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MH2
climber
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"They constructed an edifice."
J. Goldberg referring to:
It will be quite a day if neuroscience constructs an understanding of understanding.
In the meantime small but well-connected little things.
The other little things, too, like the deep sharp significance that climbing lends to details of rock, sky, moss, lichen, insect, lizard, human, and on and on.
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altelis
Mountain climber
DC
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stress as we use it everyday and stress as is used by the fields of medicine & physiology aren't the same.
like square and rectangles. the everyday usage of stress refers to a specific state that is fully accounted for in the technical term "stress", but the technical term "stress" refers to much more than the lay term.
in the technical sense, stress can include starvation, acidosis, pretty much any disease state, etc. we need not "feel stressed" for our body to mount a stress response.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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if you liked nanook, you should see atanarjuat: the fast runner.
and for darwin fans, creation--a portrayal of the man's own conflicts about what he had to say.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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t*r - This doesn't work when you condider the MS patient... "then why do people with depression show lowered immunity???"
 depression and me go back a ways... But my immune system works well on destorying my nervous system, and I haven't been sick-sick for some time now. I don't keep track, mostly because I am just living in between boughts of the 'd', but for the record I haven't taken a day off work/out sick since 07/10, and that was just a nasty head cold and massive headache and extreme nasal spewing.
I know that I am one individual case, and your statement most likely works for the majority, and so I take it like I take most everything else... as a statement from one person.
cheers Ed. Thanks for the thought provocation
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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Ed, its true that humans now do produce enough food, more or less, to support our enormous world population. But unfortunatly at the expense of every other creature on earth.
I look at the human population currently like a giant bacteria culture gone out of control, wiping out everything else in the petri dish. We continue to grow and destory until one day we will simply run out of resources, probably with a little help from global warming, war, etc., and there will be mass starvation and population die-offs and the collaspe of civilization as we know it. The world will once again go back to a primitive state. I believe science tells us that also, unless radical changes are made soon. However no one appears to be listening to the scientists that say this.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Studly - Good thought. I was thinking while reading: at what point will it not benefit a certain population to war another. or when will the resources not be available enough for one population to start war with another?
I'm hopeful that eventually populations will see this, and just stop.. But like you say... humans are the uncontroled bacteria in the dish
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Homer
Mountain climber
742 Evergreen Terrace
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Thanks for your post Ed.
How do we "know" that the starches that were observed on the teeth were the result of the person eating plants? That certainly seems like a reasonable "belief", given the limited information that we have about reality, but is that what you mean when you say "know"? That seems to me like just another "belief" based on the limited information that we have. Maybe it's even true. But how many things have we "known" in the past that have been disproved in the face of more information?
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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We continue to grow and destory until one day we will simply run out of resources, probably with a little help from global warming, war, etc., and there will be mass starvation and population die-offs and the collaspe of civilization as we know it. The world will once again go back to a primitive state. I believe science tells us that also, unless radical changes are made soon. However no one appears to be listening to the scientists that say this.
Actually, global warming is expected to increase the Earth's biomass (i.e., resources).
You can check out the NASA article I posted on GW skeptics thread about how increased plant growth because of higher CO2 is expected to dampen GW.
Here's a question for you: if world will go back to a "primitive state," wouldn't it be nice to at least be a few degrees warmer?
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Great thread, Ed.
Reminds me of these words by Feynman:
"In general we look for a new law by the following process. First you guess. Don't laugh, this is the most important step. Then you compute the consequences. Compare the consequenses to experience. If it disagrees with experience, the guess is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not matter how beautiful your guess is or how smart you are or what your name is. If it disagrees with experience, it's wrong. That's all there is to it."
This is just 1 of 5, but the rest are there...
Richard Feynman: The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srSbAazoOr8
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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Good a place as any to drop this in the mix. It's a whole new ballgame.
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/02/kepler-all-systems-g.html
Here's the very compressed big picture: Kepler is working nearly flawlessly, and it's finding oodles of *candidate* transiting exoplanets, some of which appear to be rocky worlds orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars.
The Kepler team has announced more than 1200 new candidates.
Of those, 68 are approximately Earth-sized (equal to or less than 1.25 Earth radii). More than 50 candidates of all sizes are located in the habitable zone of their host stars, including 5 that are less than twice the size of Earth. The evidence suggests that smaller planets occur more frequently around smaller, cooler stars than hotter, larger stars, of which our Sun is one example. Nearly 15 percent of the stars with candidate planets harbor more than one candidate, suggesting that multi-planet systems are fairly common.
Much more work remains to be done, and indeed the follow-up observations required to confirm that all these candidates are actually planets will likely take many years. We still don't know if life exists elsewhere in the universe, but we've now taken another major step into the asymptotic frontier, and life's cosmic abundance appears more inevitable than it did yesterday.
This moment has been coming for a long, long time.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Ed and all you science believers
Here's what you're up against
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyHzhtARf8M&feature=player_embedded
How many millions of people listen to Bill O'Reilly and believe him?
What does this say about our educational system? Our political decisions in a world of scientific and technical complexity?
When something as fundamental as the existence of the moon can't be understood? When the spontaneous(a term I use advisedly) springing forth of life, wherever and whenever it happened, can't be accepted?
