Edtharan

I have heard of similar expereiments too. From what I understand, the brain is very mallable (not just squishy ), in how it operates. It seems that the brain will accept any type of regular input and allow it to be processed and used by other parts of the brain. This could be interesting. Imagin that we have a "chip" that can be implanted into the brain. It has conections that allow input and output to it and is compatable with the neurons in the brain. If this "Chip" could be linked to auxillery processing (like a computer, the internet, or just into a wierless network with other "Chipped" people), would it be posable I wonder?

Ok. yes organisms will become better adapted to a niche in an ecosystem. But here is the catch. That organism is part of that ecosystem. This gives a feedback that changes the definition of fittness, this can mean that the organism now has to evolve a different set of traits to be better addapted to the niche, and so on... It is theis feedback loop that keeps changeing what is defined as the "most fit" that makes any notion of "Forwards" nonsense when dealing with evolution. Yes. If you use the term deleterious to mean a bad mutation, then most mutations are deleterious. This makes that particualr organism with that mutation less likely to survive. But this then means that any organism that does not have that mutation is more fitt, this is therefor essential for evolution to take place. And is a good argument that evolution works the way we think it does.

yes ther is no Physical edge to these "tubes" but there is a logical edge where this effect breaks down and you then have to use more thrust to reach the same destination. A better analogy would be the contours of a hill or mountain. It takes less energy to travel along one of these contours than it does to move up or down (ie: stop your self from moveing too close to a planet and colliding with it). It is also more complex than just a single Line running along these contours as well. The speed of the object also makes a difference to the "Tube" (as it is a 3D volume along a line). Each tube is surounded by a nested set of tubes that corespond to different speeds.

yet they have move genes from one to the other. Yes the knowledge of how the genes work is not complete. But we can Identify sequences and the proteins that they produce. So the codeing sections can be identified and the resulting protine can be predicted and identified. This is just one small part of the overall picture, but an important one. no I stand corrected.

In a recent article in the magazine New Scientist (on 25 March 2006) they taked about these gravitational "Tubes" that allow easy travel through the solar system. These tubes lie along the gravitational contours of the solar system. What I was wondering is could these "Tubes" exist between stars? and could they give a means to easily send a spaceship to another star (of course it would still take time to get there, but would these allow a ship to get there faster and with less fule needed)?

In a rfecent New Scientist article they talked about "tubes" of gravitational potential that crisscross the solar system. These tubes can allow an object (like dust or rocks or even space craft) to travel throughout the solar system with only a little push (say from debree thrown off in an asteroid collision with a planet or another asteroid). This kind of "Interplanetary Highway" would allow particles formed in the inner solar system to be transported to the outer solar system. this could be another explaination of how these particles formed and ended up in the oort cloud without the need for phenominal amounts of energy.

All these are just used to be more specific about what facet of evolution you are talking about or a particular conclusion of evolutionary theory. If you look at any technical field then you will find lots of examples like this where they use particular jargon to indicate certain neuances of a broarder concept. That is all these are, technical jargon for specific facets of evolutionary theory. Actually you did say (or at least indicated) that it did have a direction, that is that evolution increases complexity. There have been many examples of transgenic animals. They have moved genes from one organism into another organism. Once common gene that has been inserted into other animals (a transgene) is the Fluresent Gene found in many gellyfish. It has been inserted into mice, bacteria (yes this is a a eukaryote gene in a prokaryote and it still works as intended without change), and other organisms. One of the first transgenic oprganisms was a bacteria engineered to produce human insulin (eukaryote to prokaryote again). If you know anyone with diabeties they rely on this transgenic organism to provide their medication (insulin). If you use the IDers concept of complexity then I would say a definite No. I think it would also apply to me as well . And that is why it doesn't make sense to you (also it is not a good idea to wnat it to make sense to you as it will likely make you blind to any problems that it has). Either wanting it to make sense or not wanting it to make sense is closing your mind to what could be the truth. Keep an open mind and allow your self to see it from the other perspective. This is healthy.

