lucaspa

Hypercube, there are several problems here: 1. Not EVERY pair of properties is complementary. That is your biggest problem. You are assuming that it is impossible to know both of every arbitrary pair of properties. As far as I know, photons don't have "momentum". That is electrons. 2. The most often used complementary properties are POSITION and momentum for electrons in an orbit around a nucleus. It is under those particular conditions that you cannot know both the position and momentum of the electron exactly. http://www.ecse.rpi.edu/~schubert/Course-ECSE-6968%20Quantum%20mechanics/Ch02%20Postulates%20of%20QM.pdf I really suggest you read this article, and other articles on QM on the web, all the way thru.

I agree. I have noticed that journalism is a problem. For most of the political issues that journalist cover, there are 2 "legimate" sides to an issue. That is, it is possible for one person to think lower taxes will stimulate the economy and for another to think that keeping taxes where they are and paying down the national debt will do the same thing. However, in science there often simply is only one legitimate side. The other side has been conclusively falsified by the data. But journalists, out of their training for "fairness", make the mistake of portraying two views as tho they are equally valid. Democrats are not completely innocent of misusing science, but as the book documents, conservative Republicans and corporations have taken this to new highs never before used. I would suggest you get a new example. This one really doesn't involve science. It's different interpretations of the Establishment Clause. Examples today include the argument over global warming, smoking (right now second-hand smoke), possible danger of genetically altered food plants, and environmental conservation. We've seen examples of attempts to misuse sciene for one side of all of these. The reason is simple: science is the most reliable form of knowledge we have. In an argument, if you have some scientific evidence on your side, you win. Local school board wants to cut the music program? If you can bring scientific studies showing that school music programs enhance the general academic performance, then you have a powerful weapon in that budget battle. So it becomes very tempting to either undermine the opponent's science or invent some of your own. Scientists, engineers and journalists need to be ABOVE this. ... And even worse -- you also have to work out the correct moral/ethical implications without the moral compass of ideology. The problem here is that science is NOT ethics. Science tells us how the physical universe behaves. Ethics tells us how humans ought to behave. If you have scientists being the ethical goalkeepers, I think you end up with more problems. Far better to let scientists report the results and then let everyone discuss the ethics of possible uses for the results. I disagree. What we should be teaching journalists is the nature of science and that not all theories are epistemically equal. "Fairness" doesn't apply to the physical universe. The universe is what it IS, no matter what we consider to be "fair". We should teach science and engineering students to keep their personal feelings separate from their science. And we should probably be teaching them not to allow themselves to compromise the science for their personal beliefs and/or financial gain. That's not only what we are talking about. This isn't about the ability of Americans to do science. It is about people misusing science and putting out bad science to back a particular economic or other interest. The tobacco industry got very good at denigrating studies showing the harmful effects of smoking. They funded "scientific studies" that put out "results" that looked like smoking was not harmful. Look at the work done by those that oppose global warming. Again, much of this is funded by industry -- particularly the oil and gas companies -- that see their economic interests threatened if the Kyoto Protocols are put in place. I view the controversy over ES cell research as a genuine and healthy discussion of the ethics. However, I do see misuse of the data as adult stem cell research is given credit for results it hasn't produced. Evolution does threaten the god of Fundamentalism: a literal Bible. Of course, I think that's just too damn bad, from both a scientific and Christian perspective. But since the perceived threat is real, I can sympathize with the rank-and-file creationists who feel their ultimate meaning is threatened. Of course, I have NO sympathy for the professional creationists who distort the science. SkepticLance started a thread on a book that questioned whether habitat loss causes extinctions. I think that book is an example of what the OP talked about. Dressed up as "science", it actually serves the interests of developers who want to turn forests and other habitats into suburbs and malls. This "science" tells us there won't be any adverse consequences from that.

Right now there is no better term and you are going to have to use "theories". "Law" was used historically by scientists precisely because they thought they had found "nature's true self". At the beginning of the 20th century it was found that "laws" were really well-supported theories and, as you said, constructed from data. When new data was found that didn't fit the "law" (such as velocities close to the speed of light), well, then, the "law" had to change. So now the term "law" isn't used anymore -- at least in physics and the other disciplines are catching up. We have the THEORY of Relativity and the THEORY of Quantum Mechanics. Both are as well confirmed as Newton's LAWS of motion, but we don't call them "laws" anymore. I'm glad you confessed that science is not your field. Therefore you won't be upset when I say that this is NOT the way to do science. The best description of how science operates is here: "...what we learned in school about the scientific method can be reduced to two basic principles. "1. All our theory, ideas, preconceptions, instincts, and prejudices about how things logically ought to be, how they in all fairness ought to be, or how we would prefer them to be, must be tested against external reality --what they *really* are. How do we determine what they really are? Through direct experience of the universe itself. 2. The testing, the experience, has to be public, repeatable -- in the public domain. If the results are derived only once, if the experience is that of only one person and isn't available to others who attempt the same test or observation under approximately the same conditions, science must reject the findings as invalid -- not necessarily false, but uselss. One-time, private experience is not acceptable." Kitty Ferguson, The Fire in the Equations, pg. 38. As Swansont pointed out, no matter how "true" Galilean Relativity looks, it MUST be tested. If it doesn't correspond to what we observe, it is wrong. "Galilean relativity principles are tested; they are not accepted solely because they make sense. And things that make sense are sometimes wrong, which was my point earlier; making sense cannot be equated with valid science. " Again, several problems with your knowledge of science. Not all your fault, this misrepresentation of Occam's Razor is very common. The idea that the simplest answer is the correct one is actually the position Ockham argued against. This idea comes more from Newton. Ockham said "don't use any more entities than necessary to describe an observation" Ockham's example (from his own time) was: 1. An object moves because of an impetus. 2. An object moves. Ockham argued that motion is change of position with time. The phrase "because of an impetus" was unnecessary and should be dropped. In biology, we have found that simplicity is absolutely NOT "the universe's true nature." In fact, because of natural selection, organisms are unnecessarily complicated. No. In fact Swansont gave the answer in more detail. I hope you can understand and accept it. All matter/energy and spacetime. That's pretty standard. Recently some scientists have been advocating larger structures such as Multiverse and Bubble Universe. If so, then instead of saying "universe" they will say "our universe", which is all the matter/energy and spacetime that we observe. Can you always measure your movement in relation to the speed of light?

