posted 06-03-99 09:43 PM ET        

So if you want to continue the "love-in", please do it here so that:

a) we don't have to download 200K to see if there are anymore flames (or kissy face stuff)

b) we can let that little piece of Da Game forum history sink to the bottom

Man, I'm bored already without someone to pick on. But I said I wouldn't, so I won't. Waaaaaaaaahh!! Come on VG, give me a reason to recant. Please!!!!

posted 06-03-99 10:59 PM ET            

That and the fact that this event coincides with the reappearance of Nell, one of the few real live babes of the SMAC forums. (and she's got a brain too, though I've yet to collide with her in a PBEM.)

posted 06-03-99 11:12 PM ET            

Michael:
"Real" and "babe", sure, but the "live" bit is open to question, it being 4am here in the UK... and as for the brain part, well... surely "babe" and "brain" aren't mutually exclusive? Then again, I can't think of that many brainy babes offhand... err... I'll have to get back to you on that one

As far as the PBEM goes, I'd love to join you in a game... I have a few PBEMs running at the moment, but one of them has apparently died and there's always room for more If you can find time for another game, let me know by email (I don't always have time to check the BBS, so I do sometimes miss messages on here). I'd suggest a direct IP game, but it's difficult due to time zone differences... and I've only got a 56K connection (no doubt you'll be telling me next that you've got a T1 connection to go with your 4 trillion GHz monster machine!! hehe).

Nell... off to exercise her, er, brain by examining her collection of Ewan McGregor JPGs in close detail... for purposes of scientific research, you understand...

posted 06-03-99 11:32 PM ET            

I'll email you Saturday about a PBEM I'm setting up, but it won't be an accelerated start - even though that's slower, I like the total control and total risk aspect. Especially with Transcend level and full backstab communications. An IP game might be tough, since one of the other players is in Denmark, IIRC, and I'm in Pacific time so 8 hours off from you. I only have a 2 line 56k Shotgun, so no satellite dish yet, else I'd waste even more time online.

You're the ravin' queen of England, and slowin' down at 4 am? Do you work for a living or something, or are you just getting old?

.jpgs are so sad though - but maybe you can use Photoshop to composite them into kewl wallpaper. like my Hedy Lamarr collages (nice on the 21 inch monitors) and Confederate battle flags for my online and SP Gettysburg! sessions. If you don't Photoshop, send me a bunch and let me know your resolution, and I'll make ya some wallpaper to keep you glued to your monitor.
And you won't need Hyperactive Desktop (tm) to have it either.

posted 06-04-99 12:44 AM ET            

Michael:
Re the PBEM: great, count me in... I much prefer a slower start from the very beginning, and also much prefer communication from Turn 1. Loads of opportunity for evil wheeling and dealing! I'll reply with my game prefs when I receive your email

Re the babes with brains conundrum: you have to ask yourself this... who is the more brainless, the bimbo who flashes her eyelashes and gets what she wants, or the guy who actually falls for it?!?! hehe... believe me, eyelash-fluttering can get you to places where no amount of brains can take you... a sad but true reflection on the fact that, whether we like it or not, and whether the psychologists sit up all night debating it or not, we humans are still animals and still powered by good ol' hormonal rocket fuel. Thank God! It works in reverse too, you know... you might not respond too well to blokes flexing their biceps at you, but I've fallen for the wiles of the odd male bimbo in my time, believe me... and not waited to find out whether or not there was a brain lurking behind those come-to-bed eyes!!

Indeed I am the Rave Queen... I've been raving since rave was invented, and old age and arthritis ain't gonna stop me... the thing is, the excitement level of 4am (OK, 5.30am now) in my sitting room doesn't really compare with 4am at a 35,000-strong rave, so yeah, sleep's calling and who am I to argue!

Thanks for offering to PShop my JPGs... actually PShop's one of my all-time favourite apps, and if it weren't for my boyf's objections, my desktop would be absolutely covered with Obi-Wan from 350 different angles... and my screensaver would feature an animated version of same! Mind you, how about swapping me your 21" for my 15"? I did have a 17", but the aforesaid boyf pinched it so that he could see more of Cubase on-screen... moan whinge grumble

Oh and please don't mention Inactive Desktop... the first thing I do whenever I install Win98 is to disable that piece of nonsense. Yuck spit.

Nell... OK now it really is bedtime!!

posted 06-04-99 01:19 AM ET            

Up the psychologists! Wanna know my definition for the human male? Even if some other weenies on this forum don't, I'm not asking them, so here it is: Man, n. A delivery system for 23 chromosomes on a mission. Oh, did I forget to mention I'm a Darwinist? If you're awake and want a laugh or provocative thought, go to support and troubleshooting and read the thread and my response about gratuitous torture scenes or whatever the exact name of that eejit's thread is. Oh, you've got a boyf, huh? :..(
Waaah, *snif*, but then I'm too old anyway. Well then, I shan't be sending you my 21", so :P~~~

posted 06-04-99 01:30 AM ET            

Leave aside the fact that your chromosome delivery system is responsible for 90%+ of major achievements over the last 2000 years. Granted, we did some very inventive ways to hamstring the competition (resorting to outragous brutality when that didn't work), but the point is that the XY combination isn't quite as stupid as everyone these days is so keen to point out.

posted 06-04-99 01:51 AM ET            

How much of that achievement over the last 10,000 years can be resolved in Darwinian terms - i.e. drivers for territorial expansion, i.e. competition of differing gene pools, etc. I'm not saying males are stupid - just driven by many inputs that can be resolved in no higher terms than the rapidest possible spreading of those chromosomes into the gene pool. There are a huge number of social customs across many cultural boundaries to demonstrate this idea.