It is possible, but if you are right then there would be a better way of presenting your argument. If you are trying to disprove someones elses argument and use a logical falacy then you counter argument is not likely to do what you intended it to. If you use a strawman as a counter argument then what you are realy saying is either: "I can twist your words so that they mean something else" or "I don't understand the point you are manking" (at best). Neither of these actually can be a counter argument. Yes this could be a valid view, but is not a complete view. Each point on the trunk or branch must be a vaild organism (not just the ends of the branches) and is a common ancestor to all the organisms further along the branch. Any organisms that occupy and end of a branch is either the last organism in an extinct lineage (and should be positioned further down the tree) or a comtepory/living organism that should be at the same height as any other contempory organism. This is only valid if you are using the vertical as a measure of time. Once you start using the vertical as a measure of complexity then the shape of the graph must change. If you are using the height as only the measure of time, then the "Complexity at the top, simpler at the bottom" dissapears completely as there are many modern simple organisms as well as the complex contempory organisms. If you use the height of the graph as a representation of complexity, then you loose a sense of time in the graph. This shows that the two aspect Complexity and Time are not related in the way that you are claiming. Your proposition that evolution is moveing towards more complex creatures is wrong. You can get the illusion that it is moveing towards more complex organisms, but it is an illusion casue by our onw hubris byplasing more importance on organisms that we perceive as more complex (and in what way complex, there are many different ways that an organism can be considdered complex). The is a slight trend in the graph to more complex creatures in modern times, but this is a very small trend and can be explained by a selection pressures caused by biodiversity (and it is less than this alone should give, so there must be some pressures to simplify). Umm, they work very similar, and we do know how most coding DNA works in a eukaryote. We have been manipulating eukaryote DNA for a few decades now. Ever heard of transgenic animals. All animals are eukaryotes and we do know how their DNA works. Sorry it was ment as a joke. My appologies if you took it the wrong way. lol Actually complexity can mean more than just intelegence. But that was the way you were using the word, unless you were just making a joke.

A logical falacy means that the arugment presented is false, it says nothing about weather you are right or wrong. A lot of the problems with your posts is that they stem from incorect or outdated (ie new measurements and tests have show it to be incorrect) infomation about the subject. If you start with an incorect premise, no matter how impecable your logic, you will come to the wrong conclusions. Only because that is how we constructed it from our own hubris. It should be that all living organisms, no matter how complex or simple should be at the top and the organisms that they decended from are lower down on the structure (it would be better to imagine it as a pitchfork kind of structure rather than a bush or tree). The reason that the organisms that we have decended from seen to be more simple is that we don't know much about them and their detains (fossils) have been distorted by time and pressure. So we can only make crude assumptions on the actual physiological shape of these creatures (they seem to be badly moddled out of clay ). If you use the size of the DNA molecule as a measure of an organisms complexity and height on the Evolutionary Tree, then humans can not be at the top of that ladder. The human genome is actualy quite short compared to other organisms. Mamals are usually shorter than other organisms too, but we position them higher on the evolutionary ladder, simpley because we are mammals too. Many bacteria have larger genomes than humans, they also out number us and have a greater biomass too, so by these metrics, bacteria clearly are more superior to humans. Ok. You are crazy An organisms genome is as big, complex, small or simple as it needs to be. DNA take time and resources to replicate, and the bigger it is the more likely that errors will occure in it. The human genome is around a metre long (IIRC) and this is in each cell of your body (count the cells and multiply the genome size by this and you will realise that we have an awful lot of DNA in our bodies). The human genome is not very large as far as genomes go. Due to the problems of having a large genome, evolution will favour organisms that have a genome that is large enough, but not much larger than that. Actually some bacteria are more complex than us,but on the whole I would say that they are of equal complexity. They are able to perform feats that we can not, live in environemnts that we can not, perform nearly all the functions that our bodies can (even make decissions with out a brain) all in a single cell. That sounds like a prety complex organism to me. We need to distribute these tasks amoung many simpiler cells, and even then they can still do things that we can't. A common and incorrect use of the term evolution. Many people use the term evolution to mean a change. Evolution, in the scientific sense has a very spoecific meaning, which these uses that you stated are incorect useages. It would be like useing the term "Programming" to mean pluging a computer in and turning it on.

