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You might be a nerd if... - etoven - 13th October 2005
Moving to Powaton i've goten my share of country living. So it got my thinking, what if Jeff Foxworthy were on the other side of the coin. So lets get the ball rolling tendonights with the top 100 reasons you might NOT be a redneck!
= Things I'm Guily Of. Reason # 100: Your monthly IT bill is higher than your rent! Reason # 99: You maintain tabs on big brother! Reason # 98: Big brother is a server in your basement!
Reason # 97: You've crased the MSN home page on more then 7 occasions! (Only 3 Occasions But Close Enough) Reason # 96: You own more than 1 domain name AND/OR more than 3 Domain Aliases. Reason # 95: You host a D&D Site On your very own web server! Reason # 94: You play D&D! Reason # 93: You email address ends in your last name! Reason # 94: You Own A VoIp Phone System! Reason # 93: You had a nightmare about smiley emotocons on more than 1 occasion.
Reason # 92: You Have Clock Over Ip wall clocks synronising to time.microsoft.com! (John Tyler Comm College)
Reason # 91: The ending of Neo Genisis Evangilian changed your life! Reason # 90: You know the distinct difference and uses of CAT 6 cable and fast CAT 5e Reason # 89: You have more than one router in your house and or 1 of any type of high end cysco systems routher running $400 or higher. (2 low end routers and 1 default gateway) Reason # 88: You have file and or print sharing services in your house. Reason # 87: Reason #88 with wireless connectivity. Reason # 86: You have on hold music on your phones that stream of your own VoIp Server. Playing a minium of 1 customized Greeting or Annoucement.
You might be a nerd if... - Weltall - 13th October 2005
I think this thread title may be a misnomer.
"You might be a Nerd if..."
:D
You might be a nerd if... - EdenMaster - 13th October 2005
If that's the case, then let me add one:
NUMBER 85: You spend copious amounts of spare time posting at a Nintendo message board that 7 people visit.
:D
You might be a nerd if... - Weltall - 13th October 2005
Number 84: Your main source of sexual satisfaction comes to you in the form of jpegs.
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 13th October 2005
Why spend money on IT when you can just repair your computers yourself?
You might be a nerd if... - A Black Falcon - 13th October 2005
83. You debate with your friends about which ending to Neon Genesis Evangelion was better, and what the heck it meant anyway... (the original one is, btw. :))
You might be a nerd if... - etoven - 14th October 2005
A Black Falcon Wrote:83. You debate with your friends about which ending to Neon Genesis Evangelion was better, and what the heck it meant anyway... (the original one is, btw. :))Yes I have to agree the original one was the best.
#82: If your not a rednick coffie rules your life if you are a rednick beer rules your life. :)
By the way. Woot! 100 Posts!
You might be a nerd if... - EdenMaster - 14th October 2005
I'm a geek. Soda rules my life.
You might be a nerd if... - A Black Falcon - 14th October 2005
Seltzer. :) Soda is good too though, but I don't drink it that often...
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 30th November 2005
Thread revival.
You know that "suspenders" actually hold up one's socks, and the things for your trousers are properly called "braces" and you can't make anyone else care.
You know what an Altair is
You built one
It worked
You doodle "I :love: Bill Nye the Science Guy" all over the margins of your chem textbook
You can accurately name the constituents of Tom Servo's underwear collection
You passed up on watching the Friends finale because the MythBusters were exploding a cement mixer during the same time slot
You have a red bumper sticker that says, "If this is blue, you're going too fast!"
You can recite the first launch dates of the entire shuttle fleet, but can't remember your mom's birthday
You get excited about meeting Penn and Teller not because you want to ask them to show you a magic trick but because you want to ask them to research and debunk a new pseudoscientific claim
You get a greater rush out of genetically engineering bacteria than from riding a roller coaster
You read nonfiction books for entertainment, and regularly read ahead in school textbooks
...Starting from the second grade
You get panicky if you are only 5 book assignments ahead of the teacher
You have six computers in one room
Three of them are currently running
All of them are caseless
One of your major concerns is finding places where you can put all those danged books, but still be able to find the stupid things again when you want to
You consider Dexter's Laboratory to be humanity's single greatest achievement in the comedic arts
You have the first 100 digits of pi memorized...just for accuracy's sake
You went ahead and put pi to a tune for a music video
You memorized it to 101 places only to 1-up the other geeks
You realize that that is prime
Your monitor has a resolution of 8000 x 6000
As such, you have NEVER seen a scroll bar
You have 5 DVD players in your room, none of which is intended as solely a DVD player
You can say the same about CD players
You rigged your Victrola player to your PC just to get the highest quality WAVs you could from the original cylinders (my father didn't go THAT far, but he did actually hook up everything from his CD player to his record player to his PC to record all his media as MP3s)
About the worst thing you can imagine happening when buying a new display is finding a dead pixel
You think of Altair only as a star in the sky
As such, when someone mentions they made one themselves, you want to know how they made a star
So you can do it yourself
You've learned to keep most of your jokes to yourself around most people as you just get blank stares
You've learned to keep silent pretty much all the time around new people because most of what you say just gets blank stares
People go to you to settle science related arguments
Half the calls you get from family and friends are in regards to computer repair, namely, you repairing their computer next time you come over
You instinctively grab your PC repair kit any time you go to someone's house
You realize that "instinct" isn't technically the right word
When you see "........" you want to correct it by pointing out ellipsis are always 3 periods with spaces between each one ". . ."
You actually knew those were called ellipsis
You describe hobbies and people are shocked that's not your job
You describe hobbies and people are shocked that somewhere there ARE jobs related to it
You hang out at astronomy message boards
Somehow, regular people just don't "do it" for you any more
If someone asks you if you know any additional languages, you list off C++, Perl, Java, etc. . .
You don't see how the above is funny until someone explains that normal people ask about languages as in spoken languages
You still don't get it because you speak those languages out loud anyway
You understand and think "There's no place like 127.0.0.1, there's no place like 127.0.0.1" is funny
You constantly take online "nerdiness tests" to rate yourself
You get upset if you get a low score
You analyze the tests to see which questions are more significant
You analyze the tests and conclude they are not scientifically valid
You have never met your friends in the "real world"
You feel the need to put the phrase "real world" in quotes
Your most treasured presents from childhood are a telescope, a microscope, and a "for kids" training circuit board from Radio Shack
You rigged the training circuit board to act as an intruder detection system
You might be a nerd if... - TheBiggah - 30th November 2005
Hahaha! DJ, those were great!
-TheBiggah-
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 30th November 2005
You have a red bumper sticker that says, "If this is blue, you're going too fast!"
I personally love that one the best. I need one of those bumper stickers, if only to confuse most people.
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 30th November 2005
That was hilarious.
I'm surprised I have sex at all.
#(what are we up to?) You learn that intelligence is unjustified and that emotional awareness is the apex of the human mind and possibly man's greatest achievment/failure.
#?? You have detailed specifications on the removal of all world governments and your rise to ultimate power to guide all of humanity to greatness/destruction.
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 30th November 2005
Intelligence is unjustified?
Explain, logically :D.
(Sorry, there's just some major irony in that coming to such a conclusion requires intelligence. There's also the issue that everything we've gained is a result of our intellectual capabilities, and the fact that emotional awareness is a function of intellect.)
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 30th November 2005
Because it's materialistic?
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 1st December 2005
lmao I bet he wonders why Apple Jacks dont taste like apples.
I wasn't talking about intellect, I was speaking of the ideal of intelligence; which is only the knowledge of what factually is or is not. Emotional intellgence is the infinite core of all imagination, caring and love and ultimately humanity. Intellect is only the ability to percieve those things (the depth of the brain to each individual). The combined traits of what is formed by emotional intellgence and our education of what we know to be fact is the perpetual mechanics of genius and the birth of all invention. Having one without the other is destructive, where we drive our selves in to mental stagnation with no hope of moving forward. However if only one path could be taken, I would much rather live in a world of emotions rather than a world of intelligence. I would rather feel the pain of the knife cutting off my hand than to not have had a hand at all.
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 1st December 2005
I'd rather be Socrates unsatisfied than a pig satisfied...
And do you speak simply of self-awareness? Indeed, I'd rather be me than a mere calculator, or telescope. However, the thing about it is self-awareness is a direct consequence of being an intelligent being. Everything we've observed leads to that conclusion, that being self aware is a PART of intelligence. So, intelligence is justified, and being aware, being capable of understanding it rather than a meaningless volume of data that no one can be aware of, is what intelligence IS. You can't be intelligent without awareness.
You speak of "emotional intellect". What exactly is that?
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 1st December 2005
Self-awareness has nothing to do with intelligence, self-awareness is the term used to describe the idea of life or existence. Even single-celled organisms are aware of themselves and what and how they interact with what is around them and why they do it (survival).
To think inwards and manifest reasoning from cause and effect is something all living things do, it is the depth to which it is done that dictates the order of the living thing, from high to low.
intelligence is not inward nor is it outward from the self, it is only recorded knowledge to be shared. Only with the introduction of emotion can we begin to grow outwards from that base of knowledge. To dream and create.
Some people are great at puzzles, some are not. We all have weaknesses and stregths and to say that a person who is good at a puzzle is more intelligent than one who isn't is pure bullshit. But through science we can see that there are people with minds of more depth or capable of more depth than what is considered average and in those cases it is people who are more in tune with their imagination and emotional aspects.
Socrates without an imagination is a man who records history. With his imagination and his emotional intelligence he is herald as a the world's greatest dreamer and philosopher who, from that recorded history he compiled, paints a vividly diverse future with ideals to take us in to that future, most of which have to do with the emotional animal we are.
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 1st December 2005
In fact now that I think about it, Socrates was killed for his inquisitive nature; to prod, imagine and argue the legitimacy of things. He even went so far as to say that what is wrong or right holds no meaning, and that only the state could dictate such judgment. In other words, it’s all bullshit and there is no wrong or right except for what is controlled by a government or by a majority. Though he argues that in a perfect world, the majority would not be in charge.
