Edtharan

When I said that Evolution is a process, I meant literally that: Evolution is a process as in an engineering or even mathematical sense. What I am going to do is show you why macro-evolution is a mathematical fact. For this you will need to understand what a Turin Machine is and what an Algorithm is (there are not difficult concepts). A Turing Machine is a machine that turns one set of symbols into another set of symbols according to a set of mathematical function (mathematical statements). Computers are a special type of Turning Machine called a universal Turing Machine and these are capable of simulating any Turing machine. So, if Evolution is a mathematical process it can therefore be implemented on a Turing machine. And, if it can be implemented on a Turing machine, then it can be implemented on a Universal Turing Machine (a computer). If you want proof of this, just look up Evolutionary Algorithms in google. They are used form designing computer circuits to air craft, from canoes to roads. And all are implemented on computers. So this establishes that evolution is an algorithm and it is therefore a mathematical process. This means that if 1+1 is true, then so is the existence of evolution and all that comes with it. Now, with evolution it acts on the information in the genome of the organisms. It also does not have any caveat stating that certain parts of the genome are not able to be touched by the process of evolution. All information that can be inherited with variation is subject to the process of evolution (as it is the information within the process itself). In general terms, this means that any and all information inherited from one generation to another is subject to the forces of evolution. As DNA is the main repository of this infomrait0on, then this means that every single base pair on a strand of DNA (and including the length of the DNA as well) can be changed by the process (the algorithm) of evolution. The result of this is that, through evolution, you can turn one piece of DNA into any other piece of DNA. So the DNA that describes a fish can (over a long period of time) turn into the DNA that describes say an amphibian, a reptile or even a mammal. If any part of the information that differentiations one organism from another is subject to evolution, then it all is. If it all is, then Macro Evolution is as mathematically certain as Micro Evolution. As every base pair is subject to variation and inheritance, then this means that every single piece of DNA is subject to evolution, and this means that Macro Evolution exists as a mathematical fact (so you have you prove that computers can not exist to disprove macro evolution - which if you are reading this, then I think you will have a really hard time doing ).

Ok, this is your first problem. You are phrasing that the origin of life is an against-all-odds event. This, according to current knowledge of the origins of life, is wrong. It was not a chance event, but a product of chemistry. The current best theory that I have heard (yes, it is not that we don't know how life got started, it is that we don't know which of the many that have been proposed was how it got started here on Earth) is: - Basic chemical reactions with the chemicals that would have existed on the early Earth caused lipids to form (lipids are very easy to form). - Because one end if a lipid molecule is attracted to water and the other is attracted to oily molecules (and that end is also oily), the lipids form a bi-layer where the oily ends line up with each other and the water attracted ends are turned outwards. - Because the edges of this bi-layer are attracted to themselves the whole thing easily forms into a globule (or vesicle). You can see this yourself with soap bubbles as soap is a lipid) - These early lipid bi-layers were quite permeable to small molecules and would allow them to pass through it. But it is fairly impermeable to larger molecules so if some of these smaller molecules could polymerise, then they would get stuck inside the vesicles. - If these polymers could cause more of themselves to polymerise more easily, then any vesicle that had some would more rapidly accumulate them. - These lipid bi-layer vesicles is that they can be broken apart fairly easily by collisions with objects like rocks and such, but they rapidly close up again. So if they were broken apart, any molecules in them would still remain then them but split between the two vesicles. - Another thing about these vesicles is that if two come into contact, then one will take the lipids from the other causing it to shrink and even rupture (and you can do this with soap bubbles too). - The ability of the vesicles to do this relates to certain pressures in them. If the polymers that lie within the vesicles can increase these pressures, then any vesicle that has them will have an advantage and it will destroy any vesicle that does not have them. - Over time any refinement that helped the vesicle to survive amid a mass of other vesicles will give that vesicle an advantage. It is not that the vesicles are trying to survive, it is just that the vesicles that do survive are the ones that are good at surviving. Any cells that reproduce (or reproduce quicker) have an advantage over the ones that don't. To give you an idea of how powerful reproduction is, try this thought experiment: If you have a single cell and every hour it splits off a new cell (and each daughter cell does the same), how many cells do you have after 1 day (or after 1 year )? So even if there was only just 1 cell, there would be (very soon) millions, billion or even trillions of cells. As I said earlier, the cells did not need to have a plan to survive, it is just that if they didn't survive, then ones that did survive are the ones we see today. The ones that reproduced outnumbered the ones that didn't and the ones that were better at defending themselves or eliminating the others did better and had more offspring. The vesicles that I talked about earlier probably would not be considered as being alive. However, they did have the ability for reproduction, even if it was assisted by outside factors (and any that could self reproduce would have a massive advantage over those that couldn't). So even before life even got started reproduction was going on and as what we call living organisms came from such self reproducing chemical reactions, then by the time life got started, it was already equipped to reproduce.

Evolution does not just stop after a period of time. It is an ongoing process. This means that every animal alive today is subject to evolution. This also means that they are transitional forms. Homo Erectus -> Homo Sapiens -> Homo Futuris (what we will become in millions of years time). Of course, we don't know what Homo Futuris will specifically look like as part of natural evolution is an element of random variation (but mostly non random selection). What this means is that Homo Sapiens is a transitional form between Homo Erectus and Homo Futuris. See the main problem, people I have talked to, have had with this stems form the fact that scientists have to name every thing. They name Homo Erectus and people think it is therefore not a transitional form, but since evolution is an ongoing process it means that any organism alive at any time is a transitional form (or terminal form if the organism does not reproduce). Every single fossil ever discovered is also a transitional form (or terminal form). The other main problem that people have is that they think that every single organism that ever lived has left a fossil. This is not true. Not every animal that dies leaves enough remains for fossilisation. There are scavengers that will eat as much of it as they can and bacteria and other micro-organisms can destroy anything not eaten by larger scavengers. Also weathering can break down the remains and scatter them so that they don't leave any thing for fossilisation. Then there is the problem of turning the remains (if any are left) into a fossil. This requires a fairly limited set of conditions for this to occur, and the vast majority of animals die in locations that do not support fossilisation. If the remains have so far made it this far, we have a fossil, but then there are still things that can go on that will prevent us from ever finding it. Part of what is needed to occur to create a fossil is that it be buried. But, for us to find it, it needs to become re-exposed and if that never happens we would never find it. Also as the surface of the Earth is not static (volcanoes, earthquakes, tectonic plates, etc) can bury it so far down that it would not have been re-exposed or destroy the fossil entirely. Then there is the matter of finding the fossil. If the fossil has been exposed for only a few years, weathering can destroy the fossil. Also if the fossil has not yet been exposed, then we can not know about it either. This gives us a window of only a few years (at most) between when a fossil is exposed and it is permanently destroyed for us to find it. Given all this, it is amazing that we find many fossil at all. The reason for this must be that there has been a long history and that there have been many animals that have existed. In fact, because there is so much destruction of fossils, there are many species that we don't know about because all fossils of them were destroyed (or never made in the first place). For every species represented in the fossil record, there could be thousands or even millions that we can never know about. And, knowing this, the fact that we can tease out from all this missing data an actual lineage of transitional forms from the fossil record is a great achievement, and also shows that there must have been many more transitional forms that we can ever know about.

