Richard Dobson <richarddobson@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:> Randy Yates wrote: >> Greg Berchin <gberchin@sentientscience.com> writes: >> >> >>>Given the current denial of scientific evidence for evolution >> >> >> What evidence do you have that life popped out from a primordial >> soup? What evidence do you have that organs known as "penis" and >> "vagina" were >> required for survival? > > They're not. Just one choice amongst many. Plenty of lifeforms today > get by perfectly happily without either. Neither perfectly efficient, > perfectly reliable, nor perfectly enjoyable. Sometimes funny, mostly > plainly absurd. Either way, far from perfect. A million years from > now, we will likely have come up with something better. And figured > out how to do it in zero gravity. Or we will have abandoned it > altogether. Today the appendix, tomorrow... > > > This is two of about a hundred thousand examples >> which challenge that evolution alone accounts for the complexity of life >> as we know it today. > > > I think this complexity argument is highly overstated. Actually, I > think life is really simple; people just don't understand it very well > (yet). > > :-)Why don't we see any 1969 Kimball Swinger electronic organs sitting in the middle of the forest? I mean, it's been billions of years, anything is possible, right? And it's MUCH less complex than a human body. -- % Randy Yates % "She has an IQ of 1001, she has a jumpsuit %% Fuquay-Varina, NC % on, and she's also a telephone." %%% 919-577-9882 % %%%% <yates@ieee.org> % 'Yours Truly, 2095', *Time*, ELO http://www.digitalsignallabs.com
Ron Bracewell Passed Away in August
Started by ●December 5, 2007
Reply by ●December 12, 20072007-12-12
Reply by ●December 12, 20072007-12-12
Greg Berchin <gberchin@sentientscience.com> writes:> Okay, then; I'll mark down your answer as a "No".Do I have the freedom in your world to examine the evidence for myself, or do you require folks to just accept your judgements without question? -- % Randy Yates % "My Shangri-la has gone away, fading like %% Fuquay-Varina, NC % the Beatles on 'Hey Jude'" %%% 919-577-9882 % %%%% <yates@ieee.org> % 'Shangri-La', *A New World Record*, ELO http://www.digitalsignallabs.com
Reply by ●December 12, 20072007-12-12
On Dec 12, 10:53 am, Randy Yates <ya...@ieee.org> wrote:> Do I have the freedom in your world to examine the evidence for myself, > or do you require folks to just accept your judgements without question?Beware; you could be asked the very same question.
Reply by ●December 12, 20072007-12-12
Randy Yates wrote: ..> > Why don't we see any 1969 Kimball Swinger electronic organs sitting in the middle > of the forest? I mean, it's been billions of years, anything is possible, > right? And it's MUCH less complex than a human body.Ah, yes, a good example of (semi)-intelligent design, but sadly omitting the all-important random procreative mutation circuit. Not enough carbon or water, I guess. Richard Dobson
Reply by ●December 12, 20072007-12-12
Greg Berchin <gberchin@sentientscience.com> writes:> On Dec 12, 10:53 am, Randy Yates <ya...@ieee.org> wrote: > >> Do I have the freedom in your world to examine the evidence for myself, >> or do you require folks to just accept your judgements without question? > > Beware; you could be asked the very same question.It was you who: 1. Attacked, without provocation, those who reason differently than you, and 2. presumed to answer a question not asked of you. -- % Randy Yates % "How's life on earth? %% Fuquay-Varina, NC % ... What is it worth?" %%% 919-577-9882 % 'Mission (A World Record)', %%%% <yates@ieee.org> % *A New World Record*, ELO http://www.digitalsignallabs.com
Reply by ●December 12, 20072007-12-12
Greg Berchin wrote:> On Dec 8, 12:17 am, robert bristow-johnson <r...@audioimagination.com> > wrote: > >> i can think of worser wastes of money than SETI. > > Taking this even further off-topic, I wonder: Given the current > denial of scientific evidence for evolution, global warming, etc., IF > we actually found extraterrestrial intelligence, would anybody believe > it?For many people, the Bible represents Authority. That leads to many difficulties: What does the Bible actually say? (There are different translations and some known mistranslations.) What do those words mean? (There are many differing interpretations.) How reliable is the Authority (or His scribes)? A man known for snap assessments and bad judgment was once greeted by an acquaintance so: "Alfred! I was told you had died!" Alfred replied in the now classical way, "The report of my death has been greatly exaggerated." The acquaintance countered, "I don't believe that. It was John who told me, and he's much more reliable than you." Jerry -- Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get. �����������������������������������������������������������������������
