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| 7/10 |
| 2005/8/9-13 [Science/Physics, Science/Biology] UID:39076 Activity:moderate |
8/9 http://www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?columnsName=pub \_ this link doesn't work anymore I haven't been paying attention to the ID vs. Evolution discussion but I read this in the Merc and I was a bit surprised by the arguments made in favor of ID. Do the ID folks really think that the universe has more order now than at some point in the past when all the forces were unified (more entropy/disorder now right?) Also I'm confused by the assertion that the laws of nature imply ID. Isn't is equally plausible that the laws of nature are the result of (1) random chance or (2) the result of a natural process (such as collisions of branes in higher dimensional space) that creates an infinite number of universes so all possible laws of physics are expressed? \_ Well, I don't know about most of the arguments presented, but it is a little puzzling that the fundamental constants would arrange themselves randomly into an interesting looking universe that we have. If things were a little off, the universe would be it is a little puzzling that the fundamental constants would arrange themselves randomly into an interesting looking universe that we have. If things were a little off, the universe would be very boring indeed. -- ilyas \_ But there is a small but finite probability that the came about by random chance right? And by boring you mean boring to people right? Some other arrangement might give rise to a universe that is interesting to different form of "life". What I don't understand about ID is that there does not appear to be a way to show that ID is more likely than the theory that branes are/have been colliding in higher dimensional space for an infinite amt of time thus making possible every arrangement of the fundamental constants. How can one accept a theory which is by definition un- proveable? \_ By 'boring' I mean you can't have life as we understand it -- low entropy entities that use energy to maintain their state, or for that matter planets, stars and galaxies -- things needed to support life. -- ilyas \_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle \_ The only way we can even talk about this is if we happen to have the conditions for life. So, just out luck that we happen to have these conditions, however small the chance. It really doesn't prove anything. \_ And this is called the "weak anthropic" principle. For some strange reason, I can't find anything in ID addressing it (which I'd think would be important). -emarkp \_ You don't understand. This isn't meant to be a proof of anything, but something requiring an explanation. -- ilyas \_ The point you're missing is that if there are an infinite number of universes, only in the ones where the physical laws are conducive to the rise of intelligent life will there ever be anyone to notice that the physical laws are conducive to the rise of intelligent life. -tom \_ And what if there isn't an infinite number of universes? Occam's razor says to assume the least. Why is it more 'expensive' to assume intelligent design than to assume infinitely many universes? -- ilyas \_ Because intelligent design still presupposes a creator, which just pushes the question up a level; who created the creator? It's a lot easier to assume an infinitude of universes than to assume that an intelligent being somehow sprang into existence before the universe did. -tom \_ So you would rather postulate an infinitude of worlds than suspend for a moment your intuitions borne of your linear perception of time? Seems like people suspend intuitions a lot when looking at fundamental things -- consider quantum mechanics. I should mention that 'created' is a causal notion, and causality is an illusion, a way our brain organizes information. There is no causality in physics. -- ilyas 'created' is a causal notion, and causality is an illusion, a way our brain organizes information. There is no causality in physics. -- ilyas \_ Wikipedia on "Causality (physics)": "special relativity has shown that it is not only impossible to influence the past" "Despite these subtleties, causality remains an important and valid concept in physical theories." \_ This is one of those cases where I know more about the subject matter than wikipedia. There is no causality in physics, only in physicists. The standing of causality in modern physics is so weak that even my advisor, a fairly influential causality guy, concedes that it's all likely an artifact of the human brain, and not an objective feature of reality. On a slightly unrelated note, I wish people would stop quoting wikipedia as an authoritative source. I read some of their 'contention' pages, and wasn't really impressed. You don't have to look far to find wikipedia blatantly being wrong -- in the general Causality article, Pearl and Spirtes are listed under 'Probabilistic Causality,' which is untrue, proponents of that area include Good, Cartwright, etc. Pearl/Spirtes are in 'Structural Causality.' Wikipedia is trash. -- ilyas the human brain, and not an objective feature of reality. On a slightly unrelated note, I wish people would stop quoting wikipedia as an authoritative source. I read some of their 'contention' pages, and wasn't really impressed. You don't have to look far to find wikipedia blatantly being wrong -- in the general Causality article, Pearl and Spirtes are listed under 'Probabilistic Causality,' which is untrue, proponents of that area include Good, Cartwright, etc. Pearl/Spirtes are in 'Structural Causality.' Wikipedia is trash. -- ilyas \_ I support quoting of Wikipedia as an authoritative source, with disagreements with Wikipedia well disagreements with Wikipedia documented on motd for any sodan to evaluate. -jctwu to evaluate. Wikipedia's usefulness significantly outweighs its negatives when used in this way. -jctwu \_ What usefulness? It's an encyclopedia and it's WRONG. A