Terminal Velocity occurs because of two opposing forces: Gravity and Friction (air resistance). Gravity makes you fall faster, and the faster you move through the air the greater the friction it causes. When the two forces equal one another, you get terminal velocity. So to get a terminal temperature, you need to have these two opposing forces. So like insane_alien said: Here you have two opposing "forces" (well only one is really a force), the heating and the cooling (cooling is not actually a "thing" but it is the absence of heating). When they equal each other, you get thermal equilibrium (and this could also be called terminal temperature). If you are interested in this further, try looking for - Thermal Equilibrium - Black body radiation - Thermodynamics

This statement is incorrect. It is possible to represent a higher dimensional object in lower dimensions. For instance, most games now days have 3 dimensional graphics, but your computer monitor only displays in 2 dimensions. Here we have a higher dimensional object (3 dimensions) viewable on a lower dimensional object (2d). Around 20 years ago (as part of a school project) I represented a 4 dimensional object on a 2 dimensional computer monitor (a 4D cube - a hyper cube - you can see many such examples on the net). So we can even represent multiple higher dimensions on the lower form as well. Not only that, we can "unfold" higher dimensional object onto a lower dimension as well. When you see a Map of the Earth on a piece of paper, what you are seeing is a 3D object (the sphere of the Earth) unfolded onto a 2D object (the piece of paper the map is printed on). you might also have done paper folding where you take a cross shaped object and folded into a cube. A cross is a 2 dimensional object, and a cube is a 3 dimensional object. You have folded a lower dimensional object into a higher dimensional object (or if you started with a cube and unfolded it you will have gone from a higher dimension to a lower one). So from this, your statement "it is impossible to physically see or represent it in 3 dimensions" is clearly false, and as your argument seems to require this statement to be true, then your reasoning from this is also false. So just because we can imagine a higher dimensional object does not necessitate our brains existing within that higher dimension. As for the rest of your post: Quantum mechanics are not needed to explain the computational power of the brain. The brain is a Neural Network, which is arranged so as to be an (very complex) associative network for the various sensory inputs to behaviours. Such systems have been reproduced without any use of quantum mechanics (on computer) and these produce the same general behaviours that the components (neurons and their connections) does in our brain (we just haven't got the computing power to reach the complexity that the brain has).

However, that "approximate" universal now is not universal, but local to the observer and their inertial frame of reference. Two observers differing in their inertial reference frame or position will see the "approximate" now as different. This means that although it might be an approximate now, it is by no means "Universal". I never claimed there wasn't a Now, just not a universal now. So we can use the Hubble data as a local Now, but if we changed our frame of reference (inertia or location) then we would be experiencing a different now to what we would if we didn't change these.

The biggest problem with the diagram is that there is no such thing as Absolute Time. There is no Universal NOW. By laying the pencil across the diagram like you have, you have stated that ther must be a universal Now (that lies along the pencil). But as there is no universal Now, then the inclusion of the pencil is an inclusion that is not represented by reality. Because you have included something not included in reality, what you have is not actually a representation of reality at all.

As an off the wall idea, what about Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator), Beta Voltaics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaics) or Atomic Batteries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_battery). These need less shielding than fission reactors and so are much lighter, although the power output is not as great (so more would be needed, and this might mean that the power to weight ratio is not good enough).

I know. But part of the OP was that theoretical technologies should be allowed. If you had several Ion drives operating at "theoretical" thrust outputs, then it could be possible to achieve a 1g thrust (although you are still looking at around 90% of your ship's mass being fuel). Also as the initial thrust scenario I proposed was fairly short compared to the flight time (about 2/3 of a year) then a combination of "engines" could be used (including theoretical ones). A light sail powered by a laser form Earth (or in orbit of the sun - with very large arrays of solar panels (or even giant mirrors to focus the sunlight for improved solar sails), or a massive fusion powered laser in the outer solar system) could be used to give some of this thrust. Ion drives could then be used in concert to achieve greater thrust. There is also the theoretical Fission Pulse Drives (or maybe even fusion) where they explode a nuclear bomb behind the ship to give it thrust. These could provide a 1g thrust for a long enough time (theoretically), however slowing down at the other end is where the problem lies for this (but combinations could be used again - eg: Ion + nuclear pulse drives to slow down). But yes,this is just speculations.

There are two types of speed you need to consider when talking about spinning objects. 1) Linear Speed 2) Angular Speed Linear speed is the speed an object would have if it was let go from the spinning object. Think of weight tied to a piece of string. If you let the string go, the weight would fly off at the Linear Speed it had while you were spinning it around by the string. The other, Angular speed, is the number of times the object goes around the axis of rotation in a given time. You probably know this form the dashboard in your car. There is a dial that has the letter "RPM" on it. This is the number of times the engine makes a full rotation (360 degrees) in one minute. typically this is around 1000 RPM for an idling engine. Now for the Earth: Every point on the Earth makes 1 rotation (360 degrees) in 1 day. So all places on the Earth has the same Angular speed. However, the Linear speed can be calculated by knowing the Angular speed and the distance the object is from the axis of rotation. The closer something is to the axis of rotation the lower its linear speed for a given angular speed. As places near the north or south pole are close to the axis of rotation are nearer to the axis of rotation of the Earth, then these places have a lower Linear speed (because the angular speed is the same for all places, but the distance form the axis of rotation is not).

What about a "Smart" bullet? This would be a bullet with a chip in it that could calculate it's spin rate and actively adjust itself (micro rockets, adjustable steering vanes, etc). This would preserve the gyroscopic effects of the spinning bullet, but the chip inside could direct the bullet as needed. It might not provide a lot of manoeuvrability to the bullet, but it might allow it to home in on a target (and so be more accurate).

