Ringer

But if no body died the sustainability of resources would be nil. So yes, we have to die if we want our progeny to live. Nothing cares if we die other than us, the mice and blackbirds think the same about us. On the other hand there are many bacteria that if they died we would go with them, but if we died they would hardly notice (anthropomorphising I know, but you get my point).

I have to get off for a bit. I'll dig up some papers later on today. [edit] Haven't had a chance to get to any journal articles. At any rate wiki says the critical period of language seems to still largely under debate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period_hypothesis.

Then you are not speaking of complexity, you are speaking purely of intelligence which is not necessarily correlated with neuronal complexity. If you don't see a comparison between a mouse brain and human brain you may be fairly upset to learn most studies of neurodegenerative disorders are done on mice. If it were not for our digestive systems, and diet in general, we would not have the brain we do have. Also, Black birds show large amounts of intelligence and there brains our fairly simplistic in comparison to most mammalian brains. So what you're arguing for is not complexity, but a specific human trait, to show humans are better? That seems pretty anthropocentric.

Is that that age from to then of language exposure? Or do you mean they can learn a language fluently until then? I know that the ability to differentiate unfamiliar phonemes drops off much earlier than that.

http://talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/ is a good place to start. There are lots of sources out there for hominid evolution but origins should be one of the best starting points.

It's been looked at IIRC. You will notice that as long as a baby of any race is in any area of language before the age of about 3 they can speak the language with no accent. They also have the ability to learn multiple languages accentless so long as the exposure time is early enough as well as ongoing for much of their live's. It's really a very interesting subject, I could recommend quite a few books that are easy reads.

Well for one that's a loaded question since you phrased it as a creation. Ignoring that I would say a mouse's brain is more complex due to it having a higher neuron to unit body mass ratio. I could also say that the digestive system of almost any animal is more complex than the brain in many ways; such as housing an entire ecosystem, the incredible specialization in each area, etc. Depending on what you mean by complex I could give quite a few examples. This is coming from a person that is planning to work in neurobiology as well, so don't think I don't have a love for the brain.

There are a few problems with your idea. Yes, there are certain areas of language that are innate. The book by Steven Pinker with the same title as this thread gives a really readable view of this. There are also certain areas of language that are taught, as well as parts of taught language that influence different areas of life. Simplistically one could say that linguistic structures tend to be innate while many language specific areas tend to be learned. Your idea that the senses are not necessary to think may be true. But none of your prior reasoning shows that to be true and it depends on how you define thought. The rest just starts becoming word salad. You may want to rewrite it to be more clear.

I don't know about your background knowledge in this area, but here's a paper that has some really good information; http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/10/10/963.full.pdf+html

1.) When someone is asking about an idea, it is probably best they learn the idea with the most evidence before they can judge the merits for counter ideas. 2.) No idea what this has to do with anything 3.) But an idea that is wrong put forth as right cannot be judged by people unfamiliar with the area 4.) Example? 5.) again, example. 6.) That is for the science community. And if you mean within the forum I must ask for yet another example.

Benchprep is not free, but it has pretty good study material. https://benchprep.com/

Good, I was hoping for this response. This is the reason most of these ideas are not taken seriously. A very small difference is found, note it's not even statistically significant, and is expected to be groundbreaking. When the general response is, 'meh' or, more often, it's said that the results are not significant and mean nothing the person with the idea gets offended. You say that a bigger set-up would give better results, it would also be true that more runs would give more accurate results. Since this seems like a fairly simple set up it shouldn't be hard for the experimenter to run many many trials or set it up with a higher fall. If that is true why has this not been run more than 20 time for this example. Many times the ideas have had 0 trials and the presenter still gets offended. A paradigm change needs paradigm changing evidence. It doesn't need words, insignificant results, etc. It needs evidence and the ability to explain the current evidence better than the accepted model. Your link shows one experiment with insignificant results and is poorly written at that. It's not about being afraid to accept the idea, it's the idea doesn't have what even ESP experiments have shown.

It barely makes it to 1, what makes you think it could make it to 6 if it were bigger?

