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To: gore3000
That may be true, but once software is put out to the public and tested by millions, then it becomes proven.

Categorically untrue.

As I already pointed out, it is impossible in any practical sense to execute every possible data value through every possible combination of execution paths in anything other than trivially complex software. This means there will ALWAYS be some combination of data paths and data values that have NEVER been executed by the software, even after it is in the "real" world. Thus it is never "proven."

This is exactly analogous to scientific theories, as I explained. That is why scientific theories are NEVER "proven." They are "accepted" based upon their ability to fit the data and to withstand repeated attempts at falsification.

1,265 posted on 03/01/2002 8:09:24 PM PST by longshadow
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To: longshadow
This is exactly analogous to scientific theories, as I explained. That is why scientific theories are NEVER "proven." They are "accepted" based upon their ability to fit the data and to withstand repeated attempts at falsification...

Sometimes they're accepted for political reasons which have nothing to do with science.

In forming a judgement of evolutionism, you must at some point consider the circumstances under which it arose and the most probable set of reasons for its rise to dominance.

You've heard of the Medelin Cartel, El Pino, Pablo Escobar, the Pagans, and all of the other drug dealers of our times. The truth is, all together they probably don't add up to a hill of beans compared to the operations of the British empire in the 19'th century. At least one major eastern city was set up for no other reason than to serve as a conduit for Indian opium into China and an entire war was fought to protect the opium trade.

Now, you don't need to be Albert Einstein to comprehend that for a supposedly Christian nation to be engaging in this sort of business must have created at least two problems on an organizational level. One was the question of motivating men to fight and die for such causes: "For God, Bonnie Queen Vickie, and the Opium Trade, CHARGE!!!!!!" probably wouldn't get it...

The other problem which springs to mind immediately would be that which the CEO or chairman of the board of the East India Company must have faced in conducting board meatings. Picture it:

"Gentlemen, I have some good news, and I have some bad news. The good news is that profits are up 73.2% on a volume of trade which has increased 27% over the same three-month period last year, and that all of our operations appear to be running smoothly. Indigenous peoples of India, Burma, China, and several other areas with a propensity to cause problems are now happily stoned out of their minds on our products, and are causing no further trouble."

"The bad news is that we're all probably going to spend the next 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years roasting on a barbecue pit for this shit..."

Now picture Chuck Darwin walking into this scene and telling all of these people that they're sitting around worrying over nothing, and that the only moral law in nature is "The Survival of the Fittest". Can you not see all of those peoples' eyes lighting up, their hair standing straight up, and somebody screaming "By Jove, I think he's got it?"

I mean, it doesn't even matter what led Darwin to devise the theory of evolution. In any normal time or set of circumstances, he'd have either been laughed to scorn, hanged, or burned. He succeeded precisely because he solved several major problems for the Godfathers of 100 years ago. In other words, there's more than a little truth to my claim that someone has to be stoned to buy off on this BS.

1,280 posted on 03/02/2002 2:44:07 AM PST by medved
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