Unsatisfactory Scientific Explanations?

[Ratjaws]

i guess the concept we are discussing here is creativity.
there is no doubt that computers can display signs of learning and intelligence, but i seriously question whether they can be truly creative.
another area where humans outrank computers is processing density.
just the ability of taking a "snapshot" of your field of view and instantly analyzing it is still far beyond current computing ability.
not to mention picking a random object in that field of view and ad libing about it.
all this, at a few hundred hertz, 3 pounds, and 20 watts, completely outstrips even the most advanced super computer.

will any of this ever be achieved?
not with current technology.
the only way this will be achieved is by a fundamental breakthrough in computing concepts and architecture.
frankly, i can't envision a computer operating on an arbitrary set of guidelines, which must happen if computers were to become truly human.
creativity, resourcefulness, instincts, a computer simply cannot come up with this stuff on its own.

Whois,
There is much here I would have to disagree with. No the concept we ultimately discuss is two-fold: life (organized matter) and intelligence in comparison to the non-living matter of a computer. Furthermore intelligence requires a move from matter to what is immaterial and therefore we leave the strict purview of science. As I understand your statement that "the only way this will be achieved is by a fundamental breakthrough in computing concepts and architecture," you come from a materialist perspective. I suspect to you a soul (the animating form of the body material) is just matter more complex. If so I adamantly disagree as thought itself is not material and cannot be put under a microscope. Our idea of a bolt cannot be broken down while the obect of that idea, the bolt itself can be broken down into it's material components. Your are correct that a computer cannot be operated on a "an arbitrary set of guidelines" so the implication here is that human intelligence is simply arbitrary. It is not and in fact is the very reason why the computers we have today operate on a non-arbitrary basis. This is to say they manifest intelligence even though they are not intelligent.

Finally you use the word "creative" in a very loose sense. Strictly speaking to create is to start from nothing and end with something. Therefore human beings are not capable of this; we fashion or produce, that is cause something to come from something. To create is therefore divine while to produce is a human imitation of that creativity found only in a being that has it's existence in itself. If human beings could draw their existence from themselves they would not die yet that is clearly a characteristic of the human condition. Furthermore, as I've stated in other terms in the post you reply to a computer cannot fashion or produce without the human behind it. From an ontological point of view we are the form of a computer. This is to say personal intelligence is the cause artificial "intelligence," which as I've said before is an imitation and nothing more. I can go further with this analogy by saying that the Creator is our form or that our intelligence which is finite is an imitation (or mirror) of our Creator. That is the matter of our body organizes precisely because of a Being whose is our source, has within Itself this power to organize and gives the matter we call our body that power. Our form is therefore infinite (not in the sense of omniscience but in the sense that we have infinite capacity, that is we can continue to know more and more on into eternity) while the computer's form is finite (comes from our finite intelligence; our lack of omniscience). Creativity in the sense of our ability to fashion has it's cause in our intelligence just as our Creator's creativity (ex-nihilo or from out of nothing) has it's cause in a Being whose subsistence is within itself. We are an imitation of our Creator as a computer is an imitation of us. Notice here that the cause is always greater than the effect AND the effect must be in the cause or it could not exist.

 

[Gracchus]

i think that what is being said here is, genes are fixed as a matter of course, no matter what or where they are.

No, what is being said is that genetic drift involves non-coding DNA or phenotypical changes that have no selective advantage or disadvantage.

there are only 2 ways these genes will be eliminated, by the ability of DNA to repair itself, or if these fixed genes somehow interferes with reproduction.

The gene that results in positive selection may, in a different environment, become maladaptive. For instance, a gene that codes for thicker fur would be beneficial in a cold environment, but deadly in an environment that was becoming warmer. A gene will be "fixed" only so long as it is beneficial or as long as it does not suffer a further mutation.

natural selection probably plays a very minor role in selection because of the organisms ability to adapt to the environment.

Darwin differentiated "natural selection" from the selective pressures applied by conscious human choices, but if we regard humans as "natural" elements of the environment, there is only selection.

i say the above for 2 reasons.
first is the molecular clock hypothesis of genes.
this implies genes become fixed simply because that's what they do.

Genes may vanish by chance, by replacement, or because they are maladaptive. DNA that does not code for phenotype can change by mutation without effect.

second is, it's becoming apparent that evolution is not an adaptionist paradigm.

Evolution is neutral. Some organisms survive. Most do not. Some species survive for a while. Some evolve into different species. Most have gone extinct.

the genomes of organisms along the timeline and their apparent decreasing complexity supports this.

