Sisyphus

forufes - In fact, the great majority of evolutionary branches have been dead ends. So that should answer your question. (They're still technically all "intermediate forms" except for the last generation before extinction, though.) However, I should also point out that the way you describe isn't really how speciation works. It's not about a single, dramatic mutation creating entirely different organisms. Mutations are extremely common. You and I both probably have several. And they're very subtle. One mutation does not make a new species, or in the great majority of cases even a noticeable difference. And almost none are purely "negative" or "positive." It depends on circumstance. So yeah, the losers do go on living right along with the winners, and statistics gradually favors the winners. But this all takes place within a species.

Hey, at least we drive on the right side of the road.

So to summarize, the more interesting question is not "why are these people so attractive," since the consensus of the SFN Anonymous Superficial Judgment Committee (all decisions binding) is that they aren't especially attractive. Kind of goofy looking, even. Rather, it's "why is the OP so attracted to these particular people, and obsessed with this particular question?" As far as that goes, I really couldn't say. Supposedly one's own body chemistry (result of genes) both influences appearance, and heavily influences what one finds attractive in others, so maybe your hormones are trying to tell you that your particular genes combined with their particular genes are more likely to produce successful offspring. Or something. I really don't know much about it, or even whether that kind of thing has any validity. As for why this particular question holds such fascination, I won't even begin to speculate.

kitkat - It's true that everything alive is an intermediate species in that no species is "done evolving," but it wouldn't be accurate to say that existing species are intermediate forms of one another. All those other species are our cousins, not our ancestors. That said, they might resemble our ancestors, and existing species can tell us much about how various structures might evolve from "primitive" forms to more complex forms.

And vice versa. You can't just set up a one to one correspondence between reference frames. Each frame views the other as under time compression. I have no idea what this section means. In M? As viewed by who? No, it doesn't. There isn't a direct correspondence like that.

Step 1: Squeeze out some orange juice over the lighter. Your lighter is now sticky, for added grip. Furthermore, when lit the hot parts near the flame will smell faintly of boiling orange juice, like a miniature scented candle. Romance! Step 2: Consume the orange. Vitamins! Step 3: Light yourself on fire. Drama!

I don't understand where the difficulty is. Why do you think the travel times are the same? The flashes are not simultaneous, and they meet at M'. Hence, different travel times from source to M'.

This is incorrect. In frame M', both the light path lengths and the travel times are different.

BTW, in case my implication wasn't clear, I personally don't think "every event must be causally linked to a prior event" is necessarily valid. Is there anything actually wrong with considering the universe as an object with a finite time dimension? Compare with spatial dimensions. Example: a crystal structure. Looking at it in the middle, you might see that every atom is linked to an atom to its left. If you lived your whole life there, you might find it intuitive, that every atom must be linked to an atom to its left. But this isn't a law - there is a leftmost edge, and there is no logical contradiction in that. Besides, even in this universe we have events without direct causes. What causes an atom to decay at one point in time rather than another?

For the sake of avoiding a religious debate, why don't we ask, "is questioning the validity of a first cause special pleading?" And in response, I don't really see it. Even for something that "has always existed" and thus can't be classified as an "event." Because at some point the "always existed" translates into a "first event." You wouldn't say numbers are a first cause of anything, would you? If anything, it's generally a response to special pleading of an exception to the postulate, "every event must be causally linked to a prior event." The "first cause" is invented because of this postulate, then promptly deemed an exception to it for vague, mystical reasons which somehow can't possibly apply to the first event it's supposedly required to explain.

I agree. Not was I was expecting from the descriptions!

Why is "just probability" not an acceptable answer? You understand why children are not identical copies of one of their parents, right? So you already have "different looking." Why would it be surprising that you don't find parent and child to be exactly as attractive as one another? Some other things to consider: -Attractiveness is not especially quantifiable or objective. Eye of the beholder, etc. -Maybe they just take more care to make themselves attractive. -Why focus on attractiveness (to you)? Pick any quality at all. Children can be outside the range of their parents. (If they weren't, the entire population would quickly tend towards equality in all things.) -You get half your father's genes, and half your mother's genes. Maybe you get sexier (to you) half of each. Maybe the half you get from each parent combines more sexily (to you) with each other than each does with that parent's other half.

It sounds like we're mixing up a few different concepts. I was thinking if it was about "parallel universes" then it must be talking about the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. But now I realize (and should have earlier) that they're just talking about some kind of crazy brane cosmology that presumably follows from some interpretations of some versions of string theory. IOW, stuff I'm largely ignorant of. The difference is that with MWI you've got one universe splitting off different versions of itself (i.e., closer to a traditional concept of "parallel universe"), but here we're just talking about totally separate 3D "branes" within a higher dimensional "bulk." Ok, so then I don't understand why there would be different versions of you (let alone Harry Potter). Because there would be an infinite number? But infinite doesn't imply that everything has to happen, only that an infinite number of things will happen. (What I mean is that infinity doesn't equal infinity. You could have every odd number representing a brane, and they'd be infinite and all different. But there still wouldn't be a six. Maybe six is Harry Potter. Maybe all the infinite possible "yous" are 2.3 through 2.31. Etc.) And, while they could be "close by" in some orthogonal direction, would they have to be? And, of course, there's still no way to travel between them. Maybe for the best, as a piece of this universe (which is what you and I are) with our laws of physics might not enjoy it someplace with different laws. Did the documentary have any suggestions as to how travel might be accomplished, or was it more of a "if we could do that, it would be crazy!" kind of thing?