Women are also driven by Darwinian actions to a great extent - it's just that their chromosomal package is configured and developed differently.

posted 06-04-99 02:53 AM ET            

Basicially, I'm saying that factors like gender and race only influence an individual to a minor extent. I know women I'm superior to in both lanuage skills and memory games, both of which are supposed to be highly pronounced female traints. Other chicks can wipe the floor with me in terms of creativity and curiosity - both respectively enhanced male traints. And the rest is a pretty even split.

The point being that, if there is any real difference (which there most likely is), then it isn't more than a 40%-60% factor, and is virtually useless when applied on an individual basis.

If you want a way to tell people apart, look at cultural circumstances. People and societies respond to environmental and technological stimulus much more than chemical ones. And though underlying patterns are often the same, the general result can differ enoromously.

Basically, enough of the dumb male stuff, is all I'm saying. Genetic urges have, and will, take second place to cultural (i.e technology and environment) ones.

That's not to say I'm going to stop having sex. But it does mean I achieve it by being smart and charming, instead of dumb and violent.

Shining1

P.S: I do need to chill out, but on balance it 's been a tough week with the science stuff and I'm not about to suffer any twisted darwinism sh*t. Especially if it casts more doubt over my ability to do maths.

posted 06-04-99 03:46 AM ET            

In spite of the individual differences, we are mostly quite conformist in many cultural issues, and many driving historical changes were driven by Darwinist issues - territorial dominance and expansion, elimination of rivals. Why in hell was woman's suffrage such a radical issue at all, let alone still a radical issue in many parts of the world? Male dominance of females is largely reduceable to male's attempting to assure the perpetuation of their individual DNA, as opposed to some other guys - look at jealousy and reaction to affairs. A man is a stud where a woman is a slut, and so on - all about male (DNA) control. There are tons of exceptions, with billions of specimins to choose from, but there are many who are not the exception.

Smart and charming v. dumb and violent isn't the issue - if you were an illiterate cretin who never took a bath, smart and charming would be beyond your reach, and so your DNA would vanish into oblivion with that approach. If you can be smart and charming, but aren't able to pull off dumb and violent, or if the local pool of women are not culturally receptive to dumb and violent, then d&v won't work. In other words you adapt your strategy to the circumstances of your environment, or many humans have the ability to change their locale or social environment.

And many charming social customs from polygamy to slavery to ritual female genital mutilation serve male control and dominance issues. Many cultures in the good old days, after a conquest, used to kill all the males, and enslave and impregnate the females. Henry VIII whacked one of his wives for treason for having sex with someone functional, largely since such conduct was a challenge to his bloodline. In spite of the huge varieties of individual differences, there are huge common threads in human behavior.

The basic point isn't that men per se aren't dumber - just that both men and women often exhibit behavior driven a hell of a lot by forces other than the synaptic activity in the cerebral cortex. It is also amusing/depressing how much "human" behavior is observed in the animal kingdom in the wild, so there is a definite indicator that many of our triggers for certain behaviors, if not the exact manifestation of the behaviors, is biologically based.

posted 06-04-99 04:58 AM ET            

And I think women are generally smarter than men. Its not much, but it is there. One measurement of Intelligence is Adaptability, and I don't know of any Man that is as Adaptable as a Woman. Otherwise, the differences are generally into how that intelligence is channelled. Women are more observant, for instance. Men are better at dreaming up ways to *do* something. Yadda yadda yadda. Most of these traits really DO fall into the biological roles played by male versus female in the race (and before, if you are into everything is descended from one ANCIENT cell of proto-life). Men were the primary hunter. Why? Simple... Women carried the unborn, and were more impressed with the gent who could hunt best. (It's that CARRYING business that has shaped an AWFUL lot of cultural decisions). The gents would go out for the big hunt and come back, sometimes days, sometimes weeks later. The Ladies and non-big-hunt party members stayed back, maintaining the day to day business. While the ladies probably would have hunted if the need arose, there is a definate basic bent in males to protect females, whether its to breed or just reinforced fond memories of their first protector/food giver. And there is another strong definate bent toward protecting the young. That places each in the guarded circle. As hunters, the men that survived had to be VERY good at judging distances, simple ballistics, etc. Evidence of this is pretty great as a natural bent.

Ladies need intelligence, socialability, adaptability, and perception to increase their odds of surviving well. Emphasis isn't as strong for the skills and traits that the Lads need. However, its easier on the children if BOTH parents carry a good amount of each, making intelligence, perception, athletic ability, and social intelligence and social grace attractive to BOTH sexes. Surprise surprise.

A unique trait of competition for gaining a mating partner in primates is that males compete vertically/hiearchially (pecking order), while females compete horizontally (er... darn. Forget the term). What this is suppose to allow is the Alpha male and Alpha female best chances to match up. But, the Ladies often pick the future Alpha male, rather than it being a simple matter of competition resolved in Top Dog manner. Probably a good thing for the species...

However, absolute fidelity is NOT something hard-wired in either sex. Personally, I think it was a WOMAN that invented it. Its a foreign concept to a Y chromosome machine. Its easier to smash the other Y chromosome machines. One decent Y can fertilize several available X's. Its that incomplete X egg that is precious, and will eat up so much of its carrier's biological energy. Its a lot EASIER to carry through and raise the little ones with help, and for that role, you'd want someone that guarantees food.

