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Powerwise
Troll
12 Posts |
Posted - 12/28/2010 : 18:48:39 [Permalink]
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Uh, are you guys really -- REALLY -- falling for JerryB?
He might as well be standing on a troll billboard in downtown Los Angeles. |
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podcat
Skeptic Friend
435 Posts |
Posted - 12/28/2010 : 19:49:07 [Permalink]
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| I personally don't care whether or not he is a troll. It's not about him. This is for those who have an open mind. If you have a position, you must use evidence to prove it. You can't get away without providing evidence here. |
“In a modern...society, everybody has the absolute right to believe whatever they damn well please, but they don't have the same right to be taken seriously”.
-Barry Williams, co-founder, Australian Skeptics |
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On fire for Christ
SFN Regular
Norway
1273 Posts |
Posted - 12/29/2010 : 02:32:15 [Permalink]
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| I don't think he's a troll, most trolls wouldn't go to such efforts to back up their claims. |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
 Posted - 12/29/2010 : 03:23:05 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by On fire for Christ
I don't think he's a troll, most trolls wouldn't go to such efforts to back up their claims.
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I'd rather say "trolls wouldn't go to such efforts trying to back up their claims". He's not very successful, or I would be changing my mind.
Just look at the list Dave posted on previous page, those are but a few unevidenced assertions Jerry has made. He has yet to move ID beyond argument from incredulity and ignorance.
Only the other day did he grudgingly and indirectly acknowledge that bacteria of different species can exchange parts of their genome with each other. That's a ~50 year lag between scientific discovery and Jerry's enlightment. Should we be waiting until 2056 until he can accept that the flagella could have evolved? |
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 12/29/2010 : 03:36:34 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Powerwise
Uh, are you guys really -- REALLY -- falling for JerryB?
He might as well be standing on a troll billboard in downtown Los Angeles.
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Jerry has been here before, a couple of years ago, so we pretty much know his game. That doesn't change much though. We have readers who read the forum who may not know him. His baseless assertions shouldn't go unchallenged, or someone might actually start believing the nonsense he's tooting.
Also, debating him gives me an opportunity to develop my debating skills. I believe one will never learn so much that you can't learn more. There's always room for improving my critical thinking skills. It's not the goal that's important, it's the journey. |
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 12/29/2010 : 04:58:44 [Permalink]
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Eh, troll, not a troll -- what difference does it make? He gets his clock cleaned either way. You cannot spread bullshit in here and expect not to get called on it, however noble, or otherwise, your motives.
And if he is trolling, he's not very good at it. He could use some lessons from Dennis Makuse, if I've spelled that right.
We've had some real doozies here in the past. How many remember JEROME DA GNOME? He was fun as was Big Brain and HYBRID. Those guys, among numerous others, managed to turn troll-bashing into a community sport.
Oddly enough, perhaps, but I never consider verlch a troll. Others disagree, some vehemently.
Off topic: I'm running some sliced bananas through the dehydrator in order to make banana chips. Never tried that before, so, in a few more more hours, we'll see how they turn out. They should make a healthy snack to take hunting and fishing, and a hell of a lot cheaper (and easier on the teeth) than the usual home made jerky. Also found a drying recipe for tofu that looks good. I didn't know you could do that with tofu.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 12/29/2010 : 10:07:41 [Permalink]
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To me a troll is someone who posts nonsense they know to be wrong for the express purpose of getting a rise out of others. JerryB seems to post nonsense he thinks is valid. That makes him delusional, but not a troll.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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Powerwise
Troll
12 Posts |
Posted - 12/29/2010 : 16:38:16 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by H. Humbert
JerryB seems to post nonsense he thinks is valid.
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And with that quote, we can safely assume you are trolling as well. |
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Hawks
SFN Regular
Canada
1383 Posts |
Posted - 12/29/2010 : 17:16:10 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Powerwise
Originally posted by H. Humbert
JerryB seems to post nonsense he thinks is valid.
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And with that quote, we can safely assume you are trolling as well.
