Bikerman

OK, let's take it deeper.A chap called Libet did some actual practical experiments which showed the gap between us perceiving and acting. Some of his most important experiments showed remarkable things. We decide to act, then there is a gap, then we act. What Libet showed was that we are already going to act in a certain way even before we become conscious of making the choice. In effect you can wire someone up, tell them to press a button whenever they decide to, and tell in advance when they will press the button, and before they are even conscious of having decided to press it.http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ alone asks some very serious questions about the whole concept of free will.Then there is work by Susan Blackmore and others which suggests that what we think is consciousness is itself an illusion...http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/#

Mathematically/physically a chaotic system is one which is dynamic (constantly changing) and very sensitive to differences in one or more of the factors (variables) in the system. That makes such systems inherently unpredictable, even if you have all the maths describing the individual factors. So mathematically speaking chaos is certainly disorder, but it is disorder from order - non-pattern where there was pattern. Examples of real-life chaotic systems would include the weather, stock market behaviour, population growth.... Chaos theory establishes patterns within the disorder. It means that although we cannot predict the outcome of a chaotic system like weather, beyond a certain period, what we can do is give a good estimate of what that period is. So you can get some weather forecasts that are good for a week or more and others which are only good for a few hours - depends on how chaotically the system is behaving at that time.

Let us take an example.A driver is proceeding down a road. An ambulance happens to speed past them and causes him to swerve. At that moment a person jumps into the road and forces him to violently steer right which means he swerves into a bus queue and happens to kill the brother of the person in the ambulance. Coincidence? Yes. There is no causal link between the elements, yet the person dies and there is a coincidence. I do not understand what 'excuse' means in this context. It seems to me to be an entirely inappropriate word for 'reason'. As I said earlier, your problem is that evolution does not require coincidence so the thesis is flawed from the start. You have completely misunderstood (and misrepresented) Darwin. Chapter 4 deals with the environment in detail. Do you want me to continue? I can quote as much as needed. I think you are possibly referring to the section on sexual selection. Even then you have misunderstood. There is no 'mother nature'. There is no decision making, conscious or otherwise. There is simply reproduction. Those genes best suited will reproduce. If those genes express themselves in a certain phenotype (physically obvious way) then that phenotype will proliferate. Can this work to pass-on undesirable traits? Yes it can. Sickle-cell anaemia is common because it was selected for - it conveys resistance to malaria. You therefore get a greater proliferation of that particular gene. Why do you think that evolutionary theory rests on Darwin in any case? Do you not understand the work on genetics and the evolutionary synthesis that has been formulated since then? Trying to pick holes in Darwin's original formulation is to ignore the work since, and is therefore disingenuous. If you want to talk about evolution then bring it on.

Yes, I dislike having to personalise any debate - it goes against the grain for me. Unfortunately some users make it impossible to do otherwise, therefore the best solution, I feel, is the ignore button. Where I would take issue with you is on the idea of atheism as a belief. I think it depends what you mean by atheism, and this is much discussed. Let us first agree on the definition of the word - one who does not believe in God(s). Now that does not equate to asserting that God(s) do not exist. The person on the desert island you describe is not an agnostic, he is an atheist. He does not believ in God(s). The distinction is subtle. An agnostic is one who does not believe it is possible to prove or disprove the existence of God. Thus you can have religious agnostics - and many Church of England folk are probably in that category. Within atheism you have weak and strong. Weak atheism is simply the non-belief. Strong atheism is the assertion of no God. I do not assert that God does not exist - I merely say that on the evidence available there is no reason to believe that he/she does exist. If the evidence changes then my position will change. I do not have any belief, therefore. My atheism is not a belief - it is not a position taken without evidence or regardless of evidence (which I think is a reasonable definition of belief)... Just to hammer this home....most theists are mono-theists (in name at least). So they believe in one God. They therefore disbelieve in x Gods*. Are we to then say that they have one belief or thousands? In the very aposite words of Stephen Roberts: http://www.askatheists.com/atheist-quotes * Where x is a number somewhere between a few thousand and a few million).