Which brings up the two shades of relationships... short term for sex and pleasure, and long term for survival. Amazingly, men and women look for the same thing in long term partners... intelligent people (meaning adaptable) that are good for a stable relationship (that nice guy/gal) and capable of improving the (perceived future) family unit. Short term is pure sexual/pleasure oriented, so whatever fires off those breeding feelings is what is on the hunting list.

Violence is a "turn on" for the humans in general because it keys our systems for a fight. Its not an actual erotic thing, but its similar enough to confuse some, unfortunately. And since the actual act is all that needs to be complete, its a survival trait, however socially irredeemable it is. Remember, its the family of the forced and all that interact with the forced that suffer with the forced one. So its a social, not biological, issue. Of course, if you treat someone BADLY, they aren't going to allow you to repeat if they can help it... driving the aggression factor up, as without a steady mate to try with, the aggressive genes have to try to breed A LOT.

Anyways, its getting late. I'll check in later to see how much fuel Shining1 has unleashed.

And I am not a Darwinist. I do admit that Evolution is a fact, and has been since the Universe came into being (well, since Life, anyways). While that great wondrous unmatchable biological neural net that our consciousnesses sits in affects our thinking in certain basic ways, we, as thinking rational beings, also affect IT, and the body its attached to. So its not just one way deal.

Later!

posted 06-04-99 09:46 AM ET            

Hunter/gatherer societies have limited energy budgets for elaborate culture - but even basic rituals and social skills, whether practiced by bonobos, gorillas or humans, have generational survival (i.e. Darwinian) motives in mind.

Ultimately, you can't separate culture from biology - if culture(s) did not confer survival advantages, it would disappear - pick one that's been wiped out. Look at larger issues such as nationalism, etc. (our DNA v. their DNA) The whole nature/nurture/it takes a village blah blah
is naive - the too are inextricable.

My original point with Nell, in the effect of brains v. vacuous crania and batted eyelashes, is that blokes think with their balls, a lot of the time. Nell's point was who's cranium is the more empty - the eyelash batter, who uses it as a strategy to get what she wants, or the eyelash battee, who gullibly goes along with it. hehehe - but this whole Darwinist thing sure draws people out of the woodwork. :P

posted 06-04-99 11:48 AM ET            

But the fact that it can be used to describe change does not mean that the driving forces that they describe are in fact driving forces in the change process, let alone "THE" driving forces of the change.

There are many economic theories that attempt to describe the causation of human behavior. Freud has thrown in his two cents, B.F. Skinner his, Thomas Aquinas his, and many other thinkers who would drive us into the dirt.

If you put on the Darwinist glasses, or the Skinnerian glasses to view the world and then try to argue that what you see through them is not what you are seeing you will surely lose to the other person wearing the same glasses who knows that what they are seeing is in fact reality.

MtG is looking through Darwinist Glasses and seemingly only sees the world from that perspective. Thus the world is driven by DNA's urge to perpetuate itself. (A very grim view in my opinion).

It would be nice to be convinced of the veracity of any system of beliefs as MtG is on Social Darwinism, but I have seen through too many glasses (including the bottoms of some empty Tequila shot glasses) to accept any one belief as gospel at this point.

posted 06-04-99 12:02 PM ET            

As a matter of fact, I'm having a cocktail party at my house tomorrow night. I think I'll experiment the theory above and will try to report on the details sometime (like, when the hangover's gone ).

posted 06-04-99 12:27 PM ET            

I'm not a social darwinist at all - my point is that biochemistry, more precisely hormones, is A not THE significant driver, and that a lot of individual gender to gender testosterone and estrogen muddled behavior is hilarious. If you go back to the original exchange between Nell and I, you'll see where it all started from.

But it is also interesting to note how hard it is to identify a "uniqely human" general behavior (not a technically specialized behavior like piloting an F-16, or writing Hamlet) - virtually the whole range of "human" one on one interactions can be observed in the higher primates. Seriously, prostitution, cheating, flirtatious manipulation, and many other behaviors are well documented among non-human primates in the wild. And look how frequently sex is used subtlely or otherwise, to sell products.
"Buy and use [whatever] and you'll get laid more often."

posted 06-04-99 01:10 PM ET         

Goobmeister, I find it funny that you refer to some dead people, who are already presumably 'in the dirt', as "thinkers who would drive us into the dirt". They aren't thinkers anymore, and frankly I find knee-jerk ancestor worship, based on the few remaining turds we can dig up about them, to be naive. It is an excuse not to think for ourselves, and perhaps a reflection of a social inferiority complex, too.

posted 06-04-99 02:55 PM ET            

Michael:
Seems as if you and I are in full agreement... if you haven't already, you owe it to yourself to read Sir Julian Huxley's brilliant "Evolutionary Humanism"... he was a great scientist (brother of Aldous) and although he wrote before the birth of genetics (early 1900s onwards), he had the whole matter down to a T. Essential reading for anyone who's interested in Darwinism/human biology/social evolution and who wants to read a true scientist's opinion of it all, and of the likely future evolution of human society.