Then why haven't you picked up the basic concept that casualties are acceptable in accomplishing the mission? You never claimed that the concept is wrong. That's what you are doing. You focus on ONE sentence I posted and dismiss all the other points I made. I have reasons for my doubt and never said definitively that you were NOT in the military. As it turns out, you are not in the military NOW and haven't been for 2 years -- you've been a grad student. You stated "I will do my job to the best of my abilities." That certainly implies that you are STILL in the military and serving in Iraq. But you are not. Ad hominem. As a grad student I would have expected you to learn that this is an invalid form of argument. That still does not negate that Kuwait WAS an independent nation. That's where the "miscalculation" comes in that I spoke about. All wars involve some miscalculation on someone's part. Hussein's seems to be that no one would really do anything about his occupation of Kuwait. Not in the West. However, in the war against Russia, peace was signed in 1917 because Germany did offer to withdraw. Excuse me, but Iraqi troops DID invade Kuwait. That is not in doubt. So exactly when did the invasion take place? I don't see the relevance of this. If Bush threatened action BEFORE Iraq invaded, then that was clear signal to Hussein that invasion would be opposed! Which would supposedly have deterred him. If he invaded after this, is it any less aggression on his part? 1. By the start of the air war there were certainly LOTS of Iraqi troops dug in in Kuwait. Exactly when do your sources think they got there? They didn't come in AFTER the air campaign started, did they? So the sources are obviously wrong by testing against the data. 2. The reports dispute whether Hussein intended to continue into Saudi Arabia. Irrelevant. The invasion of Kuwait, IMO, was enough justification to use force to oust him. In military terms (subject to Armygas' corrections), the big thing is capability and not intention. Hussein had the capability to continue by invading Saudi Arabia. In fact, he did so when the Iraqis launched the attack on that coastal town (can't remember the name off the top of my head). Irrelevant. The provocation was the invasion of Kuwait. So Hussein decided to defend his conquests. Which means he never had any intention of withdrawing, does it? Sorry, but your arguments are internally inconsistent. First you say Hussein was willing to withdraw but now you tell us he built up forces in Kuwait so as to hold it! Can't have it both ways, Bombus.

Thank you. However, in the thread "So Much for John Edward's Take on Terrorism" you made a point of telling me you've just been in Iraq as a soldier! If you've spent the last 2 years as a graduate student and in classes, how is that possible?

I said "by your index". Meaning the EQ. YOu can't trot out EQ and use it as evidence Australopithecus used tools and then drop it when the EQ goes against you. So, I provide quotes on the strength of Australopithecus and you give an undefined SciAm article. In terms of upright stance, A. afarensis was intermediate between apes and sapiens. But the rest doesn't seem to be true. Find the data. So let's see what you picked for a source: The first one you listed is doi.wiley.com/10.1002/0471663573.ch1 This goes to the Wiley Interscience site where you need a subscription to access the paper there. So there are no EQ values there. Are you telling us you have a subscription? The other source -- http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-16355.html -- is a post from a forum on physics. It talks about an unsubstantiated e-mail with a professor. Couldn't you have looked at an .edu site? It appears that you don't check the reliability of the sources you use. The page doesn't have any data on extinct hominid EQ. So where did you get those? And you apparently can't even copy the numbers correctly. From the page: "Man 7.44 Dolphin 5.31 Chimpanzee 2.49 Rhesus Monkey 2.09 Elephant 1.87 Whale 1.76 Dog 1.17 Cat 1.00 " Your list: "1. Homo sapiens 8.5 2. Tursiops truncatus (bottlenose dolphin) 6 3. Australopithecus afarensis 4.2 4. Chimpanzee 2.4 5. Dog 1" None of the 2 species that are common to the lists have the same EQ. So I'll ask again: what was your source? My source, if you had bothered to look, gave values from 2 different tests and at least cited the equations and source for those. I picked the list that seemed to correlate best with yours. And there goes the attempt to use EQ as an argument that Australopithecus used tools!

Thank you, Bombus, for posting the smoking gun that showed just how dumb Hussein's logic was! Actually, in period of mobilization prior to the start of troop movements in August 1914, the Germans did indeed discuss refraining from invading Belgium. They made several offers to both Britain and France to avoid war with them. See Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August. There were huge arguments within the German government about whether they should go to war against France at all. And whether an invasion of Belgium would bring in Britain and how to avoid that. In the end, they misunderstood Britain's committment to Belgium and decided that Britain would not fight for what the Germans thought was just a "point of honor" that didn't seem to be vital to Britain's interests. And I agree with that rejection. Hussein's plan to tie withdrawal from Kuwait to other issues meant he wanted profit out of invading Kuwait. As I will note below to Paralith, that could not be countenanced. Those might have been listened to. But, that is in isolation from Hussein's other remarks that he was going to fight, and defeat, the Coalition forces. I can understand the first Bush's Administration not believing the offers were genuine and instead deciding that they had to continue with the war. Any massacre, rape, and pillaging is irrelevant. the principle is that any country cannot invade any other country except as a result of self-defense. It really doesn't matter whether they are nice or not, does it? It wasn't an insult. It was a statement. That you served two deployments in Iraq has nothing to do about your fear concerning terrorist attacks in the USA. And you are supposed to do that. Our job There is an unspoken contract between civilians and soldiers. Soldiers promise to go where they are told, fight who they are told to fight, and to suffer whatever comes doing that. Our job as civilians is to make sure that your job is honorable and doable so that your sacrifice isn't for nothing. So your job involves unquestioning obedience but our job involves continual questioning and soul searching: is the war morally justified, will a battle or series of battles in this place contribute to ultimate victory, are the strategy and tactics of the military actually defeating the enemy, is "victory" in these battles or war achievable? You are correct that the problem is that the NCA picked a fight in Iraq. It was the wrong fight in the wrong place at the wrong time for fighting Al Qaeda. The hornet's nest was ALREADY stirred up: that's how we got 9/11. But we had destroyed a bunch of hornets in Afghanistan and severely limited the capabilities of the rest. At home, now that we were alerted to the danger, our defenses in the form of law enforcement and security measures has stopped many plots. Invading Iraq simply gave back to Al Qaida what they had lost in the fall of the Taliban. Don't be silly. I don't wish it. Remember, I am possibly one of those deaths. It won't be you in Iraq killed in an attack on civilians in the US, will it? It is possibly ME or my loved ones. I begin to doubt you are in the military, because I know one of the basic military principles is that casualties are acceptable to achieve the mission. Unless you risk casualties, you won't get the mission done. I'm apparently a bit more ruthless than you, despite that you are a soldier and I'm a civvie. For me, the mission is a free USA. I recognize that "The tree of liberty must be watered occasionally with the blood of patriots." I'm willing that the blood be mine or my loved ones rather than impose so many restrictions on our liberty, because "no death is acceptable", that we make ourselves perfectly safe but lose our liberties. Oh, I blame ourselves (the civvies) for the vote in 2004. I myself should have worked harder for Bush's defeat. Of course, Bush lost MY vote for all time when he stood all safe in the Rose Garden and invited the insurgents to "bring it on". I think one of the great testimonials to the discipline of US Marines is that Bush's Marine guard did not frag him right then and there. I'm a REMF and know I am. I know there are limits on what a REMF can say. Acting like a juvenile teenager and goading the enemy to attack soldiers in harm's way while I am safe is WAY beyond those limits. I can never forgive Bush for that one.