You are confusing yourself.a) Coincidence does not follow from some mechanism - true. b ) It cannot therefore be used to demonstrate any mechanism - partially true. c) Therefore it cannot...etc....false. That is your basic mistake. A set of coincidences (a-z) can result in outcome X. Outcome X is therefore a result of coincidences a,b,c...z. Natural selection does not actually depend on ANY coincidence. There are a number of mutations that occur naturally to all germ DNA. That is no coincidence, that is a simple fact which is universally applicable. The rest is entirely deterministic in that the mutations that produce the adaptation best suited to survival/breeding will, of course, be passed on. You also have a problem with your definition of logical....I will leave you to work that out, since I am sure you are intelligent enough to spot the flaw.

Probability is at the heart of how the universe works. Quantum events are by their very nature probabilistic. That doesn't, of course, mean that we should give up and stop trying to predict - probabilistic events are predictable for sufficient numbers, just not for individual or small numbers. If you shine a torch at a window then there is no way to possibly know whether an individual photon will pass through or be reflected, but you can say with some certainty that about 5% of the photons will be reflected.... Nope I'm afraid that is entirely wrong. No amount of computing power will let you predict whether the photon is reflected or not (or any other quantum event).

Yes, I apologise for the 'diversion' - not my choice. If you are interested in time and relativity then I can suggest some more reading material: http://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/ http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ http://www.motionmountain.net/index.html http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/relativity.htm If you find one site too hard then move on to another - I've tried to give a range of sources and there should be something there for most non-science types.....enjoy :-)

Ahh...thanks for that. I have actually seen this story before in another publication. The feeling then (and now) was that it is possibly interesting but way way too soon to be starting to rewrite anything. Most of the physicists I know are pretty sceptical about the findings, though obviously they cannot be dismissed. I think there are just too many ifs and buts at the moment to say anything other than it is 'interesting' :-)

I'd be interested to see that. It would be a major change to physics if true....

Sorry to intrude - I will not stay long - but you have some pretty bad misconceptions here which need addressing.What you think is macroevolution is not actually macroevolution at all. Macroevolution is the term used for biological and genetic analysis at the scale beyond species level. I suspect you mean it in the creationist sense - the evolution of species rather than changes within a species. If you are going to tell someone they are confused about the term it is best to make sure you understand it yourself. Speciation can be macro and it can be micro, which is obvious when you consider that all evolution consists of incremental change rather than revolution. At what point does a common ancestoral species become a new species? The answer normally given is when it is non-fertile with the original population, but that is a bit of a fudge - there is good genetic reason to think that human-chimp breeding could be viable, for example. (The 'Law of Biogenesis' is baloney, by the way - there is no such law - it is just a name given to wishful thinking and dressed-up in scientific clothes). I'll use Macroevolution in the (wrong) manner in which you clearly intend it. It wasn't 'snuck in and proclaimed fact' at all. Neither have we been searching for transition fossils, missing links or new dating methods. This is creationist nonsense I'm afraid. The term 'transition fossil' is pretty meaningless actually. Evolution does not work in sudden jumps generally, so any fossil can be said to be a transition fossil. If you mean fossils which demonstrate intermediate forms between 'established species' then there are a huge number of them. A visit to any decent museum will give you: Transitions from primitive fish to sharks, skates, rays; Transitions from primitive fish to bony fish; Transition from fishes to first amphibians; Transitions among amphibians; Transition from amphibians to first reptiles; Transitions among reptiles; Transition from reptiles to first mammals (long); Transition from reptiles to first birds If you want mammalian intermediates then we can do even better. The whole Cenozoic era is very well documented in the fossil record, so take your pick and I will give you an intermediate fossil (or the name of one). Dating methods have changed as physics has developed, not in some scrabble for evidence since the evidence for evolution was overwhelming 3 generations ago. Most modern scientists don't bother much with the old creationist obsessions of missing links and transition fossils - the evidence has been around for 70 years, so if creationists haven't bothered to go and look yet there is little point giving them even more. Most of the modern work on evolution is done below the phenotype, at the genetic level. In fact you can take the whole fossil record away and the case for evolution is still proven beyond doubt by the generic/phylogenetic and molecular evidence. I'm afraid that, much though you might like to believe otherwise, evolution is not in question. If you want a list of transition fossils for any of the major intermediate forms then I can happily give you one. Likewise I can give you the cyto and phylogenetic evidence that absolutely clinches any last vesitige of possible doubt that even the most sceptical person could harbour. If you are going to pontificate on evolution you owe it to yourself, and certainly to your correspondant, to inform yourself, and to be honest. Unfortunately, and I say this with real regret, honesty is very much lacking in most of the creationists I have met (a very large number) over the years and they keep recycling the same old lies. I will now leave you to your conversation. best wishes Chris.

Well, the earth existed before we came along and although it is not a perfect sphere it is pretty damn close. You think the logic of mathematics is entirely a human invention? So when the ancient Greeks looked at a circle and realised there was a relationship between the circumference and the radius (pi) were they inventing or discovering, do you think? Wasn't that relationship there before? If an alien had come along and looked at Earth, do you not think the Alien would have discovered Pi ? It bears some thinking about... :-) Actually maths was a creation to keep track of things. Our early ancestors probably didn't need to count beyond 1,2,many because they had no particular need to. Then once people began to congregate together (probably around the time agriculture was discovered) then suddenly you needed to be able to count. The history of numbers is a fascinating subject but it would take pages to even make a proper start on it.... Who says there is a reason? Who says we had to be anywhere before and anywhere after? I suppose the simple answer is that before you were born you existed as a set of cells in your parents. Before that a set of cells in their parents.....and so on back.....Ultimately we are all the stuff of stars - which is nice, I think. The early universe only had hydrogen and helium so it wasn't until the first stars got going that the heavier stuff (that makes us) was made in the solar furnaces. In fact some of the elements that make us are only formed when stars die (supernovas) so there had to be several generations of stars to make us...I like that thought.... Where do we go after we die? Same thing...ultimately back to the stars :-) That's not too scarey a prospect for me, though some don't like the thought. The way I think about it is that the universe got on quite well for 13.7 billion years without me, and I didn't know anything about it. Once I'm gone it will continue to go along without me, and I won't know anything about it - just as I didn't for the last many billion years....not so scary really... We certainly evolved from a common ape ancestor - there is no doubt about that (not a monkey - that is a different part of the family tree :-) This is commonly called the question of 'first cause' or to give it the posh latin name 'Primum movens'. If everything is caused, then there must be a first causer which is itself not caused. That is the argument in a nutshell. As you correctly summise God does not actually answer that apparent problem (we are just supposed to accept that God didn't need a causer, which is a bit of a cop out I think :-) ). There are some possible answers but they are a bit mind boggling. The main problem is that when we ask questions like this, we expect to get answers that we can understand. We think that if the answer is not 'common sense' then it must be wrong. That is a very peculiar attitude when you think about it. Our common sense is based on an ape brain evolved to yell at other apes about food and enemies. Why do we expect that same brain to be able to understand questions which we have no experience of? Still, since you asked the question I will try to give at least a possible answer (well actually 2). 1st answer: The Big Bang is where our universe starts. Now, of course, you will ask what came before, but in this answer that is not a valid question. Space and time are linked together into what Einstein called 'spacetime'. They were both created at the instant of the Big Bang. Now if there was no time before the Big Bang then the question 'what came before' doesn't make any sense because there was no before... Most people don't like that answer because it feels like a cop out - but it really isn't....Still, that is only one possible answer.Modern physicists have a few other possibilities (though it is important to realise that this first answer is still the one with the most evidence to support it). Another reason people do not like this answer is because it apparently means you have to create something from nothing - which any scientist will tell you is a big no-no. Imagine....there is nothing - no space, no time. Then suddenly a tiny piece of something starts to expand rapidly, like a huge balloon being blown up by a team of champion balloon blowers - doubling in size, doubling again, and again, and again....and so on. So where did the first bit of the balloon come from? - that is the question. Literally nowhere is one possible answer. When you look into space you imagine there is nothing there - no air, no matter of any sort. It turns out that this is wrong - very wrong. The most empty space imaginable is full of particles popping in and out of existence in pairs of opposites (we call them particle-antiparticle pairs). This is the famous anti-matter from Star-Trek, and it is quite real. The thing that makes anti-matter so valuable is that when it comes into contact with matter it completely annihilates itself and the matter to give just pure energy (photons). It is the best source of energy possible in our universe.... One way to think of it is the simple sum:- 1-1=0. If you rewrite that, you get 0 = -1 +1 Now the +1 is matter and the -1 is anti-matter. Put them together and they vanish. So it follows that we can start with nothing and split it into a plus 1 and a minus 1 (a particle and an antiparticle). All we need is some energy (the same energy that is given off when they annihilate each other). But wait, you say. You still need energy, so it still isn't something from nothing. Well, here is where common sense has to go for a walk. It turns out that if you make the particles and annihilate them really really quickly, then you can 'borrow' the energy and nature doesn't notice, as long as it is paid back quickly enough. So in 'empty' space we have gazillions of particle pairs winking into existence for a teeny fraction of a second. This happens because of something called Heinsenberg's Uncertainty Principle (HUP). Basically the HUP says that you can know one thing, but the better you know that one thing, the worse you know another. So you can know pretty accurately where a particle is, but the more accurately you know where it is, the less accurately you know how fast it is going (well, actually the momentum, but let's keep it simple). It doesn't matter whether you get the best equipment imaginable - there will always be a fuzzy area between the two things. This fuzzy area allows enough time for nothing to become something and then nothing again - and it is going on all around you all the time. I probably haven't explained that very well, but it is pretty tricky without using maths, so it is about as good as I can do. The important thing to realise is that this is not just a guess - it is quite real. So that is answer number 1 - there was nothing, no time, no space. Then that very nothingness split into two opposite quantities (the plus and minus 1). So the only question left is - if we (mass and energy) are the plus 1, then where is the minus 1? One answer to that is that gravity is the minus 1, and that all the matter in the universe (and energy - they are different ways of looking at the same thing - e=mc^2) is exactly balanced by the gravity it creates. it would take another few pages to explain that, so you'll have to take my word for it :-) And very quickly - a 2nd answer It could be that our universe is part of a greater whole - call it the 'multiverse'. There are many (possibly an infinite number) of other universes, but we can never see or visit them because we are trapped in our own spacetime within this universe. When our universe came into existence it just 'shoved the others out of the way'. We can never see or visit these other universes because they either are so far distant that even light (the fastest thing possible) could not get from us to them, or them to us. Our universe is expanding too fast, so light will never be able to pass between them. Or possibly they exist in other dimensions. We are used to 4 dimensions - length breadth width and time. To specify where something can be found in our universe you give 3 numbers for it's location in space and one number for its location in time - we call that a spacetime coordinate. There are some good reasons to think that there may actually be more dimensions than just those 4 - there could be 10 space dimensions and 1 time dimension, with 6 of the extra dimensions curled-up at the tiniest scale imaginable (gazillions of times smaller than atoms)so all around us are another 6 dimensions but we cannot see, feel or interact with them because they exist at such a small scale that even our atoms are too big to notice. This is what physicists call superstring theory and that is definitely where I must leave it. Hope I haven't confused you even more :-) Chris.