Socrates was very much a man lead by his emotions, that's abundantly clear in Apology and Crito, Plato even wrote of his affection and love for the imagination and the damning of simple regurgitation of facts.
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 1st December 2005
Your definition of intelligence is not the popularly shared one. Intelligence in the form of data storage is what computers do. Intelligence as defined by everyone with some level of education I've encountered is the ability to actually use that information, combining and restructuring it, to form decisions. Computers may one day be capable of this, but not yet.
A single celled organism is not capable of self awareness. It has no idea why it is doing anything, because it has no ideas. There is no brain structure at all. A single celled organism is a series of reactions, exactly as intellectually complicated as the precipitation system of the planet. To state a bacteria is self aware is to state that a brick is self aware, as both are merely following laws of physics with no actual decision making along the way.
And yes, inquisitiveness is important. That is a part of intelligence.
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 1st December 2005
What the fish....?
A brick does not eat, a brick does not run from danger, a brick does not seek an environment that can properly sustain it, a brick does not alter behavior based on anything effecting it, a brick is not alive, a brick does not reproduce, a brick does not work with others like it to sustain a larger life form.
To say such things, that a single celled organism has no intelligence or self-awareness, by that nature alone would not be able to use its own materials and structure to create multi-celled organisms to anything from viruses to a human being. The fact that a unicell organism absorbs another and divides itself in to a human being in the womb proves that. Countless studies of the introduction of stimuli in to single celled cultures has shown that they react in much the same way that any life on Earth does... and what is this about a single celled organism not having a simple brain? How can it be alive, or die, or carry out its functions or reproduce without one?
Either you dont want to think of cells as alive (thus self aware) or you haven't studied cell structure. Anything that is alive is self-aware.
Here is what dictionary.com had to say about intelligence:
Main Entry: in·tel·li·gence
Pronunciation: in-'tel-&-j&n(t)s
Function: noun
1 a : the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations b : the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests)
2 : mental acuteness —in·tel·li·gent /in-'tel-&-j&nt/ adjective —in·tel·li·gent·ly adverb
Here's what they say about emotion:
Main Entry: emo·tion
Pronunciation: i-'mO-sh&n
Function: noun
1 : the affective aspect of consciousness
Now here's my take on it:
Intelligence is the use of knowledge.
1.) To use fact to formulate new fact
2.) To use fact to destroy misconception or old (false) ideals
3.) To record factual information for future generations
Knowledge is stagnant, unmoving until...
Emotional intelligence is how that knowledge is used.
1.) Thinking 'out of the box'
2.) Finding the correct core or direction that does not apply to logic but instead is based in emotion
3.) The use of imagination in light of factual information to break new ground and press forward with fresh ideals
See: Hope, dream, wish, what if, etc
See: Socrates, Newton, Da Vinci, Einstein, etc
There are BILLIONS of intelligent people on Earth, there are colleges filled with individuals with 200+ IQ's and yet we only have a handful of truly amazing people who single-handedly changed the world forever? If it's not the ideal of intelligence and imagination, then what is it? Studies show that people great at math suck with anything artistic and vice versa... what about the people who dont work that way? Einstein was horrible at math and he loved to draw and doodle or build things out of blocks and he created his OWN MATH he even said that the imagination is key to human achievement, imagine if IQ had nothing to do with the ability to invent and create or even ...be a genius? There seems to be alot of stuff suggesting that i'm on to something...
And I dont understand why you're so apprehensive accepting it or atleast allowing the idea to make its point before you start comparing it to bricks again. :D
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 1st December 2005
Incorrect. You make the assumption that a germ, for example, actually WANTS to stay alive. All those things you listed DO make it clear a single celled creature is alive, but not aware. Awareness is not needed for any of those functions. All of them are very robotic in their nature. The single celled creature never once makes a real decision. It merely reacts.
I must also say this. So you define "self awareness" as living. Is that all? So there is no qualitative state requirement? There is no need for, on some level, the creature to be all "I EXIST!", at all? Sounds odd to define self awareness and make awareness not a requirement. Is a video camera set to set off an alarm when it detects motion "aware"? If the answer is yes, well, it's not alive in any sense. If the answer is no, okay then. Then what IS that state of being there, some haze of "I AM" that you should know I was speaking of? Would you rather call it "sentience"? Some other term? Whatever you may call it, the idea is that something isn't merely reacting but is actually "there" in the sense of a mind, in the way that you or I aren't just typing things, we're here EXPERIENCING it.
Allow me to ellaborate on all those functions. To reproduce, the chemistry merely reaches a point where that reaction takes place automatically. It splits the DNA, matches up the sequences with parts inside, and then has two functioning strands of DNA, which then recurl into the balls they once were. Not once is the need for a choice required. It's a chemical reaction. The same goes for food. Bacteria capable of movement do not experience hunger. All we have observed is that when certain molecules are detected, the bacteria will undergo a chemical reaction that causes it to, eventually, move in the direction the chemicals came from. No thought is needed, and indeed none is detected. The bacteria never "stalks", it merely moves directly to the point, from reaction. It doesn't even compute anything on the level of a computer. It is simply direct cause and effect. I'm not saying intelligence isn't that as well, but bacteria lack the qualitative experience. As far as living rather than dying, think about the nature of evolution. Anything that lives will continue to live. Anything that dies will not CONTINUE to die, but rather IS dead and can never pass on those genes that made it dead. So ONLY bacteria that reproduce and are capable of sustaining themselves WILL exist, because those that couldn't, won't, and can't ever pass on those attributes that lead to nonexistance, because they don't exist to do so.
Nothing you have listed about the single celled creature indicates any level of awareness.
When I mention a brick, I mean everything a brick will ever do is a direct reaction to it's environment. It isn't alive because it has none of the traits "living" is defined by. However, if you strike it with a hammer, the reaction it gives is to shatter. If you paint it, it will be coated in paint. If you put it in water, it becomes wet, possibly absorbing the water. If you let it be, it stays still until another force acts upon it. A uranium brick has a little more self action, but it's still just physics. Conciousness is not needed to explain that behavior, so why take that extra step?
Seriously, if you want to establish that a bacteria is aware of itself, you must show evidence that it acts in a way consistant with awareness.
This is the rational approach.
And by the way, Albert, bad at math? That's a common myth. He certainly couldn't do a lot of it in his head, but have you actually seen his formulas? I'm pretty sure the average person here is completely incapable of doing the math he was capable of. Relativity is quantitated by him, not just some random junk he made up on the spot to be "inventive". The only reason he even came up with relativity was that he based it on his observations of the world around him. He came up with many models, and creativity is important in this regard, but it must take a back seat to observable reality.
Emotion is not seperate from rational thought. They are intertwined, as well as the "will" of the individual, and ALL are required for intelligence.
Rather than spouting random stuff, back it up. You are very smart, but this is hardly evidence. IQ, by the way, is mearly the measurement of how well one is at certain applications of intelligence. You speak of imagination, you speak of emotion, and you speak of intelligence, but you don't seem to realize ALL of them are interrelated and absolutely required for rational thinking. Keep in mind, logic, just as the rest, can become twisted. Someone can easily make a very logical argument, but when observable reality doesn't back it up...
You are right about one thing. Intelligence doesn't make you smart :D.
However, you actually seem to have a huge problem with the very idea of intellect. Do you consider scientists to be mostly evil people or something? It wouldn't be a first, but I just want to clarify. Do you have any inherant problems with science?
You might be a nerd if... - TheBiggah - 1st December 2005
DJ seems to be more grounded in reality on this one. I would argue that self-awareness is a uniquely human ability. I would define "self-awareness" as the ability to think about our very thought process, and that is something that animals are not capable of doing. This is why we can evaluate and learn from others' experiences as well as our own. This is why we can make and break our habits. We are not our feelings. We are not our moods. We are not even our thoughts. The very fact that we can think about these things separates us from them and from the animal world that acts solely on instincts.
Thoreau said "I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor." When was the last time you saw a microbe trying to change it's habits. Alive, yes. Self-aware, not even close.
-TheBiggah-
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 1st December 2005
Self aware and aware are also two seperate things I have found. Most animals are aware, dolphins, apes, and humans seem to actually be self aware from the limited testing ability we have of that. I know I'm usually flippantly insane, and this is no exception.
http://nesjesus.ytmnd.com/
And this is utterly hilarious.
I am putting that end game text in my sig! It's just so horribly wrong!
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 2nd December 2005
And again, I am faced with the ugly truth of opinion being worth more than fact.
Animals aren't self-aware? They cant 'think'? or 'think' of their own thoughts? Would you believe me if I said that almost every animal, and definitely every mammal is a teacher? To teach the young of dangers, where the best food sources are, where the safest areas are to run to, etc? In order to do that you must understand your own thought process to teach it to others so that they can follow. You may argue instincts but they do not dictate knowledge. They dictate a want for food, a desire for protection but not the means of how to achieve it and that is why we rely on our parents until sexual maturity.
My favorite example is the silver back gorilla who teaches their young to use a thin stick to prod termite hills to extract the bugs inside. This isn't as easy as it sounds, it requires patience and a steady, controlled hand. A human might tear the termite hill up and grab as many bugs as possible, but not only does the gorilla understand that if they dont harm the hill, they'll have it tomorrow, but they also understand not to eat too many of them. They are taught this by elders at a very young age.
People have such misconceptions of the world around them and thy make up these unfounded realities that only make sense because of a lack of factual data or to seek that factual data. The truth is, you only know what you know and if you dont know... well it seems popular to just make up what you dont know.
Einstein did indeed fail at math, that is not a myth. But if you would have continued reading my post you would have noted the "invented his own math" group of words next to it. He suffered from a simple desire to work out every problem instead of memorizing it, some people have to figure the math out when presented with it, some people are better at memorizing the answers on a math table. Obviously, one is more frustrating than the other.
self-aware--
1.) Aware of oneself, including one's traits, feelings, and behaviors.
