Velocity_Boy

Don't feel bad, a lot of scientists didn't understand or even believe in quantum entanglement. I think that maybe some still don't. Hell, Even Albert Einstein was a little baffled about it – which caused him to speak the oft-quoted words “spooky action at a distance”. Basically, at least how I see it, quantum entanglement posits that acting on a particle here, can instantly influence a particle far away. This is also described as theoretical teleportation. And obviously it has huge implications for quantum mechanics, quantum communication and could offer some really awesome progress for quantum computing.

So if I understand you correctly you're claiming that just because the artists attempt to give us their perceptions of reality through their art cannot be construed as objective and probably true perceptions, than their art is useless! And in fact does not even exist? Isn't real? If this is indeed what you claim, and I apologize if I misunderstood, well, I could not disagree with you more. Art is art. It's not a science equation or a philosophical dissertation on the meaning of life. Nor does it claim to be. Seems that you think unless it can answer all your questions on existentialism than its bogus. This is totally the wrong way to look at it. I would humbly ask you to read my first post to you in this thread. At the risk if sounding arrogant I think it nicely answered your original question and also summarized what art is and how it should be viewed. As well as how not to expect too many questions to be answered by it. I am almost tempted here to paraphrase Elvis Costello and say that talking about art is like dancing about architecture.

No, science may not have explained everything just quite yet, but we are getting closer every decade. And like others have said, there is absolutely no reason to insert a place holder God of the Gaps and say He did it! in those few areas we are still working on. Science has never needed gods. They simply don't apply. They are non sequiturs to any scientific question. Most psychiatrists and biologists and especially anthropologists view our obsessions with gods to simply be an undesirable by product, a sort of psychological residue, left over from our evolved homo sapien brains. Seems that when us wise apes attained self awareness we also attained a fear of our lives ending all too quickly and that they had little purpose to begin with. Thus, as an example of the mind's incessant need to comfort and soothe our fears, voila! Gods and an afterlife were invented!

Ahh....Salavadore Dali, thanks. And yeah, I guess technically or artistically that painting is...what? Abstract Impressionism? Or Abstract Expressionism? Or Surrealism? One of the two. But to me anything that is not a intentionally accurate depiction of something, like Rembrandt's "Man in the Golden Helmet" or Blue Boy or whatever, consitutes a sort of abstraction. They will tell you this in art school, too. But the point I was trying to make for the OP I think still stands, uncompromised by my gaff in naming the correct artist. But hey, thanks for being the prototype pedantic art snob that so many people like the OP let intimidate them into thinking they need to "get" the art. They don't. They just need to enjoy it if the want to. Or not. Thanks. Really? My thoughts on how a forest painting and pop music differ? Or contrast? Hmm...is this a test? LOL Weill, I would say it depends first on what style of art the painter of the forest chose? Did he do is Realistically? Or Surrealistically? Or did he do it an Impressionistic or Expressionistic style? This sounds nit-picky but I would need to know the style before I could do the compare/contrast thing for you. I would also I think, need to know the specific pop song. Sorry. But as I have seen already, here and in the real world from attending Art Functions with my wife, there are a LOT of Art Snobs out there. And one of there primary (only?) joys in life is correcting somebody when they make an error in citing specific nuances and aspects of different pieces of art. But overall both the music and the picture ARE a type of language the artist used to portray a feeling. This isn't the case all the time, though, in pop music. Some of the lamer stuff is just made simply to sell records. NO discernible purpose other than that or artistic meaning or message-trying-to-be-conveyed can be found anywhere in sight! LOL

