The Darwin Spin Off

[Arielle Popstar]

1 hour ago, Rowan Amore said:

It's sort of like citing a dubious website with a myriad of useless numbers that some unknown person or persons has correlated into a graph to use as your basis for what are facts?

Is it like that?

No, it is more like the haughty fanboys/girls who kneejerk reject any science that is not published on their list of approved journals rather then because of the actual science, seemingly unaware that science has a long list of theories that though initially rejected wound up becoming mainstream after all the critics finally passed away. What a sad testament to the advancement of science.

[Rowan Amore]

Not really a good explanation but ok.

[Ceka Cianci]

I like to Science stuffs sometimes when I'm bored and at work..

Tonight, when I'm getting lots of extra money for working a holiday, I'm gonna science the hell out of stuff, juss for the heck of it..

hehehe

[Madelaine McMasters]

19 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Dumping a barely intelligible paper about a new statistical method for determining the age of the last common ancestor, is supposed to be convincing somehow? That's not the world of grown ups but the world of haughty scientists thinking everyone should be able to understand the jargon and high level maths that they use every day. Perhaps if they understood it as well as they pretend they would be able to explain it in layman terms. Is it really any wonder that those of us whose career paths don't require the use of those, just roll up our eyes and just resort to believing God did it?

Sometimes a thing can't be explained in layman's terms because laymen don't have the knowledge framework upon which to rest an explanation...

That doesn't make the explainer haughty, that's just the way it is.

In the face of the world's accumulated knowledge, I'm pretty much a layman. My skepticism for easy answers like "God did it" doesn't arise from my inability to understand the complexity of the physical world, but from my ability to recognize and understand the frailties of my own cognition and reasoning.

I grew up in a family of storytellers, who involved me in the storytelling from a very early age. Most of the stuffed animals of my childhood were hand puppets. I often expressed myself through them. While my childhood friends were running around believing in the Easter Bunny and Christmas elves, I was being them. I could never understand my friends' fears of the dark, a world inhabited by monsters that loved Snickers bars and ghosts who baked chocolate chip cookies for me. I think those early experiences inoculated me with a sense of agency.

Ideas are powerful, infectious things and we love to believe them. I marveled at the way my friends approached Ouija. I noticed their fingertips flattened against the planchette as they pressed, ever so slightly, to move it to the next letter while my mind raced to find the most absurd answer towards which I might steer with my own fingers. While they were marveling at the forces from beyond that were guiding the planchette (but apparently not their flattening fingertips), I was marveling at the forces from within me, the same forces that made my mind race when improvising with my puppets in "plays" with mom and dad and urged me to hide my machinations from my friends. I am nefarious, you know.

I once convinced a woman (our town's historian, during a "Ghost tour" she gave over halloween) I had a useless superpower. It started with the spooky feeling I'd get from seeing things nobody else did, a feeling I effortlessly nurtured by imagining I caused them. I shared my budding superpower with friends, and ultimately spooked the hell out of them with demonstrations. The woman gobbled up my supernatural story and then promptly rejected my rational and natural explanation for it all, culminating with DIY vision testing at home that revealed I have a very high "flicker fusion threshold". The historian's disbelief in my natural explanation ("Oh sweetie, you have a gift, don't deny it.") was an alarming demonstration of our propensity to believe nonsense if it fits our world view.

My skepticism for supernatural explanations stems more from 50+ years of personal experience with cause and effect feelings bubbling up from my own subconscious, and my observations of the same thing happening in others. I've yet to have a feeling that couldn't be explained by discovering something new and wonderful about how the world, or my mind, actually works. I am, at once, a wide eyed child wondering about the strange feelings I get from interacting with the world and a "haughty" scientist, patting that intuition on the head as I put "Explain that!" on my to-do list.

I try not to "resort to believing" when I don't understand something. Instead, I resort to my favorite three word phrase, which rarely appears in online lists of "best three word quotes"...

"I don't know."

[Love Zhaoying]

49 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

"I don't know."

