Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
7 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,815 Year: 3,072/9,624 Month: 917/1,588 Week: 100/223 Day: 11/17 Hour: 0/7


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Cosmos with Neil DeGrass Tyson
1.61803
Member (Idle past 1503 days)
Posts: 2928
From: Lone Star State USA
Joined: 02-19-2004


Message 136 of 206 (725048)
04-23-2014 2:47 PM
Reply to: Message 131 by Dogmafood
04-18-2014 6:36 AM


Re: Inner Fish
Maybe we will look like Anime characters!
In the Future, Humans Will Look Like Badly Photoshopped Lemurs | PCMag

"You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative" William S. Burroughs

This message is a reply to:
 Message 131 by Dogmafood, posted 04-18-2014 6:36 AM Dogmafood has seen this message but not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(1)
Message 137 of 206 (725321)
04-25-2014 5:36 PM
Reply to: Message 131 by Dogmafood
04-18-2014 6:36 AM


Re: Inner Fish
Have our brains gotten any larger in the last 200k yrs a ...
It has been held at a size that can pass the birth canal without killing the mother or causing brain damage in the child ... which is why I feel it is a product of runaway sexual selection like the peacock tail.
... and is brain size proportional to intelligence?
Not directly. It is more proportional to the surface area of the brain -- hence the convolutions in the brain surface, the wrinkles that add area inside the same volume.
This is pretty typical for primates to maximize brain capacity, but not for all mammals:
There is also evidence that Einsteins brain had an extra connection between left and right hemispheres.
So further increase in intelligence appears to be limited to more interconnections OR to expanded use of C-section births ... and to specific selection for intelligence rather than just creativity (he makes me laugh ... )

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 131 by Dogmafood, posted 04-18-2014 6:36 AM Dogmafood has seen this message but not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 138 of 206 (725323)
04-25-2014 5:58 PM
Reply to: Message 127 by Dogmafood
04-17-2014 8:29 AM


Inner Fish / Inner Monkey
I caught a bit of Your Inner Fish last night. They were talking about the size of the mammalian brain. I thought that it was peculiar that they would say that the fact that mammals were processing so much information caused their brains to grow.
Not just in size but in convolutions. Primates and squirrels apparently have more developed sense of 3-D world due to leaping from branch to branch.
Last night I watched the "Inner Monkey" episode and was once again impressed by the detail crammed into just one hour, Lucy and Ardi were the stars of course (and I did miss getting to Turkana Boy after they moved to Homo Habilus, but there is just so much fossil history available to fit it all into the time allotment).
And I expect the creatortionistas to be howling again ...
Anyone wanting links to online streaming of the (so far) 3 shows see
Watch Your Inner Fish Online | Season 1 (2014) | TV Guide
Episode 1: Inner Fish
Episode 2: Inner Reptile
Episode 3: Inner Monkey
(I believe PBS also has links)

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 127 by Dogmafood, posted 04-17-2014 8:29 AM Dogmafood has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 143 by Omnivorous, posted 04-26-2014 7:53 AM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 139 of 206 (725324)
04-25-2014 6:09 PM
Reply to: Message 118 by RAZD
04-10-2014 1:21 PM


Clean Room and Lead Poisoning by Big Corporations ...
The latest episode from Cosmos was interesting on a different level -- pollution (and global warming) from industrial corporations ... as a by-product of determining the age of the earth.
http://www.cosmosontv.com/watch/230227523738
How lead in the atmosphere was presented as "normal" until the evidence had accumulated to the point that it was pretty irrational to ignore the poisoning of the atmosphere by the big oil companies ... you know, those ones behind the massive funding of disinformation regarding global climate change (same old same old: kill the planet for the last buck to be made).
Rather more political than the previous one, so this should have conservatives in a real knot ... aside from showing the age of the earth to be 4.54 billion years (minimum) ...