Think of Art as a language. Which is a good way to think about it because that's all that it is. The artist uses his choice medium in this particular language called Art in order to convey to you the viewer--or the listener or the reader--what he is trying to say. Sometimes his methods of communicating are not especially discernible or even attractive in your personal eyes. Or ears. This is perfectly OK. Don't ever feel intimidated by art. Thinking that you just don't "get it." There is nothing to get. Other than how it strikes you personally. It's OK if you find a Vasilly Kandisnsky painting to look as if your 5 year-old spilled all his paints on the floor! LOL. So the truth of art if that there is not really any, objectively speaking. Just like there may not be any REAL inherent truth in a Mozart violin concerto or the novel "Moby Dick." Rather, they are simply comprised by themes or ideas the artist had in his mind and wanted to share with you. Sure, sometimes an artist bases his work on real world experience, like Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" symphony or the painting "Guernica" on an air raid during the Spanish Civil War. But there not necessarily need by objective truth in the way he chooses to convey his notions or feelings on that true event. And sometimes the subject of the artist's work is pure fantasy! Say, James Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake" which is one of the most overrated novels in the history of the written world, IMHO. Or an abstract-impressionistic painting from Sal Dali--say that famous melting clocks one. This was a picture he decided on painting to convey some idea he had about the nature of time. Or maybe he just thought it looked cool in an aesthetic way. Who knows? Who cares? Maybe Art History Majors, that's about it. Just enjoy art. Or don't. Never feel intimidated. Art is so subjective. There is no finite Truth, per so. I myself used to be intimidated and feel I didn't "get it" but then I married an MFA woman who taught me a whole lot about it, and I lost ALL that intimidation. I learned that some of it, a good deal of it, was simply self-indulgent crapola and not worthy of my striving or struggling to understand it. Same goes for you. Enjoy it! There is a lot of fabulous stuff out there. But never feel bad about maybe not "getting it." You don't feel bad if you don't understand your 6 year-old's finger painting, right? Think of that next time you visit an art gallery or listen to a Dvorak flute concerto in E minor. Hope this helps! Thanks.

Genetics indisputably plays a part in determining if a person is endowed with physical characteristics that society thinks of as attractive, or beautfiul. Thus, if both parents of the offspring ARE themselves endowed with physical traits that we think of as beautiful--a highly subjective term, mind you--than yes, of course, the chances that progeny also will benefit physically from the inherited genes are greater than is the chances an offspring of two parents whom were NOT imbued with desirous physical traits. None of this is guaranteed, however. We have things like atavism and also genetic mutation that can be factors in determining how many of a parent's genes are visible in progeny. And contrary what a lot of people think, a child doesn't inherit a "50-50 mix" of their parents' genetic traits. Like for example, little Johnny's eyes are not a mix of those of his mom and dad. Rather, they are either or! That is, 100% of these genes he inherited to "code for" or "select in" to construct his eyes come from one parent or the other. This is the case for ALL physical parts: eyes; hair; facial shape; ears; skin tone, et al. IT's one or the other, as in shuffling a deck of cards, a card for each trait. You get the card from either the "Mom" or the "Dad" stack. You don't get half a card from each stack for one trait. I bring all that up so make the point that sometimes a certain combo of mom and dad traits may not necessarily result in an overall appearance that we think of as being attractive. Yet, overall and generally speaking, the answer to your OP question is "yes." A kid of good-looking parents has a much better chance of being good looking themselves than does a kid from so-so or downright unattractive gene suppliers. Thanks! VB

I gave you a source in my post. Look it up yourself, Or check one of any number of watchdog enviro groups that monitor endangered species. You will see the lists, and readily know that they comprise nowhere NEAR the percentages of mammals and amphibs which that loopy article claimed were threatened with imminent extinction. Lastly, I am not guessing. I am stating facts. This is sort of my field. The article was wrong; its facts were, if not made-up, very inaccurate and mis-leading. I am guessing their problem was with what they surmised constituted being a threatened species. Did they just use ANY species whose total population numbers had decreased? Even if that species was STILL highly viable and not even on the World Wildlife Organization's "threatened" list? This is my personal gyuess of what they did. Since they sure as hell did not use the official lists from any of those credible sources. Thanks.