2.) Realization of oneself as an individual entity or personality
I doubt anyone here would disagree with the idea that all living things have this understanding...
life--
1.) The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism. From Wikipedia:
In biology, a lifeform has traditionally been considered to be a member of a population whose members can exhibit all the following phenomena at least once during their existence:
1. Growth, full development, maturity
2. Metabolism, consuming, transforming and storing energy/mass; growing by absorbing and reorganizing mass; excreting waste
3. Motion, either moving itself, or having internal motion
4. Reproduction, the ability to create entities that are similar to, yet separate from, itself or consisting solely of entities that exhibit the quality of reproduction.
5. Response to stimuli - the ability to measure properties of its surrounding environment, and act upon certain conditions. This property is also called homeostasis.
2.) The characteristic state or condition of a living organism.
Unicell organisms--
1.) the basic structural and functional unit of all organisms; cells may exist as independent units of life (as in monads) or may form colonies or tissues as in higher plants and animals. Which contain the following traits: (from wikipedia)
2.) Properties of cells
Each cell is at least somewhat self-contained and self-maintaining: it can take in nutrients, convert these nutrients into energy, carry out specialized functions, and reproduce as necessary. Each cell stores its own set of instructions for carrying out each of these activities.
All cells share several abilities:
Reproduction by cell division.
Metabolism, including taking in raw materials, building cell components, creating energy, molecules and releasing by-products. The functioning of a cell depends upon its ability to extract and use chemical energy stored in organic molecules. This energy is derived from metabolic pathways.
Synthesis of proteins, the functional workhorses of cells, such as enzymes. A typical mammalian cell contains up to 10,000 different proteins.
Response to external and internal stimuli such as changes in temperature, pH or nutrient levels.
Traffic of vesicles.
It should be noted that wikipedia even mentions that the tradional explanation of "life" does not answer why viruses are alive among many other things that fall outside this difinition, this is why I (and many others) have adopted the term "self-aware" as a better judgement of what life is.
So, it is a fact that all cells are alive. (I seriously hope everyone is in agreement here) and that all living things are self aware in that they understand their individuality and purpose.
Now as I said many posts ago, the level to which the life-form is self aware is a construct to which we place an order to, from low to high - bacteria being low, man being high. But not at any point does the ideal of life (existence, self-awareness) ever deviate from the workings of all, any, living things.
I think i'm done with this conversation, I cant stand hitting brick walls where I have to spend time re-educating someone who places opinion over what is already known to be fact. I probably sound pumpous for saying so, but its just not something I enjoy doing. A conversation of opinions where nothing is fact, great. A conversation on the elaboration of such facts, wonderful. A mixture of the two, and i'd rather eat my own penis.
Quote:Self aware and aware are also two seperate things I have found.
Oh... so I guess if i'm "aware" then I can see that the predator is coming towards me. But if i'm "self-aware" I can see that the predator is coming towards ME... yeah, there is no difference in being aware or self aware it is a meaningless reconstitution of words with the same ideal. To be aware of one's self is to fear death and avoid it at all costs in order to continue existing, it means that you carry the inherent understanding that you exist and you can not exist and that the circumstances that lead to each outcome are directly manipulated by you.
If you want to talk about zen teachings or inner spiritual growth or some other bullshit then you're talking to the wrong person. Only half of zen is worth anything and that half is embraced as modern psychology.
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 2nd December 2005
Quote:When was the last time you saw a microbe trying to change it's habits.
LMAO holy krap they dont even teach mutation or evolution in schools anymore?? Ever heard of AIDS or the common cold before? Or maybe you thought that the bird flu was always there and just hiding? Good God I had no idea you were so hilarious.
If you're not joking, and I fear for the good of your future family that you are, then you obviously have an understanding that all LIVING THINGS conform to changing environments in order to survive and that the change which occurs on a genetic level is brought on by simple changes in behavior which grows over time in to permanent integration when needed in order for stable function.
Let me make sure I didn't confuse you:
A lives by pattern B because of environment C in order to exist.
C environment becomes environment Z
A tries to survive in Z, reformulating pattern B in to new pattern Y
Z and Y over time, cause A to introduce new means genetically in order to survive, causing A to become X
Now. X lives by pattern Y because of environment Z
Total. Overhaul. This is proven, this has been seen over and over and over and it is a fact. WHY on God's green earth would you think otherwise? First you say animals cant think and then you say microbes dont change and oh hell, not to mention the whole thing about Jews invading America or whatever it was that you spewed all over your HTML message field and presented to the world. Fuck, I thought extreme misconception went out with tie-dye and male purses. If you dont know something to be a fact, DO NOT PROCLAIM IT AS ONE
I knew it, i'm surrounded by assholes...
KEEP FIRING, ASSHOLES!
You might be a nerd if... - Undertow - 2nd December 2005
Quote:LMAO holy krap they dont even teach mutation or evolution in schools anymore?? Ever heard of AIDS or the common cold before?
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with anything anyone has said in this thread regarding the debate, but genetic mutations are different from behavior... which is what biggah is talking about.
You might be a nerd if... - A Black Falcon - 2nd December 2005
Lazy, that's not it TRYING to change anything, that's just it adapting to its environment...
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 2nd December 2005
*eats penis*
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 2nd December 2005
lazy, I acknowledge anything with a brain is aware. Selfawareness, awareness that you actually exist and not just awareness outside, is limited to things like apes and dolphins, and possibly others though we can't test for that yet.
However, if it don't have no brain, it can't think.
A plant is just reacting. It doesn't yearn life, it just DOES live because it has traits that allow it to live.
I am in fact convinced of evolution.
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 2nd December 2005
So you dont believe that a plant 'wants' to live? It is proven that a plant has a conscious entity that is formed by the single celled organisms, that it will try to do everything in its power to protect itself - some even evolving traits that are similar to animals such as releasing a poison in to the plant that makes it taste horrible or give the animal an upset stomach. Even more facinating are that all plants can communicate through pheramone and in some causes ultra high frequencies to warn other plants of its type, triggering their defensive mechanisms, a method that facilitates the protection of its species and shows us that each species of plant is trying to out do the other, meaning that there is a low to high order in plants as well.
These events are triggered by the 'idea' of being killed, the plant 'desires' to live, so it protects itself. While true that it's very act - react, but the same can be said of most if not all of the human brain.
The human brain itself is a collection of single celled organisms that communicate back and forth on a much grander scale, so why cant a plant have the same principle? If you agree to this (as far as I know, it's fact) then wouldn't it be true that the unicell organism contains at least some level of consciousness? Zero consciousness would mean that a billion cells combined would have zero consciousness, but we know that to be false.
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 2nd December 2005
It should be noted that all things 'alive' can 'die' and by that principle yearn to live and avoid threat to its life. nothing 'alive' would ever try to 'die' or put itself in harm's way unless there was a very specific reason for it (falling in to 2 catagories: depression, protection)
An animal (human or otherwise) that has, for example, lost its offspring to a predator may find itself unable to eat or drink out of sadness and regret. This can be found in all animals to atleast some extent, the higher order of the animal, the more this can be easily seen though that is sorta thrown out the window when we see it in ants or a house cat, so then it becomes a question of societal structure which doesn't always reflect the depth of the animal's intelligence and leans more towards *ta da* emotional intelligence theories (the more social the animal, the more emotional intelligence it can percieve)
An animal may also find itself in danger when trying to protect family or territory - litteraly going up against incredible odds in order to atleast try to overcome the threat of losing something more important than its own life. All mammals are proven to behave this way with avian, fish, cold blooded animals you name it with mixed results. Some animals simply evolved to simply lay the egg or give birth and then walk away, letting it fend for itself. Seaturtles are one such example. Is this lack of emotional intelligence? Or does it do this because the seaturtle has no defenses and wouldn't be able to actually 'do' anything to a predator (which are usually birds) or maybe because the sea turtle cant find a happy medium between the need to dwell and eat in the sea and laying the eggs on land... too many theories and not enough facts.
And just so everyone knows, the desire to adapt is the same as the desire to live and so causes change in the mind and pattern of the animal which leads to mutation and evolution. You cannot have mutation unless the animal changes its habits and in doing so means that the animal (even unicell) is changing its habits in order to survive either by force or by choice to overtake new means and spread further in to a higher order.
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 3rd December 2005
lazy, that's a bunch of nonsense that is not supported by fact, even if you claim that to be the case.
Desire is completely unneeded to explain the survival mechanism. You are being too anthropomorphic here. We desire to live because we have brains and a decision making process and those who's decision making process includes desires to end their own life, will end their own life.
Plants have no such processes. They have no "will" to live. You seem incapable of imagining how something can continue to live without wanting to. You seem to think that death is something they have to WANT to avoid in order to avoid it. This is a fallacy. It's too complicated an explanation when the much simpler explanation of it merely being the way things work out does the job just fine.
First, begin by thinking as though what you are saying is not the case. With that mental framework, explaning evolution should be much simpler.
Desire to live is irrelevent in evolution. It can play a role, but is not required.
A plant, for example, is designed at the genetic level to take in sunlight and convert it to sugars. It is designed to grow faster on parts where more sunlight strikes. Some of them also develop poison. In those cases, a biological reaction occurs when the plant is chewed on and the poison is actually released in stronger doses througout the plant. Would you assign an intelligence to the clotting mechanism that occurs during bleeding? Would you assign an intelligence to the behavior of white blood cells? It is the same here, though without a pumping circulatory system it needs cappilary action in order to get the chemicals moving through it. A cut doesn't need to be "aware" that it happened on a creature that doens't move. On a dog, the brain does need to be made aware of the situation. There are so many possible factors that a single programmed reaction will not suffice, and an intelligence is needed to determine, for example, whether a fight is needed, flight is needed, or it was merely an accident and tending the wound is what comes first. In a non-moving plant (the usual kind), a brain isn't needed at all. Evolutionary biologists have concluded in the past that the only creatures that benefit from a brain are those that are capable of motion. Certain undersea creatures will have a brain in early life until they root themselves to a rock, and during the metamorphosis, they will consume their own brain as it is no longer needed.
By the way, I will refrain from the dated phrasing of some creatures as "higher" than others. The only real catagorization is those that are alive and those that are not. Some have very complicated brains, and we humans sure like to think that makes us "top of the chain" due to which of our processes are more complicated, but as far as nature is concerned, the only thing that matters is if it is still surviving.
