dichotomy

Of course, over confidence is only delusion when it doesn’t pay off, perhaps? The dreamers and over confident can and do sacrifice themselves for the greater success of the tribe. My “to some degree” comment probably should be ignored at this point. Let’s look at when delusion does work: improves man’s survival chances. Without naming any deluded cultural practices, I think delusional cultural practices/ideologies are successful, generally for the dominant culture. But even, the dominated culture can benefit.

We don't have to discuss religion at all, lets discuss mass/individual delusion successes in other areas instead. Perhaps people whom think they can climb Mt Everest without dyeing? Doctors/Scientists whom over-confidently self experiment on themselves? Over confident engineering/military feats that ended in disaster/ near disaster? These things can all yield success, although, not necessarily to the individual involved.

With all this gloom and doom about global warming destroying species, what species, that benefit humans, will actually benefit from global warming? Is there an existing thread on this?

I'm not arguing that religion came first, survival obviously came first. I'm arguing that delusion, religious or otherwise, can and does aid survival. Of course, it can aid destruction equally as well. Yes, it can be broken into many other questions. But specifically, yours are very good ones. This is what I'd intuitively think was true. Yep, it is much more difficult to answer. I'm inclined to say that the pressure group splitting creates does make a stronger, longer lasting species, to a point. After that invisible point cooperation between groups, delusional or scientific, makes a stronger, happier, longer lasting species. I'm not arguing that delusion is good/bad, I think it delivers both and depends very much on the environmental variables that you point out. I don't blanketly call religion delusional, there are aspects of it that are, the obvious being the belief in a deity without credible evidence. Religion has much to offer societies as you have pointed out: social policies, effective morals, unity.

What I’m talking about is the value of delusion/ mass delusion to a species overall long term survival chances. I think it plays a larger part than we’d like to admit. Examples - The belief in a god/s is a form of mass delusion. The belief in Santa Claus is the mass delusion of children. In times of war, the belief that westerners/easterners/communists/capitalists are all evil, is a mass delusion. The belief in the effectiveness of medical blood letting was a mass delusion. The belief that ‘savages’ (native inhabitants) are just that, and its okay to take their land. So this theory might find that Delusion/worldview is successful for the survival of cells?

I’ve had precognition via dreams at least 4 or 5 times. They generally lasted a few seconds at best (3 to 6sec). They were not helpful, as in enabling me to change the course of history, or save the world . I haven’t experienced any for over 15 years at least. I now put them down to extremely low probability coincidence. Sort of like meeting someone from your old home town in an overseas city. They where, never the less, unsettling at the time. As I’m sure a solar eclipse would have been to primitive folk.

What about the value of propaganda? Is it valuable to delude a nation into war in order to secure resources for the greater good of that nation? So Christian, Islam, Hindu and Buddhist religions delude their leaders and their followers, yet unwittingly built stronger foundations for their children? Non-immediate reward. So, does this make delusion, on occasion, a valuable contributor to the survival of sections of humanity? I don't like to ackowledge this, and I am uncomfortable with it, but I think it does.

I’ve been thinking about this on and off for a while, and it would be good to get some other POV’s. Is delusion within a tribe/society/nation and self delusion, to some degree, necessary for a hyper conscious species (like ours) dominant/successful survival? I’m generally thinking about anthropocentric religious belief, and, seemingly dangerous levels of confidence that do pay off (that is, for example, impove a tribes chances of overall survival and dominance).

A cliché, I know, but so did Hitler, The Romans, The Egyptians, The British. But, yes, planning does go along way in the mind, it vastly improves the probability of success in reality.

I’m not disputing that great scientific advances have been made. And I’m not disputing that many of these advances will prove to be disastrous over time. It’s a given that both will occur. I’m disputing the assumption that GM is indisputably better than the naturally successful life forms that already exist. Only time will reveal this. If anything is an issue to me it’s maintaining diversity of life, if GM reduces the available gene pool it draws from then this isn’t a good thing, as GM relies on diversity to work its magic and future magic. I think maintaining diversity is what is most important. After all, how could we make rabbits glow in the dark if we wiped out all the jelly fish? And, I do know that this odd experiment may lead to greater understanding of how and when genes actually activate.

Well, nature does generally ‘know’ best, does it not? After all we are here as a result, as accidental as it is. Science is still an infant that has much to learn from nature. Don't kid yourself. So, being careful as practical is a good thing: before wide scale implementation of GM bcomes the norm.

In-breeding and closely related species, like lions and tigers interbreeding, both these breeding scenarios produce some infertile offspring. What do both have in common that makes infertile offspring more likely? Or what are the things that are likely to be in-common for sterile offspring to be the result? (I’ve transferred this question here from another thread. Was a wee bit awff topic )

In-breeding and closely related species, like lions and tigers interbreeding, both these breeding scenarios produce some infertile offspring. What do both have in common that makes infertile offspring more likely?

Absorption spectroscopy sounds good to me. I thought there had to be something easier than shooting a space probe into intersteller clouds to retrieve samples. Thanks Swanny! Q 33. Why do so many continents and large land masses have a pointy side at the southern side, and a bulky north side? E.g. Nth America, Sth America, Africa, India, Australia, Tasmania, Greenland. Even if you look at the southern parts of Eurasia they seem to be pointing south. There seem to be a lot of triangles out there. Gee, I would have thought this would be a relatively straight forward question??!

Well, the environment and our genetic make-up dictate the majority of our actions. Possibly all of them. We are built to desire the best kinds of beauty, power, survival, knowledge, etc that we can get. We don't really have a choice here. Which might make people think that they are being controlled by a deity, when really they are being controlled by natural survival urges and their environment. We are important to ourselves and each other. That's the powerful healthy survival instinct and there is nothing wrong with that, because it's the way we can attempt to thrive and succeed. Like the Monty Python crew would say, "We come from nothing, we go back to nothing, what have we lost? NOTHING!"

Of course there exists an intelligent designer, he's designed the perfect puzzle for us to solve: his existence....got ya! Why is there a need for a deity? Maybe because we have only had a contemporary neo-cortex for a relatively short time. The neo-cortex’s unquenchable thirst for answers has led it to the easy short cut of the deity solution, in order of course, to answers all the impossible and seemingly impossible questions with the ever handy - (Insert your preferred deity or supernatural being here) did it. The neo-cortex has been wrong on countless occasions when assuming mystical reasons for unknown physical phenomena. The neo-cortex needs to learn that not knowing some things is okay, if only to overcome its unproven and hazardous assumptions. Fire is not a spirit The earth is not flat Witches can’t cast evil spells A rabbit’s foot won’t give you good luck Horoscopes can't tell your future I voted no. I think if anything is viable it is that the universe was created unconsciously: no conscious intelligence was involved, just unconscious energy and matter bumping around in the dark and eventually coming up with different possibilities. So, possibly energy and matter are unconscious in the same way as we are when we are dead energy and matter. And this implies that there is some basic form of “know how” going on. Unconscious know how, like our heart automatically beating when we are in deep sleep.

1. Lucaspa (Even though I don’t like his I.D. witch hunt OC Disorder, he’s full of sound knowledge which shuttles him to No#1, is that scientific enough?) 2. Mr Skeptic 3. Skepticlance 4. Insane Alien 5. CDarwin 6. iNow, and his farting pet purple unicorn.

Q 32. Ok, amino acids have been found in interstellar clouds and in meteorites. I can understand finding amino acids in meteorites. But how, basically, do they gather that information from interstellar clouds? Are these 'clouds' near by enough to sample? Extraterrestrial Enigma: Missing Amino Acids In Meteorites http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/11/031104064412.htm

Firstly, I am agnostic. So no throwing spears at me. Now, would it not be dead dull if everything worked perfectly? What would we do with ourselves then? Would we just sit around being smug, omnipotent and immortal? I think we should be thankful that there is likely to be no God, no intelligent design, no Thor, this gives us a shit load of challenges to amuse ourselves with while we are still conscious. Otherwise we might as well all be a collection of rocks. I’m not saying that imperfection is actually perfect in itself; I’m saying that we are possibly more fortunate than we might imagine, that there are stuff ups and perceived stuff ups.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13375-prozac-does-not-work-in-most-depressed-patients.html “The antidepressant Prozac and related drugs are no better than placebo in treating all but the most severely depressed patients, according to a damaging assessment of the latest generation of antidepressants.” “drug companies have tended to publish studies showing positive results of the SSRIs in mildly depressed patients.” "Mildly depressed" might mean an average man who thinks that they should be feeling ecstatic, when they are really feeling quite average and normal. Unrealistic expectations of oneself perhaps?

Apparently buckyballs form naturally in minute quantities under extreme conditions such as lightning strikes. They are potentially as bad as asbestos dust is to our lungs. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080527091910.htm So, my question is are the lightening making rooms that many science museums have, could they be potentially hazardous due to the buckyballs that are created within them? Or does lightening need specific material present for the carbon-60 to be formed? Or, are we at greater risk just by going to something like a sandy beach where silica is supposedly an issue?

Why’s that? Because people generally think that the more expensive product of two similar products is better? More effective? Even if they are really the same? Or, is it easy to predict because people are easily tricked?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080304173339.htm "You Get What You Pay For? Costly Placebo Works Better Than Cheap One In the full-price group, 85 percent of subjects experienced a reduction in pain after taking the placebo. In the low-price group, 61 percent said the pain was less." I found this both amusing and enlightening. They should use this same set-up and include a real painkiller medication.

Ok, so a true loss of complexity is really defined by a loss of genes and not by inactive, or, switched off genes? Something like a whale developing fins where legs used to be would not be considered a true loss of complexity?

What I realise is that Lucaspa was not being literal; he was being convenient, concise, delivering info in an easily digestible way which I have no issue with. I realise Lucaspa doesn’t think N.S. is actually smart, intelligent, etc. He is just using “smart” in the same way I used “life doesn't think in terms of”, that is, for quick delivery of information. Nothing wrong with that in the context of things IMO. All I think is that Lucaspa might be assuming, all too readily, that members here are suggesting that ‘acts of god’ are involved in evolution, that is, when they use terms like - think and smart. Again the presumption of using ‘convenient language’ over ‘an act of God’, should be the Ockham’s razor approach that might be better employed here. But each to their own. 3 to 4 billion years...Well, maybe it's now mans turn to make more intelligent design decisions, the next faze of evolution perhaps. Only time will tell what is 'best' for life, man controlled evolution, or, blind unthinking natures evolution.