bombus

If forced, I'd rather kill a human foetus than a mature cow. Just 'cos it's human doesn't make it special to me. No-one gladly has an abortion, but sometimes it's better than not having one. At the very least, banning abortions just means that it gets done in secret and more young women die as a result. I am pro-choice. Until a foetus is a breathing baby its just another part of a womans body IMHO.

To bombus You (and Lomborg) were totally blown out of the water in that thread, but just wouldn't accept it. Introduction of an alien species IS HABITAT LOSS! Why can't you understand that simple point!? The Chinese River Dolphin is the latest. Many others are on the brink but kept from going extinct because of 'artificial' conservation effort. Many others were all but destroyed by habitat loss but some other factor was the final nail in the coffin. Either way, you are wrong. Because of huge conservation effort. Maybe, but it's totally incorrect for one to infer from that statement that habitat loss is not the greatest threat to species. I'd actually disagree with Lomborg on that point as well though. Which he misuses due to his basic misunderstanding of science. SkepticLance, Lomborg is a fool who, due to his lack of a scientific grounding is totally incapable of interpreting the data in a meaningful way. Like I have said in past threads, using Lomborg's logic, guns have never killed anyone, bullets have never killed anyone, blood loss has never killed anyone, 'cos it's all down to a lack of oxygen to the brain. Really, SkepticLance, Lomborg is WRONG WRONG and thrice WRONG! If you think he's correct I suggest you read more scientific literature, 'cos you obviously have not read enough if you can be fooled by Lomborg's smoke and mirrors.

Of course I haven't. Anyone so fundamentally stupid to say that species extinction is not linked to habitat loss is not worthy of my attention. I might as well read the Bible for explanations. Lomborg's just out to get a name for himself, get the gullible on his side, and earn cash. He's no scientist and not capable of writing scientific literature. He should be ignored.

Nine factual errors is rather a lot! Maybe it took eleven pages to satisfactorily destroy these nine of Lomborg's arguments. If they'd addressed every error there'd have been no room for the adverts! Lomborg is just an attention seeker.

Competetion does NOT decrease prices when a nationalised monopoly is concerned. It actually increases them. Simple economics.

Hewzulla, D., Boulter, M.C.,Benton, M.J. & Halley J.M., 'Evolutionary patterns from mass originations and mass extinctions', Philisophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (1999) Bak, P. How nature works: the science of self-organized criticality. New York. Copernicus 1996. Basically, the theory says that SOC causes extinctions because species evolve into new species exponentially, filling in niches, creating new niches, which then get filled ad infinitum. When the rate of speciation reaches a certain steepness there tends to be a collapse (extinction). There are many small extinctions and fewer larger ones (mass extinctions) as the system follows a Power Law: variables that plot as a straight line from any organized system. The extinctions come from within the system itself. Examples could include the evolution of oxygen producing organisms causing the extinction of many of the early anaerobic life forms, the evolution of dinosaurs causing the extinction of many of the large amphibians, evolution of placentals causing the exintinction of most the marsupials, evolution of humans causing the extinction of mammoths, sabre toothed tigers, chinese river dolphins, humans! As the Earth system includes every natural process on Earth I suppose it might also include the effects of plate tectonics, vulcanism etc, but that could be pushing it. There is also the effects of meteorite impacts to consider which add a bit of randomness to the system. It's got my vote anyway. I agree with that. I would describe the system as being fundamentally deterministic, but with a high degree of variability/randomness due to the factors you mention.

Indeed, 'tis so. It would make the human race shudder and think again methinks - perhaps even more than finding intelligent life elsewhere... I still go for Self Organized Criticality as the most likely cause, with the meteorite being a final nail in the coffin. I think biology/ecology/evolution follow mathematical principles and patterns. Everything else seems to so why not. Extinctions follow Power Law principles - lots of small extinctions with fewer large ones. The Earth is all one huge dynamic system, perhaps with plate tectonics being part of it.

They don't The UK one is NOT completely shit at all. For most people it's far better than you'd get in the US. It's just that the US has better services if you can afford to pay for them. If you have no insurance in the US, and get shot, they'll send you home the same day after patching you up a bit. That wouldn't happen in the UK. They'd keep you in until you're fit to go home, and you wouldn't be charged a penny. Cuba has one of the best health services in the world by the way. The point is, in a privatized system someone is always making a profit on top of the actual cost. In a not-for-profit system services can be offered cheaper (coz you get everything at cost price) so you can do more with the same money. That's the bottom line really.

sshurely everyone knows what happened? Intelligent, bipedal, technologically advanced dinosaurs ruined their ecosystem causing extinctions of many families. Climate chaos then lead to nuclear war which finished them all off (apart from the few that escaped in flying saucers). All we gotta do is find the remains of dinosaur cities...

