Nice.

It's called gravity.

That statement does not appear in the book. Furthermore, the late author's name was Jaynes. Julian Jaynes.

I think we maybe agree then. I make no claim to understanding anything about the "first cause", but I think that as scientists we can say that it looks very likely that planet formation and the evolution of life required nothing but the same basic laws that govern everything else. We don't know for sure and we could be wrong, but it is a very reasonable thing to think in 2009.

I'm not sure I really get your question. General relativity, which is a classical theory of gravity, does an excellent job of explaining how the universe behaves on the largest scales. Basically, gravity coupled with the expansion of the universe explains pretty much everything in cosmology. (In more techincal terms, Einstein's equations with the FLRW metric)

Thanks. Okay, people are all about "thought experiments" here seems like and hardly anyone knows anything theoretically advanced. Or unadvanced, come to that. So I want to try simple-minded science (my best kind) or - "if you can't explain it to a twelve year old...."

So try one with me. Thought experiment I mean:

Microsecond before Big Bang. Are the Laws in the singularity? Or, is there such a thing as "space?" Is the physical Universe created by the Big Bang? Did energy encounter law to create matter? But matter is impossible without gravity because by definition matter has weight as well as mass.

(Western linear thinking)

Do you think the Dark Matter could already have existed as it seems to not interact with anything re: the Laws? Don't all the Laws depend on the existence of matter/energy?

I'm just looking, I guess, for some way to make sense of the Laws. I think the origin of the system of the energy/matter universe is a lot more interesting than creation or the conversion of one to other.

Yeah, but it kinda sucks tidewater at the quantum level and isn't that where everything began?

I don't see any reasonable way to allow the dark matter we see to exist before the big bang. Dark matter does interact with everything else via gravity also. For your questions about space and time, the current view is that time and space were created at the big bang, but that isn't very satisfying since we don't really understand exactly what the big bang was.

The origin itself doesn't look like something we can describe yet with known physics so it is probably in the realm of philosophy at present, which is fine. We just probably won't be able to make too many definitive statements about it

Yeah, at the high energies of the big bang quantum phenomenon is very important.

I stand corrected. Actually what Julian Jaynes wrote was that humans gained consciousness sometime during recorded history, which is still ridiculous.

Actually, Jaynes argued that consciousness co-evolved with writing---hence around the beginning of recorded history.

In particular, written artifacts weakened the dominance of hallucinated voices in the bicameral mind. As bicameral continuity lapsed, the narrative 'I' emerged to fill the void. Hence the new importance of recorded history.

Are you sure you read this book?

I suspect I only thought I read it! Thanks.

I was reminded of it when I read Tor Norretranders' The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size some years ago. Nonetheless consciousness as the term is usually used had to have evolved long before writing.

It is a useful experience to define "consciousness," by the way.

I'll try one time but continue with the language and I'm done.

By beneficial change/bug do you mean in the program, such as a typo, or in the compiled code? If in the program, do you mean you typed one thing correctly but it somehow got changed, and beneficially?

Maybe just give an example.

What I know from my own experience, most of my programming time was spent chasing down bugs, whether they were typos, bad reasoning or misunderstanding some command or language usage. I don't recall ever making a mistake that improved anything but most of the ones I made either crashed the program (thousands of reboots) or caused incorrect output.

I expect I could find many, many quotes comparing the genetic code to a programming language. I would even call the comparison trivial and obvious.

As for Berlinski, as I posted elsewhere, I didn't like the mistake he made about von Neumann and I did make a disclaimer about his content when I first mentioned him, because I wasn't familiar with him. That doesn't nullify the correctness of the analogy, though.

Haha! Like I have the slightest interest in discussing anything with you.

I'd obviously rather spend my time talking with and reading material from people who I can actually learn from -- rather than trying to punch through the shield of Fear of Cognitive Dissonance of a religious person who's actively trying to not learn anything at all that might cause him the slightest discomfort.

But anyway, in case anyone else are reading and might be interested in some details:

I've seen both, though more of the former.

Here are a few:

• Typos, miscalculations or logical errors in GUI-related code, especially parts that have done widget layout, have lead to better / smarter / more efficient design than what was originally either previously in place or planned.
  
  
• Behaviour of agents in a 3D environment virtual world became more realistic due to a memory overwrite bug causing random data to "seed" some of their attributes.
  
  
• The weirdest, and funniest, and perhaps most relevant when comparing with mutations in biological organisms that I've seen:
  
  A friend of mine had written a so-called "Eurodemo", which is something that was (and still is, to a lesser degree) wildly popular way to show off programming skills in the days when the dominating microcomputers were C64s, Amigas and Ataris. One part of this demo was a common type of routine called a 'star-field', which is supposed to look like you're in a spaceship blasting into deep space or something. Guy had a disk-crash, managed to salvage his files, but there was random corruption in a bunch of them. When he tried to re-run his demo executable, it ran as before, except the star-field effect had changed to look different -- it was exactly like a swarm of flies, or gnats.
  
  He debugged the binary machine code, noted down the random op-code change, and incorporated it with some spiffier graphics into an "insect-swarm" effect in his next demo program.

That's how it goes most of the time, especially if you're using a crap programming language like C++, or other crap tools, on a crap platform, and you're a crap programmer.