Decreasing complexity? I have asked you to specify what you mean by complexity.

the genomes of life show little, if any, signs of optimal design.

Why would we expect evolution to show signs of "optimal design"? There is no one "optimal design". What is adaptive in one environment may be lethal in another.

in this regard, evolution programs such as boxcar2d do not realistically model evolution.

No model is precisely accurate. I am not sure what point you are trying to make.

don't feel bad.

I don't.

i've seen threads go on page after page arguing what complexity is, even smith in the referenced paper has questions about it.

So, until we have a working definition, it is merely a red herring to bring it up.

i ran across a very good definition the other day, a month ago i guess, but i don't think i saved the page it was on.

Well, present your definition and how you would measure complexity.

even if i did save it, it would be hard to find it because i don't have a directory structure for my evolution folder.

A good part of science is the organization of information.

i have well over 200 megabytes of web pages and PDFs in my folder, have any idea how many items that is?

Assuming more than one byte per page and PDF, it would be less than two hundred million items.

anyway, this definition was on the gene scale and mentioned something about the ability to code for an increasing number of proteins.
the more proteins it could code for, the more complex it was.

A genome is the total collection of genes, so, are we talking, then, about the complexity of a genome?

it might seem obvious to biologists, but i now understand why bacteria is considered more complex than humans.

And, many bacteria, by that criterion are, indeed, more complex. The cells of eukaryotes are more varied in physical structure than bacterial cells, and multicellular organisms more complex on the organismal level than protists.

hmmm . . .
okay, i reluctantly agree, but i have doubts.
the above might be an explanation for sequences, but not for a single gene event.

A single gene event is a mutation.

then again, a single base pair change, which could be a mutation,...

A change in a gene is a mutation, by definition.

... can change an entire sequence.

And the change of a single letter may change the meaning of a word, a sentence or an argument. What is your point?

your hypothesis is questionable.

Of course it is. Science is supposed to question everything. It settle for what works, until something works better.

a hypothesis must also be able to be falsified in order to be a valid hypothesis.
this is one of the reasons creationism creeps into debates such as this, and please don't.

I won't, unless you bring it up.

like i said earlier, i'm not doubting it happens, but i do question how scientists actually knows this stuff happened so long ago.

Without good reason, we generally don't doubt that the laws of physics and chemistry have remained constant over time. If we see that certain conditions cause certain outcomes today, we are justified in assuming, that those conditions would have produced the same outcomes in the past.

a single base pair mutation can screw up an entire sequence, and a single gene can be easily seen as mutated instead of HGT.

And sometimes we might be interested in whether a gene was a mutated form of an earlier gene, or had been inserted by a retro-virus or HGT.

gene duplication can also be a factor.

Yes, and a duplicated copy of a gene can be mutated while leaving the original copy functional. And remember, different genes may be "competing" for a limited supply of amino acids. This can effect the rate or quantity of protein synthesis. But that's another story, and very significant in the regional differentiation of a fertilized ovum.

 

[Ratjaws]

There is no difference between living and non-living matter, just as there is no difference between the maple wood in a plank and the maple wood in a chair. "Life" is a set of chemical reactions, "an orderly decay of energy states", a pattern of flows of matter, electrical charge and heat.

Gracchus,
There is difference and it is not just complexity, nor simply chemical reaction or change of energy states. Of course what is substantial in a maple wood plank or chair is the same even while their accidental components differ. If this we not true we would not distinguish plank from chair. Yet you gloss over the fact that they are not living matter despite the fact they came from a maple tree that was alive. Simple observation informs us that the tree shows life by growth and assimilation of nutrients while a plank or chair lack these characteristics of life. The key word in what said is "orderly," the implication is that life has dynamic order while non-living being possesses a non-dynamic order. The problem for you is to explain why the different kinds of order and you cannot do it with the scientific method alone. In fact you must interpret your data and although we can both see the same datum we can both have different conclusions. Your conclusion is wrong because you interpret the data to mean what it does not.

Implied in your view is that order has its cause in itself... and this is simply not true. Order simple or complex must have a cause outside itself otherwise matter would never become disorganized... which it does. So it's cause must be in something else we call the form (Aristotle's distinction between form and matter). Many scientists use these terms detached from their original source in Greek metaphysics and this is a very dishonest way to go about any science. As I've said previously living matter has a form that is material in nature while intelligent living matter must have an immaterial form precisely because the product of intelligence (or thought) is not material.

