nonrandom mutations...

[David Brown]

On 03/02/2022 23:39, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 20:21:18 +0100, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 02/02/2022 17:51, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 16:29:53 +0100, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 02/02/2022 14:49, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 12:11:03 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:



Viruses are an important vector for evolution. They are a common source
of horizontal gene transfer in microbes. Mutation or gene transfer via
viruses does not happen often in higher organisms

Are you sure of that? Horizontal transfer is a huge boost to
evolution, and everything has to evolve. Dispersion of improvements by
family descent is very inefficient.

Retroviruses do in fact insert their genes into the somatic genomes of
their hosts. Some of it makes it into the germline genome over time.

Yes, indeed - but it is rare that they end up actually passing on
successfully to future generations, and rarer still that this leads to
useful new characteristics. It\'s a slow game!

We know this because there are lots of (usually nonfunctional) viral
genomes in the genome of all animals large enough to see. HIV is the
current poster child in humans, SIV in simians.


Some bacterial can also fiddle with host DNA.

.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbachia

I hadn\'t heard of that one - thanks for the link. This is similar to
how organelles like mitochondria might have evolved from inter-cellular
bacteria.

No, everything does not have to evolve - there are lots of organisms
that have changed very little for perhaps hundreds of millions of years.
Horizontal transfers /can/ introduce new genes, but the /vast/ majority
of horizontal transfers are detrimental to the organism if they do
anything noticeable at all.

True, but relevance unclear. And in Biology, there is always an
asterisk or two.


You may have heard of the \"immune system\". One of its jobs is to
minimise virus infections - identifying and destroying virus particles,
and destroying any cells that get infected. The better an organism\'s
immune system (and even bacteria have immune systems to counter
viruses), the lower the opportunity for virus infections of any sort,
never mind ones that transfer genes.

Patronizing. Not effective.


To get a horizontal transfer via a virus, you need multiple things to
happen. First, the virus must infect one host\'s cell but make a
monumental screw-up during the infection, so that a bit of the host\'s
DNA gets caught up along with the virus DNA when the cell replicates the
virus. That happens, but it\'s extremely rare - and usually such
mistakes means no successful virus production. Then this modified virus
needs to get into another host, and have another monumental screw-up on
the part of the virus /and/ on the part of the host cell, where the DNA
fragment gets mixed with the host\'s DNA. And then the host cell must
eliminate the virus (so that it doesn\'t die by virus reproduction), and
the DNA change must be non-fatal to the cell. If this happens in the
target host\'s germ cells then the mutation will pass on to the next
generation (probably killing them long before they can produce
descendants of their own). Otherwise you\'ve made either a one-off cell
change that ends with the cell\'s death, or a tumour.

Horizontal transfer from viruses to big animals like humans does in
fact happen, as discussed above.

As I said. It happens, but very rarely.

And even if horizontal transfers /were/ as potentially useful for
evolution in the long term as you imagine, that does not mean it
happens. You have this bizarre belief that just because something is
useful or efficient (in your eyes at least), evolution will cause it to
evolve.

Even though evolution is blind, it does seem to solve whatever problem
is presented, because that\'s where the most stress is.

I\'d say that\'s a somewhat naïve and unhelpful viewpoint. I\'m sure you
have heard the term \"survivors\' bias\" ? That\'s what happens in
evolution. Evolution does not \"solve\" problems. It causes gradual
changes (with /very/ occasional jumps), with a selection towards species
with more long-term success. We can look species alive now and claim
\"they solved the problem\", but really they are just the ones that are
lucky enough to have survived.

We can take a very over-simplified (it\'s missing any form of inheritance
to change long-term biases) analogy, and suppose you have a large
handful of dice and want to see which ones are good at solving the
problem of getting high scores. Roll them all, then throw out all those
that failed to get a five or a six. Take these and roll them again, and
throw out the ones to fours that \"died\". You are left with dice that
solved the problem and scored at least 5 consistently. In fact, the
majority of them will have had at least one 6. And note that none of
the dice was \"intelligent\", or knew the target characteristic or the
\"problem\" they were trying to \"solve\".


I know /you/ understand this, but Larkin does not appear to. He thinks
evolution has targets and aims, and that it picks the best way to \"move
forward\". If you have other ways to help him understand, then that
would be great.

Evolution does not have aims, guides, or targets. It is not intelligent
or guided. It does not optimise, or reach ideal solutions. It does not
make huge leaps to new methods just because you think these might be a
good idea. It does not always eliminate bad traits and enhance good
ones. It does not necessarily lead to the best choices or the \"fittest\"
results.

Actually, evolution does in fact optimize. Where needed. See above.


(as you say, they have
to hit egg or sperm cells - and the great majority of mutations are
either lethal or have little significant effect). But they are vital
for getting completely new features into the population. The placenta
in mammals, for example, has been traced to virus gene transfer.

As for kissing - how exactly do you think that would transfer genes?

For one, by transferring viruses. Maybe even cells.


Do you not realise how ignorant that sounds?

Ad hominem. Not effective.


Let\'s take an analogy that might make it simpler for you. A cell is
like an electronics board, and its genetic code is like the schematic
and pcb design for the board. Do you think you can change the designs
of the boards in some machine just by putting a different board beside
them? That\'s your \"cells transferred by kissing\" idea.

Perhaps you should bang the different boards together and see what
happens - that\'s the horizontal transfer. One time out of a billion you
might make a short-circuit, or break a track, that gives one of the
boards new characteristics that you hadn\'t seen before.

Compare that to taking two extremely similar designs (99% or more
match), and swapping a few corresponding sections of the schematic to
see if there is an improvement. If you\'ve swapped something critical,
it will probably not work at all. If you\'ve swapped some values of
filter components, maybe you\'ll get a slightly better filter. That is
the analogue of sexual reproduction.

Which method do /you/ think is going to be more successful?

This is a straw man argument, and deeply flawed to boot. DNA and RNA
are recipe strings, and not schematics, so the analogy fails.

It is an /analogy/. It is not a /model/.

One can use Genetic Programming to evolve circuit designs. Was
interesting, but did not turn out to be all that useful in practice.

.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_programming

Evolutionary Design of Digital Circuits Using Genetic Programming

.<https://arxiv.org/abs/1304.2467


If you don\'t want that random brain-fart to be dismissed, you\'ll have to
justify why you think there is significant genetic material in spit,

Dismissed? Ideas should be played with. But I don\'t mind if you
instinctively attack ideas... less competition.


I offered you a chance to justify your idea before I dismissed it. It
turns out you had nothing. Good ideas are useful - but your view that
all ideas are somehow worthy for consideration is absurd. (I didn\'t
dismiss it out of hand - I thought about it, then dismissed it.)

People are put in prison based on the genes in a bit of spit.


Yes - so what? Do you think the DNA in someone else\'s spit magically
transforms you? Seriously? Do you also think that if you eat chicken,
you might sprout feathers? (Are you going to dismiss that idea out of
hand?) If a radioactive spider bites you and injects some of its DNA in
its saliva, is that going to turn you into a superhero? (Surely you
will play around with that idea too, to give you an edge on your
competition.)

Males kiss, as kissing the hand or ring of a king or the pope. Some
cultures kiss a lot more than we do.


And some do so less. None of that matters.

If kissing spreads disease, it would be deselected. But it\'s not. Same
with shaking hands... spreads germs!


Kissing /does/ spread disease - as does shaking hands, and any kind of
contact. But the benefits usually outweigh the risks.

Well, to be precise, what is deselected are people who cannot handle
the close contact needed to be a species of social animal. Immune
systems also evolve to suit.


You are talking past one another. Your objectives are different, so
both can be correct, or not, independently of one another.


Joe Gwinn

 

[Clive Arthur]

On 04/02/2022 07:57, David Brown wrote:

On 04/02/2022 02:04, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 2:33:38 AM UTC+11, David Brown wrote:

<snipped>

(And Bill, please stop obsessing about patent counts. They are a
totally useless measurement or indication of inventiveness, design
ability or anything else. They are primarily a business technique
for beating down the competition as an alternative to building
better products, and such a tiny percentage of granted patents
represent truly innovate inventions that there is no point in
bringing them up.)

Actually, they aren\'t totally useless. The patenting system is much
abused, but the tiny percentage of granted patents that cover and
protect truly innovative inventions protect most of the useful
innovations that have got us where we are today.

I didn\'t say patents are always useless. I said that counting numbers
of patents is a totally useless measure of inventiveness or anything
else. When someone comes up with a great new idea, they do not
necessarily patent it. When a patent is filed, it is not necessarily
for a great new idea. There is very little correlation between patents
filed and innovation - therefore patent counts are useless as a measure.

I have seven granted patents. A while ago I worked for a small company
which was bought by a large US corporation which I shall refer to only
by its initials, GE. While they sucked all the joy out of it and while
taking time to plan my exit, I mentioned to my PHB some fairly minor
improvement to a product under development.

He\'d been on a training course - next thing I knew I was in his office
and he was typing furiously. GE had a web-based patent application
system (IIRC the \'Inventor Center\') where you filled out details and
some far-off patent department evaluated things and did the legwork if
they thought it a viable idea.

This first one was credited jointly to me and the PHB, but having seen
how easy it was, the next ones I did myself. In total seven were
granted, six of which were US and one Chinese. (To be fair, I can\'t be
100% sure about the Chinese certificate, it could just as easily be a
treatise on haddock literacy in the fifteenth century, though it does
have my name and diagram on it.)

I did it because it was easy, I got £1k for each one, and sometimes a
trip to London to have lunch with a GE patent agent. One invention was
quite clever I thought, and is still in use albeit in very small
quantities. A second was very probably novel, though of less practical
use. Most were pretty meh and one in particular was a complete
piss-take, but they all got granted. In the very unlikely event that
any of them makes a significant amount of money I\'d get some sort of cut.

But these were nearly all US patents and I believe that applications
were also made to other agencies, none of which succeeded. My
conclusion? The US patent system is (or possibly has become) a joke,
the UK patent system at least seems to have some standards.

But seven patents does look good on a CV, if only I needed a job.

--
Cheers
Clive

 

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 4 Feb 2022 08:57:38 +0100, David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 04/02/2022 02:04, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 2:33:38 AM UTC+11, David Brown wrote:
On 03/02/2022 15:16, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 12:46:43 AM UTC+11, John Larkin
wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 20:50:20 +0100, David Brown
david...@hesbynett.no> wrote: wrote:

snip

(And Bill, please stop obsessing about patent counts. They are a
totally useless measurement or indication of inventiveness, design
ability or anything else. They are primarily a business technique
for beating down the competition as an alternative to building
better products, and such a tiny percentage of granted patents
represent truly innovate inventions that there is no point in
bringing them up.)

Actually, they aren\'t totally useless. The patenting system is much
abused, but the tiny percentage of granted patents that cover and
protect truly innovative inventions protect most of the useful
innovations that have got us where we are today.

I didn\'t say patents are always useless. I said that counting numbers
of patents is a totally useless measure of inventiveness or anything
else. When someone comes up with a great new idea, they do not
necessarily patent it. When a patent is filed, it is not necessarily
for a great new idea. There is very little correlation between patents
filed and innovation - therefore patent counts are useless as a measure.

Making lots of money is an equally poor measure of engineering or
designer skills. (It can be an indicator of other skills or
characteristics, but often its an indicator of being lucky, knowing the
right people, being born in the right place to the right family, or
being ruthless enough to grab more than your fair share.)

Selling electronics is objective proof that people want to buy it in
preference to something else. And it pays for rent and toys.

The US patent office is now a revenue machine, so they don\'t examine
patents much. People have generated hoax patents.

Stop name-dropping - claiming credit by association is as unbecoming as
Larkin\'s self-satisfaction and claims to genius.

I think designing electronics is fun. Is that Self-satisfaction?

When did I call myself a genius? I\'m not.

Really, this ain\'t Facebook. Design something; you\'ll feel better. We
can help.

In a setting like a this newsgroup, we have no way to reasonably judge
anyone else\'s abilities, other than for specific topics under
discussion.

Like electronic design.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc trk

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
\"Bunter\", he said, \"I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason\"

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 6:57:49 PM UTC+11, David Brown wrote:

On 04/02/2022 02:04, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 2:33:38 AM UTC+11, David Brown wrote:
On 03/02/2022 15:16, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 12:46:43 AM UTC+11, John Larkin
wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 20:50:20 +0100, David Brown
david...@hesbynett.no> wrote: wrote:

snip

(And Bill, please stop obsessing about patent counts. They are a
totally useless measurement or indication of inventiveness, design
ability or anything else. They are primarily a business technique
for beating down the competition as an alternative to building
better products, and such a tiny percentage of granted patents
represent truly innovate inventions that there is no point in
bringing them up.)

Actually, they aren\'t totally useless. The patenting system is much
abused, but the tiny percentage of granted patents that cover and
protect truly innovative inventions protect most of the useful
innovations that have got us where we are today.

I didn\'t say patents are always useless. I said that counting numbers
of patents is a totally useless measure of inventiveness or anything
else.

It\'s not a great measure. but if you haven\'t got one you are lower in the pecking order than people who have.

When someone comes up with a great new idea, they do not
necessarily patent it.

Perfectly true, but irrelevant.

> When a patent is filed, it is not necessarily for a great new idea.

Certainly true, but it costs enough money that it isn\'t done frivolously.

> There is very little correlation between patents filed and innovation - therefore patent counts are useless as a measure.

No patents looks very like no innovation.

> Making lots of money is an equally poor measure of engineering or designer skills. (It can be an indicator of other skills or characteristics, but often its an indicator of being lucky, knowing the right people, being born in the right place to the right family, or being ruthless enough to grab more than your fair share.)

This has been looked at. In the US wealth is more heritable than height, which isn\'t true of more egalitiarian advanced industrial countries

> Stop name-dropping - claiming credit by association is as unbecoming as Larkin\'s self-satisfaction and claims to genius.

If you spent time with people who have got patents, you do know a bit more about what they actually mean.

> In a setting like a this newsgroup, we have no way to reasonably judge anyone else\'s abilities, other than for specific topics under discussion.

You are joking?

> Pissing contents about who can boast the loudest, make the most money or name the most patent holders, are pretty pathetic on all sides.

People who claim to be able to innovate, but don\'t seem to perform, do need to be held to account. People who clearly can - like Phil Hobbs - don\'t bother making a fuss about the fact.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Saturday, February 5, 2022 at 12:14:25 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On Fri, 4 Feb 2022 08:57:38 +0100, David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
On 04/02/2022 02:04, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 2:33:38 AM UTC+11, David Brown wrote:
On 03/02/2022 15:16, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 12:46:43 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 20:50:20 +0100, David Brown <david...@hesbynett..no> wrote: wrote:

<snip>

> Selling electronics is objective proof that people want to buy it in preference to something else. And it pays for rent and toys.

Selling electronics is objective proof that you can sell stuff. All it says about the quality of the electronics is that it more or less works.

I knew quite a bit about the Lintech electron beam tester, which sold like hot cakes when it was the only on on the market. The guy who ran the business spent his development money on getting more bells and whistles that made the machine easier to sell. It wasn\'t all that easy to use or all that reliable, which pissed off the engineers who had to train the users (as well as designing and developing the bells and whistles).

One of them got himself hired by Fairchild and ended up developing a competitive machine for Schlumberger. He didn\'t have to make a very different machine, merely one that worked much the same way, but was a bit easier to use and appreciably more reliable. Once it hit the market Lintech didn\'t sell another machine. Mike Engelhardt (who worked on the project) has claimed that it ended up with 98% of the market.

The US patent office is now a revenue machine, so they don\'t examine
patents much. People have generated hoax patents.

It\'s an expensive joke. They cost thousand of dollars - the annual maintenance fee was around a thousand dollars a year thirty years ago.

Stop name-dropping - claiming credit by association is as unbecoming as Larkin\'s self-satisfaction and claims to genius.

I think designing electronics is fun. Is that Self-satisfaction?

The designing part can be fun, for a bit. Getting everything toleranced and documented is tedious.

> When did I call myself a genius? I\'m not.

Agreed.

> Really, this ain\'t Facebook. Design something; you\'ll feel better. We can help.

John Larkin might be able to help, but I can\'t recall him posting anything that looked all that helpful

In a setting like a this newsgroup, we have no way to reasonably judge anyone else\'s abilities, other than for specific topics under discussion.

Like electronic design.

Posting circuits you claim to have designed doesn\'t hack it. Explaining why you designed it that way might.

Explaining why you wouldn\'t have designed a circuit the way the original poster did should be just as useful, but it does seem to rub people up the wrong way.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Don Y]

On 2/4/2022 3:11 AM, Clive Arthur wrote:

On 04/02/2022 07:57, David Brown wrote:

I didn\'t say patents are always useless. I said that counting numbers
of patents is a totally useless measure of inventiveness or anything
else. When someone comes up with a great new idea, they do not
necessarily patent it. When a patent is filed, it is not necessarily
for a great new idea. There is very little correlation between patents
filed and innovation - therefore patent counts are useless as a measure.

I have seven granted patents. A while ago I worked for a small company which
was bought by a large US corporation which I shall refer to only by its
initials, GE. While they sucked all the joy out of it and while taking time to
plan my exit, I mentioned to my PHB some fairly minor improvement to a product
under development.

He\'d been on a training course - next thing I knew I was in his office and he
was typing furiously. GE had a web-based patent application system (IIRC the
\'Inventor Center\') where you filled out details and some far-off patent
department evaluated things and did the legwork if they thought it a viable idea.

This is the sad truth about the (US) patent system. I was granted two patents
as a teenager (lawyer jokingly verified I was old enough to enter into a
legal contract). While it was an interesting experience, it completely soured
me on the idea of patents -- damn near every patent is \"obvious\", if you think
*hard* (or even not-so-hard) about the problem.

This first one was credited jointly to me and the PHB, but having seen how easy
it was, the next ones I did myself. In total seven were granted, six of which
were US and one Chinese. (To be fair, I can\'t be 100% sure about the Chinese
certificate, it could just as easily be a treatise on haddock literacy in the
fifteenth century, though it does have my name and diagram on it.)

I did it because it was easy, I got £1k for each one, and sometimes a trip to
London to have lunch with a GE patent agent. One invention was quite clever I
thought, and is still in use albeit in very small quantities. A second was
very probably novel, though of less practical use. Most were pretty meh and
one in particular was a complete piss-take, but they all got granted. In the
very unlikely event that any of them makes a significant amount of money I\'d
get some sort of cut.

I got a free lunch in the North End (yum yum!) for the mine. I\'ve been
reasonably well compensated (a few kilobucks, each) for other ideas that,
AFAICT, were never patented. Or, were patented without my involvement.

E.g., the back of the packaging for this:
<https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cOXXSnb3afs/maxresdefault.jpg>
indicates PATENT PENDING but I never filled out any paperwork to that effect.

But these were nearly all US patents and I believe that applications were also
made to other agencies, none of which succeeded. My conclusion? The US patent
system is (or possibly has become) a joke, the UK patent system at least seems
to have some standards.

I met a guy who was a patent examiner, many years ago (we were both 20-ish).
I naively asked him about the process by which he was \"qualified\" to examine
patents. In short, he wasn\'t. He was just a paper-pusher and didn\'t have to
understand anything about the patent(s) he was processing!

That just reinforced my disdain for it!

> But seven patents does look good on a CV, if only I needed a job.

I used to think that when I was younger (when competing with other 20 year
olds, patents make your CV stand out -- as does your education, etc.).

But, I found that it matters less and less in most industries; they\'re more
interested in what you\'ve done and can do than \"paper credentials\". Asking
REALLY *good* questions, \"cold\", gets their attention. It shows insight
into their problem domain.

I\'ve a friend who appears to \"collect\" patents. He\'s aligned himself with
folks who will subsidize the applications so no cost to himself (other than
the time wasted -- which he likely treats as billable hours! -- chatting with
the patent attorney). Apparently, \"someone\" (USPTO?) sells plaques on which
an etched copy of thte top page of the granted patent is affixed -- so, you
can adorn your walls with them and remind yourself how clever you are! :>

 

[Joe Gwinn]

On Fri, 4 Feb 2022 09:25:41 +0100, David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 03/02/2022 23:39, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 20:21:18 +0100, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 02/02/2022 17:51, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 16:29:53 +0100, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 02/02/2022 14:49, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 12:11:03 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:



Viruses are an important vector for evolution. They are a common source
of horizontal gene transfer in microbes. Mutation or gene transfer via
viruses does not happen often in higher organisms

Are you sure of that? Horizontal transfer is a huge boost to
evolution, and everything has to evolve. Dispersion of improvements by
family descent is very inefficient.

Retroviruses do in fact insert their genes into the somatic genomes of
their hosts. Some of it makes it into the germline genome over time.

Yes, indeed - but it is rare that they end up actually passing on
successfully to future generations, and rarer still that this leads to
useful new characteristics. It\'s a slow game!

Yes.

We know this because there are lots of (usually nonfunctional) viral
genomes in the genome of all animals large enough to see. HIV is the
current poster child in humans, SIV in simians.


Some bacterial can also fiddle with host DNA.

.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbachia


I hadn\'t heard of that one - thanks for the link. This is similar to
how organelles like mitochondria might have evolved from inter-cellular
bacteria.

Welcome. Yes, very much so.

No, everything does not have to evolve - there are lots of organisms
that have changed very little for perhaps hundreds of millions of years.
Horizontal transfers /can/ introduce new genes, but the /vast/ majority
of horizontal transfers are detrimental to the organism if they do
anything noticeable at all.

True, but relevance unclear. And in Biology, there is always an
asterisk or two.


You may have heard of the \"immune system\". One of its jobs is to
minimise virus infections - identifying and destroying virus particles,
and destroying any cells that get infected. The better an organism\'s
immune system (and even bacteria have immune systems to counter
viruses), the lower the opportunity for virus infections of any sort,
never mind ones that transfer genes.

Patronizing. Not effective.


To get a horizontal transfer via a virus, you need multiple things to
happen. First, the virus must infect one host\'s cell but make a
monumental screw-up during the infection, so that a bit of the host\'s
DNA gets caught up along with the virus DNA when the cell replicates the
virus. That happens, but it\'s extremely rare - and usually such
mistakes means no successful virus production. Then this modified virus
needs to get into another host, and have another monumental screw-up on
the part of the virus /and/ on the part of the host cell, where the DNA
fragment gets mixed with the host\'s DNA. And then the host cell must
eliminate the virus (so that it doesn\'t die by virus reproduction), and
the DNA change must be non-fatal to the cell. If this happens in the
target host\'s germ cells then the mutation will pass on to the next
generation (probably killing them long before they can produce
descendants of their own). Otherwise you\'ve made either a one-off cell
change that ends with the cell\'s death, or a tumour.

Horizontal transfer from viruses to big animals like humans does in
fact happen, as discussed above.


As I said. It happens, but very rarely.

But we have aeons, so it will happen.

And even if horizontal transfers /were/ as potentially useful for
evolution in the long term as you imagine, that does not mean it
happens. You have this bizarre belief that just because something is
useful or efficient (in your eyes at least), evolution will cause it to
evolve.

Even though evolution is blind, it does seem to solve whatever problem
is presented, because that\'s where the most stress is.


I\'d say that\'s a somewhat naïve and unhelpful viewpoint. I\'m sure you
have heard the term \"survivors\' bias\" ? That\'s what happens in
evolution. Evolution does not \"solve\" problems. It causes gradual
changes (with /very/ occasional jumps), with a selection towards species
with more long-term success. We can look species alive now and claim
\"they solved the problem\", but really they are just the ones that are
lucky enough to have survived.

Hairsplitting. The word \"solve\" was shorthand. How about \"stumbles
upon a solution\"? In either case, it\'s on to the next roadblock.

We can take a very over-simplified (it\'s missing any form of inheritance
to change long-term biases) analogy, and suppose you have a large
handful of dice and want to see which ones are good at solving the
problem of getting high scores. Roll them all, then throw out all those
that failed to get a five or a six. Take these and roll them again, and
throw out the ones to fours that \"died\". You are left with dice that
solved the problem and scored at least 5 consistently. In fact, the
majority of them will have had at least one 6. And note that none of
the dice was \"intelligent\", or knew the target characteristic or the
\"problem\" they were trying to \"solve\".

True, but relevance unclear.

I know /you/ understand this, but Larkin does not appear to. He thinks
evolution has targets and aims, and that it picks the best way to \"move
forward\". If you have other ways to help him understand, then that
would be great.

There is an unspoken assumption here, that to understand is to
believe, and to believe is to understand. This assumption is not
correct; believing and understanding are independent of one another.

The classic poster children for this are the now-discarded theories of
science. The were once both understood and believed. Then, the
replacement theory came along, and the displaced theory was still
understood, but no longer believed. Except by a few die-hards.

And lots of theories were believed before they were understood, and no
longer believed once they were understood.

Evolution does not have aims, guides, or targets. It is not intelligent
or guided. It does not optimise, or reach ideal solutions. It does not
make huge leaps to new methods just because you think these might be a
good idea. It does not always eliminate bad traits and enhance good
ones. It does not necessarily lead to the best choices or the \"fittest\"
results.

Actually, evolution does in fact optimize. Where needed. See above.


(as you say, they have
to hit egg or sperm cells - and the great majority of mutations are
either lethal or have little significant effect). But they are vital
for getting completely new features into the population. The placenta
in mammals, for example, has been traced to virus gene transfer.

As for kissing - how exactly do you think that would transfer genes?

For one, by transferring viruses. Maybe even cells.


Do you not realise how ignorant that sounds?

Ad hominem. Not effective.


Let\'s take an analogy that might make it simpler for you. A cell is
like an electronics board, and its genetic code is like the schematic
and pcb design for the board. Do you think you can change the designs
of the boards in some machine just by putting a different board beside
them? That\'s your \"cells transferred by kissing\" idea.

Perhaps you should bang the different boards together and see what
happens - that\'s the horizontal transfer. One time out of a billion you
might make a short-circuit, or break a track, that gives one of the
boards new characteristics that you hadn\'t seen before.

Compare that to taking two extremely similar designs (99% or more
match), and swapping a few corresponding sections of the schematic to
see if there is an improvement. If you\'ve swapped something critical,
it will probably not work at all. If you\'ve swapped some values of
filter components, maybe you\'ll get a slightly better filter. That is
the analogue of sexual reproduction.

Which method do /you/ think is going to be more successful?

This is a straw man argument, and deeply flawed to boot. DNA and RNA
are recipe strings, and not schematics, so the analogy fails.


It is an /analogy/. It is not a /model/.

Huh? Cutting and pasting schematics is not the same as cutting and
pasting recipes, despite the common term, \"cutting and pasting\".

It\'s the difference between pictures of two kinds of pie, and the
recipes to make those two kinds of pie.

One can use a photo editor to make a picture that is half meat pie and
half blueberry pie, and this picture will tell one exactly nothing
about how to make such a thing. Not that people won\'t laugh when they
see it.

So the underlying problem is the false analogy; \"model\" was not
mentioned.

You are talking past one another.


Joe Gwinn

One can use Genetic Programming to evolve circuit designs. Was
interesting, but did not turn out to be all that useful in practice.

.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_programming

Evolutionary Design of Digital Circuits Using Genetic Programming

.<https://arxiv.org/abs/1304.2467


If you don\'t want that random brain-fart to be dismissed, you\'ll have to
justify why you think there is significant genetic material in spit,

Dismissed? Ideas should be played with. But I don\'t mind if you
instinctively attack ideas... less competition.


I offered you a chance to justify your idea before I dismissed it. It
turns out you had nothing. Good ideas are useful - but your view that
all ideas are somehow worthy for consideration is absurd. (I didn\'t
dismiss it out of hand - I thought about it, then dismissed it.)

People are put in prison based on the genes in a bit of spit.


Yes - so what? Do you think the DNA in someone else\'s spit magically
transforms you? Seriously? Do you also think that if you eat chicken,
you might sprout feathers? (Are you going to dismiss that idea out of
hand?) If a radioactive spider bites you and injects some of its DNA in
its saliva, is that going to turn you into a superhero? (Surely you
will play around with that idea too, to give you an edge on your
competition.)

Males kiss, as kissing the hand or ring of a king or the pope. Some
cultures kiss a lot more than we do.


And some do so less. None of that matters.

If kissing spreads disease, it would be deselected. But it\'s not. Same
with shaking hands... spreads germs!


Kissing /does/ spread disease - as does shaking hands, and any kind of
contact. But the benefits usually outweigh the risks.

Well, to be precise, what is deselected are people who cannot handle
the close contact needed to be a species of social animal. Immune
systems also evolve to suit.


You are talking past one another. Your objectives are different, so
both can be correct, or not, independently of one another.


Joe Gwinn

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 04/02/22 13:47, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

People who claim to be able to innovate, but don\'t seem to perform, do need
to be held to account. People who clearly can - like Phil Hobbs - don\'t
bother making a fuss about the fact.

\"If you\'ve got to say you\'re a lady, then you ain\'t\"

I think James Cagney said that to his on-screen moll,
but I can\'t find a reference.

 

[David Brown]

On 04/02/2022 18:20, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Fri, 4 Feb 2022 09:25:41 +0100, David Brown

I know /you/ understand this, but Larkin does not appear to. He thinks
evolution has targets and aims, and that it picks the best way to \"move
forward\". If you have other ways to help him understand, then that
would be great.

There is an unspoken assumption here, that to understand is to
believe, and to believe is to understand. This assumption is not
correct; believing and understanding are independent of one another.

The classic poster children for this are the now-discarded theories of
science. The were once both understood and believed. Then, the
replacement theory came along, and the displaced theory was still
understood, but no longer believed. Except by a few die-hards.

And lots of theories were believed before they were understood, and no
longer believed once they were understood.

That is an interesting and useful distinction.

However, you should also include an understanding of the limits of a
scientific theory, and an understanding of the limits of the scientific
process (i.e., everything is \"to the limits of our current knowledge,
based on the evidence we currently have\" and subject to being proven
wrong or inaccurate by new evidence in the future). You must also
include an understanding of your own personal limits to understanding -
while appreciating that others understand it.

Then there is no need for \"believe\" to be involved.


Thus I understand the Newtonian model of gravity. I understand its
limits - it gives an excellent approximation for a lot of use-cases, but
fails to match experimental evidence and observation in others. I don\'t
understand general relativity - I have not studied it enough, though I
do understand some parts of it. However, I understand that it is the
current best model we have for gravity, I understand that it too has its
limitations and open questions, and that theoretical physicists are
investigating alternatives or modifications. (Science progresses.)

I don\'t see where \"belief\" fits in there. I don\'t \"believe\" in
relativity - I /understand/ that it is the current best theory of
gravity. When someone figures out a theory that fits the evidence
better, I\'ll try to understand that (or more likely, settle for
understanding that others understand it).

Belief can be left for the parts for which we - as a community - have no
understanding. Will the next big theory of gravity be based on string
theory, modified Newtonian gravity, dark energy, or something else? I
can belief modified Newtonian gravity makes more sense and is the likely
candidate, but it is inevitably speculation. Once there is scientific
understanding, there are quantitative measurements and predictions, and
belief is not necessary.



Identifying what someone else believes or understands is always
speculative, especially in a medium like Usenet where posts don\'t give
the full picture.

I think I would settle for helping Larkin understand the current modern
theories of evolution, and enough of the biology involved for him to see
that some of his ideas do not remotely fit the evidence or have any
feasible way of working.


<snip>

You are talking past one another.

You are probably right.

 

[whit3rd]

On Saturday, February 5, 2022 at 5:54:42 AM UTC-8, David Brown wrote:

I think I would settle for helping Larkin understand the current modern
theories of evolution, and enough of the biology involved for him to see
that some of his ideas do not remotely fit the evidence or have any
feasible way of working.

Alas, the creationists have (literally) a textbook on awkward questions to
pose; until you answer all their objections (what about the missing link?)
there will be no end to their chatter.
Evolution Cruncher: 928 pages of silly stuff.

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 6/2/22 5:49 am, whit3rd wrote:

On Saturday, February 5, 2022 at 5:54:42 AM UTC-8, David Brown wrote:

I think I would settle for helping Larkin understand the current modern
theories of evolution, and enough of the biology involved for him to see
that some of his ideas do not remotely fit the evidence or have any
feasible way of working.

Alas, the creationists have (literally) a textbook on awkward questions to
pose; until you answer all their objections (what about the missing link?)
there will be no end to their chatter.
Evolution Cruncher: 928 pages of silly stuff.

As they say, it takes 10x the effort to refute bullshit as it does to
propagate it.

 

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 4 Feb 2022 09:25:41 +0100, David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 03/02/2022 23:39, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 20:21:18 +0100, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 02/02/2022 17:51, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 16:29:53 +0100, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 02/02/2022 14:49, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 12:11:03 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:



Viruses are an important vector for evolution. They are a common source
of horizontal gene transfer in microbes. Mutation or gene transfer via
viruses does not happen often in higher organisms

Are you sure of that? Horizontal transfer is a huge boost to
evolution, and everything has to evolve. Dispersion of improvements by
family descent is very inefficient.

Retroviruses do in fact insert their genes into the somatic genomes of
their hosts. Some of it makes it into the germline genome over time.

Yes, indeed - but it is rare that they end up actually passing on
successfully to future generations, and rarer still that this leads to
useful new characteristics. It\'s a slow game!


We know this because there are lots of (usually nonfunctional) viral
genomes in the genome of all animals large enough to see. HIV is the
current poster child in humans, SIV in simians.


Some bacterial can also fiddle with host DNA.

.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbachia


I hadn\'t heard of that one - thanks for the link. This is similar to
how organelles like mitochondria might have evolved from inter-cellular
bacteria.


No, everything does not have to evolve - there are lots of organisms
that have changed very little for perhaps hundreds of millions of years.
Horizontal transfers /can/ introduce new genes, but the /vast/ majority
of horizontal transfers are detrimental to the organism if they do
anything noticeable at all.

True, but relevance unclear. And in Biology, there is always an
asterisk or two.


You may have heard of the \"immune system\". One of its jobs is to
minimise virus infections - identifying and destroying virus particles,
and destroying any cells that get infected. The better an organism\'s
immune system (and even bacteria have immune systems to counter
viruses), the lower the opportunity for virus infections of any sort,
never mind ones that transfer genes.

Patronizing. Not effective.


To get a horizontal transfer via a virus, you need multiple things to
happen. First, the virus must infect one host\'s cell but make a
monumental screw-up during the infection, so that a bit of the host\'s
DNA gets caught up along with the virus DNA when the cell replicates the
virus. That happens, but it\'s extremely rare - and usually such
mistakes means no successful virus production. Then this modified virus
needs to get into another host, and have another monumental screw-up on
the part of the virus /and/ on the part of the host cell, where the DNA
fragment gets mixed with the host\'s DNA. And then the host cell must
eliminate the virus (so that it doesn\'t die by virus reproduction), and
the DNA change must be non-fatal to the cell. If this happens in the
target host\'s germ cells then the mutation will pass on to the next
generation (probably killing them long before they can produce
descendants of their own). Otherwise you\'ve made either a one-off cell
change that ends with the cell\'s death, or a tumour.

Horizontal transfer from viruses to big animals like humans does in
fact happen, as discussed above.


As I said. It happens, but very rarely.


And even if horizontal transfers /were/ as potentially useful for
evolution in the long term as you imagine, that does not mean it
happens. You have this bizarre belief that just because something is
useful or efficient (in your eyes at least), evolution will cause it to
evolve.

Even though evolution is blind, it does seem to solve whatever problem
is presented, because that\'s where the most stress is.


I\'d say that\'s a somewhat naïve and unhelpful viewpoint. I\'m sure you
have heard the term \"survivors\' bias\" ? That\'s what happens in
evolution. Evolution does not \"solve\" problems. It causes gradual
changes (with /very/ occasional jumps), with a selection towards species
with more long-term success. We can look species alive now and claim
\"they solved the problem\", but really they are just the ones that are
lucky enough to have survived.

We can take a very over-simplified (it\'s missing any form of inheritance
to change long-term biases) analogy, and suppose you have a large
handful of dice and want to see which ones are good at solving the
problem of getting high scores. Roll them all, then throw out all those
that failed to get a five or a six. Take these and roll them again, and
throw out the ones to fours that \"died\". You are left with dice that
solved the problem and scored at least 5 consistently. In fact, the
majority of them will have had at least one 6. And note that none of
the dice was \"intelligent\", or knew the target characteristic or the
\"problem\" they were trying to \"solve\".


I know /you/ understand this, but Larkin does not appear to. He thinks
evolution has targets and aims, and that it picks the best way to \"move
forward\". If you have other ways to help him understand, then that
would be great.

Google rapid evolution and get stuff like

https://www.pnas.org/content/116/6/2112

The neo-Darwinian idea of random mutation and selection is, as you
note, slow. Too slow for species survival in a changing world.

A change of venue, or a new predator or disease, is a problem to be
solved. Better do it wide and fast or become extinct.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc trk

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
\"Bunter\", he said, \"I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason\"

 

[Joe Gwinn]

On Sat, 5 Feb 2022 14:54:31 +0100, David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 04/02/2022 18:20, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 4 Feb 2022 09:25:41 +0100, David Brown

I know /you/ understand this, but Larkin does not appear to. He thinks
evolution has targets and aims, and that it picks the best way to \"move
forward\". If you have other ways to help him understand, then that
would be great.

There is an unspoken assumption here, that to understand is to
believe, and to believe is to understand. This assumption is not
correct; believing and understanding are independent of one another.

The classic poster children for this are the now-discarded theories of
science. The were once both understood and believed. Then, the
replacement theory came along, and the displaced theory was still
understood, but no longer believed. Except by a few die-hards.

And lots of theories were believed before they were understood, and no
longer believed once they were understood.


That is an interesting and useful distinction.

Thanks.

However, you should also include an understanding of the limits of a
scientific theory, and an understanding of the limits of the scientific
process (i.e., everything is \"to the limits of our current knowledge,
based on the evidence we currently have\" and subject to being proven
wrong or inaccurate by new evidence in the future). You must also
include an understanding of your own personal limits to understanding -
while appreciating that others understand it.

While generally true, this sounds awfully clumsy to be saying that
after each and every sentence. And the audience will soon wander off.


>Then there is no need for \"believe\" to be involved.

Really? We don\'t generally assert something as true unless we believe
that thing to be true. Or more to the point, in Law if we assert as
true material (=important) things that we know to be untrue, we are
guilty of a felony.

Thus I understand the Newtonian model of gravity. I understand its
limits - it gives an excellent approximation for a lot of use-cases, but
fails to match experimental evidence and observation in others. I don\'t
understand general relativity - I have not studied it enough, though I
do understand some parts of it. However, I understand that it is the
current best model we have for gravity, I understand that it too has its
limitations and open questions, and that theoretical physicists are
investigating alternatives or modifications. (Science progresses.)

I don\'t see where \"belief\" fits in there. I don\'t \"believe\" in
relativity - I /understand/ that it is the current best theory of
gravity. When someone figures out a theory that fits the evidence
better, I\'ll try to understand that (or more likely, settle for
understanding that others understand it).

Belief can be left for the parts for which we - as a community - have no
understanding. Will the next big theory of gravity be based on string
theory, modified Newtonian gravity, dark energy, or something else? I
can belief modified Newtonian gravity makes more sense and is the likely
candidate, but it is inevitably speculation. Once there is scientific
understanding, there are quantitative measurements and predictions, and
belief is not necessary.

That\'s a lot of hairsplitting to avoid a standard, well-understood
word.

Ultimately one judges which theories one feels are most likely
correct. One can describe this as belief in those theories, or choose
an equivalent term.

Identifying what someone else believes or understands is always
speculative, especially in a medium like Usenet where posts don\'t give
the full picture.

One traditional approach is simply to ask, and then listen.

I think I would settle for helping Larkin understand the current modern
theories of evolution, and enough of the biology involved for him to see
that some of his ideas do not remotely fit the evidence or have any
feasible way of working.

Do we know that Larkin does not know this (regardless of belief or its
lack)?

You are talking past one another.


You are probably right.

I believe so. QED.


Joe Gwinn

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Sunday, February 6, 2022 at 12:00:05 PM UTC+11, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Sat, 5 Feb 2022 14:54:31 +0100, David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
On 04/02/2022 18:20, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 4 Feb 2022 09:25:41 +0100, David Brown

<snip>

> One traditional approach is simply to ask, and then listen.

There\'s not a lot pf point in asking John Larkin or Flyguy. They tend to repeat what they said before without any useful clarification of what they had in mind (not that Flyguy seems to have enough mind to accommodate anything more complicated than the ideas he cuts and pastes).

I think I would settle for helping Larkin understand the current modern
theories of evolution, and enough of the biology involved for him to see
that some of his ideas do not remotely fit the evidence or have any
feasible way of working.

Do we know that Larkin does not know this (regardless of belief or its
lack)?

It is difficult to imagine that he does. Somebody as vain as he is wouldn\'t post such obvious nonsense if he realised that it was obvious nonsense.

<snip>

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 05 Feb 2022 19:59:47 -0500, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
wrote:

On Sat, 5 Feb 2022 14:54:31 +0100, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 04/02/2022 18:20, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 4 Feb 2022 09:25:41 +0100, David Brown

I know /you/ understand this, but Larkin does not appear to. He thinks
evolution has targets and aims, and that it picks the best way to \"move
forward\". If you have other ways to help him understand, then that
would be great.

There is an unspoken assumption here, that to understand is to
believe, and to believe is to understand. This assumption is not
correct; believing and understanding are independent of one another.

The classic poster children for this are the now-discarded theories of
science. The were once both understood and believed. Then, the
replacement theory came along, and the displaced theory was still
understood, but no longer believed. Except by a few die-hards.

And lots of theories were believed before they were understood, and no
longer believed once they were understood.


That is an interesting and useful distinction.

Thanks.


However, you should also include an understanding of the limits of a
scientific theory, and an understanding of the limits of the scientific
process (i.e., everything is \"to the limits of our current knowledge,
based on the evidence we currently have\" and subject to being proven
wrong or inaccurate by new evidence in the future). You must also
include an understanding of your own personal limits to understanding -
while appreciating that others understand it.

While generally true, this sounds awfully clumsy to be saying that
after each and every sentence. And the audience will soon wander off.


Then there is no need for \"believe\" to be involved.

Really? We don\'t generally assert something as true unless we believe
that thing to be true. Or more to the point, in Law if we assert as
true material (=important) things that we know to be untrue, we are
guilty of a felony.


Thus I understand the Newtonian model of gravity. I understand its
limits - it gives an excellent approximation for a lot of use-cases, but
fails to match experimental evidence and observation in others. I don\'t
understand general relativity - I have not studied it enough, though I
do understand some parts of it. However, I understand that it is the
current best model we have for gravity, I understand that it too has its
limitations and open questions, and that theoretical physicists are
investigating alternatives or modifications. (Science progresses.)

I don\'t see where \"belief\" fits in there. I don\'t \"believe\" in
relativity - I /understand/ that it is the current best theory of
gravity. When someone figures out a theory that fits the evidence
better, I\'ll try to understand that (or more likely, settle for
understanding that others understand it).

Belief can be left for the parts for which we - as a community - have no
understanding. Will the next big theory of gravity be based on string
theory, modified Newtonian gravity, dark energy, or something else? I
can belief modified Newtonian gravity makes more sense and is the likely
candidate, but it is inevitably speculation. Once there is scientific
understanding, there are quantitative measurements and predictions, and
belief is not necessary.

That\'s a lot of hairsplitting to avoid a standard, well-understood
word.

Ultimately one judges which theories one feels are most likely
correct. One can describe this as belief in those theories, or choose
an equivalent term.


Identifying what someone else believes or understands is always
speculative, especially in a medium like Usenet where posts don\'t give
the full picture.

One traditional approach is simply to ask, and then listen.


I think I would settle for helping Larkin understand the current modern
theories of evolution, and enough of the biology involved for him to see
that some of his ideas do not remotely fit the evidence or have any
feasible way of working.

Do we know that Larkin does not know this (regardless of belief or its
lack)?


You are talking past one another.


You are probably right.

I believe so. QED.


Joe Gwinn

Some people are in the possibilities business. Some are in the
impossibilities business.

Until we understand everything, things are still possible.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc trk

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
\"Bunter\", he said, \"I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason\"

 

[whit3rd]

On Saturday, February 5, 2022 at 5:00:05 PM UTC-8, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Sat, 5 Feb 2022 14:54:31 +0100, David Brown
david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 04/02/2022 18:20, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 4 Feb 2022 09:25:41 +0100, David Brown

I know /you/ understand this, but Larkin does not appear to. He thinks
evolution has targets and aims, and that it picks the best way to \"move
forward\". If you have other ways to help him understand, then that
would be great.

There is an unspoken assumption here, that to understand is to
believe, and to believe is to understand. This assumption is not
correct; believing and understanding are independent of one another.

The classic poster children for this are the now-discarded theories of
science. The were once both understood and believed. Then, the
replacement theory came along, and the displaced theory was still
understood, but no longer believed. Except by a few die-hards.

And lots of theories were believed before they were understood, and no
longer believed once they were understood.


That is an interesting and useful distinction.
Thanks.
However, you should also include an understanding of the limits of a
scientific theory, and an understanding of the limits of the scientific
process (i.e., everything is \"to the limits of our current knowledge,
based on the evidence we currently have\" and subject to being proven
wrong or inaccurate by new evidence in the future).

Then there is no need for \"believe\" to be involved.

Really? We don\'t generally assert something as true unless we believe
that thing to be true.

. Once there is scientific
understanding, there are quantitative measurements and predictions, and
belief is not necessary.
That\'s a lot of hairsplitting to avoid a standard, well-understood
word.

Not well-understood at all, but a loaded word which will trigger
outrage and/or religious terms like \'dogma\'. The word has
ambiguities built in, and there\'s no way to defuse it.

It\'s loaded, like a loaded cigar: it explodes.

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Sunday, February 6, 2022 at 12:50:17 PM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 05 Feb 2022 19:59:47 -0500, Joe Gwinn <joeg...@comcast.net> wrote:
On Sat, 5 Feb 2022 14:54:31 +0100, David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
On 04/02/2022 18:20, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 4 Feb 2022 09:25:41 +0100, David Brown

<snip>

Some people are in the possibilities business. Some are in the impossibilities business.

Until we understand everything, things are still possible.

John Larkin doesn\'t understand much, and thinks that a whole lot of impossible things are still possible.
He thinks that it worthwhile to expose his ignorance on a regular basis, and feels hurt when he is reminded that it makes him look foolish.

Just for the record, it is impossible that global warming isn\'t happening right now. It is possible - in fact obviously true - that people who make a lot of money out of digging up fossil carbon and selling it as fuel don\'t want people to believe this, and will lie to gullible twits about it. It\'s entirely possible - in fact obviously true - that John Larkin is one of those gullible twits.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, February 5, 2022 at 10:17:14 PM UTC-5, whit3rd wrote:

On Saturday, February 5, 2022 at 5:00:05 PM UTC-8, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Sat, 5 Feb 2022 14:54:31 +0100, David Brown
However, you should also include an understanding of the limits of a
scientific theory, and an understanding of the limits of the scientific
process (i.e., everything is \"to the limits of our current knowledge,
based on the evidence we currently have\" and subject to being proven
wrong or inaccurate by new evidence in the future).
Then there is no need for \"believe\" to be involved.

Really? We don\'t generally assert something as true unless we believe
that thing to be true.
. Once there is scientific
understanding, there are quantitative measurements and predictions, and
belief is not necessary.
That\'s a lot of hairsplitting to avoid a standard, well-understood
word.
Not well-understood at all, but a loaded word which will trigger
outrage and/or religious terms like \'dogma\'. The word has
ambiguities built in, and there\'s no way to defuse it.

It\'s loaded, like a loaded cigar: it explodes.

The fallacy in this logic is the assumption that for any given matter, science has enough information to actually \"understand\" the matter or to make accurate predictions.

I have come to realize for some time that there actually is virtually nothing that is hard, solid logical science, but rather that there is always some amount of \"belief\" or emotion involved. Scientists tie their emotions to logic, so when they think they are evaluating logically, they are actually evaluating by emotion that is tied to logic. So, when the logic is not quite rock solid and there is any degree of interpretation, the illogical aspect of emotion can leak in and corrupt the science.

Even Einstein said he didn\'t believe quantum mechanics because, \"God doesn\'t play dice with the universe\". That was pure emotion and no logic at all.

Of course this can be used inappropriately to refute every part of science by those who have ulterior motives. That has nothing to do with science other than the fact that it is a weakness of science, that it can be attacked as untrue because it is not perfect.

When it comes to judging perfection, who will cast the first stone?

--

Rick C.

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[Anthony William Sloman]

On Sunday, February 6, 2022 at 5:07:18 PM UTC+11, gnuarm.del...@gmail.com wrote:

On Saturday, February 5, 2022 at 10:17:14 PM UTC-5, whit3rd wrote:
On Saturday, February 5, 2022 at 5:00:05 PM UTC-8, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Sat, 5 Feb 2022 14:54:31 +0100, David Brown
However, you should also include an understanding of the limits of a
scientific theory, and an understanding of the limits of the scientific
process (i.e., everything is \"to the limits of our current knowledge,
based on the evidence we currently have\" and subject to being proven
wrong or inaccurate by new evidence in the future).
Then there is no need for \"believe\" to be involved.

Really? We don\'t generally assert something as true unless we believe
that thing to be true.
. Once there is scientific
understanding, there are quantitative measurements and predictions, and
belief is not necessary.
That\'s a lot of hairsplitting to avoid a standard, well-understood
word.
Not well-understood at all, but a loaded word which will trigger
outrage and/or religious terms like \'dogma\'. The word has
ambiguities built in, and there\'s no way to defuse it.

It\'s loaded, like a loaded cigar: it explodes.

The fallacy in this logic is the assumption that for any given matter, science has enough information to actually \"understand\" the matter or to make accurate predictions.

\"Understanding\" is always incomplete. There\'s always a more detail explanation which we lack the time (and usually the sufficiently finely detailed information) to fill out.

Making sufficiently accurate predictions is less demanding, and there are lots of situations where current science is quite good enough to let us do that

> I have come to realize for some time that there actually is virtually nothing that is hard, solid logical science, but rather that there is always some amount of \"belief\" or emotion involved. Scientists tie their emotions to logic, so when they think they are evaluating logically, they are actually evaluating by emotion that is tied to logic.

What on earth would make you think that?

> So, when the logic is not quite rock solid and there is any degree of interpretation, the illogical aspect of emotion can leak in and corrupt the science.

It\'s a risk, but people are aware of it. Stephen Jay Gould wrote a whole book on particularly emotionally charged subject.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man

> Even Einstein said he didn\'t believe quantum mechanics because, \"God doesn\'t play dice with the universe\". That was pure emotion and no logic at all..

And nobody took him seriously. He wasn\'t speaking as a scientist at the time, but rather expressing an aesthetic reservation

> Of course this can be used inappropriately to refute every part of science by those who have ulterior motives. That has nothing to do with science other than the fact that it is a weakness of science, that it can be attacked as untrue because it is not perfect.

The fact that science isn\'t perfect - we always expect to be able to get more subtle and detailed explanations that work more accurately over a broader range of observations - isn\'t a weakness , but rather it\'s central strength.

> When it comes to judging perfection, who will cast the first stone?

Science isn\'t about judging perfection - which we know we can\'t attain - but rather about judging how close we\'ve got to perfection so far, and how we can get closer.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Martin Brown]

On 06/02/2022 06:07, Rick C wrote:

On Saturday, February 5, 2022 at 10:17:14 PM UTC-5, whit3rd wrote:
On Saturday, February 5, 2022 at 5:00:05 PM UTC-8, Joe Gwinn
wrote:
On Sat, 5 Feb 2022 14:54:31 +0100, David Brown
However, you should also include an understanding of the limits
of a scientific theory, and an understanding of the limits of
the scientific process (i.e., everything is \"to the limits of
our current knowledge, based on the evidence we currently have\"
and subject to being proven wrong or inaccurate by new evidence
in the future). Then there is no need for \"believe\" to be
involved.

Really? We don\'t generally assert something as true unless we
believe that thing to be true.

That depends. Newtonian dynamics are known to be now quite right but
they are routinely taught as true up until degree level physics. In
normal daily life we never experience anything where relativistic
effects or general relativity affects the outcome.

. Once there is scientific understanding, there are
quantitative measurements and predictions, and belief is not
necessary.
That\'s a lot of hairsplitting to avoid a standard,
well-understood word.
Not well-understood at all, but a loaded word which will trigger
outrage and/or religious terms like \'dogma\'. The word has
ambiguities built in, and there\'s no way to defuse it.

It\'s loaded, like a loaded cigar: it explodes.

The fallacy in this logic is the assumption that for any given
matter, science has enough information to actually \"understand\" the
matter or to make accurate predictions.

Science does know when it is close to the edge and bordering on
speculation. The fundamental thing about a scientific theory is that it
makes testable predictions which can be tested experimentally.

It only takes one good reproducible experiment to refute a scientific
theory completely and start again from the drawing board.

I have come to realize for some time that there actually is virtually
nothing that is hard, solid logical science, but rather that there is
always some amount of \"belief\" or emotion involved. Scientists tie
their emotions to logic, so when they think they are evaluating
logically, they are actually evaluating by emotion that is tied to
logic. So, when the logic is not quite rock solid and there is any
degree of interpretation, the illogical aspect of emotion can leak in
and corrupt the science.

There can be some pretty big egos involved. The most recent major big
bun fight was Fred Hoyle\'s Steady State Cosmology vs Martin Ryles radio
galaxy observations and Stephen Hawking over Einstein-Lemaitre \"Big
Bang\" theory.

\"Big Bang\" Cosmology was a disparaging name Hoyle coined for it.

Prior to that there was Leibniz vs Newton and Hooke vs Newton. Newton\'s
acolytes had a habit of airbrushing out the achievements of his rivals.
Thank your deity of choice we mainly use Leibniz notation today rather
than the arcane fluxions.

Even Einstein said he didn\'t believe quantum mechanics because, \"God
doesn\'t play dice with the universe\". That was pure emotion and no
logic at all.

He was saying something intended to resonate with the public. The best
description of QM now suggests not only does he play dice he does it in
such a way that we can never hope to see them. Making any measurement
always disturbs a quantum system.

Of course this can be used inappropriately to refute every part of
science by those who have ulterior motives. That has nothing to do
with science other than the fact that it is a weakness of science,
that it can be attacked as untrue because it is not perfect.

Science is always striving to make a better and more accurate model of
how the universe behaves by formulating theories and testing them.

When new data comes along science alters its theories to accommodate the
new information. It still includes all previous theories as weak field
limits of the more complete complex one.

The old theories are still plenty good enough for ordinary use.

> When it comes to judging perfection, who will cast the first stone?

Speed of light in a vacuum being a universal constant isn\'t a bad one.

When Maxwell\'s first derived this result from his electromagnetism
equations it seemed very odd but it turned out he was right all along
and he obtained that clear and unexpected result in 1865 well before
Lorentz ether and Einstein\'s relativity at the turn of the century.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown