can imagine that there are many universes in space all contiuously expanding and contracting from singularities. What if there are infinit singularities? I dont think i should think so much i've confused myself a bit here i think :0

Endymion puts forward a really good explanation of just how vast the universe really is. I dont think are brains and the way we are taught things as we grow up truely allow us to comprehend the size of the universe.

Light and the wave-particle duality theory really are beyond me, i could never rap my head around them properly at school and i cant now.

My brains a bit fried now, although this is a very interesting subject.

Note: all theories are based on my (somewhat poor) understanding of some pretty complex science.

PS did someone mention Stephen Hawkings documentaries on video? Where could i get hold of these? anyone?

[BaM]

I saw the movie/documentary of 'A Brief History of Time' at a film festival a while back... unfortunately I had read the book first, so it kind of pissed me off. It would buid up to explaining a particular theory, such as black holes emitting matter... the audience were all sitting there going "Fuuuuck... heavy shit" etc, and I was thinking "Yeah, hit 'em with the next bit - that'll really spin them out"... and it would stop there & go on to some other theory from the beginning.

If you're in Akl, Videon probably have a copy. Catch the movie if you can, but definitely read the book as well.

[NT_VlaD]

Once upon a time in a land far far away (oh hang on ummm cancel that)
Once upon a time in a special secret place far far away live a man(no hang on a GOD)
One day this GOD got up out of bed and thought "good golly miss molly wot shall I do today" I no I shall CREATE an entire planet and civilization from nothing entirely out of my head ..YEAH good shit ..
Now where the fuck did I put my special magic wand with the purple star on the top of it .....
Ahh here it is under my imaginary bed or wotever you call that thing I sleep in (assuming I sleep)right then ... wheres that special super book of unbelievably clever shit for whisking up multiple life forms ...
Fuck here it is ,...
Ok and with the wave of the special wand and the uttering of a few special magic words
"Obeeonecanoobeedidggereedoo" an entire planet along with multple life forms suddenly appeared ..
Being of vastly superior forthought I better put in a few things to help shit move along ..
I think i might create a shitload of stuff which over the period of time can be fucken wiped out or just plain die out ...
yeah I have a few spare hours ... nows where the fuck did I put my special secret book of magic utterances again ....


[parental guidance required]

[Endymion]

FB - I personally can't prove it to you, but there is physical evidence that the universe is made up of atoms. Consider the reactions between different elements, etc, and what you can see through electron microscopes.

PK - you're not actually _too_ wrong this time (well, for one thing at least). Time did not begin, and it won't end. And no, it's not a loop.

[Fred]

SumJaun, E = mc^2 is an attempt to unify things but there are areas where relativistic thinking doesn't seem to work well. Namely down at the sub atomic level where Quantum effects rule the roost - relativity seems to be a good handle on the macro scale events. Also while relativity is well able to describe a lot of things the inter-relation between the four fundamental forces doesn't neatly fall out of it. Indeed relativity has very little to say about two of the four, ie the strong and weak nuclear forces.

The full Grand Unified Theory should allow you to derive from it the relationships observed for the four forces and, hopefully, show that they are all aspects of one single unifying force at work in the universe that looks increasingly likely to be the curvature of space/time. This is the big hope given to superstring theory and the 'platelets' theory which is it's competition.

So the short answer is no, but hopes are high that we are close.

It is a quite daunting task because down at the Quantum level the universe seems to be primarily stochasitic in nature. Somehow in the scaling up from the micro quantum world to our macro world that randomness is quashed by and large and a much more deterministic ethos rules. This change in behavior is just one of the properties that the G.U.T. has to explain.

|THAT|-fred
'fred is not dead, fred is resurrected!'

[smudge]

Back on the original topic : why is it that men want to fall asleep after sex, yet women wake up and want to talk?

Is this an evolutionary thing?

[Whiplash]

PK:"But you never see your bio teacher with a half ape, half human in a cage to show do you?"


wtf?!

