"Causality" or "determinism"?
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From: Remus Shepherd on 8 Mar 2010 09:47 In rec.arts.sf.science Erik Max Francis <max(a)alcyone.com> wrote: > Remus Shepherd wrote: > > Think of a dollar and an anti-dollar colliding and bursting into flame. > > You might think you have $0.00, but the energy of their conflagration is > > worth something -- possibly more than the $2 you started with. > No, not really. Particle-antiparticle annihilation may result in other > particles than photons if you're dealing with collisions of complicated > particles like hadrons, but the total energy (mass energy plus kinetic > energy) of the resulting particles is equal to the total energy (again, > mass plus kinetic) of the particles the annihilated. Energy is still > conserved locally. I was trying to make a very simple analogy, something that Tue might understand. I think I failed. :) But yes, I know that my example is ludicrously oversimplified. .... ... Remus Shepherd <remus(a)panix.com> Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/remus_shepherd/
From: Darwin123 on 8 Mar 2010 15:26 On Mar 5, 3:20 pm, Luke Campbell <lwc...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Mar 4, 5:37 pm, Tue Sorensen <sorenson...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > 2. > > Isn't it obvious to anybody that mammals are more complex than, say, > > amphibians? > > No. Not obvious at all. > > This is an example of species chauvinism with no biological support. > In fact, the biochemistry of amphibians tends to be more complex than > that of mammals, if for no other reason than they need proteins which > work over a wide temperature range, whereas we mammals can hyper- > specialize to a very narrow temperature range at which to carry on our > bio-chemical processes necessary to life. There is also the number of genes. Amphibians usually have a larger number of genes than mammals. However, the difference may be related to metamorphosis. A frog has to carry a complete set of genes for its separate stages of growth, larval as well as adult.
From: Darwin123 on 8 Mar 2010 15:51 On Mar 5, 11:04 pm, Tue Sorensen <sorenson...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On 6 Mar., 04:26, Peter Knutsen <pe...(a)sagatafl.invalid> wrote: > > > > > On 05/03/2010 21:20, Luke Campbell wrote: > > > > On Mar 4, 5:37 pm, Tue Sorensen<sorenson...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > >> 2. > > >> Isn't it obvious to anybody that mammals are more complex than, say, > > >> amphibians? > > > > No. Not obvious at all. > > > > This is an example of species chauvinism with no biological support. > > > In fact, the biochemistry of amphibians tends to be more complex than > > > that of mammals, if for no other reason than they need proteins which > > > work over a wide temperature range, whereas we mammals can hyper- > > > specialize to a very narrow temperature range at which to carry on our > > > bio-chemical processes necessary to life. > > > I wondered too, about that one. I believe I know that mammalian lungs > > are more sophisticated, and also mammalian brains, but beyond that, I > > don't know of any great difference, although of course I should have > > thought of the protein thing. > > > Are there any examples, other than lung structure and brains, where > > mammals are more complex than amphibians? Do you have some examples, Tue? > > Warmbloodedness (which the lungs evolved to accommodate), leading to > more efficient cellular processes. Agility of limbs. Speed of > movement. Strength of bones. I don't think any of these things require more complexity. Complexity deals with more features, not improvement in function. Agility and speed phave a lot to do with lever ratios in the limbs, for example. If the ratio between bone length and joint diameter is increased, the speed of the limb is increased at the expense of the strength. There are two types of muscle cells, fast twitch and slow twitch. Faster muscles require more fast twitch cells, stronger muscles require slow twitch cells. So the ratio in numbers between the two sets of cells determines the difference between an agile muscle and a strong muscle. Since the animal has the genetic blueprint for both types of cells, there is no difference in complexity between an agile animal and a muscular animal. >Complexity of behavior. Adaptive range. Both complexity of behavior and the associated increase in range may require more genes. However, individual amphibians have a greater adaptive range than individual mammals. Consider the life cycle of an individual frog. A tadpole has a different form than an adult frog. The tadpole has to have a complete set of behaviors to live in the water, while the adult frog has to have the complete set of behaviors to live on land. The individual frog has to carry the genes necessary to survive over the entire adaptive range. It's behavior at any one stage of life may be simpler than the associated mammal, but the complete set of behaviors over its entire life may be larger. The number of separate behaviors over the entire life of a frog may be greater than the number of separate behaviors in the life of a mole. > Quality of the senses in all but a few exceptional cases. Intestines > adapted to more complex food stuffs. A platypus (a mammal) has no stomach, and a very simple intestine. It has a very simple diet of small crustaceans. Some frogs frogs eat insects, bird eggs, birds, other frogs. Their tadpoles eat insect larva, other tadpoles, and fish eggs. >Increased vulnerability to > parasites and therefore an improved immune defense. Think of the number of different types of parasites a frog has to face its entire life. It has to worry about both aquatic and surface parasites. > > Of course all terminology depends on the context, but mammals are more > efficiently adapted to the environmental conditions that predominate > on this planet's surface in general, and this must be the relevant > yardstick to use. Individual species of mammals are no more diverse than individual species of amphibians. A panda does not live in a complex environment. It eats only one type of food, bamboo. The bamboo keeps predators away from it. Take a panda away from its bamboo, it dies. However, a toad can live in a number of places. In fact, the individual toad has to live in several different places just because of metamorphosis. >The more complex behavior we can exert in this > environment, the greater also the possibility that we will one day > evolve or technologically invent the capacity to transcend this > planetary environment and invade the exo-planetary environment to some > degree, using ever more complex technology. This is true. A frog will never jump to the moon, while a human being has lived there. Amphibians have little chance of developing any technology. The single exception is the fish-man in "Creature of the Black Lagoon." |:-) However, human beings are the only mammals that has developed technology. One doesn't need extra genes to develop technology. One needs a simple but flexible strategy to qcquire knowledge. A Mandelbrot set is generated by only a few simple rules. However, the pattern itself is quite complex. Similarly, a human has just a few genes compared to a frog. However, humans apparently have the right genes.
From: BURT on 8 Mar 2010 16:01 There is absolute determined order since the absolute beginning of time. Everything participates in the aether order together. Mitch Raemsch
From: BURT on 8 Mar 2010 16:07
On Mar 8, 1:01 pm, BURT <macromi...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > There is absolute determined order since the absolute beginning of > time. Everything participates in the aether order together. > > Mitch Raemsch Energy forms participates in aether order together. Quantum meechanics vibration is a push to the infinitely small energy form. Fields get pushed around with them. Mitch Raemsch |