The Intellectual War on Science

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TLEILAXU

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« Reply #45 on: February 28, 2018, 08:05:11 pm »
A collection of tightly bound quarks and gluons popping in and out of existence?
I'm not sure rhetorical questions are going to help me out here, but if you can't articulate what you're getting at,  I won't lose sleep :) .
How do those quarks and gluons interact?

Wilshire

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« Reply #46 on: February 28, 2018, 08:06:44 pm »
Magically?
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TLEILAXU

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« Reply #47 on: February 28, 2018, 08:08:36 pm »

Wilshire

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« Reply #48 on: February 28, 2018, 08:16:48 pm »
Hurray!
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TLEILAXU

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« Reply #49 on: February 28, 2018, 09:57:16 pm »
Hurray!
Evolution is a a wholly random process without direction...
As Above, So Below

H

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« Reply #50 on: February 28, 2018, 10:00:35 pm »
Hurray!
Evolution is a a wholly random process without direction...
As Above, So Below

I don't buy that at all.  Evolution cannot be random, everything has a cause and effect.
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

TLEILAXU

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« Reply #51 on: February 28, 2018, 10:17:15 pm »
Hurray!
Evolution is a a wholly random process without direction...
As Above, So Below

I don't buy that at all.  Evolution cannot be random, everything has a cause and effect.
Depends on what you mean. We wouldn't say that breeding horses is random, because we select the horses containing the traits we want to breed, but overall evolution is very random, i.e. mutations arise randomly, individuals mate randomly, chromosomes segregate randomly, the number of offspring can be random etc. At the molecular/atomic level, things are stochastic, so ultimately evolution is intrinsically stochastic as well, it's just on a different scale.

TaoHorror

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« Reply #52 on: February 28, 2018, 11:14:56 pm »
I agree with Wilshire - evolution is the mother of all fuckers - to "follow" it blindly is self-destructive at best, globally destructive at worst.

I agree with TL - evolution's greatest contribution is randomness/error.

To synthesize, everyone having babies yields the differentiation needed to yield the uber menches. But, once you make it out of infancy, time to learn to override your instinct/programming and forge your own way. Case in point, evolution hasn't caught up with modernity - sugars and fats were awesome for 2 million+ years and now they're a poison, but we still love them. If not for non-consensual relations, we would've died out by now - but now it's correctly understood to be a horrible violent crime. Any ideology/theology based on "the validity" of evolution has led to disaster.
It's me, Dave, open up, I've got the stuff

themerchant

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« Reply #53 on: March 01, 2018, 12:17:26 am »
" If not for non-consensual relations, we would've died out by now "

I'm ignorant of this concept. Any reading guide on it?

TaoHorror

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« Reply #54 on: March 01, 2018, 01:34:48 am »
" If not for non-consensual relations, we would've died out by now "

I'm ignorant of this concept. Any reading guide on it?

I read it years ago - but now Googling it, appears could well be bullshit ( apologies ). Regardless ( ignore the above point for now ), our sex drive is far out of sync with what we currently need to continue the species. At a very young age, testosterone kicks in and our instinct/hormones/psychological drive is to procreate as much as possible - the species is at a population level where acting on that drive without consideration or restraint is damaging to yourself as well as the world. There are all kinds of real world risks to frequent random procreation ( disease, unwanted pregnancies, legal and financial ramifications ), so it's in our collective interests to not "fulfill" that evolutionary drive.
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« Reply #55 on: March 01, 2018, 11:35:35 am »
Depends on what you mean. We wouldn't say that breeding horses is random, because we select the horses containing the traits we want to breed, but overall evolution is very random, i.e. mutations arise randomly, individuals mate randomly, chromosomes segregate randomly, the number of offspring can be random etc. At the molecular/atomic level, things are stochastic, so ultimately evolution is intrinsically stochastic as well, it's just on a different scale.

Everything still follows the chain of cause and effect.  In no way do mutations happen for "no reason."  Something caused the change.  It might seem random to us, because the trends are slight, the causes disparate and hard to directly identify, but they absolute exist, as they must.  Nothing happens just because, there is a cause for it all.  So, number of offspring is random?  No, certainly determined by a number of conditions.  Mating?  Surely not random, selected by a number of factors, some minor or seemingly "chancy" but still no less determinate if you were able to enumerate them.

Sure, the best way we have to model the interactions of atoms is through probability, but that doesn't mean things aren't following cause and effect, just we aren't able to identify and model such interactions.
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

Wilshire

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« Reply #56 on: March 01, 2018, 01:23:19 pm »
Hurray!
Evolution is a a wholly random process without direction...
As Above, So Below

I don't buy that at all.  Evolution cannot be random, everything has a cause and effect.
Depends on what you mean. We wouldn't say that breeding horses is random, because we select the horses containing the traits we want to breed, but overall evolution is very random, i.e. mutations arise randomly, individuals mate randomly, chromosomes segregate randomly, the number of offspring can be random etc. At the molecular/atomic level, things are stochastic, so ultimately evolution is intrinsically stochastic as well, it's just on a different scale.
Which is what I was saying. Evoltuion is random, so lets not pray to the random-number-generator-gods that thigns work out. Lets direct it, via animal husbandry/eugenics, which we've been doing for thousands of years, except with people rather than livestock. :)

Depends on what you mean. We wouldn't say that breeding horses is random, because we select the horses containing the traits we want to breed, but overall evolution is very random, i.e. mutations arise randomly, individuals mate randomly, chromosomes segregate randomly, the number of offspring can be random etc. At the molecular/atomic level, things are stochastic, so ultimately evolution is intrinsically stochastic as well, it's just on a different scale.

