Hey robbersdog49, thanks for the level headed reply. I'll address your comments in a few pieces here:

The origin of life and Darwinian evolution are two entirely different things. Regardless of how you believe the first life came about we do know from the fossil record and evidence about the way the environment and climate changed on earth in those early millennia that the first life was simple single cell organisms.

In my study of the evidence from the fossil record, I found more evidence that contradicted the assertions of Darwinian evolution than confirmed it. The Cambrian explosion for example, where basically every type of animal body plan comes into existence at around the same time, contradicts the idea that these things happened gradually over long periods of time. In fact, a new theory was invented called "punctuated equilibrium" which says that the reason we aren't finding the transitional fossils is that the changes happen too quickly to be found in the fossil record. Instead of a theory based on the evidence, we have a theory to explain away the lack of evidence.

Evolution is the process which turned these very simple life forms into the complex forms you see all around you today. It's an ongoing process and the evidence for evolution is overwhelming.

The evidence for micro evolution is overwhelming. The reason we have hundreds of different breeds of dogs is because of micro evolution. Darwin discovered this and all the credit should go to him, but where the leap of faith took place was when he supposed that because we see changes within species, that therefore all life evolved from a common ancestor. This claim is not substantiated scientifically. You cannot see macro evolution taking place anywhere in the world, and you cannot find the transitional fossils to say it ever took place. You cannot test it in a laboratory, it is a historical claim based on weak circumstantial evidence.

Science doesn't know exactly how life first came about. It doesn't claim to. We know that it did because we're here, but how? Not sure. But that's not a problem, science doesn't claim to know everything. Science is a process we use to find out about the world around us. It's not a book with all the answers.

Science is all about what we don't know. It's a process of discovery, and you can't discover something you already know. Religious people like to show any gap in the knowledge of scientists as showing they are frauds, or know nothing and that this means their own views must be true. That's just a stupid logical fallacy. Just because no one else has the answer doesn't mean you can just claim your version must be correct.

Science not being able to tell us how life started has no effect on the validity of the statement 'God did it'.

The God of the gaps fallacy is simply a red herring in these conversations. I don't purport to say that because science can't explain something, that means God did it. Science is all about the principle of parsimony; what theory has the best explanatory power. I purport to say that the idea of a Creator has better explanatory power for what we see than the current scientific theories for origins, not because of what science cannot explain, but for what science has explained. I think the evidence we do understand, in physics, biology, cosmology and information theory overwhelmingly points to design for many good reasons that have nothing to do with the God of the gaps fallacy.

There is also it seems a point of pride for those who think the best position is to say "I don't know", and accusing anyone who thinks they do know as being wrong headed, arrogant, or whatever. It's a very curious position to take because there are plenty of things we can know. No one is going to take the position that if you say the answer to 2 + 2 is 4 and you deny that any other answer is valid, you are arrogant or using fallacious reasoning. Yet, it is arrogrant and fallacious to those who think that science is the sole arbitor of truth when someone who believes in God points to a Creator as the best explanation. They think that because they believe no one else could know the answer except through scientific discovery. You have to realize that is a faith based claim and not an evidence based claim. You think that way when you place your faith in science as what is going to give you the correct answers about how and why you are here. I like these quotes for Robert Jastrow, who was an Astronomer and physicist:

"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

"Scientists have no proof that life was not the result of an act of creation, but they are driven by the nature of their profession to seek explanations for the origin of life that lie within the boundaries of natural law."

As for the age of the earth, there's a huge amount of evidence which says it's about 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years old. That's plenty of time for evolution to take us from simple single cell life to the complex animals we've become today.

Have you ever studied the scientific proofs for both sides? There are some "clocks" which point that way, and there are other clocks that point the other way. The clocks that point to the old Earth have many flaws, and there are simply more evidences that point to a young Earth. That video I provided shows the evidences I am talking about.

Nailed it dude!

The only angle I feel hasn't really come up so far is the idea that private enterprise and public governance could easily be regarded as two manifestations of the same "real" social dynamic: Establishment/challenger (or master/slave if you want to get fully Hegelian about it)

Like, why do we even develop governmental systems in the 1st place?

I have yet to conceive a better answer than: "to curb the destructive excesses of private wealth/power."

Why would we champion personal freedom? I would say: "to curb the destructive excesses of public wealth/power".

Or something to that effect at the very least. The idea of a society with either absolute personal, or absolute collective sovereignty seems hellish to me. And probably unworkable to boot!

There seems to me a tendency in the history of societies for these two types of power to dance either side of equilibrium as the real power struggle unfolds i.e. between reigning establishment and challenger power groups/paradigms.

Right now the establishment is both economic and governmental. The corruption is mutually supporting. Corporations buy and control governments, governments facilitate corporations ruling the market and continuing to be able to buy them.

The circle jerk @blankfist IMHO is between government and private dynasty and moreover I strongly believe that in a vacuum, one will always create the other.

Pure collectivism will naturally breed an individualist challenger and visa versa.

