>> ^hpqp:

>> ^Quboid:
Interesting hypothesises, but there are one or two other species who can't talk, yet who manage to propagate their genes and while I have not studied them at length, I don't believe it's really a case of forcing the female.

Actually, the hypothesis is total bunk: in most (if not all) mammal species, the female chooses the male she will mate with (hence the males evolving fighting and/or show-off attributes).
That being said, I chuckled at the explanation of short-haired lesbians.


Indeed. Perhaps I should have used the sarcasm option, since what I meant was that there's thousands of species that manage to communicate well enough without rape and that his hypothesises is nonsense.

>> ^hpqp:

>> ^Quboid:
Interesting hypothesises, but there are one or two other species who can't talk, yet who manage to propagate their genes and while I have not studied them at length, I don't believe it's really a case of forcing the female.

Actually, the hypothesis is total bunk: in most (if not all) mammal species, the female chooses the male she will mate with (hence the males evolving fighting and/or show-off attributes).
That being said, I chuckled at the explanation of short-haired lesbians.


Yeah I'm pretty sure he wasn't executing this as a rational theory, or he probably wouldn't have mentioned pterodactyl juice, hehe. Again the lesbian/short hair thing cracked me up also

>> ^Quboid:

Interesting hypothesises, but there are one or two other species who can't talk, yet who manage to propagate their genes and while I have not studied them at length, I don't believe it's really a case of forcing the female.


Actually, the hypothesis is total bunk: in most (if not all) mammal species, the female chooses the male she will mate with (hence the males evolving fighting and/or show-off attributes).

That being said, I chuckled at the explanation of short-haired lesbians.

This, dear Watson, is no monkey. This is a Gibbon, of the Ape family (notice...no tail). They are the fastest and most agile of all tree-dwelling, non-flying mammals. Thus, Acrobatic, and either threatening the guy, or courting him.

>> ^Jinx:

>> ^dracoirs:
In reply to this comment by Payback:
A REALLY shocking secret about your favourite dinosaurs would be THAT THEY WEREN'T DEAD.

Pro tip, today's birds are yesterday's dinosaurs

Yeah ok, and todays mammals are yesterdays reptiles? :3

HOMOSAPIESAURUS


he's right...

>> ^dracoirs:

In reply to this comment by Payback:
A REALLY shocking secret about your favourite dinosaurs would be THAT THEY WEREN'T DEAD.

Pro tip, today's birds are yesterday's dinosaurs

Yeah ok, and todays mammals are yesterdays reptiles? :3


HOMOSAPIESAURUS

Let's not get too overwrought here. At issue, one planet's climate/resources relative to the mammal(s) utilization and experience of the same and their viability on her surface. Only one species have brains large enough to postulate, process, and influence directly a variety of scenarios. The indigenous species with teensier brains on the surface of this ball have for centuries adapted to changes dealt from off-world or on. Some are no longer here. We may or may not be here in our present state regardless of, or due directly to alterations in a variety of scenarios. No-thing is sustainable indefinitely. This planet's human resources are finite as well. Fewer and fewer of them every day. Sad really, when we all die off the next wave will have to start with some toxic scratch!

*promote

Neat video, showing that animals are in fact very capable--across the board, not just apes and highly trained dogs & dolphins--capable of using tools. In this case it is to have fun. But, it appears to be self-taught without human prompting, which shows us very much that we DON'T yet fully understand their full capabilities. We are barely getting to a point were the human mind makes sense, psychologically and via neuroscience.


Once we understand the majority of ourselves we can gain better insights into the animal world, which of course is very different from one little black-feathered flying Crow to the large leathery skinned water-dwelling/land mammal, Hippopotamus! With understandings into their world via the same as ours: neuroscience and psychology; we can make further strides in truly expanding our horizons and moreover it may help prepare us for the day we really do run into an extra-terrestrial sentient life-form.

Is the music Tenacious D?

I did a big paper on the evolution of bipedalism in school. Lots of advantages to walking upright on two legs. Mainly it's more energy efficient - you get more distance per calorie. The first form of hunting used by humans was exhaustion hunting. We'd stalk other mammals (which are all quadrupedal) for days until they collapsed first, because they need a lot more rest than we do over time/distance.

The behavior is common in fishes (especially cartilaginous fishes, but also teleosts); so we might expect to see it in many and diverse tetrapod lineages (tetrapods are nested within the paraphylectic group of fishes). Still, while it has been shown in rabbits, guinea pigs, and a few other, it appears to be less common in mammals. Attempts at explaining this range from inhibitory effects of the relatively well developed cortex in mammals to differing circulatory physiology.
For more info, look up "tonic immobility".>> ^hpqp:

They're all dinosaurs. I wonder if this is feasible on mammals.

They're all dinosaurs. I wonder if this is feasible on mammals.