When an uneducated moron like this is taken seriously by such a wide audience including politicians and powerful business leaders?
(disclaimer) Before I looked at this video I had no particular opinion of Bill O'Reilly except he's a blowhard. I also had never listened carefully to his words. My Bad.
To my mind, however life actually came about (the scientific basis) is far more "miraculous" than if a "god" created life. An omniscient and omnipotent being snapped his fingers and we popped up 10,000 or even 100,0000 years ago? Give me a break.
Part of the marvel of science is that no matter how much we learn there are more avenues to research. One of the definitions of infinity. This truly mystifies and frightens a lot of people.
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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You are right, HT...
There are people who cannot accept reality, if it isn't like they 'want it to be'...
As Francis Bacon said, long ago:
"The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections; whence proceed sciences which may be called "sciences as one would." For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes. Therefore he rejects difficult things from impatience of research; sober things, because they narrow hope; the deeper things of nature, from superstition; the light of experience, from arrogance and pride, lest his mind should seem to be occupied with things mean and transitory; things not commonly believed, out of deference to the opinion of the vulgar. Numberless, in short, are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections color and infect the understanding."
Thing is, most do not even understand the science of the very things they confidently deny... They do not care to understand, as it's easier to dismiss this way. THAT is 'wilfull ignorance'.
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MisterE
Social climber
Bouncy Tiggerville
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Part of the marvel of science is that no matter how much we learn there are more avenues to research. One of the definitions of infinity. This truly mystifies and frightens a lot of people
The same can be said for faith. By choosing "either/or" one limits themselves.
One person's infinity is another person's heaven, so to speak. Each person marvels at the wonder of their own belief. The harder task is finding, nay - feeling - the wonderment of the other person's view. Therein lies a place of peace, acceptance and understanding. Good luck finding that, serial-posters-with-intent-to-change.
Personally? I'll leave that to the more "morally/spiritually/politically energetic" than myself.
Carry on - just finished night-shift and going to bed.
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Branscomb
Trad climber
Lander, WY
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One of the great achievements of the Renaissance was the realization that there was a way, by scientific method, of progressing beyond the limitations of Aristotelian logic and the Platonic view of the world that the Catholic Church had engulfed in order to neutralize the threat to it's power that those systems of logic entailed.
For once there was a way of looking at the world that promised to understand it without the voodoo of Catholicism. You could really look at things as they are and not have these self-imposed blinders of religion to deal with. This was and still is, one of the greatest achievements of human thought.
I think there is a very large place, neglected greatly in these modern times, for a humanistic approach, more subjective than the objective nature of science, especially to social problems. We saw what a mockery of scientific method could be made by mankind during the 30s and 40s in Germany, how it could be turned to horrible ends.
Indeed, what happened in Germany in the 30s and 40s is probably one of the pivotal events of human history, as yet undealt with in any serious manner in terms of trying to resolve the moral and ethical problems proposed by the event. Our moral and ethical lives have not progressed beyond the 2000 year old ethics of Aristotle, which did not anticipate such a level of inhumanity.
Unless the humans can get to figuring this out, we will never progress as a species, I don't believe, but will continue to muddle along killing each other over ridiculous phantoms of religion.
Anyway, science offers us a really excellent way to analyze our universe and has thus vastly improved the living standard of our species over the centuries. But it is only half the job. We can't afford to ignore what is, perhaps, the more difficult and subjective task of improving our social relations by rethinking the ethics by which we live.
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Well said.
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howlostami
Trad climber
Southern Tier, NY
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"Hey Ed, how's the cold fusion thing going????????????"
Cold fusion, who knows. Now hot fusion, that's getting there.
https://lasers.llnl.gov/
The plans are to break the buck this year. If you keep your cholesterol low enough you might still be around to see it.
(I'm not Ed, but am very interested in the progress of this project)
As for Bill O'Reilly, that guy demonstrates the finest of 12th century RC logic. Thoms Aquinas would be proud. Oh, wait, he wouldn't. He called all of his own theological work a "Pile of Straw". I wonder what it is like being stuck quite literally in the dark ages from a philosophical standpoint, pretty scary I'd imagine.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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As for Bill O'Reilly, that guy demonstrates the finest of 12th century RC logic. Thoms Aquinas would be proud Actually (Saint) Thomas Aquinas was trying his best to reconcile reason and logic with Church doctrine. I'm sure if he were alive today he'd be along the lines of MisterE's comment. Reconciling fact/science with religious belief as two different realms of human existence.
I wonder what it is like being stuck quite literally in the dark ages from a philosophical standpoint OUCH, but so true of so very many people
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howlostami
Trad climber
Southern Tier, NY
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Hey HT,
You make a good point, I hope that today Aquinas would fall into MisterE's thought process that sprituality and science/intellect can coexist separately in one human being. Both seem to be innate in humanity the world over, they don't have to conflict.
I wasn't intending to be overly harsh on Aquinas the man, but his works are falacious, he said as much himself. The church and anyone else who follows them without thought are on the wrong path, and have been for nearly 1000 years. Bill O'Reilly is continuing this trend to this very day. Scary.
Peace,
Tim
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Well said Branscomb.
Highest priority should be stabilizing human growth.
How ethical is it to perpetuate the biggest problem?
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