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General => Biology => Topic started by: Numsgil on May 23, 2008, 07:23:01 PM

Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on May 23, 2008, 07:23:01 PM
I was taking my daily walk from my office to the corner and back, when I saw something that amazed me:

A crow had something large in its mouth (either a bread stick or a piece of bologna or something like that), and flew in to an empty Lot.  It placed the food on the ground, and proceeded to dig a small hole by ripping out a few tufts of grass.  It then picked up a piece of the food, placed it in the whole, and covered it back up with the tufts of grass it had pulled out.  It then took the rest of the food and dug a whole a couple of feet from the first, again by ripping up tufts of grass.  And then it buried the rest of its food, again covering it back up with the tufts it had pulled out.  Finished, it flew off.

I don't know if I'm just biased against non-mammals, or if most of the city birds I'm familiar with are pretty live-in-the-moment instead of thinking ahead, but it downright amazed me.  Did some google searching and found this (http://books.google.com/books?id=AhlvmkSkxeYC&pg=PA306&lpg=PA306&dq=crow+burying+food&source=web&ots=AsVS9v4I7w&sig=MBGwnS3VjuRTNFqN7CjLi4siZKA&hl=en#PPA306,M1) on crow food hording.

I've seen lots of interesting behaviors from the crows on my walk.  Like one time where it looked like 5 or 6 birds were dive-bombing a lone crow in the field to scare him.  They'd pull up at the last second, and the crow they were dive bombing was merrily ignoring all their efforts.

So I guess the moral of the story is that you should never underestimate the intelligence of "pests".
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: shvarz on May 24, 2008, 11:31:27 AM
Maybe because I'm from Siberia, but I'm completely used to the idea that birds hoard food. There is almost no other way for wild birds to survive there.

Have you seen the famous video of the crow that makes (sic!) a tool to reach a piece of food?  Now, that is amazing!
Upd: Here it is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtmLVP0HvDg...feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtmLVP0HvDg&feature=related)  and more on related videos
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on May 24, 2008, 09:23:03 PM
I am constantly amazed at how smart animals can be.  
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum on May 25, 2008, 12:51:25 AM
Quote from: Numsgil
I was taking my daily walk from my office to the corner and back, when I saw something that amazed me:

A crow had something large in its mouth (either a bread stick or a piece of bologna or something like that), and flew in to an empty Lot.  It placed the food on the ground, and proceeded to dig a small hole by ripping out a few tufts of grass.  It then picked up a piece of the food, placed it in the whole, and covered it back up with the tufts of grass it had pulled out.  It then took the rest of the food and dug a whole a couple of feet from the first, again by ripping up tufts of grass.  And then it buried the rest of its food, again covering it back up with the tufts it had pulled out.  Finished, it flew off.

I don't know if I'm just biased against non-mammals, or if most of the city birds I'm familiar with are pretty live-in-the-moment instead of thinking ahead, but it downright amazed me.  Did some google searching and found this (http://books.google.com/books?id=AhlvmkSkxeYC&pg=PA306&lpg=PA306&dq=crow+burying+food&source=web&ots=AsVS9v4I7w&sig=MBGwnS3VjuRTNFqN7CjLi4siZKA&hl=en#PPA306,M1) on crow food hording.

I've seen lots of interesting behaviors from the crows on my walk.  Like one time where it looked like 5 or 6 birds were dive-bombing a lone crow in the field to scare him.  They'd pull up at the last second, and the crow they were dive bombing was merrily ignoring all their efforts.

So I guess the moral of the story is that you should never underestimate the intelligence of "pests".
In nature nothing lacks intelligence... genes have adapted to adapt to the envrionment, the mutation thing was taken care of long ago, and development of the right instincts haev given some speices a certain amount of intelligence.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on May 25, 2008, 04:18:31 AM
But this crow behavior wasn't just instinct.  It was learned.  It involved thought.  Think of what's involved:


Instincts can be amazing, too, but they're preprogrammed responses that have developed over millions of years.  Learned behaviors have to be relearned during each individual's life, making them much more impressive (several million years vs. a few years).
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: bacillus on May 25, 2008, 04:45:10 AM
Not exactly the same thing, but here some magpies have found out how to get into supermarkets by fluttering their wings near the automatic door sensor. That was pretty amazing.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: EricL on May 25, 2008, 12:20:16 PM
I read an interesting paper a few years ago about some swallows (I think they were swallows) in England whose beak shape had evolved to better let them get into the foil wrap on milk bottles left on doorsteps.  The paper gave evidence of positive selection on beak shape for this adaptation, much along the lines of Darwin's finches and seed size.

I'm the first guy to chime in and say we tend to over estimate the difference between humans and other species when it comes to capabilities like this, but in this case I think you may be giving the crows a tad bit too much credit.  It's not at all clear this is learned behaviour.  It may very well be that selection has just favorred crows who always dig a hole and put some of their food in it when they have more than X amount.  The crows don't necesarily undestand the concept of now and later, don't undestand the concept that giving up food means more food later, at least not in the way we do.  They just do what they do because ancestors of theirs that did it had higher reproductive success then those who didn't.  I don't actually know this to be the case and I agree that crows are very smart birds, but I rather suspect it.  General purpose intelligence and/or learned behaviour is expensive compared to pre-programmed instinct.  If behanviour can be hard coded, nature tends to select for that.

The magpie behaviour may or may not be learned behavoir.  I suspect it is learned, since automatic supermarket doors just havn't been around that long and the birds already have a lot of built-in wiring to follow other birds to food or return to where there is food so I can see learning to flutter in a certan spot being something learnable for each generation.  But as with the swallows and the milk bottles above, it could be an evolved behavioural adaptation.   I wonder whether some grad student has tried the experiment: build an identical super market with doors that never open or steal eggs and raise birds with parents that don't teach that behaviour and see if it is still there...



Quote from: shvarz
Have you seen the famous video of the crow that makes (sic!) a tool to reach a piece of food?  Now, that is amazing!
Wow!  Now that is pretty fricken amazing...
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: ikke on May 25, 2008, 01:13:13 PM
Quote from: shvarz
Have you seen the famous video of the crow that makes (sic!) a tool to reach a piece of food?  Now, that is amazing!
Upd: Here it is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtmLVP0HvDg...feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtmLVP0HvDg&feature=related)  and more on related videos
Didn't know this one. I saw a similar one about one of them making a barb on a twig to catch grubs.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Trafalgar on May 25, 2008, 04:50:26 PM
I've seen some pretty smart behaviors in chickens, and I've seen a few dumb ones too. They never seem to have any regard for where they're pooping, so they may poop in their food or in their water if they can roost where they would poop on them. And if someone tries to grab them or they want to get out of something, they may try to run or fly through wire walls/fences, plastic mesh, or windows in an attempt to dodge. They generally won't do that if they aren't trying to get away from something, so maybe they just don't notice semi-transparent objects very well when they're panicking. Roosters also won't protect their hens from other hens (whether or not the rooster thinks they're all his).

As for smart things, if you make a habit of grabbing them to pick them up, it won't work for more than one or two times on a particular chicken, since they start staying out of reach of you after you do it the first time or two. (And they can run just as fast as a person, and they can go through shrubbery or beside trees which would slow a person down) You can try luring them over with corn or another treat, but once you've grabbed them while offering them a treat, they'll stop coming that close to you to get a treat. You can toss corn somewhere to get them to go there indefinitely, though. If you get them into an enclosed area that way and then go in there and grab them, they don't seem to associate being grabbed with the corn or the enclosed area.

Quote from: Numsgil
  • The crow has to be able to understand the idea that not having food now will mean food in the future.
Or "I have enough food already, but here's more... What if I hide it so someone else is less likely to eat it?"

Quote from: Numsgil
Instincts can be amazing, too, but they're preprogrammed responses that have developed over millions of years.  Learned behaviors have to be relearned during each individual's life, making them much more impressive (several million years vs. a few years).
Learned behaviors also appear to require a fairly tightly knit social structure in order to spread newly discovered ones.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on May 26, 2008, 04:50:43 PM
Quote from: EricL
I'm the first guy to chime in and say we tend to over estimate the difference between humans and other species when it comes to capabilities like this, but in this case I think you may be giving the crows a tad bit too much credit.  It's not at all clear this is learned behaviour.  It may very well be that selection has just favorred crows who always dig a hole and put some of their food in it when they have more than X amount.  The crows don't necesarily undestand the concept of now and later, don't undestand the concept that giving up food means more food later, at least not in the way we do.  They just do what they do because ancestors of theirs that did it had higher reproductive success then those who didn't.  I don't actually know this to be the case and I agree that crows are very smart birds, but I rather suspect it.  General purpose intelligence and/or learned behaviour is expensive compared to pre-programmed instinct.  If behanviour can be hard coded, nature tends to select for that.

I could maybe buy that except for all the trouble it goes through to hide it, and the extremely short duration (<1 day usually) for them to come back to retrieve the hidden food.  It's just too short term for me to belive instinct is directing the whole affair.

Quote
The magpie behaviour may or may not be learned behavoir.  I suspect it is learned, since automatic supermarket doors just havn't been around that long and the birds already have a lot of built-in wiring to follow other birds to food or return to where there is food so I can see learning to flutter in a certan spot being something learnable for each generation.  But as with the swallows and the milk bottles above, it could be an evolved behavioural adaptation.   I wonder whether some grad student has tried the experiment: build an identical super market with doors that never open or steal eggs and raise birds with parents that don't teach that behaviour and see if it is still there...

But remember that these birds are rather social.  It's not just a matter of seeing their parents do it.  Just observing another bird do something and get rewarded for it (food) is enough for them to pick up on it.

Quote from: Trafalgar
Quote from: Numsgil
  • The crow has to be able to understand the idea that not having food now will mean food in the future.
Or "I have enough food already, but here's more... What if I hide it so someone else is less likely to eat it?"

Right, that's what I'm talking about.  The crow has to understand the idea that other birds have the same intentions it does (that other birds think the way it does).  As opposed to other birds just being part of its environment.  It's also not an attrition behavior, since it comes back for the food later.

Quote
Learned behaviors also appear to require a fairly tightly knit social structure in order to spread newly discovered ones.

Crows are defintely social.  Sometimes I see them doing things that reminds me of elementary school children.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum on May 26, 2008, 11:50:40 PM
Do you remember Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy? In his 4th book to his trilogy, he explains a test conducted by some advanced and funded research team to develop inteligence and finally emotion. The process of creating emotion can be said to be merely a complex balance of some important numbers. Their first major breakthrough was developing an emotion similar to frustration. It was an easy set up similar to your suposed crow theory;

1 - The bot would only store 1 in happy if it was holding a glass of water.
2 - The bot would record every attempt to grab.
3 - THe bot's hands were developed to never fully hold the cup long enough, so the happy value would return to 0.

Eventually the bot understood the concept of frustration, and the need and desire for something. Another experiment then proved boredom was simple, a bot merely pushed a button and recorded each push, with happy or sad values. THats not really 'intelligence' as it is so much more instinct in an Eco System which allowed for more intelligent/better adapted genetics to continue. Its simple darwinism. However for AI purposes we have to create something from nothing and make it work. So lets revist their experiment and make it work for a crow:

1 - The bird will only be happy if it knows where it can feed.
2 - The bird will record as much information as is capable with such a small cpu.
3 - The bird will never eat all of its food without finding more.

So in three steps we've explained why the Crow does what it does. Very basic and instinctive. The line between instinct and intelligence could have more to do with what we consider instictual, and what an intelligent decision really is. Is it better to sacrifice a larger bot to save a smaller one? Is it worth not being happy when you poses the capability to make that value store 1? Depedning on how you answer those determines not only your ethical views, but if you are a Greek or Latin based thinker. Regardless birds are not capable of anything beyond their genetic make up, and therefore are just as stupid as the single-celled bacteria capable of sharing genetic material; or the spiders which developed to exsists very high up in the atmosphere. Its all a matter of dna, and in reality DNA is not so much code, as it is energy/frequency. But I definitely dont see the crow surviving another ice age.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Trafalgar on May 27, 2008, 12:32:58 PM
Quote from: gymsum
Regardless birds are not capable of anything beyond their genetic make up, and therefore are just as stupid as the single-celled bacteria capable of sharing genetic material

Alex the african grey parrot would have disagreed with you: http://science-community.sciam.com/blog-en...arrot/300004074 (http://science-community.sciam.com/blog-entry/Sciam-Observations/Interview-Alex-African-Grey-Parrot/300004074)
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: EricL on May 27, 2008, 12:57:20 PM
Quote from: gymsum
The line between instinct and intelligence could have more to do with what we consider instictual, and what an intelligent decision really is.
The main difference between hard-coded instinct and general purpose intelligence is plasticity.  The downside to hard-wiring instincts is inflexibility when environmental conditions change.  This is the main reason why we don't really see "genetic memory" in nature except when it comes to very long-term things such as seasons or phases of the moon, etc.

Quote from: gymsum
Regardless birds are not capable of anything beyond their genetic make up, and therefore are just as stupid as the single-celled bacteria capable of sharing genetic material;
I don't even know what that means.  What would it mean for an organism to be capable of something beyond it's genetic makeup?  If an organism is capable of something it is because it's DNA coded for it.   Organisms have greater or lessor plasticity in various traits, as coded by their DNA.  Period.  The greator the plasticitiy, the more flexable the organism in that area, but also the more it has to learn anew every generation.  If a bird is capable of complex behaviours, be they learned or instinctual, it's becuase it's DNA coded for it, either explicitly or for the underlying plasticity that allows it.

Quote from: gymsum
Its all a matter of dna, and in reality DNA is not so much code, as it is energy/frequency.

I really don't know what that means.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum on May 27, 2008, 02:16:37 PM
John Rife... should be able to explain some of that... In short: all frequencies are vibrational energies... all matter has mass... E=mc^2 therefore all mass is energy. Therefore all frequencies and energies are contained within entities as matter. And all matter is contained as a frequency or energy.

I say the difference between intelligence and instinctual ntelligence is evident but not always clear. In Hemp for instance, should the environment conditions chnage from the previous year, the plant will reproduce seed to be better suited for that environment. The definition of a mind is clear cut, but instictual intelligence is not.. The same method for reaction occurs in almost every natural being, sea fish like Salmon are capable of climatizing to fresh water, etc... It is the difference in minds that make them capable. And I do not see a bird asking the question why; something necessary for "understanding" anything. It could be that it has developed to use scent for food markers and complex oral communications to transfer memories, but I dont think that a Crow would ever ask itself why it eats. And if a being does not ask why, then it cannot get an answer of understanding. Thats where the whole 42 bit comes in. Who, what, when, where, and how are quite possibly all a crow is able to ask; this means it might know something about its environment and clan condtions, but it certainly has no concept as to why it needs or does anything. True it might work for reproduction, but that is instinct from the begining of life, everything does work for energy, thats how the energy system works. Its as simple as building a mind that records locations, times and personal information, but never 'thinks' about it. Instinct dictates how and why it thinks; intelligent beings have more plasticity to allow for thoughts, and eventually "understand" anything.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on May 27, 2008, 03:02:43 PM
Saying that DNA is energy is like saying that an airplane is wood, wire, aluminum, and a bit of steel.  It may be a true statement, but it in no way helps you understand the amazing feat it is capable of.  In fact, it's not until you bring the abstraction level up to the level of chemistry that you can begin to understand the amazing DNA molecule.  General relativity does not really impact biology at all, in fact.  Quantum mechanics just barely overlaps if you include chemistry (which is a pretty pedestrian application of quantum mechanics at that...)

Quote
I say the difference between intelligence and instinctual ntelligence is evident but not always clear. In Hemp for instance, should the environment conditions chnage from the previous year, the plant will reproduce seed to be better suited for that environment. The definition of a mind is clear cut, but instictual intelligence is not.. The same method for reaction occurs in almost every natural being, sea fish like Salmon are capable of climatizing to fresh water, etc...

Certainly instinct exists, and it's quite amazing in its own right.  I don't dispute that at all.  But in this case I think it involves thought.

Quote
...It could be that it has developed to use scent for food markers and complex oral communications to transfer memories, ...

That's a far bolder statement than I intended, certainly.  Crows certainly vocalize quite a bit.  I tend to think of their calls as a few common phrases, like : "nyah, nyah", "mine", "shoo", "I'm sexy!" and "You're sexy!".  But who knows, they might be playing that game between Andre the giant and the Spaniard in "The Princess Bride":

Quote
Inigo Montoya: That Vizzini, he can *fuss*.
Fezzik: Fuss, fuss... I think he like to scream at *us*.
Inigo Montoya: Probably he means no *harm*.
Fezzik: He's really very short on *charm*.
Inigo Montoya: You have a great gift for rhyme.
Fezzik: Yes, yes, some of the time.
Vizzini: Enough of that.
Inigo Montoya: Fezzik, are there rocks ahead?
Fezzik: If there are, we all be dead.
Vizzini: No more rhyming now, I mean it.
Fezzik: Anybody want a peanut?
Vizzini: DYEEAAHHHHHH.



Quote
It is the difference in minds that make them capable. And I do not see a bird asking the question why; something necessary for "understanding" anything. but I dont think that a Crow would ever ask itself why it eats. And if a being does not ask why, then it cannot get an answer of understanding.

I'm not saying crows are sentient, just far more adaptable and intelligent than other city birds I've ever seen.  I consider it like the Turing test for computers, only applied to intelligence: if some animal can convince me it's smart, it probably is.

Quote
Thats where the whole 42 bit comes in.

What 42 bit thing?  Surely you're not bringing a British radio play in to a conversation about crows in anything but a tongue-in-cheek way?
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: EricL on May 27, 2008, 07:35:37 PM
Quote from: gymsum
John Rife... should be able to explain some of that... In short: all frequencies are vibrational energies... all matter has mass... E=mc^2 therefore all mass is energy. Therefore all frequencies and energies are contained within entities as matter. And all matter is contained as a frequency or energy.

