How life began

[Dejarma]

3 minutes ago, Habitat said:

dear oh dear, your obsession with 'killing off" God knows no bounds, you should take your own advice, and join the "I don't know" club !

i'm in the 'i do know' club

[Habitat]

55 minutes ago, Dejarma said:

i'm in the 'i do know' club

I'd go further, and say that there isn't anything you don't know.

Edited August 9, 2019 by Habitat

[Jodie.Lynne]

4 hours ago, Ogbin said:

 Is consciousness a product of evolution?

Maybe. Or maybe a by-product of evolution.

 

Perhaps, when a creatures brain allows it to become self aware, it becomes conscious of the larger world? Meaning, conscious of the world beyond it's belly and it's groin. 

Edited August 10, 2019 by Jodie.Lynne

[Dejarma]

2 hours ago, Habitat said:

I'd go further, and say that there isn't anything you don't know.

i don't know this weekends winning lottery numbers 

[+Pettytalk]

12 hours ago, Jodie.Lynne said:

Maybe. Or maybe a by-product of evolution.

 

Perhaps, when a creatures brain allows it to become self aware, it becomes conscious of the larger world? Meaning, conscious of the world beyond it's belly and it's groin. 

In other words what you are implying is that as long as we fast and abstain from sex we become conscious?

[Jodie.Lynne]

6 hours ago, Pettytalk said:

In other words what you are implying is that as long as we fast and abstain from sex we become conscious?

How you managed to get that perception out of what I said is beyond my comprehension.

 

However, I do think I prefer you unconscious.

[Ogbin]

22 hours ago, eight bits said:

Ours is. It is entirely possible. however, that organ meat isn't the only organized matter capable of consciousness.

If the Church-Turing Thesis (searchable) is true, then a wide variety of physical systems could exhibit consciousness, not only biological ones. It is unknown currently whether the thesis is true, however.

does life need consciousness in order to exist?

[eight bits]

1 hour ago, Ogbin said:

does life need consciousness in order to exist?

Not that I know of or can think of. I doubt that single-celled organisms, for example, have any quality or attribute usefully called consciousness. I suppose you could tweak the definition of consciousness, since life does seem to involve patterned energy and material exchange with the environment, but then you'd need to check whether some existing inanimate automata might fall under your tweaked definition, too.

It'd be spooky if Alexa is conscious

(I'd ask her, but I'm afraid of what she'd say.)

Edited August 10, 2019 by eight bits

[Mr Walker]

On 8/10/2019 at 7:34 AM, eight bits said:

Ours is. It is entirely possible. however, that organ meat isn't the only organized matter capable of consciousness.

If the Church-Turing Thesis (searchable) is true, then a wide variety of physical systems could exhibit consciousness, not only biological ones. It is unknown currently whether the thesis is true, however.

It also depends how you define self aware consciousness Several  machine  intelligences have convincingly passed the original Turing test but there is still some way to go for  a machine consciousness to equal and then surpass a human one   (general scientific opinion seems to vary between 2025   and 2050-60,  depending on the level of consciousness involved )

One thing is certain, machine intelligence is advancing far faster than human intelligence is evolving, and thus will surpass our own, not just  in specific features but in general terms, quite soon. 

quote

Given the speed at which researchers are advancing artificial intelligence, the question has become not if A.I. will become smarter than its human creators, but when?

A team of researchers from Yale University and Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute recently set off to determine the answer. During May and June of 2016, they polled hundreds of industry leaders and academics to get their predictions for when A.I. will hit certain milestones.

The findings, which the team published in a study last week: A.I. will be capable of performing any task as well or better than humans--otherwise known as high-level machine intelligence--by 2060 and will overtake all human jobs by 2136. Those results are based on the 352 experts who responded.

The experts polled in the study predicted that A.I. would become better at driving trucks than humans in 2027. The surveys were completed before robotics startup Otto successfully sent a self-driving truck on a 120-mile journey in October.

A.I. will surpass humans in a number of other milestones, the experts suggested: translating languages (2024), writing high-school level essays (2026), and performing surgeries (2053). They estimated that it would be able to write a New York Times bestseller in 2049.

