questionposter

I don't think it could stretch back 7 million years, there's too much room for variation. Maybe if they actually found remnants of all of his ancestors.

Well they still live longer, but its not because of abstinence, its because they basically eat is little as possible.

For some living things this notion is true, but not for all. There's also studies that show that being happier increases your chances of living longer, working out, and even eating less also increase your life span.

Math isn't anything on its own, we assign what it means with words.

I keep seeing around these forums and from scientists like Niel DeGrasse that photons curve the fabric of space. How is that? How do photons curve the fabric of space?

I don't think there can be a concrete definition of life. What about complex artificial intelligence? It doesn't evolve, it doesn't grow, but it could still process the same information as other living things.

Acquired traits don't reach the gene level, the ability to require them does. If both your parents are good at math, your not going to be born automatically knowing how to do all sorts of equations, but it is likely you will be born with the ability to learn math quickly.

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=continents+location+timeline&um=1&hl=en&biw=1224&bih=632&tbm=isch&tbnid=NHhD5tyeCj-gPM:&imgrefurl=http://www.math.montana.edu/~nmp/materials/ess/geosphere/inter/activities/exploration/index.html&docid=tuNRZw_W8uUbtM&imgurl=http://www.math.montana.edu/~nmp/materials/ess/geosphere/inter/activities/exploration/5globes.gif&w=571&h=712&ei=rA8ST92FAqKS0QHmpqy2DQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=94&vpy=120&dur=898&hovh=251&hovw=201&tx=144&ty=85&sig=102223466515623660594&page=1&tbnh=133&tbnw=107&start=0&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0 Timelines of Antarctica aren't very specific, so if you can find something that says Antarctica was "warm" or "cold" or had a bunch of liquid water at a time that corresponds to when those pictures show Antarctica at or near it's present state (basically in the south pole), then that should help give an answer. Otherwise, I wasn't suggesting it was a single reason for large animals dying out, its a culmination of all the reasons I was saying, but I think the most important one is the environmental shift because that really messes up food chains.

I know things work logically, but they aren't deterministic. Things like your brain just can't just be a set of "cause and effect" reactions because that would mean determinism exists which quantum mechanics has shown doesn't exist. Sure, you could have an entire thought process triggered by an emotional response from chemicals released by the perception of something along with the information being passed through some mechanisms that get registered "suggesting" what to do, but not only is that not actually a deterministic process, but the thoughts themselves are not a chemical reaction. How your describing the way life works just doesn't make sense, or at the very least astronomically improbable. Do you know how improbable it would be for every single gene and action to be automatically geared towards one single thing (survival)? Neither do I, I can't comprehend that big of a number in the denominator. Once again, there is nothing that is actually "making" thoughts happen or even "making" anything be geared for survival, some things just happen to make you lucky, and since those things are part of the universe, they cannot be deterministic and they don't have to cause specifically squat. I already understand what your saying, and how "selfish genes doesn't equal selfish people", but things just can't work in as simple of a manner as your describing, at least not in this universe. Things don't have to be geared towards anything, genes don't have to cause anything, things don't have to need or not need to survive. Actually, let's just look at that part. Do things "need" to survive? No, not for any particular reason (although to living things, the answer may differ), or at least not for the universe on a universal scale. The universe could go on without life , so why would there be a component of the universe which cares about life to determine what it does and what actions it has to be geared towards if it doesn't matter to the universe? And then, if you say it's just a coincidence, then that means there could very easily be other life where what your saying doesn't apply.

Massive Excitement=Very Large excitement?

During the warmer time periods, the poles of the Earth were also warmer, Antarctica use to have grasslands covering it. Less resources would be available due to the increasing number of organisms or decrease in plant life caused by the shift in the environment (from hot to cold). Gestation periods determine how fast a species can reproduce, so if there was some large disease that affected large animals or maybe less resources or increases in predators, it would take longer for a larger animal species to recover (perhaps too long) and the probability of a large animal giving birth would go down. Basically, most big animals died out because of large dramatic shifts in the environment.

Sub-consciousness learns form your consciousness, not the other way around. If you consciously repeat a pattern, then your sub-consciousness will try and make compulsions to repeat that pattern to save energy that would otherwise go to consciously thinking of doing it again. It just is illogical that the choices of an organism would be "determined" by something or would have to follow only specific guidelines when the universe itself is not deterministic (as shown in quantum mechanics). I even use to think things were more deterministic, similar to you. But, there is nothing to determine that everything has to revolve around survival, so it doesn't, life is free to make whatever it wants of itself. Things happen to be better for surviving in completely random ways, and that's it, there is no arms race. Mutations are completely random, they don't have to automatically make something only follow specific actions, and they don't anyway or revolve around anything at all. Also, rats don't have to show compassion to just female rats, and why would female rats even care about that anyway? Rats wouldn't be that sophisticated as to care if another rat could show compassion to other rats (excluding the mate). There is also another piece of evidence which is being able to view sub-conscious layers from your conscious perspective. If you can view that your sub-conscious is causing compulsions to affect your conscious decisions, then your conscious can't be that, so your consciousness cannot be those compulsions or those things causing compulsions, you would have to be above them. It is the same principal as "you cannot be in that chair if your staring at it from over here". The notion that your consciousness is tricking itself into thinking it exists is illogical. That's like saying that something doesn't exist because it exists.

I can't point to anything specifically as I either heard them from some education show or read them in a book somewhere, other than the discoveries that were made, such as that in times of greater oxygen, even bugs like dragonflies were much bigger with wingspans of maybe 2 feet. Also, dinosaurs lived in warmer time periods. And the last other one is just logic, if there's less resources available, then its logical that the things that can use energy most efficiently would survive although it's also based off of reports of the decreasing availability of resources and the fact that populations around the world (not just humans) have been increasing by large amounts. There's also another thing which is that larger animals usually have longer gestation periods, so there's a longer time for their offspring to get killed before they're even born, whereas with animals like insects they are small and reproduce very fast.

Wouldn't having multiple universes mean that you'd need to create more matter and energy (or subtract it) to create another universe? Further more, wouldn't that mean a big bang had to be spontaneously created and have its time sped up? And if that happened, wouldn't that mean an outcome follows a deterministic path because another universe "HAS" to have a path that corresponds with something that wasn't picked and also you would need to speed time up for that universe detirministically so it created that path?

I think some computer programs can do something similar, but I was wondering if you have some weird shape that has vertices that are formed from concave sides like this http://brainden.com/...76864110057.jpg To "Unbend" and object like the inverse of how the fabric of space can distort objects, then solve the angles and sides, and then "re-bend" it so that when you bent it, you would form the right angles and side lengths with the correct degree of bending. I suppose it wouldn't be much different than "unwrapping" a cylinder.

I forgot what the instrument is called, some kind of incubator, but you can buy it for a ton of money and it will insert custom plasmids into bacterium. There might be a similar things for viruses that you could introduce into your body, but that would never be available to the public.

1: there's less oxygen in the air now than there was at previous points 2: I'ts colder now than it was at previous points, and this is important because if its warmer, organisms can spend energy on growing rather than keeping their bodies warm. 3: Smaller is more efficient. As the number of organisms on this planet increases, the resources become less available, so its more efficient to need to use up less resources.

People think your Chinese because those people don't actually spend a lot of time around Chinese people. Chinese people think you don't look Chinese because they specifically know the features typical of a Chinese person.

Yeah but simple things like penicillin could have potentially been used even in the stone age, and I bet people had asthma and other diseases like that too who did fine. If something is really really that bad to have, then you just die from it and you can't pass it on.

I think it might be confusing because the ability to acquire traits might be related to inherited traits.

People usually cheat altruistic people when they are afraid of their own survival to a high point even if it's not fear they're feeling, but think it's something they need to do to survive, but that's not to say altruism isn't good or doesn't work at all. The human race wouldn't be anywhere if we couldn't selflessly help each other from time to time, and it would largely reduce survival rate. Your making way too big of a deal of these subconscious mechanisms, and because there's nothing actually determining what living things must do and indeed there is scientifically determinism can't exist (as far as we know right now), all things living things do themselves have to in some way be related to a conscious choice, otherwise they wouldn't do much anything (since there isn't much to "determine." what they do). It's arguable if this applies to bacterium and if they are actually alive or just chemical reactions, but I don't see how we could have the consciousness we have today without starting from somewhere, and there's even evidence for a progression of consciousness through evolution as we look at the actions and brains of other animals. Did you know it was recently discovered that rats can show compassion?

Altruism and selfishness are both required for surviving, or at least surviving well, often times more than others. Tiger's have more selfishness but they wouldn't ever reproduce if they were always competitive, and with ants or I guess other hive-mind bugs have more altruism but the same can be said about them being selfish.

Isn't a wave function describing the wave characteristics of a particle though?

Well first, what? I don't know "skinner", and 2: What huh? Duh? Of course things are going to be more likely to survive if they have compulsions like not wanting to die, now I don't even see what the fuss is about, you can ignore that if you want or not ignore it. The only thing I can really say that you describing when you apply consciousness is what I was saying before about habits, only with what your talking about its just a habit of not consciously thinking about things, which many people can break out of.

If the symptoms or the disease are/is easily treatable I don't even see this thing as a problem.