Goob:
Why is it grim to say that the driving force of life is DNA's urge to perpetuate itself? What other driving force would be better? Look closely at the animal and plant kingdoms, ourselves included, and tell me what else drives life onwards? And why is it a bad thing? We may have vast intelligence, but this is no more and no less than a product of evolution, which, due to its giving us the ability to manipulate our environment, has ensured our continuing ability to... perpetuate our DNA. It's what it's all about, my friend

MikeH:
Current psychological thought indicates that men's and women's brains actually ARE wired differently, regardless of social influences... experiment has proved that the male brain is unidirectional, whereas the female brain is more capable of "multitasking". Another difference is the fact that the male brain makes decisions faster and with less regard for possible consequences, whereas the female tends to be more indecisive and to try to consider all possible results before taking any particular course of action. According to current wisdom, these differences result from the different r�les which the male and the female play... males, being the hunters/protectors/fighters, need to be single-minded, to devote all their attention quickly to the dangers at hand, and to be unencumbered by worries along the lines of "oh, but what happens if I attack this wild beast? I might die... and then my children might starve... oh dear I've been killed while I was worrying about it". Females, with their responsibility for maintaining social cohesion and rearing the young, need to be able to devote their minds to several things at once, and also to be able to consider consequences... looking after children is a full-time job, and females who couldn't do that as well as deal with other individuals, gather food, keep an eye out for danger, etc etc, would find their offspring, and therefore themselves, removed from the gene pool pretty quickly. It all comes down to evolution... "survival of the fittest" doesn't necessarily mean "the strongest", but rather "the most suitable for the job in hand". That's why we humans, physically weak though we are, have managed to rule the world: our intelligence, and our ability to see that we need to act as a group in order to survive, has given us our pre-eminence. But it was evolution, not social conditioning, which gave us that intelligence.

Darkstar: You're largely right. However, although violence as a turn-on is certainly a fact, current thought suggests that it's an instinct based on the realisation that where there's violence, there will be death, and if there's going to be death, then it's time to get a few new individuals ready to replace those who are on their way out.

As for women instituting the notion of marital fidelity, well... I don't think you're looking far enough back in history. Certainly, until very recently, the only protection women had was to be married and to ensure that their husband provided for them, seeing as they themselves had no ability to work. However, if you look way back, to before the time of the patriarchal religions, you'll find that most prehistoric matriarchal societies cared not a damn for fidelity, since it was the females through whom the line descended, and hey, a woman always knows who her children are, so their parentage didn't matter. It was the coming of patriarchal religion, which brought with it much violence, conquest and property ownership, that meant that males, who then became the line through which the family descended, HAD to know who their children were. Hence, they had to stop their wives from having sex with anyone else, to avoid their name, money and property descending to someone who wasn't their biological child (back to the old "I must reproduce my DNA" urge!). Hence, our current outdated obsession with marital fidelity. Hence, the fact that 95% of married men admit to having affairs. Hence, a whole lot of misery, as we, polygamous/polyandrous group animals that we are, attempt to force ourselves to love monogamy and to exist in discrete pairs. It just don't work... you fight Nature, you lose. And it's interesting to consider that romantic love is a relatively modern invention (circa the early Middle Ages), and was invented at a time when to be "in love" with one person for "the rest of your life" meant until you were on average... 23. Nowadays, we live into our 80s and 90s... isn't it time to realise that no one person is going to be able to fire your rockets for 60 years or more?!?

Shining:
Certainly culture does influence our behaviour patterns. But it doesn't influence our DNA, which is still fixed at the level of the original Homo Sapiens Sapiens, seeing as we haven't evolved since then (and nor will we, unless it be done artificially... in fact, we are in danger of devolving, as we no longer allow natural selection to operate, but rather allow all individuals, superior or inferior, to proliferate). Anyway, the point is, where do you think culture comes from? On what is it based? Why do different races of humans create different cultures? The answer lies in the DNA and in the different traits which are inherent in the different human races (non-PC though this notion is). It is evolution which creates culture, not the other way round, and so culture is merely yet another symptom of our individual DNA battling its way to reproduce itself more successfully than the next molecule. This may sound soulless, but I for one find it comforting to realise that we are just one part of the vast structure of life, one rivulet in an unending stream with, with or without us, will continue regardless... well at least until the sun goes out

And of course Shakespeare wrote to get paid rather than laid... except for the fact that in our money-based society, paid usually EQUALS laid. Ergo, he was doing what he could to ensure that he succeeded... which translates into "reproduced himself as much as possible"... as do we all. In fact, I often think that much of our modern angst is caused by the fact that we now have so much biological knowledge that we can stop ourselves from reproducing, and then we find a huge gap in our lives, which we try to fill with intellectual pursuits, all of which fail to provide the essential satisfaction that is to be got from reproducing oneself. Trust me, as a woman who's now hit 30, the urge gets stronger, not weaker, and becomes in the end pretty much irresistible... and nothing else will do.

As for whether men or women are "more intelligent", that's not really the point... what we are is different, in terms of the actual wiring of our brains, regardless of any cultural or social overlay.

icosahedron:
Darwinism isn't "a subset of the mechanistic view of reality", but is a demonstrable scientific fact. You only have to read up on the many experiments with drosophilia (fruit flies) to see evolution in operation, plain as day. Of course, this doesn't preclude the independent existence of a "spirit" in Mankind, but that certainly isn't subject to any kind of test.

Wow... I think I've waffled myself to sleep!

Nell... who should probably stick to silly conversations about light sabres...

posted 06-04-99 03:32 PM ET            

I don't think there are many people who would deny the effects of breeding and selection towards altering the characteristics of successive generations. But is this what is meant by evolution?

