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Evolution Disclaimer Supported
The Advocate (Baton Rouge) ^ | 12/11/02 | WILL SENTELL

Posted on 12/11/2002 6:28:08 AM PST by A2J

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To: VadeRetro; scripter; gore3000; f.Christian; Phaedrus
Just what we've all come to expect from you.

Speaking for others again.

You may expect that as a fairly descriptive word for your posts.

It was not merely a spoof involving alternate identities that No-kin did, but a deliberate attempt at deception for a specific purpose.

You threw out names in your accusations. What basis do you have for saying why they were banned and who they were? Is this information available to all?

4,741 posted on 01/13/2003 7:26:31 AM PST by AndrewC (Darwininian misrepresentation alert)
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To: betty boop
js1138, sometimes I wonder whether the A.I. researchers have got their model wrong.

I don't doubt that A.I. is possible, but would agree that the current state of affairs is pretty bleak. I will make one general prediction: as more of the problem is understood, it will look increasingly difficult.

4,742 posted on 01/13/2003 7:27:40 AM PST by js1138
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To: AndrewC
Is this information available to all?

What a rebuttal! Yes. To anyone paying attention. But please, remain ignorant if you imagine it convenient. No one is forcing you to know anything.

4,743 posted on 01/13/2003 7:31:43 AM PST by VadeRetro (You have to guess how anyone but a moderator would know.)
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To: js1138
I don't doubt that A.I. is possible, but would agree that the current state of affairs is pretty bleak.

That depends on how you define A.I. It looks bleak if you are trying to produce Einstein on a chip. It is greatly more rosy if the goal is not so profound.

4,744 posted on 01/13/2003 7:37:23 AM PST by AndrewC (Deep Blue kicks hiney)
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To: Alamo-Girl; Doctor Stochastic
I’ve been reading quite a bit and am not aware of anyone looking at information content independent of meaning.

Yes, that was my impression. However, semantic information, or meaning, or the effect of the message (phenotype) is of great importance in biology. For that reason, I question the usefulness of information theory to biology. In my earlier posts to Doctor Stochastic I listed reasons why it would be very difficult to measure information value or semantic information in biology. As Doctor Stochastic pointed out, IT isn't about that value. Channel capacity may be very useful in communications and computer technology. But how is that of consequence to biology? Errors may change the Shannon information content of a string, but in biology such errors lead to new meaning.

Right Wing Professor weighs in from a thermodynamic point of view and makes it clear that there's about as much information in the Bible [or any other large book] as there is in the human genome.

So, when Yockey measures information in a protein or DNA sequence, it's questionable whether this has any importance for origin of life hypotheses.

4,745 posted on 01/13/2003 7:38:03 AM PST by Nebullis
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To: VadeRetro
What a rebuttal!

I'm glad you're pleased. Now, how do you know this?

4,746 posted on 01/13/2003 7:40:11 AM PST by AndrewC (Deep Blue kicks hiney)
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To: betty boop
What if consciousness is not a function of anything else, or constituted by parts of anything else? What if it were something more akin to, say, electromagnetism?

Everything known to exist -- all matter -- is something akin to electromagnetism.

4,747 posted on 01/13/2003 7:40:59 AM PST by js1138
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To: js1138
I will make one general prediction: as more of the problem is understood, it will look increasingly difficult.

I have a hunch you're right about this, js1138. There's more to intelligence than computation.

4,748 posted on 01/13/2003 7:43:16 AM PST by betty boop (<P>)
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To: js1138
Everything known to exist -- all matter -- is something akin to electromagnetism.

How so, js1138?

4,749 posted on 01/13/2003 7:44:18 AM PST by betty boop (<P>)
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To: VadeRetro
The problem isn't spotting the fallacies in an AndrewC post. It's overcoming the feeling of "Jesus-not-again!" weariness and putting the hands to the keyboard to point out how bogus it all is.

There's always "virtual ignore." It takes discipline, but it's worth the effort.

4,750 posted on 01/13/2003 7:48:21 AM PST by PatrickHenry (PH is really a great guy! Really!)
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To: Alamo-Girl
how can information not have meaning?

Don't watch much daytime TV, do you? I suppose there is a definition of information that forces a tie to meaning, but that presumes a God's eye view. For a child, a soap opera might contain information about how adults behave. For reasonable adults, there is nothing new.

The same discussion could apply to 999 of a thousand books. Or almost everything on the web.

4,751 posted on 01/13/2003 7:52:50 AM PST by js1138
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To: gore3000
Really? In spite of all our knowledge, intelligence and technology no one has yet been able to create as much as a single new gene that performs a single new function.

I'm pretty sure you're wrong about this. I know of several groups that are doing de novo protein design, and have made entirely new proteins that are catalytically active. If you have a working protein, synthesizing a gene for that protein and getting it expressed would be trivial.

4,752 posted on 01/13/2003 7:56:16 AM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: B. Rabbit
I was going to bring up David Koresh (sp?), but it's probably better that I didn't...

It takes two to tango, and DK was one.

4,753 posted on 01/13/2003 7:58:32 AM PST by js1138
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To: Nebullis
You're correct. Biology (qua biology) doesn't ask how many symbols one can transmit; rather it asks what the symbols can actually encode. A cruder example from military history: playing or not playing a song on a radio network may only transmit one bit of information. That bit was used in 1945 to signal to the French Underground that D-Day was imminent.
4,754 posted on 01/13/2003 7:59:30 AM PST by Doctor Stochastic (Of two evils, choose the prettier. - Carolyn Wells)
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To: gore3000
An excellent point! People are unwilling to die for a lie.

They died for David Koresh and Jim Jones. Not only that, but they killed their own children. Of course, in the case of DK, they might have rationally expected the government not to behave like a two-year-old having a tantrum. (But I suspect many of them knew what would happen).

4,755 posted on 01/13/2003 8:04:12 AM PST by js1138
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To: AndrewC
And I am not in a snit ...

I suggest you go back and read the 1500 or so posts that occurred in your abesence. They were nice while they lasted.

4,756 posted on 01/13/2003 8:07:09 AM PST by js1138
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To: js1138
I suggest you go back and read the 1500 or so posts that occurred in your abesence

Oh, you mean like these kind words.

I suggest you give it up and let them live with their preconceptions (and invincible ignorance) about the "spiritual" nature of consciousness.

4503 posted on 01/10/2003 8:50 PM CST by balrog666 (Boo! Made you look!)


4,757 posted on 01/13/2003 8:13:45 AM PST by AndrewC (Deep Blue kicks hiney)
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To: AndrewC
It [A.I.] is greatly more rosy if the goal is not so profound.

Call me when you have something as profound as a traffic light that maximizes throughput in the presence of pedestrians, accidents, etc. I don't expect Einstein.

Artificial "Rationality" is not what I would I would call A.I. I'm looking for something that looks like awareness. Cats are not rational, but they are aware.

4,758 posted on 01/13/2003 8:17:24 AM PST by js1138
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To: Nebullis
So, when Yockey measures information in a protein or DNA sequence, it's questionable whether this has any importance for origin of life hypotheses.

Glad to see this come up. No one can say what the outcome of a completely new entry in the genome. The "meaning" of a DNA sequence must work itself out in the environment it finds itself in.

4,759 posted on 01/13/2003 8:21:34 AM PST by js1138
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To: betty boop
Everything known to exist -- all matter -- is something akin to electromagnetism.

How so, js1138?

Because all matter can be expressed as a wave function.

4,760 posted on 01/13/2003 8:24:08 AM PST by js1138
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