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Showing content with the highest reputation on 06/09/22 in all areas

  1. 2 points
  2. I'm not convinced that life would get extinguished as often as they think. I just looked up the safe distance from a supernova, the estimate is 60 light years. Our nearest star system to us is about 3.4 light years, so you would have to be very unlucky to have a supernova go off within 30, even in a more densely packed part of the galaxy. The description of a 30 light year distance supernova sounds nasty, but not necessarily a TOTAL extinction event. https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/safe-distance-from-a-supernova-earth/#:~:text=Bottom line%3A What's a safe,away from the exploding star. On Earth, our evolution has taken 4.5 billion years. But much of that time was going from nothing to the first multi-celled organisms. If you have a massive extinction event that wipes out the larger organisms, you aren't starting again from zero. You have a head start of billions of years, in the life that survived. On Earth, we went from arthropods and molluscs to dinosaurs in a (relative) flash. So a lot would depend on what survives the supernova. If you have deep oceans the chances are that fairly advanced creatures would survive in the depths, kicking off rapid evolution to re-populate the planet.
    2 points
  3. This is what you want: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithmic_differentiation#:~:text=In calculus%2C logarithmic differentiation or,rather than the function itself. Plus changing exponential bases: 2^(-x)=e^(-xln2)
    1 point
  4. As mentioned, it seems that you do not understand some basic biology concepts. Mutations are changes in the genetic makeup of an organism. They can be caused by external factors (radiation, chemicals) but are also frequently caused by errors in the replication of the material. These errors are especially common in viruses, as they tend to have fewer systems to control for fidelity during copying. Conjugation, transformation and transduction has little to do with mutations per se, they are modes of horizontal gene transfer. These can lead to mutations e.g. by recombination events, during which external DNA is integrated into the genome, but they are something else entirely. Also btw, transduction is a mechanisms of horizontal gene transfer that relies on virus. Here, the virus accidentally puts some sequences from their host into their capsule and transfer it to a new host. But again, random mutations are not reliant on any of these mechanisms.
    1 point
  5. Yes I think the problem with Freud is that his theories didn’t really make testable predictions. He could theorise about the reasons for something after the event, but he couldn’t find a child that not been hugged, say, and correctly predict it’s behaviour without knowing it beforehand. It all seems to be ex post facto explanation. Mind you, I sometimes get a bit queasy about certain rationalisations of behaviour in chemistry, for similar reasons. For instance, One can read qualitative explanations of why Hg is a liquid at r.t.p., but I’m not sure any theory is capable of predicting that outcome exactly. With very complex systems in science, one can get a fair amount of rationalisation after the event.
    1 point
  6. Same is true within religions. Ask 10 people what god is and you’ll get 10 different answers in reply, mostly because all those who believe in god(s) tend to conjure them in their own image.
    1 point
  7. Yes, some do argue that, and their argument is wrong. Sure, a fractional handful might reach for a knife instead of a gun, but the body count after would be far lower. Also, this argument ignores basic human psychology. The gun tends to make impulse decisions easier. It removes friction from the process and thus makes it more probable. Something that would’ve been little more than a passing ephemeral thought transforms instead into a tragic reality far more frequently once a gun is merely present or nearby amd accessible. Some also argue that the gun is just a tool. Well, okay, but some jobs take far longer or never get completed at all as a direct result of lacking the “right tool for the job.”
    1 point
  8. Put yourself in their shoes. We’re intelligent, but also largely still driven by ancient instincts that were designed to give us a survival advantage in a largely hostile environment. Most people’s thought patterns are overwhelmingly ego-centric, along the lines of “what can I get out of this?”. People spend their entire lives chasing sense pleasure and running away from discomfort, putting them at the mercy of external circumstance. Our societies institutionalise greed (economic systems), hatred (militarism and nationalism), and mass delusion (corporate media). At any given time there are at least half a dozen active war zones around the world; we can’t even get along with our own species, and our own natural environment - never even mind with aliens. All these things were indispensable survival tools in the distant past, but now our technology has outpaced our ethical and psychological evolution - a very dangerous situation. We’re animals waving thermonuclear warheads around. Would you really want to get involved with such a species? I sure wouldn’t - I’d recognise their potential, and perhaps would watch from a distance, but otherwise would choose to wait until they’ve outgrown their first set of teeth at least. And as a species we’re nowhere even near that point, IMHO. Besides, if there are several spacefaring species in our galaxy competing for finite resources, then there’s quite a lot to be said for remaining silent and invisible, as a general rule (‘Dark Forest Theory’): https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/the-dark-forest-theory-a-terrifying-explanation-of-why-we-havent-heard-from-aliens-yet/ Apologies for being dark and pessimistic. Personally I see a lot of beauty and potential in Homo sapiens sapiens, but for now I see us as being little better than animals with a knack for technology. So I’m not in the least surprised that no one else has made contact.
