forufes

Eh? Impressions are not evidence. Can your sophisticated brain, for example, beat a crude stick with markings on it for measuring distance? Was there a particular thing you think the brain can sense better than our tools?

 

What of our tools sometimes being digital? All that means is that it measures with 1's and 0's, but why would that be a problem? And if it were, wouldn't it also be a problem for our own senses, since they are also digital? Or do nerves transmit analogue signals (hint: nerves cannot partially fire)?

wow, you're right, that way using your brain would be less accurate..although i was thinking more along the lines of eyes vs cameras, skin vs pressure sensors, ears vs voice recorders, biological balance vs mechanical balance, and so on.. more of a direct reading of a biological organ and a machine, where both give off readings of the same unit.. but yeah many of our tools which are augmentations of our senses are well, better, like binoculars and hearing aids and the such, so i guess you were right, shedding the light on the other side of the coin..

Well yes, but you need either evidence or a mechanism (ideally both). Anyhow, our tools are far more sensitive to every known stimulus than our clumsy biological selves. How could our brain possibly detect anything our tools cannot?

ok, evidence and a mechanism...although i think my first examples were kinda evidence, but i'll try to give better ones.

as for the mechanism, i'll propose one, because i'm not claiming telepathy exists (though i think it should), but rather support the OP, of why it shouldn't be such a far fetched idea..

as for tools' sensitivity versus our biological, i was under the impression it was the other way around, no machine or device will reach the accuracy and efficiency of a live organ, never, i somehow imagine it how the tools are digital(go by 0s and 1s) and our biological senses are analog(?), so they are bound to be way more accurate, exactly like raster (digital) images and vector (biological) images..

Merged post follows:

But this isn't 1000AD. We have a comprehensive, scientific understanding of how the natural world operates thanks to physics.

what about things that will be discovered in 3000AD?

where's the comprehensive understanding then?

Are you suggesting that "telepathy", which can't be demonstrated under controlled conditions, uses something outside of present knowledge of physics?

i guess so, yeah..

You do realize longitudinal waves are what our ears receive, right? Are you suggesting to fully "capture" the human voice we use a sense organ other than our ears?

no man, i don't know if you're doing this on purpose or not..

what i'm trying to make YOU realize is that longitudinal waves might not be the only things our ears hear, they're one layer, sure, but there could be other layers too, ones which get lost when for example you record the voice.

and so, to "fully" capture the human voice, nothing can be used best other than our ears.

Okay, so you're saying the human voice has as-yet-unspecified additional properties which can only be explained by "telepathy". I don't know what to tell you, especially since you can't even name what it is you don't think can be explained.

in the same way the human voice might have some yet unspecified additional properties, so can other organs and biological processes, like the brain and thinking, saying all there is to brain activity is electric pulses IMHO is like saying all there is to an artist's work are strokes of a brush..(bait)

We hear with our ears. End of story.

no we don't.

for example the following underlined sound, did you hear it with your ear?

(jk:-p)

It sounds like you're conjecturing something which imparts emotion. Can people not be moved by a recording of a voice as they can by the real deal? Certainly no recording will ever match the fidelity of the source, but that doesn't mean recordings of peoples voices can't move people to tears.

will they be moved by the two sounds to the same degree?

will the difference depend solely on sound fidelity?

@ bascule:

as Mr. Skeptic said, i would define the mechanism ifi knew it, but think of it as electromagnetic waves for people in 1000AD, the mechanism (medium) was there all along and going and coming,but wasn't acknowledged yet, if you say 1000ad people knew what light was, then they didn't know what UV and IR is, a bee keeper knew his bees can go a long way and come back without getting lost, but didn't know how, same with bird hunters or keepers, actually, they might have even had an explanation, which was overwritten with the discovery of electromagnetic waves, which by turn might be overwritten by something else.

you said:

We always know the medium by which sound is transmitted. The medium of sound is longitudinal waves in vibrating matter.

and i agree..

but such waves are two dimensional, the same with how light waves were once thought to be, before being found to be actually two waves perpendicular to each other (or something like that:D) my point is, a new dimension was found, was discovered, which carried something that was always there, always in effect, but not acknowledged..