 

https://www.inc.com/kevin-j-ryan/elon-musk-and-350-experts-revealed-when-ai-will-overtake-humans.html

 

https://medium.com/@aiwillsaveus/when-will-artificial-intelligence-surpass-humans-98bc2d7a3fbd

in reality some of these deadlines are already being beaten

eg

 In May, Google's AlphaGo machine won a game of Go against China's Ke Jie, widely considered to be the world's best player. An A.I. system created by scientists at Carnegie Mellon won $2 million from top poker players in a tournament in January.

Edited August 11, 2019 by Mr Walker

[Mr Walker]

On 8/10/2019 at 11:39 AM, Dejarma said:

i don't know this weekends winning lottery numbers 

 try 5 7 13 19  41 33 27 plus 61 and 57  if your numbers go that high  

[Dejarma]

1 hour ago, Mr Walker said:

 try 5 7 13 19  41 33 27 plus 61 and 57  if your numbers go that high  

i used six of these numbers & won a free go on the Lotto...

Thanks, you're a true master of the unknown

[larryp]

On 7/16/2019 at 5:43 AM, Br Cornelius said:

When someone tries to claim that life is to complex for random events to create it - I say you don't understand how many times nature failed to create life before it succeeded.  

Br Cornelius

 

Yahweh

I remember Carl Sagan would say, " . . . It took evolution billions and billions of years . . . " As if putting on a white lab jacket and using the B-word will prop up that weak theory.

This failure of the fossil evidence to support gradual evolution has disturbed many evolutionists. In The New Evolutionary Timetable, Steven Stanley spoke of “the general failure of the record to display gradual transitions from one major group to another.” He said: “The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with [slow evolution].”⁠¹³ Niles Eldredge also admitted: “The pattern that we were told to find for the last 120 years does not exist.”⁠¹⁴

 

Edited September 1, 2019 by larryp

[SmartAZ]

[Guest Br Cornelius]

2 hours ago, larryp said:

 

Yahweh

I remember Carl Sagan would say, " . . . It took evolution billions and billions of years . . . " As if putting on a white lab jacket and using the B-word will prop up that weak theory.

This failure of the fossil evidence to support gradual evolution has disturbed many evolutionists. In The New Evolutionary Timetable, Steven Stanley spoke of “the general failure of the record to display gradual transitions from one major group to another.” He said: “The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with [slow evolution].”⁠¹³ Niles Eldredge also admitted: “The pattern that we were told to find for the last 120 years does not exist.”⁠¹⁴

 

Your just repeating the same bull**** that creationists have been repeating a million times.
We witness evolution in real time in every day situations all of the time. We see speciation now not in the fossil record.
The fossil record is just like a badly corrupted film with 99.9% of the frames missing. Slow change is not what it tells us. What it tells us is that there were thousand and millions of species which are no longer with us because they either died out or evolved into something else - just as evolution tells us they must.
What it tells us that we never find anything remotely like man in the same sedimentary time periods as we find T-rex - it tells us that man is not old and dinosaurs are - that most species never existed at the same time. It tells us that reality of our own senses doesn't match the fairy story that our ancestors wrote in the bible.

Br Cornelius

Edited September 1, 2019 by Br Cornelius

[Jodie.Lynne]

4 hours ago, larryp said:

 

Yahweh

I remember Carl Sagan would say, " . . . It took evolution billions and billions of years . . . " As if putting on a white lab jacket and using the B-word will prop up that weak theory.

This failure of the fossil evidence to support gradual evolution has disturbed many evolutionists. In The New Evolutionary Timetable, Steven Stanley spoke of “the general failure of the record to display gradual transitions from one major group to another.” He said: “The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with [slow evolution].”⁠¹³ Niles Eldredge also admitted: “The pattern that we were told to find for the last 120 years does not exist.”⁠¹⁴

 

Quote mining.

 

The full quote by Steven Stanley:

Quote

Some distinctive living species clearly originated in the very recent past, during brief instants of geologic time. Thus, quantum speciation is a real phenomenon. Chapters 4 through 6 provide evidence for the great importance of quantum speciation in macroevolution (for the validity of the punctuated model). Less conclusive evidence is as follows: (1) Very weak gene flow among populations of a species (a common phenomenon) argues against gradualism, because without efficient gene flow, phyletic evolution is stymied. (2) Many levels of spatial heterogeneity normally characterize populations in nature, and at some level, the conflict between gene flow between subpopulations and selection pressure within subpopulations should oppose evolutionary divergence of large segments of the gene pool; only small populations are likely to diverge rapidly. (3) Geographic clines, which seem to preserve in modern space changes that occurred in evolutionary time, can be viewed as supporting the punctuational model, because continuous clines that record gradual evolution within large populations represent gentle morphologic trends, while stepped clines seem to record rapid divergence of small populations. (4) Net morphologic changes along major phylogenetic pathways generally represent such miniscule Template:Si mean selection coefficients that nonepisodic modes of transition are unlikely. Quantum speciation or stepwise evolution within lineages is implied. (5) The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid.