In Hemp for instance...

If you ask me, I think someone has been doing a little more more with hemp than just looking at seeds...
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Trafalgar on May 27, 2008, 10:48:33 PM
Well, it's not his fault - When God created the universe 5 seconds ago, he created it complete with his thoughts, opinions, memories, and that post there. Oh, and this post too, since you're almost certainly reading this more than 5 seconds after I wrote it. Oops, does that say "after I wrote it?" It should have said "after God made it look like I wrote it and gave me memories of writing it."

(I like to bring this out whenever someone trots out the crazy creationism argument, but I'm making an exception for a different kind of craziness in this case. The circular reasoning kind of made me go  . Although that does sound vaguely a little like string theory, but I don't particularly care for string theory either - I rather prefer scientific theories about laws of the universe to actually be *testable*.)

P.S. I couldn't find anything about your John Rife on wikipedia. The only one that comes up is this fellow: "John Winebrenner Rife (August 14, 1846–April 17, 1908) was a Republican member of the you.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania."
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum on May 28, 2008, 12:42:34 AM
Quote from: Numsgil
Saying that DNA is energy is like saying that an airplane is wood, wire, aluminum, and a bit of steel.  It may be a true statement, but it in no way helps you understand the amazing feat it is capable of.  In fact, it's not until you bring the abstraction level up to the level of chemistry that you can begin to understand the amazing DNA molecule.  General relativity does not really impact biology at all, in fact.  Quantum mechanics just barely overlaps if you include chemistry (which is a pretty pedestrian application of quantum mechanics at that...)

Quote
I say the difference between intelligence and instinctual ntelligence is evident but not always clear. In Hemp for instance, should the environment conditions chnage from the previous year, the plant will reproduce seed to be better suited for that environment. The definition of a mind is clear cut, but instictual intelligence is not.. The same method for reaction occurs in almost every natural being, sea fish like Salmon are capable of climatizing to fresh water, etc...

Certainly instinct exists, and it's quite amazing in its own right.  I don't dispute that at all.  But in this case I think it involves thought.

Quote
...It could be that it has developed to use scent for food markers and complex oral communications to transfer memories, ...

That's a far bolder statement than I intended, certainly.  Crows certainly vocalize quite a bit.  I tend to think of their calls as a few common phrases, like : "nyah, nyah", "mine", "shoo", "I'm sexy!" and "You're sexy!".  But who knows, they might be playing that game between Andre the giant and the Spaniard in "The Princess Bride":

Quote
Inigo Montoya: That Vizzini, he can *fuss*.
Fezzik: Fuss, fuss... I think he like to scream at *us*.
Inigo Montoya: Probably he means no *harm*.
Fezzik: He's really very short on *charm*.
Inigo Montoya: You have a great gift for rhyme.
Fezzik: Yes, yes, some of the time.
Vizzini: Enough of that.
Inigo Montoya: Fezzik, are there rocks ahead?
Fezzik: If there are, we all be dead.
Vizzini: No more rhyming now, I mean it.
Fezzik: Anybody want a peanut?
Vizzini: DYEEAAHHHHHH.



Quote
It is the difference in minds that make them capable. And I do not see a bird asking the question why; something necessary for "understanding" anything. but I dont think that a Crow would ever ask itself why it eats. And if a being does not ask why, then it cannot get an answer of understanding.

I'm not saying crows are sentient, just far more adaptable and intelligent than other city birds I've ever seen.  I consider it like the Turing test for computers, only applied to intelligence: if some animal can convince me it's smart, it probably is.

Quote
Thats where the whole 42 bit comes in.

What 42 bit thing?  Surely you're not bringing a British radio play in to a conversation about crows in anything but a tongue-in-cheek way?

The string theory has been created to combine the general theory of relativitiy and apply it with quantum physics... the test has been run in switzerland, havent read the results yet..
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Shasta on May 28, 2008, 12:52:40 AM
When I lived in Alaska for several years, I saw plenty of animals doing things that make you think.

Ravens are smarter than crows hands down though in all instances I have seen. If you ever see a raven close up, they are kind of eerie. They are pretty large and I have heard of them opening doors/simple locks and getting at food from neighbors.

 One of the funniest sights I saw up there was a bear cub though. The salmon were spawning and he caught a fish. Not wanting it taken by another bear he tried to run up the stream bank (pretty long and steep) right as he got to the top, he dropped his fish. It rolled all the way back down, so he went down and tried again. And dropped it. Then he settled for eating at the bottom of the bank.

But even with the silly bears you could see signs of them being quite smart just in their eating. They had so much food they would only eat the choice parts of the fish usually, so you would find a bunch of tails with spines with heads laying around.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum on May 28, 2008, 01:07:14 AM
So theres no confusion Im double posting:

to explain John Rife Device Theory:

Apparently some man named Johnathan Rife was attempting to identify a virus with a microscope to prove they exsisted. He had to develop a microscope that would emmit enough light to see the virus under intense magnification. He developed a complex microscope of sorts that used a series of high emitting bulbs filled with an inert gas, the idea was to bombard the virus with enough electrons to emmit its own protons back. He managed to identify the virus and as he continued his studies, he was able to produce a frequency which shattered the protein walls of the virus.

TO explain my half-crocked theory on string theory:

We can begin with a simple example: we have a piece of paper and a desk. If we place the paper on the desk, the desk should push back with equal force on the paper. But if you have ever used a desk that is prone to magnetism, then you know that under the right conditions the paper will stick more to the desk. Secondly, we know that the theory of numbers is based on image. The easiest way to sum up decimals is to determine how a split is made; each place is a reduction from the last split by the same multiplier, meaning at no time can you ever have a difference of 0, but you will have several closer numbers. The Chaos thoery explains that as small and insignificant instances occur, the more change over time takes place. This augmentation of entropy is an importnat law of Thermodynamics, and in accustic terms is evry similar to amplification and cancelation. So we have a means to express the results of an environment, and in this instance our only two objects are a piece of paper and the desk. On a mollecular level, the paper is composed of hydrogen and carbon compounds and the desk like wise; yet their composition and structure ensure the two never intersect eachother's plane of exsistance. Due to entropy and gravity, the paper will forever boune between touching the desk and not touching the desk. From this understanding of a piece of paper bouncing and landing on a desk, the idea that the paper is producing a frequency can be tested by measuring the minute difference in change of the papers position against parallel to the vector of gravity. At the same time, the laws of conservation state that at no time that energy exsists, will the entire value of energy in the system change; it also says that all matter is conserved, and likewise all energy. So should we decide to set fire to the paper, the same amount of energy will exsist in our system of objects in another state. THe last of my rant goes into quantum physics and is quite controverseal as far as theory uis concerned...

Since everything is made of quarks, everything can be said to be made of the same simple components. Furthermore, quarks are constantly moving in a state described as the Heisemer Principle, and this movement is alternating and constant. Above that the atoms have constant movement of electrons meaning that all matter is a state of constant kinetic energy.

Sorry if this seems to be outside the argument of the Crow, and I do fail to see how its even related....

I will say that crows are smart, but I would have to admit that worms are smart for knowing to always rise when its raining so the birds cant eat them.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on May 28, 2008, 04:38:30 AM
Quote from: gymsum
to explain John Rife Device Theory:

Apparently some man named Johnathan Rife was attempting to identify a virus with a microscope to prove they exsisted. He had to develop a microscope that would emmit enough light to see the virus under intense magnification. He developed a complex microscope of sorts that used a series of high emitting bulbs filled with an inert gas, the idea was to bombard the virus with enough electrons to emmit its own protons back. He managed to identify the virus and as he continued his studies, he was able to produce a frequency which shattered the protein walls of the virus.

Nope, can't find any google links about John or Johnathan Rife (or I can, but it seems to be a present-day lawyer).  Sure you have the name right (the rest of the story there seems scientifically implausible, so I'm guessing you're remembering some of the details incorrectly).

Quote
But if you have ever used a desk that is prone to magnetism

Hmm, sounds inconvienient plugging it in and dangerous for all those floppies I have lying around.  Or do you mean prone to static electricity?

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Secondly, we know that the theory of numbers is based on image.

Hmm, I think you're making up words here.  You don't mean a function's image (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_%28mathematics%29) do you?

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The easiest way to sum up decimals is to determine how a split is made; each place is a reduction from the last split by the same multiplier, meaning at no time can you ever have a difference of 0, but you will have several closer numbers.

Are you using abstract algebra?  ie: something like this: split on wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_%28mathematics%29)?)  New forum rule: there shall be no abelian groups allowed in discussions!  Also, all conversations must be reflexive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexive_relation) .  In all seriousness, I don't think those words mean what you think they do

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...the idea that the paper is producing a frequency can be tested by measuring the minute difference in change of the papers position against parallel to the vector of gravity...

Hmm, I measure zero.  Do I need more sensitive equipment?  Or should I take my desk/paper system out of my Zero Kelvin freezer?

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...quarks are constantly moving in a state described as the Heisemer Principle, and this movement is alternating and constant. Above that the atoms have constant movement of electrons meaning that all matter is a state of constant kinetic energy.

Yeah, it's statements like that that make me pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about.  Because, see, I more or less know what the Uncertainty principle says (not the Heisenberg principle (although it is sometimes called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle), which you managed to spell wrong) says, and it certainly does not say that movement is "alternating and constant".  In fact I don't believe the uncertainty principle factors in to absolute temperature.  It only relates inherent limitations for measuring the momentum and position of a subatomic particle.  

You don't have to delve in to quantum mechanics at all to say that molecules are in motion.  That's a temperature thing.  That's a fundamental principle of the ideal gas laws that let you equate pressure, temperature, and volume for gases.  Which is where that whole Kelvin system comes from.  And you don't need to delve in to string theory to say that matter is energy.  That's a connection with general (special?  Can never remember which is which) relativity.  And you also don't need to evoke the kinetic motion of atoms.  A lump of iron at 0 Kelvin is still an amount of energy given by that famous equation E = mC^2.

And last, the super collider on the border of France and Switzerland that's run by CERN is not operational yet.  If it was, and it managed to detect the Higgs Boson (which is not a guarentee), it would, at best, provide weak circumstantial evidence for string theory, not "proof".  In fact, the entire standard model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model) for quantum mechanics needs it, so if no Higgs boson is found, that's not only a rather large nail in the coffin of string theory, but a rather large nail in the coffin of the standard model, and with it quite a bit of theory.

At its core string theory is rather untestable, so much so that it really shouldn't be called string "theory", but maybe string "vague idea".  Or maybe string "we think it might be something sort of like..." or maybe even string "my Mom told me I was dead on with this!".

Anyway, I can't help but get the impression that you are largely (and incorrectly) self taught on a variety of subjects, and thus do not have the solid grounding a formal math or physics education gives to understand the difference between fantasy/pseudoscience and science.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter on May 28, 2008, 10:39:39 AM
Quote from: gymsum
John Rife... should be able to explain some of that... In short: all frequencies are vibrational energies... all matter has mass... E=mc^2 therefore all mass is energy. Therefore all frequencies and energies are contained within entities as matter. And all matter is contained as a frequency or energy.
Who is that John, link please.

Quote from: Numsgil
Saying that DNA is energy is like saying that an airplane is wood, wire, aluminum, and a bit of steel.  It may be a true statement, but it in no way helps you understand the amazing feat it is capable of.  In fact, it's not until you bring the abstraction level up to the level of chemistry that you can begin to understand the amazing DNA molecule.  General relativity does not really impact biology at all, in fact.  Quantum mechanics just barely overlaps if you include chemistry (which is a pretty pedestrian application of quantum mechanics at that...)
A bit of steel...., most airplanes use something like 5% steel mixed with the aluminium. It makes it way stronger, and a little heavier. Pointless informaion, but anyway.

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Inigo Montoya: That Vizzini, he can *fuss*.
Fezzik: Fuss, fuss... I think he like to scream at *us*.
Inigo Montoya: Probably he means no *harm*.
Fezzik: He's really very short on *charm*.
Inigo Montoya: You have a great gift for rhyme.
Fezzik: Yes, yes, some of the time.
Vizzini: Enough of that.
Inigo Montoya: Fezzik, are there rocks ahead?
Fezzik: If there are, we all be dead.
Vizzini: No more rhyming now, I mean it.
Fezzik: Anybody want a peanut?
Vizzini: DYEEAAHHHHHH.
eh?

Quote from: gymsum
So theres no confusion Im double posting:
...
...
TO explain my half-crocked theory on string theory:
Well, you're not doubleposting but ok. Yoú're having a theory about a theory, well.....uh....yes...well......indeed.....copl..huh.., what does crocked mean anyway?

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I will say that crows are smart, but I would have to admit that worms are smart for knowing to always rise when its raining so the birds cant eat them.
Iám smart for the fact I am posting useless replys on som forums. Not every animal can.  

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At its core string theory is rather untestable, so much so that it really shouldn't be called string "theory", but maybe string "vague idea".  Or maybe string "we think it might be something sort of like..." or maybe even string "my Mom told me I was dead on with this!".
Core phycics modele is pretty untestable too. Any theory nowadays is able to be tested by testing some of the strange forecasts. Like it would be able to travel in time, following phycics theorys. If you would travel at almost light speed, then you come according to your own time ten years later, the earth you knowed would probably have changed a lot. That isn't tested, and if it isn't possible, all theorys are wrong.

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At its core string theory is rather untestable, so much so that it really shouldn't be called string "theory", but maybe string "vague idea". Or maybe string "we think it might be something sort of like..." or maybe even string "my Mom told me I was dead on with this!".
Have you looked at the string theory, I does have some interesting points. Like let say a univeral theory. Further, a discussion about your opinion of string theorie is pretty pointless. Like anyone could convince me at a forum, if string theory is plausible or the universal theory of the future. And that is not only becouse I am stubborn

Edit: About that jonathan guy, it sounds a pretty english name.
Virussus where found with the elektron microscope, Germany did the discovery somewhere between WW1 and WW2. I am not sure where your story comes from.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on May 28, 2008, 01:31:43 PM
Quote from: Peter
Quote
Inigo Montoya: That Vizzini, he can *fuss*.
Fezzik: Fuss, fuss... I think he like to scream at *us*.
Inigo Montoya: Probably he means no *harm*.
Fezzik: He's really very short on *charm*.
Inigo Montoya: You have a great gift for rhyme.
Fezzik: Yes, yes, some of the time.
Vizzini: Enough of that.
Inigo Montoya: Fezzik, are there rocks ahead?
Fezzik: If there are, we all be dead.
Vizzini: No more rhyming now, I mean it.
Fezzik: Anybody want a peanut?
Vizzini: DYEEAAHHHHHH.
eh?

It's a quote from the movie The Princess Bride.  I'm thinking maybe this is the sort of thing crows are cawing to each other.  One caws something, and the other tries to rhyme it.

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Quote
At its core string theory is rather untestable, so much so that it really shouldn't be called string "theory", but maybe string "vague idea".  Or maybe string "we think it might be something sort of like..." or maybe even string "my Mom told me I was dead on with this!".
Core phycics modele is pretty untestable too. Any theory nowadays is able to be tested by testing some of the strange forecasts. Like it would be able to travel in time, following phycics theorys. If you would travel at almost light speed, then you come according to your own time ten years later, the earth you knowed would probably have changed a lot. That isn't tested, and if it isn't possible, all theorys are wrong.

You don't have to go that strange.  For instance, the standard model for quantum mechanics predicts various particles which have been found in particle collisions.  Except the higgs boson, because the energies of current particle accelerators aren't high enough (or that's the idea anyway).  Relativity managed to explain anomalies in the orbit of Mercury just a few years after it was formulated, which is why Einstein is so famous.  We can also accelerate particles to near the speed of light, and have observed the appropriate changes in mass/energy, there's the whole atom bomb thing, etc. etc.  Relativity may be wonky, but it really matches up with pretty much every bit of data (both observational and experimental) that we've managed to throw at it.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum on May 29, 2008, 06:54:04 AM
http://www.rifeconference.com/ (http://www.rifeconference.com/)


sorry about that... rife device..

Anyways, sorry I cant spell
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Trafalgar on May 29, 2008, 11:00:13 AM
Quote from: gymsum
http://www.rifeconference.com/ (http://www.rifeconference.com/)

I don't see a link explaining what it does. I do, however, see a crackpot disclaimer:

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Our Purpose:
"To share the incredible potential of Rife technology for improved health!"

... No statements made, including videos and links to other sites, should be construed as a claim for cure, treatment, or prevention of any disease or as a substitute for professional health care.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter on May 29, 2008, 12:02:01 PM
Quote from: gymsum
http://www.rifeconference.com/ (http://www.rifeconference.com/)


sorry about that... rife device..

