SkepticLance

To Edtharan Your idea of how agriculture arose is basically the same as my suggestion that it was evolution, not a revolutionary change. You simply chose an example that moved from eating wild grains to leaving the grains to sprout. Sure, that might be exactly how it happened, or else something similar. On dogs. I had an interesting experience as a teenager which showed how dogs 'think'. I had a pet Scottish Collie dog. My father had a 22 rifle he used to kill hens for a sunday roast. The dog saw my father kill hens with it. One day, I decided to go for a walk to hunt rabbits (we lived on a farm), and thought it would be nice to have the dog with me. I called him, and he came running as always, tongue hanging out and tail wagging - took one look at me holding the rifle and ran the opposite direction, yelping and tail between legs. Obviously the dog knew what a rifle was for, and was able to create his own horror abstract, purely at the sight of me holding it.

Dichotomy said "I realise Lucaspa doesn’t think N.S. is actually smart, intelligent, etc. He is just using “smart” in the same way I used “life doesn't think in terms of”, that is, for quick delivery of information." Actually, I fully realise that. Lucaspa has a good knowledge of evolutionary theory. However, I think he ascribes too much power to natural selection. It is not superior to human ingenuity, and the only reason Lucaspa can (almost) get away with that suggestion is that humans ingenuity, backed by good science, is so recent. We have not had time to prove the superiority of an intelligent mind over the mindless actions of natural selection. The main evidence I have to offer for the inferior nature of natural selection is : 1. The multitudinous mistakes of natural selection. Some mentioned in my earlier post. 2. The very long time it takes to get results. Social evolution, driven by human ingenuity, gallops by comparison, giving humans a tremendous advantage in terms of adapting to changing circumstances.

Hello Reaper Nice to have a pleasant chat with you. Sure, I agree. Evolution has no set goal, and the fact that humans resulted from all those billions of years of natural selection was, undoubtedly, a very low probability event. Minor environmental changes along the way might have led to enormously different results.

To dichotomy When lucaspa was making a statement about us being dumber than natural selection, you have to realise that was a religious statement - an act of faith. It does not take much thought to realise how dumb natural selection is. Even humans are smarter! What kind of process ends up giving us an appendix? Or gives women monthy menstrual cramps and PMT? Or a vertebral column so badly designed that 80% of us get serious back trouble some stage in our lives? The process of evolution by natural selection is so stupid that it took 3 to 4 billion years to come up with those seriously impaired beings known as Homo sapiens!!!

To swansont Do you not believe that a cause that has to use statistics to assign a probability to individual events can still be considered a known cause?

Lucapsa is clearly a fan for natural selection. However, we should always remember that natural selection is the most unintelligent, random and downright inefficient form of progress you can get. Under natural selection we get an enormous number of harmful variations which have to be selected out, leading to tremendous suffering on the part of individuals. Natural selection has the advantage that it goes in all directions that mutation can physically deliver - meaning that adaptation to a changing environment can occur in any direction. However, that is at the cost of the suffering and premature death of most of the 'unfortunate experiments'. In addition, it takes an enormous amount of time to achieve changes. GM on the other hand has the potential to achieve advantageous changes within one generation, and to avoid all the harm that a more random approach generates. I refuse to believe that human intelligence cannot achieve results that are better than a shotgun natural selection approach. Human intelligence applied to the problem will give optimal results. We are not there yet. It will be a few more decades before the human species can, with caution, fear and trembling, begin to adjust the genomes of our offspring - with confidence that the result will be to the benefit of the new born. That is why I suggested 100 years before the widespread appearance of the new beautiful people.

Mihael Please do not apologise. I think it is great that someone who uses English as a second language, with a little difficulty, should persist with this forum. It is a tribute to your interest in the subject. Please continue.

To lucaspa We also have a bat in New Zealand that, before people arrived, was well on the way to evolving into the niche occupied by mice. It was losing its power of flight, and spending its time like a mouse scuttling around the forest floor going through leaf litter eating insects. Alas, the change in environment, brought about by humans, has made those adaptations maladaptive in the new environment, and that bat is well on the road to extinction.

To lucaspa Re your earlier description of photons hitting a mirror and 5% getting through. Imagine a wall with a bunch of 30 cm holes in it. We take a thrower and blindfold him. Then hand him a bunch of tennis balls, which he throws 'blindly' at the wall. 95% bounce off and 5% pass through. Would you say we cannot understand why only 5% pass through? Your comment about data. We MUST have data before forming a hypothesis. Sometimes the data is not good data, and the subsequent hypothesis is not a good hypothesis. However, there is always data. A good scientist will gather good data. The subsequent hypothesis has a better chance of being a good hypothesis. Sure, there is a major data gathering exercise after that as well. In particular, we see the process of making predictions based on the hypothesis and testing those predictions, but data must pre-exist the hypothesis, or else it all becomes some kind of sick joke. Sometimes a scientist will spend his/her entire professional life just gathering data, without forming any hypotheses of significance. Others may use that data to make paradigm shattering hypotheses. In science, data is king. Data gathered before, and after hypotheses are formed. Data to confirm hypotehses, and data to destroy them. Data to permit futher hypotheses. There is a word for hypotheses that are formed without pre-existing data. "Fiction."