saying the human voice can be fully measured or "captured" by the longitudinal waves medium is like claiming that a camera can fully capture the beauty of a pretty meadow..the camera might capture the relevant spectrum of the electromagnetic waves reflecting from the meadow which makes it pretty, but there's still the smell of the flowers, the feeling of the air, the warmth of the sun, same with the human voice, except that we haven't yet named the "sun's warmth, the air's current, and the flowers' scent"..we don't know what they correlate to..

i think one of them can be telepathy..

the brain's activity can be captured as electrical pulses, but i think there's more to it than that, something our brains are sensetive enough to feel(emit and receive), but our "tools" aren't...yet.

something like resonance, just on a very different layer and concept than the known one.

but yeah, i know i'm clumsy in my posts , make them long and i feel i'm repeating myself, make them short and i feel some crucial things have been omitted..so any other pointers in presentation are welcome..

you have negative rep(as indicated by the red card) which means you cannot influence someones reputation.

just lol

If you ever feel reputation is being abused -- someone is giving you negative reputation repeatedly just because they don't like you, or whatever -- let an admin know so we can check it out.

but most of the time you don't know who's doing it!

teeth?

but how can the horses hang upside down then?

that could be "noise" occuring to the same medium your minds eye is operating on..

also, the feeling of being watched isn't necessarily linked to eyes being put on you, but rather an associated emotion that accompanies heavy surveillance, hence the feeling of "being watched"

body language, especially facial expressions, are most of the time done or "transmitted" without the person transmitting them notices..

they are also precieved or usually without the person precieving them notices, without him being aware that he is reading such language, and that such expressions are affecting him..

you look at the face of a guy who's speaking to you, and you just KNOW he's lying, you look to another, and you know he's telling the truth..those can be manupilated of course but that's not the point.

how do you know it's body language and facial expressions? because you can't tell when with the same guy on msn or reading his mail.

voice tones can be embedded with such information as well, information which is transmitted and received, and which is using a medium we sometime know, and sometimes don't.

telepathy can be the same, to one degree or another.

an english teacher once told us that the body transmits electromagnetic waves based on one's emotions.. how dogs know an earthquake is coming, is the same way they know a human who is facing them with no fear, and one who is scared shitless, albeit their appearances are the same..

others say dogs can "smell" fear.

bottom line, they know, one way or another, the medium isn't confirmed yet, but that's no reason to say it doesn't exist.

making telepathy not illogical.

some twins get sick at the same time even when they're in different continents..

you can feel someone is watching you even though you can't sense him in a normal way.

mothers intuition..

etc..

ok, so klaynos and jill swift both have three green cards yet one has a rep power of 3 and the other of 16..

and i have added rep points to people without noticing a change in either..

reality isn't reality..

it has no definite value, reality i mean, any explenation to reality (including science) is as good as how well it strings the pieces of the puzzle together..

the puzzle of life doesn't have a defined set of pieces to be solved with, those pieces being scientific findings or any other products of a certain methodology.

science is based on our perception of reality, not reality.

and any scientific piece that doesn't fit the puzzle is due to a mistake in our perception, in science, not reality.

alright! better start kissing up then..

and unless i'm mistaken, rep power and the little green cards and rep points are three different things?

i'm just guessing, but how many rep points make up a rep power? there's no way to know exactly how many rep points i have?

well, why?

can rep points become minus?

two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do!

well at least you have hope..

welcome aboard..

in 2012, i'll be ruling the world, any notes people?

the forces are the same but the displacement isn't..

Our intelligence, however, is merely the extreme form. A trait must be useful in some way at ALL levels in order to evolve. Evolution will not maintain a trait that's currently damaging just in case it becomes useful later.

 

And there is a huge cost to intelligence - it requires a LOT of calories to maintain. Human brainpower can accomplish a lot, but it cannot let us live on less than ~2000 calories a day. In an environment with severe nutrient depletion, salamanders will live happily while we all starve to death.

 

How beneficial is merely half our current intellect? A tenth? Is it beneficial enough to justify the energetic costs?

but the tenth of our intellect is sufficient for us to get over fed, food is literally wasted in our world, if you mention Africa, well get into politics, but go to a restaurant or cafeteria and peek inside the "waste" bins, sit around after a wedding is finished to see where all the food goes to..my point is, even though most of us use only about tenth of our brain power, that is more than sufficient to get us enough food for us to throw in garbage bins.

if all four legged animals along with plants died out or burnt one day, humans can fish, but would salamanders last long enough to develop teeth to become carnivores or complex stomachs to digest seaweed?

 

"Advanced" is only meaningful in what context it is put in, but as there are so many ways one can put the term "Advanced" into examining evolution and organisms, just using the term becomes absolutely meaningless unless you are very specific about what context you are using it in.

in their ability to live, to maintain their life, to stay alive.

i.e. the amount of sweat evolution put into them, as survival is evolution's handiwork.

Can you now understand, it depends on what Metric by which you measure "advancement". If the metric is how well adapted an organism is, then single celled organisms are far more advanced than multi celled organisms. If you are using the metric of coordination, then multi cellular organisms are more advanced.

IMHO, this is a fallacy, these two metrics are the same.

Q:

why has coordination been introduced, if not to be well adapted?

No one organisms can therefore be said to be "better' over all than any other.

 

We are more advance than monkeys in terms of intellectual capacity, but monkeys are more advanced at us at climbing through trees.

intellectual capacity is the finest form of evolution, of "adaptation", and the holder of such trait can be considered to be the most advanced and ccomplex.

because intelligence is able to replace any other traits missed out, that is why humans are dominating the earth, not monkeys, and it is monkeys who are in zoos, not humans, and if a meteor was going to strike the earth, humans can go into space or under water like fish and dolphins, not monkeys.

humans, with their intelligence, are the most able to adapt.

they are the most complex and advanced.

a black belt karate master is nothing in front of an old lady with an AK-47.

that is an analogy, for the AK-47 can be useless in other situations where karate is more useful.

intelligence is not, it is a master key, evolution's finest.

If our environment for us changed so that climbing through tress was more important than intelligence, then we would be considered extremely poorly adapted and monkeys would be considered very well adapted.

 

But if the environment wa changed so that climbing through trees was not a good thing (say we cut them all down), then monkeys would be considered ver poorly adapted.

 

In the past, when the common ancestor of the monkeys and us was alive, the population was spread over a large enough area that it covered different environments. In one part of the environment, climbing through trees was a really good adaptation and their environment didn't change enough for that trait to be considered a bad adaptation and so was conserved through the generations and species to modern monkeys.

 

However, in another part of the range, the population was in an environment that was not good for the adaptation of climbing through trees (say on the savannah where there weren't many trees). Instead other problems existed and the group evolved to meet these issues, and one trait was intelligence.

as i said, intelligence i\fits all enviornments, even those not intended for life(like space).

but i'm interested in hearing of the environment that made intelligence a must, instead of climbing trees.

(not to mention that for those who climbing trees is a necessity for, they only need the first 6 to 7 years of their life to develop such ability, the human brain and body is capable of feats close or similar to those of many animals. climbing trees like monkeys, running fast like four legged animals, staying underneath water for so long nearly like some underwater mammles, relatively spaeking of course.)

i really can't believe how this has been dragging on, evolution intentionally or unintentionally makes species more suited to live... by actually having us able to describe what it does, by it actually doing SOMETHING, then it has a direction, as it isn't doing nothing as in unmoving, nor is it doing nothing as in moving in a direction of unrecognized pattern..

improvement may not be the same depending on the circumstances, but evolution IS heading toward improvements, reword it as you like.

Merged post follows:

i'm also yet to discover why're you all fighting tooth and nail to keep it purposeless, aimless.. what does it bring down in evolution? what part does it screw up?

It was an analogy, not a model. Your argument is actually a Strawman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man).

 

Yes, the analogy is not perfect (if it was it would be a model). Yes, in the real world there would not have been another "surname" so to speak, but if you look at what I said as an analogy, then the other "Surname" is just the group of individuals that are starting to separate from the individual with "your surname". In that respect, my analogy holds.

 

As my answer was framed for someone who was looking for understanding of how it could occur, rather than trying to push "Evolution can not occur and I will twist any analogy to prove the model can't work", then I obviously completely misunderstood your motives for positing. This was why my answer was not a refutation of a position.

 

I was not arguing a point, I was explaining.

hey there's no need to get angry, look at what they did to my trunk and branch example, they went about telling me how they're not a trunk and branch but rather two branches, when my point was that they should grow to about the same length, i took it as a misunderstanding, but even if it's not, even if it is a straw man, what else can i do but re-explain what i meant?

also, i really don't see a difference between an arguing tone and a learning one, if you expected me to just nod my head to whatever you tell me and take it for granted without looking for answers your answers didn't answer or even created, then it seems i might not suit you as a student, otherwise i appreciate your posts..

and btw, you should be arguing too, with your "explaining" attitude it's like you're above learning yourself, it's like you're in a "sending" mode with your "receiving" ports closed, say what you have, but follow up if it shows to be bested by other participants in the argument (i'm not referring to myself of course:D)

So as a counter argument to your point (evolution means that one species can't separate into two or more species):

as for "my" argument, that's not it, mine was of the branches, why would one keep evolving and the other stop? why would one develop systems and other stay one-celled? sysiphus said different evolution rates, that's something new for me which seems to solve my "argument", although i need to look more into it..

but i can completely imagine speciation, the general idea at least, but there's some bits which were hard to swallow here:

 

1) Groups of animals of a species do not have an identical genetic code. There exist differences even within a population of animals.

doesn't this make your argument circular?

2) If this population is spread out over a large area, then the environment will be different across the range of this species.

 

3) Because there exist differences within the environments that this species ranges, it means that there will be different evolutionary pressures on the different parts of this species.

 

4) Because of this, the population of animals will start to become more and more differentiated in their genetic code.

5) Eventually, because each group within the species is becoming more specialised, then cross breeding between the groups will produce less specialised individuals and these will not be as successful as the specialised ones.

uh, i disagree, i think the off spring of the interbreeding process would be more apt to survive, BOTH environments, isn't that what we do between horses and donkeys and different types of corn?(i forgot the name).

why would such occurrence be regarded differently when done naturally?

Merged post follows:

hey i've been thinking about this for some time:

i think the off spring of the interbreeding process would be more apt to survive, BOTH environments, isn't that what we do between horses and donkeys and different types of corn?(i forgot the name).

why would such occurrence be regarded differently when done naturally?

and when you mentioned breeding and surnames:

In my analogy, the "Surname" was the environmental pressures that caused the other group to experience different evolutionary pressures. In that respect, there are millions of "Surnames" (environments) and new ones are being created all the time.

i thought; won't humans, billions and billions of years from now, look a lot much similar? a son(one person), is a combination of his parents(two people).. he won't have double the capacity to have exactly both their traits, so some would be lost, so more breeding, more traits lost..

meaning that breeding diminishes differences, not create new ones..it starts with many but end up with less, i mean some of our grandchildren would marry others of our grandchildren, carrying shared traits and producing even more shared and common ones, till what? all of us carry the same faces?

or is breeding like mixing colors*?

*but won't the destination be one albeit multiple possible routs?

Merged post follows:

What does that even mean?

more complex, unless you think you're as complex as a monkey:eek:

Don't take the "tree" analogy too literally. Evolution makes no distinction between the "trunk" and the branches. Instead of a tree, think of a bunch of forking paths, neither fork being the "main" path. Each path continues to evolve, at a rate determined by its environment.

i know there's no distinction, but why would different environments deploy different rates of evolution upon the species? there's room for evolution in any environment as any other, no?

We may have evolved further from apes than apes have evolved away from each other. However, in the context of evolution no species is considered "advanced", as evolution does not imply a direction.

well i meant we have advanced from our common ancastor more than monkey have..

but in "advanced", can't that be "more apt to survive"?

I want to know what non-humans have been discussing evolution

that was a reply to this

not some drive towards a human notion of "more evolved" (which, interestingly, looks an awful lot like a human!).

Perhaps "more evolved" in the sense of having accumulated more changes since the fork than the other side of the fork. Certainly not "more advanced". I would expect that when a species forks, with one fork remaining in the prior environment and the other fork spreading into a new/different environment, one would expect the latter fork to "evolve more" in the sense that its different environment would lead to more opportunities for successful mutations.

lol, you got the first part right, but doesn't the fork which stayed in their prior environment having a smaller evolution rate than the ones which went to a new environment imply that the first ones which stayed are slowing down because they've neared their "destination"?

so i guess here the dilemma manifests:

A-creatures alive today are of different levels of complexity(hydra, the something crabs, animals, humans)

B-evolution rate is the same,(which is impossible and doesn't make sense, implying either species didn't start off at the same point or some have stopped at some point..bringing us to:..)

C-evolution happens at different rates.

and this seems a fitting answer, but on what basis? change of environment? how does that affect the rate?

my point was very simple..

truth be told, at first i did feel a bit guilty for derailing this thread to evolution instead on neuromechanisms of belief, but going back to my point, i found them strongly interlocking..

the summery of the thread is to say that belief in a diety is a result of neurological functions humans develop. iNow, the OP starter, says he doesn't care if a deity really exists or not, for the thread is simply about how the belief works...

and so, i gave him his atmosphere, and played by his rules, and gave my note about the belief mechanism in my first post #35.

and so i repeat:

saying that the belief in a deity was made up by the human mind, that it's a natural part of the human mind to hold such belief, might have the idea(and i'm not pointing any fingers here, definitely to no atheists), that such belief is false, even though it was stated clearly that this thread has nothing to do with the validity of the statement "a deity exists". but by saying it's normal for a brain to "make it up", with my psychotic nature, i thought someone was trying to pull the mat from under holders of such belief, it's really simple really IMO, which is what drove me mad when you were all acting as if nothing has happened, and that it's me who's rude, well i might have been so, but i was so very clearly and straight forwardly, i didn't slither around and play mazes, and again i'm not pointing fingers at nobody:D.

but if someone really had that in mind while creating such thread, it seems he didn't consider what i asked about; practicality..

so the belief in a deity is the result of some nueromechanisms in our brains...

so what?

some might think that holders of such beliefs would squirm in their seats worrying that their brain has been playing games on them for all this years, while those who liberated themselves from such delusions might raise their heads and puff their chests, feeling in control of even their brains' tricks..

but if our brain was playing on us by making up or introducing such belief, didn't it do it for a reason?

which brings evolution to the equation. the neuromechanisms being a product of our brain's evolution, doesn't mean that we are evolving by holding such belief?

(cries):HECK NO! we're DEvolving by holding such belief..you dumwit..

Ohh, but if our brain has been caught introducing bad things to us now, then couldn't it and other aspects of evolution or change or whatever also have introduced such bad mutations which got embedded into us unnoticed before?

doesn't that bring the theory of evolution down on it's head?

if evolution works by keeping good AND bad mutations, instead of good only, can it be reliable as an explanation to our ever so simple origin for us such ever so complex beings?

or do evolutionists need to add a couple more eons to the age of the world for the new busted evolution to fit the profile?

as a mutation, how is the belief in a deity classified?

it's just what i said in post #35..

and i apologize for any perceived rudeness.

Please note also that this thread is about more than just the video in the OP. While that was the catalyst for my creating it, there has been a lot of additional information which has been submitted since the OP... information which gives a much clearer and bigger picture about the topic. Be sure to explore that, too, if you are, in fact, curious to learn more about the human mind and human beliefs.

....

to make it simple, if it supports atheism, welcome aboard and thanks for posting, if it seems to be going in a direction i don't like, then excuse me, this isn't about whether god exists or not, it's about how the belief works, big difference, but even if you want to discuss that by terms other than ours even better,it's off topic, go discuss it somewhere else.

is that the case? cuz that's what it seems to me.

what am i supposed to do when you see my argument flawless,and no way for you to refute it, and so cowardly discard it as off topic? when you say:

Evolution does not have any direction, it does not have any goal, and it is NOT about improvement. It is just about change.

change huh? well how can anything change to something if not in SOME direction? what is improvement, other than change? what is change from inanimate rocks into live organisms with emotions and logic and complex biological systems, what change could that be called, other than improvement..?

oh, but you already know how weak your point is,if it can be considered a point to begin with, and so you plant your shield and hide behind it:

If you wish to explore this further, or ask more questions about this tangent, then please do so in another thread.

it seems you are not

curious to learn more about the human mind and human beliefs.

if you're not gonna pat me on the back and tell me how right i am, then please let me stay asleep, huh?

you have a serious problem, one which you might share with many others,and you people seriously need to fix it.

it is at times like these that i feel ashamed to have my professional person related to science.

You got the point. Europeans still exist because not all of them migrated to North America. Only a tiny fraction did that. The rest lived on as Europeans. Some but not all Asians similarly migrated to the Americas 15 thousand years ago or so.

 

When a sub-population splits off from a large population that sub-population and its parent population can follow separate evolutionary paths. The sub-population evolves into something else. The common ancestor of the apes and monkeys was most likely something different from apes and monkeys. We don't know what that common ancestor looked like; it happened too long ago and the fossil record is too sparse. Whatever it was, its descendants followed different paths, some becoming monkeys, some apes.

 

In comparison, the last common ancestor of humans and other apes was an ape. That pre-human ape came out of the forest. Just because our ancestor came out of the forest did not force all apes to do so. Most stayed in the forests where their descendants still live to this day.

yes i know, but what i'm saying is that, when a branch goes off the trunk, the trunk doesn't have to disappear,nor does the branch has to be the spitting image of the trunk, what i'm saying is they should both have the almost same amount of length (evolution) from since they parted, the human branch is way much longer (more evolved) than the monkey trunk.

also again, relatively speaking.

All of this can be explained by the fact that we humans are not, in fact, "more evolved" than our cousins. We have the largest brains in the family, but not by much, and larger brain /= more evolved. Evolution is not some track on which an organism inevitably follows, progressing from squirrel-like thing to monkey-like thing to human-like thing or whatever, and human beings are not the pinnacle of anything. It's a bit like saying, "Why am I the smartest member of my extended family? All my siblings and cousins have had the same number of generations to improve on their parents!"

 

So, monkeys will not become more human-like unless becoming more human-like happens to immediately improve their chances on an individual level of having more offspring (and having their offspring survive), and other possible directions don't accomplish this better. That's what makes evolution work. And that's all it is, not some drive towards a human notion of "more evolved" (which, interestingly, looks an awful lot like a human!).

you are raising three matters here, two of which are two faces of one;

1-humans aren't more advanced orevolved than monkeys.

i have to heavily disagree, by all accounts and pointsof view,we are more evolved,which is matter three.

2-for monkeys to evolve, they don't have to become like humans.

i totally agree, they can be as monkeyishly evolved as they want, but evolved none the less.

3-evolution is a subjective term when used by humans.

i partially agree, as we can't discuss it with someone who isn't human, so we can't understand aspects of evolution outside the human scope..

buti still think that no matter any scope you choose, humans will always be far away more evolved than monkeys.

Think about this question:

 

Why does your Aunty not have the same surname as you?

 

The reason is that she married someone with a different surname.

 

Your Aunty and your Mother both share common ancestors (your grandmother and grandfather), but because they do not have the same genetic history as you, they have a different surname.

 

The genetic history of Humans (and the forces on them to evolve) are different than the genetic history (and the forces on them to evolve) of other apes.

 

So while one person might be a "Smith", their cousins, although they share the same common ancestors, might be a "Jones".

notify family is the only one which started life.

there was no other surname on earth for my aunt to marry from.

you follow me?

ok, there was something that was bugging me ever since i read "hijacks" in the OP title, i was misunderstood in the first time so i'll try to be clearer this time..

i DO understand that this thread isn't about whether or not god exists, but more of an explanation and discussion of how the belief in a deity exists between humans, and why it's very common..

first i'll state what i take as facts, pieces of information which i'll base my conclusion upon, if there's any disagreement on any of them, then we should clear that first:

1-the belief in god is a product of evolutionary processes humans undergo.

2-the whole idea of evolution is to, well, evolve, to become better, to be suited better to survive, adapt, continue on living, it's an important process to a race's survival.

any disagreements?

please state them.

if not, we'll move forward, so no need to jump ahead of things.