foodchain

I have a similar idea though a bit different. I think a lot of the footing life gets put on over anything else physical for the most part boils down to a lot of psychological issues rather then any real representation be it purely in formalism or empirically or a mix of the both. If by simply reality that quantum mechanics governs chemical behavior then to deny its role in life is pointless. If by decoherence pointer states "reproduce" and come to represent the now even if time is but a imaginary descriptor of physical processes executing then many parallels I think can be drawn up. To study microbial life is vastly different then looking at say a human being, you deal with different variables and of course you have the cloudy debate as to what is life, as no absolute concrete definition exists yet. I could speculate that all chemical species are simply just pointers really, or that the electron is, and why you get cosmic censorship or natural selection or any type of selection of shape of the environment is stuff in the form of subsystems interacting to produce the overall environment, such as at the big bang having stars at that point would be selected against, or impossible really until we progress a little further. As I think is accepted though for instance you had to have certain things before other things became reality, the neutron is not fundamental, yet it populates wildly in the universe, nor is a planet, or a galaxy for that matter, simply put suck out all the neutrons which are not fundamental. My big question is I come to question exactly what are the real conservation laws, or is it the reality that we cant push hard enough against the environment to defeat such, maybe the universe as we know it currently is nothing more then a quantum period. The point I like to try to make about life is that its origin, structure, and function has to fall in line with the rest of the universe, such as even being able to understand or process light, or sound, or temperature, or for that matter get drunk. So if QM can model all chemical behavior the cracking of such would lead ultimately to how life came about, because life is a physical process much like nucleosynthesis or why it rains. Physics I think should not come first, as in I do not appreciate that model. It like any field of science probably is buried under many fallacies, heck the higgs boson might not even exist then I am sure all chaos will come about. The point being is its collective human understanding, the evolution of life on a very reduced scale covers the evolution of matter/energy in some form or another interacting, we are not made of fairy dust, its not microbe then human, evolution or organic evolution is an evolution of matter/energy into what life is, this blazing simple point if amplified in study I think is so large it simply gets overlooked by people that easily become scared and or confused, or want to study simple things that are easily modeled and simply not evolve past such.

I really don’t think humanity as at a point for it to become applied, but I would go along with research as long as it stayed that way until serious understanding set in. For what its worth basic understanding of biology would point to why its a bad thing to ruin the environment but people go about such anyways; I really could care less to have genetic engineering applied in such conditions.

Wow, this thread is refreshing. What would happen if all of math and its uses were only done in statistics, what do you think human understanding would look like? I mean could you model gravity with just stats?

On the strawman maybe, maybe not I think the point holds some water though. I think games could play a participatory role in learning something, or even violent behavior. I think a great many things can do this though, I think reality backs me up on that. I also think a lot of it is a matter of opinion, I mean I could say all human cultures are temporary and flawed entities that lead to war and global ruin via issues like global warming, there is no real absolute answer to this question though, or its not as black and white as 1+1=2 really. I mean if you had a person, and all that person was allowed to do was play a violent video game or two, I don’t really think you could say its all the games fault, I mean that situation is for lack of better words unnatrual in the first place. I learned about violence from human history, such as learning about world war 2, or 1, or pick a conflict, not so much from a video game. Some people probably learn it from playing football, I just don’t see how it can be so easily constructed as playing such games means or makes you violent though. On a flip side though maybe the reality that we evolved from territorial species kind of includes the same in our makeup as a specie, I don’t find such an idea so far fetched. Could it still be us just carrying out learned behavior, but how would you answer such a question really? Cut out some genes, isolate some people? The cultural primitive does not exist past a newborn really, and even then how do you perfectly segregate various items really? The nurture vs. nature debate is hardly solved, if not for the fact its probably mutable in some open ended sense itself.

I mostly play online fps games really. I found the concept of manhunt to be a bit over the top in a trendy type of fashion, but really a lot of it is perception on an individual level. Say you play a game where you have to kill humanoid like creatures, or say an alien, when you shot them in the head with your gun why is it any different if the graphical representation was that of a human? I mean I like video games that have a flamethrower, not so much because I like to pour out flame into some packed hallway full of noobs along with some grenades(), just that I like how it looks graphically. So its somewhat case by case I would think? If the idea is that playing violent video games makes you violent, I have to disagree, if its the idea that playing violent video games means you are violent I would also have to disagree, simply because I am not a violent person. Case in point I would actually have to say I am almost a pacifist when it comes to violence or use of force in real life. So I don’t see how you can draw the connection really past just saying its that way really, which is hardly any kind of a truth, or fact, or what not. Lets look at religion, its buried so many people in all the most horrible ways, it like video games is human made, so could I say simply because a person is religious they are violent killers? I mean lots of people drink, not everyone who drinks becomes some deranged violent person, but it does happen, so what baseless blanket stereotype based on some occurrences do you wish to use really? There is no absolute mechanism or single variable correlation to be made there.