First off Anis, yes, anyone who is not completely enthrawled by your every thought is a troll, dont believe them, everything you are is special and important and the world needs to know about it.

secondly, watching any large mammal excerise the cognative prowess of play is fantastic! Serving to remind one and all of our common cellular ancestry ~ how beautiful it is to contemplate the relativity of all life on earth!

lastly, the sift is a fantastic venue for media that inspires imaginative intellectual thinking. This is largely due to its great agregation of interrested and coherent posters (the capn must exclude himself). If you feel as though i have suffered you some trollin, your defensiveness is a sign that this message weighs upon you. PLZ DONT INSIDE JOKE YOURSELF OUTLOUD, k thanks buy

>> ^Stu:

He's not trolling. We really don't give a shit.
>> ^A10anis:
>> ^CaptainPlanet:
This isn't your therapist's office, we aren't going to ask you why. We'll just make a note in our little book of 'people we wish were on youtube instead'
>> ^A10anis:
Hate isn't too strong a word to describe my feelings toward zoos.


So, because i commented negatively, regarding zoos, i should be on you tube? Your comment is a non-sequitur, please troll someone else, i ain't biting.

I have claimed that there are methods to synthesize information that do not require the interaction of a mind. I have provided an example of one such system.

You object, but without either asserting that the simulation is a mind, or that it does not synthesize information, but instead you make some vague assertion about how it's instead not an example.

A mind created and designed it, therefore a mind is involved, therefore it is an invalid example..

Abiogenesis is, like all real knowledge, unproven. None the less it is, at present, the only coherent explanation for what can be demonstrated to exist.

Abiogenesis is unproven because there is no evidence, it is just metaphysics. It's your faith that it is true. It is not the only coherent explanation, it is just the explanation that you have to believe because you have ruled out an intelligent designer apriori.

There is no ID hypothesis, Behe came the closest to actually trying, and any competent high school biology student could pick his little charade to pieces in a few hours with a half decent encyclopedia.

Here is the hypothesis

http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1156

Here is a story about ID being published in a biology journal making predictions for cancer research

http://www.discovery.org/a/2627

I am arguing not that there are no differences in the world, but that there is no concrete distinction between life and chemistry. You can assume there is, you can assert there is, but until you can demonstrate that there is I have nothing to disprove.

There is obviously a concrete difference since life doesn't come from non-life, and has never once been observed doing so. You have everything in the world to prove here. Everything in the Universe is made up of atoms, does that mean there is no difference between you and me? Is there no difference between a duck and a neutron star? You can't just say that because there are trivial similarities that they are the same thing.

And if you think like that, and you just believe we are all chemicals in motion, then you can't trust your own mind because if our mental processes are just chemical reactions, then there is no reason to believe anything is true. If our mental states have their origin in non-rational causes, rationality can't be trusted. You can't know if the rationality we have from evolutionary processes is discerning the truth of the world or not. Even Darwin realized this:

"With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"

The bottom right hydroxyl group is the only difference between RNA and DNA, to suggest that molecules can't lose parts, is to argue that the universe is not as it observably is.

Since the step you clearly label (MAGIC) in the RNA-> DNA path is so obviously trivial, why should anybody believe that the other step you label (MAGIC) is any more complex
?
Well this is plainly false. RNA to DNA is far more probable than ROCKS to RNA. The reason it is labeled magic is because there is no proof. It doesn't mean that they are both equally likely. It is less likely by large orders of magnitude.

The magic is RNA self-replication:

http://www.lifesorigin.com/chap10/RNA-self-replication-3.php

And if you had bothered to do any real research, you would see that the leap from soup to these complex molecules is anything but trivial..here is a list of just of basic issues...

http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/chemlife.html

Some quotes for you:

Instead of revealing a multitude of transitional forms through which the evolution of the cell might have occurred, molecular biology has served only to emphasize the enormity of the gap. We now know not only of the existence of a break between the living and non-living world, but also that it represents the most dramatic and fundamental of all the discontinuities of nature. Between a living cell and the most highly ordered non-biological system, such as a crystal or a snowflake, there is a chasm as vast and absolute as it is possible to conceive....

Molecular biology has also shown that the basic design of the cell system is essentially the same in all living systems on earth from bacteria to mammals. In all organisms the roles of DNA, mRNA and protein are identical. The meaning of the genetic code is also virtually identical in all cells. The size, structure and component design of the protein synthetic machinery is practically the same in all cells.

In terms of the basic biochemical design, therefore no living system can be thought of as being primitive or ancestral with respect to any other system, nor is there the slightest empirical hint of an evolutionary sequence among all the incredibly diverse cells on earth. For those who hoped that molecular biology might bridge the gulf between chemistry and biochemistry, the revelation was profoundly disappointing."