Whether or not you believe in economics or politics matters little in the real world. They are inescapable, unless you go totally off the grid and live in a commune or a cave or some other sort of existence totally removed from society. And you would have to be self-supporting, self-sustaining out there as well if you wish to be truly free of politics and the economy, since, even if you lived out in the boonies and had to go into town once a month for supplies, well, the prices and availability of those commodities ARE determined by economics, which in turn can be influenced--and often is--by politics and the legislation that is passed or is not passed as part of that discipline. And anyway, you DO believe in economics and politics anyway! LOL. Socialism IS a form of both, and the sort of world you are envisioning, or say you prefer, IS an ethos in both those areas. A usually non-viable ethos, but still an ethos. Hope this helps. Thanks. VB

Wow! I am very disappointed in the BBC. I expect better for them. Because this was one big hit steaming pile of sensationalistic yellow journalism. It's cited stats were spurious at best, and downright false at worst. And my guess is the latter best describes the accuracy of them. The article even had the literally laughable disclaimer that, although we are in the midst of a cataclysmic Sixth Extinction, it may take a bit longer than the one that killed the dinosaurs off some 65 MYA! LOL. I call that a classic case of "no shit, Sherlock!" So they claim some 41% of all amphibians and 25% of mammals are threatened with extinction? Absurd. And by whose definition? Because if you go to any of a number if official lists by global wildlife watchdog groups, like for example www.worldwildlife.org you can see the lists for every category from "extinction pending" to " vulnerable" to "no concern." And you will readily see with a cursory glance that the lists above the No Concern comprise nowhere near those percentages. In fact, not even one tenth of those numbers. So my guess is some psuedo science but with an agenda and a axe to grind is doing some very fanciful and groundless extrapolation. Or he needs to publish something quick si as to avoid that pesky date of perishing! With seven billion of us homo sapiens here on this rock and the numbers still riding in Malthusian terms every year, and the increased awareness if the risks some if our four legged friends are facing, as well as more protective legislation in place for them than ever before, I find this whole Mass Extinction article to be almost as silly as another Bigfoot sighting. Or an alien abduction. I do political cartoons as a hobby. I gave in mind a good one for this article. Some guy sitting in gridlocked city traffic while he hears a BBC report how we are disappearing so fast we will soon be extinct.

Basically it sounds like you are an Uber socialist. And a very naive one. And also not very well educated in the areas of economics. Or politics, for that matter. If you were the tiny bit savvy in either of those areas you would not the world you propose, with free everything, is basically impossible. A utopian fairy tale. You even make Bernie Sanders look conservative! And that's no mean feat. Congrats on that I guess.

Hi! Is that you in your pic? You're gorgeous. Now......on topic: Funny you should ask, as I am currently working on a project for the summer school Anthro class I teach. I have thus far found this website here to be the best, hands down, as far as answering your question. This is a fascinating topic, btw, and dovetails with my personal discipline of study. Thanks! https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/human-journey/

Assuming that there not need be a reversal of the existing directions of our orbit and rotation, and that, say, even from the Gitgo--the initial cosmological machinations that spawned the Earth some 4.6 BYA--the Earth began to acrete matter and orbit and rotate around the same star we now have and call the Sun, no: there is no reason why we could not spin and orbit around the sun in the opposite direction. So long as our moon of course was orbiting in sync with our rotation as it does now, and that the innermost two planets, Mercury and Venus, were also orbiting in the same direction as we were. In other words: sure! The sun could just as easily and effectively rise in the west and set in the East. If I may be allowed to use that popular misnomer for alliterative purposes. Thanks, BTW: this is a great question!

Many (most?) atheist and even agnostic Anthropologists, Biolgists, and Psychiatrists will opine that the tendency to believe in some sort of supernatural entity is an undesirable by-product of the homo sapien sapien mind. Our brains are postiviely obsessed with seeking patterns and causes in our world. Even when there are none to be found. The mind truly abhors a vacuum. (of causality!) This tendency once served us very well back on the harsh and unforgiving African Savannah........... "Hmm....deer seem to come to this place to drink after water comes from sky. They are easy to kill and eat when we find them here." Voila! But today, not so much. The brain looks for causes when there are none. For BIG and meaningful reasons. This is why people are hesitant to admit that, say, a lonely and deranged angry little wannabe KGB informer can buy a mail-order rifle and take down a beloved American President. NO! They collectively cry! It had to be a Conspiracy!! THE CIA/KGB/Castro/Mafia did it! The mind LOVES order. Patterns. This is why that most people, now matter how hard they try, are unable to generate on demand a sequence of totally random numbers. (We were put to this test once in an undergrad psych class I took.) You would be amazed at how difficult this is, as it seems as if it would be easy. Try it some time. I bet you will find a pattern. IF you DO do not feel bad, as last I checked only one our of about fifty can generate a totally random sequence that a computer cannot discern a pattern in. I am going to try it now for fun. Anybody is welcome to try and find a pattern. I will not think long on this. I believe in our original test we had to do it on the spot, taking no longer than three minutes. (the numbers must be one or two digits). 7, 19, 23, 2, 0, 0, 88, 17, 93, 2, 4, 63, 9, 1, 12, 43, 72, 80, 12, 4, 20, 8, 4. Hmm..looks pretty random! Anybody see a pattern? And yes, I did try my best to be as random as possible. Honest. I am not trying to make my point here.

