Mokele

Dying young, usually. In all seriousness, they probably *do* get it, but it doesn't cause trouble because a) their hearts beat much more slowly and at lower pressure, so hardening wouldn't inconvenience them as much and b) hardening would usually occur in a high-fat diet, which tends to kill reptiles off in other ways before the circulatory system can fail (usually kidney stones, kidney failure, bowel impaction, and gout). Quite possibly, there's been so much bio-prospecting going on with snake venoms that nobody can keep track. But they *do* have components that could help treat various circulatory disorders if used in *very* low doses. Higher doses tend to make blood flow very well...typically out of you, and from organs that really shouldn't be bleeding. Yes, but us hairy people have better genes. Testosterone is an immuno-supressant, so only males with very strong immune systems can produce a lot of it, which is required for the secondary sexual characteristics of body hair, facial hair, broad shoulders, deep voice, etc. In a very real sense, those without such hair are less of a man. Mokele

If you're going to insist on continual mental mastrubation of this sort, could you have the decency to use a tissue, rather than spilling it all over the board? Mokele

Possibly. After all, control systems can be extremely complex and intricate without be "intelligent", right? IMHO, there's a big difference between "intelligence" (which connotates learning, reasoning, etc) and simply a complex control system. If the environment is not sufficiently variable for intelligence to be advantageous, then it won't evolve, and all we'll get is complex control systems. Ergo it is not inevitable without certain environmental components. I think the problem is that you trat complexity as if it has no drawbacks, which is just not so. Let's consider humans, for example. We are very complex, and have complex nervous systems capable of intelligence, which, I agree, makes our resource use more effective. However, we pay for that, literally: that same complex nervous system consumes over 20% of our body's calories, imposing a *huge* metabolic demand compared to other organisms of the same size. There's other downsides too. For instance, consider two bacteria, one with twice the DNA (and twice as many genes with twice as many different functions) of the other. That might be useful, but it *does* pay a price: increased time and resources needed to replicate that DNA when reproducing. So you have two competitors, one that is less efficient but faster at reproducing, while the other is more efficient but slower. If resources are abundant, and that efficiency isn't enough to counteract the problem of slower reproduction, the more complex species will be selected *against*. Complexity also requires specialization of cells, which can also have penalties, especially if the cells become so specialized they can no longer reproduce, like nerve or muscle cells. Imagine two other competitor species, simple and complex, in an environment in which damage and loss of appendages is commonplace. If the simple one, by virtue of it's simplicity, can re-grow these appendages, it might have a greater advantage then the now-crippled yet efficient complex species. My point is that, while I *do* see the advantage of complexity, in terms of increased efficiency, I also see numerous disadvantages that can restrict or prevent further complexity from being selectively useful when all the costs and benefits are added up. And all of these living things have a common ancestor, yes? Which lived X million years ago. So, that means *all* living organisms on earth have had precisely the same amount of time to evolve complexity. If you're right, why does the level vary? Why are sponges still here, when tunicates do the same job with more complexity? Why aren't *all* species as complex as we are? The answer is simple: that complexity also has disadvantages, and that the local environment in which a species evolves may be such that it is actually *disadvantageous* to increase in complexity. The atrophy of parasite species should be sufficient to show that, in some cases, simplicity is actually *better* than complexity. And this underscores my case: that increases in complexity only occur when evolutionary and environmental conditions are favorable towards it. These situations are *not* guaranteed, by any stretch, and are, in fact, few and far between. Ergo, it is conceivable that, under certain circumstances, an environment or even an entire world would have constraints such that complexity of our level could not arise. That mere possibility is enough to counter your assertation that it *must* arise. Bah, overdeveloped, self-important fuzzballs. The vast majority of mammals are intellectually inferior to the common sand goanna. It's just that goannas don't waste their minds on socialization and play, but instead focus on "how do I kill and eat that tasty little mammal over there?" Sorry, but I study reptiles almost exclusively, and, in my experience, the only thing supporting the "specialness" of mammals is human bias, not any actual significantly unique or interesting features. Taken objectively, mammals are a modestly sucessful group of limited species richness and poor diversity, at best. After all, over 65% of mammals are either bats or rodents. Oh, no worries, but, if I might be so bold, if you're starting with an intuition and trying to amass evidence to support it, that might be the wrong way to go about things, since you're essentially assuming you're right from the get-go. Mokele

