So the entirety of ag history was really a bunch of nazis picking their--plants that were desirable for any number of practical characteristics? lol Come on dude. Let's just take the seeds from that runt that died from disease or the one that didn't ripen in time or tastes like a dirty diaper.

You're eating the results of it constantly. I hope you don't select girls by any other metric than random.

I had a feeling that one might not go over so hot but I couldn't resist.
And my girl metric is definitely rather idiosyncratic...young, old, kenyan to whitest white girl I know, etc.
I just need them at 5'4" and 105 lbs.

Ok Dr. Mengele

My brother is trying to create his own "color" of a certain pigeon breed called flying flights . He's trying to breed lavender out of them and make it stable-- but he's lazy about it. He has a few but would need to put a lot of work in still. He knows a crap ton about pigeon genetics though. It's interesting. Sometimes I joke around with him about his master race project.

Their eyes are wild looking. Might add some of them into the watercolor rotation. Usually do hummingbirds when I paint birds.

this is one of the most liberal forums out there lol

Accepting that science only supplies the tools and in the next breath saying that people using those tools are "worshipping science" seems like a stretch.

Also, even if they were - if I go to Home Depot and buy a shovel then bash my neighbour's head in with it, it's really not Home Depot's fault (despite what the prevalence of tort suits in the US would have you believe).

Speaking of which... if you're inclined:

The Buddha and the Quantum: Hearing the Voice of Every Cell

Not too too interested in reading 'pop quantum Buddhism'-- but I read the Tao of Physics when I was younger and that book was quite influential for me-- which is why I'm in this thread now extolling the virtues of it. The key points that I'd want to make in this thread are:
1. Materialism is a dead paradigm. Which is to say that the belief in the primacy of matter doesn't have any sort of leg to stand on. This is why I always tout that Adam Frank article, Minding Matter, as it does an excellent job of explaining why materialism is dead. The best theory of those who want to hold on to to materialism and remain consistent with quantum mechanics is the many-worlds interpretation, and it's as crazy as anything.
2. With materialism dead that should cause people to think long and hard about what that means and what the implications of it all are. I.e., are we living in the matrix and this is all a simulation, is God actually real?, are we being lied to by the ruling class about the true nature of reality?, and if so then for what purpose? Those are all valid questions that flow from the understanding that materialism no longer holds water, as the sort of hard-nosed atheism that we see here can only exist within a materialistic worldview.
This is what me (and others like me) are getting at when we say that science is just as much a belief system as anything religion offers: people have this belief in the primacy of matter and think that's scientific, but it is not and it's been dead for approaching 100 years now. Ultimately science isn't in conflict with religion; it points to it.

That's a lot of buzzwords and word salad to arrive at the nonsensical conclusion that science points to religion. Interpretations of quantum mechanics naturally lend themselves to this sort of mumbo-jumbo unfortunately.

Is materialism dead? That should be the first point we argue about.
And then: is it the case that the best attempt to hold onto materialism is with many-worlds, which is alleged in that article I've posted?

I don't know much about philosophy, but I don't see why it would be? Here is the definition from Wikipedia:

Materialism is a form of philosophical monism that holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions.


If you define "material interactions" as "behaviour of fundamental particles and/or waves" then why would it be dead? These behaviours are modeled just fine by the equations of QM and its brethren, as evidenced by all the modern engineering that uses them.

Consciousness-- as much as they've tried, cannot be separated out from the laws of physics. The quantum eraser experiments seem to do a really good job of driving this point home although I still need to work on my own understanding of it all. Frank has a good line though on whether mental states derive from material interactions

Putting the perceiving subject back into physics would seem to undermine the whole materialist perspective. A theory of mind that depends on matter that depends on mind could not yield the solid ground so many materialists yearn for.

The dual wave-particle nature of matter should already be enough to get you to question it. You seem hung up on the fact that "the equations work"-- as if that is enough to dispell any doubt you might have about what is going on.

I invite you to consider the computer simulation interpretation (not to be confused as implying the world is actually a simulation)

Coding efficient algorithms to simulate world covers QM. It is how we would do it and it's relatively easy to to understand. Much discussed in SMP, I suggest the Bell's inequalities thread.

Bell's theorem, non-locality, and the epr paradox will all be important lines of evidence I'll want to use in futhering my arguments here.

You're too hung up on the interpretations. "Particles" and "waves" are constructs we've created to try and make the equations more understandable. Gallons of ink have been spilt on these philosophical musings, which is fine, but the predictive value of the theory lies in the equations, not the philosophical musings.

For a poker analogy: we talk about "value bets" and "bluffs" in poker, but GTO solutions make no such distinction - they just take certain actions in certain spots a certain % of the time. "Value bets" and "bluffs" are labels we use to help us make sense of these actions using heuristic methods, but these labels are irrelevant to the underlying maths.

To quote Feynman: "Shut up and calculate!"

This sounds like mostly pure nonsense to me but I'll ponder how to best respond to it over the next few hours.

All of the above are well understood and resolved aspects of QM as far as I am aware. Regardless, even if they are not, if you are suggesting some argument for religion based on the fact that there are still aspects of QM that we don't understand, it's just a bog standard "god of the gaps" argument IMO.

Ok, thanks for sharing your initial impressions!

Do you actually understand the meaning of non-locality? Instantaneous-Faster-than-light-communication between particles has been proven experimentally. You just keep going back to how "it's understood". No, it isn't understood. It is described. There is a big difference there.

Cooking breakfast then about to be involved in manual labor so I'll have plenty of time to ponder later.

All trivial They're not going to help you further any argument. Or those who would argue you're wrong either.

Now consciousness - that's a tricky one for the 'don't believe in magic' guys. Tough not to believe in consciousness but it ain't science.

Are you talking about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis

If so, yeah, that is a pretty interesting one.

Hardly trivial. Again-- non-locality has been proven experimentally. It's out of pure theory and into empirical evidence.
I mean I agree it won't convince anyone who doesn't want to be convinced, sure.

If we both take one glove from a set of gloves without looking, and you travel to Alpha Centauri, and look and see that you have the left glove, you instantly know that I have the right glove, but no faster-than-light communication took place.

The resolution of EPR is slightly more complicated, but my understanding is that it relies on a similar principle.

I don't believe the possibility of "consciousness" being an emergent property of fundamental particle interactions is foreclosed by anything in our current scientific understanding.