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WBraun
climber
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In his foot .....
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Paul Martzen
Trad climber
Fresno
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HFCS wrote:
"how would [Paul] handle the Hayes and Komisarjevskys of the world?"
...if he were King of America?
Not 400 years from now when, imaginatively, we might be able to solve the criminal's antisocial trait by releasing borg-like nanoprobes into the cortex (See Star Trek Voyager episode, Repentance, for more) to effect repairs or to improve upon shortcomings, but now, right now, in this century in need of practical solutions.
I had to google Komisarjevsky. If i was king or supreme mechanic, I would dispose of them quietly and without fanfare, like a car that is too defective and dangerous to drive. I would not be mean or vindictive about it, I would just dispose of them. Given the nature of their crimes, it is likely that they have been creating damage through out their lives. It is not possible to estimate the likelihood that they would commit this particular crime again, but it is likely much higher than normal and the likely hood that they will do other social damage is very high, just based on their character and probable history.
I note that in the aftermath, several memorial and scholarship funds have been established in the name of the Petit family victims who it appears contributed much to society. We should pay attention to the contributions of the Petit family, to those memorial efforts and to our own efforts to help and support those around us.
...and, btw, that was an interesting bait-and-switch you posted from (a) the conscious intelligent driver of the car to (b) the (driverless) car! Truly today's best straw man and red herring all rolled up into one, lol. I did not mean it as either a straw man or a red herring but rather as an interesting comparison.
Supposing there was a driver or maybe your neighbor forgot to set the hand brake. Either way, you have somebody to blame. Your foot is still broken but you have somebody to blame. Feel better now? Supposing the driver is the king or your master/owner - me as king of America. You are screwed and I - the king, think, "Dang, I just broke the foot of one of my good workers. Well, nothing I can do about it now. Might as well just have him put down and get somebody else. He should not have been standing there anyway."
Supposing the driver was an equal, then you can yell and scream at him and try to persuade him to pay you compensation. You can take him to court.
Supposing he is your slave? You can work him twice as hard or whip him as much as you want. Maybe you just decide to kill him and get another driver who will be less careless. How can you tell whether the next driver will be any better than the one you just killed. Will killing the first guarantee that the next will be better, or will you have to try some driver training of some sort?
Your ability to hold the other accountable varies completely on their status. But still, your foot is broken and there is no obvious change in the probability of it happening again. Are there any actions that you could take which would change the probabilities of future mishaps?
But bottom line, I think, is that holding drivers "accountable" does not tell us much about how to make driving or cars safer. I seem to recall that accident injury rates are going down over time because of engineering advances which hold cars accountable in very specific and well studied ways rather than expecting the drivers to be perfect. More evidence of evolution in action, I think.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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That, to me as a social scientist, is the challenge. Even the author of the Nature of Scientific Revolutions said that sometimes a few funerals were necessary before science itself could progress.
Its so easy to resort to the mystic when confronted with the abyss of ignorance. An endless variation of 'its god's will.' Rather than implying a creator or a universal mind or whatever, 'it's gods will' should accurately be interpreted as 'I don't know.'
DMT-
How in the world did you interpret what I said to be about mysticism and belief in God? Did you read the following two paragraphs? The point was that many people simply can't change and major societal changes can't happen as long as older, inflexible people are in charge, whether of science or government. Sometimes a whole generation has to pass from the scene before change can be made. I was quoting the book, The Nature of Scientific Revolutions, not a religious text?!
Fructose-
I don't think you should waste any energy in the "fight" for science education. Basic human psychology says a non-confrontational attitude and the process of leading a student to the point where they can make their own conclusions based on the evidence, works much better for long term change.
I realize we have a lot of high powered science people contributing to this thread and I've learned a lot. The problem remains however, as the originator of this thread asked, how do you translate that level of knowledge down to the common level?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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the Earth is not in equilibrium as both Venus and Mars are, and the reason is life on the planet Earth.
We do not have a good description, physically, chemically, biologically, regarding systems that are not in equilibrium, we don't have particularly good theories for even simpler systems that are not in equilibrium.
Part of understanding non-equilibrium systems will involve modeling those systems with high performance computing, essentially "experimenting" with those systems, numerically, and divining physical insight from those simulations hopefully leading to a quantitative theory on how non-equilibrium systems work.
It is a long standing area of interest, and it is the key to understanding the questions that Largo and WBraun ask, to wit: what gives life life?