Explainer: *long technical scientific jargon*

Seeker: I don't know what any of that means. 

Explainer: The only other way to explain it is, "I don't know."

Seeker: Why didn't you say that in the first place?

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by Love Zhaoying
Spacing

[Madelaine McMasters]

50 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Explainer: *long technical scientific jargon*
Seeker: I don't know what any of that means. 
Explainer: The only other way to explain it is, "I don't know."

Seeker: Why didn't you say that in the first place?

Some people are uncomfortable with not knowing. Some of us are excited by it.

As a bit of an aside, one of my cousins is retiring from nursing with her belief in human rational thought teetering on the precipice after a year on the Covid front lines. She's witnessed people, isolated in their ICU rooms, denying that Covid is killing them while their loved ones call and harass the nursing station, declaring that forcing them to wear masks inside the hospital is infringing their rights.

This very same cousin once told me that trans people don't really exist.

"There are boys and girls, period."

I asked her how she knew.

"There are boy chromosomes and girl chromosomes".

That, of course, isn't true. Females and males have X chromosomes, males also have Y. There are also XX males, XXY males and XO females. Nothing survives without an X chromosome, which triggers female development.

I asked her if she'd ever seen newborns with ambiguous genitalia?

"Yes, doctors can fix that".

I asked her if it seemed reasonable that, given the clear evidence that sexual reproduction can produce all manner of variations in genitalia, and other structures, it might produce variations in brains (those things our bodies carry around for a lifetime).

"Yes, of course."

I then asked if such variations might produce brains that harbor variations in self image that may or may not align with physical variations apparent in the body?

"I suppose so."

Well then, does it seem proper for physicians to "fix" ambiguous genitalia on a body that's housing a brain that hasn't yet been given an opportunity to assess its compatibility with the body it's in?

"No, there are only boys and girls, period.".

So there you have it, a person who exhibits precisely the kind of thinking she decries elsewhere.

I don't want to be that person.

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by Madelaine McMasters

[Madelaine McMasters]

23 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Explainer: *long technical scientific jargon*

Seeker: I don't know what any of that means. 

Explainer: The only other way to explain it is, "I don't know."

Seeker: Why didn't you say that in the first place?

This is a form of "You can't get there from here."

We use it jokingly, but it's often true.

[Love Zhaoying]

23 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

This is a form of "You can't get there from here."

We use it jokingly, but it's often true.

The punchline to one is, "I may be dumb, but I'm not the one who is lost!"

[Love Zhaoying]

26 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

"No, there are only boys and girls, period.".

So there you have it, a person who exhibits precisely the kind of thinking she decries elsewhere.

I don't want to be that person.

 

Once they get to know a Trans person, they may well come around. (It's been the same for the LGBTQI spectrum.)

[Luna Bliss]

I believe atheists are deserving of a kind of protected status in the U.S., similar to the way in which we foster awareness of other disadvantaged groups in society and attempt to create justice for them.

There seems to be a massive confusion about what 'belief in God' entails -- the fundamentalist Christians think they are better people for believing in a God. However you can pick whatever attributes you imagine denotes 'goodness' in a person and you will find believers in a God are no more 'good' than atheists (psychological tests reveal).

It's bizarre that an atheist would not be able to hold a high public office if their atheist status was revealed (according to U.S. polls).

I can't say I understand anyone who labels themselves an atheist, because it's peculiar to call oneself a 'not something'. I can't think of very many words off the top of my head that assign meaning this way -- describing oneself as a 'not something' -- other than 'teetotaler' to denote someone who doesn't drink.
I do understand the need for labeling in a way though, as I imagine atheists feel oppressed by society and so feel compelled to position themselves against the prevailing beliefs.

@Arielle Popstar   I've known quite a few 'good' atheists personally. Perhaps you've encountered what is known as The New Atheists, Scientists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett and their followers who can be quite arrogant and condescending (when the true stance of Science is much more humble and its aim is to be open to change as more knowledge becomes available). When a Scientist becomes too confident and set in their ways this is one of the signs of Scientism, and is as fundamentalist as fundamentalist Christianity. In other words, when a Scientist proclaims that Science proves their atheism this can't be true -- atheism is simply a belief and has not been proven. 

Edited April 1, 2021 by Luna Bliss

[Love Zhaoying]

4 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

I'm gonna science the hell out of stuff, juss for the heck of it..

There's a song about it! 
 

 

[Evah Baxton]

5 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

It's bizarre that an atheist would not be able to hold a high public office if their atheist status was revealed (according to U.S. polls).

It's scary stuff.

Imagine believing that god gave free will to choose right from wrong and the "right" choice is to end all choices by creating some kind of state religion / theocracy where you get judged and punished by other not-gods for your choices.

That's a person I don't want anywhere near the reigns of power.

 

21 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

When a Scientist becomes too confident and set in their ways this is known as Scientism, and is as fundamentalist as fundamentalist Christianity.

As well as that person.

[FairreLilette]

6 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I try not to "resort to believing" when I don't understand something. Instead, I resort to my favorite three word phrase, which rarely appears in online lists of "best three word quotes"...

"I don't know."

This is not in total connection with your whole post, but something I've become keenly aware of lately due to my having to take mild Opioids for pain is that the sub-conscious mind and tapping into that are way over-rated.   For two nights I had the strangest dreams about my ex husband and I was perplexed a little.  Then, as I began to awake out of my sleep and remember these odd dreams that were never going to happen that much of what comes out of the subconscious mind is utter drivel.  My conscious mind is me, me, the real me.  All that mind-expansion peoples have talked about for decades within the drug cultural it's a complete and utter waste of time.  The dreams I have experienced are so bizarre that they are never going to happen and to me the sub-conscious mind is like a tape warping on a sunny day.  I've concluded, if one relies on the sub-conscious mind in order to try to know a person better or let's say psychology here may want to know a person better, it's useless to the person and to who they are and further utterly useless to humanity - all that's in there is a bunch of warped tape and as a matter of complete and total fact, has nothing whatsoever to do with me and who I am - utter drivel.   I do think doctor's should not put so much emphasis on this odd part of our mind, and that I've almost concluded for a fact and I do know.  This is not my first time with pain killers and not my first time with absolute nonsense dreams.  I also believe many in this "recreational" drug culture (which is illegal drugs) are not expanding their mind but causing brain damage which can lead to other organ damage.  

Edited April 1, 2021 by FairreLilette

[Evah Baxton]

23 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

utter drivel

Could be.

Take the AI test where you put a bunch of cars on a track and let them learn the track one race (generation) at a time. Only one vehicle wins per race and it is used as the template for the next generation.

Going line by line through all those learned experiences would look like utter drivel especially when you add to the same system the ability for the cars to talk, react to each other, find food, create social structures, feel happiness & pain ... 

In my opinion, you are the sum of your utter drivel. 

[FairreLilette]

1 minute ago, Evah Baxton said:

In my opinion, you are the sum of your utter drivel. 

No.  These dreams, I'm telling you, you'd have to give me billions of dollars for those to ever, ever happen with my ex husband.  It's just not gonna happen.  lol  No.  

My Mom had an exact experience after spraining her foot and taking pain killers.  She told me she had all these "weird dreams" and it was horrible.  

There isn't anything in there that's noteworthy and it isn't the real me, so far from it after I've experienced these pain killer type dreams also.  

[Evah Baxton]

4 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

These dreams, I'm telling you, you'd have to give me billions of dollars for those to ever, ever happen ...

Then what if dreams are just the random samplings (grouped and observed by sense) of all the information stored in the brain? Including current life experiences & the valuable survival information from previous generations?

They probably are drivel, you are probably right (of course, certainly right for you.)

Your post just struck me as an interesting take and I played Devil's advocate for a moment.

[FairreLilette]

19 minutes ago, Evah Baxton said:

all the information stored in the brain? 

The thing is, I never ever thought this thought consciously re: my ex and I'd probably venture to say probably everyone who has ever logged into Second Life through it's history has probably never thought this thought nor would anyone want it - it is that bizarre and ridiculous.  But, it was a series of weird dreams over the course of two nights and what my Mom experienced that really got me to realizing the beauty and the elegance is in the conscious mind.   What I also have heard of is schools of thought where certain scientists believe they can/could tap into the sub-conscious mind through drugs although it was a 20th Century phenomenon but, after my experience coupled with my Mom's, I think there is nothing in there but odd fragments of not much and also that their theory was a load of crap.  It probably wasn't mind-expansion at all, but probably brain damage.  

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I'm probably going to regret getting involved, but here we go.

To put it simply, living organisms reproduce themselves.   The second law of thermodynamics tell us that they will be subject to a degree of random change (mutation) during the process.     

Over time, some of these mutations, either on their own or in combination with others, will prove more successful at reproducing themselves than do organisms that lack these minor genetic alterations.   

The more successful the organisms that carry these mutations are at reproducing themselves, the more of them there will be, and the strain carrying the mutations will be more successful at reproducing itself, until it isn't for whatever reason.

That's evolution -- it's fundamental to the way the universe behaves.

Whether some divine power ordered the universe in this way, or if that's just the way the laws of physics are, or whether we could know anything about such a power or it's as unknowable as the inside of a black hole,   is another question, but those are matters of faith and belief, not scientific knowledge.

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by Innula Zenovka

[Luna Bliss]

4 hours ago, Evah Baxton said:

6 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

It's bizarre that an atheist would not be able to hold a high public office if their atheist status was revealed (according to U.S. polls).

It's scary stuff.

Imagine believing that god gave free will to choose right from wrong and the "right" choice is to end all choices by creating some kind of state religion / theocracy where you get judged and punished by other not-gods for your choices.

That's a person I don't want anywhere near the reigns of power.

For sure...they should be off in their church and not in Congress. Unfortunately, there's a bunch of them in Congress!!

https://theconversation.com/fundamentalism-turns-100-a-landmark-for-the-christian-right-123651

[Luna Bliss]

42 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

The thing is, I never ever thought this thought consciously re: my ex and I'd probably venture to say probably everyone who has ever logged into Second Life through it's history has probably never thought this thought nor would anyone want it - it is that bizarre and ridiculous.

OMG Fairre what did you do with your ex in that dream???!!! lol 😉

[Madelaine McMasters]

1 hour ago, FairreLilette said:

This is not in total connection with your whole post, but something I've become keenly aware of lately due to my having to take mild Opioids for pain is that the sub-conscious mind and tapping into that are way over-rated.   For two nights I had the strangest dreams about my ex husband and I was perplexed a little.  Then, as I began to awake out of my sleep and remember these odd dreams that were never going to happen that much of what comes out of the subconscious mind is utter drivel.  My conscious mind is me, me, the real me.  All that mind-expansion peoples have talked about for decades within the drug cultural it's a complete and utter waste of time.  The dreams I have experienced are so bizarre that they are never going to happen and to me the sub-conscious mind is like a tape warping on a sunny day.  I've concluded, if one relies on the sub-conscious mind in order to try to know a person better or let's say psychology here may want to know a person better, it's useless to the person and to who they are and further utterly unless to humanity - all that's in there is a bunch of warped tape and as a matter of complete and total fact, has nothing whatsoever to do with me and who I am.   I do think doctor's should not put so much emphasis on this odd part of our mind, and that I've almost concluded for a fact and I do know.  This is not my first time with pain killers and not my first time with absolute nonsense dreams.  I also believe many in this "recreational" drug culture (which is illegal drugs) are not expanding their mind but causing brain damage which can lead to other organ damage.  

I've told the story here of setting a notepad on my nightstand so I could capture the amazing ideas that wake me during the night but are forgotten by morning. I gave that up quickly because the notes were always utter nonsense.

Yet I do NOT ascribe to the notion that my conscious mind is the real me. I am the sum-total of all my parts. My subconscious is always working, thank goodness. I haven't the conscious mental capacity to handle all the sensory information coming my way throughout the day, nor for the rapid fire decision making that must occur to navigate it. I trust my subconscious to spot danger quickly, but with the realization it might assess danger incorrectly and steer me away from opportunities. Bias works subconsciously. People can claim they have no biases, yet failing miserably on any number of bias tests. They don't know that their subconscious is steering them in ways that might be ultimately disadvantageous for themselves and others.

Regarding recreational drugs, I'm fascinated by psychedelics such as psilocybin and their potential to cause lasting psychological change after only one dose. I look forward to continued research, even though the drugs are still banned by the US Government. After 60 years, researchers are picking up where Timothy Leary left off in Marsh Chapel Experiment, and seeing potential for treatment of anxiety, PTSD and other mental disorders. Most curiously, many people who've experimented with psilocybin report spiritual awakenings similar to those who've experienced religious conversion or done meditation. That's just fascinating.

[Luna Bliss]

2 hours ago, FairreLilette said:

The dreams I have experienced are so bizarre that they are never going to happen and to me the sub-conscious mind is like a tape warping on a sunny day.  I've concluded, if one relies on the sub-conscious mind in order to try to know a person better or let's say psychology here may want to know a person better, it's useless to the person and to who they are and further utterly useless to humanity - all that's in there is a bunch of warped tape and as a matter of complete and total fact, has nothing whatsoever to do with me and who I am - utter drivel.   I do think doctor's should not put so much emphasis on this odd part of our mind

Well, hard to say about drugs...I suspect they aren't always useful in the discovery of the Self much of the time, especially if taken randomly and recreationally and without an appropriate setting to evoke anything constructive.

But dreams operate in symbols and it can be useful to examine their meaning. So say you were doing some strange thing with a person, something really wild -- perhaps it could symbolize a relationship that was too static and finally in your dream you were able to be more risky. So you could take this information and have the realization that you were playing it a little too safe in that particular relationship. * Not saying this is the case for you -- I'm only providing a general example.

It takes a lot of examination to discover what your symbols would mean for you, as they're specific to each person and their situation. It helps to write down dreams upon awakening, and even to focus intention on getting clarification for the symbols in your dreams (ask your dreams to tell you the meaning of your symbols each night before sleep).

Edited April 2, 2021 by Luna Bliss

[Madelaine McMasters]

24 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

Whether some divine power ordered the universe in this way, or if that's just the way the laws of physics are, or whether we could know anything about such a power or it's as unknowable as the inside of a black hole,   is another question, but those are matters of faith and belief, not scientific knowledge.

I admit that Heisenberg and others seem to have doomed us to vast unknowables, but I wonder if Werner would have allowed for  uncertainty in his famous uncertainty.

Feynman seems to allow for the possibility of an "answer to everything"...

 

Edited April 2, 2021 by Madelaine McMasters

[Innula Zenovka]

26 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I admit that Heisenberg and others seem to have doomed us to vast unknowables, but I wonder if Werner would have allowed for  uncertainty in his famous uncertainty.

Feynman seems to allow for the possibility of an "answer to everything"...

 

I was thinking more of the impossibility of knowing, or even being able to think about, something outside the physical universe.

It's like trying imagine what colours look like that are not part of the visible spectrum to us.    We just don't have the conceptual equipment, even though we know they're there.    Something that's not even subject to the same basic laws of physics as I am is so beyond my comprehension that I can't begin to think about it.  

 

[FairreLilette]

1 hour ago, Luna Bliss said:

Well, hard to say about drugs...I suspect they aren't always useful in the discovery of the Self much of the time, especially if taken randomly and recreationally and without an appropriate setting to evoke anything constructive.

I know they are not useful and my oldest sister told me recreational drugs are used by people to let down or get rid of sexual inhibitions.  That is the No.1 reason people take drugs and possibly drink; i.e. going out to the singles bar.

As far as dreams, I just need rest now after my COVID vaccine.   I just need to take a good rest although I am feeling better than I was.   Hope your kitty is better.