No, I agree with wholeheartedly with what was said before my reply, I just felt that it might be necessary to elaborate on why you are getting critical responses. Now to elaborate as to why my earlier comment was relevant. You may think that the brain size/density argument may not be valid, but it is. Mainly because you have not defined what type of thinking you are referring to. There is not a single holistic thought process, it is more of a amalgamation of semi-specialized regions acting with and against each other. Since you neither gave a preference towards a type of thinking that uses neutrinos, the argument is valid because all neurons would use them. If all neurons use them more neurons or neuronal density should increase with increased thinking ability. Now if you want to only say only cortical folding uses this ability and gives rise to consciousness you would run into problems explaining why there is no structural difference between cortical folds and, say, neurons of the hypothalamus to interact with these particles. You would also have to explain how neutrinos give rise to any sort of measurable interaction that is not the result of a local graded potential or an action potential. There are more if you would like me to go on, but I think you get the idea.

I think your overall problem is that you haven't tried to really think about your idea. Having novel ideas is a wonderful thing, but ideas need to thought about in every way before really considering the possibility they are true. This type of idea stomping is common practice is scientists heads when they think about things (I assume since I can't read minds) and come up with novel ideas. Many of us have had ridiculous ideas, we just tend to be critical enough about ideas that many are torn apart before our mouths could even get them out. This is what is necessary for any scientific ideas. If it passes that test one would look up the things involved with the idea to make sure they have a decent grasp on what they are using in their ideas, many more are torn apart at this stage. Then comes the sharing of the idea with others. This is can be, depending on how critical of yourself you are, the most aggravating for people not engrossed in this type of thing. Scientists tend to live in a world where every idea is thrown into a grinder, torched, torn apart, etc to see if it can survive. It may seem like they are just being hateful when they tear an idea down, especially because we tend to forget not everyone is used to that sort of thing, but they really are just doing what comes naturally. It may seem like being close minded or condescending but think of it this way, to come up with ways to disprove an idea we have to think of it as true and see if the implications are met or, if there is not enough information to see if the implication are right/wrong, devise a novel way to test the idea. Science isn't a close minded enterprise, it's more of an open minded but throw a lot of stuff out enterprise.

I haven't seen this mentioned but there is nothing fundamentally different in a human's brain than, say, a mouse's brain. Sense a mouse has a larger neuronal density to body mass ratio they should be able to absorb more of the neutrinos and think much better than we do. If it isn't the ratio and only a matter of brain size, than a elephant or whale should be able to out smart us pretty easily.

I understand why you would say that, but there isn't indication I have seen that they have a better plan, or a true plan at all for that matter. I was just making sure. It's hard to tell when a statement like that is a joke by just reading it. Also after a quick google search it seems over 50% of catholics believe in evolution: http://publicreligion.org/research/2011/09/climate-change-evolution-2012/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution#Support_for_evolution_by_religious_bodies

I just thought it was rather funny a man who believes he can say he didn't work for a company because he 'retroactively retired' can, in all seriousness, tell someone they are not entitled to their own reality. I wonder if he believes the president is not entitled to his own reality, but Romney is because he earned his own reality.

Where, exactly, did the logic fail? They purposefully blocked a bill that would stimulate job growth without offering valid alternatives. That is purposefully harming the country, not trying to harm the country. Even if they did have a better idea, why not pass the bill to stimulate job growth and then introduce their bill to stimulate it even more. Would you like to cite evidence that no Catholics believe in evolution, because I have quite a bit of anecdotal evidence suggesting otherwise. Also, I truly hope that quip about evolution is a joke.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-first-debate-mitt-romneys-five-biggest-lies-20121004 http://blog.nj.com/njv_john_atlas/2012/10/who_won_the_debate_romney_or_o.html You really think he should have predicted them obstructing him not on any merits of the proposals, but only on the fact that the proposals were his?

So you count making optimistic predictions and not being able to achieve them and being knowingly deceitful as equal?

Mitt Romney told Obama Now is it just me or is that comedy gold coming from a man with his tendency of holding on to his own reality. Not to mention his Vice President.

No you said you "post subjects only men could possibly be interested in". Since you post mainly in chemistry it would imply women couldn't be interested in chemistry, or perhaps science in general. According to AAUW ~52% of chemistry bachelor degrees were earned by women in 2006. Compare that to the 6% of republicans in science, according to Pew Research Center, and I would say my statement is far and away more accurate than the one you seemed to be making.

I like how in one post it's the anti-religious left and 6 posts later they know believe trees have souls, a religious idea.