Dr. Denton, Ph.D (Molecular Biology),
An evolutionist currently doing biological research in Sydney, Australia

Now we know that the cell itself is far more complex than we had imagined. It includes thousands of functioning enzymes, each one of them a complex machine in itself. Furthermore, each enzyme comes into being in response to a gene, a strand of DNA. The information content of the gene (it's complexity) must be as great as that of the enzyme it controls.

A medium protein might include about 300 amino acids. The DNA gene controlling this would have about 1,000 nucleotides in its chain, one consisting of a 1,000 links could exist in 41000 different forms. Using a little algebra (logarithms) we can see that 41000 = 10600. Ten multiplied by itself 600 times gives us the figure '1' followed by 600 zeros! This number is completely beyond our comprehension."

Frank Salisbury,
Evolutionary biologist

Perhaps an "effort", but not a method, or a hypothesis. ID makes no predictions, it simply tries to find arguments to prop up a baseless assumption, that is the opposite of science.

If any ID proponent, or any theologian for that matter, can demonstrate even one example of anything true that their ideology can reliably tell us that we don't already know I will admit that it has predictive power, and that it could qualify as a hypothesis, and then eventually a theory. I'm betting you can't find one.

I did, see above. Here is a bunch more: http://www.discovery.org/a/2640


>> ^dgandhi:
>> ^shinyblurry:
What I insist is that you substantiate your claims, which you have failed to do.
I have claimed that there are methods to synthesize information that do not require the interaction of a mind. I have provided an example of one such system.
You object, but without either asserting that the simulation is a mind, or that it does not synthesize information, but instead you make some vague assertion about how it's instead not an example.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Abiogenesis is purely metaphysics and unproven.
Abiogenesis is, like all real knowledge, unproven. None the less it is, at present, the only coherent explanation for what can be demonstrated to exist.
There is no ID hypothesis, Behe came the closest to actually trying, and any competent high school biology student could pick his little charade to pieces in a few hours with a half decent encyclopedia.
Given two possibilities, one being unlikely, and the other being false, I'll go with unlikely.
>> ^shinyblurry:
So you acknowledge that information is trivially synthesized, by
non-minds? That's the opposite of your original claim. Is that a
retraction?
No, see above.

You said, and I quote: "if you already have DNA, you can certainly expect a cell to form."
Do you mean that DNA must already have the information required to do so? because lots of DNA does not, otherwise are you asserting that DNA is somehow "mind", which you claim would be required for that information to come into being?
>> ^shinyblurry:
The distinction between "life" and "non-life" does not exist.
So there is no difference between you and a rock? I can admit I see similarities, heart wise..:)
Let's see some evidence for your claim that there is no difference between life and non-life.

I am arguing not that there are no differences in the world, but that there is no concrete distinction between life and chemistry. You can assume there is, you can assert there is, but until you can demonstrate that there is I have nothing to disprove.
You can't disprove unicorns, I can't disprove the life boundary, and we have no reason to believe either exists.
>> ^shinyblurry:
It's not false. This is your pathway to DNA: RNA - (MAGIC) - DNA This is your pathway to RNA: ROCKS - (MAGIC) - RNA Just because you can get RNA to self-replicate doesn't automatically mean it is either likely or plausible this could happen.
Please consider this image: http://en.citizendium.org/images/thumb/f/f6/RNA_base_vs_DNA_base.jpg/350px-RNA_base_vs_DNA_base.jpg
The bottom right hydroxyl group is the only difference between RNA and DNA, to suggest that molecules can't lose parts, is to argue that the universe is not as it observably is.
Since the step you clearly label (MAGIC) in the RNA-> DNA path is so obviously trivial, why should anybody believe that the other step you label (MAGIC) is any more complex?
>> ^shinyblurry:
It is an effort to empirically detect whether the "apparent" design in nature, which biologists acknowledge, is actual design. It is only useless to you because you have ruled out design apriori, which is just simply ignorant.
Perhaps an "effort", but not a method, or a hypothesis. ID makes no predictions, it simply tries to find arguments to prop up a baseless assumption, that is the opposite of science.
If any ID proponent, or any theologian for that matter, can demonstrate even one example of anything true that their ideology can reliably tell us that we don't already know I will admit that it has predictive power, and that it could qualify as a hypothesis, and then eventually a theory. I'm betting you can't find one.

>> ^nock:

Aren't these things protected by the Marine Mammal and Endangered Species Acts? Pretty sure you aren't supposed to get within a certain radius. I'm also pretty sure he's within that radius.


I don't know the specific law in the US, but in other countries the rule has been that you are not allowed approach the animal, but once it approaches you, you're fine.

Aren't these things protected by the Marine Mammal and Endangered Species Acts? Pretty sure you aren't supposed to get within a certain radius. I'm also pretty sure he's within that radius.