Memes: Protoscience or Pseudoscience?

[articulett]

OK, hammy, if you want your meat ground too, I guess I'll accommodate you for once.

It's not pre-ordained. It's inevitable. It's obvious you don't understand the difference.

Nope. Nor the weak one. Life is life. If the conditions are right, given enough time it will happen. It's an inevitable consequence of having the right chemicals at the place where the energy is flowing. You know, like having ammonia, water, methane, and CO2 inside the "life ring" around a star. Kinda like in our Solar System, here- which seems to be exactly the same, at least in those ways, as about ten billion more solar systems in our galaxy, and pretty much all galaxies for that matter. That would be a basically uncountable number, considering Hubble found 10,000 galaxies in a piece of sky the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length- and it wasn't a particularly special piece of sky, either.

It's my opinion that people like you cannot imagine just how big it is out there in the universe, or how incredibly, unimaginably, absolutely insignificant in both space and time your existence is. Or if you can, then it scares you so badly that you abandon reason and make up stories about how you're special and jebus loves you. But if you can't imagine how big it is, you're in good company; I sat last year, amazed, listening to an idiot complain we were "polluting space." I must have laughed for ten minutes, and every time I think of it, I at least chuckle. This guy can't imagine that space isn't someplace like, you know, maybe the Mojave Desert, or New York, or something. It's right over there, you know? And we're polluting it. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Makes one wanna pull the guy aside and sit him down and say, "Listen, dumbs**t..." Kinda like it makes me feel to talk to you, hammy.

No, it proposes a mechanism by which abiogenesis can occur. It requires that there be methane, ammonia, water, and CO2, and that there be enough energy flowing to cause amino acids to form. You know the Urey-Miller experiment you like to pretend either never happened, or doesn't mean anything? Like that. Only for a billion years. In the whole ocean.

You'll note that this process is PATENTED and that companies are MAKING MONEY USING IT. And it's probably the way life started, hammy. So don't tell ME it doesn't work like that; go tell the people buying the enzymes and saving peoples' lives with them. But be careful not to get too close, or threaten anyone, or they'll get the guys in the white suits to come and take you away again.

And the info. is only getting stronger: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/he...c29,0,6082318.story?coll=bal-health-headlines

And yes, memes are predictive. If you tell a kids that they will live happily ever after for believing a certain way and that they will suffer forever for doubting, then you will have even old and curmudgeonly adults believing really imbelievable things...moreso, if you tell them they will live even happier ever after by trying to convince others that their inane ideas are true. And these people will miss learning some of the coolest things humans have the privilege of knowing!--real true knowledge--stuff with ever-accumulating evidence behind it.

I always wonder what will happen to these people as the science gets clearer and clearer--do they just become impenetrably delusional? Will Hammy or Holzman ever realize that their big words don't protect them from being wrong? Do they want the truth--or to just keep thinking they have the truth already? It seems that when you are that entrenched in your beliefs, it is unlikely that you will ever ask yourself if you are wrong. So you just play semantic games. You'd think that amongst all these posts--one of them would have offered a tad of evidence for some of their many claims--but instead they tell themselves that us "skeptics" just "won't listen".

tsk

 

[hammegk]

wowbagger: Thanks for the rational response.

OK, hammy, if you want your meat ground too...

No, I was searching for a nugget of reality in your (too often usual) cloud of obfuscation.

It's not pre-ordained. It's inevitable. It's obvious you don't understand the difference.

I'd say designed vs. determined.

Nope. Nor the weak one. Life is life. If the conditions are right, given enough time it will happen. It's an inevitable consequence of having the right chemicals at the place where the energy is flowing. You know, like having ammonia, water, methane, and CO2 inside the "life ring" around a star. Kinda like in our Solar System, here- which seems to be exactly the same, at least in those ways, as about ten billion more solar systems in our galaxy, and pretty much all galaxies for that matter. That would be a basically uncountable number, considering Hubble found 10,000 galaxies in a piece of sky the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length- and it wasn't a particularly special piece of sky, either.

And you suggest this is due to factors not covered by Strong Anthopic Principle. What factors do you see operating?

It's my opinion that people like you cannot imagine just how big it is out there in the universe, or how incredibly, unimaginably, absolutely insignificant in both space and time your existence is.

I suspect you are wrong in general, and certainly wrong in my case.

Or if you can, then it scares you so badly that you abandon reason and make up stories about how you're special and jebus loves you.

In my case, wrong, again.

But if you can't imagine how big it is, you're in good company; I sat last year, amazed, listening to an idiot complain we were "polluting space." I must have laughed for ten minutes, and every time I think of it, I at least chuckle. This guy can't imagine that space isn't someplace like, you know, maybe the Mojave Desert, or New York, or something. It's right over there, you know? And we're polluting it. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Makes one wanna pull the guy aside and sit him down and say, "Listen, dumbs**t..." Kinda like it makes me feel to talk to you, hammy.

Equating my views to that position is something only a fool could manage.

No, it proposes a mechanism by which abiogenesis can occur. It requires that there be methane, ammonia, water, and CO2, and that there be enough energy flowing to cause amino acids to form. You know the Urey-Miller experiment you like to pretend either never happened, or doesn't mean anything? Like that. Only for a billion years. In the whole ocean.

At last! pre-abiogenesis! Thank you for the answer.

You'll note that this process is PATENTED and that companies are MAKING MONEY USING IT. And it's probably the way life started, hammy. So don't tell ME it doesn't work like that; go tell the people buying the enzymes and saving peoples' lives with them. But be careful not to get too close, or threaten anyone, or they'll get the guys in the white suits to come and take you away again.

If you think I reject science, you are wrong again.

I suspect our views agree at 99.99% or more.

 

[Schneibster]

No, I was searching for a nugget of reality in your (too often usual) cloud of obfuscation.

If you wanted something other than that, you should have started out on an entirely different path, a very very long time ago. If you want to claim that you're all sensible and rational now, after all that has gone before, I'm sorry but I'll believe it when I see it. I am stretching a point even reading what you wrote; you have managed other than this to avoid some of your insulting ways, although it's obvious you haven't given up on denial yet; I'll therefore go on with this, for the moment, unless or until you get nasty again. But keep in mind that the more times I try it and you hose me, the less likely it is that the next time will ever come again; and you'll note that there are people I have ignored for whom that time will never come.

Perhaps (like the GWDs are doing now, to their great chagrin, and I notice without ever actually apologizing for repeating the oil company lies that Exxon has now stopped funding because it's doing so much damage to their reputation, and everyone has figured it out, and they don't want to go to jail when they get subpoenaed to testify in front of Waxman's committee in the US Congress) you'll eventually wake up and figure out that you're not fooling anyone, and now is as good a time as any to guess you might actually have gotten some cognitive dissonance and started opening your eyes and blinking around at the real world.

I'd say designed vs. determined.

Based on what evidence? The book by the neolithic sheep herders? Sorry, not interested, and nobody with two brain cells to rub together is interested in anything neolithic sheep herders have to say either. If you have physical evidence, present it; please don't bother with the same-old-same-old claims that "irreducible complexity" or some other chimera justifies that it was designed, and that the fact it was designed proves it is irreducibly complex, again.

And you suggest this is due to factors not covered by Strong Anthopic Principle. What factors do you see operating?

I dunno, physics? Cosmology? You know, real, actual, scientific study of what's going on instead of blind belief (which, see my signature is proof not of faith, but of doubt) in the book by the neolithic sheep herders. Like that.

I suspect you are wrong in general, and certainly wrong in my case.

In my case, wrong, again.

Equating my views to that position is something only a fool could manage.

So you claim. The fact that you terminate with an insult shows that I came near the mark on at least one point; it is, however, nothing but speculation, as I freely admitted- stating it as my opinion.

At last! pre-abiogenesis! Thank you for the answer.

"Pre-abiogenesis?" "Pre-gobbledygook." The two have equal meaning. The processes by which the universe evolved into what we see now are well known, and evidence for them is sufficient that ten thousand scientists met last week to discuss that evidence, and those processes, in Seattle. It's called "The annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society."

If you think I reject science, you are wrong again.

No, I'm right- I've seen you do it. You cherry pick the things you like from it; but that has nothing to do with "accepting science." "Accepting science" means you accept it ALL; not part of it. You don't get to pick and choose which proven facts you'll accept and which you'll reject.

I suspect our views agree at 99.99% or more.

I suspect that the 0.001% that they disagree is the most vital 0.001% imaginable. You know, the part where you actually accept evidence instead of making up conspiracy theories about how all the scientists are lying because what they say doesn't agree with the book by the neolithic sheep herders.

 

[hammegk]

Perhaps (like the GWDs are doing now

Er, yes, evidence is incontrovertible that earth is in a warming trend. OK?

Based on what evidence? The book by the neolithic sheep herders?

Why the need to tar me with a YEC or even OEC label? As to myths, the Hindu versions resonate more with me.

I dunno, physics? Cosmology? You know, real, actual, scientific study of what's going on instead of blind belief (which, see my signature is proof not of faith, but of doubt) in the book by the neolithic sheep herders. Like that.

More tar, no facts.

"Pre-abiogenesis?" "Pre-gobbledygook."

Yet you do seem to have understood me.

No, I'm right- I've seen you do it. You cherry pick the things you like from it; but that has nothing to do with "accepting science." "Accepting science" means you accept it ALL; not part of it. You don't get to pick and choose which proven facts you'll accept and which you'll reject.

When anyone provides a fact I reject, my view changes to accept that fact. The line between fact and conjecture is too often not a clean one.

I suspect that the 0.001% that they disagree is the most vital 0.001% imaginable. You know, the part where you actually accept evidence instead of making up conspiracy theories about how all the scientists are lying because what they say doesn't agree with the book by the neolithic sheep herders.

99.999 is probably closer ...

Where have I suggested any scientific conspiracies?

BTW, the newer thread A Question on Abiogenesis, with an overview recently provided by smaxwell, may be a better place to continue this discussion.

 

[Schneibster]

Why the need to tar me with a YEC or even OEC label? As to myths, the Hindu versions resonate more with me.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. "Design" implies an agency doing the designing. As has been said a thousand times, prove the existence of such an agency, or admit that it is unscientific to maintain it exists.

More tar, no facts.

Cosmology is not a science, built on observations (i.e. facts)? See, this is why no one wants to argue with you, hammy; you don't answer the arguments, and you don't admit you were wrong. You just ignore what you don't like.

When anyone provides a fact I reject, my view changes to accept that fact. The line between fact and conjecture is too often not a clean one.

Hammy, if someone provides a fact that you don't like, you ignore it. The proof is above. And in the fact that you didn't respond to the meat of this statement, or the previous one either.

Where have I suggested any scientific conspiracies?

When you suggested that the "scientific establishment" (whatever the hell that might be) is suppressing publication of papers that disprove evolution.

 

[Schneibster]

BTW, the newer thread A Question on Abiogenesis, with an overview recently provided by smaxwell, may be a better place to continue this discussion.

smaxwell having been demolished by adding hydrogen to his hot air, thereby causing him to do an excellent imitation of the Hindenburg, perhaps you'd like to reconsider.

 

[Wowbagger]

(oops! Pasted in wrong thread, sorry!)

 

[articulett]

memories...

 

[Mangafranga]

memories...

memeories

 

[articulett]

memeories

punny

 

[plumjam]

I thought Memetics was the study of Turkish kebab shop owners.

 

[Complexity]

proto