Toothpicks area very poor material for building a light object out of. Sure an individual toothpick is light, but that is because it is small. Also, the big problems with toothpicks being small is that they aren't big. So if you are going to build a big object out of them, then you need to some how stick them together. This creates two main problems: 1) The glue adds weight, and you need a lot of glue so the mass of the thing is going to go up fast. 2) It will be fragile. If you have ever built a model out of toothpicks you will know that they can break easily. So for structural strength to weight ratio, toothpicks are an extremely bad idea. What you probably want is some kind of framework made from a material that is light and strong (and not pliable). Aluminium is a good start here (they make planes out of it for a reason). Composite materials are another good idea, but can be expensive to make. If it is a scale model you are making, then plastic has a good weight/strength ratio (if the model is not too big). However some type of Carbon Fibre embedded composite material would be your best bet (if cost is not an option). Nuclear reactors are not small enough or light enough to fit into a model. Nuclear reactors need shielding in the form of a thick, dense material. this means that any nuclear reactor would be far too heavy to allow the model to fly. But to answer your question: Thrust to weight ratio is the comparison of how much thrust a vehicle can produce as compared to its weight. Mathematically, if you divide the thrust of the vehicle by its weight you will get this ratio. This is useful because if the aircraft can not produce enough thrust to lift its weight, it will not fly. This means you need to make the model as light as possible and give it as much thrust as possible. This is not an easy thing to do. Nuclear Reactors are heavy. This will increase your weight and reduce the thrust to weight ratio. Toothpicks glued together are heavy. This will reduce your thrust to weight ratio. In other words, the initial plan you ahve is a very bad plan. You will need to start again from the beginning and remember that you need to keep the weigh down, you need to increase the amount of thrust and you will need to make it strong (which is a balancing act between this and the weight - strong materials tend to be heavy). The only thing the Nuclear reactor could bring to this is that it can provide a large amount of power for a long time (but there are actually lighter ways of doing this). So there are 3 ratios you need to look at: 1) Energy to Weight ratio: This is basically how much energy you can get form a given amount of weight (in the energy generation system you use). You want to minimise the weight and maximise the energy. 2) Strength to Weight ratio: This is how strong your design is for a given weight. You want to use materials that are light and yet strong. The problem is that many materials that are strong are also heavy. 3) Thrust to weight ratio: This is your initial question. The solution is that it relies on the amount of energy you can produce and the efficiency of your engines. If your engines can't turn your energy into enough thrust then it can not work. Also, remember each engine you add to the design increase the amount of weight. So you want to minimise the amount of weight and maximise the amount of thrust your engines can produce this means getting the most efficient engines as possible.

Travelling to another star system (deep space travel) in a reasonable time frame will require a high velocity. What this means is that "friction" is not the problem, but collisions are. When your ship hit a particle (or object) while travelling at these high velocities, the friction that this would produce would be almost insignificant. However, the energy of the collision with this particle would be massive. E = M * V Energy = Mass * Velocity So if your velocity was 200,000,000 m/s (2/3 light speed) and the Mass of the particle was 1 gram. The resulting energy of the would be around 200,000 joules, or about the same energy as the 200 square meter area surface of the Earth receives form the sun each second. If this hit your ship, it could vaporise a large enough section to cause serious damage (it probably wouldn't blow up the ship though). So you would need shielding of some sort, coupled with an active defense system like radar to detect larger objects and then thrust sideways to avoid it. Vaporising the particle would not work as this would still leave the object in your path, just as a gas rather than a single object. However, a gas cloud is far more dangerous than a single particle. A Single particle might punch right through the ship and not impart all the energy of the collision with the ship, where as a gas cloud from a vaporised object would impart far more energy from the collision into the ship and thus do more damage. A far simpler option is to just thrust perpendicular to the object until the ship is no longer going to hit it. As velocity in a perpendicular direction to travel is not effected by the velocity in the direction of travel (and does not effect the velocity in the direction of travel), you can manoeuvre out of the way and let the particle pass. This would mean that the ship be a narrow as possible in the direction of travel (like a thin cylinder) so as the ship would not have to move too far to avoid the object (the maximum distance the ship would need to move is equal to half the diameter of the ship plus the error margin of detection - but in practice you would move more for extra safety). So this would make the ship appear streamlined to some degree, but it would have nothing to do with friction, but making as small an area as possible for the ship in the direction of travel. IT would need some form of long term power generation capacity (nuclear) and a high thrust to fuel ratio engine (probably Ion drive) that can be sustained for long periods of time. You would not want a ship that would thrust much more than 1g (9.8m/s/s acceleration) as this would be uncomfortable for any passengers. Also at 1g one could reach very high velocities quite quickly. In 1 day you could reach a velocity of 846,720 m/s. So (not counting relativity), to reach the velocity of 200,000,000m/s would take just over 236 days (less than a year). In a trip to alpha centauri (4.2 light years away) the trip would take around 7 years. Or to Epsilon Eridani (known to have a planet in orbit around the star) which is 10.5 light years away would take around 17 years. These are well within the lifetimes of humans (even for return journeys) This is, of course, not accounting for relativity, but at 200,000,000 m/s there is not much in the way of relativistic effects on the ship. The only reasons to connect to a space station would be to load supplies, fuel and passengers. It would likely be constructed as if it was a space station itself as well as getting supplies and passengers. So shuttles, or other transfer vehicles would be used, rather than docking it directly with a space station. Navigation would be much like they have now for space craft. There is no absolute frame of reference. This means you can't have a "compass" in space as such. What you can use is gyroscopes to tell you your attitude (angle from a known direction) and the positions of stars to tell you where you are (and also your angle as well). As you travel between stars, the positions of the stars will change. This means the "constellations" as we know them on Earth will be different if you are around another star system. As we know the positions of nearby stars, we can track the apparent motions of these stars and from them determine our motion through space. Upon entering the new solar system we would need to locate any recognisable objects (like planets) and use these to help us determine our position and motion. As I showed earlier, a weapon system on a ship for defending it from collisions is a bad idea. It is far simpler and safer to move out of the way. If you are talking military use, then you would probably use similar weapons to current weapons: Throw something solid and massive really fast at the target (maybe with an explosive warhead on it once it has penetrated the hul of the target). A Laser system powerful enough to damage another ship would make yours so massive that it would make avoidance of hazards more problematic (you want the lightest ship you can get away with). Also, if you ahve a reflective skin on the ship (or more high tech a meta material with a negative refractive index), then lasers would be almost useless against you. If you think about it, a Laser needs to be directed at the target, this means you need to reflect the laser at the target from where you generate it from. If the laser beam can be reflected by you, then why could it not be reflected by the target as well? And, what if they reflect it back at you? But what is the point of military use of weapons. In deep space there is no real territory to control, there is no resources, no population, and so forth. Military use of deep space is pointless. Again, weapons are pointless (for hazard avoidance), so you would not need any for a peaceful Deep space vehicle. However defensive systems would use radar to spot hazards and then smaller thrusters to avoid them them. There would also be some kind of heavy shielding on the front of the ship to absorb any impacts that could not be avoided in time (or detected). This shield would not be a hard material, but a gel of some kind as this would slow the impact down and allow the absorption of the impact energy (same principal as an air bag or crumple zone in a car, or bubble wrap). If we are talking about military applications, then many weapons would be self guided and small. They would be launched towards the target and once close they would home in and release their payloads. These would be designed to avoid the collision avoidance defensive systems and be able to counter manoeuvre towards the target (so that they could not avoid the collision). Military encounters at these velocities would be very brief if the ships are not on the same heading and travelling at similar speeds (not chasing one another). The impact energies at these velocities would be more than enough to do serious damage. You want high density materials for the warheads and you would not need explosives (the amount of energy an explosive would add to an impact would be far less than the amount extra mass would do) If the ships are in a chase scenario, then the energies of impact would have to be generated by the weapons themselves, so it is in this situation you would be using explosive warheads as the as the energy contained in the mass/velocity would be much less than in the chemical energy of the material. As for pirates, well... If the pirates were to chase the ship, they would need to start off from where the ship left so as to accelerate up to its speed (remember a ship could potentially accelerate for half the journey and then decelerate for the second half as this would enable the fastest trip), so any pirates would have to either start at the same time and place or spend more effort (acceleration) to catch up with them. However, as the ships will be accelerating for several months, a pirate ship needing to accelerate fast enough to catch the ship would have such a high energy expenditures (engines) that any "booty" got form them would not be worth it. Also, that constant high acceleration would injure the pirates and they probably would not survive the chase. If the pirates don't try to catch up with them, and then just attack the ship, the ship might be destroyed, but the ship will still be travelling so fast that they probably would not be able to catch it and all their effort would be wasted (plus the energy expended to catch the ship would make any thing they got worthless).

The electric field outside of a plasma ball is not static. A plasma ball is a lot like a neon or fluorescent tube in that it uses alternating current. Because this current is oscillating, it can induce currents to occur in nearby metal objects (just like an air gap transformer). I ahve even done demonstrations where I have lit a fluorescent tube from this induced current near a plasma ball. What would be happening to your laptop is that the nearby plasma tube is inducing current in the wires inside your laptop and these currents are enough to disrupt its operation (and perhaps enough to do permanent damage to it ). It is for this reason that many wires have shielding, but this is usually expensive so they are not typically used on standard electrical equipment (like laptops). The best advice is: Don't have your laptop anywhere near the plasma ball while the plasma ball is in operation. Even if the laptop switched off and unplugged, the currents induced by plasma ball could be enough to damage the electronics of your laptop.

The benefits of Selflessness can easily be seen through a game theory game called "The Ultimatum Game". It is a simple Game: 1) One person (Person A) is given an amount of money. 2) Person A then splits the money into too piles as they see fit. 3) Person A then give one of these Piles to Person B. 4) If person B thinks it is a fair deal, they can accept the money gien and then both Person A and Person B keep the money. 5) If Person B rejects the money, then neither of them get any money. Now, you might at first think that it would always be of benefit to you to accept whatever is given to you as something is better than nothing. And, if you never interact with Person A again, then this is a good solution. But, if you interact regularly with Person A, then it is of benefit to you to reject unfair offers so that in future they will give fair offers if they want to keep the money (actually it could be food or whatever, money is just a good way of expressing "value"). Now, if you are in a group with more than just the two people interacting, there now is more of an advantage to rejecting unfair offers, especially if you can be seen to do so. By being seen to reject an unfair offer, it sends a message to other members of the group that you understand the concept of fairness. They can then infer that in dealings with you they can be trust that you will be fair as well. This means that you will have more options for mutual gain than someone who is not fair. Which means that your more likely to be better off (more fit) than the unfair person. Now from here true altruism (giving your life) is but one more step. Groups that have fair, mutually beneficial interactions are more likely to do better than ones that can't trust their own members. This synergy between the group members allows them to do better than a group that doesn't act fairly to each other. And, as members of a group are likely to have very similar genes, then it is in the genes best interests if they occasionally have to sacrifice one of the groups members to gain a benefit for all the rest. If this occurs too often, then it is a hindrance to the group and will be removed from the gene pool, but used occasionally, it can be of great benefit for the rest of the group. Just by looking at this one example (the Ultimatum game) it can show how selflessness can arise. But you have to remember some important things about it: - Repeated interactions between individuals is an important factor. - Being able to observe others allows the simple "fair deal" to expand into an effect that goes beyond the interactions to other aspects of the group environment. - For it to evolve (initially) there needs to be a high degree of similarity between the genes of the individuals of the group.

There are many non human primates that use tools to gather food. There are quite a few groups of Chimpanzees that use stones and wood to smash nuts like a hammer so they can get access to the food inside them. Even their teeth are incapable of bighting through those nuts. What does this mean? Well it could show tool use that goes back to a common ancestor and that is around 5 million years. Stone tools are just one form of tool. As I stated above, chimps have been known to use wooden tools, and they work quite well. It is also known that in the Palaeolithic and Neolithic (the stones ages), many tools were actually made from wood, or bone or even antlers. Stone Henge was dug using digging tools made from antlers so stone is just one of many materials used (and survives the passage of time better - which is why we see lots of stone tools compared to other materials). Also, this assumption of yours, that only shale was used where obsidian could not be found, is completely against the evidence and against all intelligence. If a stone is too fragile to be used, and there are other stones that are strong enough, then why would they use the more fragile one? I don't know anyone that stupid (or even know of any tool using animals that stupid). There are many stole tools made of flint and other harder (than shale) materials (and I don't think I have ever heard of a shale tool - but flint tools are well known). Also, it is known that tools were traded among stone age peoples. So even if there was no local stone source good enough for making tools, they could trade for them form groups that did have them. Stone tools are quite durable (they have survived hundreds of thousands of years and would still be usable today if they weren't so valuable - it is using them that damages them). It is therefore possible for them to be traded over long distances and even time. Lastly, stone aged peoples were known to be nomadic or semi-nomadic, which means that even if there was no local source of stone for tools, they could easily have travelled to where there was some, and several groups could have shared these locations (and there is evidence that this did occur and these were used as trading/socialising locations). Even groups of chimps have places like this which indicates that such behaviours could stretch back beyond the origins of modern humans. We also know that Neanderthal also had these behaviours and this gives further evidence that these capabilities goes well back in human evolution.