This "remote Control" over the rats (and sharks, etc) is done partly by training (like giving a reward to a dog when it obeys your command). The Rats had several electrodes inserted into their brains some of which mimiced the stimulation of either the left or right whiskers, and another which stimulated the pleasure/reward centers of the rat's brain. It was shown that the rat still had complete choice over its actions (like it wouldn't make a jump it knew it couldn't do even if it was "told" to do so). A human could be controlled like this, but we still would retain our ability to choose a particular action or not. However, if the control was placed in the parts of our motor cortex that controled our muscles, we would not be able to control the actions, but we would retain the ability to know that we were being controlled. When scientists discover the regions of our brain that govern our ability to choose (and they are zeroing in on these) then we can fully claim that they can remote controll someone. This kind of controll will most likely need to activate several areas in controled paterns of stimulation, as this is a more complex issue.

My name is very common (Paul) that I find it difficult to use that as a user name. So I used a name from one of my Role Playing Game Characters as my Username (nobody will likely have it as a user name). My avitar is just from a piece of clipart and as I used to be a programmer (untill my injury), and am a computer game designer, I felt that it fit nicely (I have alwayse been a computer nerd ).

A common mutation that can occure in the copying of genetic infomation is that of repetition of a sequance. For example take the sequance: TGG (this is the sequance for Tryptophan). If this were to double then a sequance TGGTGG could occure. Now if a further mutation could occure in one of the TGG codons then you might get: TGGTGA (TGA is the sequance for Cysteine). Here we have the a the creation of new genetic material and it changeing into a differnet sequance. If this was part of an active gene then this would cause changes in the protein, which could translate into a different developemnt of the organism. there is a lot of redundency in both the codon sequance and the production of proteins, so this type of mutation might not cause any imediate change in the expression of the gene in the organism, but there will eventuall occure a mutation that will cause all the mutation to express in the organism and a visable change in the organism will occure. Also whole sections of genes can be replicated (hundreds, if not thousands of codons long) and can be replicated more than once (eg the TGG could be TGGTGGTGGTGGTGGTGGTGGTGGTGG...) and posable thousands of times. Also the reverse can happen and sections can get deleted. See here: http://gslc.genetics.utah.edu/units/disorders/mutations/mutatedna.cfm for better infomation on this. Our DNA is not all about the production of proteins. It also has control section that can turn other sections on or off according to various other chemicals in the cell. Some of the "Junk" or more accurately called "Non Coding DNA" (as it does seem to have a purpose), might have other uses, but one use seems to be as a buffer for these kinds of mutation. If these repititions or deletions occure in an area of Non Codeing DNA then there will not be any major effect on the organism. However if the mutation cause some of this Non Caodeing DNA to become Codeing DNA, then you will also have the expression of the genes in the organism, but untill then, as long as the section remains Non Codeing, then there can be as many or few additions, Deletions, Single Letter Substitutions and other mutations without it effecting the organism. Going back to the TGG codon. A single Mutation (to TGA) can cause it to become a Stop Codon. This is a control codon and is used to determine (among other components) the end of a particular sequance of a Protein. Another control sequance if that of ATG and is kind of the Start codon for a sequance and used for determining the reading frame for a particular sequance. So as you can see, additions and deletions can occure as well as changes in the actual codon letters (single letter, or point mutations). The intercocetedness of the DNA sequances in that a particular sequance can be reliant on other factors out side of the DNA its self or within the DNA, means that simple mutations can have vast consiquences and that the redundancy of DNA and that of Proteins means that not all mustation need to cause expressable effects. As for complexity. Yes organisms have become more complex over time, but some organisms have also become less complex. Take for instance a virus. this is just a sequance or RNA that can hijack a cells "machinery" to reproduce its self. Iit is a prety simple section of RNA code. However, virus could not exist without a cell in the first place. So Virus have evolved after the evolution of DNA replication and normal cells. It had evolved froma more complex organism and become a more simpler organism. So evolution is not synonomous with increasing complexity, it is change (for more complex or less complex) due to mutation and natural selection. Also the "Forwards" concept can also be proved wrong in a similer way. But ther is another way that forwards can be shown to be wrong. One may considder humans to be the pinacle of evolution, we are intelegent, top of the food chain and we can manipulate other organisms to do our bidding. But we can be killed by a small virus (like influenza). Which is the more superior organism? Is it the organism that is the parasite or the organism that is being the host to the parasite? If you drop the Homeocentric view, then you will see that the above is actually a trick question. Niether organism is supperior to the other (this is where a lot of political aplications of evolution falls down they assume that there is a measure of superiority).

