Is this a Creationist website?

[wtf]

I recently made the observation, in a thread about the odds of monkeys eventually typing out the works of Shakespeare, that this has in fact already happened. That human beings, according to the theory of evolution, are in fact monkeys who evolved to write the complete works of Shakespeare.

My post was moved to the Speculations forum. A post from one of the moderators says:

Please note that all posts that are baseless in scientific fact or that are outside of mainstream physics can and will be moved to the Speculations forum. Make sure that you think about the nature of your post before you hit the "post" button.

 

I must say that I am puzzled. Evidently some moderator on this site feels that discussion of evolution is "baseless in scientific fact."

 

I would like to know, so that I can avoid running afoul of the forum rules in the future, what exactly is this forum's position on evolution? If I say that primates on earth used to live wild in the woods and eventually, over millions of years, evolved to write the complete works of Shakespeare, is that idea regarded as being outside of mainstream science?

 

If so, I apologize and I affirm that the world was created in six days by God, and that He impregnated a woman who gave birth to the Baby Jesus, to whom I swear my total and undying devotion. I reject evolution and all heretical notions that man evolved from monkeys.

 

I trust that I am now back in the good graces of the moderator who labeled as "baseless speculation" my suggestion that humans are monkeys who learned to type. It's not my fault, I learned these heretical ideas in the public schools, from which religion has been ruthlessly expunged by the Godless minions of Satan and the United States Supreme Court. See Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962), in which the court "ruled it is unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and encourage its recitation in public schools." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engel_v._Vitale. May they all burn in everlasting hell.

 

Yours in the Brotherhood of Christ and against the evil Darwin and his deluded followers.

Edited April 25, 2017 by wtf

[CharonY]

Humans are apes, not monkeys. The split was over 40 million years ago. More importantly the question was a purely mathematical in monkey could be replaced by any random walk letter generator. You, however decided to start a breeding program.

[Velocity_Boy]

I think The problem the mods and we members had with your observations on evolution was that you were totally wrong in describing what the theory postulates in the first place. Specifically, that we are monkeys. We are not. And in fact, Evolutionary Theory makes no such claim to us being monkeys. Rather, it simply posits that we homo sapiens at one time, up until about 6 MYA, shared a common ancestor with the great apes and chimpanzees, before branching off onto our own sub species.

 

You also badly misrepresented the OP topic concerning the Infinite Monkey Theorem when you claimed it had already been done, since it was humans who have penned the great work of literature. You know as well as do we that this is not anything close to what the IMT deals with. Which is rather, a thought problem regarding probability.

 

I would be remiss at this juncture if I failed to mention I was and am a strong proponent of your thread getting moved to Speculation. I was in fact the first post to request it, I believe.

 

But now you're probably once again getting dangerously close to incurring Mod Wrath (good name for a rock band!) By saying we are all ganging up on you because we're Christian fundamentalist Creationists. And you were, like, a lone voice of scientific reason who was unjustly punished for not adhering to our beliefs.

 

Please.

 

You know as well as we that this is so absurd ad to be beyond a Straw Man argument. It sounds more like a little kid claiming his parents hate him because they sent him to his room for painting the cat.

Edited April 25, 2017 by Velocity_Boy

[wtf]

You're an idiot.

[Velocity_Boy]

Humans are apes, not monkeys. The split was over 40 million years ago. More importantly the question was a purely mathematical in monkey could be replaced by any random walk letter generator. You, however decided to start a breeding program.

Your timeline is way off. We made the anthropological break from the Great Apes about 6 MYA, as I explained in my above post. Not 40 million as you said. We were likely still on all fours that long ago, and more closely resembled large rodents.

 

Hope this helps!

 

 

http://www.livescience.com/3996-humans-chimps-split.html

Edited April 25, 2017 by Velocity_Boy

[Lord Antares]

Why is this necessary, wtf?

You are a respectable member and I wouldn't expect this from you.

 

The place where it was moved is irrelevant to the thread. If there is no difference in discussion, then you shouldn't mind it. It was split in the first place because you pointed out that it was a hijack. If you didn't, I think it would have probably got left where it was.

 

Ignore the pettiness and continue the argument. I agree that it should have been moved to philosophy (or evolution), but this is immaterial.

I would like to continue the discussion with you further, as only now has it dawned on me that saying that it already happened isn't irrelevant.