I have played and continue to play the most violent video games that exist. I can also say I don’t step on ants, or hurt anything living, or have any confusion at all that I am playing a video game. Do some people have problems with it, sure, but anything that exists there exists some people that have problems with it, so what is the point? I think a more prudent response to video gaming would be the massive waste of resources for mere entertainment, but if we did away with that I am sure a large percent of the world economy would collapse overnight and maybe gas prices would go down. I mean if you are looking for some absolute to this I think neurobiology combined with learning and the environment overall is what you are looking for, and well maybe I made the cut from people that play GTA and then go and run people over in real life.

In context of the origin of life to me one basic aspect is that it holds a molecular basis. This simple physical fact I think gets left out of the equation in regards to larger issues. Really to me what you have then is an organism, for what it is like the rest of the physical universe its physical! This to me then states that something had to allow for this, physically speaking. So in a reductionist sense what operates on a chemical level to describe bonding and other behavior, either call it thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, or quantum mechanics. The most base reality though is life has to exist like all other phenomena through a physical and or molecular basis. This to me presents something of a problem in regards to study of such. If by chance you look at say quantum decoherence, as used for the idea of a quantum computer. One of the goals they have to arrange is a system that will maintain basically a certain cyclic environment. If the computer could only process once and then become totally lost to decoherence it would be of no use at all, so as progress is made in that field producing a subsystem of the environment that can remain stable or many rounds of use. I find this interesting in regards to the origin of life. I mean if by accident or intention a cyclic system was developed that could be stand alone based on environmental conditions such as an energy source what was really made? What if this system was mutable? In regards to life it seems at the most basic level of it you have microbes, which for lack of better words really seem like nothing more then little energy processing units, they do not have any intelligence at all, they act on reacting certain elements or compounds for that matter, which to get reductionist again I think would relate to purely quantum phenomena. Also from that point on, you have an evolution of such that produces for lack of better words trophic systems of energy production in metastable mutable states. I think from intuition alone this draws with parallel to say quantum phenomena leading to an evolution of any classical system and or laws, all of course pure conjecture so don’t get to uptight. I mean for instance to totally get flipped on the topic what if what we view as heat death really is nothing more then progression into a purely alien environment in which none of the current states of energy/matter are fit to exist in? The evolution of life surely seems to point to many many questions more so on a molecular to subatomic realm that I feel also coincide with phenomena at a cosmic level such as the base reality of what nucleosynthesis is or how you obtain elements in the first place. So I think the big test I would like to run is simply that. What subsystem of the environment could you model to obtain mutable metastable behavior of matter/energy? Such as making a little nano device that basically did this along with replication. Could such truly provide insight to how life might have naturally occurred within context of our environment? The thing to me is that for the time now and into the past the earth has not decoherered into a dead frozen rock, in fact it’s a very thermodynamically cyclic system. So on a scale small enough to reach being nano again because you have that in bacteria could simply pointer states or a constant decoherence process attempting to reach classical pointer states on a level of chemical behavior within this cyclic system coincide with producing primordial life, even if it were pre-biotic chemistry alone? Does this really conflict with the definition of life being so narrow?

Why the anthropic principle and the fine tuning argument have become little more then a reality that slowly a huge gathering of religious types is occurring in physics. Both are little more then logical fallacies based on contemporary human thought that can be hotly debated. ON the basis or the face that they can be debated so easily should be the pointer to them being less then scientific but I want to get a little more in depth then that. It seems that many in academia and above would like to fit various pieces of scientific reality to fit some mold, such as the generation of the entire intelligent falling scheme. I would like to point out that many offspring first of all don’t even get to be born due to complications like mutation, to the fact that much of life exists in predator prey type scenarios to the simple reality that a majority of life or the various forms it has come in is simply extinct to why extinction even exists to the reality that our star or the sun will eventually go nova and destroy the earth. So in consequence of this what is the fine tuning argument? To make room to become a drug addict, die of cancer, get blasted with radiation, die in a act of volcanism? At what point can you detract noise to find some argument of unyielding truth about such a statement? I mean do we say the entire universe for whatever it ultimately is was fine tuned to allow us to kill ourselves via war and global warming? This is just the point I am trying to make though, its to easy to debate such a statement. Also to say the universe had to be a certain way for life to exist is just BS. Does the universe have to exist in a certain way for the sun to go nova and destroy the planet, or for an infant to die in the womb? The argument has to imply to everything, so you have fine tuning for an asteroid belt to exist, to having iron ore deposits in meteorites to incredibly devastating earthquakes. I think it becomes evident that the argument is pure manure really. I think you have to deal with two points. One is that we don’t know everything, which implies to life or any form it can take or have such as a chemistry. Which going from evolution we can see that a broad variance can exist as I am not a microbe or a zebra. The other easy to see point is that without knowing anything about anything you can take anything and say anything had to be fine tuned for it to exist, period. The universe had to be fine tuned for the toilet to clog, and you should remember this and stop being so selfish and let the toilets clog as the universe in an anthropic principle was fine tuned to do so, because I said so. Lastly I think this combined with string theory is slowly pointing out the dangerous reality of the use or rather misuse of math for any ill suited purpose some delusional nutcase can derive. I personally find all of it terribly freighting and if had some inline of control would move to bar physics from being a natural science on such grounds as creating such preposterous ideas not to mention even trying to pass them off as science in the first place.

Has there been any work modeling cosmic inflation using quantum decoherence? I have been all over the net for this stuff if it exists. Thanks for the time:D

I remember that stuff. Some machine recorded my heartbeat on a running machine. I think it was between 172-174 beats per minute. It was a two mile run on a machine though, but I did do it in under ten minutes so the pace must have been good.

I think its just that the reality of environmental impact is not understood. You don’t look at it from the perspective it needs to be, its individual on up. So you would have to generate enough nuclear energy to satisfy the energy needs of a nation the size of America, which grows. This of course has its by products. Here is another issue. Maintenance of the structures, more so when you might have competition on a market making decisions of how much to spend on such. Also for whatever technologies we have now, they don’t exist in the physical reality of what is projected by some, we cant really know for sure how that is going to work out until we get there, nuclear facilities as common as whatever other energy infrastructure is now. Also where do you place them, does earthquake prone California need to be covered with such facilities? Once you get blasted by radiation there is no going back. IN case some readers might not know radiation poisoning, or an aspect of it is simply this. Little rays pass through your tissue, while doing this they cause damage. One aspect of this is that your DNA for lack of better words gets its bonds or structure broken, it happens to repair but in many cases severely distorted, so it turns you into a giant tumor. There is no way to fix this medically after the fact save for removing such tissue at best really, I think everyone exposed to unsafe levels of such die from such in time, usually from some form of cancer depending on conditions of the exposure. Nuclear energy may be a safe bet if done absolutely right constantly, but can people really do that at the scale it will be required? All it takes is one accident to cause a tremendous amount of damage that can persist of long periods of time. Overall its surely something not to jump the gun on even in light of the gloom and doom that is fossil fuel use. If I was going to invest in future energy production I would be looking at microbes, solar and hybrid car/mass transit technology.

I surf youtube constantly it seems like and well here is to really neat videos I found with little critters in them.

Yes, firecrackers.

How do you quantify the impact microbial interaction has as a selective pressure or stabilizer for any giving species?

Could you design an explosive that spreads materials around the blast that aid to defeat it for a controlled radius? Such as materials that would consume blast energy in a certain period of time that act along with the explosive on explosion? I was just thinking it would be neat for instance if you could make a material like that you could have say firecrackers that have a square shaped explosion or what not, to more advanced shapes possibly? Maybe the explosive material itself could be modeled to reach certain phases like being a plasma possibly? As I don’t know if you could reach different results with various combinations of materials and engineering of the device itself. Purely theoretical question btw. I am sure also this thread will be flagged by homeland defense.

I agree with you to an extent. Regardless of the wording, such as physical in your usage you are still within the bounds of your earlier position by so much more. Biology is the physical reality of life in short, such as the chemistry of it for another example. Yet as you would word it in my opinion you subject this physical reality as to be within the concept that perception is flawed, so would that make your view of what physical understanding can do just part of that flawed understanding of perception? I agree with the reality that objective understanding can exist. I think this is common sense giving frostbite as just one of numerous examples. However as it stands no physical explanation can as of yet truly describe what everything is and how it works, a simple example being psychology, or understanding the history of the universe. So to go along with flawed perception obviously such is occurring, in the form of mistakes, or learning, etc... Basically I think your stance goes like this. perception=flawed perception=physical physical=flawed I think that works.