lot. Do you really want me to look through the causality article and list all things it got wrong? Wikipedia's 'usefulness' is misleading people into thinking they know something. -- ilyas \_ Then fix it man -- you're extremely lucid in your writing when you set your mind to it. That's one of the nice things about Wikipedia -- I assume that people with brains and enough confidence in their knowledge go in and remove blatant inaccuracies, so as time goes on, the overall quality of the information gets better. Don't get me wrong -- it's still a source of info which resides in the internet and therefore is deserving of a little skepticism, but it's still a damned handy reference. -mice \_ It's a Wiki-based encyclopedia, not a traditional encyclopedia. In your opinion, Wikipedia is trash; I already stated my opinion. You could also submit a change, but that's your prerogative whether you do or do not and why you wouldn't. I don't think we can get any farther than this. any farther on this. One more thing you can do: We can avoid the subjective question of whether Wikipedia is useful or not, and you can instead explain calmly and succinctly why there is no causality in physics, and/or post a URL which says so. Pretend you're Feynman lecturing to a freshman physics class. -jctwu \_ This logic appeals to me, but many find it deficient. Of course, if things weren't conducive to us being here, we wouldn't be here.... Those who have the most trouble with this usually cite the incredible odds against it. However, with possibly a trillion "trial" locations, over a span of billions of years, it doesn't seem unlikely to me that life would somewhere arise and ponder the unlikelyhood of it all.... But the pondering would 100% take place in those lucky, rare locations that "won". Like here. \-there is a good paper that assess the amount of "tolerance" we can have in various "free parameters" [i.e. the fundamental physical constants] in light of the anthropomorphic principle [the idea that we have to be here to to ask the questions] ... i can dig up the reference if there is interest. if you are interested in this you may want to review first review the list of free parameters ... some of them are pretty technical but you need some knowledge of what the are to see how things fit in terms of "dependencies". there are many good discussions of this. \_ Who says there are "trials" or they take any "time"? Why not "every possible existence that could be, is"? And maybe that means there are an infinite number of existences, and maybe that means there are a finite but greater than one number and maybe that means this is it and the only it. It's all just freshman lounge chat anyway since we can't ever know but this is better than a lot of the other motd/wall posts. \_ Hey ilyas, tell us about the stars. -aspo \_ Aspolito is a meme's way of making another meme. -- ilyas \_ ID is intellectual fraud. It presents strawman arguments about evolution and largely consists of handwaving. I can't distinguish between it and more sophisticated moon-hoaxers. -emarkp \_ Do other religious conservatives give you a lot of shit for being such a decent, rational person on science issues? I think it's fantastic to see someone who self identifies as a religious conservative speak out against these people. You can probably get a lot more traction stopping them from destroying American science than us liberal jewish athiest scientists. can probably get a lot more traction stopping them from destroying American science than us liberal jewish athiest scientists. \_ I've never been criticized for it. I point it out misrepresentations of science when I see them, and misrepresentations of religion when I see /them/. I'm particularly annoyed about ID because it is an attempt to misrepresent science to defend the author of physical law, and I just read a 30-page article this weekend from ID that read like an anti-religion tract but was basically anti-Evolution. -emarkp \_ ID isn't really about the universe and physical laws, but more about: Goddamn, can you believe a tiny sperm and a tiny egg can combine and grow into one new human being, without anything else going wrong? GAWD or ALIENS must have been involved! \- a fairly cool book on weird examples and corner cases in biology is THE DIVERSITY OF LIFE by EO WILSON. I found this quite readable and interesting and I have a fairly limited bio background. http://csua.org/u/czi \_ Cf. a good deal of Stephen Jay Gould's work on evolution. \- isnt SJG soft on ID? \_ No. Read Bully for Brontosaurus. \- Some comments: the ID vs Evolution debate is somewhat interesting for various reasons but it mainly has to do with politics when hitting a low [like BUSH weighing in about it] or philosophy of science [what is a theory vs a collection of fact, what are standards of proof, causality in an empirical or observational science]. if you are interested in actual debates on evolution, those dont really concern the teleological or "invisible hand" aspect of ID but other "legitimate" issues with the various competing evolution theories. dawkins and gould are the populerizers, but you can also look at wilson, mayr [died recently too], this fellow H. Orr, Stevene Pinker, matt ridley, and r lewontin [recently gave a talk at berkeley] and daniel dennet. a lot of these guys have secondary agendas and strong personalities so it makes for an interesting story/debate to follow. \_ The problems with ID are twofold: 1) It is not science, it is philosophy. Don't teach philosophy in science classes. And 2) As soon as you use the "The Wizard Did It" type of logic to explain the world then it's religion, not knowledge, and you can go to church to become indoctrinated in such a fashion. |