If "witchcraft" means invoking invisible causes to blame one another for our problems without any evidence, then it's surely been around for tens of thousands of years, at least. What's your point? Nope, he's the supreme god. And people have believed since well before the year one in our calendar. Not that that matters in the slightest to its validity, but you seem to think it does. And there are far older gods, too.

Where did you get that? That's not part of any theory or interpretation I know of. Well sure, if it's self-contradictory it doesn't exist. But it's more than that. The laws of physics are different in the Harry Potter books than they are in real life, because there is magic. The many worlds interpretation does not say "anything that you can imagine exists," it says that anything that might have happened, statistically, if a wave function had collapsed a different way, did happen. So while that does mean that the universe "splits" uncountably many times every instant, it doesn't mean that anything is possible. It means that anything that is possible is true. What counts as "possible" would be the same always. However, "possible" does include "ridiculously unlikely." There is a finite - though very very very very small - probability that all the electrons in the floor beneath you will decide to be somewhere else for a few seconds, and you will fall through. This is so unlikely that something like that has almost certainly never happened in the whole history of the observable universe, but if the many worlds interpretation is correct, then in a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny (you get the idea) minority, that did happen, as you were reading this. Because it's not our universe. It's not just "elsewhere" or "out in another dimension somewhere."

So chimps actually hit each other with branches? Sorry to insist on the clarifications, but it seems significant, and it's not clear what "brandishing during aggressive acts" means, precisely. The impression? If that behavior hasn't actually been observed, I think that's too big a leap. Waving a branch around does not imply a threat of using the branch as a weapon. It could just be "look at how angry I am, look what I'm doing to these branches." In fact that seems more likely, if using them as weapons against one another has never been observed. So again, have there been observed instances of weapons actually used (not just brandished) within the species, rather than just against predators or prey?

"All crows are black" and "all crows are white" are not opposite statements.

I imagine there are a lot of other factors involved. For example, a lion is an apex predator. It only really has to be alert when it itself is hunting, and has little to fear from a 20 hour nap. By contrast, animals with natural predators have to be alert pretty much all the time (or at least very good at hiding when they're not), because avoiding being eaten is a 24 hour a day job. Whales and dolphins also need to be at least partially alert all the time, for that reason and another: they have to be conscious to breathe. So they do sleep, but only with one half of their brains at a time.

Wait, do bonobos use weapons against one another? When you say "brandish as clubs," do you mean actually hitting each other with them, or just waving them around as part of a display?

Hey, they're talking about me! I actually thought it was in Speculations. I navigate mostly through SFN spy, so I don't always pay attention to what subforums things are in. As a moderator, I should have.

Not nobody. I have never done that. I also disagree about "no matter what faith you are." People reach out to what they believe in. If they do that even though they don't particularly believe, then it's probably because they are desperate and willing to try anything, even if it's probably pointless, just because there's nothing else to be done. Or it could just be a language thing. I say "damn it" when I hurt myself, but nowhere in my mind am I trying to send the corner of my coffee table to hell.

So, wait. To clarify: The lasers are in a circle around O. (In O1's reference frame, it isn't a circle.) In O's reference frame, the lasers fire when O and O1 are coincident. They all hit O at the same time. Most of them miss O1, except for the ones in the direction of their relative velocity. They don't hit O1 at the same time. In O1's reference frame, the lasers all fire at different times, but hit O at the same time. Most of them miss O1, except for the ones in the direction of their relative velocity. They don't hit O1 at the same time.

You guys are all going to be really embarrassed when crownedconquern wins a Nobel Prize for his magic graph paper.

Conclusions 2 and 3 are wrong. They both agree that O is hit by all the lasers at once. However, O1 does not agree that all the lasers fired at once.

Nope. I'm quite sure I have a heart and that I need water to live, but not 100%. Maybe 99.999%, enough that I don't seriously consider otherwise. However, it would be much lower than that if tens of thousands of smart people were claiming to have demonstrated otherwise using the scientific method, which obviously has given us so much in the past. The questions you ask and the statements you make reveal that you don't really know what the big bang, space expansion, or relativity are all about. I assumed you hadn't been taught these things. Have you? Oh but you did. You are claiming that it has to be a certain way because that's the only way that immediately makes sense to you. Therefore, you believe that the universe must be simple enough to be immediately intuitive to you, and that whatever god or gods you believe in are limited to creating something at least that small and simple. If you think you already know, then why did you open this topic? Hypothetically, suppose I said that I know that you're wrong, because the holy texts of my religion disagree, and that I have personal experience of the supernatural backing me up. How would you respond? We go by the evidence, because that's all we can do. When I say "know" I just mean that all of the MANY predictions made by the theory have come true, and nobody has yet come up with an alternative explanation that fits all our observations. If somebody does, then we would have to come up with an experiment where there would be one result if the old theory were true, and a different result if the new theory was true. If the experiment was repeatable, and its methods survived all the scrutiny that other scientists could throw at it, then the results would have to be accepted. This is how science works. GPS satellites.