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foodchain

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Everything posted by foodchain

  1. Do you think how culture encodes its information could be changed to reduce our carbon footprint? For instance, could you change a sign that gives direction to a bathroom to say the same thing but with far less material? Such as some other use of symbols, perhaps just a universal bathroom logo plus arrow. With the internet I could think of such a possibility due to the use of emoticons. The Lol emoticon for instance is beyond famous, and it can represent so much while it itself could be written out with so little. I know it seems like an awkward question, but if you could .zip the alphabet by 50% while retaining full meaning, to me it would just mean our communications should ultimately need less energy to be efficient.
  2. Can you mathematically represent thermodynamic behavior of everything? If this is true, does that have any special significance? For instance with the electroweak force, and the hopes of unifying all forces and or symmetry. If you can apply the concept of thermodynamics to any natural phenomena, does this tie into why science is concerned with combining fundamental forces? Also Being a major component of such an endeavor as a GUT theory primarily deals with energy, does energy being a major factor itself also automatically include thermodynamics as an important component.
  3. I think a part of the problem is if you want just using science. Why at any point in time should the people or scientists working on global warming know exactly what they are doing, in regards to the problem at hand which is global warming I think that's a hefty standard to set. More or less maybe its wrong to suggest that the science should just be correct instantly, all of the time, and there is no need for hypothesis testing. The other issue that I can think of immediately is just rising CO2 levels. If you can prove that increasing the ppm constantly since the industrial revolution is bad and why, currently imperfect models should not just be scraped. To me that would be similar to destroying any other theory because its currently imperfect. As for the bias or corrupting, global warming is not a simple issue. In it you can find the grounds morally for needing to change world economic systems.
  4. I don't understand your position, are you against this simply because you find it unconstitutional, on what grounds is this. Plus I get confused by your wording because you take on an extremely libertarian position I think most will never agree to. Allowing people to become crack addicts will impact individual liberty on a social level outside of just the individual. Then again we do seem to be dominated by automobiles, but those happen to be of benefit to enough people as to be a null issue outside of gas prices.
  5. I think an honest intellectual hurdle here is trying to picture biological reality I guess. Lets look at human life, its rather complex, do you think we could map everything on a molecular level, what about in the animal kingdom in general, then millions, or however far back in years you would like to go. The daily struggle for life for all of those organisms over such a span of time. I think this is a hurdle because I notice that when it comes to science a lot of times people want easy to follow stuff, be it global warming or quantum mechanics, maybe biological evolution is hard to make simple scientifically when you expand it out to such a level. Reading my genes will not tell you what life was like in 1930's China, I mean you have a lot of information. Yet in this we can track say a broken vitamin C pathway in primates that humans also have.
  6. I would have to agree that biotechnology would probably someday become something like the computer age. When our former president was in office his stance on issues like genetic engineering caused for a lot of trouble in the U.S in regards to interested parties. I do not know if Obama is much different on the issue in regards to stopping it basically, but the cash cow of genetic engineering I think will eventually come into existence. Not only do you have to think of the economic boom that would create, but another factor to consider is law surrounding genetic engineering and related technologies in other nations. More then political I wonder what humanity would think if tomorrow for instance you could have plastic surgery on a genetic level, or for that matter have a multitude of different possibilities if we could actually bioengineer anything we could think up?
  7. Evolution is evident and or supported on a genetic level also, which is testable empirically. Modern evolutionary theory has developed more since the days of Darwin, one such example of this progress is molecular biology. Modern evolutionary studies take into account many variables to help explain evolutionary relationships. The different criteria can be from a molecular scale like genes, all the way up to ecological scale studies and even animal behavior. To make the claims you have made so far would suggest a few things. One you have no mainstream science like education on the matter, or two you do have education like that on the matter but from a biased source with an agenda, or three you just have a bias about evolution with little actual understanding to any of it. I mean what is a totally separate species? Would that be an alien chemistry, or perhaps something not related to other living things currently, via chromosomes and or sexual reproduction.
  8. I know brain cells can reduce or inhibit other cell activity. There is also a model put forward with some evidence that individual brain cells actively engage with each other for resources, as such cells that perform better for some kind of stimulus gets more food. I often wonder if this individual war if indeed true has any kind of impact on personality to some extent, like of some cells that were good at both art and math, would they by brain structure have a higher chance of success in some environments, or would they suffer because of such. I think individual plasticity could register, or even become evident in studying difference among cultures on some math chart. Heck maybe that behavior could explain why animals or some can be domesticated.
  9. For number one I don't know when you call a cell living. If you mean did the first cells all come about during the same time, probably. I think the answer to question two lies more in the physical sciences then just the life sciences. The process or processes that lead to life were abiotic, so my guess is thats why we have autotrophs. For question three I think question two and one both apply. What ever physio-chemical process that lead to life is probably what was required, as for mutation is the process that natrual selection operates on. Not saying that life was guarenteed in that last statement, just thats how life exists right now as per the definition of life in this topic.
  10. That is quite a leap, how do you know that particles are not a process? What do you mean by process, do you mean like radioactive decay, or a chemical reaction? I am just wondering if your theme here could be covered by some foray into complex systems and emergence or what not. The other thing of course is thermodynamics, why does everything have to do quick? Its just a simple point on the matter, but using something unproven or some conjecture to make a definitive statement on something being true or false is sort of lame. So you claim that not every bit of evidence is open to scientific investigation, big deal, did the Romans invent microwave using electronics, no, but its not as if it were some developmental impossibility. Who knows what science will claim to understand in even fifty years, or even just a few years of operational LHC.
  11. I am not pro enough at chemistry to know, but how complex can you make a equilibrium in terms of reactions. If you had some organic compounds, or for that matter some RNA, could you develop a equilibrium for reactions that as products and reactants shift, the RNA molecule or whole set of reactions could develop over time as to make new products and reactants to enter into the equilibrium? Such that maybe you had a single product/reactant set up going on, and then you added another chemical that could boost that up to two reactants/products, etc… Could you actually keep developing or adding on to that system. My idea would simply be to find a way to keep the whole series from ever being able to halt, even while it’s attempting to do such. If such a concept has any validity I think it could be used to model how early life might have come about. Say you had some porous medium, maybe like a rock or clay, that filled, or was constantly being bombarded by all types or organic compounds, or even RNA itself and its precursors, I just wonder If having some kind of a equilibrium going on in constant flux in such a chemical environment could produce basically a “reaction engine” of such complexity that “mutation” would be an inevitable consequence. If that were the case constant pathways would be opened up to available reactions, which would wildly change all kinds of other variables like activation energies. I think this could produce all kinds of products like enzymes and or other catalysts, as a broad range of chemical variation could then occur. I have no idea if such a concept though has any validity, or for that matter how difficult it would be to feed some reaction for a week or years.
  12. Planck of the planck constant also believed in god, but his god is not one you will find popularized in any mainstream religion, so for what its worth how do you know what this guy actually thought about when he was forming the idea you claim to be BBT. Also on note science can only currently be materialistic in nature, unless you can find someway to examine some deity of any giving origin myth(there are many) in a lab. I like to frame my religious ideals somewhat like H.P Lovecraft, that I would outwardly think myself agnostic, but for the idea of some ever existing personality that would be a spirit or a soul, I am a highly skeptical atheist as why just humans, and not slugs. Its not a matter of animals rights, its just we are not the only living things. Plus there's that whole matter of evolution to contend with, and trying to square that up with any existing theistic beliefs certainly can cause a lot of trouble not to mention endless displays of logical gymnastics like god time. If you were to take science and try to combine it with modern religion you would end up dealing with nothing more then a highly subjective mess that no longer could be called science, it would be called intelligent design which to date fails to have any scientific validity whatsoever because again you cannot test faith in some laboratory. I guess its just comes down to proof, either you have it or you don't, and I like to side with proof. Take away science, and you really could say the earth is flat, center of a universe created by pink elephants and everything was created yesterday, and dinosaur fossils are actually neat reoccurring rock formations. Most organized religions were created at a time when people literally knew next to nothing about everything. Every major move to improve our understanding away from that has been countered by religions that would seek to keep people in some dark ages state of existence to win favor with an unknown you cant prove outside of personal feelings, and beyond that to simply keep power and the order that creates it.
  13. Its cool that warnings are giving. Reactions can be very fast, in fact simply holding a lighter up to an empty bottle of everclear can create half foot flame easy at jet intensity(sounds really cool), then again that's probably why they put warnings on the bottle. Most compounds used for explosives or anything like that can melt you, and not in a funny sense. Its all neat until you have to get your burn bandages changed:-(
  14. I have no idea, being black holes do not emit light, I do not think you would be able to see anything. I think the only thing you may be able to see is looking outward, but if you pass the event horizon, would you be able to see anything outside of it. From what I know, everything in a black hole ends up in the singularity correct? Yet black holes are able to be given thermodynamic properties via hawking radiation I think, so would that mean that something, even if its just friction is occurring in a black hole? Yet I do not think you could ever test anything, or test any calculations of what physics actually occur past the event horizon because as far as I know very limited information can escape one. If thermodynamics in someway holds for black holes, then to me that means something is indeed occurring in them, or that they are not frozen balls of incredible gravity forming some end of the universe. Saying that I still cannot fathom a human being actually experiencing anything past becoming one with the singularity:eek: So I would have to think, or imagine that nothing would be witnessed.
  15. The only explanation to date I have encountered is that its energetically favorable, but I am not sure.
  16. It was at least to me racist. Every bit of the statement that I have read from this website was loaded with little more then racially centered stuff. There is not dialect for a skin color, I mean if there were I think I would automatically be able to speak Polish or what not, then again you could have a black polish person whom makes racially charged jokes about Germans, but that all reduces race down to the fact it makes little sense outside of cultural stuff. I always like to point out that on a genetic level race becomes something radically different then is held by many on a mainstream level, and furthermore its a bit silly and nothing more then a detriment to even establishing a lasting colony on mars.
  17. *In response to greenprogrammin The point I was trying to make is unless you favor destruction of human rights on an atrocious level the use of armed conflict as a means to change some group of peoples perception of things I seriously doubt to work or last. Plus there is no way I think to tell how much of that conflict is truly just the natives wanting to kick you out of there homeland because they don't want to learn the kings English, and why should they have to in all reality, I mean if they don't are they "terrorists"? Past terrorist events I think allowed for enough fear and hatred to support such a move, like the preemptive war in Iraq, which was something that even as a solider I thought was wrong morally and doomed to failure because the west in general is not a bunch of monsters that are prepaird to do anything to win the objective. From what I know "terrorists" in terms of Muslims really does not mean Muslim. Sure some terrorists are Muslim, but using it like that is pretty much like saying all white people are white supremacists because some are, its faulty logic overall because it does not grasp the reality at hand. Not every Muslim nation is some barbaric place that sticks to some Interpretation of a religious text to a level of life and death. There is such a History to all of this also that I think lacks understanding. I mean didn't the west carve out the national boundaries to a lot of the Mideast, to our involvement with Iran over the years. I am not trying to be pro any side in this debate overall though, as my big fear is that such a situation could deteriorate in the course of a few years to the point in which it truly is horrible relations between say Muslims the world over and everybody else. This picture of international relations currently does not exist, but its very possible.
  18. Is your use of deexcitate somewhat similar to dephasing? As from what I know no quantum system is ever something just to itself ultimately, as in one particle like an electron is constantly bombarded from the environment via entanglement for example. I would also guess this is why so much information can be produced about a particles behavior, but I could be very wrong. What I like to wonder is about phonon behavior. If sound in a general sense is phonons, why is it regular, like metal on metal making a certain sound as opposed to rubber on metal, or is that one of those cat in a box questions? *This may seem an odd question but you seem to know a lot more about this then I. Is it because quantum mechanics relies on the Planck constant that squares have to be used? I am unsure if equations in quantum mechanics deal with all real numbers, but again I am just wondering if the square is a product of somehow needing to return a positive value to satisfy the Planck constant?
  19. Also its not statistical, its probability, which is something apart from just statistics. This is in reference to the Schrodinger equation thing I said.
  20. One of the big advances in QM was the Schrodinger equation, which of course has statistics as part of it. As for the squares aspect, I think that sort of boils down to the interpretation level somewhat. I like to go along with quantum decoherence, but of course today or a hundred years from now someone might come along and revolutionize everything. Quantum deocherence also tends to deal with thermodynamics, which is another reason I like that framework over others. Here is a link you might find of some interest, and for your sake I study this stuff as hobby only. http://books.google.com/books?id=MqDUIvOCIgoC&dq=quantum+thermodynamics&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=hsRES9W_D4fmMbWmvfEB&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false There is a few books to skim through on the link.
  21. I think bells inequalities meant that quantum mechanics was not just statistical mechanics by another name.
  22. Is the value of gold mostly "artificial" in a sense? I mean what makes gold so valuable?
  23. I am not sure if its what you are asking for but most metal/nonmetal bonds I know of are simply ionic with the metal being the electron donor. I also think this then tends to deal with electronegativity of the elements involved.
  24. Though I am unsure if it applies to pre bang conditions such a question is why I am so interested in wondering if conservation of energy can be violated. I think if energy conservation could be violated it would allow for a whole slew of weirdness, but on that note I am also unsure if energy conservation laws means that something prior to big bang had to exist. IN short from what I know it’s sort of like the theory of evolution. Biology indeed studies possible environments or what not that could spawn life from inanimate matter, but its not absolutely required for the theory to work scientifically in terms of understanding evolution. With that said from what I know current physical models of the universe, and what supports them like tests and observations currently cannot scientifically explain pre big bang.
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