I was away on business for 36 hours, and there have been a heap of replies since my last post. I may miss a few points, so beg for patience. First to Rev., who believes that GM on humans will give the wealthy an advantage. Of course it will. So what is new? When the first motor car was made, only the wealthy could buy. When the first commercial air travel became available, only the wealthy could fly. The first TV. The first sound and music players. The first personal computers. The first car phones. Even the first music concerts. Everything is expensive at first, and only the wealthy can access them. But if we let that stop us, progress would stop. I am not wealthy, and I have a car, a big flat screen colour TV, a lovely home, a good computer etc etc. All available at first only to the wealthy. The same applies to GM on humans for beauty and for other advantages such as forms of intelligence, physical health, athleticism etc. All these things will be available only to the wealthy at first. That is the way of the world, and a stage we pass through before the benefits become available to everyone. lucaspa said : "falsify the hypothesis: to show it to be wrong. For SkepticLance and Halogirl (sorry to single you out, but you have been the most vocal cheerleaders), this meant that they should have been critically looking for cases and reasons why and how GM could have negative consequences. Instead, all they have been looking at (with the notable exception of Halogirl on GM the sex of the person) is positive effects. " This pholosophy applies to hypothesis formation and their progress into scientific theories. I doubt it applies to debate. And this is a debate. It is pretty much the norm in debate for two sides to argue opposites, and that is what we are doing, which is a valid approach. I cannot speak for hologirl, but my reading also includes a heap of anti-GM stuff, so I am very familiar with those arguments. I just do not choose to use them in this debate. lucaspa on bananas "we are still making the same mistake because, even after that clonal banana was wiped out in the 1930s, we are still dependent on another clonal banana." We don't have a choice. While there are thousands of varieties of seeded bananas, the mutation that causes them to be seedless, and thus edible, is very rare. There was an earlier variety, called the Gros Michel variety, which was sweeter and nicer than the current one. Panama Disease struck and wiped it out. Thus the vulnerability of a single genotype. Back then, humans had no techniques available and that variety was lost to extinction. Today, we are more fortunate, and we have GM. The Uganda trials of the Cavendish banana that is modified to resist black Sigatoka disease are under way. Longer term, we have three choices for bananas. Either a GM disease resistant variety, or bananas drenched in fungicide, or no bananas as all! For Uganda, where bananas are the most important staple food, and the people are too poor to afford fungicides, that is not an acceptable choice.

Hiya Rev Sorry to see you took my comment as a negative. I was actually trying to tell everyone here what great people they are! I don't mind people disagreeing with me. What I get a bit peeved about is when those disagreements are based on emotion, and that is what I found with the 'environmentalist' forum. The refreshing thing about this forum is that when people disagree with me, they normally have good reasons that are not based on emotion to back them up. Doesn't necessary persuade me, but its nice to see the reasons.

Interesting statement about health and beauty, because they ARE linked. The same characteristics we see as beauty are indicators of good health and fertility. If we use GM to make people more beautiful, will it also make them healthier? Probably a pointless question, since by the time we make people beautiful we will also be using GM to make them healthy as well. Just as an aside. I got into an almost identical discussion on a greenie forum. The response was an almost 100% negative and emotional reaction. No, no, no!!! You cannot use GM to change people. Nice to see that respondents on this forum are less emotional and more thoughtful on this topic.

To the Capn I agree with you. That is a big reason why I think it will take 100 years before the 'beautiful people' become widespread. We have to make damn sure we can get it 100% right 100% of the time before we get into it big time.

willawoga It is not impossible, or even terribly difficult - just not practical at this time. The amount of rotation required is easily calculated using standard equations. The problems are the practical difficulties that come with living and working in a spinning world. For example : how can you get a good look at Planet Earth if it is (apparently) rotating around you rapidly? As I said earlier, all that is needed for simulated gravity is a long tether, and a counter weight. Each rotates around each other. However, it would make it almost impossible to work effectively on the space station.

To Mr Skeptic I completed my first degree 35 years ago. That should give you an inkling of my age. I think you are very optimistic about GM on humans. I doubt even simple manipulations will be done for decades, and the complex ones leading to a new population of 'beautiful people' will not happen for the best part of 100 years. I remember when Neil Armstrong stood on the moon. All us young optimists said : 'in another ten years - Mars!' Sadly sometimes things take time.

Re science being wrong. Occasionally the scientific consensus is proven to be wrong. My two favourite examples are : 1. In medicine - the explanation for ulcers - once believed to be purely acid damage to the lining of the gut, and now known to be bacterial attack. 2. In geology - continental drift was treated with disdain when first mooted - now known to be correct. The number of times individual scientists were wrong is legion, but that is far from saying 'science is wrong'. However, you could argue that if the consensus is wrong, then 'science is wrong.' This approach ends up in a semantics argument.

