bascule

My biggest problem with Jurassic Park was the idea that you could get a mixed up hodge podge of genes from the belly of a mosquito trapped in amber for the past 65+ million years, and somehow splice in frog DNA between the segments (WTF? Why the hell are they using frogs?) and all the sudden you have the strands of DNA you need to grow dinosaurs. That's like saying that if you take the original masters of the Beach Boys Smile which Brian Wilson cut up and burned in frustration, and try to splice together the original songs by filling in the missing bits and pieces with some Monkees tunes that what you'll end up with will be anywhere close to the original song. WTF?

Here's another debunking of Roger Penrose which points out the same fundamental fallacy in his thinking: http://www.1729.com/consciousness/godel.html

I'm still confused as to exactly what he means by "Limitive Theorems" According to Google: My only exposure to the use of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem in order to attempt to prove that consciousness must be inherently non-computational was Roger Penrose's "proof" which Dennett deconstructed in Darwin's Dangerous Idea (the one I touched on in my last post)

How about a picture of a kid in an "Atheist Child" t-shirt opening a present in honor of "Atheist Kids Get Presents Too Day"

Well considering I blew out the contrast on mine it'd be quite a bit of work... Not to mention it's a joke

I just wanted to say that the flaw in Penrose's argument, at least as I understand it, is that the supposed paradoxical knowledge a mechanical thinker could learn is a description of that thinker's thought capibilities. But since knowledge of that description alters the thought capibilities (it's... a meme!) it is no longer applicable to the mechanical thinker after it has been learned and thus there is no paradox.

You're describing a Direct Neural Interface (DNI), an Intelligence Amplification device which will lead to a Singularity scenario

Well, with the anticipated benefit of Kyoto being an SST "savings" of ~0.07 °C by the year 2050 (also note that SSTs are not a particularly accurate metric for atmospheric heat content), CO2 doesn't seem to be particularly "controllable" I'd say land use changes may provide a greater potential, but all of this is highly speculative until we have skillful multi-decadal climate modelling. A better assessment of risks and vulnerabilities is what's really needed.

Well, strawmen like... ...are you coming up with these on your own, or are you regurgitating them from somewhere? I'm assuming the latter. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

The same way a computer, as a collection of atoms, can produce realistic looking 3D rendered scenery: because that's what its program does.

Uhh, that makes about as much sense as taking code for processing CORBA datagrams and trying to make it into code for audio processing and transformation. Maybe when the function is completely different you should... start over rather than trying to convert something into that which it is not? Like this: Because this configuration aided the survival of those who possessed it, just as each transitional step was accompanied with improved survival rates over the last. Each one of those transitional stages is still a viable configuration for an animal which can eat and hear. There's a lot of ways to make animals that can eat and hear. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html For not having done even the most basic research, you like to make grandiose claims about "evolutionists" Sounds like you've been fed FUD by some kind of brainwasher...

As a Singularitarian I believe that physics will eventually be made more common sense... ...but it will happen as a result of Intelligence Aplification technology and ubiquitous accessibility of human knowledge for most (hopefully all) individuals. When you have a complete comprehension of all the underlying mathematics (by making all the requisite knowledge accessible over the Internet at the speed of human thought) and computer assisted mathematical thinking (to the point where you can perform symbolic mathematical operations "in your head" at the same speed as a computer because a computer is executing the mathematical operations for you), physics should hopefully become quite simple for the average person.

Dawkins gave instances of various mammals being bread for a complete absence of hair in two dozen generations or less. If the parasite theory was true, it could be easily combined with sexual selection: hair fell out of favor because the more hairless individuals found hairy, parasite covered bodies disgusting or otherwise unattractive.

Thought I'd post my summary of what Dawkins had to say: After humans started wearing clothing, hair became less important, and something of a disadvantage because it provided a habitat for parasites. So once clothing could keep us warm the loss of hair was favored by natural selection because it minimized the amount of time humans had to spend picking parasites out of their hair (something other primates spend inordinate amounts of time doing)

Oh butterchrist, how easily unskeptical people are infected with pathological memes. Please, for the love of god, do your research before you spread a meme. Google is great for these kinds of things. For example, try typing "Did an airplane really hit the Pentagon?" into Google, click I'm Feeling Lucky, and here's what you'll get: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/911_pentagon_757_plane_evidence.html That's a pretty concise summary of the evidence. Certainly much better than a random video that asks bullshit questions and merely spreads FUD.

In regards to global warming, "air pollution" (in the form of greenhouse gasses) is just one of many climate forcings which alter the radiative imbalance of Earth's climate system. There is an extreme overemphasis on "greenhouse gasses" in regards to global warming, to the point that people think global warming is a direct result of CO2 and all other causes are negligable. This kind of alarmism undermines all sorts of climate science research which is trying to identify how various climate forcings interact and what kind of effects we can actually expect decades down the road. If there is a problem, Kyoto isn't going to come close to solving it. Kyoto just wastes money. If you want to solve the problem, we're going to need more research.

From what I read in The Ancestor's Tale, it's presently thought that reptiles and amphibians shared a common tetrapod ancestor but did not descend directly from each other. Wouldn't it make more sense for reptilian scales to be modified fish scales?

Well first let me say this is an awesome idea. What I don't see on the list would be the sole recognized international authority on a particular subject. For example, in a recent "debate" regarding Peak Oil, I presented a press release from the International Platinum Association regarding the remaining worldwide platinum reserves. (they did cite a peer reviewed study, but for the sake of argument let's just say this is "their word") This is an international consortium, not a government body, but I think it's safe to say if there's one group in the world that understands platinum it would be this one. I really do get tired of "Well, this source has been wrong five times in a row so I'm just going to assume from here on out that everything on the site is wrong because I'm tired of debunking it" "That's an ad hominem argument!" type debates.

I certainly can't speak for Bush's intellectual abilities but certainly he is more intelligent than this thread...

It's Kwanza Time!

I greatly enjoy deep introspection. It's like meditation only with more rational thinking involved.

If you have a deterministic algorithm that produces the numbers then they are not random

In regards do Godel I'd like to mention that an ontology (IS) can contain conflicting information... I mean, surely everyone in here has learned something was wrong, forgotten it was wrong, said the thing that was wrong again, then remembered learning that it was wrong?

I just wanted to post this little tidbit from Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained that I absolutely loved: He does go on to say that he was just joking and the people working on developing a complete model of consciousness are unabashedly brilliant

Now it makes so much sense...