Comments by Bonzai

Comment #173307 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 3:30 pm

By that argument, we need religion. Why can't people reason for themselves? You don't trust them? Maybe they need to fear hell, or else they would be total assholes.

You must be joking because I can't believe an intelligent guy like you would honestly believe in that.

1202. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173298 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 3:26 pm

Comment #173235 by kaiserkriss

You ARE leaving it a bit late... jcw

Not really. Have you seen how Homer Simpson did his taxes?

1203. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173232 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 2:25 pm

Well got to sign off to do my taxes. :-)

1204. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173230 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 2:23 pm

No no no no no. Conscious is present in people, as atheists say.

We don't need religion to implement morality, why do we need a government to do so?

Well, by that argument we wouldn't need any law.

1205. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173223 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 2:19 pm

How do the people own something, collectively, if not through the state?

I think MPhil would want to deconstruct your fallacy symbolically. But I would just use words.

Socialism implies state ownership of certain key assets, but the converse that state owenership is socialism is not true. Otherwise all medieval kings would be "socialists" as the king was the state and he owns all the land.

1206. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173218 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 2:15 pm

I can't think of a situation where I want the government to regulate my purchases.

Neither do I. But this is the concern of someone who has disposable income. Many people who are working in sweatshops wouldn't really worry about it. Sweatshop is perfectly moral if you look at it from a purely "free market" perspective. Why pay people more than they can bargain for?

1207. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173204 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 2:01 pm

Al,

IMO your fallacy is to confuse freedom of people with freedom of capital.

The market force can be as coercive as any government institution. In many third world countries controlled by orligarchies such as many U.S. allies in South Central America, the governments are essentially the enforcers of capitalist interests. Pure capitalism is about the freedom to make money at the expense of everything, including human right, health and the environment,

There is also a problem of double standard here. When someone points out problems in American capitalism, you would say that is not "real capitalism" (my long post above was directed at "ideal" capitalism) but you would attribute all failures to nominally socialist countries to "socialism". Whatever problem one may have with socialism, it means ownership by the people, not ownership by the state. The state doesn't represent the people if they have no meaningful participation in the running of the state,

EDIT If socialism is simply ownership by the state all absolute Monarchies would be "socialists" because the Emperor = the state in an absolute Monarchy and the Emperor ultimately owns everything,-- at least theoretically.

1208. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173174 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 1:31 pm

The countries that have had the greatest trouble feeding their people are the countries that are run by socialistic governments.

Most third world countries with starving populations are not even remotely "socialist" by whatever reasonable definition.

1209. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #173158 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 1:08 pm

I think Al is too idealistic about capitalism.

Capitalism is not about working hard to make your fair pay, it means controlling the means of production,--capital,--and making others work for you.

All the goodies Al attributes to capitalism, science, new drugs, technology and so on are not the work of the capitalists, they are the fruits of people who work for them.Most scientists and researchers make a living earning wages. For the most part I am not sure it makes a difference who they work for as long as they are given a chance to exercise their skills and knowledge.

To attribute these achievements to capitalism is like crediting the Church for all the high attainments in the arts and sciences in the past.They occurred under Church patronage for very simple reason: almost everyone worked for the Church in some ways back then because it controlled so much land and assets, So it is true in our time, almost everyone works for some capitalists.

Even an ideal free market would not remain ideal because its dynamics would likely create concentration of wealth and hence power.

Adam Smith claimed (or at least the Adam Smith of the economist) that an ideal market if left to itself would settle in a happy equilibrium.

Forgetting about how to set up the initial condition of an ideal market, his argument that supply and demand would adjust themselves to maintain the equilibrium is pure fantasy and it should be a text book example for the inadequacy of plausible sounding word arguments so common in the social sciences.

Mathematicians carried out simulations on even very simple models of ideal market and showed that Smith's conclusion was completely unjustified. The market is a chaotic system, there is no reason why an equilibrium would persist even if the market started out in an equilibrium, in fact, in the generic case, the equilibria are mostly unstable and cannot sustain themselves against small perturbations (like an egg standing on its end).