 

You also badly misrepresented the OP topic concerning the Infinite Monkey Theorem

 

It's funny that YOU should say that.

[CharonY]

Your timeline is way off. We made the anthropological break from the Great Apes about 6 MYA, as I explained in my above post. Not 40 million as you said. We were likely still on all fours that long ago, and more closely resembled large rodents.

 

Hope this helps!

 

 

http://www.livescience.com/3996-humans-chimps-split.html

 

I meant monkey-ape split. I thought it was clear, as humans never split from great apes (i.e. we are and will forever be Hominidae). I do realize that I only said "The split" which may have left ambiguity. The split between the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans was 6 MYA ago, if that is what you meant.

[StringJunky]

 

I meant monkey-ape split. I thought it was clear, as humans never split from great apes (i.e. we are and will forever be Hominidae). I do realize that I only said "The split" which may have left ambiguity. The split between the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans was 6 MYA ago, if that is what you meant.

I suspect wtf was using the word 'monkey' generically, to which, included the whole class of ape-like creatures..

Edited April 26, 2017 by StringJunky

[CharonY]

Quite possibly, but since it was used in the context of evolution I had a hard time not making a quip about it. Though to be honest, in hindsight I have no idea why I thought that it was amusing in my head. I blame it on the bachelor theses that I have to grade.

 

But looking at the other thread (and considering that it was in the maths section), the hijack is pretty obvious.

[wtf]

I suspect wtf was using the word 'monkey' generically, to which, included the whole class of ape-like creatures..

 

Of course, and you had no problem understanding that. I HAD to. The subject was monkeys. I wanted to make a point that evolution managed to produce a primate who typed out the works of Shakespeare. To do so I had to speak casually and conflate primates and monkeys and ignore the technical details of evolution. I had to ignore the technical point in order to make the real point. That evolution did what probability never could.

 

Someone missed my point so completely, and took my post so literally, that they fired off an indignant message to a moderator, who decided to go along with the deliberate misreading of my post.

 

I have no use for people who are either so literal they can't understand the larger point; or who PRETEND to be so literal in order to be able to reel off a sequence of gotchas, none of which are on point to the sense of what I wrote. People like that, I have no interest in responding to. My estimation of that individual stands as stated.

 

I'd like to hear from the moderator who moved my post. Did you honestly think I was suggesting a specific mechanism for evolution? That that was the *point* of my post? As opposed to simply noting the interesting fact that evolution provides a far better mechanism for writing plays than randomness does? Why did you choose to elevate the complainant's disingenuous literalism to forum policy?

Edited April 26, 2017 by wtf

[Velocity_Boy]

I meant monkey-ape split. I thought it was clear, as humans never split from great apes (i.e. we are and will forever be Hominidae). I do realize that I only said "The split" which may have left ambiguity. The split between the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans was 6 MYA ago, if that is what you meant.

But even if you were referring to an ape-monkey split your timeline is off.

 

It's been generally thought to have occurred about 20 Mya. Up until we fairly recently found a fossil that compels us to slide it back about five million years.

 

So I reckon that at 25 Mya.

 

Not anywhere close to forty.

 

Forgive me if I'm being overly picky or going offtopic, but this be my shite. LOL

 

http://io9.gizmodo.com/fossils-reveal-the-evolutionary-split-between-monkeys-a-507559881

[StringJunky]

 

Of course, and you had no problem understanding that. I HAD to. The subject was monkeys. I wanted to make a point that evolution managed to produce a primate who typed out the works of Shakespeare. To do so I had to speak casually and conflate primates and monkeys and ignore the technical details of evolution. I had to ignore the technical point in order to make the real point. That evolution did what probability never could.

 

Someone missed my point so completely, and took my post so literally, that they fired off an indignant message to a moderator, who decided to go along with the deliberate misreading of my post.

 

I have no use for people who are either so literal they can't understand the larger point; or who PRETEND to be so literal in order to be able to reel off a sequence of gotchas, none of which are on point to the sense of what I wrote. People like that, I have no interest in responding to. My estimation of that individual stands as stated.

 

I'd like to hear from the moderator who moved my post. Did you honestly think I was suggesting a specific mechanism for evolution? As opposed to simply noting that evolution provides a far better mechanism for writing plays than randomness does? Why did you choose to elevate the complainant's disingenuous literalism to forum policy?

