gib65

But my point is' date=' time did have a beginning, how you argue that fact is up to you.[/quote']

 

I don't quite get your reasoning. Are you saying that time has a beginning simply because you hold it to be axiomatically true, and that's that? You mentioned some contradictions, like heat approaching infinity, but I fail to the reasoning behind this.

I was just thinking: some theoreticions believe that the universe will eventually collapse under its own gravitational pull and result in a Big Crunch? Some of these theoreticions would go even further and postulate that after this Big Crunch, the universe will once again be in the same state it was in before the Big Bang, and so another Big Bang will occur. If this were true, then the universe is simply a perpetual series of Big Bangs and Big Crunches, and it not only makes sense to project this series into the future but into the past as well, which means that the most recent Big Bang was not the absolute beginning of the universe but only the beginning of the current cycle. In effect, it would mean that there isn't necessarily a beginning since this series could be retro-projected eternally. Is there any reasoning to this idea?

I've heard of it, but I've never really been sure what it is. As far as I know, it is the fact that when two particles interact they are forever effected by each other no matter how separated by space they become. So, if you did something to one particle, the other particle would be effected even it was half way across the galaxy. Am I on the right track?

That's depressing

Does any one have an experiment to show what goes on in the mind of a women...

No.

Judge for yourself: Step 1 on the way to being science: Does he have testable hypotheses? Is the idea falsifiable?

Yes, these are certainly criteria for being real science, but what I'm wondering is overall, how strongly does the scientific community of the world consider this to be fact as opposed to speculation. You know what I mean? Take string theory, for example. Today, string theory is still not completely accept by 99% of scientists and it has yet to be seen if it will one day be considered "the truth", but it's way more scientifically grounded than, say, Jung's theory of the collective unconscious. Where does quantum consciousness stand in this regard?

Has anyone heard of quantum consciousness? Here's a website that describes it:

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/

Any thoughts/comments? How close is this to being "real science"?

Have there ever been any studies done to show that one's freedom to express him/herself artistically is negatively correlated with the amount of violence he/she is prone to engage in? I started wondering this when I was thinking about these gothic/heavy-metal rock bands like Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, Limp Biscuit, etc. and how I've never heard of them going to jail for serious crimes of any sort. Do you think that artistic expression serves as an alternate channel through which to "exercise our demons"? If so, do you think this is why countries with the most violence are usually also the ones with the most censorship on the press and individual expression?

According to evolutionary theory' date=' individuals in a society are weeded out if they possess an atribute that makes them less likely to survive and reproduce. When we (humans) use medicine, I believe we are weakening the human race by stopping evolution from taking place. If we didnt use medicine then people with inhibiting conditions would gradually die out. if we didnt make glasses then we wouldnt have very many people with really bad eyes because if you cant see you cant get by in our daily world. is the human race permenantly halting its own progress? are we forcing ourselves to remain imperfect forever? will other races eventually overcome us since we are the only ones who use medicine?

 

any thoughts/opinions/insights welcome.[/quote']

 

Sounds like something Hitler would say.

 

Say you were on a football team. Say one of your players injures a foot. What are you going to do? Dump him from the team or invest some resources to rehabilitate him so he can continue to play? Which one benefits the team most in the long run?

Finally this is a must read' date=' after all , it's what started the Scientific Revolution(Evolution). I still prefer a hardcopy, but someone was nice enough to make it into a digicopy.

 

The Origin Of Species - by C. Darwin

Actually, the scientific revolution started roughly around 1550.

Yeah, I think that's the point he's getting at. When was it? About 65 thousand years ago? Suddenly, homosapiens started becoming imaginative and artistic! Sure, they had their reasons: artistic inspiration, wonder, ideas, theories about the cosmos, you name it... but I think what paleolithic was asking was why did evolution decide it was necessary to endow homosapiens with this gift?

I just did the math, and 64 oz. of water makes more sense now. That means each glass = 8 oz. I just checked one of my bottled waters and it said 16 oz. I always considered "one glass" to be roughly equivalent to one of these bottles, so I found it hard to imagine having 8 of those a day, but 4 sounds more reasonable.

They say that the optimal number of glasses of water one should drink per day is 8. I'm skeptical though. If we really needed that many, wouldn't we crave it? Lucky if I crave more than 3 glasses per day.

I was wondering something about how evolution works. Most leaps in evolution happen via a genetic mutation, right? But what good is an advantageous phenotype when it makes your physical appearance deviate from the norm. Wouldn't that make you "ugly"? Aren't we attracted to what looks like "normal" physical features? So if one of the side effects of genetic mutation is to end up looking like a gimp (however advantageous it may be), how would you go about finding mates to reproduce, or even being socially accepted period?

Furthermore, humans will not die because of environmental damage. We are altering our environment to benefit[/u'] us, making us more fit and likely to survive.

You make good points, Hyebeh, except for this one. I think you're confusing the intent with the results. It was our intent to better our lving conditions at the start of the industrial revolution, but the idea that we are damaging our environment in the process is a more recent finding, one that seems to fly in the face of the original intent. We may be hurting ourselves more than benefiting ourselves. We know today how much more we depend on our environment and how delicate it is to the slightest changes than we ever knew before. Nevertheless, you may be right in that our intention to change our environment in order to improve our lives may still be a viable option. This has yet to be seen though. Can we undo the damage, or at least stall its growth long enough, so that our original intention can be met?

I just read the article. It seems to me that the biggest misconception the author has about evolution is that natural selection is the only mechanism driving evolution. These appearant leaps in phenotypes distinguishing one species from another can be easily explained by genetic mutation. Take, for example, a fin becoming a web over one generation, and then an eon later, becoming a paw. Although this would seem like a leap in evolution (which it is), the leap is not so big on a genetic level. Now I'm not sure what the genetic code for fins, webs, and paws are, but the idea would be that when the fin evolved into a web, the gene for the fin went through a mutation that might have changed only a few molecules in the DNA, but because the DNA acts as a code for the phenotype, even the slightest change can cause huge alterations in the phenotype.

PS - The article did mention genetic mutation in a few places, but the context was all wrong. It talked about breeding pigeons as a way of genetically mutating the species, which is completely wrong. That's just artificial selection. If you want to genetically mutate the species, you have to take pigeon sperm and egg into a laboratory, get into their chromosomes (however that's done), genetically engineer it, and then manually fertilize the eggs with the new genes, which is not the standard way of doing it.

You should ask her to post it here, in this thread.

I'll take your words for it, since I have no idea what those things are.

That does not settle it. The original question was...."does environmental damage destroy life or change it? What do you think?"

 

Environmental damage IS destroying life' date=' and if unchecked, humans will die. That is destroying life. There will not be enough time for mutations to occur for humans. Yes, bacteria can live in swamps, but your a human.

 

Bettina[/quote']

 

I know. I was being sarcastic. You bring up a good point. Even if life does carry on, human beings will die, in their present form at least. I don't know if more evolved human beings need time, though. The idea, as far as I understand it, is that when an environment changes or a natural catastrophy happens, those who are fit to survive it are already among the population. That's the beauty of bio-diversity.

The left brain and right brain are responsible for different mental functions. The left brain is primarily responsible for logical/analytical thinking and the right brain for artistic/creative think. This is overly generalized, but the point is if you remove the right brain, the individual will continue to function but will not be able to think creatively. If you remove the left brain, the individual will not be able to think logically. There are other functions that would be thrown out too. The left brain is responsible for speach and language comprehension, so removing the left brain would render the individual speachless and incapable of understanding speach. On the other hand, the right brain can identify objects visually and solve visual problems, so the individual would still be able to carry out these tasks. I'm not sure how much the left brain would be able to learn to take on these tasks should the right brain be remove, or the right brain learn to take on language tasks should the left brain be removed. AlexT, when you said the left/right brain could take over the tasks of the other, did you mean it could actually do this?

Ah! Then that settles it!

Hm. What kind of predictions does virtual particles make? How have they been tested?

IS this true? I'm no microbiologist, but is it really true that the "damage" being done onto the environment at the current rate will eventually wipe out ALL bacteria life? Surely there will be some sectors in the world and pockets of mini-ecosystems that will remain to harbour some forms of bacterial life. I guess maybe you're right. In the past, whenever a species couldn't adapt it was usually due to some change in the environment or a natural disaster that had the effect of nature recycling herself rather than putting a stop to life in general. But the effects on the environment we're seeing today are all together on a different level. We're not just changing the environment such that a certain species can't survive in it, we're changing it such that the essential criteria for life proper are being eradicated. Still, I can't help but to have faith in life's astonishing ingenuity when it comes to adaptation. In the words of Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park "Life finds a way."

Virtual particles are particles that exist for such a short period of time that they can't be observed. If this is true, then wouldn't this defy one of the criteria of science, namely empiricism?

Thinking about how we humans have been damaging the global ecosystem with our industrial prowess for the last few hundred years, we've definitely seen the devastating effects it can have on life forms which depend on the environment staying in its pre-industrial-revolution state. What I'm wondering, however, is how many people are of the opinion that this damage spells the doom for life altogether in the ecosystem in question such that once the damage is done, no life will be found there for an indefinite time? Because the theory of evolution would suggest an alternative scenario where life will simply adapt to suite its new environment. So, it is certainly the case that the current configuration of life in a particular environment will not survive an excess amount of damage, other configurations which thrive on the environment in such a "damaged" state will eventually sprout out. For example, if CO2 emissions continue to saturate the air at the rate it is currently at, oxygen breathing animals like ourselves will eventually die from suffocation, but with 6 billion people on Earth, there might be a small handfull who are genetically endowed with mechanisms in their respiratory system that can either tolerate CO2 or even make use of it somehow. Again, the general issue is: does environmental damage destroy life or change it? What do you think?