I believe, as I think both HFCS and Dr. F do, that the explanation for life is physical, but that being said, we have not yet been able to formulate that explanation. It is more subtle than just mixing stuff up in a primordial ooze, the ease with which life apparently came to be on Earth, as indicated by the very early time it became abundant, currently escapes our efforts to reproduce it in the lab.
It is, perhaps, that we do not understand something relatively fundamental in those systems that we are missing the point. I don't think that either Largo or WBraun have presented any viable alternative, but they do not have to do that to criticize the lack of a physical theory of life, and point out that we don't have one.
From that fact one can draw any conclusion that they would like to... but very likely whatever that conclusion is, it probably doesn't have much relevance for the future.
The back and forth on this has become quite silly, really... there is really good science being done in this direction, we simply don't have the answer to those questions yet. It's not an issue of the alternative explanations being righter or wronger, the scientific question is unresolved.
If either HFCS and Dr. F can point me to the literature which shows that I am misinformed I'd be forever in their debt.
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Mimi
climber
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Well said Ed. People have a hard time with the lightening strike on the primordial ooze. It's my most plausible. Throw in a few stroids and comet crystals and whamo! You can't reproduce that in the lab. Or can you? Now that's what I call green jobs.
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MH2
climber
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"It is not the nature of things for any one man to make a sudden, violent discovery; science goes step by step and every man depends on the work of his predecessors. When you hear of a sudden unexpected discovery - a bolt from the blue - you can always be sure that it has grown up by the influence of one man or another, and it is the mutual influence which makes the enormous possibility of scientific advance. Scientists are not dependent on the ideas of a single man, but on the combined wisdom of thousands of men, all thinking of the same problem and each doing his little bit to add to the great structure of knowledge which is gradually being erected.
— Sir Ernest Rutherford
Quoted in Robert B. Heywood, 'The Works of the Mind', The Scientist (1947), 178.
The path from chemistry to life was probably also gradual, but just what conditions existed in the early oceans, volcanoes, atmosphere, lithosphere, and other sites in the first billion years is hard to be sure of now. Somehow, organic molecules of impressive complexity must have been formed and been organized into complexes, like peptides in lipid membranes. Going from the simple to the complex can happen: there is no law against it, just long odds. But as Francis Crick and others have noted, there is a big gap between what kind of molecules and molecular arrangements seem achievable by processes we know about, and an organism that can reproduce. The cheap answer is that however unlikely it was, it happened. Otherwise we wouldn't be here.
Most people don't need to know much science and shouldn't have it pushed on them if they don't like it. Another Rutherford quote, I think, is, "I'm not interested in theories that can't be explained to the barmaid."
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Many people don't find this type of belief system adequate for their vision of reality
No Craig, my views are not based on beliefs. I have said that 1,000 times. Zen has no content. This doesn't help answer questions from the materialist camp, but those are not the questions I am asking.
Nor, as Ed suggests, am I trying to present an alternative to the fantastic belief that matter, with no inner direction, or laws, organized itself "by natural causes" into life, or that matter "creates" consciousness, or that life and consciousness are indistinguishable from and are absolutely, in qualitative terms, the selfsame things as matter.
To some, these are fantastic statements. But are thy really more fantastic than the idea of the speed of light being relative to the observer?
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I wasn't trying to suggest anything...
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WBraun
climber
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Poor skywalker the original poster.
The poor guy must be banging his head against the wall thinking WTF have I done. LOL
We took his thread and hijacked it to everywhere.
So sorry man, .........
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Mimi
climber
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The OP needs to provide an update. Shirley he had to get some good ideas from this thread for his classes. Maybe too many. LOL!
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go-B
climber
Habakkuk 3:19 Sozo
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Job 38:4 Where were you when "I" laid the foundation of the earth?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Ed: I don't think that either Largo or WBraun have presented any viable alternative, but they do not have to do that to criticize the lack of a physical theory of life, and point out that we don't have one.
From that fact one can draw any conclusion that they would like to... but very likely whatever that conclusion is, it probably doesn't have much relevance for the future.
The back and forth on this has become quite silly, really... there is really good science being done in this direction, we simply don't have the answer to those questions yet. It's not an issue of the alternative explanations being righter or wronger, the scientific question is unresolved.
And being unresolved at the moment, what's curious is peoples' reaction to that and what they take away from the fact it's unresolved. It obviously provokes a strong reaction in some people.
Largo: Nor, as Ed suggests, am I trying to present an alternative to the fantastic belief that matter, with no inner direction, or laws, organized itself "by natural causes" into life, or that matter "creates" consciousness, or that life and consciousness are indistinguishable from and are absolutely, in qualitative terms, the selfsame things as matter.
