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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (914109)	1/13/2016 8:22:43 AM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573908

A white rabbit suddenly materializing in front of me" is something that probably couldn't happen under our understanding of the universe. That's different then "life originating". Out understanding of physics, biology, and chemistry does not suggest life can't form out of non-life. Really? What exactly about our understanding of physics, biology, chemistry tells us life can form out of non-life. that establishes spontaneous generation? I guess Pasteur was wrong: "Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple experiment." It gives us no reason to think that such a thing is impossible, or even (given enough time, and a big enough area with the right conditions) extremely unlikely. It obviously is rate, there is no sign of it happening every day, or even at all in human history. But that just means "enough time" is at least many millions of years. I consider that a statement of blind faith. We probably have a greater degree of understanding of rabbits, then we do about the origin of life. I'd say much greater, even enormously greater. If the appearance could extend beyond the properties of the rabbit itself, say someone used some sort of teleportation device to make it appear. Well yes we would have to have a greater degree of understanding to say such a device is impossible. Some sort of wormhole travel might be possible, so even going just with our general current understanding of physics it may be possible, and that's not even including ways in which our understanding of physics may be woefully incomplete or even flat our wrong in some ways. See the white rabbit thing was a great analogy. All we have to do is suppose the existence of things we don't understand (yet), but can imagine and write into sci-fi fiction like teleportation devices and wormholes. Human DNA is like a computer program DNA could be considered software or software like. In some ways its more of a blue print then a program (although a very commplex blue print); but, at least in the context of the RNA and proteins that interact with the DNA, it has the program for selecting which genes or going to be expressed, and a program for making copies of itself. Whether its more complex or more advanced then anything humans have created is a complex question. In terms of data represented by a human diploid genome, I understand that it can fit on a DVD with room to spare, maybe even on a CD. OTOH the amount of data in bytes is only one measure of complexity, and the human brain that develops from the information encoded in that DNA could reasonably be said to be more advanced then any computer in a number of ways. Certainly much more parallel (if running at a much lower "clock rate"). So I don't object to or distincly disagee with "far more advanced than any software we've ever created". So life IS software based. Be aware the protein recipe coding is just the coding we've learned how to decode. Doubtless there are other codes that control other aspects .... life is more than just chemical reactions in an uncontrolled manner. The overall cell and organism systems acts as a whole and thus have to be controlled. biological things are better than electronic devices Again what does that even mean? Better can mean a lot of different things. For me personally my laptop is better then some horrible plague. Man made vehicles are faster then any animals. A nuclear power plant is better at powering a city then any life form. Of course I could similarly create a list of ways various biological things are better then many, or even any technological item. "Better" without qualification or context is just too vague to mean much. Yes, I certainly wasn't using better in a moral sense. Your laptop is morally superior to a bacteria that kills people. Just saying that living things are pretty damned impressive, not simple chemistry. and I'm talking about God, doesn't make it really unthinkable I certainly wouldn't consider God unthinkable. Good. I think a lot of "scientific" hyptheses are driven by a desire to make God unthinkable. And if needed, I can give you quotes of a number of philosophers saying so explicitly. These two new genes appeared almost immediately, perhaps literally immediately, with the beginning of nylon manufacture 1 - How would anyone know that? An unexpressed gene, an expressed but useless gene (because such products did not exist), even an existing life form with that ability (whether or not it was useful) could have already existed. 2 - Bacteria have very short generations and rapid evolution. If it was indeed new, I don't see why that would be shocking. OK, I was remarking on two necessary genes found to digest nylon waste, a substance that didn't exist on earth till humans developed it. You have a point ... perhaps the genes already existed and were somehow preserved with no purpose for millions of years, waiting on humans to develop nylon. That would be as amazing as them appearing immediately when needed. imo anyway.