Actually, it doesn't take massive amounts of energy to cross interstellar space. We could do it with today's technologies (if we had the will and funding to do it). A nuclear power plant driving a bunch of ion engines could have us to nearby stars in a matter of decades (probably around 70 or 80 years). The ship would be under acceleration all the time (accelerate to just over half way and then slow down after that - the reason you can accelerate more than half way is that you are using fuel and so are lighter for the second half and can thus get a higher acceleration for slowing down). So the ship would technically be a generation ship, but of only 3 (or 4 at most) generations and you would still have some of the original crew as well. If we knew that the planet at the other end would be capable of supporting a colony, then this kind of ship could do it. You would send one (or two ships) out first to establish the base and get everything set up, then you would send out another fleet of ships carrying the actual colonists. With current waste recycling systems it is possible to create a mostly closed cycle (there will be some losses), so not much in the way of supplies would be needed. With slightly more advanced technologies it could be possible to create an almost completely closed cycle that would not need much in the way of raw materials. With ships like this you could cross hundreds of light years. But, if you can do that, why bother colonising other worlds? Mining asteroids for the raw materials you need to top up your supplies and to create new habitats would be enough. Also, if you are looking for material, then you probably would want to stick around in the Kuiper Belts and Oort clouds of stars as there is probably more material in these than in the rest of the planets. For powering ships you probably want to get fusion power working as the raw material for it is the most common element in the Universe (hydrogen) where as a Fission generator would need new radioactive materials to be mined (which would mean gravity wells and planets - and it is much more rare than Hydrogen). And if you really need to get material off of a planet, shooting it up or launching it with rockets is actually a wasteful method. A better way is to use a space elevator (this is an other technology that we are close to being able to make - we probably have the materials to make one for Mars' gravity and definitely for the Moon, but not yet Earth's). With a space elevator you can generate energy as you send stuff down and then use this to lift stuff up. If we put the resources we are currently spending on war, into developing the technologies needed, we could most likely have ships heading out to nearby stars within 50 years. This, I think, is the best argument for a peaceful contact between species. War is expensive. Peaceful co-habitation is cheaper (and quiet likely profitable). But as the most likely place for an Alien colony is not here on Earth, but out in the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud, then we are not likely to bump into them unless it was on purpose Oh, radio waves would be a poor method of communicating between colonies. A better way would be through a modulated neutrino beam as radio waves would be blocked by solid matter, which would mean that unless they maintain lots of receivers to cover the entire sky at all times, then if your receivers are pointing the wrong way you won't pick up the transmission and the delay between sending and confirmation of receiving it could be in the hundreds of years. With a Neutrino beam it would pass through any solid matter and you would only need a single receiver to pick up the transmission from wherever it originated from. It would mean a much more reliable communication system. It would have a much lower bandwidth (due to neutrinos being had to detect), but because of the delay cause by a bad reception, it could actually work out better (although short distance transmissions would still probably use radio waves).

The brain stores information as a distributed associative network. This means that there isn't just one neuron that stores the information about you cat, but in how the specific inputs associated with your cat trigger a cascade of neuron firings in many different regions of the brain. Yes, the masses of information from your various senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell) does go through a kind of "bottle neck", but this "bottle neck is not just in one part of the brain and is far more than just 1 neuron. The distributed nature of the associations within the network of neurons does mean that your brain is quite robust, but it also means that it can still be damaged and memories lost (or even changed). In the case of brain damaged people recovering their memories, this is because in the initial damage, the connections for the associations were damaged, but if only some of the connections are damaged, then there are still connections that keep some of the associations. Over time the person with the brain damage can reconnect to these areas (the brain is constantly making and breaking connections between neurons all the time). If the bottle neck is the part that is damaged, then it is possible for the entire set of memories to be retained, just that the person can no longer access them. However, because of the network of the brain, it might be possible for those memories to still be accessed through other associations than the one that initially formed them. It is then possible to recover those memories over time as you access and re-associate with them. Now, above I stated that the brain is making and breaking neural connections all the time. Breaking connections tends to occur when an association is not used. It is a case of "use it or loose it". And, as with brain damage, these connections breakages do not occur through a particular association, but occur in fragments through out the brain. This means that over time, if you don't keep up an association, you will eventually loose it. But it also means that memories don't just vanish in a "puff of smoke" from your mind and they can be re-associated again. The down sides of this type of system is that the brain doesn't really distinguish between different associations, even ones that are not real. It is possible to force associations to form. This can be used to change the memories of people (one study I heard about they were able to implant a memory in a person of meeting Bugs Bunny at Disney Land - the problem is that Bugs Bunny is a product of a competitor of Disney and would never have appear at Disney Land and the extra fact that the subjects had never been to Disney land in their life). It can also lead to psychological conditions like phobias and such. Many people make the statement that the Brain is like a computer. Well only in the most general of terms. The brain is quite different in it construction and function. It is a Distributed Associative Network processing inputs (sensory information) and its own internal states, and producing outputs (behaviours and changing its own internal states). The distributed nature and the plasticity (the ability to change - reform or break connections between neurons) of it allow it to recover from sometimes even huge amounts of damage, but it also means that nothing in the brain is ever stored for ever.