Anyways, sorry I cant spell

Quote
Royal Raymond Rife (May 16, 1888 – August 5, 1971) claimed to have used a special optical microscope to observe very small viruses. Bacillus X and Bacillus Y (at some point renamed BX and BY viruses) were experimentally isolated, and Rife causally linked them to two forms of malignancy (cancer): carcinoma, and sarcoma. This renaming of these bacillus forms by Rife to that of viruses is now known to have been in error. The limitations of optical microscopes, and the size of viruses is such that most viruses cannot be seen under an optical microscope. Furthermore, the scientific understanding is that the estimated 15% of human cancers that are caused by viruses are caused by a number of different types. Rife's virus claims must therefore be seen as mistaken.[1]

Rife also claimed to have rendered, in the living patient, such viruses and many others inert by means of a "beam ray" device, which was claimed to devitalize pathogens by inducing resonances in their constituent chemicals[2][3]. Rife's treatment has been unanimously condemned as worthless by mainstream scientists,[4] and "Rife devices" have been blamed for the deaths of cancer sufferers who have used them in place of medical treatment.[5][6]
Quote from wikipedia

The special microscope shooting protons, is just a optical microscope. He said it was a special microscope that can see very little things, not really confirmed by other scientists at the time, becouse of high costs it never cam in full pruduction.
(few years later there came a real microscope that could see it, from other scientists and a different mechanism, like an optimal micropscope could see virusus, in most types even bacteria are pretty small.)
He also had a alternative-cure(?beam?ray?) for cancer. Yes, indeed great......(I didn't meant that)
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on May 29, 2008, 01:47:29 PM
I'm not sure I understand what this Rife guy had to do with anything when gymsum first brought him up...  Something about "all frequencies are vibrational energies...", but I don't see what a goofball "biologist" (I use the term loosely) has to do with energy, mass, string theory, etc. etc.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum on May 29, 2008, 11:55:55 PM
Well you see, the string theory is actually a complete theoretical model of the universe which basically sums all other theories into one... Energy and mass are the exact same thing in the laws of physics. The rife device (not as a medicinal cure) is just one example of why the US government has been experimenting in high frequency emmitting devices (currently I beleive ISrael possesses anti-ballistics lasers which work on similar principles). I have done this experiment already, I took a random sampling of bacterial cultures from my town and let them propigate in a lab condition. I set 10% of them aside as a control and submitted the others to sound waves and light at vhl and vhf (very high and very low) and did a count everytime, no other conditions were altered. Some times the bacteria seemed to melt into a puddle when under sound wave radiation, and when under extreme frequencies even at low levels of brightness (I cant remember that word or care to google it.. candle?) the bacteria went into an accelerate enzymatic cellular break down. I'll ask the lab assistant to fax the read out to me. I was not able to prove that radiation in any form could "cure" anything (which is not why I was interested in Rife theory), but I was able to show that radiation, regardless of its state/form, or how fast it traveled, radiation can destroy living organisms. If I remember correctly the cuttoff of effective radiation at vhl was about 7.2 hz. This means the same principle guiding the fundamentals of light emission guides the same principles as concusive/elastic collisions. I brought up Rife not for discussion as a medical practice, but as a demenstration that Energy at Mass at any scale are = with an error of 10%. Proton is light, so I alraedy knew that but I thank Peter for clarifying it; radiation has always been known to destroy things in the wrong way, and sound seems to change the inertia of small things to produce a "group" inertia which is not driven by the group of objects. (The above experiement is not safe for home use, best for experts and in a real lab).

This experiement is safe and anyone can do it with a few things:

A C-Clamp,
Nice Speaker (something cheap tho)
Sand

Its all over youtube, creating formations in sand. The sand aligns along the nodes of the soundwaves creating voids where the wave coagulates. Nothing sigificant? One cosideration is that Cellular life could have started from a form of radiation which caused the shape of cells, cell division, and things like the growth process of human embryo.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=s9GBf8y0lY0 (http://youtube.com/watch?v=s9GBf8y0lY0)

anyways we've gone way beyond the topic of crows and their brain size... With some final facts I believe the connection between neural nets and radiation can be made, since electricity is mass.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on May 30, 2008, 02:02:35 AM
You're confusing a lot of things.

Quote from: gymsum
Well you see, the string theory is actually a complete theoretical model of the universe which basically sums all other theories into one...

No, not quite.  It's a way of unifying the four elemental forces.  (The three on the atomic scale (electromagnetism, weak, and strong) and that other one that operates on the galactic scale (gravity)).  Assuming for a moment that such a theory is possible and we had it in hand, it wouldn't really help biologists, sociologists, economists, anthropologists, etc.  The theories these "soft" sciences deal with are emergent, and understanding the extremely fundamental rules that give rise to that emergence isn't really helpful in understanding the end behavior.  Oh, and It would be of extremely limited use to chemists, too, which is one of the "hard" sciences.  N-body gravity (ie: non uniform gravitational fields) doesn't really come in to play in chemistry very often   My point here is that assuming you had the completed string theory in your hand, you still couldn't make predictions about all the sort of events that interest humans: ie: phenomena that's measured using seconds, meters, dollar signs, etc. etc.

Quote
Energy and mass are the exact same thing in the laws of physics. The rife device (not as a medicinal cure) is just one example of why the US government has been experimenting in high frequency emmitting devices (currently I beleive ISrael possesses anti-ballistics lasers which work on similar principles).

You're confusing two issues here.  Energy/mass equivelance only really matters on the atomic level.  Like accelerating a proton to .999 the speed of light or splitting a uranium atom.  It would also come in to play at the macroscopic level if you had a large object moving at relativistic speeds, but that doesn't happen terribly often.

Now, high frequency lasers do not rely on energy/mass equivelance at all.  They rely on something known as the photoelectric effect, which is far more pedestrian.  Basically when a substance absorbs light it spits out excited electrons (electricity).  This is the process that lets plants produce chemical energy from sunlight.  If the light has a high enough frequency (a light's frequency describes its energy level), it can cause biochemical molecules to break their bonds, causing a cell to basically cook.  Or in the case of an anti-missile laser, it causes the missile to prematurely detonate by "cooking" the innards of the missile.

Actually, now that I think of it, I wonder how temperature gains (kinetic energy of atoms) are caused by the photoelectric effect, since the excited electrons that are created have mass that is way less than the mass of their atoms' nucleuses...  Maybe there's just a lot of 'em?

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I have done this experiment already, I took a random sampling of bacterial cultures from my town and let them propigate in a lab condition. I set 10% of them aside as a control and submitted the others to sound waves and light at vhl and vhf (very high and very low) and did a count everytime, no other conditions were altered. Some times the bacteria seemed to melt into a puddle when under sound wave radiation, and when under extreme frequencies even at low levels of brightness (I cant remember that word or care to google it.. candle?) the bacteria went into an accelerate enzymatic cellular break down.

lumens is the word you're looking for...

Quote
I brought up Rife not for discussion as a medical practice, but as a demenstration that Energy at Mass at any scale are = with an error of 10%.

Destroying cells with energy doesn't destroy the matter.  It just rearranges it.  If you isolated the cells in a closed system (pitri dish with a lid), weighed it, killed the cells with energy (ie: light), then weighed it again, the two masses will be within measurable tolerance of exactly equal.  The law of conservation of mass (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_mass) still holds for non-relativistic situations.

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Proton is light, so I alraedy knew that but I thank Peter for clarifying it;

Peter was quoting you, not clarifying.  A proton is the nucleus of a hydrogen atom.  The word you want is photon.  They're quite different.

Quote
With some final facts I believe the connection between neural nets and radiation can be made, since electricity is mass.

No, electricity is not mass.  Electricity is made of electrons, which have mass (very, very, tiny mass).  Electricity itself is energy, though (or more accurately, a flow of energy).

Lets say you have a battery you just bought from the store.  You use it for a solid week in a flashlight, until it's dead.  If you weigh that battery, its mass will not have changed*.  How can this be if the battery has used all of its electricity and electricity is mass?  It's because all the electrons are right back where they started from (inside the battery).  The only difference is that they have a different energy potential than they did before.

* It will actually have changed, but the amount of change is something on the order of the mass of an electron.  For practical purposes 0.

And even supposing that electricity did have mass, how would that relate to neural nets?  Neural nets built in software or in the brains of creatures operate according to an abstract, mathematically definable base.  It's that case of the airplane made out of aluminum again.  You can learn all you want about aluminum, but it won't help you understand how an airpline flies, because the airplane's built from aluminum, not defined by it.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum on May 30, 2008, 08:40:38 AM
The conservation of energy applies both at atomic and massive scale, it causes suns to burn out... If electricity is energy, then it is in fact , massive.. Anyways this is becoming a debate of words more than fact, as mass and energy have to be equal for the conservation of energy to exist, otherwise you burned things there would be an imbalance in total energy spent, meaning you wou.ld produce either less light, ash or other. Anyways if no one here is willing to think of energy and neural nets as one in the same, theres no way I can convince any of you, but the laws of thermodynamics are clear cut, the amount for work put out is always equal to the total available energy in a system, including its energy as light, heat, mass and other. While things may be very small in scale, doesnt mean the same laws do not apply, gravity does paly a role in chemistry, or the Earth would be barren of oxygen and hydrogen... And yes, just remember no matter what the work is, conservation of energy applies constant, its a Universal law in Physics with absolutely no exception.. SO the battery powering the laser runs on the exact same prinicples, ever notice how batteris get hot, its wasting some of its availble energy of electricity in the form of heat... Im not explaining lift vs mass, its energy and mass equivelancy on an atomic level resulting in a singularity of the definition of energy (I.e String Theory). Thermodynamics can be measured witht eh first law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_law_of_thermodynamics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_law_of_thermodynamics) The Photons emmit light, the photons hit objects and excite the object's photons, and in intense sources like the sun, the photons can give energy/heat to living organisms. OF coarse the more this happens (energy use) the more entropy occurs, meaning that the next time you try to create the energy, its so widely spraed thin that its more difficult to light the ash remains of paper. Anyways back to the crow:

Yes crows know things, but they are no PArrot. So I fail to see the connection mentioned between Alex the parrot and the Crow unless the argument is that Crows are capable of Parrot behaviors, not sure if their vocal box can handle human sounds...
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on May 30, 2008, 07:08:25 PM
Quote from: gymsum
The conservation of energy applies both at atomic and massive scale, it causes suns to burn out... If electricity is energy, then it is in fact , massive..

Ah, but see, how massive?  The mass you're talking about, the amount of energy (and therefore mass) lost as an electron moves from an area of higher potential to lower potential, is practically 0.  Yes, there is some non zero amount, but it only comes in to play in a purely academic theory-type setting.  From a practical engineering standpoint, it's 0.

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Anyways this is becoming a debate of words more than fact, as mass and energy have to be equal for the conservation of energy to exist, otherwise you burned things there would be an imbalance in total energy spent, meaning you would produce either less light, ash or other.

No!  Well I certainly agree you're using more words than facts   But that other part is wrong.  You do not need mass-energy equivelance to balance energy conservation in something like a campfire.  If you weigh the wood before you start the fire, and then weigh all the ash + gases given off by the fire after it dies, they would be equal*.  So what happened to all the energy?  The chemical potential energy of the wood was converted in to radiation (probably in the IR spectrum) and heat (it warmed the air around it using convection).  The mass (not counting energy) of the wood was conserved even though you burned it.  The energy (not counting mass) was conserved by turning the chemical potential energy in to other forms of energy.  At no point was mass converted to energy or vice versa.

*In theory, there would be a small mass difference from the lost chemical energy.  But from any practical standpoint this is 0.  It's something on the order of like 10^-30 grams.  Which is about the mass of an electron (give or take a few orders of magnitude).  Tiny.  Quite literally insignificant.

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Anyways if no one here is willing to think of energy and neural nets as one in the same, theres no way I can convince any of you, but the laws of thermodynamics are clear cut, the amount for work put out is always equal to the total available energy in a system, including its energy as light, heat, mass and other.

No, not all energy in a system is usable for "work".  "Work" has some very specific meanings in physics.  But you can say that the amount of energy in a system remains constant, where energy is sum of its light, kinetic motion (heat), (rest) mass, etc.  This is always true.  For the vast majority of systems, however, you can go even further and say that the amount of energy in a closed system, not counting its mass as energy, will remain constant under any conceivable circumstance.  And likewise the amount of mass in the system, not counting energy as mass will remain constant under any conceivable sitation.  This conservation of mass is even more useful since it holds even if you're inputing energy in to the system.  Just so long as you don't input too much energy, (like in an atomic blast).  Then you'ld have to take that whole mass-energy equivelance in to account (I think an atom bomb converts a little less than a gram of matter in to energy, IIRC).

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hile things may be very small in scale, doesnt mean the same laws do not apply, gravity does paly a role in chemistry, or the Earth would be barren of oxygen and hydrogen...

You mean from the ligh gases floating off in to the void of space?  That's not what I'm talking about.  That's clearly phenomena on a planetary scale.  I mean chemical reactions, like one O2 molecule and two H2 molecules reacting to give off energy and produce two water molecules.  At no point in that reaction does mass-energy equivelance or gravitational attraction between the molecules come in to play.  The only gravity that does come in to play is the effectively uniform gravitational field of the Earth during the reaction (some reactions occur differently in 0 g).

Maybe if you had a DNA strand the size of a small moon, you would have to take graviational attraction in to account.  But otherwise you just don't.

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And yes, just remember no matter what the work is, conservation of energy applies constant, its a Universal law in Physics with absolutely no exception.. SO the battery powering the laser runs on the exact same prinicples, ever notice how batteris get hot, its wasting some of its availble energy of electricity in the form of heat...

I'm not arguing against the conservation of energy.  That the electrical energy turns in to heat is exactly my point.  It doesn't turn in to hydrogen atoms or something like that.  It goes from one form of energy to another.

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Im not explaining lift vs mass, its energy and mass equivelancy on an atomic level resulting in a singularity of the definition of energy (I.e String Theory).

Huh?

Quote
Thermodynamics can be measured witht eh first law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_law_of_thermodynamics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_law_of_thermodynamics) The Photons emmit light, the photons hit objects and excite the object's photons, and in intense sources like the sun, the photons can give energy/heat to living organisms.

Photons don't emit light.  Photons are light.  Or rather they're an abstraction of the rather annoying wave-particle duality of light.  When a photon hits an object, it does not "excite the object's photons".  Objects don't have photons.  Photons are stuck going at the speed of light (since they are light) and traveling in a straight* line.  When a photon hits an object's electrons, it can excite that electron.  How can you even expect me to take you seriously when you confuse photons, electrons, and protons?  That's like middle school science class.  It would be like confusing mammals and fish.

*Gravitational lensing not withstanding.

Also, the light source does not need to be intense.  In fact, it's the frequency of light that determines if it can give energy to an atom.  See the photoelectric effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect).  You could have an extremely intense light source, but if it's the wrong color, you won't get any photoelectric effect, and thus no energy.

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OF coarse the more this happens (energy use) the more entropy occurs, meaning that the next time you try to create the energy, its so widely spraed thin that its more difficult to light the ash remains of paper.

That is the most bogus explanation of entropy I have ever seen.  The energy "spreads thin"?  Really?

What's really happening is that "energy" as we're used to thinking of it is actually a "flow" of energy (that is, the change in energy).  Energy always flows "downhill", from areas of high to areas of low, and it's this flowing that produces "work".  So if all of your energy is at the same level, you won't be able to extract any work from it, even if that energy is a relatively highly charged level.  That's what happens when a battery dies.  The energy level on the front half is equal to the energy level in the back half.  In a charged battery, the two halves have different energy levels, so you can extract useful work as the energy flows from the charged half to the uncharged half.

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Yes crows know things, but they are no PArrot. So I fail to see the connection mentioned between Alex the parrot and the Crow unless the argument is that Crows are capable of Parrot behaviors, not sure if their vocal box can handle human sounds...

Parrots are birds though, and so clearly demonstrate that there are at least some birds with intelligence.  You were saying that all birds behave only instinctively.  That they're as dumb as bacteria.  But that is clearly not true, since there's at least one counter-example.  As for crows specifically, they're entire family is widely regarded as one of the smartest birds.  See Corvidae Intelligence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvidae#Intelligence).
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter on May 31, 2008, 08:56:29 AM
A few useless facts.

An high energy photon can change itself into a positron and a elektron(energy into mass), if those two collide with eachother you're getting two photons(mass to energy).

The sun losses something like 4 ton of mass during every second. That mass is converted into light(mass->energy).


gymsum, your gymsum-string- rive-theory is too difficult for me, somehow Numsgil seems to be understanding you.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum on May 31, 2008, 11:05:49 AM
WHen you consider the first principle of thermodynamics (one of the major guding forces in the universe), all heat is, is movement of particles; the mroe movement/higher-frequency the more heat. So if we start with electricity (lightning to be exact), we see multiple results from one event; the lighting super heats the air instaneously, breaking donw the composition of the air to produce nitrogen, intense heat and light.

We also know that sound/light and heat act on the same principles of the inverse square law, and so the sound wave (if at high decibles) has the potential to cause air to heat or cool based on the work done by the sound wave impacting particles.

We know that the universe in a constant exspansion, so as the stars burn up and use the remaining gases, the energy content of the universe will continue to expand outward and as far as density is concerned, the energy can be said to be "spread thin". True some of the matter will collect from gravity, but as the matter changes states, percentages of the exsisting fuel/mass changes from entropy.

Chemical interactions are not my strong point

Not sure if the entropy quote was out of context or not... I was generalizing on a massive scale, but I think I clarified it.

Glad theres someone with some knowledge out there to discuss this. Have to agree with you on photons, I may not be very good with definitions and words, but I know the math behind the physics, that was my interest.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter on May 31, 2008, 12:30:01 PM
Quote from: gymsum
WHen you consider the first principle of thermodynamics (one of the major guding forces in the universe), all heat is, is movement of particles; the mroe movement/higher-frequency the more heat. So if we start with electricity (lightning to be exact), we see multiple results from one event; the lighting super heats the air instaneously, breaking donw the composition of the air to produce nitrogen, intense heat and light.
Do you mean the ionisation of air by lightning.


Quote
We also know that sound/light and heat act on the same principles of the inverse square law, and so the sound wave (if at high decibles) has the potential to cause air to heat or cool based on the work done by the sound wave impacting particles.
I can boil or freeze water by setting the radio high???
Eh.., think. Sound is more like a variation of pressure, no real energy.

Quote
We know that the universe in a constant exspansion, so as the stars burn up and use the remaining gases, the energy content of the universe will continue to expand outward and as far as density is concerned, the energy can be said to be "spread thin". True some of the matter will collect from gravity, but as the matter changes states, percentages of the exsisting fuel/mass changes from entropy.
1. No, we don't know the universe is constantly expanding.
2. Stars don't burn.

Quote
Chemical interactions are not my strong point
Hmm...
A simple chemical formula.
CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O and energy
Burning of methane, forms energy, no mass is gone.