The stance you take here is materialist and leaves much to be desired. Not only are there many holes in your interpretation of the reality around you, your metaphysics is either flawed or nonexistent. If you neglect this field of knowledge because you consider your scientific method to be sufficient then this would explain how you error on such basic observations as the profound difference between inanimate and animate matter. Of course this error becomes more serious when you move to intelligent life where form must by nature of its effects be immaterial. Order in matter non-living, living and intelligent is the effect of which you have to explain its cause.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Gracchus,
There is difference and it is not just complexity, nor simply chemical reaction or change of energy states. Of course what is substantial in a maple wood plank or chair is the same even while their accidental components differ. If this we not true we would not distinguish plank from chair. Yet you gloss over the fact that they are not living matter despite the fact they came from a maple tree that was alive. Simple observation informs us that the tree shows life by growth and assimilation of nutrients while a plank or chair lack these characteristics of life. The key word in what said is "orderly," the implication is that life has dynamic order while non-living being possesses a non-dynamic order. The problem for you is to explain why the different kinds of order and you cannot do it with the scientific method alone. In fact you must interpret your data and although we can both see the same datum we can both have different conclusions. Your conclusion is wrong because you interpret the data to mean what it does not.

Implied in your view is that order has its cause in itself... and this is simply not true. Order simple or complex must have a cause outside itself otherwise matter would never become disorganized... which it does. So it's cause must be in something else we call the form (Aristotle's distinction between form and matter). Many scientists use these terms detached from their original source in Greek metaphysics and this is a very dishonest way to go about any science. As I've said previously living matter has a form that is material in nature while intelligent living matter must have an immaterial form precisely because the product of intelligence (or thought) is not material.

The stance you take here is materialist and leaves much to be desired. Not only are there many holes in your interpretation of the reality around you, your metaphysics is either flawed or nonexistent. If you neglect this field of knowledge because you consider your scientific method to be sufficient then this would explain how you error on such basic observations as the profound difference between inanimate and animate matter. Of course this error becomes more serious when you move to intelligent life where form must by nature of its effects be immaterial. Order in matter non-living, living and intelligent is the effect of which you have to explain its cause.

Living matter is a series of chemical reactions, most of which will happen naturally without energy or catalysts, just not as effectively or quickly. The perceived complexity is simply the result of the chemicals that are associated with life evolving together, with the more efficient combinations being able to reproduce themselves faster and better than competitors, and thus improving the system over time.

 

[whois]

Whois,
There is much here I would have to disagree with. No the concept we ultimately discuss is two-fold: life (organized matter) and intelligence in comparison to the non-living matter of a computer.

okay, you are basing your opinion on what current technology is giving us.
current technology is based on digital binary that operates mainly by discrete voltages levels according to a plan, or program.
there must be a fundamental breakthrough that not only changes the digital binary concept but also the discrete logic associated with current technology.
the following webpage gives some interesting parallels between DNA and C programming and could very well serve as a basis for this breakthrough.
the computers of tomorrow could very well be DNA based.
once this has been achieved, the lines between human and machine will probably be erased.
ds9a.nl/amazing-dna/
we might not have to go that far though.
the perfection of the mind/ machine interface can have astounding effects on our abilities.
even with current technology, such a device coupled with 3D printing will give us the ability to "think things into existence"

Furthermore intelligence requires a move from matter to what is immaterial and therefore we leave the strict purview of science. As I understand your statement that "the only way this will be achieved is by a fundamental breakthrough in computing concepts and architecture," you come from a materialist perspective. I suspect to you a soul (the animating form of the body material) is just matter more complex. If so I adamantly disagree as thought itself is not material and cannot be put under a microscope.

do you really believe that tress and plants can think?
no, thoughts come from a brain, and brains are material.
even animals show signs of judgement, doctors recommend pets for the lonely and depressed, not plants.

Your are correct that a computer cannot be operated on a "an arbitrary set of guidelines" so the implication here is that human intelligence is simply arbitrary. It is not and in fact is the very reason why the computers we have today operate on a non-arbitrary basis. This is to say they manifest intelligence even though they are not intelligent.

correct, with current technology.

Finally you use the word "creative" in a very loose sense. Strictly speaking to create is to start from nothing and end with something. Therefore human beings are not capable of this; we fashion or produce, that is cause something to come from something.

i disagree.
google mandelbox on youtube.
this stuff does not exist in nature, it was created by humans.
furthermore it couldn't exist without the aid of computers.

