Mr Skeptic

OK, I'll completely analyze the issue of free will being incompatible with morality: 1) Suppose free will is incompatible with perfect morality. Therefore, any morally perfect being (such as God, if he is morally perfect), cannot have free will. But most people say God has free will and is morally perfect, but per premise 1 such a god cannot exist. 2) Suppose free will is compatible with perfect morality Therefore, free will cannot be used to excuse god creating beings with poor morality. God could have created us with both perfect morality and free will, but chose to make us with poor morality instead, which seems morally dubious to say the least. As the above proves, either one agree that their god does not have free will, is not morally perfect, or must find some excuse other than free will for creating us with imperfect morality.

That's your problem. When you know for sure that you are wrong, you go back and check where you made the mistake, not continue onwards in the hope that you'll make another mistake that would cancel the first. Any conclusions you reach starting from 8/3=5 will be suspect, because you are starting off with a false assumption. Instead, look at it as a proof by negation: If A then 8/3=5, therefore not A. Your calculations are wrong. The correct answer to your problem: 1. [math]\frac{d}{dx} f(x) = 2x[/math]; [math]\therefore F(x) = x^2 + C[/math]; 2. [math]\left. \int f(x) \, dx \right|_{x=2} = 5[/math]; [math]\left. x^2 + C \right|_{x=2} = 5[/math]; [math]2^2 + C = 5[/math]; [math]\therefore C = 1[/math]; 3. [math]\therefore F(x) = x^2 + 1[/math]. You can verify my result by checking that it gives the correct answers for both 1) and 2). However, your result gives the wrong answers for those.

OK, look at the wiki page for simple harmonic motion: http://en.wikipedia....harmonic_motion We have: And for a wave we have wavelength = speed / f. [Random gibberish alert!] Now suppose we set amplitude = wavelength. Maybe something interesting happens? [/random gibberish] Or you could use these equations, if you don't consider that cheating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie_wavelength

More important would be an expert. I've looked at things under a microscope and they look mostly like blobs; I'd only be able to distinguish the species if I was given a limited number to choose from. But a microscope would be enough to distinguish its general type even for the inexperienced, you could find whether it is an eukaryote or what shape it is.

Depending on where you published it, you may have already transferred the copyright to the publishing company.

I am not failing to consider the inputs and outputs (incidentally, it's a closed system, not open, and not isolated -- look it up), which is why I'm talking about a closed system rather than an isolated system, but it just so happens that the entropy of the environment is irrelevant to the question. What is intellecually dishonest is to change the question when answering. But if you like, I'll restate the question to include all the inputs and outputs, so we're both happy: Suppose you have a system defined as such: a volume of air of 1 cubic meter, enclosed by the walls of a refrigerator, which is not turned on, all at room temperature and in equilibrium with the environment. You turn the refrigerator on. Describe the changes that occur in entropy after the refrigerator is turned on in 1) the system, ie the 1 cubic meter of air, and 2) the environment (ie, everything else). Assume anything you like in addition as necessary to make the problem well-defined. There, now you can consider the inputs and outputs to your heart's content, and still answer the question. OK, that matches but has less information than the definition here: (well other than the minus sign) The info this includes is that the constant of integration is zero. (Incidentally, your concept of entropy as you described violates the third law of thermodynamics, unless deterministic processes result in perfect crystals only.) But the mistake you made is specifically in confusing dPilogPi with PilogPi. For example, I said the original DNA was randomly generated, so Pi = 1/4. After passing through a deterministic process, the Pi is 1, as you said. Therefore the change in entropy is S = ∑[(1/4)log(1/4) - 1 log 1) = ∑(1/4)log(1/4), clearly a decrease in entropy. The failure is yours, in being unable to distinguish between the system and the environment, and the consequent failure to distinguish the inputs and outputs of the system as opposed to those of the environment. If you know of a way to be certain, then go make yourself famous and publish that. Otherwise, what do you think is the most likely explanation for a change in two specific amino acids? Let's not be intellectually dishonest -- no amount of genetic engineering will ever show that intelligent design is a causally adequate process to explain life on earth. The only thing that would, would be to show that the odds of there being an intelligent designer are higher than the odds of it being done by known natural processes. But no amount of showing how smart people are will provide any evidence of pre-life-on-earth intelligences.

Because it helps the organism in question survive and reproduce?

The bad thing is that you're calling it integration when it is not. It is like saying 2+2=5, and 5 is then number that comes after 3. Sure, it all works out but it will just confuse people. Your new thing needs a new name. And we can't talk math to someone who does not understand math. Look again at what you wrote; 8/3 is not equal to 5.

No, changing the question means you are failing to answer the question. I asked only about a very limited system, and you are trying to talk about the universe. It is intellectually dishonest. While the second law of thermodynamics applies to any isolated system, that does not mean you can extend it to other systems that are not isolated (as my question shows), and increasing the system to include the universe is not the same as talking about the system. If you have some issue with the question, point out the issue you have with the question (eg "have you stopped beating your wife?" has a built-in assumption). If you have some suspicion that I'll misuse the answer, I can assure you I don't intend to. But if not please stop changing the question.

Why do faster moving objects have more kinetic energy, don't use the equations for kinetic energy?

A colony of some kind of microorganism. Unfortunately, it really isn't very easy to tell what those are just by looking. Though it seems a little more patterned than what I'm used to, so my guess is a fungus.