Sun.
Simple question, in my small post before yours. I stated that the sun loses 4 tons every second. Can you explain where that mass have left, and how, and why, and anything particulair about it, I'd like to know how much your rabling or that you really have a idea what you're talking about.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Trafalgar on May 31, 2008, 01:08:00 PM
Quote from: gymsum
Anyways this is becoming a debate of words more than fact
Yes. Wait, becoming?

Quote from: gymsum
The Photons emmit light
I think you have no clue what you're talking about.  
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: abyaly on May 31, 2008, 08:27:07 PM
Are rsucoop and gymsum the same person?
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on May 31, 2008, 09:55:48 PM
Yes, he changed his s/n to try and boost the google page rank for the RSU co-operation run for cancer (or something similar to that).
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter on June 01, 2008, 02:33:39 AM
Quote from: abyaly
Are rsucoop and gymsum the same person?
That was pretty obvious, in a few topics rsucoop begins a topic, and at the replys gymsum anwsers.
Hmm, but why.

Well, like this one (http://www.darwinbots.com/Forum/index.php?showtopic=2686&hl=rsucoop).
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: abyaly on June 01, 2008, 09:02:25 AM
Quote from: Peter
That was pretty obvious, in a few topics rsucoop begins a topic, and at the replys gymsum anwsers.
Hmm, but why.

Well, like this one (http://www.darwinbots.com/Forum/index.php?showtopic=2686&hl=rsucoop).
Maybe for people who are searching for content in his posts, it is
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter on June 01, 2008, 04:01:39 PM
Quote from: abyaly
Quote from: Peter
That was pretty obvious, in a few topics rsucoop begins a topic, and at the replys gymsum anwsers.
Hmm, but why.

Well, like this one (http://www.darwinbots.com/Forum/index.php?showtopic=2686&hl=rsucoop).
Maybe for people who are searching for content in his posts, it is
Well, I am not really looking for content in the posts, somehow at every post in that topic I stop reading after the second or third line. If the other he is suddenly beginning about another 'slim evo', the obvious is clear.

If you just see a bunch of letters and the one who made it is rsucoop/gymsum, I understand that you don't start reading, that way you can't see the obviouos, that is for sure .

Still, why did he have two usernames. Maybe nobody was listening to the first one, and therefor a second one.
.
..
...
Maybe it is time for a new username for me, then everyone will take me serious.  
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on June 01, 2008, 04:05:48 PM
You probably missed my post, Peter, (it was right before yours), but he changed is s/n to boost the google rank for a "run for cancer" charity event.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter on June 01, 2008, 04:41:51 PM
Quote from: Numsgil
You probably missed my post, Peter, (it was right before yours), but he changed is s/n to boost the google rank for a "run for cancer" charity event.
I fact I didn't.

I thought 'RSU co-operation run for cancer' that you mentioned had to do with the name rsucoop.
I haven't got a clue what gymsum has to mean.

And as gymsum was the second account, why did he take gymsum, his second account.
So why did he take a second account?
Or did I confuse myself and was it gymsum that had to do with a charity event?
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on June 01, 2008, 07:39:12 PM
He was originally rsucoop.  The top google hit for rsucoop was his user profile here, so he made a second screen name (gymsum) to try and lower the ranking of his rsucoop's profile on google, and thus raise the google rank of the charity run.  That's why he changed accounts, he wanted to boost the page ranking for the charity run, so he had to ditch his rsucoop account.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum on June 02, 2008, 03:27:16 PM
Quote from: Peter
Quote from: gymsum
WHen you consider the first principle of thermodynamics (one of the major guding forces in the universe), all heat is, is movement of particles; the mroe movement/higher-frequency the more heat. So if we start with electricity (lightning to be exact), we see multiple results from one event; the lighting super heats the air instaneously, breaking donw the composition of the air to produce nitrogen, intense heat and light.
Do you mean the ionisation of air by lightning.


Quote
We also know that sound/light and heat act on the same principles of the inverse square law, and so the sound wave (if at high decibles) has the potential to cause air to heat or cool based on the work done by the sound wave impacting particles.
I can boil or freeze water by setting the radio high???
Eh.., think. Sound is more like a variation of pressure, no real energy.

Quote
We know that the universe in a constant exspansion, so as the stars burn up and use the remaining gases, the energy content of the universe will continue to expand outward and as far as density is concerned, the energy can be said to be "spread thin". True some of the matter will collect from gravity, but as the matter changes states, percentages of the exsisting fuel/mass changes from entropy.
1. No, we don't know the universe is constantly expanding.
2. Stars don't burn.

Quote
Chemical interactions are not my strong point
Hmm...
A simple chemical formula.
CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O and energy
Burning of methane, forms energy, no mass is gone.

Sun.
Simple question, in my small post before yours. I stated that the sun loses 4 tons every second. Can you explain where that mass have left, and how, and why, and anything particulair about it, I'd like to know how much your rabling or that you really have a idea what you're talking about.

If you lower pressure like in a vacum, you can boil water which releases its energy and thus freezes. If you increase the pressure the water's temp will drop and then increase. So even with Boil's principles of pressure, sound should produce a result at very low frequencies.

Also, Times magazine did an article on the exspansion of the Universe, it hasn't slowed and most scientists assume so, and like a flat Earth, what we presume is only a theory. Sorry for the misspeak.

The loss of the mass of the sun has to do with energy consumption during light emission. Recall E=mc^2; well say 4 million metric tons is lost a second. We haev calculated the amount of energy produced by the sun in ergs, about 4 x 10^33 ergs/sec. We know the mass loss is equal to 4 x 10^33 ergs/sec, and we have our original equation so divide the energy out by the speed of light squared, or (3 x 10^10 cm/sec)^2 and you now have an equation to calculate the loss of mass due to energy-light crap. (sorry for lack of jargon). Taken from the suns total mass and radious, at this rate evry 160 billion years the sun will lose 1% of its current mass. So to produce 4000000000000000000000000000000000ergs/sec it must consume/alter the state of 4 million metric tons of (fuel I guess) per second, or 1 onehundred-sixty billionth of its entire mass a year. I think thats correct, if my notes are still acurate.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on June 02, 2008, 04:29:23 PM
Quote from: gymsum
If you lower pressure like in a vacum, you can boil water which releases its energy and thus freezes. If you increase the pressure the water's temp will drop and then increase. So even with Boil's principles of pressure, sound should produce a result at very low frequencies.

It's Boyle's law.  Not Boil's law.  Although I think it would be funny if his name was boil.  Would make remembering it that much easier.

Quote
Also, Times magazine did an article on the exspansion of the Universe, it hasn't slowed and most scientists assume so, and like a flat Earth, what we presume is only a theory. Sorry for the misspeak.

That the universe is expanding has been known since at least Hubble (the scientist, not the telescope).  If you had two objects in space, and neither object is accelerated, after billions of years they would end up further apart, because the actual space between them is expanding.  See wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_universe).  This makes sense when you consider the fact that the universe literally exploded out from a single point.  The more interesting bit is that this expansion is accelerating.  This is where the whole idea of dark/vacuum energy comes from.

Quote
...it must consume/alter the state of 4 million metric tons of (fuel I guess) per second, or 1 onehundred-sixty billionth of its entire mass a year. I think thats correct, if my notes are still acurate.

Didn't check out your math (math is boring).  But this part you glossed over is the interesting bit, IMO.  What fuel is used (what was that mass before it was converted to radiant energy), what reaction takes place, etc.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter on June 03, 2008, 03:44:09 PM
Quote from: gymsum
If you lower pressure like in a vacum, you can boil water which releases its energy and thus freezes.
Just read this line a few times yourself, what is wrong?

Quote
The loss of the mass of the sun has to do with energy consumption during light emission. Recall E=mc^2; well say 4 million metric tons is lost a second. We haev calculated the amount of energy produced by the sun in ergs, about 4 x 10^33 ergs/sec. We know the mass loss is equal to 4 x 10^33 ergs/sec, and we have our original equation so divide the energy out by the speed of light squared, or (3 x 10^10 cm/sec)^2 and you now have an equation to calculate the loss of mass due to energy-light crap. (sorry for lack of jargon).
I haven't heard of 'ergs/sec', meaning it isn't a standard, means I ignore it, please use SI-standards(you know them like, meter, gram, Joule and so on) I am not going to calculate back. Oh and please write down exactly what you do. I don't follow you.

Quote
Taken from the suns total mass and radious, at this rate evry 160 billion years the sun will lose 1% of its current mass. So to produce 4000000000000000000000000000000000ergs/sec it must consume/alter the state of 4 million metric tons of (fuel I guess) per second, or 1 onehundred-sixty billionth of its entire mass a year. I think thats correct, if my notes are still acurate.
How did you come by the '1%' loss of mass in 160 billion years of the sun. How did you come by the '4 with much zeros ergs/sec'.

Oh and I agree with Numsgil, I'd like to get the anwsers to the questions.
Quote
Didn't check out your math (math is boring). But this part you glossed over is the interesting bit, IMO. What fuel is used (what was that mass before it was converted to radiant energy), what reaction takes place, etc.

Quote
That the universe is expanding has been known since at least Hubble (the scientist, not the telescope). If you had two objects in space, and neither object is accelerated, after billions of years they would end up further apart, because the actual space between them is expanding. See wiki. This makes sense when you consider the fact that the universe literally exploded out from a single point. The more interesting bit is that this expansion is accelerating. This is where the whole idea of dark/vacuum energy comes from.
It stays a theory that the universe will keep expanding, a strong one but it stays a theory. There are other theorys  like the steady state (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_State_theory), altrough it isn't really a competitor anymore.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on June 03, 2008, 04:29:09 PM
There's a great deal of data to support the theory that the universe is expanding, though.  Basically supernovae have a known color.  Distant ones from us are are all red shifted (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift), which indicates that their sources are moving away from us.  It's possible that space is not expanding, and is constant, but then that would mean that everything in the universe is moving away from us (so we'd be at the center of the universe, quite literally).  It would be a remarkable coincidence for us to be in the center of the universe, given that Earth could have been anywhere in the universe, so that idea didn't catch on.  Instead we assume that all points in the universe are moving away from all other points.

In science, a theory doesn't mean "educated guess", like it's used in everyday life (that's called a hypothesis in science).  Theory means "something that explains all known data on the subject."  And even after it's proven, it tends to keep the "theory" label (eg: Pythagorean Theorem).  Basically science doesn't deal in absolutes.  It doesn't say "this is the way the universe works", it says "if you use this model, you can predict outcomes to events within the tolerance of measuring instruments."  See Theory vs. Hypothesis (http://physics.suite101.com/article.cfm/theory_vs__hypothesis_vs__law).  A theory is like a best-fit polynomial.  You use it to fit the data you have, and make predictions about future data you will receive.  If those predictions are wrong, science (slowly) will revise the theory until it takes the new data in to account as well as the old data.  That way theories are rarely "wrong", they're usually just incomplete (ie: Newton's laws of motion under relativistic speeds).

Many times theories don't seem to make much sense, but they still manage to explain all the observed data.  The reality of the event is probably more complex than we currently understand, but the end data behaves like it would if it were doing our simplified model.  For instance the wave/particle duality of light.  The truth is probably really neat and complicated, but we don't really understand it.  However we can predict what sort of results we would expect to see in any given experiment by pretending that light is made of particles some of the time, and waves at other times.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Testlund on June 04, 2008, 07:59:42 AM
I don't trust the Big Bang theory any longer. See this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl3Uj2UJjPA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl3Uj2UJjPA)
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on June 04, 2008, 01:02:31 PM
Um, don't trust "scientists" that post on youtube.  You tube is for dogs on skateboards.  Here's another tip: if they say something like "what was before the big bang" or "why did the big bang happen then instead of before or later", they don't know what they're talking about.  Time itself started at the big bang.  There was no "before", because there was no time.  There also wasn't a "somewhere else", because space didn't exist either.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter on June 04, 2008, 03:08:33 PM
Quote from: Numsgil
In science, a theory doesn't mean "educated guess", like it's used in everyday life (that's called a hypothesis in science).  Theory means "something that explains all known data on the subject."  And even after it's proven, it tends to keep the "theory" label (eg: Pythagorean Theorem).  Basically science doesn't deal in absolutes.  It doesn't say "this is the way the universe works", it says "if you use this model, you can predict outcomes to events within the tolerance of measuring instruments."  See Theory vs. Hypothesis (http://physics.suite101.com/article.cfm/theory_vs__hypothesis_vs__law).  A theory is like a best-fit polynomial.  You use it to fit the data you have, and make predictions about future data you will receive.  If those predictions are wrong, science (slowly) will revise the theory until it takes the new data in to account as well as the old data.  That way theories are rarely "wrong", they're usually just incomplete (ie: Newton's laws of motion under relativistic speeds).
I that a hypothesis is a speculation, I know a theory is well though out, it is not like there are theorys brurted out. But wait, it does not explain how the universe works?, it does not? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang)

Quote from: Testlund
I don't trust the Big Bang theory any longer. See this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl3Uj2UJjPA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl3Uj2UJjPA)
My soundcard doesn't work on this computer, so I think I would miss the message.

Quote from: Numsgil
Um, don't trust "scientists" that post on youtube.  You tube is for dogs on skateboards.  Here's another tip: if they say something like "what was before the big bang" or "why did the big bang happen then instead of before or later", they don't know what they're talking about.  Time itself started at the big bang.  There was no "before", because there was no time.  There also wasn't a "somewhere else", because space didn't exist either.
Dog.. skateboard.... , but why not. Why can't those scientists be trusted. You are posting links to wikipedia, well it isn't like that can be universal trusted, I have found some mistakes in it, just a few but still, can you trust wikipedia fully.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on June 04, 2008, 03:47:22 PM
Quote from: Peter
Quote from: Numsgil
In science, a theory doesn't mean "educated guess", like it's used in everyday life (that's called a hypothesis in science).  Theory means "something that explains all known data on the subject."  And even after it's proven, it tends to keep the "theory" label (eg: Pythagorean Theorem).  Basically science doesn't deal in absolutes.  It doesn't say "this is the way the universe works", it says "if you use this model, you can predict outcomes to events within the tolerance of measuring instruments."  See Theory vs. Hypothesis (http://physics.suite101.com/article.cfm/theory_vs__hypothesis_vs__law).  A theory is like a best-fit polynomial.  You use it to fit the data you have, and make predictions about future data you will receive.  If those predictions are wrong, science (slowly) will revise the theory until it takes the new data in to account as well as the old data.  That way theories are rarely "wrong", they're usually just incomplete (ie: Newton's laws of motion under relativistic speeds).
I that a hypothesis is a speculation, I know a theory is well though out, it is not like there are theorys brurted out. But wait, it does not explain how the universe works?, it does not? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang)

Science doesn't say that the universe exploded out from a singularity.  It says that observed data is consistent with that conclusion.  The difference is the difference between faith (this is the way it happened), and a weaselly sort of data based conclusion (it sure seems like this is the way it happened, based on things I observe with my telescope).  The idea of a big bang explained some facts that didn't fit in the previous model, and predicted some conclusions that have largely been validated over the years (background radiation for instance).  When facts come along that don't agree with the theory, there'll be some grumbling, but eventually they'll come up with a new model to explain all the facts.  But that's the only "scientific" way to dismiss a theory: it has to contradict some known fact.

Quote from: Testlund
Quote from: Numsgil
Um, don't trust "scientists" that post on youtube.  You tube is for dogs on skateboards.  Here's another tip: if they say something like "what was before the big bang" or "why did the big bang happen then instead of before or later", they don't know what they're talking about.  Time itself started at the big bang.  There was no "before", because there was no time.  There also wasn't a "somewhere else", because space didn't exist either.
Dog.. skateboard.... , but why not. Why can't those scientists be trusted. You are posting links to wikipedia, well it isn't like that can be universal trusted, I have found some mistakes in it, just a few but still, can you trust wikipedia fully.

Wikipedia isn't perfect, but it strives for verifiability.  Meaning that editors don't invent new information, they just find existing information from reputable sources and put it in to encyclopedic formats.  Each article is (ideally) debated and pounded on by everyone with an interest, so the end result is very close to humanity's actual understanding of a subject.  On youtube, however, nothing has to be verified by independent sources.  So any crackpot with a computer can say absolutely whatever they want.  They can distort or ignore data, outright lie, pander, etc. etc.  Basically it's Propoganda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propoganda).  So don't trust what you see on youtube anymore than you would trust the propoganda film reels from World War 2 (our boys in the trenches really stick it to those Nazis using superior American engineering and know how.  Go get 'em boys!)

For comparison, a well thought out theory will openly admit places where it falls apart and needs further work.  Darwin, for instance, discussed the idea of irreducible complexity in his Origin of the Species book: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case."  If you read actual science articles in reputable journals, you'll usually find a discussion at the end where they point out areas where their work is incomplete (usually as a way to build a bridge for future articles, I imagine.)
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on June 04, 2008, 05:58:28 PM
Also, Skateboarding dog (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQzUsTFqtW0).  An its XTREME competitor (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bluJaIMQN0k&NR=1).
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum on June 05, 2008, 12:16:45 AM
Quote from: Peter
Quote from: gymsum
If you lower pressure like in a vacum, you can boil water which releases its energy and thus freezes.
Just read this line a few times yourself, what is wrong?

If you do not believe me, you can check using either math (physics) or you can do the experiment I did in highschool to prove one of the laws of Boyle. Change in Pressure = Change in Temp, since temp is energy and pressure is work on the system. Take a vaccum, they sell them online at science supplies, and a petri (sp?) dish of water and place the water inside the vacum. If you lower the pressure, the water will begin to boil because as the pressure drops, the boil point of water drops (this is do to thermal exspansion). So if you know anything about energy and work, you would intuitively know that if the water boils, it will release energy to convert the water into steam. Without checking my notes; the amount of energy used to convert the liquid into vapor drops the temperature of the remaining water, and freezes it. I've done this experiment and know it works. DOnt believe me ask your local High School Physics teacher. Its one of the laws behind Boyle and Thermodynamics.