Work undertaken using the Fossil Record 2 database suggests that we are in the middle of a mass extinction that started around 10,000 years ago. It looks likely that regardless of global climate change we are going to lose all the large mammals. The question is, are humans a large mammal? I think probably. I have it on good authority that we have around 400 years!

Einstein did it before he died. Unfortunately the set of equations he came up with had an infinite number of solutions. Maybe that's the way God likes it. A circle is a square with infinite sides after all... A 'unified field theory' that combines the laws of electromagnetism and gravitation.

From a review of Dennet's book: The conventional arguments against both free will, on the one hand, and scientific materialism, on the other, rests on the belief that in a deterministic universe there is simply no room for freedom. If every state of the universe has been determined by a previous state then in what way could any act be said to be 'free'? Is it not simply the inevitable outcome of a series of causal links that goes all the way back to the Big Bang? Not so, says Dennett. Such a view confuses determinism and inevitability. Suppose I'm playing baseball and the pitcher chucks the ball directly at my face. I turn my head to avoid it. There was, therefore, nothing inevitable about the ball hitting my face. But, a sceptic might say, I turned my head not of my own free will but was caused to do so by factors byond my control. That is to misunderstand the nature of causation, Dennett retorts. What really caused me to turn my head was not a set of deterministic links cascading back to the beginnings of the universe - though that certainly exists - but my desire at that moment not to get hit by the baseball. At a different moment I might decide to take a hit in the face, if by doing so I help my team win the game. This appears to totally fail to address, let alone answer the problem! Dennet agrees that there are deterministic links cascading back to the beginnings of the universe, but manages to exclude his brain/mind from this. Maybe I'll have to just read the book. Where does free will fit into all this? For most people, conscious will derives from what they would call the 'self'. But this notion of the self, according to Dennett, is an illusion. The self is not the entity that governs brain processes, but is the outcome of those processes. Echoing the neurologist Daniel Wegner, Dennett suggests that 'People become what they think they are, or what they find others think they are.' I would agree with all of this. Dennet seems to be confusing free will with personality development. They exist at completely different levels IMO. Thanks Just read about Compatibilism. One explanation is: For example, you could choose to keep or delete this page; while a compatibilist will not try to deny that whatever choice you make will have been predetermined since the beginning of time, they will argue that this choice that you make is an example of free will because no one is forcing you to make whatever choice you make. In contrast, someone could be holding a gun to your head and tell you that unless you delete the page, they will kill you; to a compatibilist, that is an example of a lack of free will. (The compatibilist account sometimes includes internal compulsions such as kleptomania or addiction.) This is not free will IMO. This merely accepts that free will is actually an illusion. What is the fundamental difference between someone holding a gun against your head, being in the path of a falling rock, or having electrons in a certain 'place' in your head at a certain time. It's all things created by the universe affecting your mind. This idea fails to address the problem.

Thanks! Great stuff.

Are you suggesting that they have twisted the results of this? I can assure you they have not! So why does the result change depending on what you are looking for? A fundamental role, not just an important role. Agreed. It might, it very well might, and that is what Penrose et al is hypothesising. Agreed, but irrelevant to my argument. OK, I shall look that up, however, Penrose's hypothesis does not require a total severence from causality. How can you make free-willed decisions in a totally deterministic classical system? Apologies for calling it a theory. His ideas have by no means been completely discredited, that is an extreme exaggeration to the point of being wrong! Also, it took a long time before the mechanism of Darwin's theory was discovered. Yes, the fact that free will cannot exist in a classical deterministic system. Either free will is an illusion (and maybe it is) or it is real. If real it cannot be adequately explained by classical theory.