You seem to be confusing "acceptance" of a behavior and discussion. You are saying that homosexuality can't be discussed. But that is patently untrue: this society has a lively discussion about homosexuality: its causes, its morality, etc. That some people consider the behavior immoral and should not be done is not a "taboo". It's their opinion. We don't have to agree with it. 1) Actually, only very few people, in society, have analyzed taboos objectively and logically ( scientifically). This isn't true. Because of deductive logic, falsified theories are complete and definitive in science. As I say, can you tell me with a straight face that it is not definitive that the earth is a shape other than flat? Currently accepted theories are open to further testing and discussion, because you cannot, by deductive logic, "prove" a positive statement. You need to make a distinction between falsified theories and supported theories. They have different standings regarding "definitive". 1. Did you notice that "totally replacing knowledge"? That's definitive, isn't it? 2. Yes, showing a hypothesis to be false IS enough. It tells us what is wrong. Yes, we look for the correct hypotheses, but we do so by the process of falsifying all the alternative hypotheses we can think of. One reason the supported hypotheses are not definitive is that there may always be an alternative out there we haven't thought of. And that is because they are questioning a supported theory-- nuture alone -- not a falsified one. In fact, they are saying that "nurture ALONE" is a falsified theory. Not NOW. Now the idea that the earth is flat is effectively taboo. You admit that when you say "the earth has a geoids form (approx. the shape of a regular oblate spheroid )." Sorry, I never used the phrase "earth's form was 'definitively clarified'". Instead I said that the idea that the earth is flat is taboo today. Because flat earth is definitively falsified. My apologies. I apparently misspoke. I said "That the earth is not flat would fit what you call a "taboo". Anyone today suggesting that we must(re)analyze whether the earth is flat or not would get pretty short shrift. " What I meant to say was "That the earth is flat would fit what you call a taboo. Anyone today suggesting that we must (re)analyze whether the earth is flat or not would get pretty short shrift." Do you disagree? Do you think anyone can legitimately raise the issue "the earth is flat" as valid? Those are separate issues! 1. Is pedophilia morally wrong? You say "there is not doubt". Where is the "it is never a final knowledge about this matter"? You say there IS "final knowledge" because "there is not doubt"! Thank you for refuting your own position. Even you think some ideas are tabool In this case it is the idea that pedophilia is beneficial to children. 2. How we deal with pedophiles to protect society. That is not settled. And we were discussing the possibilities. You raise some further issues: 1. What are the causes of pedophilia? Is it evolutionary or chemical? 2. How should the law apply a proportional punishment to each case ? No, I said there were studies showing sexual orientation -- heterosexuality and homosexuality -- was genetic. Again, apples and oranges. Has nothing to do with pedophilia Do you want those? You can find studies on the issues you raised at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez doing a search with the keyword "pedophilia". Some of the most recent articles are: 1: Dyer O. Drug treatment is proposed to manage child sex offenders. BMJ. 2007 Jun 30;334(7608):1343. No abstract available. PMID: 17600001 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] 2: Schiltz K, Witzel J, Northoff G, Zierhut K, Gubka U, Fellmann H, Kaufmann J, Tempelmann C, Wiebking C, Bogerts B. Brain pathology in pedophilic offenders: evidence of volume reduction in the right amygdala and related diencephalic structures. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2007 Jun;64(6):737-46. PMID: 17548755 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] 3: Hall RC, Hall RC. A profile of pedophilia: definition, characteristics of offenders, recidivism, treatment outcomes, and forensic issues. Mayo Clin Proc. 2007 Apr;82(4):457-71. Erratum in: Mayo Clin Proc. 2007 May;82(5):639. PMID: 17418075 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] 4: Walter M, Witzel J, Wiebking C, Gubka U, Rotte M, Schiltz K, Bermpohl F, Tempelmann C, Bogerts B, Heinze HJ, Northoff G. Pedophilia Is Linked to Reduced Activation in Hypothalamus and Lateral Prefrontal Cortex During Visual Erotic Stimulation. Biol Psychiatry. 2007 Apr 2; [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 17400196 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] 5: Levenson JS, Morin JW. Factors predicting selection of sexually violent predators for civil commitment. Int J Offender Ther Comp Criminol. 2006 Dec;50(6):609-29. PMID: 17068188 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] 6: Schiffer B, Peschel T, Paul T, Gizewski E, Forsting M, Leygraf N, Schedlowski M, Krueger TH. Structural brain abnormalities in the frontostriatal system and cerebellum in pedophilia. J Psychiatr Res. 2007 Nov;41(9):753-62. Epub 2006 Jul 31. Not quite. We know the earth is not flat because we have consequences that can't be there if the earth is flat: 1. Ships disappear over the horizon hull first followed by masts. 2. The sun shines directly down a well at one point on earth at noon but casts a shadow an another latitude but same longitude. 3. The earth casts a curved shadow on the moon during lunar eclipses. Thus, whatever shape the earth is, it's NOT flat. As it turns out, these consequences are all consistent with the theory that the earth is round. Theories survive or fall on their own. Otherwise you fall into the creationist trap of "dichotomy", taking evidence against one theory as automatic support for another.

I think you need to check out whether entanglement involves complementary properties. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle involves complementary properties -- position and momentum being one pair. Entanglement that I have seen involves different properties, the ones I have seen most being polarization -- right or left -- and spin -- up or down. These are not complementary but simply 2 states that a quantum particle can be in. You may be trying to use apples to determine oranges.

Human experience is considered to be an accurate way for ALL observation. All evidence is human experience. For everything. To say that human experience can't be used to obtain information about deity is to engage in Special Pleading. In a sense, ALL hypotheses are "assumptions", in that we assume they are true in order to test them. The hypothesis of deity can be derived as explanation from the observations: 1. The universe exists. Why does it exist? 2. The universe has a particular order. Why does it have this order rather than some other one? Deity is proposed as a hypothesis for both questions. There are other hypotheses also proposed for both. That doesn't explain the 2 groups. That would be used if NO ONE had experience of deity and that isn't the situation we have. To propose this you have to make and demonstrate another hypothesis first: none of the experiences of deity by people are genuine. And, before we can decide that everyone who claims experience of deity to be either lying or delusional, then we must have an indepedent test of honesty and sanity. The idea that people who report experiences of deity are either lying or delusional is what is called an "ad hoc hypothesis". The hypothesis would be "deity does not exist". Personal experience constitutes falsification of that hypothesis. So, now you propose 2 ad hoc hypotheses to avoid the falsification: 1. The people are delusional. 2. They are lying. In science, for ad hoc hypotheses to be valid they must be testable independent of the hypothesis they are trying to save. And THAT turns out to be a big problem: "But why should anyone think such a combination of faiths might be necessary, or indispensable on a quest for fundamental truth? There are two reasons for thinking it might be. One would be to have first-hand, experiential evidence of God which was personally convincing. The second is because to dismiss belief in God summarily is to pass premature and unwarranted judgement on the sanity, honesty, and intelligence of a vast number of our fellow human beings who claim to have such experiential evidence, many of them the same persons we do trust implicitly when it comes to other matters." Kitty Ferguson, The Fire in the Equations, pp. 281-282. For instance, Bishop Spong is one of those claiming experiential evidence. I can't find any evidence he suffers from delusions or that he lies. His written works are brutally honest. I have a friend who is a surgeon that claims experiential evidence. He is always rational and truthful and I would trust him implicitly to perform surgery on me. Bottom line, I don't have an independent means to back either ad hoc hypothesis. With all due respect Snail, you said "if we're to take the universe as 'everything', which by definition the universe is." Do you see "by definition the universe is" If you reorder the sentence you have "by definition the universe is everything" That's not an assumption anymore. It sounds like you are saying that you did not intend to say this. But you unintentionally did and I cannot, unfortunately, read your mind to know what you intended, but can only react to what you actually write. First, I'm using "deity" here because to use "God" means a particular theory of deity -- the Judeo-Christian Yahweh. Second, I don't think you want the term "undefined". I think you want the term "unknown". I suggest that what you want to say is "the existence of entities cannot be determined by science until they can be tested." Third, I would argue that "interpretations" = theories about the nature of deity. And those can be tested, and have been tested over the centuries by theists. The theory of deity that was the Greek pantheon that lived on Olympus was tested and refuted -- by theists. I don't think you understand. As far as part of science is concerned, everything = what we are able to observe (our universe) + what we can NEVER observe. In Bubble Universe, we can never observe the other bubbles, because they are moving away from us faster than light. Yet the "universe" is both what we can observe (all the galaxies, quasars, etc) + all the other bubbles. "Universe" is then also used to denote just our bubble. As YT says, you are arguing Labels (and here I'll use the caps for emphasis) and not what they refer to. Yes, our eyes perceive electromagnetic waves of 700 nm as red. But do you see? Now we can define "red" not as "what I perceive thru my eyes" but as an objective entity independent of the person. What you call "red" might be slightly different than what I call red, but 700 nm is 700 nm for both of us. What we have are individual detecting units for objective reality called our senses. We have made names for the output of those detectors: color, sound, heat. However, what those detectors detect is wavelenghts of light, vibrations of air, and motion of molecules. So, using the correspondence principle in math where a = b = c, therefore a = c, we have: vibrations in air = what is detected by ear = sound, therefore vibrations in air = sound. Now you can see the answer is "yes". Since sound = vibrations in air, the falling tree does make a sound. It is simply that there is no detection device present. My sanity is still intact. Your reasoning ability, OTOH ... You end up denying cause and effect. As YT pointed out, our eyes do not detect a lot of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. Since you say objects don't exist unless we can "see" or "hear" them, then I suggest you go stand next to a high energy gamma ray emitter. After all, you don't see any "colors", so those photons don't exist ... by your logic. Perhaps YT will help me explain to your next of kin how you were totally sane so that they won't be so distressed by the manner of your death. The way you said this it says "the universe is energy". That's not the case. The universe is more than energy.

Just a couple of comments: This presumes that future events are real, existing entities! They aren't. The future does not exist until it happens. Therefore time only has one direction. Several philosophers have tried this. It doesn't work. Motion is change of position over time. You can't have motion without time, therefore time cannot be a consequence of motion. So, time IS a basis for motion. In order to have motion, you need a spacetime. Something to move thru. You threw that out there without any basis. It's a premise, but one that you haven't bothered establishing. For instance, HOW does energy record information? What about energy that is at maximal entropy, where there is no energy to do work? Let's face it, recording is work. Really, does that always happen? What about space? Where does that fit into "objective reality"? Not true. It's wavelength can tell you where it originated. For instance, the photons of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation tell that their past was that they were generated at the Big Bang. The wavelength can also tell you how long it has been traveling. Ever hear of the Red Shift? Well! That contradicts your statements that photons don't have a past! If they don't have one, then you can't "record" where they "have been" -- past. Keep working on your philosophy. But read someone besides Mach, will you?

I don't see documentation of interfering with the publication of articles, unless you mean government reports. I took that to mean scientific articles and I would like to see that documented. Overall, if you want a deeper picture, read the book The Republican Attack on Science. Yes, there is a group of ideologues who want their ideas as governmental policy, no matter what the scientific data says. So, if the science contradicts what they want, then attack the science. In all fairness, this is done to some extent by nearly everyone. Just look at the hysteria and arguments against the studies on intercessory prayer at infidels.org and other atheist sites. Misinformed and invalid attacks on the science because the results threaten their beliefs. However, since 1994 the Republican party has taken this to new quantitative heights and to the point that it threatens reasonable decision making for the forseeable future.

But you are not in the position of power to make or enforce the law! It's about power and the abuse of it. If a person who is telling us he wants the power to enforce a behavior but isn't excercising the responsibility of adhering to the behavior to begin with, I don't want him/her in the position to have a rule that applies to me but not to him. Later on you are presuming that the law will apply to both. But let's get to that later. BTW, that you are smoking a joint shows just how wrong your logic for advocating marijuana to be wrong is. Come to think about it, that's another reason to expose hypocrisy: it is an indication of faulty thinking processes and we need to know when our public officials don't think clearly -- because of the power they wield. There's a difference between "message" and "ideas". What we are trying to determine is whether an idea (message) is accurate or not. When you say "correct message", it means you have already decided that the message is accurate. In science, you can do that by looking at the objective universe. In other areas where we don't have an absolute outside "authority", much of our decision is based on trust of the individual. In the cases I outlined we have politicians telling us what is moral and ethical. However, the politician himself is not adhering to those standards of morality. That makes me question whether the morality is accurate or not. And I need that information to make an informed decision come voting day. Sorry, but I'm not explaining this correctly. 1. A politician is telling us that men who have extramarital affairs and, particularly, get the woman pregnant are doing something illegal and deserve to be punished. 2. What's more, if we make it a law, then the behavior is so "wrong" and dangerous to society that we can use the force inherent in the police to track down these people and force them to pay. 3. BUT, the politician feels that HE is exempt from this responsibility and wrongdoing. If he did not feel this way, he wouldn't try to keep his "crime" secret. I don't want a politician in office that has a disconnect between power and responsibility, particularly when he is advocating the use of force to ensure compliance for "moral" behavior. As to how the politician would be able to keep it hidden once in office? By abuse of power, of course! And that is something else I don't want in a public official.

1. Can you give a specific example where the actions in the OP have happened to you? 2. Yes, most subjects should be open to discussion. But not all. Have you ever considered that the subject has been analyzed objectively and logically, the conclusion reached, and it has been concluded that further questioning is simply ignorance? Let's take this out of sexuality and look at some other areas of human knowledge. Science: once theories are proven to be wrong we don't feel the need to discuss them anymore. It's a waste of time. That the earth is not flat would fit what you call a "taboo". Anyone today suggesting that we must(re)analyze whether the earth is flat or not would get pretty short shrift. History: Consider what happens to Holocaust deniers. They think that we have to "analyze" whether the Holocaust took place. Do we really need to go into all the data and logic to justify that the Holocaust happened? Another thread where you raised "conformism" was in Pedophile Nationalism. Pedophilia has been analyzed objectively and logically and the clear conclusion is that pedophilia is morally wrong for a number of independent reasons. Do we need to keep discussing why that is so, or is someone who questions it obligated to do the research into how and why the conclusion was reached? Just because you disagree with a conclusion does not mean that the subject has not been settled. For years there was a Flat Earth Society because one man continued to insist the earth was flat. Do the rest of us owe him our valuable time to discuss such a ridiculous position when the information settling the issue is readily available?

WAIT a minute. What in the world does this have to do with the thread? If you want "conformism", you need to post something from this thread that yu think qualified. Talk about mixing metaphors! We have an idyllic outdoor scene vs some human behaviors! If you were going to do this, you could at least have had "pleasant truth" being something like Mother Teresa caring for the poor in India or Doctors Without Borders running a clinic in rural Nicaragua. Paranoia, let's not let Blue cristal distract us. What we both asked was what in this thread constituted "conformism" and "the truth". We haven't gotten an answer but a dodge. Well, aren't you special! And so modest, too. Have you every challenged that belief in "verifiable evidence"? In particular, have you ever looked at the problems inherent in "verifiable"? Hint: examine the problem of induction.

So what you are going to do is nitpick and snipe. No, it's not. We are back to Toumai and Orrorin. Here the brain size (by your index) is much smaller than chimps. So, by your index, the brain is too small for the cognition of chimps but are equal to primates that do not use tools. The tools were made from bone: http://171.66.122.165/cgi/content/full/98/4/1358 So yes, you have very strong evidence that Australopithecus robustus used tools. That, of course, is not A. afarensis. See below for EQ of the two. I have found contrary data: "Their [A. afarensis] bones show that they were physically very strong." http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html Oh dear. More data that is directly contrary to what you claim: "Compared to their small body mass, the forelimbs of early hominids are both longer and more muscular than those of recent humans. The arms are shorter than in chimpanzees, but the areas of muscle attachment have greater strength. Strength is especially evident in a large humerus from the Ethiopian site of Maka, dating to 3.4 million years ago (White et al. 1993). The prominent muscle attachments on this large specimen indicate that the individual was very strong, but also that most muscle exertion was in a single preferred pattern. The bone is thicker than chimpanzee humeri of equal length, again reflecting its mechanical strength. " http://johnhawks.net/weblog/fossils/afarensis/forelimbs_climbing_afarensis.html So perhaps you would be willing to share the source of your data. If you look ahead in the post, you will find that you present bad data elsewhere. I'm beginning to think that, in desperation, you are starting to make your data up. I hope I am wrong. A. afarensis and A. africanus both retained the long arms and upper body strength for climbing. They were bipedal, but not bipedal like us. Their bipedality was intermediate between chimps and us. Now you are being silly. You are taking the sentence completely out of context. It shows you have stopped having a serious discussion and are trying to make this personal. Let's look at what I said: "I don't know anyone that definitively rules out the use of tools by Australopithecus. Instead, it is the manufacture of stone tools that is used to demarcate Homo." It's obvious I'm talking about the classification of extinct hominids, not modern Homo sapiens! Also I'm making a distinction about the use of tools and the manufactire of tools. Stone tools are clearly on the side of manufacture. The demarcation from Australopithecus to Homo was decided by Leakey by the making of stone tools. Should he have made that the demarcation point? That's a differenct discussion. The fact is that manufacture of stone tools IS the demarcation point. Probably do. My point was that large body size or small body size can artificially decrease or increase the index and thus obscure real intelligence. Now, you say I ignore some facts. I've been to Wikipedia and the page you used. First, is the caveat that the page doesn't seem to fit the quality standards! Second, I don't see a list now, but I do see this: "However, there seems to be some controversy over whether humans have the highest brain to body mass ratio (followed by dolphins),[1][2][3] or whether treeshrews are on the top of the list[4] Treeshrews hold nearly 10% of their mass in their brain, making it one of the most encephalized animals.[5] Since shrews are less intelligent than humans, many[citation needed] believe that intelligence correlates with the absolute brain-mass left over from when one subtracts the brain-mass for running the body." So, if you insist on use the EQ, the treeshrews have an even higher EQ than humans! Brain shape and size of the areas are more important. For instance, neandertal brains are bigger overall but the frontal cortex is smaller. This doesn't negate my point that absolute brain size is a criteria. I never said it was the ONLY criteria! Really? After all, the dolphin brain has an EQ = 6 but no tool use! BTW, what's your source for the EQ of the New Caledonian crow? You'll see below why I'm asking. But let's look at this more carefully: http://homepage.mac.com/wis/Personal/lectures/evolutionary-anatomy/Primate%20Brains.pdf Using the Jerison EQ in the table (which you seem to be using), we have: 1. H. sapiens = 8.07 2. Chimp = 3.01 3. A. africanus = 2.79 4. A. afarensis = 2.44 5. H. habilis = 4.31 6. Cebus = 3.25 7. Saimiri = 2.68 So, the numbers don't match the ones you gave us. Big surprise. Not the first time you've given us bad data. You had EQ of chimp = 2.4 and A. afarensis = 4.2. So, did you deliberately tamper with the data or did you just get bad data? If the latter, where exactly did you get your data? Instead, chimps have an EQ higher than either Australopithecine species, and considerably higher than A. afarensis, which is the one we are talking about. BTW, A. robustus, which has those bone tools, has an EQ = 3.24. So, based on the EQ numbers, we can readily doubt that A. afarensis, despite being our direct ancestor, used tools. They did not have EQs equal to other hominids that we know use/used tools. We have Saimiri who has an EQ between A. afarensis and chimp and it does not use tools. Neither does Ateles with an EQ = 2.49 However, orangutans, (P. pygmaus) at EQ = 2.36, have primitive tool use in the wild. OTOH, gibbons (Hylobates) at EQ = 2.6, apparently do not use tools. Therefore, we have doubts that EQ does, at all, correlate to tool use.

Let's get back to what I actually said: 1. The only biological reality is species. These are real populations. 2. Higher taxa are not "real", but are rather simply groups of species. So, when you are looking at what survives an extinction, or what diversifies, you are looking at species. Not "class". The Class of Aves did not survive the KT extinction. Rather, species that humans put in the Class Aves did. We can look at morphology/physiology/behavior that these species had in common, but saying "why did birds survive but dinos did not" does not capture the reality. Not ALL species of birds survived. Instead, the way to correctly phrase that question is "Why did a few species of birds survive but all species of dinos went extinct?" What you have done in your post is make an irrelevant digression into taxonomy. FYI, our current classification system was made by a creationist. Yes, Linneaus was a creationist. The classification supports evolution because the classification is a nested heirarchy, and nested hierarchies are a product of descent with modification. http://www.physics.vanderbilt.edu/astrocourses/AST101/readings/kt_extinction.html "Icthyosaurs: These fish-lizards died out 30 million years before the K/T extinction. Plesiosaurs: These creatures had decreased from 6 families to only 2, at the approximate time of the K/T extinction. Vertebrate species: More than 50% of vertebrate species survived across the K/T boundary, in the fossil record of what is now the western United States. Not including very rare fossil species, for which often only a single fossil is known, 70% survived. The extinctions were concentrated in only five of 12 taxa of vertebrates. Hit hard were sharks & relatives (less than 20% survival), bird-hipped dinosaurs (0% survival), reptile-hipped dinosaurs (0% survival, except birds), lizards (less than 30% survival) and marsupials (less than 10% survival). Completely unaffected were frogs & salamanders, champsosaurs, and placentals; barely affected were turtles (85% survival), crocodilians (80% survival), bony fishes (70% survival) and multituberculates (50% survival). ... Mosasaurs: These giant marine reptiles (up to 17-m in length) lived from about 90-65 MY ago. They appear to have been diversifying and undergoing a mass radiation shortly before the K/T event, with most of this occurring from 75-65 MY ago. They apparently went extinct abruptly at the K/T boundary. " New Zealand seems to be a typical example of biogeographic distribution of an isolated island. Other examples we have are volcanic islands that are newly formed -- the Galapagos and Cape St. Verde islands. Therefore it is more related to that than the KT extinction event.

This level of detail -- down to the atom -- may not be achievable. But it is unnecessary anyway. That much detail in a simulation may demand more computing power than is available in the universe. However, there are already very complex and detailed simulations and other work showing how complex structures can arise by natural selection in more general terms. See here: http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/dave/JTB.html Oh, that's been done. See that paper. Two things to remember: 1. Natural selection is an algorithm to get design. That is, it is a series of steps that, if followed by a servile dunce, is guaranteed to produce the result. Long division is an example of an algorithm. The result of the algorithm of natural selection is design. Humans use natural selection when the design problem is too tough for them and, often, the results are so "complex" that humans can't figure out how the design works! 2. Natural selection adds information. Many systems in living organisms are more complex than they have to be. This is because natural selection can only add information. Where an intelligent agent would simplify a system natural selection can only make it more complex by adding another level of control. For instance, look at the blood clotting system. In trying to fine-tune the system, natural selection must keep adding levels of control. The first 3 chapters of Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett is very good. Sorry, but here you have to be careful with creationist arguments. Thermodynamics and entropy does NOT prevent life from existing. It's the strawman and misrepresented version of entropy presented by creationists that says entropy forbids evolution. Yes, chemistry or biochemistry will/has solved that. Because of the chemistry. Ask in more detail exactly what you mean by "the shape" and I'll walk you thru it. No, natural selection can only work once you HAVE life. It won't tell you how to get life to begin with. That's biochemistry. For natural selection to work, you have to have the following things: 1. Populations, or groups, of entities 2. Variation in one or more characteristics among the members of the population. 3. Selection among variations. 4. Reproduction 5. Hereditary similarity between parents and offspring. Once you have life, then you have these criteria. But you don't have them before life.

No shit. The hypocrisy calls into question whether the politician is going to apply the law equally. Both examples were of a politician advocating publicly to make certain acts illegal but violating those future laws in private. In the second example, the result of keeping the out of wedlock child secret is that HE won't have to pay the fine! But the law would force other men to make their private lives public and to pay fines. IMO, if a politician is going to advocate making "morality" a law, then the politician must adhere to that morality. If morality is to be legislated so that we are obligated to follow the politician's concept of what is "moral", we can't tolerate "do as I say but not as I do". It is a sign that the new law is meant to oppress people and THAT behavior certainly falls under the job description of what a public servant is not supposed to do. In this case the Senator is guilty of violating his own stated standards for proper job performance. He can't apply the criteria only to Clinton. A democracy or republic cannot survive if the rule of law only applies to some people and not others. So, if Vitter says the proper response to infidelity is to remove a politician from office, then that response MUST apply to him also.

I think we have a disconnect on why a founder event will fail. When you say "one male and multiple females" you make it seem like you need genetic variability so you avoid inbreeding. Nope. You CAN do it with one male and one female. The problem isn't genetic variability to avoid inbreeding. No the problem is two fold: 1. Whether the 2 individuals are able to survive where they end up. IOW, you can have lots of founder events, but most of the time the environment is just TOO different and the individuals can't survive there at all. 2. Accidents in the first couple of generations. In this scenario the 2 animals can survive in the new environment but accidents (chance) play a role. Say the G0 parents have 1 child -- a male -- and the mother slips, falls down a slope, and dies. The founder event has failed. I think your distinction is artificial. You are basing "complexity" only on the presence of a spinal column. So what you are saying is that founder events are rare in the Phylum Vertebrates http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15813781&dopt=Abstract http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10865&page=14 http://www.mun.ca/serg/genet43380.pdf look at the references in this one. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0014-3820(199404)48:2%3C490:MOSIBA%3E2.0.CO;2-W A study by Lynch cited here indicates that 15% of the speciation in the vertebrates studied were "peripheral isolates", which is equivalent to founder events we are talking about. They use "vicariance" to refer to allopatric speciation by geographical barriers. Also remember that Darwin's finches are supposed to have resulted from founder events. You might want to correspond with the guy whose website I cited. I'm thinking he would be your best source as the to lifestyle of the neornithine species that made it thru the KT. Oh yes! Foodchain, the only biological reality is species. "Birds" are really a group of species. It doesn't have any objective reality, but represents human taxonomy. Also, run this backwards: EVERY taxonomic category above species started with a single species! That's how it MUST be with evolution: "descent with modification" and having A common ancestor. I'd suggest you look at the diagram in Origin of Species (there's only 1, you can't miss it). Look at the ancestry of H. sapiens. About 7 million years ago there was THE common ancestor of chimps and humans. One species. Call it A. Now, there are 3 possibilities: 1. A gave rise to species C and C went on to chimps while A went to hominids. 2. A gave raise to species H, and H went on to hominids while A went to chimps. 3. A split to 2 new species C and H. Now you have 3 species. A goes extinct. C goes to chimps and H goes to hominids. But any way you slice it, all the species in the genus Homo started from a single species. So yes, a single species of Aves could, thru cladogenesis (splitting of an original species to 2 or more), generate all the species we see in Aves today. No, each species must survive. If you have many species in a group, then you try to look for commonalities between the species. Do the species have something in common that caused the group to survive while other groups did not? This is where you confuse us, because these 2 points contradict! First you are saying that we must look for a "bird trait" because we must consider birds "as a whole". Then you turn around and say that survival may be due to traits specific to each species and NOT a "bird trait" because it is not shared by all birds! Can you not see the contradiction? What I am saying is that only a minority of bird species made it thru the extinction. So ... the conclusion is that we are not looking at traits shared by all birds -- otherwise most of the species would have survived. Instead, we are looking for a much narrower group of species within the Class Birds. And, thanks to Sayonara, we may have found it: seabirds that burrow in the sand of the beach. This adaptation of making burrows in sand is going to be very limited among bird species -- only a few species will have it. Some of those species will be closely related -- same genus or family. Other species may have evolved burrowing independently and belong to a different order. You can also look at it this way: the species did not survive because they were birds. They survived because they burrowed. Being a bird or mammal or reptile was incidental and not related. SkepticLance, I see one major problem with that: dinosaurs were among the most mobile! Remember, turtles survived the KT event. I have this picture of a turtle and hadrosaur migrating and the turtle leaving the hadrosaur in the dust! Yeah, right! From the evidence, most of the land surface was not "sterilized" by the impact itself. OK, the fireball would have extended up to 5,000 km radius, which covers most of North and South America. Eurasia tho, is unaffected by the fireball. What they have to contend with is the global climate disruption and nuclear winter. http://members.optusnet.com.au/mpaineau/paine_bioastronomy02.pdf And we know there were dinos in Eurasia at the end of the Cretaceous. Again, which species is more likely to be able to migrate to the Americas? Turtles or hadrosaurs?

Not quite an "assumption". Once we entertain the hypothesis that deity exists, then we have available all the instances of humans experiencing what they have concluded is communication with deity. I don't refer to the people who hear voices or the ones preaching from the streetcorner. So now we have 2 groups: those who report communication with deity and those who don't. Now come hypotheses as to why there are 2 groups. I gave one. You have proposed 2 more: 1. "Maybe he [deity] just choses not to do so." So deity chooses some and not others. 2. "Or maybe there are physical limitations that he encounters as well that would make his communication sparse." I'm guessing you mean "physical limitations" on the side of deity. After all, the lack of a deity detecting module would be a physical limitation but on the side of humans. You can also make hypotheses that the experiences of deity are due to something else other than deity. The most common one is "delusion" or "hallucination", altho no commonality of causal agent is given. You have made your own assumption here: communication is "sparse". That doesn't seem to be the case. Cases in the scripture of various religions would indicate that deity does not intervene often in human history on a grand scale and then does so only thru a limited number of individuals: Moses, Mohammed, Smith, Buddha, etc. However, millions of people over the centuries have reported a much quieter, much more personal experience of communication with deity. This isn't "sparse", it just doesn't have the publicity or gaudiness of the other cases.

Define "torture". You are basing your objection to "torture" on an inherent quality within the animal. One you can't demonstrate. I base my objection on how the torturer would react to humans. Inflicting physical damage on either living organisms OR inanimate objects without a goal other than to inflict damage indicates a person who would do this to another person. Notice I included inanimate objects. Think about a person who goes around setting fires or explosions for goal of inflicting damage ... THANK YOU for making my argument that you can't project human emotions onto animals! Of course, you just destroyed your own argument. Let's look at this again from a human pov. It's a forced injection against their will! IOW, people ultimately choose to have injections because of the health benefit to them. Here there is no choice on the part of the rat, the needle is much larger in comparison to the one used on humans (bigger needles hurt more). So the rat is having pain inflicted on it every day. Would humans be "bored"? NO! They would view this as torture. They would struggle and resist. EVERY DAY. But the rats have none of the reactions humans would have. Evolution cannot be tested??!! Oh boy. Sorry, Bombus, but in your zeal for an emotional position, you have completely abandoned science. Sorry, but I'm not. It's called the Duhem-Quine Thesis. Look it up. So our "educated guesses" are more than likely to be wrong. Thank you for admitting you are arguing from emotion: "intuative leaps". Making a leap from "sound science" doesn't do you any good unless you can scientifically test what we are considering. Scientists made an intuitive leap from sound science that proteins were the hereditary material. Of course, you said evolution can't be tested, either! Which means you just excluded it from "sound science". If you keep digging this hole, Bombus, you are going to come out on the other side of the earth. Remember, evolution is "descent with modification" You are denying the "modification". Why do you think we do clinical trials on treatments we worked out in animals? because those modifications by evolution sometimes have changed us so that we are no longer close enough for data on animal trials to work on humans. We can all think of treatments that had excellent animal data that don't work on humans. I'll contribute one: Carticell. Behaviors/responses evolved like this. The error is attributing "emotional" to them. All science does is test the behavior/response. It is your non-scientific value judgement to say they are "emotions" We have to distinguish between "self-aware" and cognitive abilities and the quality called "sapience". Now, why are you "sure" when you say "This can never really be proven."? Those contradict. If you can't prove it, then you have to retain some uncertainty. Now, what do the behavioral experiments measure? Are identical experiments made on human children? Can you cite these studies? Although behavioural experiments have suggested this, we still have to rely on our 'common sense' which is based on our accumulated knowledge to interpret those experimental results. We are not discussing that. We are discussing projecting HUMAN emotions onto them. I'm saying that, even IF animals have emotions, those are not the same in the same circumstances as humans have. You conceded that above with the rats. Therefore, insisting that humans behave toward animals based on their emotions being the same as ours is flawed logic.

An assumption of science is that the universe is unified. QM did not "abandon" theories. Instead, there was no way to reconcile QM and Relativity because gravity was not quantized. So we had 2 separate theories that explained different parts of the universe very well. Both corresponded to the data in that area of the universe EXTREMELY well. Remember, theories are driven and controlled by data, not the other way around. Since then, many people have tried to find a theory of quantum gravity or a way to get around the quantization or indeterminism of QM. Both are approaches to getting a theory that would unify Relativity and QM. So far, no one has been successful. There are several choices: 1. It is possible that the basic assumption of science -- that the universe is unified -- is wrong. 2. No one has found the correct unified theory and we should keep looking. Yes. In submitting to PNAS, you also can use sponsors. The role of the sponsor is to review and critique the manuscript and make sure it is ready for publication. The sponsor does not have to initially agree with your views, only agree that the paper is scientifically sound and be willing to send it in. So, if you send it to a sponsor, you will get an initial review. The sponsor may decide that the paper is deficient, in which case he will tell you that. 1. Complete citation, please? 2. I don't see that the sequence above fits the equation B1-(A2B1) It only looks like the part in the parentheses fits that equation! Otherwise, the numbers at the front of the sequence (1/3, 2/5, etc) are completely arbibrary. 3. And by "fit the sequence", what exactly are you referring to? The width of the rings? The spacing between them? What about the rings around other comets? Do they fit this sequence? If only the rings around Haley-Bop fit the sequence, then you have coincidence, not a principle. You lost me at that leap of logic. Go back and take it step by step. The "cause" is the same one you used for the sequence above: it fit the data! Pot, meet kettle. Uh, no, it can't. You said "The sequence for particle structure is also a fractions of the remainder sequence, but the opening fractional sequence is 1, 1/2 1/3, 1/4 etc" The sequence above uses 1/3, 2/5, 4/9, etc. So how does your theory get that fraction of the remainder sequence from your fraction of the remainder sequence? There are posts by "elas" and posts by "merlin wood". Those posts talk about what appears to be 2 different theories. Are you saying that "elas" and "merlin wood" are the same person talking about the same theory?

Bombus, nice to see you immediately went to ad hominem. The "mouse" was run past the "cat" many times. While the "cat" is in a state of coherence the mouse does not interact. So we get many "results". Some of which are the cat is still both dead and alive, and then a "result" that the wave function has collapsed. So, which of these are "observations"? According to you the wave function collapses with observation. But several mice can run by the cat and report their "observations" to the humans. Those observations say coherence is maintained. By your idea, coherence should collapse on the FIRST observation, right? But it didn't. Quit trying to force your ideas upon science. Instead, listen to what the data is telling you. Coherence/decoherence exists or not independent of observation. Take this article: 7. GP Collins, Schrodinger's SQUID. Scientific American 283: 23-24, October 2000. Electric current flows both ways around a superconducting loop at the same time. Now, why didn't the current flow just ONE way upon observation? Here we have a wave that doesn't collapse upon the first observation. 1. The concepts are a function of human consciousness. But the actions and interactions of the electron happen whether there is a human there to observe them or not. 2. Remember, the conditions for sentient beings was not present until relatively recently in the history of the universe. Are you seriously going to try to tell us that the universe did not exist until then? If that was the case, then how could the conditions necessary for sentient beings have developed? 3. In your last sentence you move the goalposts. Up until then you were talking about "existence". Now you try to tell us the universe has no "meaning" without observers. Even IF this is true, so what? Does an entity have to have "meaning" in order to exist? Existence and meaning are 2 different things.

Not compared to other humans! Here you are moving the goalposts of "close". They are still outside the normal curve of human genetic diversity. Then I saw "boredom" on the rats that were being "painfully" injected into the stomach each and ever day! This cuts both ways, Bombus. If we were picked up every day against our will and had a (equivalent) 8 guage needle jabbed into our abdomen, we would be pissed! We would fight and struggle. They didn't. The rats just hung there passively. LOL! First you invoke the mantle of science, then discard it! You say that science is based on hunches that are "proven". By that you mean tested. But since in emotions you can't do the testing, then you abandon science and then reach the conclusion. And, actually, Bombus, you are wrong about the "much of science is based ..." If we look at ALL "hunches"/hypotheses in science, we find that 99.9999+% of them are WRONG! So wrong that officially the odds of a new hypothesis being right is basically 0. So, on that basis, we emphatically should NOT do as you advise; it's almost certainly wrong. What "judgement"? What "accumulated knowledge"? About how WE feel? That doesn't count because we don't know it applies to pigs. What do WE feel about eating our babies? Does that apply to rats? Nope. So our "accumulated knowledge" is wrong there, isn't it? This isn't "emotion". You are making a real hash out of evolution. Animals don't "develop" a "fear" of heights. Rather, ancestors who avoided heights were less likely to fall of cliffs. It's not an "emotion", it's a genetically wired behavior. Same with evacuating. Those ancestors that did not pee when receiving signals to do so died of toxemia. I like your argument about self-aware vs behavior and that you can't reliably read emotions into behavior in other species, especially "distress". So stick to whether animals are "self-aware" and stay away from the claims they have emotions -- especially trying to attribute them to evolution.