Peter: If I could explain something to you that told you millions about a specific tree in a forrest, but it did not explain how the forrest worked, would all that information about that one tree not be useful? The problem you have and Numsquil are discussing is known as the infinity; no matter how much time is spent understanding a specific function or idea, the resulting entirety known about the rest that is unknonw, is less than a billionth of a percentile. Thats because theres infitely much that is left unknown, by simply knowing a few facts. I may have only explained how the Spruce works to you (continuing the idea), but its not necessarly how the forrest works. So what do you assume about the forrest? Well spruce requrie intense heat to cut back overgrowths and help spread seed, so obviously thats how the forrest works. And you know that each spruce needs about 32 ft of space to take and last longer than a decade. So by only knowing everything you possibly could about this one species, you know absolutely nothing about the remaining 99% of total species remaining in the forrest, not to mention the facct that there could very well be civilization near or in it. Thats how the Big Bang Theory is relavant to the tree from the forrest idea. Its not that its completely right or completely wrong, its just an accumulation of all previously exsisting knowledge, which is how all theories are derived, one after the other in a logical progression.

Also youtube doesnt edit/audit posts that are inacurrate or wrong. WIki has a community of super nerds that do that I believe.

Finally, we come to Einsteins greatest Blunder: The exspansion of the Universe. Einsteins theory of Relativity could not be used to produce a model of the universe that was static, it would either expand or collapse. At first he was proven wrong, and as of recently we have began to understand where he left off. THe universe is expanding. Einsteins theory of relativity was unique because it treated the speed of light as the maximum, and was designed around the idea that time had no ether (or medium by which it progressed/moved). 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.

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.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on June 05, 2008, 03:12:51 AM
Quote from: gymsum
Quote from: Peter
Quote from: gymsum
If you lower pressure like in a vacum, you can boil water which releases its energy and thus freezes.
Just read this line a few times yourself, what is wrong?

If you do not believe me, you can check using either math (physics) or you can do the experiment I did in highschool to prove one of the laws of Boyle. Change in Pressure = Change in Temp, since temp is energy and pressure is work on the system. Take a vaccum, they sell them online at science supplies, and a petri (sp?) dish of water and place the water inside the vacum. If you lower the pressure, the water will begin to boil because as the pressure drops, the boil point of water drops (this is do to thermal exspansion). So if you know anything about energy and work, you would intuitively know that if the water boils, it will release energy to convert the water into steam. Without checking my notes; the amount of energy used to convert the liquid into vapor drops the temperature of the remaining water, and freezes it. I've done this experiment and know it works. DOnt believe me ask your local High School Physics teacher. Its one of the laws behind Boyle and Thermodynamics.

You can lower the atmospheric pressure and boil water at room temperature.  There's even a magical thing called a triple point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_point), where you can get water to exist as a solid, liquid, and gas at the same time.  Ideal gas laws can be a lot of fun, and they're usually covered in high school physics.

Quote
Peter: If I could explain something to you that told you millions about a specific tree in a forrest, but it did not explain how the forrest worked, would all that information about that one tree not be useful? The problem you have and Numsquil are discussing is known as the infinity; no matter how much time is spent understanding a specific function or idea, the resulting entirety known about the rest that is unknonw, is less than a billionth of a percentile.  
 Thats because theres infitely much that is left unknown, by simply knowing a few facts.

Is that a made up statistic? You know 99.567% of all claims involving percentages are made up on the spot

There's always an exponential growth in questions in regards to answers (that's how you know you have a good answer).  But we weren't looking for a whole rabbits hole worth of knowledge.  We just wanted to see if you had a vague understanding of what you're talking about.  When you say crazy things, people tend to treat you crazy.  If you can convince them your not crazy by saying something particularly lucid, they might re-evaluate their opinion of you (crazy is as crazy does...)

The sun converts something from matter to energy.  Apparently several tons of it a day.  What's the something?  And what's the process?  What sort of energy is produced?

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WIki has a community of super nerds that do that I believe.

As a wiki super nerd, I take offense to that!  

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Finally, we come to Einsteins greatest Blunder: The exspansion of the Universe. Einsteins theory of Relativity could not be used to produce a model of the universe that was static, it would either expand or collapse. At first he was proven wrong, and as of recently we have began to understand where he left off. THe universe is expanding. Einsteins theory of relativity was unique because it treated the speed of light as the maximum, and was designed around the idea that time had no ether (or medium by which it progressed/moved). 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.

Specifically he's referring to the consmological constant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant).
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum on June 05, 2008, 08:01:14 AM
Nums, I derivered the infinity from the indea of the 1%. If you have 1% of something, you have 99% remainining not yours (or unknown). Ther rule of devision by nine means the remaining unknonw (or not yours) is 1/99 or .1 repeating into infinity. The same would hold treu if you knew 50% of all the universal knowledge, theres still an infinity of .5s to have learned before you can say I know 51% of everything. If you consider eacg digit a bit of knowledge, you realize how much information there truely is (since we're speaking in stats, the percentage represnents what humans currently know and wish to know). The energy is in photon, the chemical reactions of the sun relaese the photons as energy, the entire amount fo photons realesed is so great, it actually weights 4 million metric tons. Im not sure how or why, but I do known it is nuclear fusion. As all its reserves of fuel become hydrogen, the sun will eventually become colder and darker. (what is it nitrogen to hydrogen? idk I never took chemistry).

Infinity: If you can imagine a decimal place as a mirrored part of the whole. So .5 is a half mirror image of 1, and .05 is a half mirror image of .5 and so on. So .5 repeating indefinitely is a sefl mirror image of .5 continuously, meaning there is an infinite threshhold between the last .5 and the next. This threshhold comes from the Chaos THeory, and fractals. Google search a fractal if you're not sure. The amount of space between one area of color and where another color intersects, is inifinitely small, and no matter how much magnification is used, there will always be a gap between the two. This is why things like weather are impossible to predict. Now this may have is own named theory, but I say its easier to remember it as the theory of infinity. The real life example being money. Say you have 1 dollar. You buy a soda thats half what is in your wallet. So the next time you buy the soda it only costs half your wallet, and gives you equally as much halves as your wallet is from its starting ballance (meaning the second soda is half as large, and the third is half as large as the second, and so on). At no point did you run out of money, but the amount of liquid purchased equates to the total sum of all charges made on your wallet (meaning 1 + .5 + .05 and so on until some limit is reached, left for the masses to decide). This idea was also held true with the latest geometric proof. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/ (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/) This proof took him an entire lifetime to prove one concept; and beyond that it was something said to be common knowledge, but not yet proven. So inorder to gain 1 new proof from the thousnads in exsistance, it took one life time. As opposed to the first proof which may have very well taken a few hours to think up to produce 1 out of the entire known proofs. Its just an attempt to explain how difficult it is to continue to expand on anything using numbers.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Testlund on June 05, 2008, 12:45:30 PM
Quote from: Numsgil
Um, don't trust "scientists" that post on youtube.  You tube is for dogs on skateboards.  Here's another tip: if they say something like "what was before the big bang" or "why did the big bang happen then instead of before or later", they don't know what they're talking about.  Time itself started at the big bang.  There was no "before", because there was no time.  There also wasn't a "somewhere else", because space didn't exist either.

You can't just disregard something because of the place it has been presented. On the contrary, YouTube is such a popular and well known place that if somebody wants to get information out, that's where it should be presented, instead of hiding it in hard to find scientific papers. You need to analyse the information that is presented. Does it make sense? If what the guy says about the hubble telescope and doppler effect makes sense then it is something of worth to consider.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: EricL on June 05, 2008, 01:09:05 PM
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.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on June 05, 2008, 01:39:45 PM
Quote from: gymsum
Nums, I derivered the infinity from the indea of the 1%. If you have 1% of something, you have 99% remainining not yours (or unknown). Ther rule of devision by nine means the remaining unknonw (or not yours) is 1/99 or .1 repeating into infinity. The same would hold treu if you knew 50% of all the universal knowledge, theres still an infinity of .5s to have learned before you can say I know 51% of everything. If you consider eacg digit a bit of knowledge, you realize how much information there truely is (since we're speaking in stats, the percentage represnents what humans currently know and wish to know).

And you were doing so well   You're assuming a priori (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori_%28philosophy%29) that the amount of knowable information about the universe is infinite.  That's a pretty big jump.  And what kind of infinity is it?  Countable or uncountable?  That is, is it the sort of infinity like natural numbers, where we might not have used every number possible, but we can easily construct any number we want at any time?  Or is it the sort of thing where the more you know, the more you don't know, on forever?  You can make philosophical arguments either way, but neither is a given.

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The energy is in photon, the chemical reactions of the sun relaese the photons as energy, the entire amount fo photons realesed is so great, it actually weights 4 million metric tons. Im not sure how or why, but I do known it is nuclear fusion. As all its reserves of fuel become hydrogen, the sun will eventually become colder and darker. (what is it nitrogen to hydrogen? idk I never took chemistry).

That doesn't really say much.  And you're wildly confusing different elements in the periodic table.  This also isn't really a chemistry thing...  Try to read this article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton-proton_chain), and see if you can come back and try again

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Infinity: If you can imagine a decimal place as a mirrored part of the whole. So .5 is a half mirror image of 1, and .05 is a half mirror image of .5 and so on. So .5 repeating indefinitely is a sefl mirror image of .5 continuously, meaning there is an infinite threshhold between the last .5 and the next. This threshhold comes from the Chaos THeory, and fractals. Google search a fractal if you're not sure. The amount of space between one area of color and where another color intersects, is inifinitely small, and no matter how much magnification is used, there will always be a gap between the two. This is why things like weather are impossible to predict. Now this may have is own named theory, but I say its easier to remember it as the theory of infinity. The real life example being money. Say you have 1 dollar. You buy a soda thats half what is in your wallet. So the next time you buy the soda it only costs half your wallet, and gives you equally as much halves as your wallet is from its starting ballance (meaning the second soda is half as large, and the third is half as large as the second, and so on). At no point did you run out of money, but the amount of liquid purchased equates to the total sum of all charges made on your wallet (meaning 1 + .5 + .05 and so on until some limit is reached, left for the masses to decide).

It's called an infinite series.  The infinite series Sum(1/n) n -> infinity.  But you can't take it as some sort of mystical cosmological thing.  Some infinite series converge to a number.  Some diverge to infinity.  This one just barely diverges.  If you took sum((1/n)^1.00000000001) n->infinity, it would converge.  See this article (http://math2.org/math/expansion/tests.htm) (look for p series).

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This idea was also held true with the latest geometric proof. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/ (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/) This proof took him an entire lifetime to prove one concept; and beyond that it was something said to be common knowledge, but not yet proven. So inorder to gain 1 new proof from the thousnads in exsistance, it took one life time. As opposed to the first proof which may have very well taken a few hours to think up to produce 1 out of the entire known proofs. Its just an attempt to explain how difficult it is to continue to expand on anything using numbers.

But the amount of man power involved is also increasing exponentially.  Our pace in science has increased, not decreased, since the time of the Greeks.  Who's to say that mankind's exponential increase in manpower won't match the exponential increase in new questions needing answers?

Also, Fermat's last theorem shouldn't be considered an "easy" problem.  It was one of the hardest outstanding problems in math for a long time.  See Fermat's last theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_last_theorem) (BTW, this theorem should be familiar to any science fiction fans.  There's an episode of Star Trek, the Next Generation, where Pickard is trying to solve Fermat's last theorem.)

Quote from: Testlund
Quote from: Numsgil
Um, don't trust "scientists" that post on youtube.  You tube is for dogs on skateboards.  Here's another tip: if they say something like "what was before the big bang" or "why did the big bang happen then instead of before or later", they don't know what they're talking about.  Time itself started at the big bang.  There was no "before", because there was no time.  There also wasn't a "somewhere else", because space didn't exist either.

You can't just disregard something because of the place it has been presented. On the contrary, YouTube is such a popular and well known place that if somebody wants to get information out, that's where it should be presented, instead of hiding it in hard to find scientific papers. You need to analyse the information that is presented. Does it make sense? If what the guy says about the hubble telescope and doppler effect makes sense then it is something of worth to consider.

It's not just that he posted on youtube.  It's the use of very obvious propoganda techniques, and his obvious lack of understanding about the science of the big bang.  He also makes logically inconsistent statements ("there are so many theories, therefore none of them are right".  WTF?)  That, and he talks about biology like biology has anything at all to do with the big bang (hint: it does not).  It's just a thinly veiled attempt by a creationist to discredit science.  I'm not a fan of people who spend their time being nonconstructive (this policy applies on both sides of the fence.  I can't stand Richard Dawkins either).

I can give you a line-for-line rebutle of the video if you want.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum on June 05, 2008, 06:23:36 PM
We already know that a Modulous (or even Modular fucntion) can be used to create counting systems. But it doesnt matter if you do so, the numbers can be translated; but its when you attempt to count the entire possible counting systems that its no longer calculable. True, we have a profound understanding for how things work; true we know that the Big Bang seems likely from this. But even with all our current knowledge, we know just as little of our creation as the ancients that mystified themselves with religious figures and magical ideas. Regardless of what we may be able to percieve from our own world, we still lack many phenomena that occur frequently throughout our universe. The theory of multiple dimensions (which is actually part of the string theory 'multi-dimensional harmonic strings') proves that because of a limitation in percepetion, there exsists an infinity which nothing can nomprehend. We as humans have the ability to ask why, and its still a profound question. Asking Why inplies that the action or result was caused by some set of agenda, or motive or plot. But Why the Universe works is as complex a question as asking why water can become all three states at once with no way of possibly showing the results without mere numbers (like in this post). So why does the Universe do what it does? Well each theory of physics explained the reaction we see and what mathematical equation fit the conditions. True 1+1 = 2 and so does 3-1, its the same result under completely different circumstances. So even if the same result is deduced there exists an infinite potential for how the result is achieved.

Honestly, I never learned the table of Elements because it was of no use to me, I just copied them down for biology. Regardless of how fusion works in the sun, its still where my thought of vibrational frequencies came in. The way the enteractions occur and the way sound waves interfere and augment, and the way light blends. The mechanics which causes the sound waves to augment could be said to be the same as doppler on light waves (since the augmentation in hot air causes the speed of sound to increase and bend the sound towarsds the ground much similar to light bending around gravity). Verying levels of pressure in a closed system will produce verying levels in gravity, since the more pressure the more content there is within the space or pocket. So the final energy we have yet to understand is dark energy, which has a repelling force. It exsists everywhere, but the balance between matter with positive gravity and dark matter is crutial to preventing every object in the Universe from collapsing in onitself into a singularity. This balance I believe is a rythm more or less, since the amount of Dark Energy makes up more than 50% of the entire mass of the Universe (otherwise we would be collapsing, not speeding up). And since we as beings are composed of this balance, the result is a being in constant flux (not necessarly mentaly but physically). Everything must be able to expand to live, otherwise the being can not store any energy and thus cannot function even genetically. So our entire knowledge of the Universe and Absolutely Everything, is limited to the fact that we have only experienced one universe, we often only live in 3 dimensions at best, and perception of reality within our own habitat is based on the idea of self-superiority rather than knowing everything that follows some code or logic. Also, not every person involved to finding new discoveries is 100% efficient or successful, it took Socrates alone to discover what he knew about the Earth (or so its written).

The problem I see with people that have to ask who started everything, is that that kind of quesiton is based on the fact that somebody else started you hopefully for a reason. But with the Universe everything happens for no purpose that is of any importance, there is no magical spaceship to take us all off to heaven, and most certainly we will be completely unable to prevent or guide how what and when the Universe does anything. To do so would mean that the Universe has a counciousness, and a set of moral codes you could use to fast talk the Universe out of or into doing something.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on June 05, 2008, 08:03:55 PM
Quote from: gymsum
We already know that a Modulous (or even Modular fucntion) can be used to create counting systems.

I'm not talking about mod.  I'm talking about countably infinite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countably_infinite) vs. uncountably infinite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncountably_infinite).  I assume you know that there is more than one type of infinity?

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But it doesnt matter if you do so, the numbers can be translated; but its when you attempt to count the entire possible counting systems that its no longer calculable.

You mean counting the natural numbers?  That's an example (a rather tautological one) of a countably infinite set.  It has different properties than uncountably infinite sets (real numbers are uncountably infinite, IIRC).

However, in either case, you can still arrive at proofs for every element in the set by using the properties of the set.  One of the first things you do in a Mathematics major at a university is do proofs that involve even and odd numbers.  You can proove things about even and odd natural numbers that are true for every single even or odd natural number, regardless if that natural number has even been conceived of by humans ever (maybe it has so many digits that its impossible to list it in the space of time given by the life of the universe).

My point here is that infinity does not mean uncountable or unknowable.

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True, we have a profound understanding for how things work; true we know that the Big Bang seems likely from this. But even with all our current knowledge, we know just as little of our creation as the ancients that mystified themselves with religious figures and magical ideas.

...

So why does the Universe do what it does? Well each theory of physics explained the reaction we see and what mathematical equation fit the conditions. True 1+1 = 2 and so does 3-1, its the same result under completely different circumstances. So even if the same result is deduced there exists an infinite potential for how the result is achieved.

That depends a great deal on what you mean by "know".  And really is a whole philosophical can of worms that goes back to the Greeks and their shadow puppets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave)   Ignoring the philosophy for a moment, I would say that it doesn't matter what the "actual" mechanisms are that the universe uses to work.  If our scientific models allow us to predict the behavior of all known facts, it is irrelevant wether that our models are "true" or not.  This is the "if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck" principle.  If we can't distinguish between our theoretical models' results, and real life results, then the theoretical model describes real life, by any practical viewpoint.