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 118 by RAZD, posted 04-10-2014 1:21 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 140 by RAZD, posted 04-25-2014 7:40 PM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 140 of 206 (725333)
04-25-2014 7:40 PM
Reply to: Message 139 by RAZD
04-25-2014 6:09 PM


NCSE comments
Cosmos Wars Episode VII: Heir to the Denialist Empire | National Center for Science Education
quote:
... Tyson started the show with a bang. He pulled apart the layers of the Canyon and showed the moments in Earth’s history that they preserve. The idea of stratigraphy, that the layers of the earth are pages in a history book, deserved more time, but Tyson’s brief exploration of the Grand Canyon was a memorable image and sure to shape how geology teachers present stratigraphy to their lucky students in the future.
... The research Tyson describes, and the entire field that’s grown out of Patterson’s work, is constantly attacked by young-earth creationists. Tyson’s clear explanation of how we know the Earth is billions of years old will be a thorn in creationists’ sides for decades to come.
As an aficionado of science denial, I can’t believe I never connected this early work on the age of the Earth with the gasoline industry’s attempts at suppressing Patterson’s finding about the pervasive harm caused by leaded gasoline. The story of the battle against leaded gasoline is a bit more complicated than what the show tells (see, for instance, the discussion of leaded gasoline in the American Experience episode The Poisoner’s Handbook), but the basic structure of the story is not only accurate, but eerily familiar. Patterson’s attempts to measure the age of meteorites and Earth were hindered by widespread contamination of samples with lead residue from gasoline. ...
Science denial is not healthy or rational. It is very dangerous.
ps -- Faith should watch the Grand Canyon part ...

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 139 by RAZD, posted 04-25-2014 6:09 PM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 141 by Faith, posted 04-26-2014 3:21 AM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 141 of 206 (725347)
04-26-2014 3:21 AM
Reply to: Message 140 by RAZD
04-25-2014 7:40 PM


Re: NCSE comments
Science denial is not healthy or rational. It is very dangerous.
Neither the ToE nor OE geology is science, it's all mental conjurings, so that ought to take care of that problem.
Sure I don't mind watching the GC segment. I'm sure it will be illuminating.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 140 by RAZD, posted 04-25-2014 7:40 PM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 142 by Larni, posted 04-26-2014 7:07 AM Faith has replied
 Message 145 by Percy, posted 04-26-2014 9:45 AM Faith has not replied

  
Larni
Member (Idle past 163 days)
Posts: 4000
From: Liverpool
Joined: 09-16-2005


Message 142 of 206 (725350)
04-26-2014 7:07 AM
Reply to: Message 141 by Faith
04-26-2014 3:21 AM


Re: NCSE comments
Neither the ToE nor OE geology is science,
If this is the case what is your explanation for them being considered sciences in accademic circles?
All the best.

The above ontological example models the zero premise to BB theory. It does so by applying the relative uniformity assumption that the alleged zero event eventually ontologically progressed from the compressed alleged sub-microscopic chaos to bloom/expand into all of the present observable order, more than it models the Biblical record evidence for the existence of Jehovah, the maximal Biblical god designer.
-Attributed to Buzsaw Message 53
The explain to them any scientific investigation that explains the existence of things qualifies as science and as an explanation
-Attributed to Dawn Bertot Message 286
Does a query (thats a question Stile) that uses this physical reality, to look for an answer to its existence and properties become theoretical, considering its deductive conclusions are based against objective verifiable realities.
-Attributed to Dawn Bertot Message 134

This message is a reply to:
 Message 141 by Faith, posted 04-26-2014 3:21 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 144 by Faith, posted 04-26-2014 8:28 AM Larni has replied

  
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


(3)
Message 143 of 206 (725352)
04-26-2014 7:53 AM
Reply to: Message 138 by RAZD
04-25-2014 5:58 PM


Re: Inner Fish / Inner Monkey
RAZD writes:
Not just in size but in convolutions. Primates and squirrels apparently have more developed sense of 3-D world due to leaping from branch to branch.
Proto could grow his kids' brains by teaching them another language after the age of first language acquisition but before puberty; that'll convolute them, too
Safer than trees, though I'd personally prefer the trees. Learning another language is like taking another lover: Who's got the time?
I like Shubin's enthusiastic but matter-of-fact affect: he's just laying out his portrait of our evolutionary past, sketching some of the best evidence. I especially like his inclusion of regular people with relevance to the topic: he explains polydactyly to parents and how our embryonic testes drop and fishes' don't to a fishmonger.
Tyson is a bit more...incisive, albeit coolly and urbanely. Throughout the series he's noted suppression of the best science of the day for political and religious reasons. The Patterson story added the hydra of corporate money. The scope of Cosmos gives Tyson a bigger canvas, and I think he's using it well. Of course, he's an intellectually and culturally confident black man, and that will strike many Americans as arrogance. Shubin is cozier.
It's great to have them both doing this work. We need more, much more: funny to think that CGI and advances in scientific and popular imaging on all scales might reignite public enthusiasm for science, as they offer visually stunning explanations that let people see what they cannot imagine. Incredulity arguments lose their punch when you've seen it on tv. (More mundanely, I think many people don't know the persuasive power of the fossil record because they simply haven't seen enough of it. My prescription for both better tv and better intellectual times is show and tell more fossils.)
Thanks for the reminder. I haven't watched the Inner Monkey yet, although I feel perfectly comfortable with mine.
Perfect for a rainy Saturday.
Edited by Omnivorous, : No reason given.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 138 by RAZD, posted 04-25-2014 5:58 PM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 144 of 206 (725357)
04-26-2014 8:28 AM
Reply to: Message 142 by Larni
04-26-2014 7:07 AM