To create is therefore divine while to produce is a human imitation of that creativity found only in a being that has it's existence in itself. If human beings could draw their existence from themselves they would not die yet that is clearly a characteristic of the human condition.

i believe that science can indeed create a human that doesn't die, or at the very least lives for 3,000 years.
there is already exiting evidence that proves genomes can live that long.

 

[Gracchus]

Gracchus,
There is difference and it is not just complexity, nor simply chemical reaction or change of energy states.

And what is the difference?

Of course what is substantial in a maple wood plank or chair is the same even while their accidental components differ. If this we not true we would not distinguish plank from chair.

What is different is not the type of matter, it is the patterns in which it appears.

Yet you gloss over the fact that they are not living matter despite the fact they came from a maple tree that was alive. Simple observation informs us that the tree shows life by growth and assimilation of nutrients while a plank or chair lack these characteristics of life.

Yes, but assimilation and growth are chemical reactions.

The key word in what said is "orderly," the implication is that life has dynamic order while non-living being possesses a non-dynamic order.

"Pure" HOH (water) is actually a dynamic process, involving shifts between H2O, H3O+ (hydronium ion), OH- (hydroxide ion), and even trace amounts of H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide). The Oxygen is continually losing and gaining Hydrogen atoms. MOst people would probably deny, however, that water is alive. It is a different set of reactions. Chemicals react to form more stable molecules. But energy flows can reverse reactions. "Life" is simply one set of chemical reactions. It follows the same laws of physics and chemistry as non-life.

The problem for you is to explain why the different kinds of order and you cannot do it with the scientific method alone.

Why not? How are the "different kinds of order" different?

In fact you must interpret your data and although we can both see the same datum we can both have different conclusions.

And a third grader can look at the same math as a professor of mathematics and draw from it no conclusion at all. Not all conclusions deserve equal respect, or inspire equal confidence.

Your conclusion is wrong because you interpret the data to mean what it does not.

Which data have I misinterpreted?
You have proclaimed that there are "different kinds of order" but you have not defined the differences.

Implied in your view is that order has its cause in itself... and this is simply not true. Order simple or complex must have a cause outside itself otherwise matter would never become disorganized... which it does.

And "disorganized" matter also becomes organized when subjected to flows of energy. Consider that flowing water can render unsorted rock detritus into boulders, cobbles, pebbles, gravel, sand and clay.

So it's cause must be in something else we call the form (Aristotle's distinction between form and matter).

Aristotle was a very smart man, but rather deficient, by modern standards, in physics, chemistry, biology, and even mathematics.

Many scientists use these terms detached from their original source in Greek metaphysics and this is a very dishonest way to go about any science.

No! Modern science does however have different methods and standards from ancient Greece.

As I've said previously living matter has a form that is material in nature while intelligent living matter must have an immaterial form precisely because the product of intelligence (or thought) is not material.

You keep saying it, as if repeating unsupported and ... problematic ... assertions can make it true.
What is "immaterial" is the patterned flow of energy following the observed laws of thermodynamics. Science has long since discarded the idea of "vitalism". Matter is matter, and life is a shifting pattern of matter.

The stance you take here is materialist and leaves much to be desired.

Have you considered that what you desire to be real may not be necessary? "Desire" don't feed the bulldog. Wishing and wanting doesn't make it so.

Not only are there many holes in your interpretation of the reality around you, your metaphysics is either flawed or nonexistent.

I regard "metaphysics" as the study of the non-perceptible. To quote Laplace, "I have no need of that hypothesis." "Metaphysics" cannot be demonstrated, or at least I have never seen such.

If you neglect this field of knowledge because you consider your scientific method to be sufficient then this would explain how you error on such basic observations as the profound difference between inanimate and animate matter.

You have not demonstrated any difference much less a profound difference. It is as if you were saying that I was making an error because I was not taking into account the political relations between fairies and leprechauns. I have no reason to consider such imponderables.

Of course this error becomes more serious when you move to intelligent life where form must by nature of its effects be immaterial. Order in matter non-living, living and intelligent is the effect of which you have to explain its cause.

As I have pointed out, flows of energy (or matter) can create orderly, even dynamic, patterns from disorder.
Here is a question: What contributions has "metaphysics" made to anything but emotional states? It makes you feel good because you can fill your ignorance with conjecture and imagination that cannot be confirmed. Other than that, what good is it?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

First off you cite computer simulation as one reason that your principle is good yet reality and computer sims are two different things. Artificial simulations can tell us of some accidental aspects of nature but certainly not what is substantial to nature... this is to use Aristotle's philosophical language. The principle you say you've adopted is at the level of substance (corporeal, physical or empirical) in that it tries to encompass all of nature's unfolding and change.