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With that quote, we can safely assume that YOU are a troll. |
METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
It's a small, off-duty czechoslovakian traffic warden! |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 12/29/2010 : 17:25:24 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Powerwise
And with that quote, we can safely assume you are trolling as well.
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Yeah, you got me. I've been biding my time, sneakily accruing over 4,000 posts on this site, just so I can now troll the membership here without them suspecting my motives. How insightful of you to catch me on only your second post!
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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JerryB
Skeptic Friend
279 Posts |
Posted - 12/31/2010 : 12:52:22 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
While it is true that thermodynamic entropy is measured heat exchange, there are many other entropies that SLOT governs.If they're not dealing with thermodynamics (which genetics does not), then it's not the Second Law of Thermodynamics which governs the interactions. It may be some other law which mimics or is otherwise analogous to SLOT, but it won't be SLOT.
Furthermore, calling something "entropy" doesn't necessarily mean that all the laws of thermodynamics will apply. Look at the creationists who think that there's a "Law of Conservation of Information" just because Shannon used the word "entropy" to describe some aspects of his information theory. |
Just what law or laws do you think mimic SLOT? In fact there is no other law from which entropy can be calculated because the definition of entropy is the measurement of the effect of SLOT on any given system.
Your problem here is that you do not understand the entirety of the law. You do not understand that there exists Classical Thermodynamics that deals only in heat exchanges (and pressure, but that's not germain to this particular discussion), and statistical mechanics made famous by Boltzmann and others.
According to your argument, Boltzmann, one of the greatest thermodynamicists off all time was NOT one:
"The lasting fame of the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906) rests on the statistical interpretation which he gave to classical thermodynamics."
http://biography.yourdictionary.com/ludwig-boltzmann
And Claude Shannon was also not a thermodynamicist? LOL:
"The bottom line is that thermodynamic entropy is best understood not as a property or macroscopic state of matter (like mass, temperature, or pressure), but as a lack of knowledge of the detailed configuration of matter. In particular, thermodynamic entropy is a measure of our lack of information about the microstate of a closed system of matter near equilibrium. To make this concrete, I'll compare two similar simple systems, one of particles and one of bits. Although the concept of entropy in classical thermodynamics was elucidated long before information theory was developed, thermodynamic entropy can be viewed as a straight-forward application of information theory to a physical problem."
http://lcni.uoregon.edu/~mark/Stat_mech/thermodynamic_entropy_and_information.html
You simply have a low understanding of the field we are discussing. Here is the way one of my favorite modern day physicist, Tim Thompson puts it: "The 2nd law is no different in statistical mechanics than it is in classical thermodynmics."
http://www.tim-thompson.com/entropy2.html
There. You have it. Your argument on this point is so weak, it doesn't walk at all.
| No, in thermodynamics, entropy is a measurement of energy not available to do work. In Shannon's information theory, it is the measurement of uncertainty in a received message. In ecology, entropy is the measure of biological diversity. |
And so Shannon entropy is not really entropy? LMAO. SLOT is a universal, ever-present law that uses many different formulas to calculate it's effect. You must agree, because you name three above--To which I could add about a dozen more definitions depending on the situation.
| So what's your argument, then? My position is that natural processes are perfectly capable of creating ICS. A tree dies and falls across a deep ravine: it becomes a bridge which is an ICS. Remove the log or either side of the ditch, and the bridge goes away. An ICS doesn't indicate the presence of an intelligence. Nature is a sufficient designer. |
A bridge is a machine with well matched parts? You cannot have an ICS with a single part.
| Really, my point is that your examples were stupid. There are plenty of things which once really were thought to be true by a majority of scientists in the appropriate field which were later proved wrong, but your two examples never were. Next time, you might want to try examples like the ridicule that Wegener received or even a much more-recent consensus-breaker like H. Pylorii and stomach ulcers. |
Fine just pick two of your own examples and we will have settled this. If I told you that 2 + 2 = 4 in 1st grade math, I honestly believe you would argue that point. Are you here just to argue, or to win some points in debate?
| Given the fact that donkeys and horses, dogs and wolves, lions and tigers all can produce living offspring "with their shared genes," I'd say that your alleged "biolgical law" has a boatload of exceptions. |
"My" biological law? I'm afraid that once again, you are showing your education in science. I'm further afraid that a famous biologist named Ernst Walter Mayr came up with that definition many years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_W._Mayr
I was simply paraphrasing him: Species: Any two organisms that can interbreed and produce viable, fertile offspring. Viable in that they can live a healthy life and fertile in that they can produce offspring as well.
If you understood this, you would realize that two examples you gave above fit this perfectly. Donkeys and horses produce mules, all of which are sterile. Lions and tigers produce ligers of which the male has no sperm.
| The historical stuff in there is fine, but the rest is new-age nonsense. You (and Tipler) have failed to understand the QM meaning of "observation," and you (in particular) misrepresent the Double-Slit Experiments in your attempt to prop up the unevidenced suggestion that an observer must be "conscious" or "intelligent." The simple fact is that the wave functions of the photons in the DSEs always collapse, the only thing that's interesting is where they collapse. |
LOL....science you don't like is new-age nonsense?? Yup. And this nonsense being published, peer-reviewed and based on math that has been peer-reviewed, and it stands, means nothing? It does to you because you obviously reject all science that conflicts with your belief system.
The difference between you and I is that if I were shown science that conflicted with my beliefs, I would change my beliefs. You just bring rambling, nonsensical arguments to refute the science.
And you don't understand the slit experiments. The wave ALWAYS collapses when being observed and NEVER collapses when it is NOT being observed.
Please educate yourself on this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc
So I think it is myself and Tipler that understands this and you are the one totally lost.
| Oh, you're not familiar with a lever? If a branch falls onto a boulder (in a teeter-totter arrangement), completely by accident, it forms a simple machine without any designer whatsoever. |
So what? You think then that you can extrapolate that analogy to complex systems? You think that maybe DNA just fell out of the sky like the tree? You think maybe that Bill Gates was just walking through the woods one day, kicked a rock and Windows XP poofed out of it?
| So, you're going to engage in special pleading, then? Everything we see that we know has been designed by an intelligence has been designed by humans, except (in your mind) biology. |
What an interesting statement coming from you. I thought you believed that there is no way to detect design and yet you say that there is a way to know when something has been. Pray tell your methodology on this design detection.
| You're mixing politics and science in this argument. AGW denialists use the political argument that some scientists deny AGW to suggest that there's a serious controversy within the science (which there isn't). The "alarmists" (as you call them) counter with the political argument that a consensus exists. Neither the consensus nor its denial have any effect upon the sound science of climate change. |
I'm not going to argue AGW with you right now. You quite obviously have your hands full on the topic we are now discussing.
| You don't know much about paleontology, do you? |
Perhaps not, but have common sense and totally understand that one cannot detect speciation by looking at some freaking rocks.
ID is a body of thought as is anatomy or medicine or astronomy. There is no theory of astronomy. There are theories within it, of course. Same with ID.
| Why not get into some mathematical genomics? |
I just did.
| No. W is the total number of microstates which are consistent with a given macrostate. |
Same thing.....sheeze.
| No, they didn't. Eyre-Walker and Keightley said nothing about entropy. |
I don't care that they didn't. That's not relevant to their study from their perspective. What they found was increasing harmful mutations in the human genome over a 6 million year time period. The genome would have had to order for homo sapiens to have developed such complexities over Chimp such as speech, science and engineering skills. Guess what, this is evidence that the macroevolution you espouse didn't happen.
Calculating W in that fashion tells you the statistical probability of a certain arrangement of binary possibilities given a uniform distribution (like a coin toss). Genes don't function like that, and the fact that 38% of deletrious mutations (according to Eyre-Walker and Keightley) have been selected out tells us that we're not dealing with a simple uniform distribution.
All that you've calculated here is that the "number of ways" of having a coin land heads 1.6 times out of 41471 trials is 1.71×107, which is meaningless when applied to DNA. |
Nonsense. In fact, what you are stating makes no sense at all. Unless you are saying that one can use statistical mechanics on both systems, then I would agree.
Bwaahahahahahaha! You took a spot measurement and you're claiming it's a trend! HAHAHAHA! Look, you have $87 in your wallet, so that must mean you'll become a millionaire!
You haven't provided any evidence whatsoever that this alleged "entropy" you've calculated has gone up or down in the last six million years. All you've given us is the value of the alleged "entropy" in 1999. |
LOL, that's ridiculous. The study was done comparing the genome of chimp and man over what supposedly is a period of 6 million years. It was not accomplished in anyone generation. Admit it. This study has floored you and destroys your entire belief system as to man poofing from Chimps.
| Yeah, let's just ignore the units (which are actually joules/Kelvin, not joules) since they're inconvenient and turn your argument into mush. Let's also ignore the fact that your math is completely inappropriate to the problem class. Let's also ignore the fact that you've utterly failed to calculate the number of possible microstates that correspond to "being human," which is not the same as the total number of nucleotides per James Crow (since that would mean that any arrangement of nucleotides would create a human, which you know is false). There's so much we would have to ignore in order to agree with your argument here that we should just ignore the whole thing. |
This entire paragraph is meaningless. Just add on joules/kelvin to the formula if you want because that is what it is, I thought I'd already said this.
And don't go dissing the math. I sent you to a prestigious university that told us how to calculate it and used their math EXACTLY. Remember this:
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/PHYS3410/lecture5.html
Maybe you would like to calculate the microstates of a mouse to show us it's mouseness.......Hehe
| The only reason that they're controversial is because of creationists. The fact that Archeopteryx is a transitional fossil is not controversial among biologists, even if where it belongs in the tree of life is. |
And IDists....and skeptics who know it is scientifically impossible to determine speciation by looking at a rock.
| Major changes happened gradually. Minor ones quickly. That's what Gould was saying. |
And he would know this.....how? Was Gould there? And how does Gould explain that we see species emerge in the fossil record relatively suddenly; and stay the same until the become extinct in the record?
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| Edited by - JerryB on 12/31/2010 13:02:30 |
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JerryB
Skeptic Friend
279 Posts |
Posted - 12/31/2010 : 13:45:09 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Hawks
Originally posted by JerryB
Genes aren't statistically independent? LOL...No, they communicate with one another to cause mutation conspiracies. Pssstt... You guys wanna mutate, tonight? Shh......Yeah the Warden is on vacation.
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Here's something for you to ponder, JerryB. If genes were statistically independent then you are immediately claiming that there is no such thing as irreducible complexity. Oh, wait, you ARE claiming that IC exists. What gives?
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Genomes are not irreducibly complex as evidenced that one may mutate and do nothing to the rest of the system. It can still function. However, I could see it argued that SOME of them could be--those that result in the death of the organism due to mutation, but I have never researched this. |
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podcat
Skeptic Friend
435 Posts |
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JerryB
Skeptic Friend
279 Posts |
Posted - 12/31/2010 : 14:13:09 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by filthy
Evolution of the Chainsaw
It's all evolution, you know. When the cutting chain is lost, the bar becomes vestigial but the saw itself is far from useless. Remove the bar and you have a strong two-stroke engine with a centrifugal clutch and handles. From here, the once-saw can be a maple sugar tap; a power plant for a go-cart; an ice auger; a post hole digger and so forth.
See, I can do straw men, too. |
Missing the point. The point is that it can no longer function as a chain saw. The chain saw, which is the system, can no longer function. Period. Sure, I can still use the piston as a paper weight, but that does not a chain saw make.
The fossil record does no such thing, and here's a few of the transitionals:
This is a very tentative list of transitional fossils (fossil remains of a creature that exhibits primitive traits in comparison with more derived life-forms to which it is related). An ideal list would only recursively include 'true' transitionals, i.e. those forms morphologically similar to the ancestors of the monophyletic group containing the derived relative, and not intermediate forms. See the article on transitional fossils for an explanation of the difference with intermediate forms. Since all species are in transition due to natural selection, the very term "transitional fossil" is essentially a misconception. But the fossils listed represent significant steps in the evolution of major features in various vertebrate lines, and therefore fit the common usage of the phrase.
Don't be afraid to open the link; it's not to TO. Some of us don't need to reference TO; there are many other sources, including Wikipedia.
Of that list, here's a good'n: Human Evolution.
Human evolution, or anthropogeny,[1] is the origin and evolution of Homo sapiens as a distinct species from other hominids, great apes and placental mammals. The study of human evolution uses many scientific disciplines, including physical anthropology, primatology, archaeology, linguistics and genetics.[2]
The term "human" in the context of human evolution refers to the genus Homo, but studies of human evolution usually include other hominids, such as the Australopithecines, from which the genus Homo had diverged by about 2.3 to 2.4 million years ago in Africa.[3][4] Scientists have estimated that humans branched off from their common ancestor with chimpanzees about 5–7 million years ago. Several species and subspecies of Homo evolved and are now extinct. These include Homo erectus, which inhabited Asia, and Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, which inhabited Europe. Archaic Homo sapiens evolved between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago.
The dominant view among scientists concerning the origin of anatomically modern humans is the "Out of Africa" or recent African origin hypothesis,[5][6][7] which argues that Homo sapiens arose in Africa and migrated out of the continent around 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, replacing populations of Homo erectus in Asia and Homo neanderthalensis in Europe. Scientists supporting the alternative multiregional hypothesis argue that Homo sapiens evolved as geographically separate but interbreeding populations stemming from a worldwide migration of Homo erectus out of Africa nearly 2.5 million years ago.
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OK, but with all due respect how do you know with certitude that one species transitioned to another? There is no evidence to support this.
I checked out a few and and saw a couple pictures with some hand waving stating OK, this picture sprang from the organism in this picture.
This means nothing and that is my point. How would anyone ever show this to be true with scientific experimentation?
As example, there are species of cat that are very similar today and it would be quite easy to believe from fossils that they are closely related or that one evolved from the other.
But the truth is that we know better in real life. In fact, we know that they are different species, don't interbreed at all; so it would be impossible for one to evolve from the other.
Let's face it; ID is no more than creationism wrapped in tin foil like a Hershy's Kiss. It looks nice and shiny and good, but when you peel the foil away, as was done at Cobb County and Dover, and recently in LA, it's still the same tired, old "Goddoneit." IDcreationists don't like to say anything about God because if they do, they suddenly find themselves right back where they started; under the tattered wings of John D. Morris, another engineer, and Phillip E. Johnson who, by the bye, is a lawyer (figgers  ).
In short, ID is no more than a backdoor attempt sneak creationism into science class' even though it fails at every point. Believing in some anonymous "designer" is a lot more of a stretch than accepting evolutionary science backed up by virtually all of the available evidence, whatever your theology.
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Well, that is your opinion and you know what they say about opinions....
I don't sat godunit, I say: quantum mechanics that I call God dun it.
But if you will research this thoroughly, you may actually discover that there are IDists out there with no theological agenda. In fact, the Panspermians who are ardent IDists are atheists. |
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Hawks
SFN Regular
Canada
1383 Posts |
Posted - 12/31/2010 : 14:14:16 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by JerryB
Originally posted by Hawks
Originally posted by JerryB
Genes aren't statistically independent? LOL...No, they communicate with one another to cause mutation conspiracies. Pssstt... You guys wanna mutate, tonight? Shh......Yeah the Warden is on vacation.
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Here's something for you to ponder, JerryB. If genes were statistically independent then you are immediately claiming that there is no such thing as irreducible complexity. Oh, wait, you ARE claiming that IC exists. What gives?
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Genomes are not irreducibly complex as evidenced that one may mutate and do nothing to the rest of the system. It can still function. However, I could see it argued that SOME of them could be--those that result in the death of the organism due to mutation, but I have never researched this.
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If SOME of them are then you don't have independency. That should be fairly easy to comprehend... |
METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
It's a small, off-duty czechoslovakian traffic warden! |
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Intelligent Design is Stupid