So once again a posting entirely off topic?You are clearly an idiot - I thought I'd take you off ignore because you might actually have something to say. I was wrong. Back you go.

Have you actually got a point or are you just going to dribble abuse? I didn't say I have nothing against religion. You really do have a problem reading. Religious belief is what I said. Spacetime is a bit beyond your abilities so i wouldn't expect you to understand it. Nobody knows everything. The rest of this paragraph is a mixture of ad-populum fallacy and nonsense. A couple of million? Another figure plucked from the air?1.25 billion Catholics believe that 1 billion Muslims are wrong. Does that make either of them right? Of course not. It is the 'my dad is bigger than your dad' type of argument that children indulge in. Terrorism is certainly linked to a particular 'type' of Islamic fundamentalism. If you don't believe it then ask the terrorists.You should also read up on the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy because you seem very fond of using it. You are a very silly person. I wonder how many Muslims you know? I know plenty - where I live, in the NorthWest of England, we have a large Muslim population so I was brought up with Muslims and count amongst my good friends 1 devout and 1 less devout Muslim. Both, by the way, would agree that Osama Bin Laden is a Muslim terrorist, though they would both say that he is a bad Muslim (just as he would say that THEY are bad Muslims). Well who is stopping you? In the time you took to type this drivel you could have read the first 4 chapters of Genesis. On the other hand, if you feel like making a contribution, rather than spewing bile, you could tell us what you think is wrong with the notion of spacetime and give your alternative.

Tautologous. Of course a reason includes a why and a process includes a how - by definition.Unfortunately that does not mean that you can say "Coincidence is non-sequitur, therefore everything has a reason for its existence (except if they are eternal)." as you do in your avatar, because that, itself, is a non sequitur. Evolutionary theory doesn't say any such thing. The name 'chicken' is a human construct. There is no sharp boundary at which a particular creature becomes a chicken and before which it wasn't. You can only say when the chicken occurred with hindsight and by setting an artificial boundary. The one most commonly used is inter-fertility (ie a species is sometimes defined by an evolved subgroup that can no longer breed with the parent population). Therefore the question itself is flawed because it relies on an artificial division. If you are going to rely on such a division (between chicken and not chicken) then clearly the chicken came first because that was classified as a chicken, whereas the egg could not have been. What utter piffle. Of course coincidences exist. You either don't know what 'logical' actually means, or you are deliberately misusing the word, because nothing about coincidence is at all illogical.It is not 'stated for convenience' or 'to fill the gap in knowledge' because that implies that there must be a causal relationship between two events which appear to be related. Where no such relationship exists then it is a coincidence. Coincidences happen all the time and if you knew something of statistics you would know that they MUST happen. Since you clearly believe in some form of creationism, then I will use a simple analogy that should appeal to you: If my watch is stopped then it will show the correct time twice in any 24 hour period (assuming it is a rotary dial watch). If I happen to look at the watch at the time it just happens to be correct, then we call it a coincidence. Nothing illogical about it.

No no no no no. a) The dimensions of an object are relative to it's motion with regard to the observer. The dimensions change as the velocity changes. b ) Exactly the same applies to time - it changes as the velocity of the observed object changes. c) Space and time are not separate things - they are woven together into what we call spacetime. Everything moves through spacetime at the same speed - the speed of light. Some of that 'speed' can be in space, and some of it in time, but they always add up to c (the speed of light). Therefore if you travel very fast through space, you only travel slowly through time.

a) There is no such thing as a 'gravity amplifier' b ) Gravity is proportional to mass (not size). c) No it is not possible to reach the speed of light in that (or any other) manner.

Most religion is so limited I can hardly describe it as spiritual at all. I defy anyone to look at the universe and not feel awe, wonder, astonishment. If they don't then they haven't thought it through. The chances of me being alive are so incredibly remote that my luck in being born at all is mind-bending. Then there is the sheer immensity of what there is to know, the beauty of symmetries and fundamental relationships, the still largely unexplored wonder of consciousness, and the awe inspiring results that arise from apparently simple rules. Thats the point really - I don't need to believe - that is for intellectually lazy people. I can do the maths and check what I accept. I don't 'believe' in evolution, for example. It doesn't require belief - it would be like believing in telephones - I know that telephones exist so no belief is required. To wrap that up as God and visit it on Sunday is a negation of what it is to be human. We are born wanting to know and we should take advantage of that impossible good luck to learn as much as we can, whilst remembering to pause and admire/wonder now and again.