    1 point
  9. To borrow thoughts from the thread on falsefiability, neither the 'rare Earth' orthe 'uninteresting Earth' hypothesis are falsefiable with existing technology. We might as well conjecture that a God createed only us and no others, and put us in an uninteresting 'frame' to teach us humility. All our conjectures are based on what we've experienced, and certainly cannot be the basis for what we don't know.
    1 point
  10. Ants are highly interesting for a huge range of topics. A surprising number of biologists I know turned became fascinated with biology after observing ant behaviour. They are models for a huge range of neurobiological and behavioural aspects, including colony behaviour and related emergent properties. Even engineers, physicists and mathematicians have been looking at ant hill to look at how simple rules can create complex structures, avoid traffic jams and so on. If we are only somewhat as interesting, I fully expect that someone will pour liquid metal over our cities to make a pretty cast and marvel how such simple organisms are able to make such pretty structures. What I am trying to say is that ants are awesome and any disagreeing is just objectively wrong. Also, I have no idea how one would even try to speculate about motivations and patterns to a psychology that is literally alien to us.
    1 point
  11. Why would you believe that? We think we know how a dog thinks, it's a fellow mammal after all, but what would you say when it asks "smell that, nudge nudge wink wink"?
    1 point
  12. A very powerful speech by Matthew McConaughey, who is from Uvalde, Texas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD1EC48TTO0
    1 point
  13. What did you think about the purported physical evidence that they discussed? This section is at timestamp: 1:18:00. Dr. Jacques Valleé (PhD) and Dr. Garry Nolan (PhD) analyze the results of a multibeam ion imaging scan of several purported metallic fragments from a UFO. This device can analyze substances down to their atomic structure. Nolan stated that the results of the scan showed the isotopic composition of the elements in the metallic fragments did not match anything that exists on Earth. To paraphrase Dr. Nolan: "Whoever made this material created it at the atomic level, working with individual isotopes, and not just elements." My question: Is there any technology that anyone is aware of that can construct a synthetic material by manipulating individual isotopes? Dr. Nolan's credentials here: https://profiles.stanford.edu/garry-nolan Here is an article explaining the technology they were using: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20753-5 (Images below)
    1 point
  14. I wasn’t exactly awaiting your permission. On another note, if you don’t want to eat bananas, you don’t have to. This has a weight roughly equivalent to your statement quoted here.
    0 points
  15. Over the last couple of years, earth's entire population has witnessed and observed the real-time evolution of coronavirus.
    0 points
  16. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/when-whales-walked-on-four-legs.html Apparently the natural history museum says whales walked on land. "Evolution has been clearly witnessed and observed." When, may I ask has it been witnessed or observed? Yes, the world is amazing and works like clockwork, perfectly. It's just amazing that could happen by accident I say sarcastically.😏 The most amazing machines have designers though. FYI, people who read and study learn more, so you get your head in that book. I don't understand why the finches would be different species if the differences between the beaks were less than a quarter of a centimeter. The evidence is always against YOU. You just always say, "look at the science." What do you think the Christian scientists do? Those bones have been found to be important for mating, not for legs.
    -1 points
  17. They probably troll through threads like this to neg rep a bunch of people 2 years after they made their post. #NecroNegs
    -1 points
  18. I'm not even trying to troll. I'm just stating my beliefs and if you don't want to believe me, you don't have to.
    -1 points
  19. Gotcha. I'm sure you have a well informed and well developed insight and opinion on this (as on everything) but I ask you to save it, put in in a file somewehere on your drive and paste it instead of one of your woke rants in a police brutality or rape thread when it comes up. The abuse which JD suffered was psychological, the physical part was I'm sure irrelevant to him.
    -2 points
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