Mr Skeptic

If you destroy all the electrons in a sample via annihilation, you will end up with hot plasma. Without the electrons to hold things together nothing could withstand such a beam. If you use antiprotons in your beam, the same will happen but you will get a radioactive plasma instead.

Well, mostly it would be lab equipment that would promote a mad scientist vibe. Vials filled with colorful chemicals comes to mind, generally with a distillation apparatus. Smoke or steam coming from the vials would really help (especially since you probably are mad if you have lots of those). Maybe have the wall entirely covered in squiggles equations. And you need a lab coat, messy hair, and probably glasses.

Each time you get a new dimension, you draw a new axis perpendicular to each other axis (well it just needs to have a component perpendicular to them). You can't draw a 4D object in 3D because you're missing a dimension. There's no limit to how many dimensions you can have, but they won't necessarily correspond to reality just because you can describe them mathematically. To imagine multidimensional things, I suggest you start with points equidistant from each other. In 0D you have a point, in1 D you get a line segment with two points, in 2D an equilateral triangle with 3 points, in 3D you get an equilateral tetrahedron with 4 points, in 4D you get an equilateral shape with 5 points equidistant from each other, etc.

By moving the production to a factory you can increase efficiency. You can either buy cheap materials to make your nails with, or buy pre-made nails. Which do you think will be easier/cheaper? For the house of course some of the efficiency is lost in greater transport costs (it is hollow and so bulkier), but for portable houses I think it would work out.

What are you talking about? you mean 9^9^9^9? Lying/making a mistake in one of the steps, yes. I didn't even need to look at the problem to understand that. In this case it is using the wrong root of the equation. The other steps are just to hide the lie. Here, watch: 1=1 1^2=1^2 1=-1 OMG I PROVE 1=-1 !!!!!

Religions tend to be either false, or probably false and definitely useless for anything other than self-delusion. Self-delusion is useful though. Science answers the "how". Religion tells a nice story that some people think answer the "who what where when how why". There's no evidence that it actually answers any of those questions, including the "why". Correct. Religion looks foolish from an intellectual standpoint. If your theory presupposes a god you need to show how complicated or simple the god you presuppose is. Simply saying your presuppositions are simple and likely doesn't make them so nor does it switch the responsibility to others to prove otherwise.

So what then? Should we have it so that the player does nothing and the cell pre-adapts to some things millions of years in advance and is completely too late to adapt to others? Your idea sounds like so much fun, I'll go take a nap. Also, the game does correctly have the endosymbiont theory (note how mitochondria and chloroplasts are acquired externally whereas all the other organelles just appear in the cell).

Eh, it's vaguely accurate. As for the "creationist" aspect, if anyone takes the suggestion that we were created by extraterrestrial platypuses seriously, well, I don't know what to say. Actually, panspermia and made by ET are possible secular theories for the origin of Earth life (though not of the first life). They're just not very popular because it just moves the question elsewhere.

Nope, it goes to the lowest bidder. I'm guessing it would go down to a few thousand due to dumb people, unless there were a price floor.

Another thing, when working in science always always always write the units in your calculations. Units can be canceled or replaced with equivalent number of other units, just like if they were a variable or unknown like x or y. Had you done this, you'd have immediately noticed you made a mistake (your answer would have the wrong units), and the same will be true later on in various scientific areas. In many cases (but not this one) the units you start with and units you should end with are all you need to know to solve the problem. He means [math]d=\frac{1}{2}gt^{2}+v_{0}t[/math] and also don't forget that both g and [math]v_{0}[/math] have a direction signified by their sign. Sometimes they give you irrelevant information. Ignore the irrelevant information.

Species is more or less an arbitrary distinction, except the particular definition you gave involving reproduction. However, then you can make a new species with exactly the same genes by changing the number of chromosomes or somesuch.

Scaling up, the muscle mass is cubed and the muscle cross section squared. So the muscle has cube more energy, cube more weight, requires cube more oxygen and nutrients, and has square more strength (ie, weaker compared to its mass). If humans could be shrunk down to tiny sizes, we would beat ants at weight-lifting because our muscles are better -- but we'd probably freeze to death, and I have no idea how our capillaries and other surfaces would react.

No, per the problem I specifically state that the gene codes for a non-functional protein. Which according to your definition, is zero information since it is non-functional. So from zero information to an entirely new functional gene in (I estimate about a day for bacteria). Yes, you say any time period and then demand that it be observed. Which severely limits the amount of time. Anyhow, the example is good enough. 1) the function is not there, so it is a new function within the experiment. 2) You said blind search, not random walk. Blind search means you don't get to limit your search to those close to the original organism, but have to try every single base pair combination until you get the right one. To get that specific improvement blind search would take so many times the life time of the universe that it is pretty much guaranteed never to happen via blind search. I estimate evolution would do it in about a day with bacteria (10^-8 mutations per base pair, ~20 mins generation time if allowed to replicate freely for 24 hrs would be 10^21 individuals), needs only a single specific mutation. And what other than humans have been observed to design? Are you saying maybe an animal designed us? Or maybe that something that has never been observed is needed to explain something you claim has never been observed? Would it not be simpler to just cut out the middleman?