Where do you get this idea that evolution means a sudden change from one species to another? Man did not evolve from a chimpanzee or something like that, the idea is that both species shared a common ancestor and branched off at some point millions of years ago... millions. Can you comprehend that number? In our time frame of a year? Its an insane length of time but its nothing compared to the time taken by the full evolutionary process...


"But humans from apes, monkeys, or anything that aint human, doesnt matter over what time period, is a fairytale for adults."

Gah, so is the tooth fairy, the easter bunny and obviously your ability to think outside the circle :P~~~

[Fred]

pk: Two things.

1) Are you prepared to conceed that just because you don't understand something that doesn't mean that that isn't how it works? Unless you can conceed the possibility that you are wrong then discussing anything with you is a waste of time.

2) What do you have against AI? Why is it such a bad idea?

|THAT|-fred
'fred is not dead, fred is resurrected!'

[BaM]

Whippy: it's no use trying to explain it to purple+ostrich. He just doesn't want to know....

[NT_VlaD]

So its possible to split something which does not exist ..
ummm strange ...

[Farmer Joe]

BaM: yeah i figured that out on the second page and stopped posting

[#$^^%$ grammer]

[This message has been edited by Farmer Joe (edited 21 July 2000).]

[Nemises]

Actually Smudge, yeah ...
The Biological reason for a Man falling asleep after sex, and a Woman becoming more active aparently (think I read this in like Womans Day or something) is that, the Man seeks rest from physical labour (and to re-produce expended Sperms), however the Woman, to increase the probability of a fertilisation, must remain active for some time so that Blood flow is constant in the re-productory organs.

BTW I looked up stochasitic and there doesnt appear to be any such word, However it was likely a mis'spell? as Stochastic (very close) is a valid word that means "Involves chance or randomness". (just for you guys/gals to lazy to look it up, but want to understand Fred's post

[Fred]

Nemesis: Yes, I meant Stochastic.

I am normally typing these things inbetween compile runs and without a dictionary or spell checker hander so you hopefully will forgive the odd mangle I make. I also have a nasty habit of dropping the odd linking work as well so watch out for that too.

One day I'll learn to proof read.

|THAT|-fred
'fred is not dead, fred just mangles things!'

Oh gawd.

So you cant even see the danger of true AI. Not the likes if AI in a game, but AI in or on an OS. Each OS has effectivly, a real personality. All the network, thinks. Everything on the network, can be controled by that AI.

If it is true AI, well.

Power corrupts, and that AI will have a lot of power. That is, if it is true AI, which I have my doubts as to just how true AI can be written.

Anyway, I could read up on nutty evolution, again, but if its only for the sake of argueing with you lot then forget it. Because its turd, plain and simple.

Cya!

[Spoon1]

PK - go take 1st year Phil and learn how to think.

At this stage you're too thick to post on this board. Sorry about that.

[Necro]

I think what you are fearing is Artificial Sentience. AI, by itself, will never be a bad thing unless that was the programmers intention. AI does not have freedom of imagination, it can not conceive of mankind as being evil and try to destroy us. It only knows what the programmer teaches it. AI has specific rules it must follow, it cant break them the same way human intelligence can. To create AS (Artificial Senteince) is beyond our understanding of mathematical science. It may become possible in the future, but it isnt possible now. But even then, AS would only have as much freedom as the programmer granted it. If you dont give it access to the network/internet it wouldnt be able to do anything remotly. It could desire the destruction of the world, much the same as some manical people do, but it simply wouldnt have the capacity to carry out such a task.

The sooner people stop fearing AI because of the hollywood scenarios the sooner we can start using it for useful applications. AI, just like any other computer application, is a tool. There is nothing amazing about it, it just has good data processing abilities.

Dont fear the reaper, reprogram him instead.