The only reason I upgraded was due to format incompatibility. I liked the older versions much better, that focused on more important things than making the color of every damn thing easy to change at the expense of more interesting things. There's also a training issue, in that it takes some time invested into a program to learn to use it well, and you might not want to have to spend that time learning a slightly different version, but this applies more if you spent a lot of time with the earlier version.

It rather makes sense. In the area near the original 13 colonies, the population would have reached a comfortable limit much earlier, and the more sparsely populated areas still have plenty of room. But is this about birth rates, migration, or both?

And even less people would know what the words mean. For example, express maxwell's equations in words, and then to test that they understand it see if they can derive the classical equation for light (or the equivalent in words), including its speed. Even if you tell them about the sinusoidal nature of the light equation they really aren't going to figure it out without math.

Well, that's rather a long and vague answer to a yes or no question. But it seems to me that you answered that yes, the entropy of the system I asked about dropped, and then further pointed out that this is still consistent with the second law of thermodynamics. Good, I think? Did I misunderstand you or did you agree that the entropy of a system can drop (at the expense of greater entropy outside the system, of course)? Oh, and what happened to the part about please not analyzing irrelevant things? Your answer would have been much clearer if you had ignored the parts not relevant to the question as requested. Hm, I think I miscommunicated that one. I'm counting the entropy of the plants plus the components for growth, you seem to be counting only the plant. I'd agree that more material has more entropy than less, but I was trying to say that plant material has lower entropy than plant components. We misunderstood each other. I thought you were saying that the entropy of the plant material was lower than that of the plant components, which would be equivalent but not word-for-word to the claim that plant materials would increase in an isolated system (ie plants growing in the dark), so I gave that example to show that such an idea is untenable. But it seems we were just looking at different systems.

For the most part, it probably depends on various factors. For example if there are a lot of others who aren't part of the group and fitting in, it would be much less awkward to not participate, and it would also show that the group is OK with that. For most things a religious group would be delighted for you to participate even as a non-believer. For example a christian wouldn't mind you praying, singing, donating, reading the scriptures, and just about anything else they do, and in fact would be glad for anyone to join in regardless of their beliefs. However, they do have a few things that you shouldn't do as a non-believer, such as baptism and communion/Last Supper, which are specifically restricted to believers, but these happen only very occasionally. Maybe preaching the sermon since it would be rather hypocritical, but then random strangers don't really get invited to preach anyways.

It's all unitless. Would be a strange exponent if it wasn't. None of those links have an example of what you said. Which one of those genes is unexpressed in the ancestral organism? You'd need an awful lot of data, perhaps all the possible ways to make neuromuscular structures, then comparison of that to all the sponge proteins, and then data on the usefulness of intermediates along the way. It would be pretty much impossible, kind of like predicting whether it's going to rain on Jan 1, 3010, but most people don't take that to mean that physics fails, even though in theory a physicist should be able to make that prediction with enough data. However, it is essentially a necessity that the ancestral organisms carried genes used by their descendants, new function or no, since the odds of entirely new genes appearing are rather slim. No, it would be a horrible thought experiment. That's how a researcher in a lab would measure fitness. Calling it a thought experiment just shows you completely failed to understand it, since as a thought experiment that would be worthless. Evolution doesn't need to measure fitness, and as the equation I gave shows, fitness is not the only thing that wipes out genes.

Well, when you invent something new you need a new name for it. You can't call it an integral if it isn't an integral, which your idea isn't. I'm not really too interested in the maths of someone who derives equations from 8/3=5.

Well you're wrong. Integration and derivatives are almost opposite, such that the derivative of an integral of a function always gives you the original function. Moreover, the integral of a derivative can give you back the original function, but not necessarily. Note that some information is lost by taking the derivative, because the derivative of a constant is zero. This means that the integral of zero must be a constant, but it could be any constant and hence is unknown. For example, if f(x) = x + 3, then [math]\frac{d}{dx} f(x) = 1[/math] But [math]\displaystyle\int d f(x) = \int 1 dx ==> f(x) = x + C[/math], but without more info than that you can't show that C=3. Because you don't realize this, you're saying that [math]\frac{2^3}{3}=5[/math], which clearly isn't true.

Well before its melting point, iron is no longer magnetic. (as a conductor it can still be used to make an electromagnet though).

Math can be expressed through words too, so of course physics can as well. The trick is that the words to describe physics in words have to be very exact, and in general its harder to do physics with words than with equations.

This isn't correct either. You can't get a definite answer from an indefinite integral; [math] \int 0dx =\int dC [/math] [math] 0 + C_2 = C + C_3 [/math] To find C2 and C3 you need to know the limits of integration.

Edtharan, populations follow more like the logistic growth, not exponential. As you said, there's really no excuse for the number he suggested. But let's leave all the cheating to the other side, OK? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function

That's only true if the clock is oriented differently from you, just like left and right mean different things to people with different orientations.

A tradeoff like any other. What if the city council reduces the speed limit to a nice safe 10 miles an hour, forcing everyone to triple the time they spend in their cars, think of how many people that murders (by effectively wasting several life-times worth of people's hours driving when they could be doing something). For example, in a city of 10,000 people with a speed limit of 30 mph and everyone driving 1/2 hour per day there, lowering that to 10 mph would have them driving an extra hour per day, so with 10,000 people that adds up to 417 years, and those are all waking hours. To me it looks like a perfectly good trade, everyone gets more of their life and a few people lose theirs early, but overall I'd count it as lives saved. For extra fun I'm sure you could calculate the effects of the pollution from the cars too. And you too, for all the people you murder by not being a doctor and helping everyone in need, you get away with that with no penalty whatsoever either.