The simulation I intended was that of the basic principle behind evolution by natural selection - heritable variation with selection. It happens in nature - creatures reproduce and their offspring vary genetically; the offspring are then selected for fitness in the environment, and those that survive to reproduce pass on variations of their own genetics. You can simulate this process in its simplest abstraction in a computer. I first realised the power of this mechanism back in the 1990's when I ran a simple simulation called Tierra. The replicators in that were only about 60 bytes long, and all identical at the start, but after running the simulation for a few tens of thousands of generations, you'd end up with a whole ecosystem of variations - parasites, cooperators, doubles, triples, etc. It wasn't intended to simulate the real world in detail, just the action of selection on replicators with heritable variation.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

true.
although computer simulations have great value, they cannot model the unknown.
a computer built specifically to play chess couldn't tell you what 2+2 is.
this is one area that humans are light years ahead of computers, computers simply cannot "guess", they must follow a programmed plan verbatum.
of course, they can generate and use random numbers, but this too must follow a program or plan.

This isn't necessarily true; neuromorphic systems (neural networks) emulate the way the neurons in the brain function; they start with no set program code, but are trained with multiple examples until they can perform the task. Recently such a system (called Annabell) was constructed that can learn to communicate in English at roughly the level of a four year old child - starting from tabula rasa (blank slate) - so it begins with no knowledge of words or meanings, and ends up parsing simple sentences and giving simple grammatical responses. Here's the research article on it - and you can download the software and compile and run it yourself, if you have a C++ development environment. It does have program code, but this just simulates the neural network, it has no language recognition itself.

 

[PsychoSarah]

This isn't necessarily true; neuromorphic systems (neural networks) emulate the way the neurons in the brain function; they start with no set program code, but are trained with multiple examples until they can perform the task. Recently such a system (called Annabell) was constructed that can learn to communicate in English at roughly the level of a four year old child - starting from tabula rasa (blank slate) - so it begins with no knowledge of words or meanings, and ends up parsing simple sentences and giving simple grammatical responses. Here's the research article on it - and you can download the software and compile and run it yourself, if you have a C++ development environment. It does have program code, but this just simulates the neural network, it has no language recognition itself.

Fascinating, what limits it to learning language to the degree of a 4 year old though?

 

[whois]

This isn't necessarily true; neuromorphic systems (neural networks) emulate the way the neurons in the brain function; they start with no set program code, but are trained with multiple examples until they can perform the task. Recently such a system (called Annabell) was constructed that can learn to communicate in English at roughly the level of a four year old child - starting from tabula rasa (blank slate) - so it begins with no knowledge of words or meanings, and ends up parsing simple sentences and giving simple grammatical responses. Here's the research article on it - and you can download the software and compile and run it yourself, if you have a C++ development environment. It does have program code, but this just simulates the neural network, it has no language recognition itself.

it's simply impossible for today's technology to operate without a plan.
this plan can take 2 forms:
1. the software approach where the program, or plan, is written and input to the computer.
this type of computer is called a general purpose computer and is the basis of the typical internet type of computer
or
2. the hardware, or microcode approach.
this is a computer built for a specific task, handheld calculators are typical of this class of machine.

in both types, there must be instructions to tell the machine how to do things.
the "neural net" you speak of is quit likely the second of the 2 classes i mentioned above.
i am NOT saying computers cannot learn, i AM saying they cannot operate on arbitrary guidelines.

modern computers makes this stuff seem really simple, but it is anything but that.
you hit the "A" key and the letter appears on the screen.
the code and process required to do that on the machine level, well, it would probably take at least 2 typewritten pages just to simply explain it to you.

today's machines need code. or a plan, to just sit there and do nothing.
they can't even do nothing without a plan.

 

[whois]

Fascinating, what limits it to learning language to the degree of a 4 year old though?

the simplest answer is that they cannot surpass that of their program.