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The theory of multiple dimensions (which is actually part of the string theory 'multi-dimensional harmonic strings') proves that because of a limitation in percepetion, there exsists an infinity which nothing can nomprehend.

First of all, string theory is not a theory yet (by which I mean you can not take the things it predicts, like multiple dimensions, as fact).  Assuming it were, though, you don't have to "comprehend" the reality of something to understand the math behind it.  For instance, I cannot "imagine" what a fourth spatial dimension would look like, but I can understand the math well enough and make solid predictions about how things would work in such a universe.  That's really the magic of math: it lets you approach otherwise unapproachable ideas.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that there does not exist any self-consistent idea, imaginable or otherwise, for which a mathematical model could not be built that would allow predictions to be made about that idea, and through that math allow anyone reasonably educated to understand it in any practical sense of the word.

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We as humans have the ability to ask why, and its still a profound question. Asking Why inplies that the action or result was caused by some set of agenda, or motive or plot. But Why the Universe works is as complex a question as asking why water can become all three states at once with no way of possibly showing the results without mere numbers (like in this post).

I disagree.  Higher math doesn't usually involve numbers.  It usually involves symbol manipulation and sets and the like.  It's using these higher maths that the universe might be understood (string theory has a strong foundation in Topology, IIRC).

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Honestly, I never learned the table of Elements because it was of no use to me, I just copied them down for biology.

I'm not saying that you should be able to reattle off what element atomic number 42 is.  But you should have at least a passing understanding of Hydrogen, Helium, Oxygen, Carbon, and Nitrogen, since our entire existence as Humans in the solar system revolves around those elements.  You should also at least know the three "elementary" particles: proton, neutron, and electron.  And the photon, of course (not an elementary particle.  More of an abstraction, really).  There's just no excuse to consider yourself even slightly scientifically inclined if you don't know what a neutron is.  It's covered extremely early on.  Usually middle school.  If you find yourself ignorant on these important topics, you should look them up on wiki and read about them.  Ignorance is bad, and usually will cause people to label you crackpot when try and talk science with them.

It's like that episode in Seinfeld where George hired an electrician to move a frogger machine, and he referred to electrical outlets as "holes".  You can be the greatest electrician in the world, but if you don't know what an electrical outlet is, no one is going to take you seriously.  (Well, except George.  But that's because he's desperate).

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Regardless of how fusion works in the sun, its still where my thought of vibrational frequencies came in. The way the enteractions occur and the way sound waves interfere and augment, and the way light blends. The mechanics which causes the sound waves to augment could be said to be the same as doppler on light waves (since the augmentation in hot air causes the speed of sound to increase and bend the sound towarsds the ground much similar to light bending around gravity).

Wow.  Okay.  First, Doppler shift (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_shift) exists for sound already.  It's why sounds increase in frequency when they come towards you, and decrease in frequency when they go away from you.  Usually seen in the "eeeEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOoooooo" of a car driving past you.

Second, the effect you're talking about with light isn't the doppler effect.  It's called gravitational lensing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lensing).  Totally different ideas.

Third, gravitational lensing and interference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference) are different ideas as well.

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Verying levels of pressure in a closed system will produce verying levels in gravity,

How big is your closed system   Like how much mass are you considering here?  The sort of thing I can do in a lab, or a theoretical closed system of something like a planet?

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since the more pressure the more content there is within the space or pocket.

That's called density.  Tell me you at least know what density is.

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So the final energy we have yet to understand is dark energy, which has a repelling force. It exsists everywhere, but the balance between matter with positive gravity and dark matter is crutial to preventing every object in the Universe from collapsing in onitself into a singularity.

No, gravity is weak on the level of subatomic particles.  We need dark energy only to explain why the universe's expansion is accelerating.  With no dark energy, something the size of our galaxy or local galactic cluster would still work just fine.

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This balance I believe is a rythm more or less, since the amount of Dark Energy makes up more than 50% of the entire mass of the Universe (otherwise we would be collapsing, not speeding up).

The second part of that sentence makes sense to me (dark energy is actually something like 80% of the universe's mass/energy, IIRC).  But the first part did not.  What does rhythm have to do with anything?

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Everything must be able to expand to live, otherwise the being can not store any energy and thus cannot function even genetically.

How do you figure?  In what way does the day to day activities of a cell require it to be able to expand (and apparently not contract, since you didn't mention that...) and what does it have to do with expansion of the universe?

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So our entire knowledge of the Universe and Absolutely Everything, is limited to the fact that we have only experienced one universe, we often only live in 3 dimensions at best, and perception of reality within our own habitat is based on the idea of self-superiority rather than knowing everything that follows some code or logic. Also, not every person involved to finding new discoveries is 100% efficient or successful, it took Socrates alone to discover what he knew about the Earth

You're entirely dismissing the knowledge we can learn from pure math.  It might be possible (meaning it is not proven impossible yet) to construct a theory that would let you describe all possible events in all possible universes.  Knowledge does not always have to follow from experience.

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(or so its written).

And so shall it be done

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The problem I see with people that have to ask who started everything, is that that kind of quesiton is based on the fact that somebody else started you hopefully for a reason. But with the Universe everything happens for no purpose that is of any importance,

I don't think that's given at all.  Science and religion are entirely separate from one another.  Science describes how the universe works (or a close approximation to it anyway), and religion describes the purpose for meaningful existence.  The universe/our lives might very well have a vast purpose.  And that's where religion comes in.  Belief in science doesn't mean you have to be atheist, or worse yet, nihilistic.

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there is no magical spaceship to take us all off to heaven,

Not necessarily.  If the universe dies in a very specific way, it can be used to generate a computer with infinite computational power, from which the entire universe can again be simulated, and all people who ever existed by thusly resurrected.  Or that's the idea anyway.  See this article (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980DEFD9113AF93AA35753C1A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all).

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and most certainly we will be completely unable to prevent or guide how what and when the Universe does anything.  To do so would mean that the Universe has a consciousness, and a set of moral codes you could use to fast talk the Universe out of or into doing something.

How does influencing the universe mean that the universe has consciousness?  For instance, if we were to somehow move all galaxies in the universe together, maybe we could overcome the expansion of the universe and produce a big crunch instead.  The possibility of that aside, wouldn't that mean we influenced the what and when of something the universe (will) do, without requiring the universe to be conscious?

You mixture of metaphysics/philosophy/pseudoscience and proper science disturbs me.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum 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?
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil 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 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_forces).  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).
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter on June 06, 2008, 02:58:02 PM
Quote from: Numsgil
Also, Skateboarding dog (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQzUsTFqtW0).  An its XTREME competitor (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bluJaIMQN0k&NR=1).
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?

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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 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units)?
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.  

Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Testlund 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.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter 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.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil 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.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: asterixx 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.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Testlund 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.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil 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

Quote
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" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mote_in_god%27s_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.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: EricL on June 08, 2008, 04:52:55 PM
Quote from: Numsgil
Reminds me of a scifi book called "The Mote in God's Eye" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mote_in_god%27s_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.  
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil 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.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: ikke on June 08, 2008, 11:22:46 PM
Iliked the single species ecosystem of heorot: herbivore larvea and predatory adults feedig of them.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter 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.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum on June 09, 2008, 04:30:30 PM
Back to the crow: The raven is smarter.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on June 09, 2008, 07:05:20 PM
Sure is:

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

XD
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum on June 09, 2008, 08:52:02 PM
And the answer of the Crow: Food over there!
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: asterixx on June 09, 2008, 08:57:52 PM
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Testlund on June 10, 2008, 07:00:34 PM
Quote from: Peter
Let start the war with the crow.

I'll join the crows in the battle then!  
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum on June 10, 2008, 07:52:51 PM
Quote from: Testlund
Quote from: Peter
Let start the war with the crow.

I'll join the crows in the battle then!  

You do realze taht according to this post, the crow only knows everything about how to find and keep food... So I dont see the crow looking for something if its not worth hunting, and I say we use the Eagle, as its much larger and smarter than a crow.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on June 10, 2008, 08:06:26 PM
Quote from: gymsum
Quote from: Testlund
Quote from: Peter
Let start the war with the crow.

I'll join the crows in the battle then!    

You do realze taht according to this post, the crow only knows everything about how to find and keep food... So I dont see the crow looking for something if its not worth hunting, and I say we use the Eagle, as its much larger and smarter than a crow.

Well they're certainly larger, but I haven't seen anything (research or personal experience) which would indicate that they're smarter.  You're not making up things and passing them off as facts again, are you?

I'll side with Testlund and the crows in the upcoming war of species attrition.  Humans might be smarter, but crows have that whole "we don't need to ever touch the ground" thing going for them.  So they have air and ground combat abilities even before I equip the crow army with rocket packs and laser guns.  
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: EricL on June 10, 2008, 11:54:49 PM
We got crows and eagles (bald and golden) by the truckload here in the PNW.  Eagles are good at fishing, but otherwise they're not that bright.  I've seen a couple of crows hound an eagle and steal its food dozens of times.  Last summer, I saw an eagle taking bites out of a wounded baby harbour seal on a beach in the San Jaun Islands.  The seal probably got nicked by a boat prop.   Mommy seal lumberred over to baby, barking aggressivly at the eagle the whole time.  It didn't pay any attention until mommy got close enough to bite it and shred a wing so bad it couldn't fly.    If a 200 pound barking harbor seal can sneak up on you on a beach, you ain't the brightest bird in the aviary.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Testlund on June 11, 2008, 09:59:00 AM
Quote from: EricL
If a 200 pound barking harbor seal can sneak up on you on a beach, you ain't the brightest bird in the aviary.

You got that right. How many times haven't we seen magpies teasing cats knowing how to keep the perfect distance to manage to fly away just in time. They're not crows though but belongs to the same group of birds. Maybe crows tease cats too, I don't know. I say just the ability to adapt to a human created environment got to be a sign of intelligence, because human development have happend to short a time to be a genetic adaption from animals.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Testlund on June 11, 2008, 10:30:31 AM
Maybe we can expect something like this in the near future. Hehe.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2TKSZDWqIA...feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2TKSZDWqIA&feature=related)
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: ikke on June 11, 2008, 11:20:40 AM
Quote from: Testlund
I say just the ability to adapt to a human created environment got to be a sign of intelligence, because human development have happend to short a time to be a genetic adaption from animals.
If you refer to the video you linked yes.. otherwise there are two flaws:
a) you assume a human created environment requires fundamental adaptation. This is not necessarily true. Falcons have started to live in mid city, coming from the forest edge. The fundamentals of their ecosystem (from their point of view) may not be all that different: they need high safe places to breed, and enough prey in striking distance. A ridge of a building with pidgeons feeding of city scrap qualifies as well as a tree and a field with mice. Maybe even better as the first more and more takes over from the second.
B ) Don't underestimate the power (and speed) of evolution. Darwin's Dreampond: Drama in Lake Victoria by Tijs Goldschmidt describes (amongst other things) the collapse of an ecosystem and ends with signs of recovery by evolutionary adaptation

Edit The difference between  and B ) is
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on June 11, 2008, 01:48:46 PM
It's also interesting to note the effects of domestication.  Generally speaking, when animals are domesticated, they tend to develop neoteny, that is, they keep juvenile characteristics in to adult hood.  eg: dogs with floppy ears and cute faces.  A diminished intelligence seems to go along with that in some cases. (There's a funny farside comic about this, actually.  With wolves commenting that their friends doppy expression and blank stare must mean he's been domesticated).
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter on June 11, 2008, 01:49:13 PM
Quote from: Numsgil
I'll side with Testlund and the crows in the upcoming war of species attrition.  Humans might be smarter, but crows have that whole "we don't need to ever touch the ground" thing going for them.  So they have air and ground combat abilities even before I equip the crow army with rocket packs and laser guns.  
Traitors, indeed that "we don't need to ever touch the ground" thingy combined with the fact they are all the word is a little problematic, how can you effective defeat them.

I'll side with the humans(I tend to belong to that specie, so I choose tio side with them) looking for a possible cooperation with the dolpins, crows can't get us underwater(I hope).

Now I will figure out how to confince the dophins to become a ally of ours, before the crow army gets them, or did they.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Testlund on June 11, 2008, 02:08:42 PM
What do you say, Nums? Shall we recruit some killer whales to counter Peter's dolphins?  
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on June 11, 2008, 02:22:40 PM
Sure.  We'll promise to let them eat their trainers first.  All that "jump, shamoo, jump" crap probably gets old real fast.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: gymsum on June 11, 2008, 05:21:21 PM
Nums, I would never attempt to pass on fabricated information as fact. ANd as for the pseudo-science related post of John  Rife, my data cannot be posted for legality; we had lab certification but no medical backing, and the research is actually a violation of federal law without a medical certificate (or license). Thats not to say theres no effect, my animal pound uses Ifrared lamps for some sort of thearopy, not that I believe it..

Mice are the number most intelligent speices around, so I say go with them, as they are pandimensional.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Trafalgar on June 16, 2008, 10:58:12 PM
Quote from: Numsgil
It would be a remarkable coincidence for us to be in the center of the universe, given that Earth could have been anywhere in the universe, so that idea didn't catch on.  Instead we assume that all points in the universe are moving away from all other points.

Of course, you realize, if God created the universe and Earth, and made it the only home of intelligent life, and communicated part of the history of creation in a very confusing and trippy LSD-like fashion, the most likely place for Earth to be would be the center of the Universe, would it not?  
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on June 17, 2008, 05:48:23 AM
Very true.  

But considering that not even hard line creationists still believe that the Earth is the center of the universe, it hasn't gotten much of a following.  That, and the decidedly non-central location of the Earth in the milky way galaxy.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: d-EVO on November 25, 2008, 01:50:50 PM
In the decidedly non-central location in the Univers.

Still think God created it though.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: bacillus on November 26, 2008, 12:32:19 AM
Ever listened to Stephen Hawking's "The Briefer History of Time"? It has some interesting stuff in it, like that god could only control the starting parameters of the universe, and can only possibly do so in either a 7-dimensional or 12-dimensional universe (don't ask me why, but I'm pretty amazed I still remember that). It also brushed over that problem with the earth being a the center of the universe, with each side looking identical etc. etc., and somehow comes up with a model that we are just sitting on the surface of a four-dimensional balloon (which sort of makes sense in an unimaginable sort of way.)
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: d-EVO on November 26, 2008, 11:45:07 AM
I listened to a condensed version of it on you tube, will listen to the full version or read the book when I can
But even Stephen Hawkings can't denny there is an all-powerfull god that created the universe. (And he didnt).
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: bacillus on November 26, 2008, 05:09:47 PM
No, but he didn't admit it either. He cleverly stayed on neutral ground.
 The problem is that everyone thinks that science rejects the notion of god, but in reality, as there's not enough facts to say anything definite about the existence of god, it only says that the probability of there being one is not quite 100%.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: d-EVO on November 26, 2008, 05:53:09 PM
Yes, totaly agree , thats why its called faith
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: bacillus on November 26, 2008, 10:28:33 PM
True
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter on November 27, 2008, 04:53:50 AM
Quote from: bacillus
No, but he didn't admit it either. He cleverly stayed on neutral ground.
 The problem is that everyone thinks that science rejects the notion of god, but in reality, as there's not enough facts to say anything definite about the existence of god, it only says that the probability of there being one is not quite 100%.
Totally disagree.(sorry it is my nature, if everyone states it is right, I say it is wrong)
There aren't enough ''facts'' to prove the existance for gnomes, fairys, giants or god. That doesn't mean they exist. On the other side I would never dare to say gnomes don't exist. There isn't any prove they don't exist.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: bacillus on November 27, 2008, 11:58:20 PM
I'm not taking any sides, I just love to argue against whatever side is brought up first (or any side for that matter   ). Did I say anything that might indicate a heavy bias?   .
Anyway, pascal's wager: (From wikipedia)
Pascal's Wager (or Pascal's Gambit) is a suggestion posed by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal that even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should "wager" as though God exists, because so living has potentially everything to gain, and certainly nothing to lose.

Okay, that is a good point, but not quite true unless you ignore extremes...
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: d-EVO on November 28, 2008, 08:37:17 AM
Quote from: Peter
Totally disagree.(sorry it is my nature, if everyone states it is right, I say it is wrong)
There aren't enough ''facts'' to prove the existance for gnomes, fairys, giants or god. That doesn't mean they exist. On the other side I would never dare to say gnomes don't exist. There isn't any prove they don't exist.

Actualy you are agreeing with us.
In case you were not following . we never actualy concluded the existance of god.
We concluded that the existance of god cannot be concluded through logic.
But I would rather be on the safe side and believe anyway and not argue with poeple that disagree
I will let them believe what they like if I can believe what I like.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: ikke on November 28, 2008, 09:08:10 AM
Quote from: Peter
There aren't enough ''facts'' to prove the existance for gnomes, fairys, giants or god.
Gnomes exist, one just ate my reply  
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter on November 28, 2008, 10:24:16 AM
Quote from: jknilinux
Woohoo, atheist vs. theist discussion! I love these...
I don't really like those discussions. There can be a lot of discussion but rarely there will be real difference in anyone opinion. Discussions with christians is one of the rare subjects I'm sure I don't change my point about(another reason why I don't like it). On the other site I then see christians changing there opinion about evolution and comparable a little bit by saying stuff like micro-evolution exists but the real doesn't. So that religion is still right.

Quote
I'm with the theists, but I do have a question for the atheists: How do you deal with pascal's wager?
I ignore everything everything that doesn't have any prove, no matter the consequences. Does that anwser your question?

