Sayonara

Why not? a) That means no good will come from their suffering, where we do in fact have the power to wring some good out of it, and b) You can't translate the attributes of metadata onto the data itself. That makes no sense.

I think the idea that we probably know more than the Nazis did about the things they were researching is a given, but that's not the point of the thread. The point here is whether we should discriminate against certain data sets just because we have ethical problems when considering the metadata.

They don't make halon ones any more, but the replacement (can't remember the name right now) is absolutely fantastic.

You should refer to chemical safety cards before planning any experimental design you are not already intimately familiar with: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/safework/cis/products/icsc/ Be aware that conventional fire precautions such as fire extinguishers might actually make some situations a lot worse depending on the chemicals you are using, so be very aware of which chemicals react in what way if there's a risk of fire.

Yes, it is only data. If you do not conduct, endorse or support the experiments why should you feel guilty about putting the information to good use? "most cloning kills babies" What?

Much like, say, the rest of the primates do?

Why are (were?) we so different?

Tricky one, isn't it?

No other animal completely uses their hands for what we do because they are not adapted to do what we do. Your proposition was that "When humans could use their hands they could use the environment better", as an explanation of why human-like animals would be the only intelligent ones. So if this is true, and hands play such an important role, why are other primates not as intelligent as humans? That's the major obstacle your theory needs to get around.

I imagine that depends on what sort of wormhole it is. Even if it did collapse, it would only need to exist long enough for the electron to pass through it and then the whole idea still works. Although it is speculation.

Defining what life actually is turns out to be realllllly difficult.

Considering the number of mammalian species that have hands, and their heritage, it's unlikely to be the only factor. A question: Since your theory requires hands in order for a mammal species to achieve our level of sophistication, would that mean dolphins have reached an upper limit of intelligence for their species?

It's not like anyone's saying it happened in five minutes when the only two piles of amino acids in the universe happened to bump into each other. Try to imagine the scale. Vast lakes jammed with exotic (for the time) molecular configurations. Abundant heat energy. Millions of years' worth of collisions between quadrillions of different molecular configurations. If you get the scale right, it stops being inplausible and starts being inevitable.

There's no evidence for a higher power to start with, so it's a little pointless us speculating on how such an entity might come about. We don't even know what physical rules - if any - existed before the universe, and if we did it's unlikely they still apply. So pre-universe stuff is probably going to be of no help to your theory.

I think he's talking about wormholes on a sub-atomic scale.

It depends what was in the "goo". It's not like we have any 4 billion year old samples to work from, more's the pity

If all blondes looked good, everybody would have one.

"Carefully insert firing rod A into guidance slot B, twisting theKABLAMMO!!!!" Time to issue another Darwin Award

If there's a higher power floating about, you don't really have "nothing". But assuming we aren't counting the higher power as "something", we're still left with the question of 'where did it come from?' (Hence the whole "let's work with what we've got" approach that deals only with the observable, testable universe around us).

I think the best thing going for it is the catchy name tbh

Who cares? If the things we are studying are defined and controlled by the laws of physics that exist in this universe, then it doesn't matter what was here before it. I want to know about the reasoning for humans being the only logical intelligent form, because it sounds like it could be interesting.

Whuh? Don't be sorry, explain your theory!

The current model shows that the universe has not always existed. However, given its size, it's likely there is human-like life out there somewhere. "The only logical form of inteligent life is the human being" needs to be qualified.

Oh that. Well, it wasn't just you

People have smaller jaws because of selective pressure due to significant changes in our diet and the way we prepare food. What you want is some evidence.