 

[whois]

let's take this "neural net" type of machine one step further, just to show the limitations of which i speak of.
let's suppose the input was visual instead of typewritten text, and for simplicity we will limit the input to english.
the computer is now faced with, not only parsing the words, but now has to contend with ambiguous writing styles.
IOW, people do not always write legibly.
when we start adding other languages, the task most likely becomes impossible.
can the machine cope with this?
not without some kind of instruction.

i guess what i'm really saying here is that a bare computer with no program at all is useless, a paper weight.
so, what is really needed?
sensors, both audio and video, and the corresponding decoding logic.
these 2 items alone are simply beyond anything we can come up with.
audio seems to be making some progress, but video, and its interpretation, is beyond what we can deal with.

there also appears to be certain instincts, and these would most likely be microcoded instead of software.

the 2 best known examples of AI that i know of is:
1. asimo, designed and built by honda.
and
2. big dog, designed and built by boston dynamics.

there are others of course, 2 others:
1. deep blue, the chess playing machine by IBM
and
2. the machine that played jeopardy.

all of the above displays "intelligence", but to have true conciousness will require something other than what we currently have.

 

[loveofourlord]

Of course - doesn't even matter that all T-Rex remained T-Rex, all Triceratops remained Triceratops - from the oldest fossil found to the youngest. Just like all Husky remain Husky and all Asians remain Asians.

Accepting those observations would crush their beliefs - and so observations will be ignored.

so things like protoceratops don't exist? ALong with the other precursors to them? The dozens or so species of t-rex we've found going from small to the bigger and so on?

 

[Michael]

Being that physics is not my specialty, as you know, I still have to ask "why limit oneself to only empirical physics, when some solutions may only be derived through other means or combinations of them?"

I'd ask you that very same question with respect to the topic of God. Why label yourself an atheist, if not based upon a perceived lack of an empirical cause/effect relationship between human experience and what they call "God"?

Without any empirical cause/effect demonstration between redshift and 'space expansion', and without any emotional need for exotic matter to explain any 'missing mass' in spacetime, how do you expect me to have "faith" in these claims, particularly when the cause/effect relationship between inelastic scattering and photon redshift is well established in the lab, and ordinary plasma is the 'most likely' candidate to explain any 'missing mass' in space?

The basic "emotional need" that drives Lambda-CDM is a need to have some sort of "creation event" that presumably 'explains' how we got here. I think that's actually the single most egotistical concept I can think of. Maybe the universe is simply infinite and eternal, and it's simply always been here.

All I do know is that there are no empirical cause/effect demonstrations of stable forms of exotic matter, nor any cause/effect link between 'space expansion' and photon redshift. I simply have faith that empirical physics offers us enough tools to explain what we observe in space, *without* any need of magical forms of matter or magical forms of energy.

 

[Michael]

Well I'm not asking for Hubble's opinion, I'm asking for yours.

My previous post to Sara pretty well sums up my personal beliefs about spacetime.

But the idea of "tired light" violates conservation of energy.

Not at all. All we're observing is the loss of photon momentum due to interactions with dust particles and plasma and "physical medium' of spacetime. Whatever momentum is lost in the photon is simply passed along to the "physical medium" of spacetime, as particles in the way of the photon are 'bumped' and moved by the interactions with the various photons. Many empirical physical experiments on Earth have demonstrated that inelastic scattering occurs in plasma and dust.

It's actually the concept of 'space expansion' that *grossly* violates the concept of conservation of energy.

In addition, tired light would not explain the apparant time delay that accompanies the red shift.

That's basically due to the scattering process as well, as some photons interact with the medium more than others. It's commonly referred to as 'signal broadening'' in other branches of physics.

Tired light would be expected to show events unfolding in exactly the same speed, only with redder light.

It is actually occurring at the 'same speed', it's just that the signal gets "spread out' over distance.

Doppler shifting shows things somewhat slowed because the more recent images were sent to us from further away than the earlier images, making the time between the arrival of the images somewhat larger. Guess which scenario is supported by the arriving light.

The concept of 'Doppler Shift' is related to *moving objects*, not "space expansion. I'd accept either a 'moving object' or an inelastic scattering solution to the problem, and a combo of all empirical options, certainly before I'd entertain the magical concept of 'space expansion' which *grossly* violates the conservation of energy laws.

 

[Michael]

Then his suggestion that the big bang theory uses something else is also off.

Not at all. The empirical link between inelastic scattering and photon redshift can and has been demonstrated repeatedly in the lab. The same is true of 'moving objects' and photon redshift. Both options are *demonstrated physical options* to "explain" photon redshift.

On the other hand, the empirical link between 'space expansion' and photon redshift has *never* been demonstrated empirically. It's an "act of faith' on the part of the believer. As it relates to "science', as well as every topic under the sun, I tend to prefer *empirical solutions* before "leaps of faith" in unseen (in the lab) cause/effect claims.