I can try: Spirituality - a sense of being connected with a larger whole. Meta-physics - a branch of philosophy that deals with 'fundamental truths' about 'being' and 'knowing'. Neither of these is exclusive to relion or the religious - many atheists are deeply spiritual, and I include myself in that. Likewise many rationalists have no problem with metaphysics - you can't use physics to make judgements on moral behaviour (though it might help inform any decision). The problems are with pseudo-science (non-science pretending to be science) rather than metaphysics.

It is not merely a presumption, it is supported by good evidence. Exactly the same grab response can be observed in tree dwelling/using primates such as chimps, and various monkey species. Interestingly a baby also has the same reflex in the feet, although obviously they are evolved to a point where that is of little practical use. If you have never tried it then you might be surprised just how strongly a newly born baby will grasp a finger placed in its palm. The evolutionary origin is also supported by other reflexes/behaviours present in babies. One such is the parachute reflex. If you watch a baby falling forwards it will instinctively throw its arms out wide. This is counter intuitive for land-dwelling species - you would expect the baby to instinctively cover the face/head region. It makes sense for an arboreal species, however, because it increases drag, slows down the rate of descent, and gives the baby a better chance of surviving a fall from height.

It is known that babies have a 'grab' instinct from very early - from the point of birth, if not before - and they will seek to grab and hold a finger or other part of a parent in the very early stages after birth. It is suggested that this is an evolutionary adaptation from our tree-climbing days, and this can be illustrated when the baby perceives a danger of falling - the 'grab' reflex is strong and instant. The implications are quite profound : grabbing a finger placed in the palm is not a particularly taxing problem, but working out when to grab is. Having worked on some vision-control computer systems I know some of the issues and complexities involved. How does the baby know it is in danger of falling? The available data is limited - some feedback from the inner-ear, but not much at so young an age; visual clues, but again pretty limited in very young babies, since they cannot focus properly; feedback from muscles and nerves would be the final input. Already there is some serious processing going on to work out when it is necessary to grab - and this is hours after birth, before the baby has chance to experiment by trial and error. As the baby develops it learns to grab objects in free-space. This could be reaching out for a toy, reaching for a parent's hand. This involves a whole series of calculations, even if unconscious. There are distances to be factored, as well as movement in space. There are estimates to be made (of reach, distance, speed) and there is often some element of prediction/anticipation required. All this is going on in the brain without the baby being conscious of it. It is certainly maths and, what is more, I would be prepared to bet a substantial amount that you can't even do the maths necessary for a task as simple as catching a ball now, as an adult. The child does it fairly naturally. Watch a group of girls doing a skipping or ball game. Watch a juggler. The mathematics is obvious and high level. Differential calculus is the tools that we would use to tackle this sort of problem (involving multiple objects moving at different veolocities and accelerations) but the brain just needs a bit of practice in most cases and away you go.

Chaotic systems are deterministic by definition, and the logistic equation is a simple but valid example. It displays the characteristic bifurcations of chaotic systems when the driving term gets above 3.5 - ie there is neither convergence or oscillation of result. Stochastic systems are random - not chaotic. If you want a more formal definition of a chaotic system then it is one which:1. is sensitive to initial conditions; 2. is topologically mixing; and 3. has dense periodic orbits.

Ah...my fault. On the general topic of inate maths, we certainly have mathematical abilities from around birth. Being able to touch something involves fairly complex 3-D transformations & being able to catch something involves ballistics calculations.

posted in error

But is it, I wonder? The planet [sic] is not round...it approximates a human construct called a sphere, but does a sphere exist in nature? Certainly there are good approximations, but an exact sphere is a mathematical construct. The same would apply to other geometrical figures. The question I ask is whether the perception is of 17 buffalo or not. Once we learn symbology then we assign categories, but is that something we do 'inately'? Quantitive awareness depends to some extent on categorisation. We have to agree that A,B and C are of type X before we can go on to ask how many of type X we have.....

Well, here is a free design tool (shareware). This will output a pcb in the standard language - PADS-PCB - so if you do find an upload facility it is likely to want it in this format.