Quote
Actualy you are agreeing with us.
In case you were not following . we never actualy concluded the existance of god.
We concluded that the existance of god cannot be concluded through logic.
But I would rather be on the safe side and believe anyway and not argue with poeple that disagree
I will let them believe what they like if I can believe what I like.
It sounded like bac was saying that science was unable to disprove god. And science tells something about god. Well science doesn't tell anything at all about god. There isn't a theory that would say god exists. There are only theorys where god doesn't exist.

The connection between ''science<->god'' doesn't really exist. They should really be seen apart. You can't mix them.
Someone who is religious and tries to mix them starts with ''god is right'' and concludes with ''science is wrong''.
Someone who is ''scientific'' starts with ''science is right'' and concludes with ''god is wrong''.
Just don't mix them.  

Anyway if this gets into a real atheist/theist discussion.  

Then I'm probably out.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter on November 28, 2008, 06:36:02 PM
Quote from: jknilinux
Peter-
Well, when I said "atheist vs. theist discussion", I meant the intelligent, no-flaming kind of discussion. Otherwise, I agree- flame wars are ridiculous wastes of time.
Hmm, I look sometimes at flame-wars at some boards. Some are funny to read.
Not about religion just random nonsence.
Still stand with my point(religion discussion->waste of time) , still little interested what your thoughs are when you use a program like DB. That goes against a strinct principle of most religions, evolution.

Quote
btw, I've never found even one scientific theory that says God doesn't exist, or one reasonable religious point of view that claims science is wrong.
Hmm, well it is just how you look at it. But what about big bang, evolution theory and such. It is old one but got to be mentioned.
Put your reasonable religious views here if you think those theorys don't interfere with god.

There are a lot of things where science can't say it is wrong. Yes, the gnome fits here too.

And are you then looking through the view of a certain religion or just thinking there is a god becouse you think there is something higher?

And maybe more important, is there a scientific theory that states god exists?
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: d-EVO on November 28, 2008, 07:22:39 PM
Quote from: Peter
Hmm, well it is just how you look at it. But what about big bang, evolution theory and such.

Im pretty sure that when God created the universe there was one hell of a Bang.

Regardless of whether we evolved or not I still give God the credit. ( Think that is what counts )

Quote from: Peter
And maybe more important, is there a scientific theory that states god exists?

Is there one that says He doesnt?  

Ok we are not getting any were with this but I have got one more question

-Why do most atheists hate the God they don't believe in  ???
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Ta-183 on November 28, 2008, 07:24:39 PM
Quote from: d-EVO
-Why do most atheists hate the God they don't believe in  ???
Now, what do we do when we assume......
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: d-EVO on November 28, 2008, 07:59:07 PM
Quote from: Ta-183
Now, what do we do when we assume......

I dont know. tell me

And im not assuming.
I said most because most, if not all of my atheist friends, get all grumpy and shut off when they hear God mentioned.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Ta-183 on November 28, 2008, 08:03:22 PM
I don't, and I'm an atheist.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: d-EVO on November 28, 2008, 08:09:59 PM
well that is why I said most.
talking from my experiences here, sorry.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter on November 29, 2008, 11:41:28 AM
Quote from: d-EVO
I said most because most, if not all of my atheist friends, get all  and shut off when they hear God mentioned.
I depends on how I hear god. You don't have to try to get me converted, if I want to look what a religion is about I'll go look ask myself. Still I find it rarely mentioned in conversations. I know some that have a religion, but rarely they bring up religion.

If some jehovah's witnes comes up at the door, I quickly tell them I'm not interested. I also knew someone from school that was a jehova, took some time before I knew that, I don't really have that much conversations about religion. (later I heard she stopped with that school under pressure from the jehova's)


Quote
The big bang, evolution, and such only contradict genesis, which, IMO, wasn't exactly divinely inspired. It looks more like someone "found out" answers to the questions people were giving him about how the earth was made and decided to make it scripture.
In that view, do you then state most main religions are wrong, in the sense that they do believe in a genesis. Do you believe in a completely other way then those religions?

Quote
And no, the gnome doesn't fit there too.
It does, until you find a theory that has definite prove, gnomes don't exist.

Quote
And, as you know, there are no scientific theories proving God, but from my point of view, this says nothing- if God really made the universe, and if the point of our existence is really to develop faith, then isn't it in His best interest to make the universe in such a way that science cannot find absolute proof of His existence? That completely eliminates faith, doesn't it? So the "there's no proof" argument is moot, right?
If he exists, and if we have do develop faith. But indeed a god should be able to stop us from finding proof for his existance. In this it could exist. Then the question could be why? Why do we have to develop faith, that's more in the filosofic direction.


Quote from: jknilinux
anyway, d-evo -

I must say I agree, there are bad apples in any bunch. That doesn't mean the religious viewpoint of those apples is wrong.

There are radical atheists (who hate theists) and radical theists (who hate atheists)- they're considered nuts by the normal people on both sides.
I'm not sure what the radical sides mean.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: d-EVO on November 29, 2008, 12:14:15 PM
Quote from: Peter
If some jehovah's witnes comes up at the door, I quickly tell them I'm not interested. I also knew someone from school that was a jehova, took some time before I knew that, I don't really have that much conversations about religion. (later I heard she stopped with that school under pressure from the jehova's)

just so you dont get the wrong idea
jehovah's witnes is not accepted as part of the christian faith.
many christians view jehovah's witnes as a cult. dont mean to offend any of you that are a jehovah's witnes .
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on November 29, 2008, 04:40:16 PM
Personally I take a more humanist view towards religion.  It's about spirituality.  It's about magical thinking.  It's about a mythos, and being part of a community, and knowing who you are and what you want, and your place in the world.  That's the reason religions are so universal across all cultures and human experience.  And that's why the vast majority of them are so similar to each other.  It's as much apart of what it means to be human as storytelling an family and big feasts during holidays.  To not have something you're willing to believe in (whether God or whatever) is pathological.

It's not about what did or did not happen, or will or will not happen.  That's the realm of science.  The two are orthogonal.  Science, for the most part, doesn't trespass in the realm of faith, and faith doesn't trespass, for the most part, in the realm of science.  It's when either forgets its place that things get nasty.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: ikke on November 30, 2008, 03:17:50 AM
Cult vs religion is trivial. The only difference is the number of followers.
Science, in the end, asks and answers the how of things. The law of gravity answers how the apple falls to the earth, not why. Neither does m theory. Some peole find comfort in answering the why question with god, others don't feel the need. When beliefs turn to religion things get nasty. The contribution of religion to civilsation is perfectly summed up by quoting a french bisshop: Kill them all, God will recognise his own. Religion claims absolute truth, and by extension absolute power. People are not nice when things get absolute..
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on November 30, 2008, 03:32:47 AM
Quote from: ikke
Religion claims absolute truth, and by extension absolute power. People are not nice when things get absolute..

That's something of a straw man fallacy.  There are religions like that, but they're not all like that.  It's like you see something's shadow and think you know all about what casts it.  There are religions that cast no shadow.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: bacillus on November 30, 2008, 03:44:12 AM
Quote from: jknilinux
Bacillus-
What extremes?

Any you care to define. Everything is relative.


Quote from: d-EVO
=
Im pretty sure that when God created the universe there was one hell of a Bang.
Kind of like an LHC experiment gone wrong?
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: ikke on November 30, 2008, 07:01:06 AM
Quote from: Numsgil
Quote from: ikke
Religion claims absolute truth, and by extension absolute power. People are not nice when things get absolute..

That's something of a straw man fallacy.  There are religions like that, but they're not all like that.  It's like you see something's shadow and think you know all about what casts it.  There are religions that cast no shadow.
Name on religion that claims no absolute truths...
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: d-EVO on November 30, 2008, 08:30:11 AM
Quote from: bacillus
Quote from: d-EVO
=
Im pretty sure that when God created the universe there was one hell of a Bang.
Kind of like an LHC experiment gone wrong?
lol

we should start another thread  discussing what we think is actualy going to happen
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on December 01, 2008, 12:18:27 AM
Quote from: ikke
Quote from: Numsgil
Quote from: ikke
Religion claims absolute truth, and by extension absolute power. People are not nice when things get absolute..

That's something of a straw man fallacy.  There are religions like that, but they're not all like that.  It's like you see something's shadow and think you know all about what casts it.  There are religions that cast no shadow.
Name on religion that claims no absolute truths...


Your problem is that you're trying to understand religions like they're doing the same thing that science is.  You're equating things like the creation myths, and where we go when we die, as representative of the whole religion.

Although it's not a religion, I'd say that the Free Masons, from what I understand of them, come closest to representing what I see religions as.  They're about metaphor, stories, ceremony, community, etc.  It doesn't matter if the stories are "true" in the sense that you're thinking.  The lessons they teach have "truth".  If they didn't the religion wouldn't exist, because it wouldn't offer anything to its believers.

With Christianity, it doesn't matter if Christ was a divine figure or not.  It in no way changes the "truth" of Christianity.  With Buddhism, it doesn't matter if reincarnation occurs or not, Buddhism still has "truth" in its examination of the human condition.  And probably what confuses scientifically minded people the most is that when it comes to spiritual truths, two ideas can be in direct conflict and still have truth.

So basically, all religions have absolute truths.  It's just not in the way you're thinking.

edit: wiki has come in use one more.  Life stance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_stance) is pretty close to what I mean when I talk about religion.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: ikke on December 01, 2008, 04:32:45 AM
Don’t get me wrong. I have no issue with people comtemplating the the why of the universe, or how to live their life better. I have no issue with them taking inspiration from religious scriptures in doing so.
You’re off track if you think my interpretation of religions is the basis for the issues I have with them. For all you now I happen to think Christ is devine, or to believe Christ is devine. My interpretation is my own. The issue I have is that people are willing to burn you alive, because you have doubted the notion of Christ’s divinity, or reincarnation or whatever their interpretation is of whatever.
To me the corruption of religion is mixing the notion of absolute truths with humanity. As said people are not nice when things get absolute. Religion is a human construct, and the notion of absolute truth opens the door for abuse. It lulls people into not thinking when they should, because people are taught absolute truths exist and people have told them what they are.
This abuse can be as benevolent as people doing the right thing not because it is right, but because they will be rewarded in eternity. It regresses into social ostracism for not adhering to group standards, pressuring children and their parents into not mentioning abuse to religion based mass murder. The ideals religions embody may not be to blame but their claim to absolute truth is.

Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on December 01, 2008, 01:41:24 PM
Definitely, it can be used to bad ends.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on December 06, 2008, 01:05:46 AM
Quote
I disagree. I'd say a cult is a religious group that performs practices viewed as negative by the general population. Satan worshipers are a cult and will remain so, so long as they do not constitute more than 50% of the population. LDS- and christian scientist- members do not perform any practices generally viewed as negative, so they are not cults. Wikipedia, btw, agrees with me.

Do you mean Luciferism?  Actually it's a fascinating religion, very different from Christianity.  I wouldn't call it a cult.  The emphasis is on the individual and to me a cult means strong authoritarian overtones.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: ikke on December 06, 2008, 08:20:06 AM
Quote from: jknilinux
I disagree. I'd say a cult is a religious group that performs practices viewed as negative by the general population. Satan worshipers are a cult and will remain so, so long as they do not constitute more than 50% of the population. LDS- and christian scientist- members do not perform any practices generally viewed as negative, so they are not cults. Wikipedia, btw, agrees with me.
I agree that cult has a negative connotation in everyday use that the term religion lacks. So use of either term is subject to the speaker's perception. Romans tolerated many religions, but persecuted early christianity because it was seen as disruptive to society. Clearly cult. I cannot see the RK church stand on condoms in the light of the aids epedemic as anything else than negative. The majority of dutch will probably agree. Same for its stance on same sex relations or the position  of women in the church. Does that make the roman catholic church a cult? German gouvernment thought of enacting a berufsverbot against members of Scientology. Earlier berufsverbote have been directed against (neo) nazi's and communists. Scientology, cult or religion?
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on December 06, 2008, 10:52:51 PM
Quote from: jknilinux
It may be interesting, but it still is viewed as negative by the general population and therefore is a cult.

It is viewed negatively but I think that's as much from ignorance as anything else.  Luciferism isn't about sacrificing goats and babies to a big red faun, which is presumably what the common perception of it is.

If you define cult as any group viewed negatively by the majority of society than that's a pretty broad definition.  You could include groups like the Black Panthers, Al-Qaeda, Romas (aka Gypsies), Jews in Nazi Germany, etc. etc.  I would say that a cult would better be defined as a revolutionary (in the sense of rebelling against the mainstream religious views of their people), authoritarian religious group.  Early Christianity was a cult, by this definition, until the Romans mass converted.  Luciferism isn't a cult because of it's strongly non authoritarian beliefs.

I'd say the "cultiness" of a group is a function of it's size, acceptance by the surrounding community, and authoritarian leanings.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on December 07, 2008, 09:44:08 AM
Quote from: jknilinux
IMO, to the general population, there's an absolute definition of right vs. wrong, since the general population is religious. Satan-worshipers may be the nicest people in the world, but since what they believe, and therefore do, is completely against the general population's concept of right, they are a cult according to the general population.

That's what I mean.  The general population thinks Satanists are doing things they would find wrong, but they're really not.  Well, maybe slightly distasteful, but not evil.  For instance, one of the 11 Satanist "commandments" is to be cruel to people in your home you find annoying.  I think Satanism is a good example because if you define cult as a perception by the majority, then it's not really an inherent aspect of the group and it loses all meaning.

Quote
Anyway, do you have any thoughts on the pascal's wager argument?

Since you're atheist, do you view life as nihilistic? If you're religious, do you view religion as non-nihilistic, even though our goal is to experience an emotion forever? Why?

I'm less theistic vs. atheistic than I am nihilism vs. non nihilism.  People who believe in something are happier and more well adjusted than people jaded with a nihilistic world view.  Humans are built to have deep seated convictions.  It's encoded in our DNA.  It's how our brains are wired.  We need it as much as we need air, water, food, and companionship.

Pascal's wager assumes the reward happens after death, but I say the reward comes directly from the belief.  It doesn't necessarily have to be a belief in God, just a belief in something less immediate than eating and screwing.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: ikke on December 07, 2008, 10:02:13 AM
Quote from: Numsgil
It's how our brains are wired.
Literally, a couple of years ago a region in the brain was found that is linked to experiencing mistical senstations. If it was stimulated people would report all sorts of mystical experiences. A group of nuns was discovered to have a higher natural level of activity than the reference group.

As for wagers argument: the assumption is rationality, which is a stretched goal for humanity. To add to nums direct reward: one of the rewards is the recognition of belonging to the ingroup (however defined). Just being one of the babboons in the troup is already reward and this is handed out through shared ritual behaviour
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on December 07, 2008, 09:47:59 PM
Quote from: jknilinux
nums-

If you think our goal is to be happy, then you're embracing nihilism.

Atheism is the belief that the reward is in this life (as in being happy in this life), and so you're left with nihilism. This includes people who go to church, but do it just to have the benefits of going to church so they can be happy in this life- they're atheist and nihilist, IMO, even if they don't know it.

If your goal is to be happy I'd say that's more epicureanism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism).  Happiness is everyone's goal; I think that's a Greek Philosophy argument.  Everyone does what they think will make them happy.  Nihilism to me is strongly associated with self-destruction and hedonism.  A world view that happiness isn't worth chasing because it's all just chemical signals in the brain anyway, and therefore entirely immaterial and without value.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: bacillus on December 07, 2008, 10:03:34 PM
Here's another interesting point: if you can prove the existence of god, how do you prove that there is only one god?
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: d-EVO on December 08, 2008, 05:20:57 PM
you are totaly missing the point.

you know there are beliefs that entitle many gods. eg. paganism.
they believe that there is a god for everything. eg. rain, land, fire ect.
And they worship these gods.
so they are baisicaly worshiping idols (material objects).
this is stupid because worshiping the sky is not going to make it rain, worshiping fire is not going to protect you from burns ,ect.

we believe in one god because why would we believe in many ?!

maby I am missing your point.
Do you think that If it is possable for there to be a god, why not many gods?
well god is in essence, an all powerfull being that has total power over everything.
How can there possably be many beings that have total power over everything? It does not work.

another point

I do not believe that you should believe in god because of pascals wager.
If you believe in god just because you dont want to have the risk of going to hell, then do you trully believe in god ? if not you will go to hell anyway.  

You believe in God because you want to have a relationship with him, and yes, it does include benifits such as happines and a sence of being.

Hell is not a place with little red thingies with pitchforks running around torchering dead people  
Hell is eternall seperation from God.
What I am about to say is not exactly politicaly correct but...
atheists are going to hell wether you like it or not,
this goes for everybdy if God does not exist.  

I want to clear up a few other things to.

first of all, I never actualy called Jahova's witness a cult.
I simply said many christians veiw it as a cult which is true.

The big bang and evolution does not even contradict genisis as much as you say it does.
It says the world was created in 7 days. 1 day is about 1 rotation of the earth. earth wasnt made yet so how could it posibly say it was made in 7 days.
I belive it was made in 7 stages.
some people ask why the bible doesn't explain how he did it.
My answer is, he could of. but if the bible said that "  then nuclear fision occured in a supper dense cloud of hydrogen gass and [maxwell's Equation] and ect..." and then there was light. I dont think they would of taken it seriously in ancient times.
The only thing you could argue with is the creation of Eve from a rib of adam, but that is baisicaly saying that woman is from man and man is from woman.

The bible is a religious book unlike any other.
It makes claims that no other book would dare to make.
at least 25 % of the bible is Prophecy , and of that 80 % has come true
The odd's of this happining is imposable to comprehend
some info at this site

http://www.hopeofisrael.net/index.php?opti...4&Itemid=30 (http://www.hopeofisrael.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=64&Itemid=30)

what it baisicaly says is the odds of just 8 Prophecys in the bible comeing true is about 1 in 10^17
or 1000000000000000000
but there are many more than 8 prophecys
In another calculation, 48 prophecies were used even though 456 could of being used (dont think he had a big enough calculator ) and arrived at the extremely conservative estimate that the probability of 48 prophecies being fulfilled in one person is the incredible number 1 in 10^157 !!!!!
that is a numbere with 157 didgets on it, not even going to attempt writing it.

the other 20 % are prophiceys about the end of the world. wat does that tell you?  