That also brings me right back to that question about your choice of atheism as label to describe your beliefs.

 

[Ratjaws]

whois,
Ratjaws said: ↑
Whois,
"There is much here I would have to disagree with. No the concept we ultimately discuss is two-fold: life (organized matter) and intelligence in comparison to the non-living matter of a computer."
whois said:
"okay, you are basing your opinion on what current technology is giving us."

No I am not refering to technology at all. My subject is the nature of these beings. You and others in this thread insist the beings we find in this world are nothing more than matter, and since Einstein said matter and energy are convertible, we can also assume nothing more than matter and energy depending upon ones point of view. I consequently come against two philosophical heresies here that touch on empirical science. The first has been called atomism and the second dynamism. In short they are two views at the extremity of how things are in this world. Either everything is reduced to corpuscular (particles)) or everything is in motion (energy or force). In actuality we find both matter and energy in our world. Where we make a mistake in understanding is to say that at the so-called atomic level all being must be reduced to particles that are like balls and planetary systems... all in different states of motion. This the popularizers of science try to reduce further moving in the direction of either only particulate or only force. One's opinion depends upon what school they came from..I've chosen a position that best fits what we actually find in the real world and as I said before we find both matter energy in constant interaction. I refuse to impose on the nature of being these ideas we take from every day life. I refer to the atomic nature of matter as taught in pretty much all schools from grade to college. I don't deny these models of empirical nature have given us success in our control of nature and its consequent manipulation through use of techniques (technology) to control matter and energy. What I do deny is that these ideas or models we use are the same as the essential nature of being we encounter in this world. For this is what each of you are saying here with minor differences in the details, again depending on your school of thought. I say that when we start talking essence we must leave empirical science, dealing with metaphysics to guide how we see matter and energy at their most fundamental level. In the final analysis I fall into a school of thought termed hylomorphism (from the Greek: hyle or matter +.morphe or form). In a few words I see form behind matter, thus my understanding of our world coincides better with reality than these forced empirical models, without the mind numbing anomalies one finds in current physical interpretations. I refer to ideas like "one particle knowing where the other is" and Schrodinger's Cat (where the cat is both dead and alive until one observes it) which ultimately means an object can both exist and not exist at the same time. These inconsistancies in thought (and other examples of this) exist precisely because the current world view surrounding our science is wrong. In fact this materialism tries to shut out mystery in nature and in doing so leaves with these logical fallicies. The incongruiencies disappear when one allows for invisible form behind visible matter. The forms remain in potency until such time as something acts on the matter (like an instrument) causing it to act. To us at the every day level it may look like something new came into existence but this can never be in a way where the matter didn't always have the form waiting to be triggered... so-to-speak.

Now these forms can be either material or immaterial depending on the effect in the material we are dealling with. In relation to the non-intelligent world the form is material. An intellectual being implies an immaterial form because as I've said before, and you seem to miss, an idea cannot be composed of matter since we cannot break it down into any material components. Thus while we attribute thought to our brain one cannot pinpoint any given idea in brain matter. This is simply because the immaterial form of a thought works through body matter and if there is a defect in the brain one finds mental capacity impaired. You should now see in this that something mysterious remains which I might add here is heretical to the atheist view of life. Yet how can one who subscribes to the materialist view of life explain why a body dies, despite the fact that at the moment of death the body material has the same complexity, the same DNA structure, the same organization right up to the moment of death? It's only after the form leaves the body that it can break down into a state of disorganization and unfortunately, because this form is invisible to empirical science, it is ignored. It is forgotten at the price of not getting rid of mystery but of introducing all kinds of wild scientific interpretations on matter like an inanimate particle "knowing" something.

whois said:
"the computers of tomorrow could very well be DNA based. once this has been achieved, the lines between human and machine will probably be erased."

Your latter point is impossible since one cannot produce what is immaterial, or it's effects, from what is material. You can talk about playing around with DNA all you want but it is simply matter and cannot account for its own power in and of itself. We have no reason to believe matter causes itself to organize the way we find it does in nature. Furthermore it is absurd to think matter causes itself to exist (wouldn't that make material beings God... from rocks to persons???). I am not saying here that a computer cannot be composed of DNA... only time will tell if this is possible... but I deny whole-heartedly that a machine composed of acid is the equivelence of a person. In fact I would bet against it since a soul is the required form of a person while the best a machine can have is a material form.
　
whois said:
"do you really believe that tress and plants can think?
no, thoughts come from a brain, and brains are material.
even animals show signs of judgement, doctors recommend pets for the lonely and depressed, not plants."