First of all, this has absolutly nothing to do with qualia or even neurons. It has to do with the actual cells in the eye that detect colour (Cone cells). These cells produce a chemical that when light of a certain frequency hits them they break down and cause an electrical change that can be detected by the cell and passed on to the neurons that connect with it. These cells produce these chemicals at a finite rate, but they can become depleted of this chemical (especially in bright light, or if you look at a certain colour for a long time). Once depleted, they take time to rebuild their supply of the chemical. When you stare at a coloured dot for a while, the chemical becomes depleted, then when you look at a white surface, all the colours are entering the eye, but because those cells are depleted of their chemical, when the light hits them, they don't fire and you don't see the colour that should be there. Instead (because it is white light entering) you see a mixture of the other colours (the complimentary colours). This is a photo/chemical phenomena (and is a direct consequence of the physical properties of the interaction between the photons and the chemical reaction they cause) and nothing to do with qualie at all. This is further evidence that you are just trying to shove any explanation into your pre-set idea, without looking at what is really going on. You are not interested in reality, you are only interested in what sounds like it might work. Actually yes, this is exactly what I am saying: Because that is what they are defined as. they are specifically defined as a non physical phenomena. It is when philosophers have tried to make them a physical phenomena that they fail as a concept. And, again it is a case of people trying to create a new explanation (which is not based on empirical observation) to explain something that already has a valid explanation (and that doesn't disprove the current one and doesn't predict anything the current one doesn't). Also, the explanation doesn't allow us to use it to make predictions about the system, so it fails in its usefulness as well. This might be useful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning If you redefine the word Qualia to mean anything you want, then you can make it mean anything you want. The problem with this is that if you define it to be something that is totally different to what is the accepted meaning of the word, it just create confusion. Qualia are defined as being a non-physical phenomena and not representative of a given brain state. If you are going to use brain states as the definition of qualie, the the problem arises that no two people have the same brains states, even when viewing the exact same event. So if you are going to try and redefine qualia as being the physician brain state of an observer, then I can say conclusively: No two people will ever have the same qualia. Which is bad for your proposal because it relies on them having the same brain states (or very similar as to be practically indistinguishable). You keep using two people who share a lot on common as your proof of this, and even say that communication would be difficult (if not impossible) for people who don't have such similar brain states for a given event. The problem with this is that there are lots of people who have very different brain states (or qualie if you are going to use brain states as qulaia). People with colour blindness, people who are blind or deaf, or even people with Synesthesia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia). There are a lot more people like this than you think, but we don't seem to have any problem communicating with them despite them having extremely different brain states and even qualia (as per the dictionary definition of it). There is so much evidence against this initial assumption that you can not use it. The assumption is proven wrong. Which means, for your proposition, you have to restructure it so that it does not rely on this initial assumption. Question: What is experiencing the state of the brain here? This harks back to the old and disprove "Homunculus" concept of the brain, that there was a "thing", a homunculus that observed the world through your brain. What this homunculus was supposed to be ranged form a "Soul" to a physical structure in the brain (like a sub organ/brain that watched the rest of it). This has been thoroughly disproven, and the line of argument you are trying to use here will only work if you invoke a homunculus as the "observer" of the brain states (but then what is the nature of this homunculus and does it have brain states or quale?). As I states above, there are so many different ways that people experience the world (colour blindness, deafness, blindness, Synesthesia, etc) that you can't make the statement that human "quale" are necessarily similar (so either you need to supply proof, or drop the necessity for it form your proposition) and communication is possible (I have even managed to communicate what music is like to someone who has been 100% deaf from birth). This completely disproves this statement that quale have to be similar to allow communication. But, according to you, the quale must be similar to allow communication. However, an uncle of mine is colour blind and I manage to communicate ok with him, even about colours. It take a bit of communication to understand that his view of colours is different, but with that knowledge I can successfully communicate information about colour to him (I just change the association of the word for a particular colour I am talking about). This could be done with a very simple computer program (the search and replace function in any word process or could do it - and that would be much more than is necessary). In other words, the Quale do not have to be all that similar for communication to occur. This claim is completely wrong, and so using it as an initial assumption in your proposition is invalid (if you want to be correct, in any way, about your conclusions). It doesn't matter how right you think you should be, or how much sense these arguments make, the fact remains that there is evidence that states that your initial assumptions that you are basing your proposition on do not match with reality. If we are discussion reality here, and not a fiction story, then you can no longer use these initial assumptions because they are not real (because there is evidence that states they can not be real). This gives you two options: 1) abandon your whole proposition 2) rework your proposition so that it doesn't use these initial assumptions. You seem to think I am arguing against your reasoning, but I am not. I am arguing that your initial assumption that you are basing your reasoning from are invalid. As these initial assumptions are invalid, it does not matter how rigorous your logic, or how much sense your arguments make. If the initial assumptions are wrong, then your conclusions are wrong.

There are two ways you can go about this. 1) Inertia: Make the cart travel fast and have a large mass so that the falling hook weight accelerates the cart fast and then when the hook weight reaches the ground the cart is released and allowed to run freely until friction slows it to a stop. However, if the cart is too heavy, then the hook weight won't fall and friction will take most of your energy away. Low friction bearing, wheels and running surface would be needed for this to be successful. 2) Mechanical Advantage: The idea here is to use mechanical advantage to somehow increase the distance the cart moves for a given distance the weight falls. Using pulleys to give this mechanical advantage would be the easiest way. The problem here is that you will only have a set distance you can travel as dictated by the ratio of the pulleys and that there will be a lot of friction in the pulleys which you will have to deal with. A lighter cart would be an advantage here as it would cause less strain on the pulleys and so less friction (and easier to start moving - overcoming the static friction of the system). Low friction pulleys and a low weight cart are needed for this. There might be a third option. 3) Hybrid: You might be able to make a hybrid system where you use mechanical advantage to turn the energy of the falling pulley into a higher kinetic speed.

Hmm. I think you are trying to argue against something that is not my position. I never said that we don't internalise, but instead, that they way you were using it was wrong. You were trying to say that internalisation allowed us to "read" another person's mind. I also never said that Qualia didn't exist, I just asked for proof that they did (as an example of what evidence you need for your argument - and I ended up having to supply it). And, even if qualia do exist there is no evidence (even in that video) that they must be the same. For example, I can run both Windows and Linux operating systems on the exact same computer hardware. So even if we had two structurally identical brains, this does not mean that they have to have the same qualia. My position was not against your position, but I was trying to question it and see if there were any hole in it. I was, according to the scientific method, testing you explanations for accuracy (even though I am not quite sure what they are trying to explain that has not already been explained). I am also showing that there is evidence against your propositions and initial assumptions. That definition is not mine, but the dictionaries definition (in my words). According to Dictionary.Com (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/qualia): n. pl. qua·li·a (-lē-ə) A property, such as whiteness, considered independently from things having the property. And Wikipedia states it as (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia): "a term used in philosophy to describe the subjective quality of conscious experience" Ii is a philosophical construct, not empirical. It is about the subjective experience of an event/object. If you are going to create your own definition of a word, then of course you can make it mean anything you want. But if you are going to do that, it is better to invent a new word than use an existing one. The problem of using qualia (as defined by dictionaries) is that the experience we feel is also an event, and therefore leads to an infinite regression of quale. The pattern of activation of those neurons is not a Quale. The quale is what those activation of neurons causes us to feel. As the definition of qualia states, the quale is independent from the thing with the property. So if a rose causes a series of activations in the brain, then these activations are the representation of the properties of that object (rose). Therefore the Qualia associated with it must be how we respond to those properties. But this is also just neural activation, and so for the qualia to exist we have to know how it feels to have quale. And thus leading to infinite regression. But if we drop the whole concept of qualia and instead look at what is actually going on in the brain, then what we get is a information broken down into fine details and stored in an hierarchical manner within an associative network. But what about some of the arguments for qualia? Like the inverted spectrum argument (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia#The_inverted_spectrum_argument): Using the Hierarchical/Associative Network description, then what is occuring is that the association of "Colour" is being changed. This way nothing else has to change about the objects, but it accounts for why this is possible. As the information about objects are stored in associations of the hierarchical data (the various aspects like colour, size, edges, and such) of the object, and these associations are not absolute (they can be created or even changed), then all that is needed is to change the association (or create a new one) as to the colour of the objects. With the knowledge argument (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia#The_knowledge_argument): Argues that qulaia exist because the person did not know what something is like until they experience it. With the Hierarchical/Associative Network description this can be resolved because it is the association between the senses and the knowledge that was missing. Until the sense encounters the stimulus, then no association between the stimuli and anything else in the brain can exist. And because of all that, using Qualia in your explanations are problematic as you have to account for all this evidence against it. This is what I was talking about. You are "assembling facts" to prove something, but you haven't defined what you are trying to prove first. I also never said that you are making stuff up (but apparently you are making stuff up about what I say). In fact, what you describe is exactly the opposite of what I said. I was saying that you are collecting "facts" and then shoe horning them into whatever you can and applying them where they don't apply. Science is not about "assembling facts" and then putting them together in new ways. Instead, science is about observing an event and then trying to explain that event. Then once an explanation has been made, you use facts to try and disprove that explanation. This is what I keep trying to tell you: You are not doing science unless you use the scientific method. What you are doing is not the scientific method, so it will be therefore impossible for you to prove your propositions scientifically. Sure you might prove them according to your own methodology, but you will not have proved it scientifically (or made it match with reality - it might, but with your method there is no guarantee it will). Science works by Abductive reasoning and then checking this with both Deductive reasoning and Inductive reasoning (by using observations of reality). What you are saying you are doing is just Deductive reasoning. But, you are making assumptions as to the initial facts (that qulaia exist and such). If these initial assumptions are wrong, then the conclusions you draw are also wrong. As this thread is about Telepathy, then I am only assuming that you are trying to "explain" telepathy. But you are not actually trying to explain it, you are trying to prove some new version of telepathy (that is not telepathy). Also, you state that you want to do this scientifically. But, when I try to explain that you are not using the scientific method you dismiss this. This is why you ahve to clearly state what it is you are trying to explain. However you say you are trying to prove something, well science doesn't try to prove anything, but instead tries to explain things. The only "proof" that science uses is proof that an explanation is false. It is also why you have to follow the scientific method if you want to do this scientifically. If you fail to use the scientific method, then you automatically fail to prove it scientifically (because that is what is meant by scientifically: Using the scientific method). So, in conclusions (and summing it all up in as small as I can): If your methodology is not scientific, then you are not doing science, and if your initial assumptions (facts if you will) are wrong, then you conclusions will be wrong. Qualia have not been proven to exist. they are a Philosophical argument and not based on the physical reality of how the brain works. You can try and use Abductive reasoning and use the way the brain works to explain qualia, but this also relies in qualia actually existing (which has to be established first). This means that using Quale in your "facts" is wrong as it is not a "Fact" but an unproven assumption (with evidence against it). As your whole argument rests on the using Quale, then this makes your entire argument very shaky.

Sorry, I've been out of the loop a bit due to being in hospital for shoulder surgery (and now have a neural stimulator connected to my shoulder). The brain does this through a hierarchical organisation of the information in an associative network. In other words, the brain does not work in the same way as a computer (but yet it is still a Universal Turing Machine). Computers store information in a flat file method. Each piece of information (file) is its own separate entity. In the brain each piece of information is broken up into different components (like edges, colour, sound, etc) and relationships between them are then stored to represent the actual piece of information (and yes, colour, sound, edges are all information too and are also broken down and stored and associations between these components are also stored). This is actually a very efficient way of storing massive amounts of similar information and processing that information quickly. The other thing is the information is not just stored hierarchically, but it is also in a network. Specifically a "Small World" network. This is a type of network that has predominantly short links between entities in the network (neurons), but it also has long ranged links (between regions of the brain). These types of networks are fractal in nature and are extremely efficient at transmitting signals all over the network but still allowing for local effects (many other networks are like this including human social networks and even the internet). So as we experience the world, our brain stores the information about the world in this hierarchical manner, but also constructs small world network associations between these pieces of information. One of the hardest thing to do with computer vision is to enable the computer to see part of an object and for the computer to successfully work out what that object is. For us, we can do this without any real effort (or seeming effort). The reason is in the different way we sort and process information. recent advancements in computer vision have been using the hierarchical + small world network association approach and they have been making very rapid advancements. Using this approach, computers have been able to "internalise" the world around them (and process it too) in a way that seems that they couldn't do it "inside" their "skull". The processors are faster and more memory is available, but even then, running the old software that used the compartmentalised system that computers were built for still is not able to compete with this associative network approach. Even very simple Neural Networks have amazing information storage and processing capabilities (and none of it by magic). Then you will fail. Even if you were correct in your conclusions as the method you are proposing is not the scientific method (so you will fail to prove something using the scientific method if you are not using the scientific method ). With the scientific method, you don't start from a conclusion and then try and find things that prove it. What you do is start from observation, then you try and come up with an explanation of that observation, then based on evidence check if your explanation works or doesn't work, and then modify or abandon your explanation based on how well it matches with further observations. You are starting form "This is what I want things to be like" and then trying to find a justification for that initial assumption. As this is not the scientific method, you will fail to prove your assumptions scientifically. Another way of putting it is: You are putting the cart before the Horse. You are trying to come up with an explanation for a phenomena before you actually know what that phenomena is, and before you know if that phenomena really exists. So if you want to proceed, start back at square one and state the phenomena you are trying to explain. But, remember, if there already exists an explanation, then you have to say why the old explanation is wrong and yours is right in a way that can be tested that will conclusively determine which is right or wrong. You also have to show evidence that the phenomena you are trying to explain exists. This is what is meant (in the first instance) by evidence. You have to show evidence that what you are explaining exists. Secondly, if there already exists an explanation for the phenomena, you have to show evidence that the old explanation is wrong. This is more evidence that is needed. Thirdly, the explanation you come up with must be shown to be accurate. This means that it must make predictions about the phenomena that can be tested and evidence is needed that your explanation is right. You might be able to show that the phenomena exists and that the current explanation is wrong, but if you don't also show that your explanation is right, then you haven't achieved your goal. So far, you haven't really stated what you are trying to explain and not shown its existence, and the explanations you have tried to create "explain" different phenomena, but these already have explanations (and you haven't shown those explanations are wrong). However, you do seem to have a collection of explanations from all over the place (and are trying to shoe horn them into something). You are trying to take explanations for one type of phenomena and apply it to a different phenomena, but as these explanations were designed for these other phenomena, they won't work (and these other phenomena already ahve valid explanations).