LOL Try being left handed . Scissors are a nightmare (it's not the grip, but the way they are hinged), anything with a "grip" handle) is harder to use. Even the design of some buildings temds to favour right handed people. Now on to opening things... Jars and such favour right handed people, Packeges that have "easy opening" tabs are designed for right handers usually (and made out of Unobtainium so you can't open them any other way). Maybe us "lefties" should be able to claim dissability for it... BTW this is not ment to be taken seriously.

Another part of the experiment that would help lend credability is that of the double blind test. You could have the reciever be un aware of weather or not you are actually sending the signal (you might be out of the room doing something else). this would have to extend to all the people who are involved with the reciever too). Also have a barrier that prevents you and the reciever (and anyone associated with both of you) from knowing anyhting about eachother. Also make sure that the reciever does not know what type of infomation is bing sent (ie numbers, letters, combination of letters and numbers, images, etc). This could be achieved by using 2 seperate buildings and a pre arranged time (by a third party that then has no more contact during the experiment) that these experiments will occure at (say something like between 6:00pm and 6:30pm). Be very strict with the control of infomation between the 2 groups (sender and reciever), and the fact that it is a random sequance of numbers and letters.

Ahh, so now I understand your confusion over evolution. Mutation is any change to the genome of an organism, weather it is additions, deletions, movements, or anything that results in change. So loosing genetic infomation is not de-evolution, it is mutation. There is no such thing as de-evolution (except in some tacky sci-fi novels and movies). Evolution, also, is not just mutation. Evolution is the process where a change in the genome (through mutation), is selected for survival (or extinction) due to natural selection. You seem to be able to accept the fact of Mutation and Natural Selection, but can not seem to see how they interact with each other to produce what is called evolution. If we tinker with the genome of an organism, it is called Genetic Engineering, not De-evolution. If this change occures naturaly, it is called mutation (note: these could both be considdered as just mutation, but that is realy just a matter of semantics).

Actually evolution means that these vestigial organs should exist. They are the "intermedieate forms" that IDers say don't exist. If an organism was designed intelegently, then what would they include something that didn't serve any function? or even was a disadvantage? The big deal with dinosaur fossils is that they are a big problem to IDers (in this context). In other contexts all fossils are important (not just dinosaurs) as it gives us data about what the earth was like in the past, how and why we are the way we are and just for curiosities sake. A similar argument could be put about mould, of what reson could someone decide to grow mould on bread. This kind of curiosity lead to penacilin and other antibiotics. So the study of fossils might lead us to some discovery of importance.

