Author Topic: Crows are pretty damn smart  (Read 46798 times)

Offline gymsum

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Crows are pretty damn smart
« Reply #60 on: June 06, 2008, 09:29:45 AM »
If all ovjects share a graviatational atraction, why dont atoms share this? Are you saying that even thought we are made of mass and we dont collapse that its not because of a repelent force which exsists in all matter?

Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #61 on: June 06, 2008, 01:15:35 PM »
Quote from: gymsum
If all ovjects share a graviatational atraction, why dont atoms share this? Are you saying that even thought we are made of mass and we dont collapse that its not because of a repelent force which exsists in all matter?

Atoms do attract, but it is such a tiny force, that it is negligable until you get to the size of things like moons.  We don't collapse into a singularity because the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces are way more powerful than gravity.  Check out wiki again.  Scroll down to the table that shows the four fundamental forces.  Gravity is 10^28 times weaker than the so called "weak" nuclear force.  And 10^36 times weaker than magnetism.  And 10^38 times weaker (thats 100000000000000000000000000000000000000 times weaker) than the strong nuclear force (which is what holds the nucleus of an atom together).  The only places where gravity can overcome these forces enough to collapse matter are in blackholes.  And those things represent an amount of mass that would boggle the mind (several orders of magnitude larger than our sun).

Offline Peter

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« Reply #62 on: June 06, 2008, 02:58:02 PM »
Quote from: Numsgil
Also, Skateboarding dog.  An its XTREME competitor.
The most usefull piece I found in the topic.  . Dog Pete is the best.

Quote from: gymsum
If you want to deny any of the facts I presented, you're denying thousands of years of human knowledge and hundreds of years of physics.
Uhuh..., facts? What facts, can you please tell me where your facts are?

Quote
To answer your math questions, I took 4 tons, as standard weights (US), converted it into metric tons, and then checked my result with my physics notes (it sayed 4 mil metric tons as of 2006). SO I went with that. 4 tons is a horable inacurate count, considering  4 x 10^33 ergs/sec is the amount of energy produced by the sun, and energy = mc^2. Its simple algebra if you cant figure it out from there.. ergs is a unit of metric ton equivelance, the amount of energy to move one metric unit . So you divide the amount of energy produced by the sun (available from NASA) by its mass (again NASA) times the speed of light (take a guess). I have a graphing calc, so the numbers should be dead on. The 1% is realy easy dude, you take the total known mass of the sun, and divide it by the amount lost. I got 16 billionths of a percent a year, or 1% every 160 billion years. That fact alone has alot to say about how our solar system formed.
I find it a pity that the USA still doesn't use standards then. An for your information, haven't you ever heard from Le Système International d'Unités?
And just show the info you got from NASA, it would make it much easier. What you're doing now is something like ?+?=3 and I just feel like the '?' is a '1' . No really just give the numbers. I am even doubting your calculating skills.

Quote from: EricL
I must say I find this thread mildly embarrassing.  It makes me less likely to point friends and aquaintences to DB.

People are welcome to disagree with prevailing scientific viewpoints and site whatever reasons they wish for doing so, however irrational or nosensical.  But I find the lack of rational thinking and blatent, delibert spouting of pusedo-science mumbo jumbo displayed here to be sad and disappointing, especially in that it is outside the off-topic forum.  I for one, would have hoped that people who are attracted to DB would be by and large more scientifically minded and/or less prone to be duped than this thread would indicate.
Indeed some admin has to put the 'lack of rational thinking and blatent, delibert spouting of pusedo-science mumbo jumbo' part of this topic the the offtopic section. Well said anyway, you wheren't talking about me, where you.  

Oh my god, who the hell cares.