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| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle universe must be consistent with our exis tence as carbon-based human beings at this particular time and place in the universe. In other words, "If something must be true for us, as huma ns, to exist; Frank J Tipler (1986), are: * Weak anthropic principle (WAP): "The observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable but they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirements that the Universe be old enough for it to have already done so." Furthermore, the range of constants allowing evolution of carbon-based life may be much less restricted than proposed (Stenger, "Timeless Reality"). The strong version is also criticized as being nei ther testable nor falsifiable, and unnecessary. alternat e universes is suggested for other reasons and the anthropic principle p rovides additional support for their existence. Assuming some possible u niverse would be capable of supporting intelligent life, some actual uni verses must do so, and ours clearly is one of those. However, alternativ es of the intelligent design conjecture are not limited to proposing the existence of alternate universes. Frank J Tipler (Oxford University Pre ss) was published. In this book Barrow, a cosmological scientist, pionee red what he called the anthropic principle in order to deal with the see mingly incredible coincidences that allow for our presence in a universe that appears to be perfectly set up for our existence. weak nuclear force seems to be tailored for us to exist. The exist ence of carbon-based life in this universe is contingent upon several in dependent variables; and were any of these variables to take a slightly different value, carbon-based life could not exist. The anthropic princi ple implies that our ability to ponder cosmology at all is contingent on all the correct variables being in place. tautology, a very elaborate way of saying 'if things were different, they would be different'. This weak anthropic principle is a truism that says nothing and explains nothing because in order for us to be here to ponder the universe, it had to be such that we can exist. In 1983 he also included the warning that the inverse was true for evolutionary bio logists; Carter claimed that in interpreting the evolutionary record, on e must take into account the astrophysical restraints of the process. Wo rking with this in mind, Carter concluded that the evolutionary chain pr obably could include only one or two highly improbable links given the a vailable time interval. The theoretical work involved attempting to unif y gravity with the other forces. While there were a number of promising developments, they all seemed to suffer from the problem that the fundam ental physical constants seemed to be unconstrained. The observational m otivation came from cosmological observations which gave firm values for quantities such as the matter density of the universe. Contrary to expe ctations, the value was not one, but 03, which is a non-obvious value. Further, using the ba sic wavefunction of the universe as basis, Hawking's equations indicate that such a universe can come into existence without relation to anythin g prior to it, meaning that it could come out of nothing. He conclud ed that it might be, but that: Many 'anthropic principles' are simply confused. Some, especially those drawing inspiration from Brandon Carter's seminal papers, are sound, but... In particular, I argue that existing methodology does not permit any observational consequences to be derived from contemporary cosmological theories, in spite of the fact that these theories quite plainly can be and are being tested empirically by astronomers. What is needed to bridge this methodological gap is a more adequate formulation of how observation selection effects are to be taken into account. |
| csua.org/u/czi -> www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393319407/qid=1123653705/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_sbs_1/002-2147905-4484807?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 com Humans, the Harvard University entomologist Edward O Wilson has observed , have an innate--or at least extremely ancient--connection to the natur al world, and our continued divorce from it has led to the loss of not o nly "a vast intellectual legacy born of intimacy" with nature, but also our very sanity. In The Diversity of Life, Wilson takes a sweeping view of our planet's natural richness, remarking on what on the surface seems a paradox: "almost all the species that ever lived are extinct, and yet more are alive today than at any time in the past." " We should, he continues, regard every species, "every scrap of biodive rsity," as precious and irreplaceable, without attempting to quantify th at regard with utilitarian measures such as "bio-economics." See all Editorial Reviews Product Details * Paperback: 424 pages * Publisher: W W Norton & Company; Reissue edition (May, 1999) * Language: English * ISBN: 0393319407 * Product Dimensions: 92 x 61 x 11 inches * Shipping Weight: 16 pounds. But first a warning: readers should have some basic biological knowledge and part of the book (with many examples and useful digressions) will on ly appeal to botanists/microbiologists. Wilson clearly demonstrates that the world's demographic explosion initiated a big extinction of all sort of biological species and that we have to stop this, for biodiversity is priceless. Governments take the biological wealth of their country not serious enoug h He states for instance that fewer than 3 percent of the flowering pla nts of the world have been examined for alkoloids and that many species are at risk. Wilson illustrates very forcefully the impact of biodiversity by gi ving numerous examples from the medical, pharmaceutical, energy and agri cultural field with colossal numbers in $ for actual applications. To give one example: 'the rosy periwinkle of Madagascar produces two alka loids that cure most victims of two of the deadliest of cancers, Hodgkin 's disease and acute lymphocytic leukaemia. See all my reviews One of the most accessible of EO Wilson's books. This book puts humans in the context of another animal amidst great