In combination with Krul's note about physical forces, the stomach lining also contains "stretch receptors" which tell us when the stomach is distended. Perhaps the stomach's lining get stretched somehow during the motion, and this causes the receptors to fire in an unusual or erratic way, generating a "weird feeling". Mokele

Oh, I don't doubt that (except for when I'm forced to deal with fraternity members). I'm just pointing out that it does not *necessarily* lead to complexity in *all* species. Interesting, and I see your point, and agree to a point. However, I'd also point out that, in all this time, our complexity is still limited. Perhaps there is a point of diminishing returns, so to speak, beyond which increases in complexity don't yeild enough advantage in resource efficiency to outweight the attendant problems in other arenas (such as frailty; we aren't exactly great survivors compared to simpler life forms). And perhaps this point of diminishing returns is dependent upon environment. To tie in to exobiology, perhaps on other, harsher worlds, the point of diminishing returns for complexity is much lower than here. Perhaps even the harshness of early earth could have been the reason that complex life took so long to show up. Well, while intelligence is a form of complexity, is it a necessary form? Couldn't a high level of complexity form in other systems, without a complex nervous system? I'm just hesitant about generalizing based on a sample size of one. After all, we've only seen life on this planet, and it's only evolved once, so there's not a lot of room for testing "what if's" in that. Mokele

The others seem to have this covered, but I'd like to add that a lot of your objections seem to have to do with origins of the universe, the Earth, and the first life. While these are interesting fields, they are not evolution, nor are they needed for it. Evolution is simply a process that happens on life under certain conditions (which happen to be nearly universal conditions on this world). Where that life came from doesn't matter to evolution. As I've said before, it's like gravity; gravity doesn't give a crap whether I bought a ball from a store or carved it from wood myself, it'll make it drop all the same. Mokele

Why would "hyperspace" have anything more than different formulations of our own rules, since it's a (possible) part of our universe, albeit usually inacessible? Furthermore, even if it is "lawless" like dreams, that similarity does not necessarily unite them. On an off-topic note, I'd like to say that I *love* the title of the thread. Mokele

As I often say, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but whips and chains excite me." Mokele

I'm thinking that if I can spew technobabble convincingly enough, I could claim to have a "Grand Unified Theory" with just as much support as any of the others, and probably also get a book deal out of it. Now *there's* a topic: "Do book deals for physicists drive the search for the grand unified theory?" Mokele

IMM, while I agree, I'd like to point out (as I did somewhere deep in the depths of this thread and I can't be bothered to look) that, just as a zygote is alive, so are the haploid precursors, ergo conception itself merely means that the life forms involved undergo fusion and genetic alteration. With the possible exception of a zygote created in the lab from genetic material of a deceased individual, life doesn't actually "begin" except once, about 3.8 billion years ago. Ever since then, it's been an unbroken chain of life. I'd also add that I think the question of "When does a developing human become a 'person', and what are the criterion to assess that?" is of value to the discussion. Mokele

I agree, but for more than probabalistic reasons. Evolution only works on what's on the table, so to speak, what is around and can occur by mutation. Obviously, this isn't unlimited; there are numerous constraints on evolution because of our biology. Alien systems will likely have different fundamental biology, and thus different constraints. I use the "building blocks" analogy. Regardless of it's form, life on earth is all made of the same cubic blocks. Constraints can easily lead different piles of blocks into big cubes of many blocks (convergent evolution). But what if the alien "blocks" are tetrahedrons? No matter what the conditions, you can't build a cube with those. Mokele