Offline Testlund

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« Reply #63 on: June 06, 2008, 03:45:48 PM »
Just think about this for a minute: The reason why some scientists claim the universe is 15 billion years old is because that's the longest distance they've been able to see out in the universe, meaning then that our planet is in the center of the universe. How likely is that? It's as silly as when they believed the earth was the center of our solar system!
In the video I posted the link to the guy says that the longer the telescope stare out the older the universe seems. It could as well be that the universe has no beginning or end, it just goes on forever. I don't like it when things are taken for granted at the limits of our understanding.
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Offline Peter

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« Reply #64 on: June 06, 2008, 04:27:08 PM »
Quote from: Testlund
Just think about this for a minute: The reason why some scientists claim the universe is 15 billion years old is because that's the longest distance they've been able to see out in the universe, meaning then that our planet is in the center of the universe. How likely is that? It's as silly as when they believed the earth was the center of our solar system!
In the video I posted the link to the guy says that the longer the telescope stare out the older the universe seems. It could as well be that the universe has no beginning or end, it just goes on forever. I don't like it when things are taken for granted at the limits of our understanding.
Well in fact they claim the universe is 14 billion years old(not 15). Nasa project WMAP found that conclusion. With a complicated way they find the oldest light that came from the beginning of the universe filtering other light out. Hard to imagine how they exactly came to that number, becouse in the beginning there was no light. Conbined with big-bang theory with a lot of phycics there is the age calculated.
Point is that the big-bang is 'probably' the best fitting theory, others like steady-state have been (almost) dismised becouse they can't be right. Becouse big-bang has no real counter arguments left, it is chosen as main theory.
You could say that big-bang has gotten more attention then others, and therefore there are extra theorys created for big-bang theory(like cosmic inflation) that explain some parts that don't fit exactly. And that the others with less support didn't had the capacity to create strong counter arguments.
But time will tell, they'll find out sometime, how it really works. Maybe they are really right.
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Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #65 on: June 06, 2008, 04:40:50 PM »
Quote from: Testlund
Just think about this for a minute: The reason why some scientists claim the universe is 15 billion years old is because that's the longest distance they've been able to see out in the universe, meaning then that our planet is in the center of the universe. How likely is that? It's as silly as when they believed the earth was the center of our solar system!
In the video I posted the link to the guy says that the longer the telescope stare out the older the universe seems. It could as well be that the universe has no beginning or end, it just goes on forever. I don't like it when things are taken for granted at the limits of our understanding.

You're very close to understanding this.  Indeed, if we look out in every direction, we seem to be at the center of the universe.  Far away things are moving away from us (they are all red shifted), as if we were at the center of an explosion (big bang).  This motion does not allow for a steady state universe.  If we extrapolate the motion, at some point in the distant past, the Earth was at the center of a large explosion (big bang).

That would be quite a coincidence if the Earth was the center of the universe (even an absurd statement to make).  So instead of make that conclusion, scientists assume that every point in the universe is the center of the universe.  That is, that the actual space that we're familiar with (meaning the distance between two arbitrarily chosen points) is expanding.  From any point in the universe, if you were to look out, it would look like you were at the center of an explosion, because you are at the center of an explosion.  At the beginning with the singularity, all points in space were infinitely close to each other.  As the big bang occurred, it wasn't the matter that exploded out, but the space upon which matter sits.  And this space is still expanding.

And it's not just a clever idea.  It explains why background radiation has "cooled" since the time of the big bang.  It's not that it's exchanging heat with an outside universe (as your video claims is obvious), but that the density per unit volume is decreasing, because space itself is expanding.  An expanding universe decreases the pressure of that background radiation, "cooling" it.

That's something of a simplification, but that's the best way to approach the idea.

Offline asterixx

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« Reply #66 on: June 08, 2008, 09:22:50 AM »
I am really not too sure how this thread progressed to this point   , but if I may just make a comment about the original point, I'd like to say that it is not surprising that a crow would be capable of such a behaviour. A friend of mine has a pet crow and it is capable of opening doors, and it has never (I think), seen another crow, the only 'social structure' it could possibly observe was the human interractions of the family. Can we at least agree that the crow has DNA that codes for the capacity to achieve such a task?