That is all I can think of for now. any questions
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: ikke on December 09, 2008, 02:38:05 AM
Quote from: jknilinux
ikke-

What do you mean when you say pascal's wager assumes rationality?
The assumtion is that people can make a rational choice and stick with it, while in truth we rationalise our emotional decisions and fail to live up to them.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on December 09, 2008, 03:29:27 AM
Quote from: d-EVO
Hell is not a place with little red thingies with pitchforks running around torchering dead people  
Hell is eternall seperation from God.
What I am about to say is not exactly politicaly correct but...
atheists are going to hell wether you like it or not,

Not that it matters much, but I think that's more the definition of damnation.  There are Christian sects which separate the idea of separation from God (damnation) and Satan's realm (Hell).  Among them Catholics with the idea of Purgatory.

Quote
The big bang and evolution does not even contradict genisis as much as you say it does.
It says the world was created in 7 days. 1 day is about 1 rotation of the earth. earth wasnt made yet so how could it posibly say it was made in 7 days.
I belive it was made in 7 stages.

Actually, if you go to the original Hebrew the word used is yom, which in addition to meaning a day like we understand day can sometimes be used to define a period of time (much like hour (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hour) in English can mean 60 minutes or a time period (see definition 5 and 6)).  So that interpretation is supportable even in a literalistic interpretation of the genesis account.

Quote
The bible is a religious book unlike any other.
It makes claims that no other book would dare to make.
at least 25 % of the bible is Prophecy , and of that 80 % has come true
The odd's of this happining is imposable to comprehend
some info at this site

Except that most of the prophecy that came true is recorded only in the book itself, since it happened in prehistory.  Likewise the prophecies in the new testament either are Millennial in nature or happened soon after Jesus's death, during the period of time it is believed that the new testament was written by the Apostles (60-100 AD).  I'm thinking specifically of Jesus's prophecy concerning the destruction of the Temple.  And of course the prophecies in Revelations which can be read to refer to the middle ages, but those are worded to be interpreted in many different ways.  You can't look at the Judeo-Christian mythos and "prove" it.  It's entirely self referential.

As a clearer example, in the Book of Mormon used by the LDS church, there's a prophetic verse which is clearly a reference to Joseph Smith, the translator of the book and first Prophet of the Church.  If the book was an ancient record Joseph was translating, it's a prophecy that came true, and strengthens his claim to be divinely inspired.  If Joseph made the book up (or used spirit writing, which I think is a more believable criticism given the way the book was written and Joseph's limited education), then it just proves him even more as a fraud.  For the believers it strengthens belief, and for the cynics it strengthens disbelief.  That's the pattern for the Bible as well.  If it's true, it proves its truth even more.  If it's false, it proves itself false even more for its need to prove itself true.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: d-EVO on December 09, 2008, 08:37:18 AM
Quote from: Numsgil
Except that most of the prophecy that came true is recorded only in the book itself, since it happened in prehistory.  Likewise the prophecies in the new testament either are Millennial in nature or happened soon after Jesus's death, during the period of time it is believed that the new testament was written by the Apostles (60-100 AD).  I'm thinking specifically of Jesus's prophecy concerning the destruction of the Temple.  And of course the prophecies in Revelations which can be read to refer to the middle ages, but those are worded to be interpreted in many different ways.  You can't look at the Judeo-Christian mythos and "prove" it.  It's entirely self referential.

You are forgetting that many prophecys in the old testament are refering to the new.
the bible consists of many books. all written by different people at different times and places. many of the people didnt know each other. so any reference to another book is most likely unintentional
The old testiment was written long before the new.
You may argue that the new testiment must of being written to forefill prophecys in the old testiment. but the thing is, we know Jesus existed and we know what he did.
Not only from the bible but many roman texts from that time (see, not self referential). So the new testiment is not just a fairy tale written to fit with the old testiment, even though it my seem like that because it fits so well.

The bible also prophisizes the destruction of many nations. all which have happend long after 100 AD
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on December 09, 2008, 09:08:01 AM
Exactly, it's been cared for by a lot of people over a lot of time.  There have been times where it was all but lost, ample opportunity for changes to be made to meet political necessity.

For example, the mention of Cyrus in an old prophecy used to convince Cyrus to free the Jews and let them rebuild their temple.  Awfully convenient, and the Jews of the period were scattered enough that the written records could maybe be altered to meet an immediate need and no one would be the wiser.

There was another time, after a particularly lengthy hedonistic period in Israel (or maybe Judah, I don't remember), where literally no one knew about the records.  A priest found a single copy in the temple.  It is not beyond the imagination that parts of it could have been altered to meet the needs of a newly come to power priesthood.  Specifically, to create a strong sense of nationalism towards the Hebrew religion.

Plus, the documentary hypothesis[url] suggests a time where political necessity required merging differing religious texts into a single new one (probably after the fall of Israel when many Israelites and Levite (ie: priesthood) refugees fled to Judah.  Merging the new arrivals into the existing country was a necessity to prevent a situation like France and the disenfranchised Muslim youth).  It stands to reason that these different Hebrew sects had some disagreements, and the resulting new text cherry picked where necessary to create common ground and forge a unification.

Add to that the New Testament, which in addition to being written well after the death of Jesus and the founding of the Church and the agreement on a core doctrine, was an outlawed book by a renegade sect for hundreds of years.  Take the role of Pontius Pilate, the representative of Rome, who is not only innocent of Jesus's crucifixion, but unmistakably so.  Then take the role of the Sanhedrin, who come across as mustache twisting villains ploting Jesus's downfall.  The Jews weren't all that well liked by the Romans (witness all those rebellions), and Romans like Romans, so maybe the story was altered on paper to make Rome look good and the Jews look bad as a political necessity for the early Church.  Maybe they did it with the understanding that they'd carry on an oral tradition of what really happened, and somewhere along the way all the church leadership was fed to the lions and all that was left were a handful of devout believers and the documents.

Then add to that the nature of the early church.  There were many competing sects, some with quite different interpretations than the Christianity we understand today.  Most notably the Gnostics, with the belief that the God of the old testament was a vindictive son of a bitch, and Christ saved us from Him by overpowering him and taking his place.  When it came time to pick through the circulating religious texts and choose what should be canon and what should be part of the apocrypha, there was a definite agenda in place.  Texts which were against what the church leadership viewed as true were actively destroyed.

Now of course you could view it that God watched out for the Good Book, and He refused to let it come to any detrimental harm, but I can only take that position seriously if you're Catholic or Orthodox Jew.  If you're Protestant, you believe the church became corrupted, and if the church was corrupted why not the Bible?  Likewise if you're a member of one of the reflationary Christian traditions like Jehova's Witness or LDS.

So when it comes down to it there have been too hands in the pie.  I don't think anything's been changed in maybe 1600-1700 years.  The Bible's become too widespread to change much now, beyond translations and the like.  Plus the Protestant tradition of non priests actually owning and reading the Bible means there's just too many copies for changes to occur.  But there were lots of times in the past where there was both opportunity and motive for some well meaning priest to change things to meet the needs of the present time.  Maybe old prophecies were changed slightly to foster belief during times of apostasy.  Maybe new prophecies were added.  Maybe commandments were changed, and details altered.  The end result is a text that has a very evolutionary history, and has changed exactly as much as necessary to be relevant across all those thousands of years to where it is today. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis)
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: d-EVO on December 09, 2008, 11:10:19 AM
maby....
maby not...  
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: d-EVO on December 09, 2008, 01:33:29 PM
Quote from: jknilinux
D-evo:

1: Believing in multiple gods is not really self-contradictory.

It is (it depends on how you define a god)

Quote from: jknilinux
2: Why can't you base your beliefs off of pascal's wager? You seem to be basing your beliefs on probabilities...

1 : I never said you couldn't, I said I dont believe you should base your religious stand point [you]only[/you] on pascals wager.

2 : I don't. I simply used probabilities to demonstrate the credability of the bible.
     Believing because of pascals wager [you]is[/you] basing your beliefs on probabilities ...

Quote from: jknilinux
Anyway, so long as faith isn't perfect knowledge, you'll remain religious in order to have the "insurance policy" that religion brings, not because you know it will make you happier.

1 : religion is not [you]only[/you] an ensurance policy. It is the way you live your life. A product of this [you]may[/you] be happiness

Quote from: jknilinux
Just FYI, the LDS church does acknowledge that the bible was altered over time, and that this was detrimental to it's spiritual content. That's why Joseph Smith made the JST Bible.

not all churches acknowledge this though, ( even though it is a posability )
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on December 09, 2008, 10:49:36 PM
I'm just saying that it's a strong possibility, so you can't look for material truth of the Bible from within the Bible.  You can look for spiritual truth, believe it's true because of what it contains and judge it solely on its own merits, but if you want to examine it with a more scientific mind you have to take everything inside with a grain of salt.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: bacillus on December 10, 2008, 03:48:47 AM
You made it sound as though people were too lazy to worship many gods at once, so they chose one and gave him the credit for everything. Not so much a contradiction as an exxageration.
The problem with end-of-the-world prophecies is that no-one pays attention to them, because what do you do against them, and who's going to tell you "I told you so!" afterwards?
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: ikke on December 10, 2008, 04:29:01 AM
Quote from: bacillus
The problem with end-of-the-world prophecies is that no-one pays attention to them, because what do you do against them, and who's going to tell you "I told you so!" afterwards?
The problem with end of the World prophecies is that the World ends on average once every 10 years or so. Funny, I must have slept through a couple.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Peter on December 10, 2008, 11:14:01 AM
Quote from: jknilinux
Just FYI, I don't believe because of Pascal's wager, but it is one of my favorite atheist-icides. LOL.
?atheist-icides?  

Anyway, you shouldn't try to prove god with science. Really don't try to. Before we get into the discussion here science is wrong, and you'll lose that one.
Many still refer to science as work of the devil.
Science and religion aren't compatible, anyone who tries put everything exact at it place, that one will blame one of them for being wrong.

And so far the bible(or other books) is the only real prove that there is a god. Often the bible states a little vague thingys(didn't really read the whole thing so blame me if I'm wrong),(example) there will stand up a king in the east, and eventually he will control a big country. Some will say after reading this, there was a country. And will say, another confirmed prophetsy. In my gues there is also another website(somewhere) that states the exact opposite becouse of another look at the bible.

If wouldn't base off the bible the belief in a god. A pity becouse it is the main proof.

Many will say it is good there isn't definite proof for a god. That is faith, maybe we can keep it on that.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: d-EVO on December 10, 2008, 11:26:56 AM
Quote from: jknilinux
d-evo:

Looking back at your posts, I didn't see a contradiction in relation to multiple gods. mind explaining it for me?

I was just saying that if you define God as a being with total power over everything, you can't possably have many.
unless they are all working in the exact same way, and then you could define it as one being any way. if they didnt they would all just cancell each other out or very little would get done.

Quote from: jknilinux
also, religion is an insurance policy that says if you live your life a certain way, you'll get the benefits, IMO.

Just FYI, I don't believe because of Pascal's wager, but it is one of my favorite atheist-icides. LOL.

Great, so we agree

Quote
You made it sound as though people were too lazy to worship many gods at once, so they chose one and gave him the credit for everything. Not so much a contradiction as an exxageration.

sorry if I made it sound that way
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: d-EVO on December 10, 2008, 02:03:23 PM
Quote from: Peter
Many will say it is good there isn't definite proof for a god. That is faith, maybe we can keep it on that.

agreed. lets all rest in peace now
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: ikke on December 11, 2008, 02:40:01 AM
Quote from: jknilinux
Kind of off-topic, but have we ever had a thread this long before? Aside from being 153 posts long, the "view new posts" page says this thread has had over 1,000 views...
This thread is a monument to how the members of this forum can get off topic. It started with an observation on crows and bird intelligence. Look where it stands now
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: jknilinux on December 11, 2008, 01:35:44 PM
Quite amazing.

Anyway, the main refutations of Pascal's Wager so far:

1: You shouldn't use it as a reason for belief because doing so will make you go to the other place anyways.
Maybe, but it depends on how you define a ton of stuff. Anyway, it's really just to show atheists they should believe.

2: It proves all religions. True, because that's the same as saying it "disproves" atheism, which was the point, so it's not really a refutation, it just shows that you still have a problem afterwards.

I think that's all. Please let me know if there are any holes in my reasoning or any refutations I haven't acknowledged.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on December 11, 2008, 02:59:54 PM
Why are you trying to refute Pascal's wager anyway?  It's a wager, and a rather tongue-in-cheek one at that.  Are you feeling threatened by the implications?
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: bacillus on December 14, 2008, 03:33:13 PM
Quote from: ikke
The problem with end of the World prophecies is that the World ends on average once every 10 years or so. Funny, I must have slept through a couple.

Like a backup earth?  

With this post added, the thread is officially longer than the F1 thread on page two of the bot tavern.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: ikke on December 15, 2008, 02:37:10 AM
Quote from: bacillus
Like a backup earth?
Probably. Didn't like the outcome of the game, pressed escape, load game and continued from the last save...
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Moonfisher on January 03, 2009, 09:44:49 AM
Like loading an old sim in DB

I don't see why anyone who is religious would try to prove the existence of god. The whole concept of god is that you have to believe in him, and that doubt is a sin. In fact according to the new testament denying the existence of god is the only sin that can not be forgiven.... you can be a sadistic pedofile and you'll be ok if you believe, but if you deny the existence of god you can't be saved. And trying to rpove the existence of god, may not be denying his existence, but it's definately doubting it... the whole point of religion is that you shouldn't need proof, you either believe or you don't.

Personaly an atheist, so I'm going to hell, but I have no problem with faith at all, in fact I wish people had a litle more faith in eachother, and generaly believeing in "goodness" is a great thing I believe. I don't believe in evil though, but I do believe in a-holes.
But I think believing in scriptures written by many different people from different times, with different motives, views and morals... is misguided.
Faith and scriptures/organized religion are 2 VERY different things. The church is responsible for a very large amount of murders and wars, not to mention torture and opression. For any good thing in life there will always be someone trying to exploit it, having faith in a higher power can be harmless as long as you don't have blind faith in other humans. Faith in humans is good, give people a chance if you can afford it, but never have blind faith in someone unless you know them VERY VERY VERY well... and you never know people as well as you think.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Testlund on January 03, 2009, 11:49:33 AM
Well said, Moonfisher.
If one consider life as limited it tends to give it more value, doesn't it? You don't have time to follow false ideas and you're better off listening to you're own heart and desires, instead of others dictating what you should do and think. Religion is upholded by fear of going to hell and hopes for another better life than we have, instead of trying to improve this life for ourselves and others. An illusion and enslavement of the mind.
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Numsgil on January 03, 2009, 04:10:50 PM
Quote from: Moonfisher
I don't see why anyone who is religious would try to prove the existence of god. The whole concept of god is that you have to believe in him, and that doubt is a sin. In fact according to the new testament denying the existence of god is the only sin that can not be forgiven.... you can be a sadistic pedofile and you'll be ok if you believe, but if you deny the existence of god you can't be saved. And trying to rpove the existence of god, may not be denying his existence, but it's definately doubting it... the whole point of religion is that you shouldn't need proof, you either believe or you don't.

Totally a side point, but that scripture in the new testament can be interpreted to mean that if you know God exists and deny him, you can't be forgiven.  Meaning not faith, but like God personally shakes your hand and buys you a cadillac.  Like with Judas betraying Jesus.  Presumably because it demonstrates that you're a first class ass hole.

Also, while some Christian sects say you need to believe in Jesus to be saved (that your faith alone saves you), there are others which base salvation on works as well, so a murderer, even one who believes, would still have a hard time getting in to heaven (they could be forgiven, but presumably it'd be a lot of work).  I think the former is more Protestant, and the latter more Catholic, but I could be wrong on those points.

And there are yet others which view salvation as freely given to everyone, regardless of belief or works, as a universal gift to mankind through Jesus.  Point being, Christian doctrine has many variations, so it's hard to make broad generalizations about what exactly Christians believe, and what exactly happens to non believers.  As an atheist it's still possible to go to heaven even not believing in God or Jesus depending on which sect is correct (though you'd think if you're dead and in heaven it'd be hard not to believe).
Title: Crows are pretty damn smart
Post by: Moonfisher on January 06, 2009, 09:46:56 AM
Well sure you COULD choose to believe that you can't be saved if you deny god knowing he exists... but I realy doubt that was the intention fo the writer.
And I think the new testament only applies to protestants, and people choose to believe or interpret it in different ways.
But most of the time it's pretty obvious what the intention of a scripture was, and while a lot of poeple choose a more politicaly correct interpretation, most of us know what the guy who wrote it realy ment. Even the most cryptic scriptures often have a very clear motive and message to them, because back when they where written people where pretty thick, so you had to spell it out for them.
Never been fond of scriptures since they're usualy written by someone with a questionable motive.

What realy bug me is that today you see the same thing within science. If you ask a team of scientists to come up with a specific answer to a question, they will... since they know that any other answer will get them fired. You don't even need scientists, you can just get a lot of poeple to sign a piece of paper and claim they're scientists... and it won't matter if the scientific comunity is buying it, since the media are the gateway to the general population, so if you can convince the media of a certain fact, or convince them that it's in their best interest to make people believe in a certain fact, then you can make the majority believe almost anything, or merely give the impression that this is what the majority believe wich will be enough to gain the political leverage you need.
By now I'm so confused the best measure I have to tell if someone is telling the truth is how much money they make on what they're saying... the more money they make the less likely I am to believe them. (I think the ICCP have come up with the greates conn of the century)