First, that's not what natural selection means. Second, while malnutrition and vitamin/mineral deficiencies *can* cause *some* diseases, to claim that they cause "most" isn't supportable in the least. Malaria has killed many more people than heart disease, and continues to do so. We just don't see it locally because we live in a "developed" country. The prevalence of "lifestyle diseases" is purely secondary. Less developed countries don't have them because people are dying from cholera, malaria, AIDS, Black Death (yes, it's still around, namely in India), and assorted other microbal nastiness, not because of any "natural lifestyle". The only reason we have cancer so much now is because people are actually living long enough for it to form, rather than dying of sleeping sickness at age 35. Mokele

So what? Does that mean that I can't study a honeybee hive? After all, it's far more fast-paced and also always changing. It presents obstacles to study, I agree, but I fail to see why it prevents any scientific study at all. I mean, if we can study elements that only exist artificially, for a fraction of a second, why are humans that hard? Mokele

Well, the wires aren't bare along their whole length, just at the tips that poke into muscle tissue. Because of the anatomy of the system, we can't make use of less invasive techniques that don't directly measure particular individual muscles. Thanks!

How is there any qualitative difference between studying the behavior of a human, a chimp and a rat? I mean, they're all mammals, and thus similar in form and behavior. What makes the study of human behavior different form the study of monkey behavior, which you evidently consider a science? After all, the only difference is that we're smarter, and think faster. That's all, we're just a smart monkey. I fail to see how qualitative differences could even arise. How does our ability to interpret the finding in any way we see fit make it less of science? I mean, look at quantum physics and the sheer amount of Newage (no space, pronounced like "sewage") crap that's been based on it and typical misunderstandings of it. Just because we can apply, for instance, operant conditioning to rid someone of a phobia does not make the discovery of operant conditioning any less of a scientific discovery. That's like saying that the invention of lasers for CD players make quantum not a science. I know of Chaos theory, but fail to see what it has to do with this discussion. Mokele

Microbes are incredibly successful, as are various forms of worms (even we share the tube-within-a-tube bodyplan, just with some extra dooddads inside and outside). In contrast, the primate body form has only shown up once, in a comparatively unimportant group of mammals with highly limited range and ecology, and low diversity. The simplicity, effectiveness, and versatility of worms and microbes indicates they are probably going to show up in a wide variety of environments. The complexity, inefficiency and specialization of the primate form means that is improbable (though not impossible) for the conditions that lead to it's evolution to occur again on another world. Mokele

Wrong, in two major ways. Firstly, biology *also* studies social interactions, just not between humans. Dominance rituals, mating dances, competition within and between species, etc. Other animals can learn from each other two; even octopi can learn a skill by watching a fellow perform it. Chimps and many other primates have "cultures", in which certain learned behaviors are present or absent or variant between populations. Learning is common, and how does that prevent the study of anything? It makes it harder, yes, but that can be dealt with. Secondly, why do you assume we cannot quantify and discretely measure human interactions. I can quantify, for example, how stressed someone is by bullying, by simply taking blood samples immediately after the event and assessing corticosteroid levels. Other variables of behavior can be quantified, such as sterotyped patterns that always occur in response to a stimuli. Actually, many aspects of psychology deals with the quantifiable. For instance, the effectiveness of various therapies designed to get people off drugs can be quantified by the rate of relapse. Not to mention that "pyschology" often includes things as simple as exploring how our sensory system works and interacts with our brain (do congitive biases alter perceptions, for instance). So, is any study in biology which deals with animals that can learn "not science"? By your criterion, all studies of animal behavior are "not science" because it interacts with the environment. Hell, by your criterion, *genetics* isn't a science because genes and gene products interact with the environment to produce the phenotype of the organism. For instance, siamese cats are 100% black, geneticly. But on the protiens in the melanin production pathway is temperature senstive, and can't function at the temp of the cat's skin over the main body, only in the cooler extremities, hence why the "tips" of the animal are black. But, since the environment is involved, I guess you don't think that's a scientific conclusion. I'm studying snake locomotion. The snakes do *not* behave in the same way between trials. Does this mean my results are useless and "not science" because the cycle time of the snake's movement I find is only approximate? In fact, by your deterministic arguement, nothing is a science. Last I checked, a ball doesn't roll down a ramp with *precisely* the same speed every time; a million tiny random imperfections slightly alter the speed every time. What about chemistry? Ever read an NMR? The hydrogen spike isn't always in *exactly* the same place, nor is there a way to calculate it in advance to any reasonable accuracy. So it that not a science? Let's not forget biology as a whole, which tends to have all sorts of complicating factors that makes results go awry from what they "should" be. If you insist on total determinism, nothing is a science. If there's some "wiggle room", then the definition of what constitutes acceptable variablibity in predicted results in essentially arbitrary and therefore meaningless. What makes something a science? Hypothesis, prediction, observation, conclusion. Testable, falsifable hypotheses. Psychology as a whole clearly fits that bill, regardless of how odd some of the sub-fields are. After all, before you criticise Freud, remember that *some* of his ideas have been borne out by experimental tests, which I certainly cannot say for Superstring. Mokele

1) How does that even address my objection? 2) I'm not wasting my time on that link. I have better things to do that read crackpot websites, especially ones that have nothing to do with the subject at hand (except in your private little world). Honestly, stop wasting everyone's time.

BS. Prove it. Oh, that's right, you *can't*. You have not a single scrap of evidence to support this beyond "it sounds good". Guess this is why all of your posts are in the Psuedoscience forum. Well, that was fun. Now I'm gonna stop wasting time with you and get back to measuring and quantify the *evidence* I use to support my hypotheses, which is what *real* science does. Mokele

Ok, let's consider the path of two bouncy balls. They're governed by internal laws (basic physics principles), and interact with the environment, just like evolution. But there is *also* a random component. If you launch the balls from a mechanical launcher, each will not land in *precisely* the same spot as the other. Then, because of this difference, the next landing will be even more different, and so on and so forth. The longer they bounce, and the more complex the environment, the more different the location will be for the same time after launch. The tiny variations induced by the environment (air currents, bugs getting in the way and hit, etc) will accumulate and alter the outcome more and more with time. Now, evolution has internal rules, and interacts with the external world. But there *is* an element of randomness. The evolutionary paths of two creatures from the same starting point will be vastly different, because the "balls" are in a *very* complex environment and have been bouncing (thus accumulating the resulting changes due to randomness) for a very, *very* long time. That's a mixture of gibberish and BS. Life is not defined at the quantum level. If I step on a bug, I doubt I've made a coherent different in it's atoms at the quantum level. But it's still very, very dead. Quantum has no relevance to evolution, with the sole exception of perhaps the mechanisms of mutation. However, since such mutations are random with respect to fitness (whether or not they follow chemical laws), the total effect of quantum interactions on the path of evolutionary systems is 0. I see it as a drift into psuedoscientific gibberish and time wasting. I suggest you need to brush up on your knowledge of evolution, as it's evidently sorely lacking. Mokele

Actually, it's just the bare ends of two wires. The trick is to implant them into the muscle (the wires are *very* thin, and this is done under anaesthesia, so the animal doesn't feel any pain). Each barb will be located in a different muscle cell, and the cells depolarize (like a neuron) when they contract. Thus, the equipment reads the differences in voltage (intra-cellular ion concentrations) between the two cells, resulting in a large (if messy) amplitude jump when the muscle contracts. That's part of the end set up, after the amplifiers, along with a host of complicated stuff that synchronizes it with high-speed video and records the 13 channels we have. Basically, I'm after a wireless, lightweight way to get the signal from the snake to the rest of the equipment, so the wires don't constrain movement anymore. Mokele

Yes, there are consequences and interactions, but there is also probability. Sure, organisms that fixed CaCO3 evolved, but just because it *did* happen does not mean it *must* happen. That's like saying that just because yeterdays winning lotto number was 6357 means that it must always be so. The difference is that life has only played out once (that we know). What would have happened if such organisms had never evolved? That would have altered all of earth's history. My objection is merely that you state that certain outcomes are pre-destined, ignoring the massive levels of randomness in the system, and how that randomness can drasticly alter the outcome. Gould once said that if we rewound the tape of life and played it again, the results would be completely different with each playing. Well, remember, for over 3 billion years there weren't even multi-cellular life forms. Only recently have organisms with many cells and nervous systems shown up, and we're so recent that it's a blink of an eye in evolutionary time. And we aren't exactly terribly important, either: 50% of all living species are beetles, not mammals. Verebtrates are only a tiny fraction of life. Hell, 45% of all mammals are rodents. Life seems to get along just fine without intelligence. Furthermore, our brain takes up a *huge* amount of energy, 20% of our metabolism, iirc. It takes some pretty unique circumstances for something that costly (no matter what it is) to evolve and be of sufficient benefit not to be wiped out pretty quick. I disagree. How many "intelligent" species are there? Compare that to the number of monogenan flukes, parasites that have pretty much become nothing but a sack of gonads. Then there's all the other parasites that have undergone similar simplification. Evolution *can* lead to complexity, but does not necessarily, nor does it most often, IMHO. I think, instead, that we're more likely to *notice* complexity, and thereby get a skewed view of it. Sure, that complex deer is a product of evolution, but so are the ticks, tapeworms, fillarial worms, and flukes feasting on it. My point is that most organisms have done just fine without anything near our intellect, and there's no fossil record of anything with similar intellect to us (indicating, likely, that it's only happened once in the 560 million years of multicellular life). Our brains have paid off, but I think the real issue is the intermediate stages, before it's as usefull as now, but still pretty costly. I doubt evolutionary conditions to allow that development have happened too often, nor often coincided with a species with the capability of following such a path. So, basically, my answer boils down to beetles. Mokele

Except that humans, or even intelligent life, is *not* an inevitability of any sort, ergo no technological device is an inevitability. Species evolve to suit their environments (biotic and abiotic), which can change. Those environments might change for preditable reasons (like the slow movement of tectonic plates), or they might change for entirely random reasons (like 20-mile-wide rocks slamming into earth). Of course, this is ignoring that evolution itself is dependent on randomness (like when or if a mutation will occur) as well as subject to it (fat lot of good a new mutation for disease resistance does a species if the sole carrier, the first mutant, dies when trying to cross the freeway). Since the evolutionary path that lead to us is based on millions of random events, large and small, to assert that there is any sort of inevitable outcome is foolish. We are no more inevitable than this week's lotto numbers, and a good deal less probable. Mokele

Ok, I'll preface this by saying I know almost nothing about electronics, except the bare minimum I'm picked up fro Physics 2 and working with various things at the user level. Anyhow, a bit of background: I'm going to be doing experiments soon involving electromyography, the detection of electrical impulses in muscles to tell when they're active. Specifically, I'll be working with snakes, on locomotion. Now, our current setup has direct wiring, in that the wires go from the snake to the little screw-down connector thingys (told you I was bad at electronics) to the amps, etc, which means the length of the wires constrains the motion of the animal. What I'm wondering is this: Is there some sort of cool transmitter-type thing which I could use instead, so the input signal could be sent to a reciever (thus giving the animals more freedom of movement)? The input signal is from 2 wires, and is basically random fluctuations in the microvolt range (hence why we have the huge set of amps) that vary in amplitude (we look for the places where the amplitude massively increases, indicating activity). Any sort of transmitter would only need a range of about 12 feet, but would need to be a) cheap b) without a wire for power supply (since that would eliminate the benefit of a transmitter at all) and c) small, by which I mean under a gram in weight, ideally, though any sort of potential device in that size range would be great. I realize the size is probably going to be the most difficult part, but the problem is that things that are too big will seriously alter the animal's locomotion. A 16 gram object is 10% of the total body mass of some of the these animals. On the other hand, any huge equipment on the receiving end would be fine. So, basically, is this sort of thing even possible? Is it feasible? If yes to both, where should I go to learn how to make these things? Mokele

Actually, that's a myth; they "hide" by laying down on the ground behind dunes and such with their neck flat on the ground. Should that fail, they run or fight (and their kicks are easily lethal). What, hiding? Simple genetic programming governing nervous system development. Individuals with genotypes that resulted in hiding from predators survived better, and thus the trait became fixed. Mokele