I was always under the impression that evolution was an explanation for the origin of the complexity of plant and animal life. At it's crudest being: 1) inaniment chemicals to 2) single-celled life to 3) multi-celled life to 4) larger and more complex species of MC life.

Has science demonstrated that kind of evolution? I haven't heard that it has yet.

posted 06-04-99 04:00 PM ET            

Darwin and Huxley said it so much better... read The Origin of Species and Evolutionary Humanism... it's all there, and explained far better than I ever could

And yes, science has demonstrated all the steps you mention, save that of the evolution of inanimate chemicals into animate protein chains. That, of course, is the step where people would say that God intervened and did his "Let there be life" trick... and nobody has any kind of proof of that.

And doesn't the fact that there is a mere 2% difference between human DNA and that of chimpanzees suggest a rather close family resemblance? Not to mention their observed social and learning behaviour patterns, which are so close to ours as to be rather depressing, when you consider how frightfully we treat these cousins of ours

posted 06-04-99 04:11 PM ET            

I can't even pick out which argument I would like to pursue the most at this point. For now I will confine myself to the points you raised in relation to me.

>>Why is it grim to say that the driving force of life is DNA's urge to perpetuate itself? What other driving force would be better?

First, what I was refering to as a grim idea is the idea that DNA is the driving force of cultural/social change or of human behavior. The idea that there is any(!) driving force to an individuals over all behavior other than their own will is completely unfounded. Individual traits and reactions may be hardwired or conditioned, but every individual has the ability to overcome the wiring and the conditioning. Any other view is a grim view to me.

>> Look closely at the animal and plant kingdoms, ourselves included, and tell me what else drives life onwards?

Yes every biological creature has some built in desire to procreate. That does not mean that their total behavior is based upon that same desire. It is the result of an internal chemical reaction. A chemical reaction that can be overcome/suppressed/ and ultimately ignored if someone chooses.

>> We may have vast intelligence, but this is no more and no less than a product of evolution

It is a product of eveolution but it is both more and less than that product. You state elsewhere that we are now capable of stopping our own evolution. That alone refutes this argument. It is not our intelligence that matters though it is our will and freedom of choice.

>> due to its (evolution) giving us the ability to manipulate our environment, has ensured our continuing ability to... perpetuate our DNA.

It has also given us the ability and thus the choice to end the perpetuation of our DNA, and that also is what it is all about my friend.

Goob

- If I have time, I may talk about some more of your points.

posted 06-04-99 04:27 PM ET            

Are you saying that science has actually taken single celled creatures and created multi-celled creatures out of them? Ones that can reproduce and sustain themselves?

That is something that I think would have been big news and I can't say that I have heard anything along those lines.

There is also something that has always bothered me about the "drastic" changes leading to higher forms theory. For many classes of animals it takes a male and a female to produce offspring. I was given to understand that drastically mutated sex cells could not combine with their sister/brother cells anymore to produce zygotes and if they were similar enough to be able to combine then the resulting offspring would be sterile (ala horse and donkey leads to mule). Where is the mechanism then to propogate the drastic mutation?

As you have no doubt gathered, I am quite skeptical of the claims made by evolutionary science.

posted 06-04-99 04:41 PM ET         

First, let me say that this is a very interesting discussion. Many separate and partially overlapping views. Fun!

Nell:
Pure Darwinism is the 'party line', but it doesn't quite wash when speaking about a social animal such as Homo Sapiens. Psychology is not a direct result of DNA, and social influences can alter DNA. For example, the discovery of radioactivity is essentially a social phenomenon, as are the applications of the discovery.

Also, social creatures can propogate socio-psychologically in addition to genetically, and in many cases the propogation is deeper and more lasting. The best example of this is Isaac Newton, who had no children (and no legitimate sex, even, though some suspect him of an incestuous thing with his sister), though most great contributors to the collective consciousness did not produce much in the way of genetic follow-on. In fact, it is rather the exception that a genius is the parent of another genius.

Language is a virus, and it has caused humanity to mutate. "In the beginning (of consciousness), there was the Word, and the Word was God." I am no bible thumper, but there is esoteric wisdom in them thar hills, waiting to be mined by the right-minded.

TFS: Inanimate chemicals? Everything moves. Brownian motion, quantum zero state energy, non-decreasing entropy, all that rot.

Goobmeister: Dry sarcasm yes, and no. If you take it that way, this shows that you were not in fact doing the ancestor thing, and I apologize if I impugned your character in any way. But it is important for us to see that WE are the thinkers now, and that what we have left from those old dead dudes is really just their finest turds -- no match for their actual presence.

Cheers to all for an interesting discussion!

- icosahedron

posted 06-04-99 05:47 PM ET            

MtG - I recognized the joke. However, to answer your challenge, the unique behaviour that is Human is Self Sacrifice for a stranger. We are not communal beings, although we are social ones. Aside from a few highly socially bonded dogs that thought themselves human (or all humans dogs), we are the only species that will give up our life for others, even living beings and inanimate objects. All other animals that are self-sacrificing are communal creatures in which they are designed as one part of the greater organism. Bees, Termites, yadda yadda yadda.

Nell - As Goob, I am unsure were to begin. So lets start here... Yes, men and womens brains are wired differently (on average). But for every study you can show that men are single tasked and women are multitasked, I can show you another that says its the other way around. Truth is, its condition and social circumstances that determine a good part of such items. For instance, during the initial space race, it was determined that pound for pound (a GREAT motivator and decision maker, as well as a harsh mistress, in space flight concerns), women should have been the first astronauts. They have *faster* reaction times, can make split-second decisions FASTER then the men, used less oxygen, were better insulated throughout the body, and handled the stresses of launch and landing better with their slightly different physiology. But, as that was the late fifties, they HAD to send a man, not a lady, up. Just the way it was.

It would be in the Hypothetical Early Hunter/Gatherer Lady's interest to secure the best provider exclusively. This would guarantee that she and her children would get first pick, or as close to the top as circumstances permitted. The trade off would be, of course, is that she couldn't wander far without enabling him to do the same. Typically speaking. Jealousy is motivated out of a lack of security. That is motivated out of good lack of self in our modern culture, as well as the biological machine that houses us trying to compete for the best partner. Bad double whammy. When one is secure, should any hormonal pangs of insecurity crop up, then the Self can modify its Mood by positive internal reinforcement.

Evolution is always going. The Biological Scientist have discovered that on average, every human being has 3 mutations over and above those of its parents. Further study has shown that most advanced vertebrates follow this rule. They had IMMEDIATELY thought the cause was all the excess radioactive material the is floating about thanks to all that wonderful air testing of nuclear bombs, as well as nuclear accidents. So they did some studies and test on non-modern (Atomic) age genetic material, of humans and other biologically complex animals. Know what they discovered? That the rate of mutation was pretty constant. About 3 mutations/changes per offspring. Scary huh? This is still being checked for the 1800th time in the biology and genetics fields, but it IMPLIES, the evolutionary jumps happens suddenly, and in a lot less time than thought (not necessarily Geological time, for instance).

On women being smarter than men... that isn't an absolute truth. But it does lean that way. The typical man's personal universe is not as complex as a woman's personal universe. Whether that's purely cultural in todays society of mixed up ideologies would be hard to say. When an ability isn't used though, it tends to get lost, or not retain its useability. Second, Men being less cautious of personal survival than Women while young (due to inexperience and the adolescent male culture) means that they suffer more trauma. Any serious trauma causes a degradation of Intelligence. This is a fact, whether it is strong Emotional, Mental, or Physical. It doesn't matter. The greater the Trauma, the greater the loss. Apparently, our nueral nets don't take shocks well, and subsequently do not recover well as a rule. Whether Women ever catch up with Men on the LOSS due to all the wear and tear put on them due to Life in the Modern Age is something to still be ascertained.

Culture can be, and often is, anti-survival. As long as some viable offspring are produced that can learn the culture, it can continue to exist. With the creation of our Intelligence has come a new area of genetics and survival for a new beast, and that is the Ideas, and all those mental structures those can be a part of. Whether its Ideas on Improving the Selfish Genes a chance at reproducing (Harems, Grooming, Self-Decoration), or concepts exclusively for an Idealogical Family Line's own spreading (the printing press, digital storage and retrieval, heiroglyphics, The Spreading of the Word, etc etc etc). Ideas, like Corporations, are their own unique beasts and species, living, growing, spreading, mutating, and dying. We humans are just one of their mediums. Other conscious/cognitive beings have their own realms of Ideas competiting... with out mutual communications, these Ideas cannot compete in each others spaces, keeping their universes (or ecosystems in the biological metaphor) apart. Ideas that help the spread of itself (contraception is a sin, anyone not believing as we do should be taught to, yadda yadda yadda) are much more likely to survive.

Culture can and DOES shape biology. Not being simply Biological vehicles, any Cultural Idea that is used to select a mate, or is successful in getting one selected as a mate, shapes the next generation. This shaping will be limited to pure biology if its a quick mating that is successful. In family units that last through the raising of the young, Cultural Ideas impress and spread to the young to be carried forward in its generation. This probably accounts for any minor differences in any particular sub-strand of Homo Sapien. Cultural Ideas carried through many generations causing a controlled drift. As we have been Intelligent, Cognitive beings for a long time, the overall effects for most Cultural Ideas have probably caused a Brownian drift... except for Intelligence.

No matter HOW you boil it, the primary trait wanted in a long term partner under typical circumstances if Intelligence. It's its own
greedy gene. This allows it to continue to evolve itself. Its the only REAL way to explain why as biological creatures, we waste so much precious space and biological resources on it. We don't need all that processing power. So why do we have it? The answer has to its own existence. Since its evolution into the control center for all of our actions, its always trying to evolve better faster and more powerful hardware to run on. One day, it will succeed, and Homo Sapiens will no longer be the Brains. That will be a very sad and dangerous day for Human Kind, as Intelligence is generally a SELFISH thing. Everything is there to serve IT. This is a concept missing in SMAC, as far as I can tell, but included in CtP. Strange as that seems.

Well, its Friday, and I have other things to do. I'll see what other great fun is being shared or flamed later.

-Darkstar

posted 06-04-99 05:57 PM ET            

The ultimate evidence in favor of evolution is the absolute commonality of DNA across all species - it is possible, and has been done many times, to take DNA from entirely different species and resequence it and place it into new species. There is a farm in Wisconsin producing corn which makes a rare human protein which certain people can't make (I forget the name of the disease and the particular protein) Although we call it genetic engineering, what we are really doing is small scale artificial evolution. We have created new species of microorganisms, but the tehnology to do any of this is less than two decades old.

Producing multicellular stuff is around the corner, but starts to get into sticky ethical issues - where do you draw the line on created species? Cloned sheep and engineer tomatoes caused quite a ruckus, what do you think would happen if new multicelled species were to be created?

