Mr Skeptic

Well, time to put it back on track then. I propose that humans will evolve more within the next 200 years than they have for the past 2,000,000 years due to genetic engineering.

Also, Just because Hillary doesn't have a dick doesn't mean that she won't be one

I find it curious that someone named doG wants to discuss religion in rational manner. Yet I've found his posts to be quite reasonable.

Right then, the possibility of life on mars is tied directly to the possibility of liquid water on mars. It is more or less accepted that no liquid water -> no life. If there were liquid water, there would be quite a possibility of finding life there -- though I have my doubts that they would be found. Regardless, it is fairly certain martian life would have to be microbial. One possibility I particularly like is that a few microbes might have been seeded from earth eg when a big meteor hit hard enough to throw earth dirt into space.

That she had no intention of running for president? Seems at least purposefully misleading people to think that she wouldn't run for president, and I'm pretty sure she was busy making plans to run when she said that. http://edition.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/06/08/hillary/

As I understand it, the extra $80 would be Fed magic so they don't have to go around printing and collecting money. Also, it is a 90% cap, not a requirement. If it weren't for that law, the banks would lend out as close to 100% as they could, which would result in disaster. -- As for your other posts, Quartile, it seems to me that you are a hopeless idealist. I agree with many of your ideas, but see no way that they could be accomplished. How would you convince the rich to give their money to the poor? How would you get people to work together (let alone work at all since the rich will give them money if they need it)? How will you get individuals to live in harmony with the earth when they would be much better off exploiting it? How would you get counties to accept the leadership/influence of a weak country when it would be more benefital to them to take control themselves? I guess I'm asking: how will you get rid of greed, especially since greed is benefitial to the greedy individual? I still disagree with your comment about asians being exploited. They willingly take the jobs we give them because they pay better than other jobs they might get. The costs of living are much smaller there so they can get by fine with less money -- try living in Silicon Valley with your current job and you'll see what I mean.

It would be invisible and go through your hand.

Under the assumption that the Bible is true, evolution would be false. It would conflict with the chronology, the order different things were created in, with the requirement that critters reproduce "after their kind", that humans were formed by God directly from dirt, the time from Adam to now calculated from the genealogies, etc. BTW, you have not yet given any justification to the beliefs of science that I mentioned in post 23.

I was thinking that too, but wasn't sure whether I had my facts straight re Iran being the one to claim that they had/were developing nukes rather than the US. In claiming they have or are developing nukes, they put themselves in the public spotlight. If I'm not mistaken, claiming that you are developing nukes is a very bad idea if you intend to complete the development, because it would result in pressure or even military action to stop the program. Hence, a claim that they are developing nukes would seem to me a gimmick to get people to negotiate or at least talk to them.

It seems like a necessary assumption if anything is able to be explained. How can you explain why something happened without causality?

I think that it is berry important that we take a goat space travel to see if there is life on mars.

Then we would have to reject the idea of causality that has worked so well for everything else. Besides, there's no such thing as "nothing" anyhow

The mass of the third sphere doesn't matter, because the force will be proportional to the mass, and hence the initial acceleration will be the same regardless of the mass.

I voted "yes, in my lifetime" because I see the creation of an AI as inevitable, and once an AI that is unconstrained in the type of problem it can solve is created, it can be made arbitrarily more intelligent simply by adding more computing power. Also, I am young and optimistic, so I think it will happen in my lifetime. Given the assumption of materialism, there is no reason that we couldn't build an intelligence because it is already demonstrated that it is possible (people exist and are intelligent). As bascule noted, we could simply make a simulation of a human on a computer, if there were no simpler method. I personally think it will be a much simpler prospect, but there's no way to know until we get there.

Well, under the assumption that the Bible is the Word of God, you could make predictions as to what you should or shouldn't find in the Bible if that statement were true. If your observations support the statement, then you would say it is (probably) true. Just like in science, but with different starting assumptions Edit: Let me add, that there is a reason that Martin Luther's 95 Thesis became so widely accepted even though it went against the Pope

Smarter for who? I doubt that it is necessary. It may just be easier. In nature, the truly social all have identical genes. However, making a world full of clones is not likely to be the solution. To make people work together, you have to make it so that working together is best for each individual involved. I don't see how transferring money from the rich to the poor could be accomplished or how it would be of any benefit -- why then would people work if they get nothing for it? How are we "using up" the earth? If you go to other planets, I guarantee you will not find pristine forest to exploit, just a barren wasteland far worse than the earth will ever be. ? Because if it were not so, a country with a bigger army could crush them and loot them and become the most influential. It seems unavoidable that the country that wants to have the most influence must have access to the biggest army. Yup. Glad you understand why capitalism is so effective. I hope you also understand that the asians are willingly working for these very high wages we are offering them. And do not forget that eventually the flow of money from our country to theirs will bring them up to about our level. No, they are allowed to lend out 90% of what is saved. So if you put in $10, they can lend out $9. If they could lend out more than they received, they would just borrow money and deposit it, getting infinite money. Heh.

It also says that Clinton has a 2 to 1 lead over Obama nationally. I've been afraid that we may end up with two totally worthless candidates to choose from for our next president. I don't understand how Clinton can get away with lying about not running for president (and apparently countless other lies)? Do people not know, or not care?

Yeah, but I doubt that the SFN results will be the same as that for the general population

No. They are different things, and not necessarily inseparable. A dreaming person would be intelligent but unconscious, while a fish might be conscious but of very limited intelligence.

Oh, I meant to collect the ice in the winter and keep it till spring/summer. Then it could be used to power a heat engine (for example) using the room as a heat source and the ice as a cold source. So, power and air conditioning. But will it be energetically or economically worthwhile to collect the snow and store it till spring/summer?

Well then, here you go. Define intelligence

In a few discussions here we have had the problem that intelligence is badly defined. Here's my definition: Intelligence is the ability to think of solutions to problems. By think of, I mean compute, model, etc rather than physically solve. An ability to solve only specific types of problems would be a specific subtype of intelligence. How do you define intelligence?

Me too. I even go so far as to question well accepted theories, and even the fundamental assumptions of science. And be question I do mean question, not disbelieve. So far, it seems that to even think, I need to make unprovable assumptions. They provide education and entertainment. Are they at all dangerous? Hopefully, bored people with a sense of humor. If not, at least they provide entertainment to people who really are bored and have a sense of humor. I still think that visiting that website will, on average, result in people being slightly more educated than before

About now in the northern hemisphere, snow would be falling all over and getting disposed of. Could it be put to good use instead of thrown away? Ice has an enthalpy of fusion of 333 kJ/kg (the energy required to melt 1 kg of ice). This is about one hundredth the energy density of gasoline. Instead of throwing it out, could snow be gathered and used as an energy source? This would have the additional benefit of snowplows not throwing snow to the side, but would complicate the clearing of snow. Though the production of energy from snow would be very inefficient (a side effect of the small temperature difference between ice and room temperature), using ice as a power source would have the unusual property of cooling rather than heating. Thus, extracting power from ice could replace air conditioning systems and the power consumed by them. However, ice has a very low energy density as compared to chemical sources, and may even take more energy to gather than it could produce. However, since we have to clear snow anyhow, at least some of those losses would be necessary anyhow. So what do people think? Could gathering snow be a useful form of renewable energy? Or would the costs of gathering and storing it outweigh the potential benefits of power generation and cooling?

I think that thuthism.com is an educational website much like dhmo.org. At least I hope it has the same effect.