There is also this if you can find it: Consciousness, information and panpsychism JCS, 2 (3), 1995, pp. 272-88 William Seager, University of Toronto, 1265 Military Trail, Scarborough, Ontario M1C 1A4, Canada. Email: seager@lake.scar.utoronto.ca Abstract: The generation problem is to explain how material configurations or processes can produce conscious experience. David Chalmers urges that this is what makes the problem of consciousness really difficult. He proposes to side-step the generation problem by proposing that consciousness is an absolutely fundamental feature of the world. I am inclined to agree that the generation problem is real and believe that taking consciousness to be fundamental is promising. But I take issue with Chalmers about what it is to be a fundamental feature of the world. In fact, I argue that taking the idea seriously ought to lead to some form of panpsychism. Powerful objections have been advanced against panpsychism, but I attempt to outline a form of the doctrine which can evade them. In the end, I suspect that we will face a choice between panpsychism and rethinking the legitimacy of the generation problem itself.

very well said! My subsequent silliness! You don't seem to understand the very basics of the argument. Yes it is where physics meets metaphysics - that's the big issue! That's the problem. Metaphysics asks some very basic questions, such as 'What is the nature of reality?'. Does not Science try to use an evidence based approach to answer this same question? Now whether or not Penrose's orchOR theory is correct is not the point (he may well be wrong in the exact explanation at this stage), but the questions still remain, and I think that the effect of QM is the answer. Quite how I do not know, but I do not believe the answer has already been discovered via classical theory! Bascule: Have you watched the animated film about the double slit experiment? Do you agree that consciousness appears to cause wave function collapse? That belief is perfectly acceptable, but it is just a belief at the moment - a hunch, like my belief. Could you explain your 'hunch' a bit more? That's not a very good comparison. All Penrose is saying is that the arguments/inaccuracies do not affect the meat and bones of his theories, which is the important bit!

Penrose answers back (including to Solomon Feferman): http://psyche.csse.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-23-penrose.html Not to Tegmark though.

It is more than breeding, but breeding helps a great deal. This is why wolves don't make great pets. Also, any dog taught to be aggressive (including police dogs) is not one I'd trust with small children.

what a load of bollocks

And what if someone does the same and gets different results. I'm not going to change my views on the basis of one paper. Semantics Have you seem the little film? Hardly We shall see I'm willing to wait I've posted about Penrose extensively, including multiple threads about the Road to Reality and Shadows of the Mind. Have a look here: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/search.php?searchid=352214 You're just scared!

I disagree. You say that because maybe you don't understand why I am saying what I am saying. I suggest you have a look at some articles on the subject. Start here: http://www.imprint.co.uk/hardprob.html They do not falsify, they merely give an opposing view. Big difference. Anyway, Tegmark's theories are opposed by many - have you visited his website? He has some great theories by the way. How are those interconnected systems controlled, or have you no power of independent thought? Everything in science is a philosophical position. Science is a philosophy. (PhD = Doctor of Philosophy) And some would argue they don't work OK, I will. Aaaaah, I see your problem. The point is that consciousness can cause the collapse of wave function into a discreet value (c/f the double slit expt), thusly in the brain this 'randomness' can be controlled by consciousness and give us the ability to think freely without our brains being totally dependent on what state they were in before. That is the whole of the question! A bit more than that - quite a bit more. Try here (it's fun too): That's not true. Opinion is just divided - and that's just in relation to the orchOR theory. Not discredited, just challenged. These critiques can often be full of misunderstandings and errors, although I'm happy to check it out. ??? Penrose is a giant among scientists. I think to say he is misusing science is like saying that the Beatles ruined music! Like I said, believe what you like, but I am confident Penrose and Hammeroff et al will be proven correct to some degree.

I'm a bit sit-on-the-fence when it comes to Nuclear Power. The trouble with nuclear power is that it's actually very expensive. If that same amount of money was spent on energy efficiency instead we could start closing power stations! Also, if you drill deep enough it gets very hot. We could spend the money developing geothermal power instead which has none of the problems of nuclear. (not to mention tidal, biomass, solar). Nuclear power should perhaps be a very last option once all other options are exhausted. Mmmmm, if the snail is endangered and threatened by a development (of whatever type) then its protection should be considered in any planning application. I think much of the court stuff is usually due to local people protesting!

well, that's kinda what I'm alluding to. To do the job properly would take a lot of energy would it not? Even just people monitoring it. Over 100,000 years it could build up!

sorry!

Not sure where to ask this, but here goes... It's often said that nuclear power stations do not emit CO2 and so may be able to solve our energy problems with regard to global warming. However, considering that the radioactive stuff is dangerous for at least 100,000 years, and has to be 'dealt with' over this period of time, has anyone ever done the calculations to work out whether more energy is spend dealing with the 'mess' of nuclear power stations over 100,000 years than the ernergy they actually produce in their operational lifetime?