A plant growing towards sunlight is merely something that leads that particular plant to a greater chance of survival than a plant who's cells do not react to the presence of sunlight, or, heaven forfend, grows away from sunlight by some odd reaction. It has no actual awareness of the process. And, when I say "it" I am refering to a conciousness that isn't even there.
Is a star alive? They reproduce, alchemize heavier elements, go through a life cycle and act in a way during their inception to feed themselves. During the death phase of stars, upon running out of hydrogen they actually change their internal fuel to that of helium to "keep lit". This method is just a natural reaction, something that just plain occurs due to the laws of physics. There is no intelligence involved.
Cells or no, that doesn't matter. Intelligence is not merely reacting to the environment. Everything that can be said to exist "reacts to it's environment". Intelligence is the WILLFUL move using what methods you have available to take in knowledge of the outside world, form a decision based on past experience and this obtained knowledge, and act based on that one decision from a laundry list of other possible decisions.
Plants do not show any signs of this. If you insist that they do show awareness, a flawed "thought experiment" shown exactly where it is flawed is not enough. Make observations of intelligence behavior. Merely saying "I can't see how it could survive if it didn't want to" is simply silly. Existance is primary, not conciousness!
To reiterate, plants and single cells have no "desires" whatsoever. They are not even needed. I will of course change my mind if you provide actual evidence of this though. I'll gladly eat crow if conciousness is spread even further through the tree of life than I thought. I have no objections to the idea as far as wanting it to be so. It's merely the total lack of any evidence. Does this theory of yours explain behavior where previous theories fail? I don't see how. The statement "they do so merely because of chemical reactions, and they live because if they didn't, they would not exist, and only things that exist continue to exist" seems sufficient. Occam's razor.
By the way, the idea that imagination is more important than intellect is flawed too. There are a ridiculous number of people who believe the same thing, and all have failed to make a difference. Only those that actually try to make new discoveries based on the observable world have made a difference. Any scientist you can name that has changed the world may be imaginative, but was fully aware that wasn't enough. Newton made countless observations and experiments. He didn't just sit around thinking. Galileo did the same. He saw how the world actually behaved and noted it totally contradicted the way people just THOUGHT it worked, and he went where the observations led, not just where wishful thinking led.
Every year, a new perpetual motion machine announcement shows up. They have no reason to think that such a device will work, but hey, it could very well be they did discover an exception. Problem is, they didn't DO any real testing of their supposition. They merely make the claim that it should work based on random conjecture. Then, upon being show repeatedly where such a design fails, and being asked for evidence that would refute their critics and justify this device's existance, they simply fail to do anything. They have little more than conviction without any evidence to back it up.
Aristotle, on the other hand, came up with many many explanations for how the world worked. Unfortunatly, he never once did any experimentation to see if it even worked the way he thought it did. That's cart before the horse science. You can't try explaning HOW a phenomenon works until you show that the phenomenon exists to begin with. It's like trying to formulize how many angels can fit on a pin head. Aristotle went about trying to explain why a heavier mass falls faster than a lighter mass. Problem is, there are NO records of him ever even establishing that heavier things fell faster to begin with. Galileo was fully aware of this himself when he wrote that cute short story of the debating philosophers. He, however, actually DID do some experiments. He did drop spheres from great heights, higher than any available to Aristotle in his day, and noted that, wind resistance being equal, they always struck the ground at the same time.
You see the difference? Imagination is great, but it must be guided by the hand of reality if it will ever make a difference.
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 3rd December 2005
hahaha I think someone needs to re-learn some biology and understandings of nature. GO GO HYPER SARCASM MODE You also completey neggated alot of things you said yourself by throwing out the rediculous comment of 'moving = brain' as if a brain can only exist in one instance :D in your description all things in motion have a brain which means that everything with any self-powered movement is an intelligence such as what you say is not: white blood cells, unicell organisms, multicell organisms etc who all have self-powered mobility. And yet after stating that these organisms have no intelligence or consciousness you tell me they do, because they dont. Good job. :D
And oh yes, order does not exist at all. There is no chain, or system of chains clearly defined by the animal's role in nature. For example, deer are not below or above wolves, just because the deer exist as a food source and the wolves exist to control that food source does not equal any greater plan of action such as a food chain and therfore no 'order' is set it is simply randomness and chaos.
Boy I feel dumb for trying to philosophize on existence as awareness of the self when in reality to exist you only need to move. I mean, scientists and smart people say that moving is only a tiny part of the grande scheme and is usually not a good base to judge the qualification of life though it is the easiest to witness.
life--
1.) The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism. From Wikipedia:
In biology, a lifeform has traditionally been considered to be a member of a population whose members can exhibit all the following phenomena at least once during their existence:
1. Growth, full development, maturity
2. Metabolism, consuming, transforming and storing energy/mass; growing by absorbing and reorganizing mass; excreting waste
3. Motion, either moving itself, or having internal motion
4. Reproduction, the ability to create entities that are similar to, yet separate from, itself or consisting solely of entities that exhibit the quality of reproduction.
5. Response to stimuli - the ability to measure properties of its surrounding environment, and act upon certain conditions. This property is also called homeostasis.
you're right! a star does all of those things! I guess stars are alive! Oh wait, they dont move.... Oh, and stars dont do any of these things and they are balls of gas.... so I guess you'd either have to change all the working theories or create new fact in order to think of stars as alive but no matter, yes they are applied to existence through physics... oh wait, everything in this plane of existence is applied to physics! therfore anything that works through physics is alive except for stars and things that cant move. Gotcha!
dj go soke ur hed, that last post of yours was like watching a car accident in slow motion. The next time you think that living things do not will to live and simply manifest at a point of existence take any living thing and damage it, watch what it does. Why is it doing that? Hey, its upset that its being hurt, its upset that it might die... why is that? ...maybe because i'm keeping it from moving and if it stops moving it dies... oh but that proves that the will to live in a living thing is present as well. I guess we'll never know. :(
*God points to a massive collection of knowledge in the form of books and documents with factual data while holing a sign that says DJ = car wreck in slow motion*
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 4th December 2005
You misunderstand.
I only stated that only moving things need brains. I didn't say ALL moving things need brains. I merely said that before a brain even becomes necessary, it needs to be capable of movement. All things with brains can move, but not all things that can move have a brain. I also did not define "life" as "moving".
I went to great pains to point out that there isn't "higher" and "lower", and that our designation of "species" is a matter of convenience for organization rather than an indication that nature itself somehow "recognizes" the cutoff between certain genetic configurations. In using the model of stars, I was only pointing out that in some ways they can be seen to try to protect their own existance. In most ways, they do not fit the definition of life. Perhaps fire would have been a better analogy? :D Don't make me quote Data (from Star Trek).
And, just because you can damage something and see it react in a way to heal itself doesn't mean it is aware of the process. I can damage an enemy in a game and some of them may be programmed to back up or find health in order to kill me and "win". Does this indicate any awareness? I certainly hope you are at least aware that current AI has no conciousness.
Just because the set of reactions tend to lead to continued survivability does not mean it is actually aware of said reactions.
The rest of that was merely petty insults. All I can say is that you have yet to provide any evidence other than "it reacts to it's environment and tends to survive!". That, however, is NOT sufficient evidence for intelligence.
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 4th December 2005
gufaw
Intelligence is the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge.
You must have the following requirements in order for this to work:
Be a living thing.
All living things have a brain, or in other words, a network of energy that collects and applies knowledge on a base of instinctual goals
In a video game or program, it is called "artificial intelligence" and has been documented in programs to get the point of being so intelligent and it can create a brain simple enough to act and react as an intelligence on the same level as microbes which takes massive amounts of computing power and i'm not just talking about hunting down food but acting as single organisms and creating larger colonies to gain strength and formulate goals from their own perception (not a programed goal).
It is called "artificial" because it is man-made, though humans themselves are man made, it is a process we cannot fully explain in which two cells create a larger single entity that is done through a natural process.
In a video game it is often documented that in some cases the AI will find new ways to acquire the goal without the programers giving it that logical step, th program will make the logical step on its own though this usually ends in glitches and erratic behavior and must be held by the hand and explained what to do in every detail which causes even more mistakes because the term detail is usually finite to a point of being up to millions of commands at any time. So we end up with dark sims that dont know that a door is blocking their way because thy didn't open it or they shoot the bullet proof glass trying to hit you because they dont know the glass is there - a real life form would try to hit you through the obsticle a few times before it realizes it must find a different route, but only rarely in a video game will th artificial intelligence take the leap of discovery and decide to attack you straight on instead of through the glass. It is simply trying to accomplish its goal.
If I made a game where I told th AI to:
only attack every human player
Then even if put it on my team, it would attack me. It can make no logical leap that i'm on it's team and it shouldn't attack me. But in real intelligence, the living thing would find it greatly beneficial that any thing that helps it or makes its existence easier is something to be embraced as long as it doesn't possess a threat. Lampreys on sharks, shrimp on crabs, birds on alligators, anti-bodies and white blood cells, the list continues and it is found in every living organism.
The alligator with th bird in its mouth WONT eat the bird, the easiest meal possible. It WALKS in to their mouth, eating anything stuck in its teeth. And the alligator, a cold blooded instinct in the form of a swimming mouth with only the intelligence needed to survive WONT kill the bird because it makes the choice not to, it realizes that it is better to co-exist with the bird because it is beneficial despite it being an easy meal. That is reasoning and in a cold blooded animal no less.
And like i said, this co-existence among seperate species can be found on every level of life on Earth. It is NOT programed, it is NOT instinctual, it is something that has been learned through aqcuired knowledge and applied to daily life for the benefit of both species. You should know that.