The higher level language you use, the less chance your program will simply crash or otherwise halt when you make a mistake, and the larger the chance it will do something "interesting" instead.

I wouldn't give a flying f**k what Berlinski says about anything. A guy who think it's a tough challenge for science to come up with examples of beneficial mutations -- not only that, but he's presenting it like it's really a killer problem for evolution! -- is a raging idiot who obviously hasn't bothered to do even 15 minutes of research before opening his big, uninformed, arrogant mouth.

I mean, take 10 seconds to break out google on 'examples of beneficial mutations' and the 2nd hit will be the abstracts of 6 peer-reviewed papers on a page titled "Examples of Beneficial Mutations in Humans".

And the 4th google hit is the talkorigins.org page that explains in like ~50-100 lines of text the mistake in the creationst claim 'most mutations are harmful, so the overall effect of mutations is harmful'.

The Discovery Institute should certainly be proud of having the "secularist" Berlinski on their team. He fits right in.

fixed your post.

gtfo then. No one is keeping you here, nor does anyone value your opinion.

Do you mean platforms like C64s, Amigas and Ataris?

And it seems to me that no one actually paid attention to all of what Berlinski said. He did not claim that "beneficial" mutations have never or never happen.

But if most mutations are deleterious then we should see more systems crashing.

In the same sentence he compared dna to a computer program he also compared it to a book. But wait a minute, does he REALLY think dna and War and Peace are EXACTLY the same thing with no differences whatsover? What a donk creationist IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!!

I believe most are neutral, not harmful. And we do see "systems crashing" - as many as would be expected, even. How many more people with birth defects are you aware of than with mutations that make them extremely strong or something of the sort? I think the results line up exactly with what's being predicted.

I realize that you believe in evolution, but it's interesting that your instinct is to side with creationists in most debates, even if it goes well beyond the topic of atheists using evolution to prove that God does not exist.

From: http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/002154.html

Did not know about Roddick, that is really cool. I would like to see if my scoliosis gives me the a pro-level serve.

I have yet to side with anyone. I wanted to see how people would respond to his claims. And my belief in evolution has nothing to do with this thread as I am not talking about evolution as a whole, but the Darwinian mechanism.

And I understand what you are saying on an individual level. He (I believe anyway) is talking more about on the species level. If the mutations occur in the numbers that would be needed coupled with the fact that most mutations are deleterious (in reference to their environment), then we would expect to see more "system crashes". It is important to differentiate between a "system crash" and a species not being able to keep up with its' environment.

I it interesting to me that pretty much people ITT spent a lot of time to rag on Berlinski instead of just answering the ****ing question. Curious, don't you think?

Berlinski is in fact a creationist donk, and so are those here who are defending his "argument." This is one of those tired old creationist claims which have already been refuted many times.

Mutations are simply a source of genetic variation, upon which natural selection works. We know immediately that Berlinski's computer program analogy is ******ed, because if we (and other organisms) were that sensitive to genetic variation, we'd (and they'd) all be dead. Most mutations are known to be neutral with respect to any given organism's fitness.

As biologist PZ Myers puts it in this blog post:

Also see creationist claim CB101 from talk.origins. LOL at those who are impressed by Berlinski's regurgitated nonsense.

Actually, what is curious is that you seem to be ignoring all the posts that directly - and convincingly imo - answered the OP and destroyed the argument and imply that the OP has been ignored in place of ad hominem attacks. Sure there is some filler around, but not everyone is a computer programer. While I'm not in favour of ad homnem attacks either, it is not fair to suggest that the OP is being ignored.

People are focusing on the "computer to DNA" analogy instead of the underlying question. I have not had a ton of time to spend on this thread, but I have not seen anyone that directly answered the question.

More complex programing can handle mutations better than simpler programing. Human DNA is extremely sophisticated programing. Most mutations kill computer programs, some make them better in unexpected ways. Most human mutations also likely kill the human (or not permit them to be born, or are born deformed, mentally disabled, etc.), some mutations (ie: Lance Armstrong) make humans better in unexpected ways.

While I'm sure Dawkins could do a better job, I think the responses are included in these posts, at least from the layman's perspective. What more would you like on a poker forum?

Huh? It's already been answered directly. Contrary to what Berlinski claims, most mutations are neutral with respect to fitness, not deleterious. This is very a well known fact of genetics.

It's also very well known that the genetic variation which is observed is sufficient to drive biological diversity through natural selection. The propagation of beneficial mutations and associated novel phenotypes have even been observed in micro-organisms in the lab.

What more of an "answer" do you want?

Two things. First, I do believe you have to have the genetically-based potential to achieve these states. Second, these measurements were made after these people became star athletes. Esp with Armstrong, you have more adaptation than genetics, possibly, and esp in Hamm you have more genetics than adaptation.

Generally in the discussion, though, one has to keep in mind that "beneficial" or "deleterious" are relative to environment. Blue eyes are a mutation, they seem beneficial in some situations and harmful in others and neutral generally.

Sickle cell genes in pairs are fatal, but singly are life-saving in certain environments.

Analogies are just that and none are perfect or complete or they wouldn't be "analogies" they'd be the thing discussed. I think one problem with the computer code analogy is the limited environmental interactions. It's useful in limited ways.