Re: NCSE comments
If this is the case what is your explanation for them being considered sciences in accademic circles?
Delusion.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 142 by Larni, posted 04-26-2014 7:07 AM Larni has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 146 by Larni, posted 04-26-2014 6:34 PM Faith has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 145 of 206 (725363)
04-26-2014 9:45 AM
Reply to: Message 141 by Faith
04-26-2014 3:21 AM


Re: NCSE comments
Faith writes:
Science denial is not healthy or rational. It is very dangerous.
Neither the ToE nor OE geology is science, it's all mental conjurings, so that ought to take care of that problem.
Genesis and the Gospels are works of fiction. There, we're even.
Can we have an evidence-based discussion now?
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 141 by Faith, posted 04-26-2014 3:21 AM Faith has not replied

  
Larni
Member (Idle past 163 days)
Posts: 4000
From: Liverpool
Joined: 09-16-2005


Message 146 of 206 (725389)
04-26-2014 6:34 PM
Reply to: Message 144 by Faith
04-26-2014 8:28 AM


Re: NCSE comments
Delusional
But it is only delusional in biology and geology? Why is it biology and and geology where people are delusional?
I'm not trying to play a game of 'gotcha', here: I just want to understand your position for concluding biologists and geologists are delusional but other scientist are not.
All the best.
Edited by Larni, : No reason given.

The above ontological example models the zero premise to BB theory. It does so by applying the relative uniformity assumption that the alleged zero event eventually ontologically progressed from the compressed alleged sub-microscopic chaos to bloom/expand into all of the present observable order, more than it models the Biblical record evidence for the existence of Jehovah, the maximal Biblical god designer.
-Attributed to Buzsaw Message 53
The explain to them any scientific investigation that explains the existence of things qualifies as science and as an explanation
-Attributed to Dawn Bertot Message 286
Does a query (thats a question Stile) that uses this physical reality, to look for an answer to its existence and properties become theoretical, considering its deductive conclusions are based against objective verifiable realities.
-Attributed to Dawn Bertot Message 134

This message is a reply to:
 Message 144 by Faith, posted 04-26-2014 8:28 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 147 by Faith, posted 04-26-2014 7:30 PM Larni has not replied
 Message 148 by RAZD, posted 04-26-2014 8:09 PM Larni has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 147 of 206 (725390)
04-26-2014 7:30 PM
Reply to: Message 146 by Larni
04-26-2014 6:34 PM


science versus mental conjuring
But it is only delusional in biology and geology? Why is it biology and and geology where people are delusional?
I'm not trying to play a game of 'gotcha', here: I just want to understand your position for concluding biologists and geologists are delusional but other scientist are not.
It's basically the historical science versus experimental science argument that's been argued here many times already, and that Ken Ham argued on the debate with Bill Nye. It's NOT "biologists and geologists" it's only OLD EARTH or "historical" geology, and evolution or "historical" biology, and it's also not just the practitioners of those belief systems but everybody who has been persuaded by them. Geology and biology are otherwise legitimate sciences that do legitimate scientific work.
I watched the Grand Canyon segment of Cosmos that RAZD recommended and found it the usual bald assertion of what is nothing but a belief about what happened in the past. He pointed to a Precambrian rock and told us that it represents a period of time a billion years ago when the only living things on the planet were a form of bacteria. Evidence? He didn't happen to mention the evidence but we know that it's the presence of fossils of those bacteria found in that rock. Period.
It may suffice as a theory but even as a theory I find it ludicrous that Science identifies a slab of rock laid down in water as a Time Period. Everybody screeches for evidence, but there is no evidence for that theory either. It's all a matter of what makes logical sense and that theory is ludicrous. It's a belief system.
Science can prove its theories, science can repeat its studies, science leads to productive results, science harnesses natural phenomena like electricity and puts it to use, science finds medicines and vaccines, Science discovered that germs cause illness and therefore how to avoid it. But all this theorizing about the ancient past leads to nothing of any use whatever, and it cannot be tested or proved.
So I suppose everybody's now going to chase the red herrings of the definitions of "theory" and "proof" and give us the usual tiresome pedantic renditions instead of recognizing that I'm using them correctly and usefully in this context. The context is interpretive or historical science versus testable experimental science, and the ludicrousness of the current interpretation of the strata and the fossils, as well as the complete unprovability of the ToE. It's all assertion and bullying, not fact.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 146 by Larni, posted 04-26-2014 6:34 PM Larni has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 151 by Tempe 12ft Chicken, posted 04-26-2014 9:56 PM Faith has replied
 Message 152 by Coyote, posted 04-26-2014 11:23 PM Faith has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 148 of 206 (725392)
04-26-2014 8:09 PM
Reply to: Message 146 by Larni
04-26-2014 6:34 PM