Quote:I went to great pains to point out that there isn't "higher" and "lower", and that our designation of "species" is a matter of convenience for organization rather than an indication that nature itself somehow "recognizes" the cutoff between certain genetic configurations
.....are you insane? Nature doesn't recognize that life falls in to catagories of 'prey' and 'predator' and that there are 'top predators', lower predators' and 'top prey, and lower prey' based on what that animal benefits the most from or FOR? creating a huge chain that is seperated by location and species through evolutionary means that is established through trial and error over periods of millions of years? Are you just trying to say something stupid? If nature didn't recognize such things, why would every species we have found be up 80% different in its genes? Its entire framework of existence and how it functions is seperated by huge gaps of difference based on how and why that life was created or evolved, small flying arthopods used for carrying seed and pollen, giant flesh eating population regulators, giant plant eating veg-regulators who also carry seed and pollen and happen to be the 'population' that needs to be controlled by the felsh eating citizens of earth so they dont eat too much of the vegitation, OF COURSE nature has a designated system of higher to lower order because that is how everything works.
EVEN IF natural order was not the base design in its inception eons ago, it is definitely in place now.
I feel like all you're doing is trying to argue things like a kid, you make a simple statement in opinion and I have to come in and explain it to you and then you ask why. You dont back anything up with facts, you make crazy assumptions and with every post you delve deeper in to the 'who gives a fuck' realm of discussion. You have effectively sucked all the fun out of this discussion to boot. I mean look at this:
Quote:single celled organisms do not have a brain
Quote:the only creatures that benefit from a brain are those that are capable of motion.
Quote:I didn't say ALL moving things need brains.
Quote:All things with brains can move, but not all things that can move have a brain
ALL LIVING THINGS HAVE A BRAIN
ALL LIVING THINGS REPRODUCE
FIRE DOES NOT HAVE A BRAIN
ALL PLANTS HAVE A TYPE OF BRAIN
ALL MICROSCOPIC ORGANISMS HAVE A TYPE OF BRAIN
BECAUSE PLANTS AND MICROBES ARE ALIVE
ANYTHING THAT IS ALIVE, IS AWARE OF ITS OWN LIFE AND ITS EFFECT ON ALL THINGS IN ITS LIFE
ALL LIVING THINGS WILL TO LIVE AND AVOID THREAT TO THAT LIFE (or propagation of that life, territory, offspring) AT ALL COSTS
these are facts, these are well known facts, buy yourself a good encyclopedia set and start reading, I read through 3 sets and it only took me a few weeks so it's not like its hard. I am done trying to revive this discussion.
*pulls out rifle*
It was a good discussion, while it lasted.... *harmonica*
I remember the good ol'days........ *violin*
*flashback of DJ and I looking through a science book and laughing at pictures of a protoplast without its membrane in slow motion*
*close up of a tear forming in my eye*
*screen goes black*
*a rifle shot is heard*
Disney: *sues me*
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 5th December 2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteria
In that explanation of how bacteria operate, what indicates intelligence? There is no reason to appoint intelligence to mere reactions. All the things you describe fail to provide any evidence that bacteria are self aware.
However, I have decided to get some people that actually have studied this field in further detail to settle this.
One thing to say by the way. What makes you think evolution is an ACTIVE process, something that creatures actually DO? Creatures don't think "I'd better evolve and SOON!" they just reproduce and die. Evolution is just a phrase used to describe why some creatures die and others continue to live and how, over millions of years, a single random mutation might actually be beneficial to life instead of detrimental or neutral. No creature is ever aware of evolution "occuring", because that's not a proper model of how it operates.
So, this idea that this is the method by which life can "learn" is a little confused.
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 5th December 2005
Okay, after recieving some rather stern criticism from people smarter than I, I have realized I have gone about this all wrong.
So, here is my attempt at going about a correct argument.
First, give an accurate definition of what it means to be self aware. Also, clearly define what test a thing needs to pass in order to be called self aware by this definition.
You might be a nerd if... - TheBiggah - 7th December 2005
wikipedia is a joke. USER submitted definitions? Lazy, you've got to be kidding me that you would site THAT as a source....
-TheBiggah-
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 7th December 2005
I cross refferenced the material that I posted here and it all came up roses. Wikipedia is nothing more than a public forum for a collection of knowledge, thy have people who check every new submission for facts, it just takes time to check everything.
DJ/ *black persona* HELL'S NO I AINT STARTIN ANOTHER DEBATE I GOTS NO PATIENCE FOR DIS SHIT NIGGA BETTA RECOGNIZE though I will add a comment:
Quote:What makes you think evolution is an ACTIVE process, something that creatures actually DO?
It is a conscious effort to not die, if the environment changes, the animal will try to survive. if it able to reproduce and sustain life after consciously changing its habits and patterns to accomadate the new surroundings, the active process of evolution will alter genetic material to make that animal's life easier in the new surroundings. But without the conscious effort to try to coexist with the changing environment and make new desicions and lifestyle changes, the animal will simply die out.
Quote:Creatures don't think "I'd better evolve and SOON!" they just reproduce and die.
You forgot one important step. They aqcuire knowledge of the surroundings and build a pattern of lifestyle that best fits for the most comfortable existence possible. They then share that knowledge with offspring, how and what to hunt, where the best water sources are, etc. So the correct phrase should be "They just aqcuire knowledge reproduce and die." And by that very nature alone are constantly thinking "I better make sure I dont die" Therfore in abstract the nature of the brain is constantly thinking "I better evolve and SOON" if, and only if, the animal is facing a threat to its existence. if the animal is not faster than its prey, it will become more rugged and gain better defenses because of trying new ways to survive against the threat to which the prey will gain better ways ways to penetrate those defenses by thinking of new ways to take the prey down and so and so on.
Quote:Evolution is just a phrase used to describe why some creatures die and others continue to live and how, over millions of years, a single random mutation might actually be beneficial to life instead of detrimental or neutral. No creature is ever aware of evolution "occuring", because that's not a proper model of how it operates.
you're right, it's completely random and has no structure. Oh, woops, it does. And it's documented. And the only reason it's still called a theory is because of over zealous religious fanatics who insist that we sprung from the ground by a command from God. Which is only half true. Every living thing is aware of evolution because evolution is change.
Let's assume that magnon and erectus first reached their levels of notable structure in africa (though this model is not consistent with other findings, it makes the same point):
Tropical climate: no protection from ultra violet rays cause skin pigments to engorge and over time become permanent. The reasoning behind such a change is that because of the body's natural ability to manufacture chemicals and vitamins through sunlight, if these chemicals and vitamins are in over abundance the person becomes sick. Hiding from the sun was not a realistic option so the pigmentation reaches a point of becoming as dark as possible to protect the animal from dangerous cancers and sickness. The over abundance of food means that the animal is comfortably sustained with little to no fat reserves. Most food intake is burned directly to keep the body functioning in the high heat and active lifestyle.
Ice Age(s): Very little to no sunlight, severe lack of food and nutrition for comfortable sustained life and a climate of constant freezing winds reverts the pigmentation to the complete lack of pigmentation to allow any sunlight in to the skin to create chemicals and vitamins the body needs. Lack of foodstuffs (vegetable or otherwise) create a method of storing energy in fat so that the body can sustain itself for long periods of time between meals. When food was available, the animals would eat till bursting, and their genetics would turn as much of the energies possible in to fat for survival. One key note of interest here is that the blinding winds and our severely unprotected eyes would over time gain an extra flap of skin filled with fluid as a built-in way of protecting the eyes against freezing cold and icy winds. This outcome is also recognized in desert regions.
After Ice Age(s), the human animal has spread through the world. Pigmentation has become a very dynamic structure creating an infinite spectrum of light to dark and even getting to the point of dynamic enough to change within the period of a few hours depending on the severity of the sun's light. The Ice Age veterans would have found life alot easier without the blistering cold and freezing winds so over time the extra flap in the eyes would concede to allow for maximum amounts of light to enter the eyes during night hunting or to be keen and aware of nocturnal predators (which, during the ice ages, were not a threat as they did not exist in any great numbers).
For the people who did not leave or press on (the hunter/gatherer would have to keep traveling in nomadian herds to follow food sources while others would change their habits and find food sources in new ways and stay behind) the evolutionary bi-products would stay with them longer as needed. The darker skin, the half opened eye, the the dynamic skin pigmentation, the storage of fat as per the requirements of the genetics (to be stored or burned) are all witnessed today in a huge melting pot since after all, we're only talking about (at the most) a million years ago which as far as Earth is concerned is last week.
so in tropical climates, the black will stay black, the white will stay tanned. In climates of high winds be it desert sands or ice, the eyes will stay half opened. In fact, it has been documented that Japanese people over the past few hundred years can look back on paintings or photographs and see that the eyes are widening. Just as Europeans and other other ice age vets can see an increase in height (which has about a million theories to why it's existing, but it all falls in to the 'spreading theory' where in an animal with no predator will simply continue to grow and become stronger since it has no generalized direction to follow) and other documentation such as the average Korean man being darker skinned than a Japanese man, the Korean lives in a more tropical setting while the Japanese opted for a colder island, the effect is subtle but speaks volumes of the environment to evolution paradigm and can be witnessed from the last 10,000 years.
Again, the factual information is out there. Go find it.
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 7th December 2005
I am aware of the information.
However, you didn't provide an accurate definition of what you consider conciousness to be.
Memory is not needed to survive. Bacteria are not capable of learning.
Now, I've already explained in great detail exactly what the flaw in your reasoning is. You refuse that outright, so be it.
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=35500
I decided to get a few others involved, people who are well educated all around.
They seem to say I have actually pointed it all out rather well.
So, I'll simply repeat myself.
You confuse intelligent response with mere selection. Evolution isn't "random" in the sense that it's a natural result of the laws of physics, but you seem to assume it NEEDS intelligence to operate. That's just like intelligent design only you put the intelligence in creatures without proper evidence rather than in god.
You assume that the process of evolution ALWAYS requires the WILL to survive. If it doesn't have the will, it dies out you say. Wrong. Will is irrelevent. The only thing life needs is to live. Whatever traits lead to best survival change with environment. Learning isn't needed, just a mutation of the genes every now and then. Favorable mutations are kept BY DEFAULT, not WILL. A creature doesn't have to WANT to live in order to live.
Look, this is very silly. I have no idea what sort of ideology you have which insists that everything that lives has to "want it", but that's just not the case.
At any rate, you keep pointing out the definition of life.
Okay then, tell me, specifically, what aspects of life IN PARTICULAR lead to conciousness? Why should I consider my individual white blood cells to be aware? Why are they any more aware than my antivirus suite? Specifically, what aspects of being alive lead to conciousness?
You say something can't arise from nothing, and so all the cells making UP our brains must have some level of awareness for the total to be aware. With that line of thinking, all the atoms making up each CELL would have to have a level of awareness for each cell to be aware. You see, this line of reasoning has reached something even you must see as absurd. Let me ask you this. Are a pile of chemicals alive? How about when you arrange them like... THIS? Yes? Sure, now you can see it.
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 8th December 2005
Quote:I am aware of the information.
Then why are you arguing.
Quote:However, you didn't provide an accurate definition of what you consider conciousness to be.
con·scious·ness Audio pronunciation of "consciousness" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (knshs-ns)
n.
1. The state or condition of being conscious.
Quote:Memory is not needed to survive. Bacteria are not capable of learning.
Just so you know, you made me laugh out loud with this one. Is it so inconceivable to you that a life form that has evolved for billions upon billions of years longer than any life form on this planet has achieved a state of what is beyond our grasp and understandings? If it didn't learn, how does it continue to 'learn' to infect in new ways and reach multiple species? How does it 'know' how to attack certain species in certain ways, even to the point of finding a balance as to not make the host sick so it can survive in the host until host dies? Obviously bacteria and unicell organisms have extremely simple brains but that's all they need in order to function. To say that they are not conscious or self aware means that they are unconscious and anything that is unconscious cannot percieve what the relation to itself and the environment is, which, as we know as fact, is what cells do. Memory is the retention of aqcuired knowledge, anything with a brain is capable of this but more to the point, not only is memory one of the most founding aspects of our rocket to the top but it is also necessary for a living thing so it can acquire and apply knowledge to better itself, in its most simple form it allows the retention of something such as pain from an object so that the living thing remembers not to touch it again or the reverse where knowledge of how to break through certain defenses is retained and used over and over until the method doesn't work anymore (to which a step in a new direction must be made) We litteraly watch cells do this, we know they do it. We cant figure out how, we have hundreds of theories but then we have hundreds of theories for unknown things some of which we applied half naked men with glowing heads to take care of them. We know for example that feeding the brain of a living thing after it retains knowledge to another living thing has produced results that suggest that the brain's capacity to transmit information between neurons can be absorbed by another living thing. It could be that if one cell learns of the best way to inlfiltrate a host that it teaches other cells by either being absorbed or dividing (the new cell retaining any blue prints from the first). But since we know the brains are super simple, it's hard to dictate how this process works. Is it temporary? is the information lost after a period of time? can it retain more than one goal at once? etc.
Quote:I decided to get a few others involved, people who are well educated all around.
They seem to say I have actually pointed it all out rather well.
If you're trying to get my cookies, it wont work. These are my cookies. But i'll give you a pat on the head for getting another group of nerds involved who also enjoy sharing their opinion on the matter when there is either no factual information to drive any point further (which is fun) or when factual information already exists yet you act as if it doesn't and spin your own ideas which I like to call 'masturbation'.
Quote:You confuse intelligent response with mere selection. Evolution isn't "random" in the sense that it's a natural result of the laws of physics, but you seem to assume it NEEDS intelligence to operate. That's just like intelligent design only you put the intelligence in creatures without proper evidence rather than in god.
Evolution applies to the laws of physics!? Everything in this universe applies to the laws of physics you door knob. Evolution is not selection, selection is an old term used by people who thought that God goes around with a bow and arrow and kills whatever he doesn't like, such as dinosaurs or the 80's. To denote selection would say that there is a process in which an animal or species is wiped out/reaches greatness based on predetermend factors which is simply not true. The universe is an equal opportunity employer, any living things has the same chance of survival as any other living thing, evolution is why we have thousands of different mammal families and species from ONE ANIMAL SPECIES that we can trace the origins of ALL mammals (including us) back to. ONE SPECIES DJ, it was a tiny little ferret like creature and all mammals evolved from it by spreading to different regions of Earth and experimenting with their surroundings to formulate a comfortable life in the food chain. Intelligent design (again, you're a door knob) is that "Unexplained forces that by some unknown means control the universe and formed all creation through its unknown power" and is a fancy way for dumb people to try to make their religion more factual. Since all living things have a type of brain, and all living things achieve a state of consciousness where they can aqcuire and apply knowledge and create a simple understanding of the relationship between the self and the environment I would have to say you're a door knob again and that intelligence is a major key factor. The level of intelligence is infinitely confusing since every species has a different way of thinking that is broken down even further through individuality. I mean what are you trying to say? That only human beings can be intelligent? Obviously, all life is a form of intelligence. Period. Whether its capable of more depth is only a matter of perception, the fact remains that if it has a brain, it has intelligence.
Quote:You assume that the process of evolution ALWAYS requires the WILL to survive. If it doesn't have the will, it dies out you say. Wrong. Will is irrelevent. The only thing life needs is to live. Whatever traits lead to best survival change with environment. Learning isn't needed, just a mutation of the genes every now and then. Favorable mutations are kept BY DEFAULT, not WILL. A creature doesn't have to WANT to live in order to live.
Okay, i'm going to assume you're joking and move on. But just in case you actually think that nothing wills to live that is alive or in other words, protect its life at all costs just try this simple experiment at home: Pinch your cat, see what happens. As with all life forms, if there is a threat to its life, it will alter its pattern and change behavior doing whatever means to keep itself alive - by that nature we can see that since this is a constant that evolution steps in so that the next generation (times a few hundred million) will carry new genes that give this new way of life more stability. Evolution will begin change until there is a threat to the life-forms existence. That's why alligators are the same today as they were 100 million years ago, they do quite well for themselves and dont need to change, if it aint broke, dont fix it.
Quote:Look, this is very silly.
Hehe, you said it, not me. :D
Quote:Okay then, tell me, specifically, what aspects of life IN PARTICULAR lead to conciousness? Why should I consider my individual white blood cells to be aware? Why are they any more aware than my antivirus suite? Specifically, what aspects of being alive lead to conciousness?
wtf is an anti virus suite? Your white blood cells are the police of your body, they track down intruders and eat them. This act by itself is a good example of how they are self-aware. They understand that 'host' needs to survive in order for them to survive, they protect host so they can continue to live. Being alive and being conscious are the same things, you cant have one without the other. If we got an infinite scale, we could say that all matter at its most simple is alive (energy) which does seem to have a conscious to it, an intelligence that gives it form and purpose but we are talking specifically about conscious entities. The state of a conscious entity is measured by many factors but the main one we love to point to is the food chain. The higher something is on the food chain, the more intelligent we percieve that animal to be, which is somewhat true but not in the literal sense, other factors we look to are societal structures which again, doesn't tell us much. Consciousness is the simple act of being self aware, to know that you exist and that you influence all things around you. In order to exist in this state, you must be a living thing (again, on a retracted scale, there's too much we dont know to call it a total fact that applies to all existence and forms of it be it inanimate or not, its best to apply the above to all animal forms, unicell on up. There is too many questions when we ponder the strange traits of the universe in that it seems to desire the creation and perpetuation of life, why it does this is beyond our grasp, if the universe itself is an entity of any sentience it could be assumed that its traits are reflected in life on earth in that it wants to reproduce)
Quote:You say something can't arise from nothing, and so all the cells making UP our brains must have some level of awareness for the total to be aware. With that line of thinking, all the atoms making up each CELL would have to have a level of awareness for each cell to be aware. You see, this line of reasoning has reached something even you must see as absurd. Let me ask you this. Are a pile of chemicals alive? How about when you arrange them like... THIS? Yes? Sure, now you can see it.
I just explained that above actually. But yes you're right, obviously we have found all forms of existence and there is nothing more to learn from this universe. Seriously, is it that hard to imagine that an atom is a form of life? Isn't there a scale of the building blocks of life? Called a... table... or something? Doesn't it have ....elements? one of them being...... carbon? Maybe? :)
You think...? :)
My friend, for some reason you have it in your head that what you think is correct and while I love it when people experiment in their thoughts to clarify existence it is always better to see if anyone tried to do it before you and build your thoughts off of there's (unless they're Catholic). And I hope you know that I call you door knob with a smile, it is not meant to be taken seriously.
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 8th December 2005
Oh holy krap my paragraphs melded in to giant text blocks!
um...
*runs away*
You might be a nerd if... - -JaSon- - 8th December 2005
Ryan Wrote:Number 84: Your main source of sexual satisfaction comes to you in the form of jpegs.
*mpegs or avi's rather.
;)
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 8th December 2005
We are not debating on if a cat has conciousness.
And by the way, the fact that you think the ability to learn is needed to evolve shows your lack of imagination.
I have explained in excrutiating detail exactly how evolution operates. Things that survive, survive. Things that die, die. Bacteria mutate very fast. There is no need for it to WANT to do so, it just happens. If you apply antibiotic to a large enough culture, SOME of the bacteria will be capable of withstanding it. They didn't DECIDE anything. Some of them just mutated. These mutations would have happened anyway. The difference is that in a situation where all the ones that don't have that mutation die, ONLY those with the mutation will live on. However, when all the ones without it continue to live, those with the mutation will continue to be the minority, if they live at all.
You can be very insightful sometimes. However, in this case you are overthinking things.
Why is conciousness needed to explain this behavior? Why is mere reaction and the occasional genetic mutation not enough to explain it?
You state blindly that white blood cells are aware the host needs to survive for them to survive. That's not proper evidence. That's stating another unsupported hypothesis to "prove" your original unsupported hypothesis. What is the proof they actually know the body needs to survive for them to survive? Why is it not sufficient to say their behavior simply is to react to certain stimulus? What mechanism allows them to know and comprehend this? Bacteria, any single celled creature, have no known mechanism for storing memories. DNA is a pretty far fetched thing there. By that, the entire present universe is a massive "memory" of the past.
Once again, you are faced with the absurdity that to apply conciousness to creatures with no mechanism for being aware you must apply it to ALL things in the universe.
And your definition of conciousness sucks by the way. Try to define it in a way that is not self referential.
And, just so you know, the majority of the people at that board have actually majored in various fields of science, some of them in biology. Don't take lightly what they have to say, if you even bothered going there at all. The fact is, you are NOT properly representing the findings of science, and you seem to think it's because I have some fundamental issue with single celled creatures being concious? No! That would be an amazing discovery! However, nothing points to that! You just support your own arguments with made up stuff that itself is not supported by evidence!
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 9th December 2005
DJ, we're talking about something that was only discovered in the last few hundred years that is infinitely thought upon and is still a mystery. We dont know everything about the workings of everything, what you cannot prove must be theorized and in the creation of theory the more you base it on existing principals and knowledge the closer to the truth you can get.
To say that cells only act out of stimulation is a huge misunderstanding. All brains, even the most complex, react from stimuli. since all living things react from stimuli, and all living things have a conscious awareness, it is not difficult to make th leap that unicell organisms carry the same traits on a much more simplified scale. A neuron is basically a true/false stopping point for information to stop on. each neuron (out of billions) is connected to something like 25 thousand. So as you're generating thought, it's making pit stops at the true/false stations before going on a new path. the end result is a fully defined thought pattern or signal. The basis of the workings being the true/false stations is a perfect example of how we react to stimuli, we can react to our OWN mental stimuli. It takes one thought to cause every neuron in our heads to light up like a Christmas tree processing the vast amount of instincual designs and acquired knowledge to reach a point where we are satisfied.
Now, since the neuron is a living cell we can use it like a standard, it could be that all cells act as a true/false station in the same way. The larger the group of cells, the more it is able to process to formulate massive plans of infection. in that way, it's sorta like ants. As a group, the queen can dictate order but an ant alone will simply wander around looking for food. We can witness the same principal in unicell organisms though there doesn't seem to be a queen or lead cell, instead each cell brings with it the ability to work and react to a stimulous such as "I'm hungry" and performs its act in a chain of order that produces a result (be it beneficial or harmful to the host). If the organism needs a living host, it will try not to kill the host, an organsm that doesn't need a living host will just continue to eat with no guiding principals.
in cases of mutation (not evolution) a virus can suddenly become a death warrant to the host, such as AIDS. There were no cases of AIDS (and its symptoms) until the early 60's. So, just like th bird flu, it suddenly mutated in to something different. This mutation was probably brought on because of it trying to infect new typs of hosts. Apes cannot contract full blows AIDS, they can only carry it yet never get any of the symptoms, the virus probably mutated after trying to infect a different species (like reptiles or birds) that eat the dung or dead bodies of the apes. Virus enters new host, tries to live in it, mutation kicks in (the express route to evolution) and within a few months/years we have a new strand.
Mutation is usually pointless, like different colored eyes and hair, hair thickness or length (though some of these things are arguable). Evolution only exists to create a form of perfection, evolution will give the same fish in different parts of the world a larger tail to swim faster and the other fish a larger mouth to eat more; They are specific changes, the fish with the larger tail probably couldn't catch its prey in the new environment and the fish with the larger mouth probably couldn't eat its prey in the new environment. The reason these changes happen is because the fish (with a small mouth and tail) kept trying to catch the prey, become faster with each day they try catching it. The fish who needed a larger a mouth tried to eat the large prey as best it could, it tried every day, and evolution will step in to make existence easier, but if the fish didn't change environments, or if it found different food sources, it wouldn't have changed, it would have stayed the same for millions of years to come. The will to live, and a conscious choice, dictate the flow of evolution.
Mutation is a half-assed evolution of sorts, mutation can mean in a single generation the DNA is changed. A birth defect is a mutation - it is common knowledge that native americans (who dont smoke or drink) have less birth defects than whites. Native americans have a strong gene pool, only the strong survived. European culture helped the sick, tried to give passage to the disabled - if a person was born with a defect, it was cared for and nurtured. Not the same with the native american culture of yesterday. If the baby was sick and deformed, their medicines wouldn't be able to save it and th baby would die. Any mutation would be erraticated and very little of it would be present in the gene pool. Evolution doesn't really try to change DNA though in many cases it does. What evolution tries to do is reform structure, it borrows from here or there to make another aspect stronger.
Case in point - it is well know that that every animal pumps a certain amount of energy at peak levels in every part of the body for every function. Apes divert a TON of energy to the stomach and digestive system, they need this because they eat things like bark, insects and rotten fruits. An ape, in contrast, can eat mayonaise that has been sitting out for days and not get sick. One of the major key factors that gave human beings a swift kick in to stardom is the fact that our stomachs are extremely weak. We must eat fresh foods and cant even touch some things even though they're rich in minerals and vitamins (like tree bark). It messes up our digestive system and makes us very ill. Why is it that every primate on earth (except us) has this cast iron stomach that we dont? Because we made a trade off, we gave up our super digestive system in order to have an extra layer on top of the mammalian brain that is packed with even more neurons than any primate. Our bodies, through evolution, diverted the energy from our super digestive system to our brain so that it became stronger. Why did it become stronger? who knows, i'm willing to bet it had alot to do with the fact of being lumbering awkward primates in a world filled with super predators like 15 feet long cats and alligators the size of a bus, we got smart real quick to figure out ways to escape them and eventually, to hunt them. But maybe it was because we were competing with other races of primate, perhaps even the species called neanderthal would wage battles with us over territory and since they were larger and stronger than us we went the route of thinking.
In mutation, the effects are always clumbersome and nasty. Evolution is streamlined, perfected. It's easy to spot once you know what you're looking for.
Giant wide noses are found in alot of negroid and mongoloid people. Is this evolution or mutation? Why didn't it happen to caucasions? The answer might be that the heavy air in a tropical area that is saturated with humidity was so hard to breath that nature provided larger nasal passages. But what about the mongoloid? Japanese people dont have large wide noses, but some Chinese cultures (mainly, mongolians) do. Could it be that because of the cold air being hard to breath that they got the larger nasal passages? How do we prove this?
There are animals in these areas (tropical and freezing tundra) and we can find very smiliar traits when you compare them to the same family of species in different areas. Their nasal passages will be larger than an animal who lives in a neutral climate. So we can make the logical leap that the larger noses are needed by nature in order to have a comfortable life. Whatever life needs, nature will provide.
The polar bear didn't become more aero-dynamic and less bouyent because of mutation. It happened because in order to survive, it had to swim in deep freezing waters... every day, for hundreds of thousands of years. With each generation, they get better and better at swimming (their bodies becoming 'built' for it, because they want it - it will make hunting easier for them.
Now for some reason, you believe these ideals to be too complicated (yet we can witness it over and over even in controlled environments) but what I propose is that you state your opinions and then prove them. Show me how you're way is fact. The only things you have put forth is opinion and then tell me to prove my points. But no matter how many times I prove it, you say its not enough. So now i'm asking you to prove your points. From here on out, only legitimate factual data can be used in the arguments put forth.
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 9th December 2005
One thing that seriously freaks me out is when evolution gets in to the idea of camoflage. How on God's green Earth does a cricket TRY to look like a leaf? There is a bug called a walking stick, it looks like.... a walking stick. Now, neither mutation nor evolution gives us a clue why this has happened. There are insects that look exactly like the particular leaves that grow in that particular region and will even change color depending on the season..... wtf?
There are also arthopods (and other species) today that attach bits of foilage to itself to blend in to its environment. But how would the body know to make itself look like these particular forms of foilage? Could this mean that the principals of evolution could possibly dictate that just by doing something over and over for a few hundred thousand generations will make it more permanent?
Look at humans, in comparison to other primates we're basicaly bald except for the headm, under the arms, and sexual organs. We have a thick coat of hair on our faces (this might be a throwback to the genes that were formed during the ice ages) but why no where else? Could it possibly be that the sun... no, apes in Africa have black skin and coarse hair all over their body to protect from insects. What about the cold of the ice ages? No again, there are many furry animals in cy regions, in fact in icy regions the more fur the better... which might hold a clue.
In afirca, most people outside the cities who live in tribes in a more natural setting wear very little clothes because its fucking hot. But when the ice age hit, and more than 90% of all life on earth died out, man tried to survive it... by wearing huge animal skins to cover his body. Now, we're basically looking at a total world-wide population of less than 20,000 people on earth during the ice ages, that's the entire population of EARTH as far as humans are considered. And all of those people would wear animal skins, and we did so for thousands of years.
So is it possible that the reason we're hairless is because of clothes!? It makes alot of sense that nature sees an animal that wears the skins of other animals to keep warm, so it detracts the amount of body hair on the animal as it is no longer needed.
Now... the question is..... how is removing body hair a good thing? :D Removing it would mean that there is now more resources for the body to pull from, so where did it go? Wouldn't nature let us keep our hair even though we're piling on animal skins to be even more warm? Our testicles have to be at something like 93 degrees (which is why they hang outside th body) or else the sperm will die. So could it be that as we're wearing animal skins huddled around a fire that we were getting TOO hot? So nature steps in and removes our body hair to bring our temprature down?
Just like the arthopods wearing foilage that eventually become foilage-like in their appearance, shouldn't we have become even more hairy though?
Earlier i said that apes in africa have long coarse hair so that they're not overcome by insects and mites. Well, in an ice age, there are no insects or mites, so maybe we simply lost the hair because of a lack of use, and because we wore the skins nature didn't see us needing the use of hair again... except on our heads and sexual organs and.... arm pits. Oh great, now where's the logic there?
Head - To protect the brain from extreme tempratures?
sexual organs - same thing? It would also keep bugs and mites away from our highly infectious membranes.
arm pits - .....yeah, I got nothin.
There's nothing there to protect other than skin so bugs wouldn't be a hassle for us there, why the arm pits and not the feet? No logic. So maybe it was temprature.... but to protect what? we do have special pheramone ducts under our arms, but how does having hair there make any logical connection? Pheramone glands aren't effected by temperature, well, the more sweat the more pheramone, so there is an effect. So maybe that's it... the reason we have hair there is to keep our underarms warmer so that the pheramones are easily produced through the sweat glands... that's th best I can figure out.
Okay, so we sorta gave logical reasonings to the head, sexual organs and arm pits.
We still have hair folicels all over our bodies, but the hairs are fine and short, often invisible until closer examination, so we know the hair used to be there. I'm willing to bet it's a combo of lack of need and human ingenuity of wearing the skins to replace what would have become a need.
.... but it doesn't make any sense why arthopods and other species evolve in to plant-bodies......
There's a special kind of octopus called a Lying Octopus or something like that who changes his color, design of color, texture of skin and body movement to look like other sea creatures. It swims like a flounder or floats out of a cave to look like a sea snake or eel, all kinds of cool shit. And thi makes sense because it has special muscles and cells it can control to emulate the designs and textures. Just like felxing a muscle, except it makes your skin a different texture or changes the designs. But its still an octopus, when it's not trying to look like something else, it looks like an octopus. It litteraly looks at the rock and flexes its muscles until it resembls a rock.... so why do we have an animal that looks exactly like a small branch in winter with dead leaves on it!?!?! It even knows how to ACT like a plant, swaying in breezes that it actually controls just to trick any predators or prey around it and the look of the plant is actually its skeleton...... fucking weird.
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 9th December 2005
So we reach the point where you say that it's all basically conjecture. "Where evidence ends we just have to theorize" is a false usage of science.
Face it, you are just being an iconoclast here.
At this point, you are basically arguing the same things intelligent designs proponents argue. First, I just have to say holes in a theory don't invalidate the whole theory or mean you can just make stuff up. The theory of gravity as we understand it has a LOT of holes. Does that mean we must explain all "holes" by invoking "intelligent falling"? Must we actually revert to the Aristotelian view that things fall because "of a desire to be one with the Earth"?
Evolution OR mutation? Mutation is just how we get new genes. Evolution is merely the process by which the genes are selected. It's very simple really. And, as to WHY certain things developed as they do, in some cases we don't have a clear idea of how that came about. In others, it's rather clear. Just be more imaginative. Why does a walking stick look so very convincing right down to actually wiggling about? Think about it. A random mutation that alters color happens often enough. If that color leads to increased survivability, that gene lives on. That's evolution right there. It doesn't need to WANT to change color, that's just how it is.
But, at this point you have basically admitted that you are just hypothesizing at this point. Don't get me wrong, hypothesis is a healthy thing. Just remember that this has to be supported by evidence. Even the failed hypothesis have some value when examined thoroughly by those willing. However, if a road leads to nowhere long enough, eventually it's just best not to even bother until there is reason enough to look into it again.
Rather than state this is a FACT, when it clearly isn't actually viewed as such, merely state you present this potential explanation for the gaps in the theory. How do we test this? Is it falsifiable? What predictions does this make that the previous explanation, mere natural selection, does not make, which we can thus test for?
ALL science involves proper observations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science
Empiricism is what science actually is. What you are doing is philosophy. Logic is a very important tool, and it can lead to further predictions and more hypothesis, but for it to reach the lofty heights of "theory", it must be tested. The real world sort of plays a part.
You might be a nerd if... - lazyfatbum - 10th December 2005
lmao you called me an iconoclast in the wrong thread. Do you even know what it means? Last time I looked it means someone who tries to destroy religion. (a word created by the Romans...haha, almost every word in the english language was forulated from latin :D) Also it should be noted that I state specifically what is theory as the rest is well known study. But you choose to ignore that.
mu·ta·tion ( P ) Pronunciation Key (my-tshn)
n.
The act or process of being altered or changed.
An alteration or change, as in nature, form, or quality.
Genetics.
A change of the DNA sequence within a gene or chromosome of an organism resulting in the creation of a new character or trait not found in the parental type.
The process by which such a change occurs in a chromosome, either through an alteration in the nucleotide sequence of the DNA coding for a gene or through a change in the physical arrangement of a chromosome.
A mutant.
ev·o·lu·tion ( P ) Pronunciation Key (v-lshn, v-)
n.
A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form. See Synonyms at development.
The process of developing.
Gradual development.
Biology.
Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species.
The historical development of a related group of organisms; phylogeny.
natural selection
n.
The process in nature by which, according to Darwin's theory of evolution, only the organisms best adapted to their environment tend to survive and transmit their genetic characteristics in increasing numbers to succeeding generations while those less adapted tend to be eliminated.
Now since you're not actually reading my posts anymore or being open to my ideas (to subjects that contain no ultimate facts and are all theorized) and you're arguing my opinions and ideas with your opinions and ideas which you think are fact and completely ignoring any valid point I made and i was really hoping you would take a stab at the reasons why animals will become foliage-like in their appearance (other than saying they change color which has nothing to do with the fact that they actually look JUST LIKE a leaf, or stick, or stick with leaves, specific leaves, a type of marine plant, etc) I will simply ask you: Show me how natural selection, mutation OR evolution (yes, they are two different things, one is a theory and the other is something we have actually witnessed) can create an animal that looks like a specific plant. To say it was evolution makes no sense, to say it was random mutation makes no sense (they just randomly happened to become stick-like and actually gain qualities that make them look like ONE specific plant?) and to say that it was natural selection makes no sense because you are again saying that by random events the entire genus suddenly became plant like.
There are no records, for example, of a human being suddenly having a trait that makes it more bug-like in appearance by gaining 8 eyes. For thousands of years, we have helped the retarded and the deformed and we will try to keep them alive and healthy in our society - so since some of these creatures have only been around for a few million years longer than human beings, how is it that we dont have people that look like other random objects? Since as you say, it is a proven fact that we simply change for no reason and the ones that survive become the new norm, how come we look so much alike eachother for the past 4 million years? How come we dont have people that look like plants? Or look like bugs? You say its random and is constantly changing, so... where's the random changes? Everything seems to be pretty streamlined and within a set scale of logical design. The same can be said about every single animal on the planet based on fossil records (there's no sabretooth cat that looks like a plant my friend)
If a bug randomly changes in to different forms and whatever works 'sticks' (punny :D) then how come we have not acheived any of these radical changes in the same time period? How come there is nothing that points to the ideal of randomness? Why is it that cats have always looked like cats, elephants have always looked like elephants etc with only slight modifications with absolutely no record of some random mutation? Why dont some apes look like trees? why is it that that all apes, as far back as the evolutionary tree allows us to see, have always been 'ape-like' in a slow, streamlined direction of logical purpose? Since, as you say, that mutation has to exist and be born in to the world so it can either die out or flourish, it would leave some evidence of its existence.
Based on what you say, all living things (including man) basically have no set boundries of DNA, and we will randomly look like different things every once in a while. You can point to midgets, you can point to tall people, you can point to fat people, you can say 'What about people born with one eye!' or what about 'Cats with no tail!" and the fact will remain that these changes are not random and that the whole of the structure remains intact in that it looks like a man with one eye or that it looks like a cat without a tail, not a cat that looks like a plant.
You might be a nerd if... - Dark Jaguar - 10th December 2005
Ugh... Okay look. You seem to think that a mutation is going to change the ENTIRE creature into something completely different. (On another note, I'm using iconoclast in a somewhat indirect way, you are pretty much trying to tear down science because it conflicts with your religious views. It's a valid use.)
Ever try copying something in a copy machine? Take the new copy, and copy that. Keep that up, and eventually something will change. If you are coyping a picture of a fridge, it won't suddenly look like a car. Rather, it will slowly deteriorate. The one issue is in this case there is no natural selection process.
Apply that and you get pretty much what we see. We can trace back every creature to various "branches". The "tree of life", the sephiroth if you will, is pretty convoluted.
We've found a very large number of missing links. Sure we have yet to find them ALL, but that's very likely to be the case. We have however found enough.
What sort of effect will a single gene that is somehow changed have? Major, or minor? It depends on the role. To expect that a gene's mutation will suddenly make a puppy look like a whale is silly. That would take massive changes all at once. Something of that level may be expected if a more complicated thought out method of gene change were happening, like a scientist in a lab. However, "random" mutation is not likely to do that. The changes that happen are going to be very minor in most cases. Now and then, one will happen that will be very apparent. Example: moths with black coloring suddenly producing a moth with white coloring. These are mutations we actually have noticed. There are many mechanisms that allow for this.
Ever wonder about why our genes don't self-repair? Why we get cancer? Well, it's in part due to an evolutionary advantage. Hwaha? Am I insane? Not really. There's an understanding now that if our genes ALWAYS perfectly repaired themselves, which would make us immune to cancer, we would no longer be able to evolve. Being able TO evolve is an evolutionary advantage.
And, you don't have a proper theory I might add. You have an unsupported hypothesis. I don't "have a theory" so much as I'm describing an existing theory. Remember, GRAVITY is a theory. Theories are what science works TOWARDS. Holes are no reason to make up random stuff.
And yes, we have no set boundries in DNA, but you fail to understand how minor these mutations tend to be and the sheer time scales needed to really get a different looking thing.
By the way, ever bother thinking about that chinese room thing I told you about? Let me add to that. Let us now say the room the man is in is actually the head of a giant city smashing robot. Some of the chinese characters he has no understanding of represent actions the robot can perform, or sensory input. The big book of instructions the man uses to write down more chinese characters he doesn't understand (to send back out) is set up so that if he recieves certain strings of these characters he sends out specific responses. Since he doesn't know chinese, and has no understanding of what he's doing, just that he takes in certain inputs and sends out others based on that book's rules, the robot can't be said to be aware. However, if the robot damages an arm, it will, if the guy follows the instructions in the book after getting those strange characters, respond by holding it's arm in pain, or appearing to, and so on and so on. A huge battle against a giant monster moth could occur without the man inside the machine having any idea that it's happening. The robot may work to preserve itself. It all depends on the instructions. Replace that man with a computer program designed to do the same thing, and you pretty much have the major problem with the Turing test, which is that it can never provide a positive result, only a negative (negative meaning it can't even pretend to act like a sapient).
Now then, apply this to bacteria and you get where I am coming from.