 

[Habitat]

Slow evolution isn't obvious in the fossil record because only a trace amount of organisms get locked up as fossils, and a mutation that is advantageous can spread widely geographically very quickly, displacing the competition. The "new" species arose elsewhere, not from the locals.

[larryp]

8 hours ago, Habitat said:

"Slow evolution isn't obvious in the fossil record because only a trace amount of organisms get locked up as fossils . . ."

You're trying to tell me that you need an additional 100 billion years to see a gradual change in the fossil record. Why not ask for a trillion-years.  LoL . . . LoL 

 

8 hours ago, Habitat said:

". . . a mutation that is advantageous can spread widely geographically very quickly, displacing the competition. The "new" species arose elsewhere, not from the locals.

Most mutations are weak, can not reproduce, and certainly don't turn into a different species. 

[larryp]

12 hours ago, Br Cornelius said:

"Your just repeating the same bull**** that creationists have been repeating a million times."

Br Cornelius

At least I got proof in the fossil record. What do you have? A skull of a prehistoric monkey that you're trying prop up as a "transitional link." My child knows better than that. 

 

24 minutes ago, larryp said:

 

 

Edited September 2, 2019 by larryp

[psyche101]

2 hours ago, larryp said:

You're trying to tell me that you need an additional 100 billion years to see a gradual change in the fossil record. Why not ask for a trillion-years.  LoL . . . LoL 

I didn't read it like that. 

I'm sure than means that there's not an obvious record of the transitional journey of every species on earth because not many dead bodies are subject to the right conditions for fossilisation. 

That's not to say some very good records do exist, such as the evolution of the whale and horse. 

2 hours ago, larryp said:

Most mutations are weak, can not reproduce, and certainly don't turn into a different species. 

Yes, they happen very often. Only a fraction offer a distinct advantage that allow the species to outcompete others. And yes, they don't turn into a new species. It's a long slow process. There was no first giraffe or first hippopotamus. Generations of incremental changes. It was a gradual process. That's why it is slow in nature. Not rapid, like how we directed evolution in dogs to create breeds to suit certain tasks. 

[larryp]

7 hours ago, psyche101 said:

I didn't read it like that. 

I'm sure than means that there's not an obvious record of the transitional journey of every species on earth. . ."  

 

You don't have any fossil records of any species changing into something else-Period. What you have found and are experiencing is the "variety" that Yahweh is fond of.

[Jodie.Lynne]

16 minutes ago, larryp said:

You don't have any fossil records of any species changing into something else-Period. What you have found and are experiencing is the "variety" that Yahweh is fond of.

So you are looking for the elusive 'crocoduck' then?

 

[larryp]

^^^ You mean the Piltdown man.

[psyche101]

3 hours ago, larryp said:

You don't have any fossil records of any species changing into something else-Period.

Who told you this lie? 

Yes we do. Plenty of them. Like I say, the whale and the horse offer particularly good records which we can follow right down to remaining vestigial organs and bones. 

 

3 hours ago, larryp said:

What you have found and are experiencing is the "variety" that Yahweh is fond of.

That's ridiculous. 

Why would you believe a silly old story like that? 

[psyche101]

35 minutes ago, larryp said:

^^^ You mean the Piltdown man.

Piltdown man was a hoax. 

If you're saying one hoax disproved evolution, then what does thousands of God's made up by men indicate? 

By your logic, religion is a thousand times less likely than scientific discovery. 

Even that's generous in my opinion. 

[Jodie.Lynne]

14 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

That's ridiculous. 

Why would you believe a silly old story like that? 

Because he listens to and believes the apologists who mangle the explanation of the evolutionary theory.

Lackwits like Ken Ham and Sye Ten Bruggancate (spelling?), who claim there should be examples of turtles giving birth to frogs, and "half critters" like a lion-horse. The same twits who claim a difference between "micro-evolution" and "macro-evolution", when it is all just evolution.