No I do not believe plants or animals think. Plants assimilate food and water but have no senses. Unlike plants animals are capable of local motion. I consider animals to also have what is called sense cognition, while human beings (persons) too eat and move, and have sense cognition. Yet persons alone have intellectual cognition. Sense cognition is a power that allows an animal to act in accord with its surroundings. They react to sensitive information in other words but only humans have an intellect that is capable of abstraction, ratiocination (reason) and moral as well as logical judgment. Have you ever seen an animal in school, produce a computer, compose a symphony, write a discertation, or walk on the moon? The judgment you speak of here is merely sensitive in that an animal must decide whether to fight or flight, eat or protect, sleep or hunt, etc..

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Frumious,
What you say here has bothered me for a long time in that we have two branches of science in conflict with each other, of which no one notices. Here you say chance is a prime element of evolutionary theory leading to what you term advantage, yet the theory which environmentalism asserts says that all life is in a chain and it is bad for any one species to disappear. Thus evolutionary theory wants the weaker species to die while environmental theory teaches we must protect the weak. Due to this oversight proponents of each theory tend to use the other as support for their own. How can the same scientific insight give us both theories?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'environmentalism', but I assume it's the creed of the environmental movement. It is potentially bad for any one species to disappear because loss of species and/or genetic diversity could disrupt balanced or relatively healthy ecosystems, and damage the short-to-medium-term prospects of recovery from disruption. This is potentially bad from the point of view of human interests - where directly, or indirectly, we rely on the stability and health of these ecosystems. The evolutionary process is blind to human interests. If circumstances arise that are too extreme for even outliers to survive, a species, or many species, will go extinct. It's happened several times in the past that a majority of species have gone extinct. Environmentalists would prefer that we take whatever steps we can to maintain what we have. It is arguable whether the loss of species detrimental to man, such as yellow fever, smallpox, malaria, polio, etc., is a 'Bad Thing' or a 'Good Thing' - it typically depends on the perspective adopted.

Also you contradict yourself initially saying "cells didn't stick together from any innate instinct" then you say "It's not yet clear whether this is a completely new trait for this particular yeast, or a reactivation of a distant ancestral trait." Clearly an ancestral trait is an innate instinct. Why would one look for traits if it is chance that drives the advantageous change?

You've misconstrued my post, there's no contradiction. What I said was, "initially cells didn't stick together from any innate instinct...", 'initially' meaning, 'in the first place' or 'originally'. In other words, in the early stages of life on Earth, the first cells that stuck together to compose multi-cellular organisms did so because of chance changes to their chemistry. In more recent times, when a similar change to multi-cellularity was observed in single-cell yeast cultures in the lab, it was not clear whether this was an entirely novel development, or a reactivation of an earlier trait that had been 'lost'.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Fascinating, what limits it to learning language to the degree of a 4 year old though?

I guess it's the structural limits of the virtual network. It has 2.1 million neurons, interconnected through 33 billion virtual connections at the start of training. At the end of training, the number of established connections was 27 million (the brain also prunes redundant connections during learning). Although the virtual structure is organized for more efficiency with less redundancy than a real brain, a real brain has vastly more neurons and connections (approx 86 billion neurons with ~1,000 trillion connections); not all will be directly involved in language processing, but reasoning and episodic memory will require a more extensive network than the model provides.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

it's simply impossible for today's technology to operate without a plan.
this plan can take 2 forms:
1. ...
2. the hardware, or microcode approach.
this is a computer built for a specific task, handheld calculators are typical of this class of machine.

in both types, there must be instructions to tell the machine how to do things.
the "neural net" you speak of is quit likely the second of the 2 classes i mentioned above.

Of course, you can't just throw an unstructured bunch of neurons together and expect it to learn any computational task efficiently. The system I described is programmed to emulate a neural network - it has explicitly coded instructions to behave like a network of 2.1 million interconnected neurons - structured (layers and connectivity between layers) according to a proposed model for human-like language acquisition. To this extent, it is structured for language acquisition. There is no explicit code for language acquisition, but the network structure is particularly well suited to it. If you train it appropriately, it will learn the basics of a language reasonably well. If you train it poorly, it will perform poorly.

What it does demonstrate is that a neuromorphic model based on, but far less sophisticated than, that in a human brain, can achieve recognisably similar informational processing without explicit programming; which was my point.