Moreover, once departed from an equilibrium, there is no way to estimate how long it will take the market to attain the next equilibrium again,--assuming that would happen. The "relaxation time" would be very long, so a depression that lasts for 20 years can be "market adjustment" as far as economists are concerned.

Of course "equilibrium" can also be brought about in many ways, say, mass starvations through the Malthusian mechanism."The economy" is indifferent to human miseries as they cannot be tallied on companies' balance sheets.

The market logic of savage competition is not hospitable for long term planning and risky undertakings that may take a long time to bring marketable returns, for example, scientific research. In the U.S. as well as all the developed countries,the advanced sectors of their economies are heavily subsidized and protected from the unpredictable market force. The government pays for the costs for all basic research and the private sector only takes over when development reaches the stages that has the profit potential. If the U.S. has adhered to the free market doctrine of pursuing comparative advantage, it would probably still be trading fur.

The pressure of short term survival also encourages behaviour that may be detrimental to long term well being such as over exploitation of resources, pollution and any way to pass on the cost to the future or places that don't show up in the balance book.

I find the argument that there must be someone doing "shit jobs" appalling. Yes, there are unpleasant jobs that have to be done, but it doesn't follow that people who do unpleasant but necessary jobs have to get shitty pay. The society can survive without some very high paid lawyers for a while, but it will be paralyzed without garbage removal for several weeks. There is also a strange logical difficulties here. If there is always x number of shit position to fill why does AL suggest that people should work hard to upgrade themselves and seek education? No matter how you reshuffle the deck someone will come out in the bottom in a society that operates like a zero sum game. Even if everyone has Ph.Ds in the sciences, society would still need X numbers of garbage cleaners.

As Michael Polayni pointed out, there is a big difference between a society with a market and capitalism (even idealized capitalism). In Capitalism society becomes an appendage to the market where market logic threatens to take over all aspects of life and subjugates all other considerations.

1210. Museums teach society lacking in science literacy

Comment #173112 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 11:15 am

I love going to science museums, its like being a kid again!

I just love being a kid again.

1211. Is religion a threat to rationality and science?

Comment #173106 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 10:47 am

Wooter is just a troll without a life. Ignore him and hopefully he'll get bored and go away. I wish there is a button to filter out his posts.

1212. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #173105 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 10:44 am

MaxD

Yeah, it looks like some kind of cult thing. Very disturbing, though some of the pictures are not bad.
Didn't see the one where Jesus is taking a big hit on someone's heroin though.

1213. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #173086 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 10:19 am

I think TruthID is honestly trying to ask questions, we shouldn't bear any grudge against him.

1214. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #173063 by Bonzai on April 30, 2008 at 9:44 am

Geoff

Bonzai, you were looking for biomorphs earlier:

http://physics.syr.edu/courses/mirror/biomorph/

Thanks for the link.

TruthID, I highly recommend this, See if it gives you a better feel about evolution. It is one thing to read about the idea in books, quite another to see a simple demonstration, even if it is only a caricature.

1215. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172610 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 7:20 pm

Well gentlemen, nice chatting. Got to shut down the computer for some maintenance work. Have a good night, or good morning for Brian.

1216. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172609 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 7:18 pm

Mphil

But since Platonism says that the universals are independently existent, and the Judaeo-Christian concept of god includes that everything depends on God, and only god has the property of aseity, that is incompatible with Platonism, as Craig correctly notes

I always said that even though never read Craig or know the word "aseity",--I thought it might have something to do with God being big, like obesity,

That proves that it is not necessary to know big words. :)

1217. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172601 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 7:10 pm

Brian

couldn't the feeling of exploring with maths be that due to the 'laws' of our universe, numbers are just a reflection of the universe's parameters so to speak. Not anything preter or supernatural?