Reply by ●December 12, 20072007-12-12
Richard Dobson <richarddobson@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:> Randy Yates wrote: > .. >> >> Why don't we see any 1969 Kimball Swinger electronic organs sitting in the middle >> of the forest? I mean, it's been billions of years, anything is >> possible, right? And it's MUCH less complex than a human body. > > Ah, yes, a good example of (semi)-intelligent design, but sadly > omitting the all-important random procreative mutation circuit. Not > enough carbon or water, I guess.By comparing it to a human body, I did indeed infer a reproductive process. That was my mistake. Let's instead compare it to the first simple-celled life form (amoeba or whatever) that came out of a soup, so that reproduction/mutation/natural selection has nothing to do with it. I still assert the odds of the Kimball happening are much better than life forming. -- % Randy Yates % "I met someone who looks alot like you, %% Fuquay-Varina, NC % she does the things you do, %%% 919-577-9882 % but she is an IBM." %%%% <yates@ieee.org> % 'Yours Truly, 2095', *Time*, ELO http://www.digitalsignallabs.com
Reply by ●December 12, 20072007-12-12
On Dec 12, 11:42 am, Randy Yates <ya...@ieee.org> wrote:> It was you who: > > 1. Attacked, without provocation, those who reason differently than > you, and > > 2. presumed to answer a question not asked of you.I did? Wow. All that from a rhetorical question: "IF we actually found extraterrestrial intelligence, would anybody believe it?"
Reply by ●December 12, 20072007-12-12
Greg Berchin <gberchin@sentientscience.com> writes:> On Dec 12, 11:42 am, Randy Yates <ya...@ieee.org> wrote: > >> It was you who: >> >> 1. Attacked, without provocation, those who reason differently than >> you, and >> >> 2. presumed to answer a question not asked of you. > > I did? Wow. All that from a rhetorical question: "IF we actually > found extraterrestrial intelligence, would anybody believe it?"Yeah, it's just words, huh Greg? No need to get hung up about them... (Actually the second point was not from your original post). -- % Randy Yates % "Watching all the days go by... %% Fuquay-Varina, NC % Who are you and who am I?" %%% 919-577-9882 % 'Mission (A World Record)', %%%% <yates@ieee.org> % *A New World Record*, ELO http://www.digitalsignallabs.com
Reply by ●December 12, 20072007-12-12
Randy Yates wrote: ..> Let's instead compare it to the first simple-celled life form (amoeba or > whatever) that came out of a soup, so that reproduction/mutation/natural > selection has nothing to do with it. I still assert the odds of the > Kimball happening are much better than life forming.So far there is no evidence of silicon (or thermionic)-based life-forms, so I have to conclude that in order for Kimball to exist, life had to exist first, and become intelligent, etc; so I would have thought that the odds on the latter are rather better than even, whereas the odds on the former are much weaker, being (as far as we can tell) dependent on the latter. I was never very good at statistics and probabilties, but intuition sugegsts to me that where D is dependent on C, which is dependent on B which is dependent on A, which is dependent on not much more than a universe existing (by whatever means) for long enough, itself possibly a pretty random event, the odds of A are somewhat better than those of D. Life seems to be dependent on one very simple thing - the inclination of small things already close together to get even more close together, and also to move more or less randomly around each other, until some point of equilibrium is achieved; at which point the whole thing starts again on a larger scale. Complexity is easy (just ask John Conway) - plain weirdness is more challenging. I have always found water to be the single most weird substance in the universe. Never ceases to amaze me. If you want evidence of intelligent design, forget about life, just look at water. No human could possibly have invented such a thing! And made out of two gasses? How is ~that~ possible! Richard Dobson