[DaFlash]

someone give PK some AI or just I before i throw up =)

[Fred]

Well if we are just going to trade aphorisms at each other then I have one for you :-

"Absolute power doesn't corrupt absolutely, it merely attracts the absolutely corrupt." - Frank Herbert

And you have your doubts about true AI. Where exactly? Do you subscribe to the concept of a non material portion of conciousness and if so how do you explain radical changes in personality caused by physical brain trauma? Or are you allying with Roger Penrose and subscribing that consciousness has it's roots at the quantum level. In which case how do you rule out the possibility of those same effects being artificially created and exploited to create an AI?

Or do you have objections to the conceptual breakdowns current AI methods have on the world? And if so which methods do you dislike? The Frame/Slot method? The Cyc project's emperical database with ruleset?

What is your _reason_ for disliking AI and having objections to it beyond having read the odd cheesy sciencefiction novel a few times too many? The concept of an AI controlling the world's computers is a laughable threat. If you want a credible threat be worried about an AI with a nano-constructor and an innate curiousity about the world...

|THAT|-fred
'fred is not dead, fred is resurrected!'

[ChaosWulf]

Damn PK, you're a funny guy to talk about "fairytales".

What, you want me to go to uni, and then come out like you lot? Heh, right.

I have a brain, I can think, my only flaw is my typing, where I cannot type fast enough, and have to keep going back to certain peices of a thought, and this distorts what I want to get out a little. The only thing I would want to go to uni for, is Maths, and English. Nothing else, because it seems to direct peoples mind into one way of thinking and logic.

Actually, thats a good topic. brb.

[Necro]

If you bothered to pay attention pk, you would notice that 'you lot' are nothing alike, we are thinking in entirely different ways and it has nothing to do with our level of education. University does NOT make you think in a logic manner. Having intellect is what causes us to think in a logic manner... once again your prove you refusal to open your mind and accept that not everything is how you think it should be. It isnt even your beleif in god that hinders you. I know and respect many people that beleive strongly in god, and they are nothing like you, they dont refuse to accept that science is a viable thing.

But all that aside, tell me how exactly you expect to become a programmer of any worth if you cant think logically? The ENTIRE basis of programming is logic. I'm sorry pk, but I just cant comprehend how someone can think the way you do and still claim to have intellect.

Heh, well sorry to upset you, but you still dont have any idea how I think. Sure, I may come across as a dimwit here, thats cool, but I do think, and do accept things in science, not all, though.

And dont tell me what I can and cannot do with respect to programming.

[Necro]

I did NOT tell you anything, I asked you a question. Then I stated how I was unable to comprehend something.

THIS IS A QUESTION: Where did I say I was upset, where did I tell you what you could program?

If you are going to pick my posts apart at least bother to read it first.

[Yautja]

PK, is you mind too small/narrow to even comprehend what infinity mean's (going on 'for ever and ever' as you put it). Even if you have torches a far away from you as you like , if there's infinite number of them you'll see them (at infinite brightness which would give you a really bad tan).

If if the universe's is not infinite, it won't be at 100% brightness - or time has not exisisted forever so the light has not had time to reach us. You could argue that the galaxy's are traveling away from us at the speed of light - but that would imply that the universe started from a point.(i know PK won't take any notice of my post, but someone else will)

Men falling asleep after sex. Someone once told me it was to do with the rush of blood after an errection (add to that increased heart rate,blood pressure) to the Brain. Causing something similar to getting hit on the head i guess , or low air pressure - that also put's you to sleep by making the pressure in your head higher (compared to the outside, really it's the overall pressure in your body increases).

Nature of light, didn't learn much about this in stage 1 physics - supposed to consist of 2 waves that intersect each other at right angles, ones electro-magnectic and the others electro-static(?) i think (don't remember about manetism polarising them - but seeming it consist's of a electro-magnetic wave i guess so).

The partical nature is because they don't come in continuous waves (think lazerlight comes in a continous wave) but 'quanta' - this is what einstein got his noble prize for proving, not relativity .As i understand it they're just a segment of these waves, so they come in finite amount's of energy , so when you're calculating the mass of light its really calculating the mass of these quanta.