I don't understand your reasoning at all. Single method? Hardly. Take for example, the ways in which we determine the age of fossils or stones or pottery shards or cliff dwellings or bones. Last I checked, there were over four-dozen different methodologies of radiometric dating. If you Google "methods of radiometric dating" you will see this. Prepare to be amazed. We also cannot forget the very powerful method of peer-review which we use all the time in science. This gives colleagues the chance of debunking or refuting ANY claim made by another scientist. And make no mistake: many religious folks, for example, I have heard accuse us in the sciences of being akin to some evil, good-old-boy network who always sticks up for our views and findings that continue to all but disprove the likelihood of a personal god. What they don't get is that it is the DREAM of ANY scientist to be able to make his mark by being able to empirically refute a well-known Theory. Or any sort of finding that is offered in a PR journal or paper. This is so much better in career terms than just following the flock or the conventional wisdom of the day, is it not? I cannot think of any other arena that holds its findings and theories up to as much open-faced and vulnerable attacks or refutations than the arena of Science. And religion is notorious for NOT holding their own proclamations up to the same amount of inspection and levels that they demand of science. It should be a two way street, but it is far from that.

The first sort of beliefs in God(s) were almost certainly of the poly-theistic type. Probably having to do with nature gods. As in, attributing things like weather, thunder and lightening and rain and good or bad crops to some type of sky-dwelling supernatural entities. And after praying to these gods a desired results was seen as proof they existed. And if the prayers were not answered, as was most likely the case, the homo erectus or even a. afarensis souls doing the praying simply figured the gods were displeased with them. And thus the cycle continued, as there was no way back then to disprove the notion of gods. As is unfortunately the case still today. Witness Carl Sagan's "The Dragon in My Garage" parable. Funny. Though science has decidedly progressed on all areas since the times of our ancient ancestors, relgion and its attendant belief in god or gods has it seems to me RE-gressed. Since the aboriginal poly-theistic version really makes more sense than, say, the murderous, petty, jealous, and hopelessly anthropomorphized Yahweh type of a god.

Very misleading quote from...Gee! Surprise! Amnesty International. They referred to death penalty "cases." As in the court costs. This is far different than claiming that the actual cost of doing one lethal injection one time on a guy is more expensive than feeding and housing and caring for him for, say, another 20 or 30 years. Where I think the cost per annum for a Maximum Security Inmate equates to the same as an Ivy League University education.

Well IMHO you cannot go wrong with Richard Dawkins on this topic. You may the to begin with the book that put him on the map, and might be his most well known. It's entitled, The Selfish Gene. It IS over a decade old, but since the time of its writing no new discoveries have been made in the fields if bio genetics or evolution which would render anything in the book as dated, let alone inaccurate or wrong. I'm a huge Dawkins fan, so I admit I am a bit biased, but I really do think reading him would serve you well.

I would love for you to explain to me why you claim it costs more to kill somebody than to keep them imprisoned for life. I have never heard that claim before, even by the staunchest anti DP folks. So..thanks, I'll be waiting patiently.

You need to get out more. My argument only contains my own personal incredulity as a small part of the overall argument I make. Which is..wormholes exist only on paper diagrams and computer models that are all products of the minds of theoretical physicists and Cosmologists. An argument could be made that thus far the evidence is nil, and is no more compelling than many other examples of scientific, check that...psuedo scientific, menta! Gymnastics. I was gonna say mental masturbation, but decided to err on the side of p.c. Thanks.