This is just as false todat as the claim made yeas ago that if all people learned to read it would lead to social colapse. People ten to want simple explainations of complex events, so it is natural for them to seize somehting new that they don't underrstand and make that the object of villification. It will not be the computer games (or the music of the Beatles as was claimed) that will cause these problems, it is as was stated, the apethy, ingorance and closed thinking (part of what I called simplex thinking) that will lead to these problems. Mostly these problems will occure on a small scale (another advantage of a Complex/Multicultural environment). And if as was suggested that a One WOrld One Culture prevaled, then I would be seriously worried about a total colapse of the human race. But as we curently have many cultures in the world, as one falls, others will rise to take it's place. There might be setbacks (like the darkages) but humanity will continue. But this is taking the long view and accepting that our curent scocieties are only transitory (which they are, regardless of what we would like).

Yes. A person, born without senses would be alive, and a unique individual. There are people born without senses and they are still alive and unique individuals. Ok some might not see someone who never developed a brain as a person (and therefore not murder in killiing them). But what would be the moral standing on deliberatly restricting the growth of the brain so as to use this "potential" person as a new vesel for someone else? If you deliberatly "mutilated" a foetus at conception (and throught out its development) so as that no brain was formed, just for the purpose of creating a new body, what would the moral stand point be? Also if you tinkered with the genetics of a sperm and egg (before conception) so that if the egg was fetilised by that sperm would never produce a brain in the developing embrio, what would the moral standpoint be? Of course there is no absolute answers to these and it will always be a moral grey area. It is this reason that Immortality treatment will never be developed for this technique (as there will alwase be objectors), especially if there are other potential paths for immortality treatments. Vat grown organ replacements (that are not full organisms) would be a better path. If the ability to grow any organ in the body were developed without the need for a complete organism is a much less grey area for this kind of treatment (just replace the bits that get worn out as needed), but is realy just on one extreme end of the above scenario (but much more acceptable).

I would call a One World One Cultrue as social collapse, as what has happend to all the other cultures, they must have colapsed under the domination of this "One Culture". I think a One World Multiple Cultures would be the next step. For this to occure I think people will have to give up their Simplex (not simplistic) and Multiplex world views and take the Complex world view (not complicated). The Simplex world view is that everyone must see the world as they do (and if they claim that they don't then they are either lieing or ignorant. The Multiplex world view is that your world view is the right one, but others can hold a different one so long as they don't stop you from holding yours. A Complex world view is that an individual can accept multiple world views and all have equal validity. I think the greatest threat to society is that of the Simplex world view. This kind of thinking inevitably will lead to war and totalarian regimes. The Multiplex world view will still lead to war, but it will be less likely to lead to a totalarian regeme (but it still will occure, it just will eventually be replaced).

Well looking at rock, they can see that at some point in the past the atmosphere was very different from what it is today. The atmosphere did not contain much oxygen (and neither did the oceans). Eventually an organism evolved that was able to produce energy from sunlight (photosynthisys) by breaking down certain molecules and combineing it with hydrogen (from the oceans - water is 2 parts hydrogen and 1 part oxygen). The "waste" product was oxygen. Oxygen is actualy quite toxic. It is highly reactive and would "oxidize" many of the chemical reactions needed for life. However some organisms were able to "mop up" these free oxygen radicals (I am sure most of you would have heard of "free radicals") and any organism that could do so would have had a survival advantage (if you can live in a toxin where others can't then you don't have as much competition and can dominate that niche). Eventually the reactivity of oxygen was harnessed by life to speed up certain reactions and life became dependant on it (as it was so plentiful and those that didn't have the advantage of the extra energy and chemical reaction speed could not reproduce as quickly). The predictions that can be made from this is that there may still be areas on earth that have continued to be low in oxygen and so these oxygen dependant organisms may still exist, not only that, but these organism would most likely be killed by oxygen (as it would still be toxic to them). And scientists have discovered these organisms here on earth. The have found bacteria living benath the surface of the earth (around a kilometre under the ground) that do not use oxygen at all and in fact oxygen is highly toxic to them. So the atmosphere did not "evolve" but it was changes by organisms that evolved to use sunlight to produce energy, and this change in the atmosphere forced another evolutionary change to occure in other organisms. Some people use the word "evolution" to mean change. Their use of the word "evolution" in this context is what causes the most missunderstanding of the "theory" of evolution that I know of.