People are at their best I think when balancing self interest and altruism. Too much of either tends to hurt others around you and diminish ones capacity to grow and adapt. (being nice is no good if you lack the will and capacity to get shit done)

It seems natural that the ideal way of organising society would always balance collective state power, with private personal power.

Libertarianism (even the superior non anarchist version) defangs the state too much IMHO. Some collectivist projects such as education, scientific research and exploration I think tend to be better served by public direction. But more importantly I expect the state to referee the market, just as I expect public transparency to referee the state.

Total crowbar separation between the three: public officials cannot legally own or control private wealth and cannot live above standard of their poorest citizens. Private citizens cannot inherit wealth legally, only earn and create it. The state cannot legally hold any secret or perform any function of government outside public view unless it is to prepare sensitive legal proceedings (which must then be disclosed in full when actioned).

In the age of global communications this kind of transparency may for the first time be a workable solution (it's already near impossible to keep a lid on most political scandals and this is very early days). There is also the possibility of a steadily de-monetised market as crowdfunding and crowdsourcing production models start to become more advanced and practical than traditional market dynamics. e.g. kickstarter style collective investment in place of classical entrepreneurial investment.

The benefits and dangers of both capitalism and socialism here would be trending towards diffusion amongst the populace.

And then there's the whole Meritocracy vs Democracy thing, but that's really getting into another topic and I've probably already gone on too long now.

Much love

I'll try....
In short, yes, slightly they would (and have) accelerated.
This stops sometimes because equilibrium is reached, there's only so much heat being added to 'transfer'. Also, at times it HAS melted the ice caps completely.
Climate change causes ice ages to come and go. There are many reasons for climate change historically, usually tied to the makeup of the atmosphere, which naturally changes in 'cycles' (when not interfered with un-naturally). From my understanding, most have been caused, at least in part, by volcanic activity on a scale never seen in human history. The really scary part to me is, even without these volcanic events, we've raised the CO2 level faster than they seem to have raised due to natural forces in the past. The climate is now playing catch up with the atmosphere.

"Exploitation has been throughout human history, and *didn't* cause economic growth"...?

I'm pretty certain that's exactly wrong. Maybe it wasn't as booming as what brought us into the 20th and 21st centuries, but that's also because we didn't have globalization forces at work. History should easily prove the economic growth due to exploitation is directly proportional to how much your economic mobility is and how much of your workforce you're "exploiting".

We're seeing a slowdown in economy for the western world largely because the proportion of exploiters to exploitees is nearing equilibrium.

It did look like the crane did lift too long, didn't see slack in the line before it had done 3/4 of the way. Probably to avoid the unstable equilibrium that forms when it's perfectly upside down. But yeah, doesn't really matter, the rate at which it comes back up looks sufficient that it works with out that little tuck. This is done in calm waters in that harbor, when it's choppy the waves and unstable equilibrium can't really happen.

@RedSky - You aren't reading what I'm saying.

I'm talking about finding an equilibrium in which humanity can thrive economically, socially and environmentally.

I'm only saying that things like environmental damage, fracking, certain food production techniques, the current flavor of resource wars, and the fact that a massive proportion of our current population really can't feed itself are all evidence that the effort required to sustain current and future population levels doesn't fit my definition of finding balance.

The only point of no return I'm talking about is that at some point it will be essentially impossible to get to that place of balance that I favor. It's a nebulous concept for sure, but I do think it is relatively imminent and at the very least that we are heading in the wrong direction - especially in light of the notion proposed by this video where exponential growth can give you a false sense of security right up until just before you hit it.

I actually agree with you and think that earth could sustain an arbitrarily large population of say 20 billion or even more.

But we'd have to spend more of our time and efforts competing (sometimes violently) for the resources, we'd have to shape ever larger proportions of the natural world to our own narrow needs, we'd have to put up with a much less pleasant environment, and since it will be challenging enough to just get the resources to feed and clothe your own people, there is a really good chance that unfathomable (billions) quantities of human beings will be marginalized by this system and spend most of their time suffering.

Again, a far cry rom my definition of equilibrium.

As for your notion that vague global threats don't cause change, for starters I'm not sure that's true - there are significant popular environmental movements around the world and also some threshold of self interest can be breached. For example if you look at negotiations over things like the Kyoto protocols you will see that developing nations who are much more susceptible to environmental changes like shifting climates and rising sea levels are significantly more likely to sign on. It's no coincidence that Bangladesh and a few other island nations were the only countries to ratify the thing.

But there are also educational and social strategies that can have a huge effect. I think that you'd get a lot of mileage from just increasing women's rights around the world.

I don't think anyone's advocating forced population control here.

I only think that people are advocating that a greater emphasis on family planning be incorporated into your prescription for everyone to "control his own activities and teach his neighbor the virtues of his infinitely sustainable choices."

Doing this too fast would be demographic suicide for a lot of complicated reasons, I don't think anyone is denying that, but a very significant organic reduction over the course of a few centuries would be beneficial for humanity and could be reasonably attained. It's certainly less far-fetched than mass colonization of Mars or Venus in the same timeframe.