I agree. Good intent-- like an "it's OK, no problem" sideways wave from a malformed hand. I am liking this idea more and more. So much now that I would probably bet on it. I'm not sure why this debate is so important to me. Must be a side effect from my penchant for Linguistics. As hand gestures ARE a sort of language. I minored in Linguistics, almost majored, but got bit hard by the Biology and Evolutionary Theory bug on a trip to Africa as a young man. Thanks!

Indeed. Purely hypothetical. Mainly used for purposes of trying to give some possibnility to equally hypothetical scenaris like Time Travel, and quick shortcuts through the vast Cosmos. I would add that, though they are entertaining to think about--much like Conspiracy theories--it it just as likely we will one day prove Worm Holes do not exist as we will prove that they do. In fact, it I had to bet on it, my money would be on the "no such thing" side of the table. I mean, sure, there are likely some weird aberrations out there in the Space Time Continuum, maybe like strips of extra dense Dark Energy where matter and even space and time are repulsed more harshly than amidst the regular DarkEnergy fields. Or--closer to the wormhole thing--strips of LESS intense Dark Energy or Dark Matter where resistance is lessened, thus maybe allowing for speedier navigation through them. But a classic wormhole per se, as a path to Time Travel? Very unlikely.

Well according to many Cosmologists including Einstein, TIME is a constituent of Space. That is to say, a part of. And while different yes, only in the way that, say, the color blue is different that another color in the Spectrum but still a part of it. They call this the Space/Time Continuum, or STC. And its been proven that lights gets curved or altered by mass and the gravity that mass exudes. But space? Hmm...not so much I don't think. I always liked to think of Time maybe being to Space what those colorful little swatches of lights on a soap bubble are to the bubble. That bubble being Space. But you can question the Gravitational model all you want. Why not? we still don't know how it works! Or what the medium is for its force. Oh, we call them Gravitons but that is only a sort of place-holder of a word. We've no idea that a Graviton consists of. Much like the mass-carrying particle we called the Higgs Boson, before we discovered it a few years ago at the CERN LHC. I think space CAN be infinite. It's just that our homo sapien minds are incapable of grasping the notion of infinity. We have no experience with it, anbd certainly noway of observing or testing it. We can only use picture models and metaphors. Analogies, so staggering is Infinity in its totality. Like we do with those vast cosmological distances. And numbers. As in the hundreds of billions of galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars in each one, likening them to all the total grains of sand on all the world's beaches. Or how to show the vast emptiness of an atom, we picture the nucleus as a football sitting at the 50 yard line, and the distance of the attendant electrons are flying around at light-speed outside of the stadium, and are the sizes or grains of sand if the nucleus is the football. I digest. Er, digress. My personal take is Space IS finite, and this current Big Bang of a mere (!) 13.8 BYA is only the latest in a series of BB's and BC's, (big crunches.) Part of an infinite cycle. (damn..there's that word infinite again!) LOL.

Hey I'm no Christian but that proffered Bible passage disproves nothing. It will be construed as a Believer as being a mere figure if speech. Like when you say that was a nice sunrise this morning. We all know that term is Cosmologically inaccurate. So if a book by Hawking used it that means his whole book is bogus, right? According to your argument. Sorry. You lose this one, amigo. Anyway, the Bible has far more absurd stuff in its pages than that! Hope this helps.

Well, since your first two statements are scientifically spurious at best and downright mythos only at worst, an immediate monkey wrench of empiricism is tossed into the gears of your working argument here. What sources are you using to substantiate those first two points about Satan? The Bible? I'm not sure it's even in there. And even then, the collection of Bronze Age Hebrew Mythology we call the Bible is the last place to look for viable facts that can be used in a debate on our place in the cosmos and why we are here. Besides, if any of that God v Satan woo were to be true, a person claiming that Satan was calling the shots in today's world and has been all along and God is a whiny and wimpy and capricious disgruntled underling, well, he would have a more logical argument and one that he coukd find many examples for by combing our history books. In the same way the Church of Satan's Nine Rules are far more applicable and useful than the Ten Commandments from that other religion. I stray off topic with that last two sentences, I know. But my point is that your premises are so groundless that it's anybody's ballgame if we want to wax theological.

Your point being.......?