Re: NCSE comments
But it is only delusional in biology and geology? Why is it biology and and geology where people are delusional?
And physics, don't forget physics: that bit about radiometric dating methods, all hogwash made up fantasy ...
Then there is astronomy with their fantasy about light years and development of stars with the original stars blowing up to make new stars like the sun and the planets like the earth ...
Anthropology of course is fantasy with the preposterous claim of true human being descending from apes like chimpanzees ...
Paleontology is even worse with pretend relationships of earlier life forms to a common ancestor pool by made up "similarities" in order to force them into an imaginary tree of life ...
Genetics is okay as long as they stick to the modern day, but as soon as they go off to talk about nested hierarchies with gibbons and gorilllas it's la la land ...
Chemistry is fine as long as they stick to modern day reactions. Talking about reactions in the past is ridiculous because nobody was there to observe it.
What have I missed ...?
Delusional
Indeed. What's that German word again? ... ah yes ... Fremdscham ...

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAmericanZen☯Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 146 by Larni, posted 04-26-2014 6:34 PM Larni has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 149 by Omnivorous, posted 04-26-2014 8:20 PM RAZD has replied
 Message 156 by Faith, posted 04-27-2014 3:01 AM RAZD has replied
 Message 157 by Faith, posted 04-27-2014 3:15 AM RAZD has replied

  
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 149 of 206 (725393)
04-26-2014 8:20 PM
Reply to: Message 148 by RAZD
04-26-2014 8:09 PM


Re: NCSE comments
RAZD writes:
Then there is astronomy with their fantasy about light years and development of stars with the original stars blowing up to make new stars like the sun and the planets like the earth
You know, I was just wondering about that. If you believe that the earth is 6000 years old, what do you make of the stars and the apparent age of the universe? Do you insist that nothing in the universe is farther away than 6000 light years? How do you explain stars whose life cycle status shows them to be clearly older than ours? When God created the earth, were we joining a show already in progress? Or did God create the magnificent evidence of the universe's size and age just to keep us guessing?
I think: head, sand; sand, head.
When you write young earth claims broadly across the night sky, they look even more absurd. After all, we're seeing that light now--no historical conjuring or speculation involved.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 148 by RAZD, posted 04-26-2014 8:09 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 150 by RAZD, posted 04-26-2014 8:37 PM Omnivorous has seen this message but not replied
 Message 153 by NoNukes, posted 04-26-2014 11:38 PM Omnivorous has seen this message but not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 150 of 206 (725395)
04-26-2014 8:37 PM
Reply to: Message 149 by Omnivorous
04-26-2014 8:20 PM


and of course there is SN1987A
When you write young earth claims broadly across the night sky, they look even more absurd. After all, we're seeing that light now--no historical conjuring or speculation involved.
And we can validate that with the information on distance with SN1987A, and the evidence in the star-light - the adsorption bars of the various elements - show that radioactive decay was occurring there with short age elements being formed and decaying with the same decay rates we see for these elements on earth.
It defies reason to think this is not evidence of an old earth. I wonder if Cosmos will discuss this event (they passed one opportunity already with the neutrino detector discussion).
Dave Matson Young Earth Additional Topics Supernova » Internet Infidels

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAmericanZen☯Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 149 by Omnivorous, posted 04-26-2014 8:20 PM Omnivorous has seen this message but not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024