To elas I am puzzled. Could you please explain why you think what I said is 'on dangerous ground?'

To elas I am puzzled. Could you please explain why you think what I said is 'on dangerous ground?'

To vexer Sadly, it is not as simple as that. Lots of occasions exist where two populations can interbreed, but are nevertheless considered different species. The definition of species is not really very clear cut. This is especially true with certain microorganisms. Bacteria freely exchange genes, which is a kind of interbreeding, among widely differing species. Lots of flowering plants can hybridise, but do not do so in nature, because of geographic or some other isolation, such as flowering times. They are considered to be separate species. Even animals often have the ability to interbreed, but are nevertheless considered separate species. Cichlid fishes from the Lake Victoria region of Africa are known to evolve rapidly (100 years) into reproductively isolated groups that are visually distinctly different from each other. Many biologists consider those populations as separate species, in spite of strong genetic similarity. There are butterflies which are genetically almost identical, but have different markings. Because of these visual differences, they do not interbreed in spite of being geneticaly able to. These groups are considered separate species.

No-one is suggesting that GE of beauty in humans can be done soon. There are heaps of traits that will have to be used. Bilateral symmetry is a good one. However, we know that these traits ARE passed on genetically (ever looked at the female offspring of Hollywood's sex goddesses?). GE will be expensive and complex to begin with, but all such technologies become cheaper and easier with time. Over the next 100 years, we will see robotics, including nano scale robotics becoming common and cheap. If we cannot apply those technologies to making human GE easy, then my faith in human ingenuity is misplaced! My guess is that, within 200 years, pretty much all humans will be genetically modified in ways that we currently regard as superior - better looking, better athletes, healthier, longer lived, better intelligence etc. Nor do I see anything wrong with this. Why not? We are just giving everyone the genetic opportunities that are currently restricted to a favoured few. If we are to create a barrier beyond which we must not cross, perhaps we could suggest the introduction of animal genes into humans??? On the other hand, I can think of a fair number of alien genes that would be of great benefit. For example : a round trip to Mars would probably kill the astronauts by radiation poisoning. However, there are genes for DNA repair that would solve that problem. Is there anything wrong with making people less vulnerable? At the end of the day, it is not our problem. All these, and more, will be decided by those who will not be born for decades yet.

Re GE for beauty. I think there are short term and long term outcomes here. In the short term, using GE to make offspring beautiful will create inequality. In the long term it should achieve the opposite - increasing equality. In the short term, GE will be expensive, and available only to the wealthier people. However, GE is permanent and passes down the generations, which means the benefits will be spread more widely, the greater the number of generations that pass. Of course, the long term trend for all novel technology is that it gets cheaper with time. Thus, the benefits of GE for beauty will become more widely available as time passes, as it gets less expensive. Over enough generations, most sources of ugliness will be simply eliminated from society, and we will have wonderful equality - everyone will be beautiful!

To halogirl Why should we be paranoid about using GE to control physical appearance? God knows how many billions of dollars are spent today on mostly futile efforts to improve physical appearance. Physical appearance is clearly of paramount importance to billions of humans. What harm would it do for a parent to arrange for their offspring to be born bilaterally symmetrical, and with a physiology that kept them slim? Or some other harmless feature which makes them look nicer?

So far, temperature rise, measured as global average, is only 0.8 Celsius. We can live with that, and quite a bit more. Sea level rise has been a fraction of a metre, and we can live with that, also, plus quite a bit more. The time for drastic and reckless action is still way over the horizon. We need to address the cause, as swansont said. The real problem is that governments are still fooling around, when there are real things they can do now. As I have said before, the world needs about 1000 extra nuclear power plants, since electricity is going to supplant fossil fuels as a resource in lots of areas. The important thing is to get under way the things that we can do, and develop new alternatives where such are not yet available. Bio-fuels are a case in point. Mostly biofuels consist of ethanol from corn, or biodiesel from such things as palm oil. Both have been utter disasters so far, and both should be curtailed. If the world is to use biofuels on a large scale, we need new technologies, such as whole plant conversion to ethanol - not just the edible part.

To iNow I salute you as one who has reached his 12th dan in scotch drinking. Myself, I am still working towards my brown belt, and have to resort to dilution to make the infinitely subtle and delectable flavours suitable for the untrained taste buds.

To swansont and farsight I see now that we are arguing semantics. You use a different definition of teleportation to the one I use. You assume that teleportation involves sending the actual object. That is not so. However, the end result is the exact equivalent of sending the object. If a molecule is teleported (not yet achieved, but it will be), then the end result is a molecule in a new location that is absolutely identical in every way to the original. This is exactly the same as if we had teleported the molecule, which makes your distinction somewhat meaningless.