That's not a real major barrier, in any event - sponges are a good example of a no big deal multicellular. There's a lot more to be said on this topic, so I'll be back.

posted 06-04-99 06:39 PM ET            

--------------

From WWWebster Dictionary at:

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary

posted 06-04-99 06:52 PM ET            

"The ultimate evidence in favor of evolution is the absolute commonality of DNA across all species"

Can it not also be argued that commonality of DNA is evidence against evolution? Why this particular kind of genetics? Why only four building blocks? Why didn't another genetic mechanism evolve coincidentally with what we observe? Why only one?

>>>> icosahedron

The meaning of animate is distinct from mere movement:

Main Entry: in�an�i�mate
Pronunciation: (")i-'na-n&-m&t
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin inanimatus, from Latin in- + animatus, past participle of animare to animate
Date: 15th century
1 : not animate: a : not endowed with life or spirit b : lacking consciousness or power of motion
2 : not animated or lively : DULL

posted 06-04-99 06:58 PM ET            

>> Hence, our current outdated obsession with marital fidelity. Hence, the fact that 95% of married men admit to having affairs. Hence, a whole lot of misery, as we, polygamous/polyandrous group animals that we are, attempt to force ourselves to love monogamy and to exist in discrete pairs. It just don't work... you fight Nature, you lose. And it's interesting to consider that romantic love is a relatively modern invention (circa the early Middle Ages), and was invented at a time when to be "in love" with one person for "the rest of your life" meant until you were on average... 23. Nowadays, we live into our 80s and 90s... isn't it time to realise that no one person is going to be able to fire your rockets for 60 years or more?!?

Nell, Your are invited to my parents 50th Wedding anniversary next January, my wife's Grandparents just celebrated their 60th anniversary.
Unless the vast majority of my married friends are lying to me none of them, nor I have ever had an affair. So there must be a blip someplace else to get up to 95% of married men admit to having an affair. (I have never heard that stat.)

I admit to the occaisional fantasy involving multiple women from the Victoria's Secret catalogue. But even if Heidi Klum and Tyra Banks themselves came up and propostioned me together... (Yes, I KNOW it will never happen) I am devoted to my wife and family, the idea of cheating on her (and thus my children) is abhorent.

My only mistress is SMAC. (had to get back on topic )

I am convinced of the existence my free will, and your free will, and of everyone elses as well.

My understanding of anthropology is also at odds with your desription of the development of cultures, but that is for another post.

Take care I am off to home, family and SMAC.

Unless of course I see a particularly hot babe on the road, and I think to myself "I bet she Shags like a minx", and then I will naturally and unavoidably follow her home, and "SHAG her Rotten Baby, Yeah!"

posted 06-04-99 08:22 PM ET            

To first clarify a few personal philosophical points:

(1) I'm not a "social Darwinist"

(2) I'm not an atheist, and I reject the notion that creation (in some form by some mechanism at some level) and evolution (same disclaimer) are mutually exlusive.

(3) One of the reasons evolution and some other life science topics, and all "social sciences" have these contentious issues is that the terminology is not precise. To every physicist in the world, the term "tidal friction" or Maxwell's equations or Einstein's field equation means the same thing and is universally understood, so the disagreement are over whether the thing works, not what it is.

(4) I absolutely believe in free will.

(5) This sh*t is off topic, but the more intellectually interesting crowd hangs out here.

(6) I vehemently disagree with one point of Nell's - the idea of devolution and who's superior or inferior, etc. I disagree both on philosophical and scientific grounds. That idea has the potential to get into all sorts of ethical and rights issues, and scientifically, Shockley and the whole "superior DNA" thing is bonkers. There are multiple influences on all behaviors, so isolating any one as a basis for anything is simplistic.

tfs

why is a fairly simple matter of both chemistry and evolution - depending on your definition of life, not all life is DNA based if you include viruses. The C N O H elements are enormously abundant in the universe, (Carbon for a very interesting reason that is one of those "guided by design" hot points), and they have a huge variety of possible compounds, plus they are mostly soluble in water, but not TOO soluble (very useful on earth) Why those four in combo worked is unclear, but undoubtedly there were hundreds of alternative structures, and this one worked better, so it proliferated. Biochemistry is enormously complex in detail, but the shapes and bonding energies of the outer electrons of particular atoms has a decisive influence on whether an organic molecule will do something or not.

If you look at the diversity of environments in which the double-helix A C G T structure flourishes, that gives a hint - everything from permafrost tundra, to near boiling geysers, and there are known ecosystem on earth that are based on the metabolism of methane, the metabolism of ferrosulfates, and the metabolism of Hydrogen Sulfide, in addition to the plants, animals humans and SMACers that eat and breathe all the normal stuff.

Another interesting thing is that many of the same molecules exist in interstellar dust clouds all through the galaxy. Over one hundred organic compounds have been positively identified in those clouds, including aminonitriles (one of the precursor compounds to amino acids) and there is some still unconfirmed but probable evidence of glycine - a full fledged amino acid, in interstellar dust clouds. Organic compunds on comets are well known, as they are also well known on many classes of meteorites. It doesn't mean that ALH84001 contains evidence of Martian life - cool as that may be, the support for that idea is going, going, almost gone.

There's another good point though - you are right in thinking why DNA? - since there's absolutely no reason to assume because it's all over the place here, that life on other planets will be DNA based. Carbon based, yes, because there are no other combinations of elements with the diversity of chemistry, but DNA? Nope, just because it worked once, doesn't mean it will work again anywhere else.