Thanks for this thread, truly amazing. As for the physics, I really do not know enough to speculate objectively as to the nature of the relationship between the structure of energy and its connection to gene expression? I appreciate the divergence  

Nice to post again, it feels like its been ages. And this zerobot sim is closing in on 1000 hours, there has clearly been evolution (I thought I'd never see changes) but, nothing as spectacular as I was hoping.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2008, 09:25:24 AM by asterixx »
"Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you.  Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch it to be sure."

Offline Testlund

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« Reply #67 on: June 08, 2008, 11:04:32 AM »
Quote from: asterixx
Can we at least agree that the crow has DNA that codes for the capacity to achieve such a task?

I agree with that. I also think that as long as humans rule the world, intelligence will have an evolutionary advantage, which could eventually lead to even smarter animals, that might even be able to compete with us and cause us troubles. But I don't think we'll get that far. I think evolution will start over within a period of 100 years from now when most life has been exterminated including our selves.
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Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #68 on: June 08, 2008, 01:21:15 PM »
Quote
am really not too sure how this thread progressed to this point laugh.gif ,

me neither

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I also think that as long as humans rule the world, intelligence will have an evolutionary advantage, which could eventually lead to even smarter animals

That would be interesting to determine if city crows are smarter than forest crows.  Or if there's been an increase in intelligence over time.  Humans tend to think that intelligence is a good thing, but maybe in a relatively predator-less city it's better to be stupid and breed prolifically?  Reminds me of a scifi book called "The Mote in God's Eye" about an alien species (their planet is in a nebula called "God's Eye") who haven't been able to leave their solar system, after potentially millions of years, so their civilization keeps collapsing every couple hundred years due to overpopulation.  With so long under the rule of sentience, the planet's biosphere has permanently adapted to the aliens.  There are little critters called Watchmakers, for instance, that can dismantle and put back together almost any technology.  It's also a neat study in sentient evolution, since the aliens are divided in to different subspecies with vastly different intellectual levels and physical strengths, depending on what they do.  Overall it's a relatively neat book.

Offline EricL

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« Reply #69 on: June 08, 2008, 04:52:55 PM »
Quote from: Numsgil
Reminds me of a scifi book called "The Mote in God's Eye"

Larry Niven is God, especially when he gets together with Pournelle.  My all time favorate author.  The sequel 'The Gripping Hand' is almost as good as Mote and if you haven't read Footfall and Lucifer's Hammer, you're missing out.  Even 31 years after publication, Hammer still rocks.  
Many beers....

Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #70 on: June 08, 2008, 05:21:19 PM »
Definitely.  I think they also did a book called "Inferno", which is based on Dante's Inferno but instead of Dante it's a scifi author journeying through Hell.  Probably my favorite scifi book, or very close to it.

Offline ikke

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« Reply #71 on: June 08, 2008, 11:22:46 PM »
Iliked the single species ecosystem of heorot: herbivore larvea and predatory adults feedig of them.

Offline Peter

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« Reply #72 on: June 09, 2008, 02:19:15 PM »
Quote from: Testlund
I agree with that. I also think that as long as humans rule the world, intelligence will have an evolutionary advantage, which could eventually lead to even smarter animals, that might even be able to compete with us and cause us troubles. But I don't think we'll get that far. I think evolution will start over within a period of 100 years from now when most life has been exterminated including our selves.
That settles it, we've gotta exterminate the crows. Otherwise they will take the world domination. I'll gues that the crows putting food into the ground are just fooling us, within ten years they will be putting bombs into the ground.

Let start the war with the crow.

Quote from: Numsgil
Quote
am really not too sure how this thread progressed to this point laugh.gif ,

me neither

Well now there is talking about sci-fi books, there is not really much needed to let the topic go completely off-topic. Just a random sentence and someone else that responds on that and go on.
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Offline gymsum

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« Reply #73 on: June 09, 2008, 04:30:30 PM »
Back to the crow: The raven is smarter.

Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #74 on: June 09, 2008, 07:05:20 PM »
Sure is:

Poe: "Is 5 greater than 7?"
Raven: "Never more"

XD