Might need a link to explain it better (its easier to understand with diagrams), or wait till fred corrects me

AI - our brain is what makes us intelligent/consious - it run's on electrical signal's , similar to computer's. So unless you beleive in a soul, why should such a being not be consious

I know computer's are not comparable to neuron's, in processsing power and the fact they are are more like billion's of smaller computer's that are interconnected[clustering is it called ?] - but progress is never ending.

And if it was created why wouldn't it be hostile - we'd be the only thing's that could threaten it's 'life' - so would react like us killing shark's , lion's etc. Unless it was too intelligent for that.

PK - math is the basis of all science (think that is based on logic, if im not mistaken),

Math => Physics => Chemistry => Biology => Archaeology + Psychology

, so you would be learning science

(took so long to write that there were 5 post's more since i started )

[This message has been edited by Yautja (edited 21 July 2000).]

[glacier]

adding to yaujas thingy

Math => Physics => Chemistry => Biology => Archaeology + Psychology => Economics => Accounting

thats the order of stuff acording to my accounting lecturer.
he also adds " but dont tell the other depatments about that. or they'll thow stuff at me."

[BaM]

PK: "What, you want me to go to uni, and then come out like you lot? Heh, right."

I've never taken a Uni paper in my life. :þ

[This message has been edited by BaM (edited 21 July 2000).]

Necro, you said I cant think logicly. And then said programming is based on logic. Basicly knocking on the 'you wont be able to program games' door.

And Yautja (wtf does that name mean, anyway?), there are particles in space the hinder the lights mission to prove your point.

Look at the sun, it gives us day.
Look at the stars, they are like the sun, but further away. They barely light up anything. How many stars are there out there, that you can see? Shite loads. But they are very far away, and a lot of their light has been killed from particles on the way.

[smudge]

Any science knowledeable types care to comment on this link :

http://www.smh.com.au/news/0007/21/pageone/pageone3.html

?

Shh Bam

[Fred]

Smudge, reading the writeup it looks like another example of a quantum effect similar to the Tunnel Diode effect. The twist here being that they are exploiting a super energised electron to cause the light quanta to 'skip' the space of the atom and be emitted from the opposite side of immediately.

Several people have experimentally demonstrated this trick in recent years. What the writeups in the paper never tell you is that the process should randomise the light as well preventing information from being sent at FTL rates. There then ensues a nasty amount of bickering over what constitues information.

Personally I'd tend to say that is further evidence that relativity has it's drawbacks and a newer Grand Unified Theory is needed. Whether that theory will allow FTL speeds to be practically useful is hard to predict.

Incidentally this trick of super energising an atom is how a laser can be used to cool an object. Effectively you energise the material sufficiently that heat in the atom is enough to cause a state transition in an electron and emit a quanta of light.

Also, as a sorta scoop, a friend in Fermilab informs me that they have just experimentally proven the existance of the tau neutrino. It being the third and last neutrino flavour to be verified. This puts the Standard Model of particle physics on a stronger basis. Expect to see headlines about it in the media over the next few days.

|THAT|-fred
'fred is not dead, fred is resurrected!'

[Whiplash]

Think about how fast light travels, and how far away these stars can be. If there were infinite amounts of stars (which is probably true as they are born and die often) then we wouldn't always see their light because of the distance. For all we know, in some black part of the night sky a star is born, or has been born 50 million years ago, and died 6 million years ago - but we wouldn't see the light because of the distance taken to get to us...

Regardless, if space is infinite, and there are infinite amounts of stars out there - why would sentient life only form on one planet? For all we know 5 billion years from now after earth is destroyed by some nutty war some aliens may come and discover our then ancient civilisation and seem quite primative in comparisson to their achievements...

Ahhh yes, but they would take it all back when they had some kiwi dope though