Yuck city, that’s classical physics really. Quantum Darwinism is a neat way to look at it I would suggest. Basically in such isolation or isolated systems do not exist really, not in time at least. The rate of interaction among quantum systems or the smallest aspect of reality is constant and copious. In which you have for lack of better words I would guess constant interference, coherence, and decoherence going on really in some form or another. Also I would suggest from the reality that probability exists in the real world as a facet of physical reality, see role of the dice, that such by itself physically provides more of enough for a basis to allow such to exist by physics. Its just most people do not think of QM in regards to physics for such I think and I do not know why. This I think is a product of the frozen and deterministic mindset brought on by classical physics, such also for the most part generated determinism. As far as I know the reality of QM, which empirically is totally sound so far in regards to physical tests basically denies that reality is either only or purely classical nor is it purely deterministic in some linear sense. I mean for instance you happen to be of matter and energy just like everything else physically at a highly reduced notion of what is physical. This means just like a bouncing ball you happen to be governed by such "laws" even if they are currently temporary and flawed. How do you think a mind could work? How does a c-h bond understand what a Twinkie is? These questions and related happen to blow peoples minds as they do mine but really I think most of it boils down to QM even if our current understanding of such does not match the exact reality of it even if it has one. More and more I am beginning to think its just a constant evolution of stuff, in which produces anything, be it laws of physics, to time, to microbes to the current form of the universe. I have no real way to test this but none the less to answer your original position physics does not outlaw in any way organic evolution.

It does depend on the field you go into in biology. Most the undergraduate programs I look at usually have a year of calculus to take, or heavy statistics with some calculus. Not like a typical physics degree in regards to math for sure, and still a bit behind how much math that I find typically involved in a chemistry degree but its not like you don’t have to know math to obtain an undergraduate biology degree. I personally do not look forward to any of the calculus also to be honest;)

One of the members here, I think glider knows a lot about this stuff. Personally I think your best bet is to simply study the anatomy of the brain, such as each part because it has parts. For instance most of what is human about us is primarily located in the very foremost part of the frontal neocortex if I have the words right. Damage to this can impair self control I think. Also for instance language has a "center" in the brain, its not some perfect exact position person to person but very similar to it, plus damage can destroy this. I would also suggest a decent place to start is reading about axons. You might also want to look up the role of calcium in the brain. I just think those two alone would give you an idea of the scope involved.

I did not say that or elude to it in my post. I said I doubt life’s beginnings were instant.

I am not to familiar with them either, that’s why I asked the question. I want to study such for context of life in regards to its origin. For instance the chemical composition of life seems to represent it physically, I would imagine this it would imply in its origin like it does with the earth for instance with an iron core and hydrogen laden oceans. Energy interacting with matter leads to various formations of such, like an isomer for instance. So it would be in this basis that the formation of life on earth possibly took. So if you had say a region or regions of the earth that possibly had the chemical composition required, or that over time such meet during the right conditions over all for a period of time it could lead to precursors for whatever is required for life on earth to form. I think time becomes important because I am looking for a way to find some medium of energy/matter interaction that could begin to react the various elements that could be possibly involved to an original protocell for example. My big guess is using something more basic such as the chemistry involved was just an action on processing energy, much like why we have volcanoes or get tornados. See my question is I doubt it was instantaneous in what lead to life, my big idea is that processing energy lead to a type of protocell or something really that on contact with different levels of energy in an environment could morph or retained a somewhat amorphous state. I am thinking this is mutation, I am also thinking that only QM could really work with that in context of the environment as a selective pressure, or pressures on the molecular nature of life. More so at that scale. So basically my idea is to model a "chemical" ecology of sorts in which you reach a mutating cell that basically mutates into a fit or selected form to process energy, not at first for survival in terms common to the life sciences but something more akin into thermodynamics really. I think convergent evolution is a powerful descriptor for selection. Basically My question then becomes if you can use unitary operators to work with this as convergent evolution has a molecular basis. I don’t know if I could use plasmid behavior for this. I also think if you could model a cell at such a level of precision, such as up to the uncertainty principal that you would not only know so much more but it would offer so many more benefits, ranging from medicine to energy production to environmental remediation. Its actually a rather large list, the stuff related to microbes that is.

If I get it you mean that dimensions are just abstractions to be used in mathematical frameworks to describe the natural world?

Energy?

I am sorry about my wording. I don’t really know what I am talking about nearly enough to work with it any better then I currently do. Basically I think unitary operators might be useful in determining the various actions proteins might take within a cell. Simply put I imagine chemical movement in a cell is nearly insane to trace using modern chemistry. I know this would imply use of QM via things like density theory(?) but I don’t know the exact amount of applications giving unitary operators. For instance, though out of my league a bioinformatics program using a Darwinian algorithm plugged into QM would probably be funny to watch. These things are more or less independent interest currently as I don’t study them in school. Personally I find the reliance on math somewhat a frightening concept giving its human but what can you do? Test it? Could you model extinction as being less then 1?

Could you use unitary operators to study for possible convergent processes from the genome into the proteome? Such as at the gene level you will have the information for say eye color existing, this of course operates within a dynamic system.