biodiversity. One of the m ost humane aspects of this book is to help us humans feel part of someth ing greater, not someone superior and exclusive to nature. The value of biodiversity and the symbiotic relationships of animals to e ach other paints a picture that is both enlightening as well as upliftin g This book was one that changed my mindset on many fronts and I owe a great deal to EO Wilson for this wonderful book. See a ll my reviews This book took me a long time to get through (probably about a week), bec ause, while the language is user-friendly, there's so much information c ontained therein that at times it gets overwhelming. The book covers the history of life on earth in broad strokes, from the time of the first r eplicating organism through the present, and beyond. More than anything, Wilson asks us to appreciate what goes into evolution , and what we stand to lose if we continue destroying our fellow species at anything near the present rate. He also provides a blueprint for an ideal solution to the current global crisis. One of my favorite sections is chapter 2, which recounts the story of Kra katau, a volcanic island that was blown from existence in the late 1800s . Biologists were able to visit the diminished rock that remained, and w atch the reassembly of life on a less-than-desert island. The recounting of the violence of the explosion is gripping, made vivid through an eye witness account by the captain of a nearby ship, and through the effects of the explosion, which literally traveled around the world in the form of waves. The tidal waves killed 30,000 people, and the sound was the l oudest ever recorded in history (as judged by the distance from which pe ople heard it). Within a year or two, the island began to be a host for life again. Life reached out in several interesting ways, from parachuti ng arthropods to swimming lizards. You would expect plant life to be the first thing to take hold of the island, but scavengers were able to do their work first, and predators (at the insect level mostly). There were also animals that could eat the things that the sea brought, such as cr abs and detritus. Eventually, life rose again, until the island looks ve ry like other islands in the area. Wilson also recounts how there were five previous great extinction spasms in the history of species, and how humans are bringing on the most terr ible one of all. In chapters four through ten, Wilson explores the various ways in which s pecies evolve to take advantage of habitat. He gives fascinating example s of symbiotic relationships, adaptive radiation, and the way in which l ive has slowly and steadily become more diverse over the last billion ye ars. He spoke of certain species with great passion, including ants (whi ch are his primary specialty) and sharks. These both represent extremely successful species, as ants make up more biomass than any other type of creature, and sharks are one of the longest-lived lineages in the world , having evolved to take up hundreds of different oceanic niches. Another striking image in the book is the vastness of the worlds in front of us. There are millions of species of bacteria that are completely un known to us. He estimates the total number of species as ten to 100 mill ion, and stresses that no one can really be more exact than that with an y certainty. Of these, we have named only 14 million species, and the n aming of them is all we have done in the vast majority of these. Meaning , that for the small number of species we have identified, in most cases we have labeled them with a name and sent a specimen to moulder in the drawer of a museum somewhere. We are very ignorant of the world around u s The rain forests of South America are the lungs of the world, and contain perhaps half of the total number of species on the planet. When he wrot e the book 14 years ago, he noted that the rain forest then took up an a rea the size of the United States, and was losing 2%, or an area the siz e of Florida, every year, mostly to small-scale agriculture and logging. In chapters 11 and 12, Wilson talks about the impact that humans are havi ng on the environment, which is, of course, bad. He notes that ancient h umans hunted every large flightless animal to the brink of extinction, p ointing the finger at paleo-indians for the disappearance of Wooly Mammo ths, and at early Polynesian traders for eating their way through hundre ds of island bird species (mostly flightless). Rather than focus on pollution, Wilson instead talks about physically pre serving habitats and environments. There is nothing so threatening to an environment as the clearcutting, burning, or mining of the land itself. Noting that a tenfold decrease in an environment leads to a 50% reducti on in the number of species (his own discovery), Wilson makes the plea f or preserving large areas of land across the world, especially in 18 glo bal hotspots that represent high areas of diversity that are under fire. This part of the book gets very depressing, as you get a feel for the t housands of problems, the magnitude of solving even one, and the speed w ith which the situation is worsening. Finally, in chapters 13, 14 and 15, Wilson puts the hopeful smile back on our faces as he outlines both what needs to be done, and what has alrea dy been successfully done. He notes that the habitats that are being destroyed are mostly ravaged fo r economic gain. He then makes the argument that, in many cases, the pre servation of the land can be more economically beneficial than the razin g of it. For example, clearcutting a single hectare of rain forest yield about 1,000 in profit. But, harvesting the commercially viable fruits a nd other natural resources from the same spot of land yields 422 in prof it-every year. He also notes that the pharmaceutical and food industries have much to gain from prospecting for species that can cure disease or hunger in some way, citing many examples. For example, rather than raise cows, if ranchers ... |