Everything still follows the chain of cause and effect.  In no way do mutations happen for "no reason."  Something caused the change.  It might seem random to us, because the trends are slight, the causes disparate and hard to directly identify, but they absolute exist, as they must.  Nothing happens just because, there is a cause for it all.  So, number of offspring is random?  No, certainly determined by a number of conditions.  Mating?  Surely not random, selected by a number of factors, some minor or seemingly "chancy" but still no less determinate if you were able to enumerate them.

Sure, the best way we have to model the interactions of atoms is through probability, but that doesn't mean things aren't following cause and effect, just we aren't able to identify and model such interactions.

I don't think I'm following that line of reasoning.
Take mutations: gene transcription happens millions and millions of times, sometimes a gene gets transcribed improperly and you make something different. If the gene leads to increased survival, then it gets passed on.
Mate selection is a further extension of this. While it might have a whole host of factors that don't seem random, they're based on the person's genes and partner suitability, which was ultimetly determined randomly.

If we could actually see the tools we're using to select partners - hormone smells, face symmetry, etc. - I'd maybe consider it was random, but the fact that we're blind to almost all of it seems to suggest otherwise. On top of that, if it wasn't random, we'd have a whole lot fewer bad genes wandering around making life miserable. But since we can't see, and we let disease rule us, I'd say there's little that shows its not completely random.
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« Reply #57 on: March 01, 2018, 02:18:15 pm »
I don't think I'm following that line of reasoning.
Take mutations: gene transcription happens millions and millions of times, sometimes a gene gets transcribed improperly and you make something different. If the gene leads to increased survival, then it gets passed on.
Mate selection is a further extension of this. While it might have a whole host of factors that don't seem random, they're based on the person's genes and partner suitability, which was ultimetly determined randomly.

If we could actually see the tools we're using to select partners - hormone smells, face symmetry, etc. - I'd maybe consider it was random, but the fact that we're blind to almost all of it seems to suggest otherwise. On top of that, if it wasn't random, we'd have a whole lot fewer bad genes wandering around making life miserable. But since we can't see, and we let disease rule us, I'd say there's little that shows its not completely random.

Random: lack of pattern or predictability in events.

We do know why mutations happen though.  It isn't as if there is just some cosmic random number generator that determines if a gene will replicate properly or not.  If it fails, it fails for a reason.  Lets call it, for simplicity's sake, fatigue, or even effect of some radiation (i.e. cosmic rays), or compositional weakness.  In any case, there is predictability, if we could enumerate every possible cause.  To quote Spinoza "Nothing in Nature is random. … A thing appears random only through the incompleteness of our knowledge."

The question of, say, mate selection sure appears random, because there is a huge range of possible outcomes if we select two people "randomly" out of the entire population of the earth (so, lets say 3 billion males combined with 3 billion females, just for an examples sake yields something like 4.4999999985E+18 possible combinations).  Yet, of course, there is only a far, far smaller actual set of real combinations that could even really happen, because events don't just happen, they are caused by something.  So, someone in, say, having never left rural Africa has almost essentially zero (or functionally zero) chance to mate with someone in, say, the dense jungle of South America because they will never, ever, even possibly interact, unless they specially left the area, which would then change the entire scope of the calculation and in doing so, prove that there is some element of determinism based on causes having effects.

You could only possibly mate with someone you actually encounter.  The people you encounter are not random, they are wherever they are for some reason or other.  And you interact with them for some reason or other.  You decide to mate with them for some reason or other.  I really don't understand how this is random, even if it is vastly complicated and incredibly hard to predict.  We simulate it with something that approaches randomness, because that is the best we can do, but that doesn't make it actually random.

Same with a computer generating "random numbers."  Even something like "GetTickCount" yields something that appears random, but really isn't.  So, there are very expensive "random number tables" one could buy, that use vastly complicated data sets (like captured cosmic radiation) but even those are determined by something, and are not truly "random."
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

Wilshire

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« Reply #58 on: March 01, 2018, 02:22:43 pm »
I guess I'm not making a distinction between 'random' and 'directionless cause and effect'.
Like to me you can either talk about intelligent design, or evolution.

ID requires someone or something directing outcomes. We've been doing this for thousands of years with lifestock.
Evolution is everything else. We're talking past each other because we're using the world 'random' differently, but I think we're all talking about the same thing.
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« Reply #59 on: March 01, 2018, 02:39:53 pm »
I guess I'm not making a distinction between 'random' and 'directionless cause and effect'.
Like to me you can either talk about intelligent design, or evolution.

ID requires someone or something directing outcomes. We've been doing this for thousands of years with lifestock.
Evolution is everything else. We're talking past each other because we're using the world 'random' differently, but I think we're all talking about the same thing.

You know I am all about distinction in definition,  ;)

Indeed, I am not saying there has to be "intelligent design" but there is cause and effect.  Evolution has a "course" because only certain things are possible, given the chain of cause and effect, but that isn't specially designed or reaching an aim.  People do sometimes confuse "evolution" with something like, say, "progress" or mistakenly assume that evolution is a process that increases complexity or sophistication.  In reality, evolution does not favor a rise in complex organisms at all, just difference.  We favor a view though that flatters complex organisms, because we just so happen to be one.  But this is, has been, and probably always will be bacteria's (and virus' to a less extent) world, we are just living in it.
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira