24.7.07

open thread: evolution, Roger and homo sapiens sapiens

so over at Pharyngula i ended up in a bigass discussion with Roger the Creationist, who won't accept that evolution is a fact, and i offered to start up a debate here (since the original thread is from ages ago).

so, here is an open thread. i'm not expecting anything decent.

actually, pessimism being my premier mindset, i'm not expecting anyfuckingthing. i'm like the antithesis of Deepak Chopra.

Lepht

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, he's still sniping away over at Pharyngula. You showed remarkable patience with him.

Lepht said...

oh, he's not, is he? seriously, i'm not sure he can read at an adult level. thanks, though. i tend to always make the mistake of assuming everyone will listen to logical arguments, and it looks like i mighta made it there and all.

maybe i shouldn't have used the word "abiogenesis".

Lepht

Anonymous said...

There are some stupid ID'rs, don't count me with them.

Lepht said...

well, i can't agree that ID is anything like a reasonable or evidence-based scientific hypothesis, EP, but i think you'd have to take several years in clown college to get to Roger's level of stupid. i wouldn't worry if i were you.

Anonymous said...

Ohaha, that was an epic lol thread. Provided me with couple hours of entertainment.

Lepht said...

i know right. man, that boy was a whole new brand of stupid.

so are you guys reading the archives now or what? i thought they were like the forgotten vaults of Irem or something.

L

Anonymous said...

Nah, I just spotted your blog yesterday through an article in h+ magazine, got curious.

Lepht said...

huh, you keep the same hours as me i see. glad to know this backwater Googlehole has finally attracted some readers, anyway. i've been talking to air for like two years here.

L

Anonymous said...

Not exactly, i'm UTC -6, Central Standard Time. And the magnet implants was the thing that hooked me up first. I don't consider myself a hacker, but i do play around with hardware and software a lot and recently got interested in wetware/bioware too.

Lepht said...

ah, i see. i sit on the Greenwich line, but don't get to bed at reasonable hours. glad to know you're interested in wetware as well; anyone can do it, bro. just pick something you want and start wondering how you can develop it.

you working on anything cool?

L

Anonymous said...

Wetware-wise - not yet. But i like the idea of magnet implants where i want to start. Most that i can think of would be of controlling machinery around me and expanding senses. I am thinking about accelerometer implant in hand and some kind of wireless interface to replace mouse but not sure yet how to implement power supply.

Anonymous said...

That said, it's a long term project that'll take me years to finish with bunch of smaller that will be getting it closer to implementation.

Lepht said...

actually, a colleague of mine at the NBX project had a good idea for how to use my Nd-60s to control a mouse.

them little switches made of two foil pieces, react to magnetic fields - diode switches? i can't remember the name. anyway, you get a 2D pad of those attached to the mouse port on the motherboard and presto, old chap: air mouse.

bada!

L

Anonymous said...

Is called reed switch. Would be good for general "within/outside of the range", not so good for precise coordinates.

Anonymous said...

Plus the point is to get "air mouse" without additional equipment, just maybe receiver in usb port if there no built-in bluetooth. I'm sick and tired of touchpads.

Anonymous said...

But yeah, magnetic field configuration can bee a good idea to start with.

Max said...

Just leaving my mark here to show that this blog and its archives are not in fact the forgotten vaults of Irem.

I found your blog the same way MooNWalker found it. I was fascinated by your article in h+ magazine (which I only stumbled upon by chance). I had honestly never heard of transhumanism before (which in itself is kind of surprising, as it completely reflects my own stance on the subject), and if I can manage to scrape together the balls to do it, I'll get my own neodymium some day.
Generally, I'm astounded to find another mind so similar to my own (if a lot more powerful). Up until now, I just considered I was insane, or everybody else was faking their phoniness.

Thank you for keeping this blog.

Lepht said...

MooNWalker, Max -

air mouse = awesome. you could possibly mod the housing of a laptop - the space around the screen for instance - to place the reed switches.

glad my place isn't totally abandoned, anyway, although you may be incorrect in presuming i'm smarter than you. i ain't as bright as i look.

L

Max said...

Well seeing as there's people who would rather abandon hope than have you as competition, and that at university (which I'm not even at yet), I thought it was a safe bet ;)
You sure as hell know more about crypto and computer science than me. (only yesterday did I find out what the hell a stack is)

Anyway, when you said that 'back room transhumanism' will get you a pain problem, what did you mean? Did you mean that these implants always hurt and never really heal? (I mean, seeing as they're nonorganic object that are stuck in a half-healed wound, it would make sense)

Anonymous said...

Main problems with excessive body modifications are legal and social. People use non-organic implants in medicine all the time, just not to modify body but rather to replace damaged parts. As long as you perform surgery and aftercare correctly - i.e. don't damage anything important, don't let the wound to be infected, - you should be perfectly fine. About stack etc. - there is always something to learn, what's important is willingness to do so.

Lepht said...

Max - you'd be surprised. i have colleagues who build their own operating systems for kicks, etc. i don't actually have any formal CS education beyond somehow being allowed onto this degree; i think it's more a matter of (retarded) enthusiasm.

plus, i write CVs real fucking good.

anyway, by the pain problem i meant the fact that you'll become inured to pain, not the pain itself; on a lesser note i was also probably alluding to the various unnecessary pains you'll put yourself through. don't worry, implants don't hurt, and they heal fine. MooNWalker's right, it's all in the aftercare.


MooNWalker - amen; hell, i've got a perfectly healed, doctor-sanctioned contraceptive implant in my arm and another one stuck inside my torso. i think most people over here do.

L

Max said...

MooNWalker, Lepht:
Thanks for reassuring me, I could probably stand having to endure the pain of the surgery (there's anagesics for that, after all), but I wouldn't take the lot of chronic pain to have magnets under my skin...

On a side note, I suck at writing CVs :P

ianmathwiz7 said...

To be fair, Roger didn't seem to be trying to prove creationism, just disprove evolution, so you probably shouldn't have insisted that he give evidence for creationism, but evidence against evolution.

Also, I don't think that there's any point in denying that scientists have cooked up evidence--they have, and we usually revoke their credentials for it. That's the thing with science--it's a one-strike-and-you're-out policy.

~Ian

Lepht said...

Ian - wat. we don't disprove stuff in science, boy, you oughta know that.

to explain: Roger's the one with the truth claim. there's already so much evidence for evolution, and none against it that isn't outright false, that i don't need to provide it straight off. i'm not the one claiming to have overturned the foundations of biology - any competent scientist would know that he who makes the claim of "X THEORY IS WRONG, I IS RIGHT" is the one who needs to provide evidence for it.

even if there were no evidence for evolution and no evidence for ID either, the world looks exactly as we would expect an evolved system to look, not as a designed one would. look at the ridiculous convolutions of nerves in the necks of mammals (particularly the giraffe) or the sheer effort it takes to get oxygen around your body, or the fact that your jugular is one huge fuckoff weak point, etc. etc.

tl;dr - if he's gonna say ID is correct, he needs to provide evidence. science isn't about disproving anything, only providing backup for your claims.

man that pushes my rage button.

L

ianmathwiz7 said...

Wow, I forgot I'd ever left a comment here.

@L: First, you do disprove stuff in science; it's called falsification, and it's one of the bedrocks of the scientific method.

As regards to providing evidence, I agree that Roger needed to provide it. My issue is with what the evidence was to be of: the answer is, whatever he was claiming. The point (I think) I was trying to make was that he wasn't making the claim that ID was true, rather that evolution was false.

In other words, while it was his burden to falsify evolution, it wasn't his burden to verify creationism, since to my knowledge he never made the latter claim.

~Ian

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