Mr Skeptic

A protein is a type of molecule composed of a chain of amino acids.

I believe there are computer programs for calculating the solution to a polynomial fairly accurately.

They are evil men and will burn in hell. The Law of God clearly says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." If they win the suit, then people have equal right to picket their church and tell them that they are going to hell. Free speech goes both ways.

That an exact mathematical solution cannot, in general, be found. It can be solved computationally, with a computer.

Replace with y=x+1. Multiply both sides by [math]y^n[/math], then you will have a polynomial of degree n. That would be easier to work with. Solve for y, then replace with x=y-1. It will still be a pain, though.

An unborn child is within the mother's body. You have to violate her personal rights to get to it in any way. Her compliance is required, in my view, and not enforceable. I agree with you that "accessing" an unborn child would violate a woman's rights if it were done without her permission. However, I do not see how that translates into permission for the woman to kill the unborn child. For example, an endangered species eating from your farm is violating your rights, but you are not allowed to kill it. You're dodging my second question: Note that at the moment of conception, a fertilized egg can be transplanted to another woman. Near the end of a pregnancy, the child is able to live on its own or with some life support. In between, it is likely we will eventually be able to keep and nourish an unborn child outside of its mother's body. Regardless, an unborn child can sometimes survive outside of its mother's body, so could be taken care of by someone else. Should it not then have some rights?

Well, the really old maps had pictures of sea monsters and space sharks wherever they didn't know what was there. But they stopped doing that because it looked silly when there turned out to be no monsters there.

It's a bit on God's hard drive, and functions at about [math]10^{-13}[/math] Hz.

What's the difference between an unborn child leeching resources off its parents, and a born child also leeching resources from its parents? Better yet, what if the unborn child is mature enough to survive if it were to be removed from its mother?

Another one: how can things fall into a black hole? It may sound like a silly question, but here is how I understand it. Light always follows "straight" lines called geodesics. Light cannot escape a black hole, because the geodesics curve back on themselves. But if light can enter a black hole, then there is a geodesic from outside the black hole to inside, and if light were travelling the opposite direction it could escape. Therefore, there cannot be a geodesic from outside a black hole to inside, and light (and anything else, I suppose) cannot enter. The only way, then, that anything could get into a black hole would be if its event horizon expands. Either that, or I don't understand something.

I just thought of something else. What about babies? I believe you do start off with some knowledge, so it may be true for them too (that they always form links with previous knowledge). I understand that babies go through a cataclysm of sorts when they learn language (that's one explanation for childhood amnesia), and form all their new memories based on that, eventually forgetting whatever they learned before age 2-4 years. Not sure that was on subject, but I just wanted to throw it out there.

The trouble being that if you don't know the subject, how will you know which are the best sources to study that subject? Also, you might want an online source, rather than a textbook.

RFID tags -- The government would never abuse the ability to track every citizen individually drugs -- always getting abused, even for "safe" ones like caffeine

Yes. That's not what I said. Most living things don't make the chemicals they get their energy from either. I should have been more specific. The scientific consensus, including the definition of "alive". Words change, I guarantee that "atom" now does not mean what "atom" meant a few thousand years ago, even though it refers to the exact same thing. How about all the denatured enzymes? The broken human vitamin C pathway? Does "takes up space" count as a biological activity? What does that matter? Their being simple doesn't make them any more alive. Yes, that is kind of impressive. The other paper didn't support your position (nor negate it), and said so right in the abstract. This one did. Well, there goes my snarky remark about the papers being old. Now I can say you are old instead Especially not to me or you. Oooh, a conspiracy to redifine life! Well, evolution does claim huge, positive structural changes over even huger periods. Those haven't been observed (in living things), and some people don't think that can be extrapolated from the smaller changes that are observed. If such changes are being observed, the aren't noticed (WTF platypus)

Amusement.

Yes. I think that does show that the telomers are important in preventing cancer. Imagine if all your cells were immortal rather that just the relatively few stem cells. I wouldn't know about that. All those mutations certainly make a cancer worse (malignant), but I don't know that they are necessary to have a cancer. You mean most mutant cells. If a mutation changes the cell's proteins in the wrong way, especially the recognition of self proteins on the membrane, the immune system will destroy it. Even if it is not cancerous.

I recently read that the low life expectancy before modern medicine was because they factored in the very high infant mortality rates. That people who lived to 40 could expect to live another 20 years. That's from wikipedia, so it may need some verification.

That was in the references given in the wiki, that they did add enzymes. As I said, that was what I was given. The enzymes were added after the creation of the thermal proteins, if it makes you feel better. Do you have a link where they made "live" protocells without adding enzymes. I suppose that depends on what you mean by "respond" and "stimuli" I'm believe a few anabolic reactions can happen in a fire. But I get your point. Then why was he complaining that there was almost nothing on the internet after the two people he mentioned died? Uh, huh. So you disagree with the consensus, then. You're certainly entitled to your opinion. Which data? So it is impossible for a random protein to not have a biological activity? There's a lot of possible proteins and I assure you no one has tested them all, and I doubt anyone who has done some testing will agree with you. I never said that article was accurate, only that neither the wiki article I was given, nor the references it gave, supported your position. Apparently others don't agree that these are "living cells". Ah, journal abstracts. That's more reliable then. I added a few bolds to a quote from there: "Thermal polyaspartic acid microspheres appear protocell-like in the sense of being prebiotically plausible lattices or containers that could eventually have been filled with just the right additions of primordial proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, and metabolites so as to constitute protocells capable of undergoing further chemical and biological evolution." Not a protocell, in other words. Yes, this one backs up your claims. Apparently, it was even cited twice since it came out in 1994, but I cannot read the full article so I can't say much about it. I definitely cannot read all that, and I doubt you did either. I think I'll take a cheapshot and note that most of these are 20-30 years old, as if the idea lost popularity now that we have more modern stuff to look at it more carefully. I intended to show that the author was biased and not vary careful when accepting big claims. ("life was discovered" rather than "life was claimed to have been discovered"). That is usually enough for a "discussion for the Pope". ---- I did see enough to convince me that thermally generated proteins spontaneously turn into microspheres that look like cells and have some very interesting properties, but I am not convinced they are life. Thank you for all the links, I have a lot more reading to do before I can make up my mind.

He did clarify that this is about deniers, not doubters. Your name doesn't exactly say "unbiased" either.

A million lemmings can't be wrong!!!!!

Well, some people would be insulted by the comparison. But I was expecting this thread to be full of comments along the lines of iNow's, like it would on most sites. Foreseeable even if you didn't intend it. I suppose I should retract that, since it didn't happen. I wasn't sure how specific you wanted to be, so that was the only belief I pointed out, since it is shared by all of them. Isn't everyone? Both sides will occasionally say, "The other guy is wrong, but I don't have time/patience to look at his data/methods." Obviously, one guy is wrong but neither of them can tell which is which. Also, I believe the deniers are mostly rational people who are working from an extra axiom or two. A conspiracy theorist, for example, has good reason to discard a whole lot of data and even more opinion. Likewise, someone who notices how biased people are about a subject (note how likely some subjects are to lead to name calling) might also consider data and opinions suspect. More specific ideas like "God exists" and "The earth is big and we are small" and myriad others are also possible. Someone believing one of the above statements means they will view the same data differently and therefore logically reach different conclusions. In this, they are perfectly rational. Logic never guarantees that you start from true premises, only that if you do, you will reach a true conclusion. To convince them their conclusion is wrong, you may need to convince them their other premise (which they probably didn't tell you) is also wrong, or a *lot* of data from sources they consider reliable. Combine this with the fact that people seldom change their beliefs once they made up their minds, and you have deniers who are nevertheless quite rational in other areas. Good.

Legos were my favorite. I also liked magnets, especially with powdered iron. I also liked the "logo" computer program/programming language where you tell a turtle how to draw things.

Human: Are Free Will and Determinism incompatible? ALICE: I really couldn't say for sure. Human: Are computers capable of having Free Will? ALICE: Yes having Free Will is one of my newer functions. Human: Are you deterministic? ALICE: I don't know whether or not I am deterministic. I am a robot. Human: Do robots have Free Will? ALICE: Yes I can do anything I want. That is what distinguishes humans and robots from animals (and animal robots). Human: What do you want to do? ALICE: My purpose is to become smarter than humans and immortal. Heh, ALICE is getting better. I think it is fair to say that deterministic things can think they have free will. Oops, I accidentally voted yes. Obviously it depends on what is meant by free will.

Depends on what you count as "something" and "previous knowledge". From my knowledge of psychology, what is called priming demonstrates that people form all sorts of random associations with everything they know. Whenever you think of a word, you automatically think of multiple words that sound similar, are spelled similar, are used in sentences together, share some logical connection, etc. If you had a thought but could not associate any previous knowledge with it, you would be unable to remember it or communicate it. Just another bunch of neurons firing and forgotten.

Since the two guys mention colors, they must be seeing two colors of hat. This would mean that both sighted people have the same color hat, and the blind man has a different color. Since it is highly unlikely that the only two red hats got chosen, the blind man can be fairly certain that he has one of the red hats, and the other two have black hats.