Don't know what you mean by preter or supernatural, I am not even sure if those questions are meaningful. In general I don't think about those things very much.

1218. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172594 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 7:01 pm

Mphil

he[Craig] denies Platonism because it denies the aseity of God//

I always think that "Platonism",--or some of its variations,--is not particularly hospitable to the idea of a creator God. (EDIT we all know Socrates' argument against needing the gods to define justice)

As noted, for many ancient mystical cultures God,--or gods,--came from the primordial order, not the other way around. So the idea that God is required for logic and laws of nature is not only illogical, it is not even intuitively persuasive. It only sounds reasonable because of Juadeo-Christian cultural conditioning .

1219. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172583 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 6:48 pm

Brian

I don't have a position to defend, but I am sympathetic to the Platonists in the sense of Penrose,.

It is how it feels when you actually do math, you are making discoveries. It is as though there is a mathematical landscape that you explore. There are many occasions of great synthesis in that people come to the same "facts" through completely different routes in that you can have several proofs for the same theorem starting from completely different ideas.

This is a personal feeling, I don't try to turn it into a philosiphical claim. What I find particularly annoying is the view that mathematics is just a formal system of symbols, axioms etc. Whatever mathematical "truth" means, that is a very bad caricature of what mathematicians actually do and it mistakens presentation as substance in my view.

1220. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172572 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 6:37 pm

Quine,

I think they can at most claim that there is a Platonic world of mathematical forms and people like Ramanujun have an extra sense which allows him to access that world. Mystical, but not necessarily a case for ID or God. I would think Platonism probably renders personal Gods redundant.

EDIT (
In many ancient mystical religions (the Greeks, Taoism, e.g) the gods,--if there were any,--were not primal, but instead they arose out of some primordial order ("logos" or "the tao") Therefore I always think that it is weak argument to try to say that we need God for the law of physics or logic. It is a very culturally specific assumption of Judao- Christian beliefs.)

I am reminded of a story one of my math professors told us some years ago. He said there was a California mystic by the name of Hinton (IIRC) who claimed to have a secret method to see things in higher dimensions.By "seeing" he meant not visualizing, but literally.

According to my professors, the great Canadian geometer H. S. M. Coxeter for some years retained the service of Hinton's daughter. She would report what she saw in her trip to some high dimensions and Coxeter would prove them. Apparently Coxeter tried to find out how she did that but she never shared her secret,--thus keeping herself employed.

Coxeter was one of the greatest "classical" geometer in that his work was highly visual and he used the synthetic method extensively, which was very unusual for 20th century mathematics.

1221. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172564 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 6:16 pm

Quine,

Actually, Ramanujan did say that "the goddess" whispered the mathematics to him, though as far as I know he didn't say it was Krishna or specifically which one.

1222. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172560 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 6:11 pm

Mitchell

If necessarily I'll clarify or explain when asked about something, but won't correct it so other know what was talked about. For instance I was bothered when you pointed out a mistake to MPhil, and he fixed it. Now I have no idea what it was, or what you could have meant by your joke. I try to avoid that myself.

Normally I won't do it, but it was a funny mistake. He addressed the post to himself (instead of "MaxD" he typed "Mphil" in the opening)

1223. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172556 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 6:06 pm

A teen accused of plotting to blow up his high school told police that he wanted to die, go to heaven and kill Jesus, federal authorities said Tuesday.

There you go. Religion inspires people to do horrible things, though in a way you won't expect.

1224. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172482 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 3:48 pm

I can't think of many scientists who fit your description of the genius/crackpot. It seems to be mathematics that attracts (or generates?) that kind of mental instability. Cantor and Godel come to mind.

So were Newton and Heaviside, possibly Hamilton. Some may even think Penrose is a crackpot.

EDIT: Some may add wheeler (who passed away two weeks ago) to the list of great scientists having some really strange ideas.

1225. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172471 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 3:32 pm

What I was trying to say was that it should not take much effort to know, for example, that business about not being able to travel back before the construction of a time machine.

Well I don't know. I think we are talking about things at a very speculative end of physics.

My attitude is "never say never" as many things we think we know can be wrong,

Now that is not to say we take all speculations equally seriously, but speculate away, if you can put together a mathematically solid formalism and get testable consequences out of it, we will look at it. There is no point telling people they are wrong because their speculations contradict some established ideas or philosophical dogmas.

There is a very thin line between a competent crackpot and a genius. A genius is often a crackpot who hits on some right ideas among many failed ones.

It is a mistake to think that scientists are rational people, Science is a rational enterprise, but original ideas often come from irrational places. The difference between a great scientist, and a competent but mediocre one is often that the great scientist is willing to entertain wild ideas which may seem totally nonsensical and crackpotish. As Pauli said, interesting physics has to be crazy enough. But then of course the process of testing and validating the original insights consists of hard and careful work, Verification is a rational process.

That I think may also answer to some extent the question why some outstanding scientists are religious or entertain other crazy ideas. "Compartmentalization" is probably only one mechanism, but at some level perhaps great scientists are like great artists, who are not necessarily very rational people to begin with and that is part of the reason behind their greatness. Newton was a crackpot through and through, and that was not just because of his religion.

1226. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172439 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:57 pm

One time I accidentally flagged myself as a troll

1227. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172437 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:55 pm

About editing. I edit a lot sometimes because there is no preview function. It is only after I post the comment and read it that I find it needs modification.

P.S. I will be posting my nude pic next. :)

1228. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172428 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:47 pm

do try not to post nonsense. All those matters I have mentioned have, in fact, been dealt with by the very "pop science" you are talking about. Pick up almost any book by Kaku or Davies from a store and this will be mentioned. There will be very little detail, to be sure.

I didn't say you post nonsense. I am saying the assertion that you can actually *understand* physics and assess physical theories by just reading popular account "nonsense".

General relativity can be summarized as "matter creates curvature in spacetime, and curvature in turns tell matter how to move in it"

But I doubt that one can say he understands general relativity just by being able to form a mental picture with this. Otherwise no one would need to spend a whole year just to get the basics.

Pop science accounts by necessity are only suggestive. I can make a suggestive picture with words and analogies, but I cannot really tell you what "curvarture of spacetime" really means without getting into differential geometry and the Riemann curvature tensor etc, not to mention formulate precise enough program that can be tested.

1229. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172416 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:40 pm

... and reportedly treated the women who did this in a true asshole-manner.

He wasn't a role model father and husband, apparently.

1230. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172410 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:32 pm

False dichotomy. It is possible to have considerable understanding of the state of knowledge in a subject, even a detailed understanding of the subject itself, without being able to make mathematical models

Sorry, that is nonsense, A journalist would love to believe that, I am sure.

Einstein had major insights into physics, but had to get help with the math

You make it sounds like he was flunking math or something, it wasn't like that.

1231. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172405 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:26 pm

Steve

But it is very selective. The issue of wormholes, their stability, the expansion of the universe and the limits of theories of time machines and so on aren't that deep physics at all.

Those are very speculative stuffs even though it is not so easy if you want to actually make mathematical models rather than just making pop science-tish assertions.

However, I have respect for anyone who has actually sweated through a few courses in field theory and published papers on it. May not be terribly sexy comparing to pop science, but that is real meat and butter hard stuff.

1232. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172397 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:17 pm

Quine

I wonder how people would have reacted if Srinivasa Ramanujan had told us that his mathematical ideas were passed to him by the voice of Krishna.

I don't know. When I heard that I just said "fuck me!" and thought maybe I should shave my head.

The thing is he burped things out as if he could "see" theorems and you can't really say his mind has "worked on it" From what I heard he never proved anything himself, he just made assertions and then other mathematicians, such as Hardy would prove them only after great efforts.

But then I cannot vouch for the authenticity of those accounts. Mathematicians' attitude towards the history of mathematics seems to be "never let the facts get into a good story". For example, it is widely believe that the reason why there is no Nobel prize in mathematics is because Mittag Leffler, a famous Swedish mathematician, was sleeping with Nobel's wife and Nobel worried that if there was ever a Nobel prize in math this guy would get it and laughing on his grave. The fact is Nobel never had a wife.

1233. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172311 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 1:07 pm

At least we know the women in the compound have access to internet..

How do you know Kyrie is a woman? This is the internet.

1234. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172305 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 1:00 pm

Mphil

Here

http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,2511,Does-science-make-belief-in-God-obsolete,Hitchens-Pinker-Stenger-Schermer-others,page5#171453

1235. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172299 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:56 pm

Oh, those, it is on a recent thread though I cannot remember what it is called just now. I will try to post it later.

1236. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172293 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:52 pm

Which comment?

1237. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172292 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:51 pm

Is Kyrie a member of that Mormon compound? I am beginning to wonder.

1238. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172287 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:44 pm

Karda

here is nothing specific that you can do to promote God's plan. In general, love God (or the world, if you like), love your neighbors, love yourself. Try to be fair and just. Promote peace, but defend your rights. Seek knowledge, and help others to learn. Be good. That will all help.

Yesterday on another thread "flying goose" a moderate Christian minister who visits this site now and then told us that he was actually moving towards atheism, or "non theism " even thoughb he still believed in "the sacred".

He made an interesting point. He said even if there is a God, perhaps it is still necessary for humanity to take a default atheistic position in order to become truly mature, and become what God has wanted us to become all along. That would be consistent with the kind of God he believed in before.I am paraphrasing here, but it seems to have some relevance to what you say here.

1239. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172274 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:21 pm

Quine,

I have the feeling that Karda knew all these already. From what he told us about himself and what he wrote I think he is a very intelligent and scientifically informed person, probably knows more physics than anyone here (regurgitating pop literature is common on internet forums but to my mind that is not an indication of in depth knowledge)

But very bright people often have very wild ideas. Somehow genius and "craziness" are only separated by a very thin line. If you 'cure' the "craziness" you kill the genius and originality as well.

Why do I say that? On reading Karda I am reminded of a friend of mine. A truly brilliant guy I knew as a physics undergraduate. Very bright and full of ideas, then something happened and he lost his mind and became an ultra orthodox Jew. I still talk to him from time to time.His "ultra orthodox Judaism" turns out to be actually very unorthodox, with a lot of Karda-ish speculations mixed in it. Even though I am not convinced, but it is clever to put that thing together.

Karda, please don't be offended, I am not suggesting you are crazy in the literal sense, though my friend was at one point,

EDIT: I did tell my friend about Ramachandran and also Michael A. Persinger's experiments. He has his ways to get around them, at least for himself. Basically even if you can show a causes c it is not the a proof that god cannot cause c through others means or cannot be causing c through a.
Not a very scientific argument for sure, but good enough for him.

1240. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172263 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 12:07 pm

karda,

Since I have been clear in noting where I am speculating, the only assertions I have made are about the nature of the experience that I consider to be evidence. You can mock those, if you like... but you can't accuse me of asserting that God has a plan, because I have not done so.

That is fair enough, I also don't have any desire to dissuade you from your speculations. It is personal and you do have some interesting ideas.

1241. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #172254 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 11:46 am

Mphil,

Are you talking to yourself now? Solipsism must have gotten to you. :)

1242. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172227 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 11:09 am

Karda,

Let's say you are right that god has this plan of trying to "fine tune" the universe "retroactively", what can we do to assist him anyway? It seems rather irrelevant for practical purposes, don't you think?

1243. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #172218 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 10:58 am

Karda

Consider the spectrum of the hydrogen atom. The bound states are the time averaged sum over all of the classical paths that the electron could take in its orbit around the proton, considered for all time (-infinity to infinity). In the case of the hydrogen atom, both the classical and quantum dynamics are linear equations, because it is such a simple problem. One can calculate the spectrum exactly because of the simplicity of the sum of the orbits. Transients are just a superposition of those states, and represent classical solutions that are none-the-less predictable for all times.

But now consider the helium atom. The third body makes the classical dynamics non-linear, so that the phase space is chaotic. At certain energies it is hard chaos (resembling a Bernoulli system, like a coin toss). Calculating the solution to the (linear) Schroedinger equation is now considerably more difficult, as we must sum over all of the orbits at a given energy (from t=-infinity to t=infinity), and they are often not even classically deterministic. As such, approximate methods are used to solve for the helium spectrum.

But if you measure the spectrum of helium atoms, they always come out the same. Each helium atom is a little, exact solution to this intractable problem of solving for the steady state solutions over infinite times. The reality that underlies the theory of quantum mechanics seems to be able to sample the arbitrary future an past, and come up with an instant solution. It's bizarre. Quantum mechanics seems to say that, while time is a variable of the dynamics, nothing happens without being affected by the entire future and the entire past.

High energy physicists don't like to think about bound states. I had the privilege of taking quantum field theory from a gentleman that insisted on beginning the class with a three week treatment of QFT using a Hamiltonian formulation that dealt with bound states, prior to moving on to the Lagrangian formulation and the more typical calculations used to explain the products of collisions in particle accelerators. As such, I got the notion that QM samples all time drilled into my head.

Are you basically saying that time should be treated like another dynamical variable so the action integral involves summing over all paths in some configuration space witch includes time as a dimension? (instead of just a parameter to parametrize the paths to be summed)

1244. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171961 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 3:31 am

Brian

.. the one that evolved the more efficient pattern would be the more fit because they'd need less energy to perform the same reproductive function.

How do you predict the exact arrangement from this fertility mumbo jumbo without knowledge of physics? And if you already know the physics what does this bit of "vitalism" add to the explanation?

Do you also think water droplets curl into little balls in order to better procreate? Well I suppose it is a very poetic image like saying God's invisible hand is everywhere..

1245. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171958 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 3:25 am

QED what? Mathematics is not natural selection.

1246. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171955 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 3:22 am

Yes. It is a minimum energy configuration. Requires less resources than others.

Yes, but that is a physical property which has nothing to do with biology or selection. It is like a water droplet having a spherical shape, some kind of "least action principle" at work. The Sun flower thing has been modeled in an experiment using magnetic field and small metal shavings in a liquid, nothing biological or even organic was involved.

1247. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171952 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 3:15 am

Goldy, one last note

I'm guessing there's a lot of compromising to animal gaits in order to fit other components in, like carrying organs and such, that get in the way of perfect physical locomotion phenotypes...

Yes, but the beauty of their model is that they made only one assumption, which is that the movement of the animals is controlled by a "central pattern generator",--which is a schematic caricature,-- other than that they made no biological and mechanical assumption whatsoever, the whole thing was derived just from symmetry,--mathematical constraint which is not even physics or chemistry. They didn't even write down any differential equation.

1248. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171947 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 3:03 am

Brain

What we see as beautiful is an evolved trait.

Well you can strike out the adjective "beautiful". Why such patterns? What selection purpose do they serve? Why does the sun flower's head have spirals that roughly follow the Fibonaci sequence? Is that selection?

Well really have to sleep.

Good night or good morning everyone, and steve too.

1249. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171943 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:59 am

I am off to bed too, It is 6am my time.

1250. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #171941 by Bonzai on April 29, 2008 at 2:56 am

Brain

To say otherwise is to say that animals fly inspite of the laws of physics.

Of course, that would be a trivial kind of constraint, But I am talking about the growth and development of forms and patterns. For example, why does a tiger have stripes? If it is just because of natural selection you can imagine other possibilities. How about the beautiful colour and patterns of shells that live in the mud? There seems to be no selection reasons for them to develop such patterns.