Superfluous pedantry gets on my nerves too.

[wtf]

Superfluous pedantry gets on my nerves too.

 

I'd like to hear from the moderator, not just the critic. I get that the critic stated his case. I am curious to know why the moderator bought it.

Why is this necessary, wtf?

You are a respectable member and I wouldn't expect this from you.

 

 

Thanks for the kind words. If I had it to do over again I'd have either made my point in a much more literal way, or else said nothing at all.

Edited April 26, 2017 by wtf

[CharonY]

But even if you were referring to an ape-monkey split your timeline is off.

 

It's been generally thought to have occurred about 20 Mya. Up until we fairly recently found a fossil that compels us to slide it back about five million years.

 

So I reckon that at 25 Mya.

 

Not anywhere close to forty.

 

Forgive me if I'm being overly picky or going offtopic, but this be my shite. LOL

 

http://io9.gizmodo.com/fossils-reveal-the-evolutionary-split-between-monkeys-a-507559881

 

No worries, pedantry is fine (though probably going off-topic, but then it is my fault by starting that). My number was based on the memory of a molecular clock paper, but upon revisiting the high end estimate was actually ~35 MYA. However, I think you may misunderstood the article, though (you'll have to read the actual paper, the report is a bit on the incoherent side). It was not assumed that divergence happened 20 MYA, but people were unable to find catarrhine fossils older than that (and note, not finding a suspected fossil is no evidence of its absence in itself). As I mentioned, this does not fit what has been estimated using molecular data. As the fossils were found in a 25 MYA stratum and exhibited the traits of old world monkey and apes, respectively, it means that the split must have happened before that, putting the paleontological evidence closer to molecular estimates. One would need to find fossils roughly 10 MYA further back to have actually a fossil record of the split.

 

If you are really interested in these topics I encourage you to read the original papers, as most of these short articles really do a rather bad job to contextualize what the researchers have found.

[Phi for All]

You're an idiot.

 

!

Moderator Note

... but you got the warning point. Hmmm.

 

Let's be civil, folks.

[John Cuthber]

As long as we accept that the split between men and monkeys happened more than about 500 years ago we accept that monkeys didn't write Hamlet.

How much earlier it was doesn't matter.

This would be a creationist site if someone came up with valid evidence for creation.

[CharonY]

As long as we accept that the split between men and monkeys happened more than about 500 years ago we accept that monkeys didn't write Hamlet.

How much earlier it was doesn't matter.

This would be a creationist site if someone came up with valid evidence for creation.

I am pretty sure that somewhere, someone is training monkeys to write assignments, though.

[Argent]

 

Of course, and you had no problem understanding that. I HAD to. The subject was monkeys. I wanted to make a point that evolution managed to produce a primate who typed out the works of Shakespeare. To do so I had to speak casually and conflate primates and monkeys and ignore the technical details of evolution. I had to ignore the technical point in order to make the real point. That evolution did what probability never could.

 

Someone missed my point so completely, and took my post so literally, that they fired off an indignant message to a moderator, who decided to go along with the deliberate misreading of my post.

 

I have no use for people who are either so literal they can't understand the larger point; or who PRETEND to be so literal in order to be able to reel off a sequence of gotchas, none of which are on point to the sense of what I wrote. People like that, I have no interest in responding to. My estimation of that individual stands as stated.

 

I'd like to hear from the moderator who moved my post. Did you honestly think I was suggesting a specific mechanism for evolution? That that was the *point* of my post? As opposed to simply noting the interesting fact that evolution provides a far better mechanism for writing plays than randomness does? Why did you choose to elevate the complainant's disingenuous literalism to forum policy?

You might wish to consider these points -

 

Several people have misinterpreted your argument.

Each of these people has, at least, a sound reputation on the forum for an understanding of science.

No one has chosen to defend your position.

It is therefore possible (and I think, probable) that you just presented your idea rather badly.

 

Conclusion - blaming others for your own poor writing is funny when the topic is about "monkeys" writing Shakespeare.

[wtf]

No one has chosen to defend your position

 

Factually false, read the two threads. People who understood me may be in the minority but the set's not empty.

 

I won't be posting further on this topic.

Edited April 26, 2017 by wtf

[Lord Antares]

But will you reply in the other one?

[StringJunky]

People aren't in sync sometimes and stuff like this happens. I think it's best if this thing is just dropped.