With about as much dmage to the ship as having it in a gravitational field. Gravity is the warping of space and if you had a negative gravity filed behind the ship (pushes it away) and a positive gravity infront of ther ship (pull it towards it), this is the effect of the "warp drive" on the ship. The ship will effectivly be in free fall.

A large number of genes can be switched off and on with just a single mutation. These mutations are in control genes that govern how (and if) other genes express them selves. Depending on the method used by the scientists, it could all be down to the control genes as to weather the lactase gene was active or not and therefore a single mutation that allowed the control gene for the lactase genes to be reactivated.

Yes there would have been some cells in the control that did develop the lactase mutation (or just re-aquired or reactivated it), but there would not have been any survival advantage, or even a slight disadvantage as the bacteria would have to "spend" metabolism on it. If just 1 or 2 cells (or only a few) aquired the lactase mutation then they would only constitute a very small numberof the final cells. It is very posable that the cells selected for testing did not contain the lactase gene as the number of the was so few. Not only this but if the mutation to produce lactase could be aquiered by a single mutation then it is equaly likely that it would loose this mutation again if it gave no survival benifit (this is called genetic drift and is what drives punctated evolution). Mutation hotspots have been identified in genomes. In humans (and other animals) they have identified some in the locations that govern your immune system. If you know how the immune system works then this makes a lot of sense as it allows the human immune system to evolve to keep pace with new pathogens that occure (think about what european deseases did to the native americans). It makes sense that genes that would beifit from being highly varied woudl evolve a mechanism that would allow that variation to occure, also genes that need to be astble would evolve methods to reduce the rate of mutation. I supose that a complete modern cell with all the components that it has might take that long to "randomly" occure, but if you take into account evolution and natural selection (even in nonliving system) then it make the appearance of a cell "non-random". Mutations might be random, but once you apply selection (in any form) to it then it becomes non random. We do not (and maybe can not) know exactly how life started in the universe (or even just on earth). But from what we do know we can make estimates on how quickly life can occure in a sutiable environment. These range from around a billion years to a few thousand years. Life on earth seems to have got started fairly quick (a few million years), so it dosen't fall in either extreme, but was fairly quick.

Yes squid are not vertebrates (backboned animals), they are cephalopods (related to the snail and slug). They are invertebrates (without backbone). Squid have 2 eyes, not 1. Squid and other cephalopods (if you take evolution) share a common ancestor with mamals (mamals are a vertebrate). But this ancestor did not have a functioning eye. The development of the eye in cephalopods and mamals occured after they split from the common ancestor, so the eyes that they have can not be evolved from a common eachother. They eye evolved in these two lineages seperately.

This is a common mistake about the brain. A lot of people think that the "You" is just your brain. Your neural system extend throughout your body, and even then many processes that go into makeing you, you are not all neuralogical. For example: Take food. You probably have a favoruite food. But if you are hungery you will enjoy food a lot more. This hunger is caused by the body needing energy and neutrients. If you could get all of these by just pluging your self into a recharger (if you were completely mechanical/electrical say), then you will never be hungry and thus never feel the extra enjoyment of eating when you are hungery (even if you retained the ability to "taste" food. I think you will be able to store these "patterns" that make up the brain and transfer a personality/person into a completely mechanical body (someday), but I think there would be some "loss" in the transfer (nothing spiritual though). We do experence loss like this today. People do need parts of thier body replaced with mechanical components (or even just removed) and they can experienc "Phantom limb" pains and such. Would we experence "Phantom Bodies" if we completely converted to a synthetic body? Cyborgization may alow us to live forever, but it will mean that we will be changed by the process. Weather those changes are acceptable, or even change us so that you are no longer you, is something that can only be answered by time (actually doing it).