This is the whole crux of your problem. As you state: "the term changes substantially depending on placement" Yes. the placement is :Scientific Theory, not "Theory in general". As such, Evolution is a scientific theory (and an extremely well tested one at that). One of the requirements of a scientific theory is that it needs to be stated mathematically. This has been done for evolution. The mathematics used (and it is a valid use of the maths) is that of Algorithmic Maths. Algorithms are like a computer program, but unlike normal computer programs they are not designed for a specific type of computer. the concept goes back to before the days of computers to a guy called Allan Turing. Turing came up with a (at the time) hypothetical machine we called a Turing Machine. This was a machine that read symbols off a "tape" and then translated them into another set of symbols. The problem with this is that any machine designed to read the symbols and translate them into the correct symbols would only work for that set of symbols. If you change the symbols or the machine, then you would not get the correct output. However, Turing when a step further and proposed a machine that not only read the symbols on a tape, but also read how to translate those symbols into the correct ouput. He showed that such a machine could be designed so that it would be able to perform the role of any other Turing Machine. It would be a Universal Turing Machine. We have now created such Universal Turing Machines, we call them: Computers. Now, at the same time as Allan Turing, there was a woman by the name of Ada Lovelace (she worked with Turing). Ada was very important as she was the first computer programmer. Between them they came up with the idea of a set of instructions, called an algorithm that the Universal Turing Machine followed. As it was a machine, then any function it did would be able to be described mathematically. So, using this it can be shown, that any set of instructions (algorithm) that a Universal Turing Machine can perform is valid mathematically. Translating one set of symbols into another is called a "Function". Evolution is performed on computer all the time. Things from hull designs for boats to new medicines to aeroplanes to mobile phones to trafic flow all use Evolution to make them work. What has also been shown is that DNA and living organisms act as a Universal Turing Machine (there are even computers that work using DNA). Now, as any Universal Turing Machine can emulate any other Turing Machine (even Universal Turing Machines), this means that any "algorithm" that can be implemented on one Turing Machine can be implemented on any Universal Turing Machine. So, if we can have the Algorithm for evolution run on a computer, then it has to be able to be run on the biological Universal Turing Machine that is living organisms. But this, Evolution is not longer really a theory. It is so much more. It is a Law. It is an inviolate as the Law 1 + 1 = 2 and is as mathematically absolute. So anyone claiming that Evolution can not occur has to also be claiming that the mathematical basis that it is described with must also be false, and that is based (ultimately) on that 1 + 1 = 2. So anyone denying Evolution is also denying that 1 + 1 = 2.

Yes. That is one way. But winds are generated by High and Low Pressures in the atmosphere. There are several ways they can form. In fact, this difference in Hot/Cold driving some winds is part of the complex systems that scientists are trying to model. In some areas, GW will cause this difference to reduce and so lower wind speeds will be the result, but in other cases it can cause a greater difference between them and so cause more winds. One of the major causes in wind is not so much the temperature differences, but the humidity. When air is over water, the evaporation will increase the amount of humidity in the air. As this rises, the air cools (it doesn't have to be over land for this to occur) and the humidity condenses out into clouds. However, when water condenses from vapour to liquid, it has to get rid of the energy that caused it to evaporate in the first place. Using the knowledge that energy can't just disappear and has to go some place (conservation of energy), then the energy that caused the evaporation must go into the surrounding atmosphere. This causes the air to heat up, and become less dense, so it rises. This cools the air even more and causes more water to condense out, giving more energy to the atmosphere. The result is that you get a strong upwards movement of dense, humid air, and this displaces less dense dryer air. Because of other forces, this mass of rising air starts to spin, and because it is dense it is pushed outwards too. This is what we call a Hurricane/Typhoon/Cyclone (depending where you come from).. Most storms are also created this way too. As you can see, the amounts of energy this process puts into the movement of air is enormous.

:confused: First you state that you are not interested in using the scientific method, and then you say that you are trying to prove something scientifically. If you are going to prove something scientifically, then you have to use the scientific method: That is what proving something scientifically means. This was how the ancient Greeks used to think, The problem that they found was that it didn't work... They used observations, but then used musings to come up with the explanations. And, it does work for certain things (like maths), it doesn't work for figuring out how the universe works. They even came up with an explanation for why their explanation didn't match reality (instead of seeing that they were wrong and adjusting their explanation to take into account reality). One of them, Plato, came up with the idea that their musings actually lead to the real world, but that this world is like the projection of the shadow of the real world (it is known as the Platonic realm). Any difference between what they came up with and reality was put down to "lumps and bumps" of the "surface" the shadow was projected onto. In the end, because of this way of thinking, they came up with explanations of the universe that did not resemble how the world worked at all and over time the "model" that was used became more and more divorced from the real world until it was completely useless. Eventually the scientific method came along and the requirement that any explanation must match with reality was introduced and understanding of the universe took off. All of modern society could not exist without this one restriction: "explanations must match with reality". It is only in the last 360 or so years since this was introduced (with the scientific method), and since then we have discovered more about the universe and in the whole 300,000 years of human existence (including the time of ancient Greece). Abandoning this requirement, therefore, seems like a really big mistake. What is the purpose of coming up with an explanation for something if the universe is not like that at all. What is the advantage of explaining rain using the tears of unicorns, because it sounds more reasonable to me, than using evidence based reasoning that has the constraint "must match reality" and reaching the explanation of air pressure, humidity and temperature? Basically my approach is this: Reality trumps all. If it is not real then it doesn't exist. Turth (whatever it is) has to be subject to reality. If you even just think about it for a second, you can see why this has to be so. If you are going to explain something that is real, then what you are explaining must first be shown to be real. There is a quote (I'm not sure who said it - although I think I remember it from a Startrek episode): "Nothing unreal exists." Again, only if they really exist can this statement be made. And, if qualia do exist, what evidence do you have that ours are similar? Can you directly know my qualia? No, you said so yourself. So there is no evidence that qualia exist, and there is no evidence that if they did exist that they have to be the same (or similar). See the real point I am making here is: Evidence. It is pointless trying to argue that something exists or has certain properties if there is no evidence for its existence (or what it is actually like). Without a reference to whatever is being discussed, how can we know what is being discussed? For example: How can we discuss if Zegbat's are black or white if we don't know what a Zegbat is, for all we know they might be green (btw: I made them up so they don't actually exist). Not at all. To ask: Does X have Y does not presuppose that Y exists at all. For example: Do you have a Unicorn embedded in your back? First of all, this does not require that Unicorns exist. If they don't then the answer is "No". Second, if unicorns did exist, this does not mean that it is even possible for them to become embedded in someone back. So if I ask: Can you prove that you (or I) have qualia? Then if (and only if) qualia exist, does the second part of the question (can you prove that you ahve them) come into play. If qualia don't exist, then you, of course, can't prove that you ahve them. Just as you can't prove you have a unicorn embedded in your back (but you can prove that you don't have that unicorn problem - but if you do, you should probably go see a doctor about it, I heard that they can fester... ).