The cube-square law is basically a limit for scaling things up or down as-is. Scaling things up for example, you increase body mass and muscle mass as cube, but surface areas as squares. So as you scale up, bones will have to thicken significantly, heat dissipation starts becoming a problem (see: elephant ears), lung and digestive capacity have to increase surface area beyond just scaling up, etc. So for example, let's say you have a 10 ft elephant weighing 10,000 lb, and you want to scale it up to godzilla-size proportions of 100 ft high. Then it will weigh 10,000,000 lb, 1000 times as much, but its bones will only be 10 times thicker with only 100 times the area. Now let's say you actually managed to make this work, using magically strong bones etc to make the scaling work. How high could this giant elephant jump? Well, the energy in the muscles will scale with muscle mass but so will the mass, so this monster can jump only as high as a normal elephant despite being 10 times as big. And if you consider all the extra weight from the bones you would have to make much thicker, it would be able to jump less high than a normal elephant despite being 10 times bigger. If you've ever been to a zoo and seen an elephant exhibit with a wimpy little fence and a shallow ditch, it is the ditch that keeps the elephant in -- a fall of a few ft could kill them. The biggie sized elephant could likewise be held back by a shallow ditch that wouldn't hold back a toddler. For pouncing species making them bigger will make their leaping less impressive relative to their body size.

I travel through space on a really BIG rock.

My example is an example of evolution creating a new function. The function was not there, and then evolution created it. The reason I used that particular example is that you want an example that will occur within your lifetime. Compare the speed for evolution to create the new function in this example -- a few generations -- to the speed of a blind search (many times the lifetime of the universe), and you see it is much much faster than a blind search (but less thorough). Information is generated at 1 bit per coin flip. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_%28information_theory%29 So which human created us all then? If as you say only humans have been observed to create information (false, regardless of your modifiers), then what created us must therefore have been human. You proposing a non-human intelligence with no evidence other than an argument from ignorance, compared to scientists arguing evolution from a common ancestor via known and verified processes. Although evolution is not directly seen at the largest scales (nor expected to be), the evidence is in the DNA sequences that it was so. I'd go with the option with the evidence.

Nope, it would take an absurdly strong pump (not to mention pipe) to pump the water up that high. It would take many many atmospheres of pressure -- 1 atmosphere pressure for every 33 feet.

Nobody cares whether you think it works, the fact is that evolution can generate information. Just to give you a simple and guaranteed example, make a point mutation such that it disables an important but non-vital gene. Evolution will rather quickly revert it back to the functional state. This can only happen because natural selection can recognize the more functional protein as better than the less functional protein. What this means in your own little world I don't know, but to me it means the fitness function works just fine. I'm not sure what your obsession is with a blind search. Nevertheless, my above example shows a genetic algorithm (evolution itself) successfully finding an optimization faster than by blind search. Yet more interesting than non-proposals such as Intelligent Design.

Nope, waging wars against abstract concepts is rather pointless. It reminds me of the war in Orwell's 1984, where an unwinnable war is the objective for the effects it has on the population. If we stopped funding terrorism it might be easier to beat the terrorists, huh?

Um, telephone numbers are actually rather important, and each phone number will usually be known by at least one person. And then there is social security numbers, driver's license numbers, bank account numbers, ... I think there might be some unused 10 digit numbers. Actually, if you ask swansont, he probably has a number for each fraction of a second, and he's probably up to the 20 digit range already.

For a quick example of what it feels like to change your pH, hold your breath for a while. The buildup of CO2 will acidify your blood, just a little, but believe me you will notice. (The lack of oxygen is very hard to notice, for example if you were to breathe nitrogen you can exhale CO2 but not inhale oxygen, and you feel fine until you faint -- but don't do this alone since you can kill yourself)

Osmosis is strictly water-based diffusion, by definition. Diffusion of other things happens but isn't properly called osmosis, although some people do call it that anyways. And yes, gases diffuse.

Indeed, the fitness function is a necessary component of a genetic algorithm. Evolution has a fitness function. These are optimizations, and not strictly necessary. They limit the scope of the search and if done properly will result in faster results. On the other hand, it means any solutions that would include different intermediate steps are not included. Evolution doesn't need these intermediary steps in the algorithm because it already starts with all the intermediate steps it needs to have a functional organism. The above criticism would work for abiogenesis theories, but note that these theories have proposed intermediate steps as well.

Feel free to show how it is a false comparison. You'd have to show that there was in fact a singularity, not just that the equation gives a singularity (since as I demonstrated, just because a theory gives a singularity doesn't mean there is a singularity) This is a false dichotomy. Instead of correcting you, I shall let you try again. If you are unable to figure out a correct dichotomy, please tell me and I will give you the answer. This is an assertion pretending to be informed. Instead of answering it, I will treat it for what it is. Oh, look at that! You can make snarky remarks and pretend that you're being clever for it. Very well then, I'll give you the answers. The two correct dichotomies that could be made from that sentence are: The implication is that the universe either came out nothing, or it came out something. the implication is that the universe either came out of that which cannot be understood in physical terms, or it came out of that which can be understood in physical terms. See, when you make a correct dichotomy there is no option but the two mentioned. I disprove your false dichotomy by the possibility that the universe came from something which we do understand in physical terms, such as branes. The existence of a possibility that does not fit with the dichotomy proves it is a false dichotomy, regardless of how remote you may want to think the possibility is. So now I showed both that I was correctly informed (I disproved your false dichotomy), and that as well as not understanding the basics of logic you feel overly confident in your own answers (which is in fact very common, see the study Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments). If there is an explanation it is science if there is no explanation there is no science. What you want though is no real explanation, but instead a pseudoexplanation that "makes sense" but provides zero predictive value. What singularity? Anyhow, we can have an infinite universe without any singularity, which is what I was talking about.

An increase of IQ of about 3 points per decade? I'll go with better nutrition and a richer environment. Taking a tangent on your tangent, do you think that the Flynn effect could be a basis for Technological Singularity?