Oh, but that's exactly what your doing in an inscrutably slippery, 'have-it-both-ways' manner you've had going on both these threads. On one hand you embrace a "fantastic" skepticism around any leap from the inanimate to the animate (but don't yet seem to deny we exist), while at the same time proffering a "totally impersonal and dimensionless intelligence." Just what is one to make of that? Matter can't beget life or mind on their own, but there's a universal intelligence loitering about should the need ever arise - is there some reason you don't just close the gap? Is there some sort of ascetic aesthetic in the denial of the obvious?
So, skipping the inscrutability index conjecture, which in no way represents the 'criticism' Ed seems to think it does, how about simply answering the question?
healyje: Largo, what exactly is the problem with not currently having a clear hypothesis, a viable theory, and not having even gotten the problem space well mapped out? We were in the exact same space in 1889 relative to the transistors, jet turbines, and what the surface of Mars was like.
It kind of boils down to just another day in the hood and so what?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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I dunno, from my perspective this is just a ride and when it's over it's over and there's absolutely nothing whatsoever special that distinguishes me from an amoeba or a rock beyond what I appreciate, enjoy, love and contribute. I have no further requirement than that and accepting that seems a simple as breathing as well. No need for god, universal intelligences, hells-on-earth, or somewhere to go or be after this life. This is and has already been exceptionally great beyond words. In fact, coming up on sixty and struggling with whether I can pull my sh#t together enough to claw my up the Diamond on the day of, I'd say I'm already so very far into the gravy that every hour is a gift given how life could have, and still could, go at any moment.
It kinda leaves me amazed that people can't see the miracle and wonder in just walking around breathing and instead allow fears and need to leave them continuously preyed upon by a desire for something more than what's right in front of them when they open their eyes and take a deep breath. So speaking of the Homeric, why on earth is it that people need for it to be any more complicated or mysterious than that?
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cowpoke
climber
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^^^haven't laughed that hard in a long time -- thanks, DMT. very funny.
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WBraun
climber
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I dunno, from my perspective this is just a ride and when it's over it's over
I drove to the cookie, parked the car, the ride was over,
I left the dead car.
The hike to the base began .....
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WBraun
climber
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Look who's whining now.
You're the one who's originally started all those stupid snarky posts making up tons of sh!t.
Then you asked for examples of you making up sh!t.
You were then exposed time and time again with examples.
F you need your head examined ......
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Oh, but that's exactly what your doing in an inscrutably slippery, 'have-it-both-ways' manner you've had going on both these threads. On one hand you embrace a "fantastic" skepticism around any leap from the inanimate to the animate (but don't yet seem to deny we exist), while at the same time proffering a "totally impersonal and dimensionless intelligence." Just what is one to make of that? Matter can't beget life or mind on their own, but there's a universal intelligence loitering about should the need ever arise - is there some reason you don't just close the gap? Is there some sort of ascetic aesthetic in the denial of the obvious?
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What one is to make of that is what I have said all along: There are at play in our lives fantastic mysteries and paradoxes that ARE both ways. These paradoxes are fundamental and basic to being alive. We are both material and thought, temporal and infinite, matter and not. You want them to be one way, material, quantifiable, temporal, and causally connected. Material things can be framed in this way and without doing so we have no technology. But materialism can only take us so far and then it breaks down. Usually at the point of imagined "origins," particualrly when matter is expected to source "all and everything."
Because of this belief, we have scientism, which at bottom believes quantifying has no limitations per investigating "reality." And if it does, it still goes further than any other mode. That is the Golden Rule which can never be broken.
I laugh and am snarky because while there is a million dollar prize out there for anyone who can demonstrate how inanimate matter became animate. You could post the same for showing how matter can become experience. And while no one has any answer beyond objective functioning, they will insist that because "good science" is being done all over the place (very true), these challenges will soon be wrestled down materially. The only reason we don't already have a sentient computer is that we haven't quite got the technology sorted. But just wait.
And like I said, I got real estate on the moon for anyone believing same.
JL
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StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Bottom line is you can't be totally objective. Everyone has prejudices that make them interpret "objective" facts according to their own experience and training. Mathematics, physics etc. are all based in observable facts, but I don't think they explain the complete breadth of human experience. Being aware of your prejudices really helps you move forward in complete understanding, but this is a side note to teaching the mechanics of evolution.
Things are never black and white when it comes to human experience. If you choose one thing over another, you are limiting your capabilities to understand. It is fine to have preference, but excluding is limiting.
The mechanics of evolution are observable. What put them in motion is still up for debate.
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