And that's an important distinction here. We aren't really concerned about the environment here. We're concerned about what's best for us.

The environment is going to shrug us off and incorporate all our plastic, CO2, and evidence of narrowing biodiversity into a few more strata and continue doing its thing. It has survived mass extinctions before.

It's ridiculous to think that we can even destroy the environment. Our population size and its destructive effects would be reduced to insignificance long before we hit a point of no return and the biosphere's existence is even slightly threatened.

We should be framing the argument in terms of how to achieve an environmental equilibrium in which humanity can live in a comfortable and humane manner.

I think we're a lot closer to a point of no return with regards to achieving that goal.

For my money I'd say that exponential population growth isn't pointing us in that direction, and living - as I do - in a rapidly modernizing "second world" country tells me that bringing all eight billion of us to affluence too quickly poses its own significant dangers.

Let's not forget that this videos two main points are that we are demonstrably in a period of exponential growth, and that exponential growth from the limited perspective of the inside can be deceptive. Points of no return that seem far away are in fact very close.

I liked when [spoiler]he got his face cut off at the end fight scene[/spoiler] in Equilibrium, but this video was much funnier.

i love this guy.
some contemporary movies that deal with bradbury's premise:
equilibrium
and book of eli.
good flicks.

Taking the term "free market", as it's generally regarded in moderate economics circles, at a literal sense misinterprets its actual meaning. A good analogy is Creationists who cling to the notion that because evolution is regarded as a 'theory', given the colloquial definition if it, it is in dispute.

The key point of free market is voluntary setting of prices through of supply and demand by consumers and producers generally unhindered by external forces. However, a sub-field of this, market failure, deals with exceptions to the rule.

For example, negative externalities where production is incentivised beyond societally desirable equilibrium norms because costs are not bourne or captured by the producers who produce these goods and the consumers who consume them (e.g. carbon emissions).

Alternatively it also focusses on the supernormal profits that can be borne by producers who hold too much market power in monopolistic, oligopolistic or duopoly microeconomic market structures (such as what this examples presumably is, with some rent seeking thrown in on the side).

So its the means and not the ends which perturb you?

How do you propose those end get met? By ends I mean equilibrium/equality rather than female supremacy.

Further, if female supremacy is the end goal you imply that it is not yet met. Does it not entail that there is male supremacy? If there is and gender is not important then why not female supremacy? What possible objection could there be? Males have had it up until, on a folk-historical account, the mid 1980's.

Entropy is a son of a bitch.......and so are the people trying to sell this as something other than what it is, garbage.

If this was real, you would expect to see this engine accelerate uncontrollably.
Instead, it reaches a peak speed and stops accelerating. This speed will be determined by the potential energy given to the rotating wheel, from the distance drop of the magnet.

Once it reaches the fastest that potential energy can push it, the system reaches equilibrium. If you try and take the slightest bit of energy out of this system, it will grind to a halt.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Just playing devli's advocate here- if the status quo is that most people have guns - then there is philosophy of mutually assured destruction that keeps an equilibrium in the society.

I guess that's where the saying "If guns are criminalised, only criminals will have guns" comes from.

Equilibrium anyone?

http://youtu.be/tXOcXvqZlXI

Well, as far as I know, I don't have any corporate sponsors that are financing the dissemination of my opinion for their own interests ... that I know of?

Hold on, you're twisting my words. I'm making a statement of social science, not of ethics. I'm not in the mood to argue ethics, generally have a mixed opinion, and don't like discussing it since it becomes purely an emotional argument.

On a theoretical basis, you would say in the market for labour, competition pushes labour costs down to their equilibrium demand/supply level. If there are a shortage of skilled workers for an X industry or skill set, the price or wage goes up, or vice versa. That's why you typically see union structures in less skilled or more standardised rather than specialised job types. Those, with a high quantity of people possessing said skills for the job.

But as always it's a trade-off. If firms in a particular industry or skill subset start paying too little for their workers, less people will decide to study it, and they will miss out on the talent and skill pool of those who were incentivised into other industries. On that basis unions aren't necessarily good or bad for industries.

On a personal level, I'd say that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with unions and they make perfect sense. Firms organise themselves into trade associations and it would be naive to say that they don't share information on wage levels, or for that matter that this kind of information is not freely available. Why shouldn't the counterparty in the so-called market for labour not be able to organise themselves equally?

As for your last comment on whether competing is always necessary, I tend to have a pretty cynical view of the world and believe that people are generally consciously or subconsciously acting in their own interests. You may point out altruism and I will say people are satisfying a innate biological need to help others, a characteristic that would have come about in our cavemen days when co-operating distinguished your survival ability from other tribes, but ultimately something motivated in you by the evolutionary survival advantage that it conferred to you rather than any pure form of altruism.

Economics as a theory of study is pretty much predicated on this notion. What is the extent of the truth of this in reality? Who knows. I have little ability if any to truly glance into the mind of what anyone else is thinking or what motivates them.