Goob, congrats on your parents and your wife's parents - I haven't heard the 95% figure, but all social statistics, of any kind, are totally useless unless you know the exact context and exact methods used to gather them. That is why every stripe of politician can take the same world, and statistically support his or her ideology as the best means to screw it up further .

I don't think that DNA is THE driving force, but it is an influence, and many advanced and less advanced social traits and individual behaviors have biological bases.
That doesn't obviate free will - your choosing to eat Pizza or go see a movie or play SMAC at any given time has no influence on your individual reproductive success, and evolution concerns itself with gene pools, not specific individuals.

Whoever it was: Evolution is accurately defined as a process of gradual change - it is not just jumps from one species to another, and such jumps are hard to define, to say the least. There is a lot of reasonable doubt as to whether we are a distinct species from Cro-Magnon man, some debate as to how distinct we really are from Neandertals, etc. Taxonomy is imprecise.
A simple genetic modification, such as losing the recessive genes for sickle cell anemia, or Tay-Sachs disease, is in fact evolution - it's simply the gradual redesign over many generations.

posted 06-04-99 08:53 PM ET            

Self sacrifice IS an evolutionary behavior common in many species - the ground nesting bird feigning a broken wing to lure a predator away from the nest - and even fossil dinosaurs have been found in apparent defensive formations. Elk and buffalo, primates, and a huge number of animals act such that dominant males will protect the larger group at there own risk.

Say we are cave men (many here would agree ) and brothers, so genetically related. We both have mates and kids in our little group, and everyone else is related to some degree, i.e. has a more or less common gene pool. This is tribal or prototribal, the first real social structure.

We get bounced by a big ol' saber tooth cat, who goes for one of our kids, since we're bigger, old, tough and stringy, and besides, the kid wandered off, so is easy munching. We both go after said cat, to teach it some manners, and we zap the cat, but one of us gets mortally wounded.

Our individual fate is not evolutionarily important, due to the common gene pool, and our self-sacrificing behavior is in fact protective of the success of our common gene pool. The later campfire stories I tell (sorry bud, it's my post, so you had to be the one to go ) about your bravery and greatness as a warrior and protector of our little tribe serve to reinforce this trait, since other young boys and young men full of testosterone will want to prove themselves as warriors in their own right.

The only uniquely human aspect to this self-sacrificing behavior is not always positive. As our social groupings have progressed (I didn't say the "e" word )from extended family to clan to tribal to nationalistic, we have transferred some of our loyalties outward - not always in a positive way. But the individual who will seriously risk his or her life for a total stranger is lauded as a hero by most, and derided as a fool by some, precisely becasue that extension of human behavior is pretty damned rare. More often, self sacrifice is rooted closer to home, or to our extended nation-tribes. But it is derived from behavior which is evolutionary. We don't crank out millions of eggs like a starfish, so we have to invest a huge amount of energy in the success and survival of our pool of offspring.

posted 06-04-99 09:46 PM ET            

The result being that you simply can't give birth to an adult sized head (the mere thought of that makes ME (read: ignorant male) wince), so your offspring needs to spend the best part of 2 decades growing up. Compare that to any other species, where 99% of the time the male's job is simply to prove his genetic worth and impregnate as many females as possible (who then handle upbringing by themselves).

This extra time as a helpless juvenile places a near impossible burden on the mother (certainly in the caveman era), so humans, unlike most other animals, actually NEED the input of the male in the upbringing process. Which makes the relationship dynamics a whole lot more complex: The female is forced to evaluate both genetic AND support potential of a mate; and a male is then forced to commit to a single female, forcing HIM to make a selection as well.

posted 06-05-99 02:00 AM ET            

Shining - you raise an excellent point with the pelvis size issue as a limiter - human cranial capacity is not going to expand further, and in the ag/industrial/technological era, it won't matter. Even in the great apes, social structures appear as a result of the relatively high proportion of life that a young bonobo, etc. spends in a juvenile stage. With humans, it is far longer, and much of that is more recent as knowledge, not puberty becomes the defining point of social adulthood.

I think evolution will matter a LOT in the future, but that on a different level than most people view evolution. One of the misconceptions of evolution is that it is a vertical process - that something will evolve to something more complex. In reality, things often move sideways, or even backwards in some ways. Eyes or a tail are expensive items to maintain in an animals energy budget, so a fish in a dark cave or deep water ecosystem, or a naked ape who can't seing from trees, gains an advantage by putting those resources elsewhere.

Anything which perpetuates itself is a good design from an evolutionary standpoint, so if refining the details or going a step backwards works, or if 5000 designs all work, they'll all be viable from an evolutionary standpoint. A cockroach is another wonderful example of evolution - the things are so well adapted they flourish almost everywhere, and there are no tree huggers protesting our taking precious habitat from the endangered cockroach. The idea is inconceivable.

Endangered bacteria? It's the other way around as we get things like Vancomycin resistant staph, etc. The old science course in school thing about the age of reptile, the age of mammals, the age of man, etc. is all a bunch of crap - it's always been and always will be the age of skanky little invertebrates, since the simpler the creature it is, the more it has the ability to adapt, and the more generations it will have. If you're an S. Aureus with a life span of an hour? or so at most, you have a lot of chances to evolve in 20 years, especially if there's trillions of you in the first place.

So evolution will be active, but we only rule the roost to a certain extent. Certainly our history will be too short to see significant evolution of gross physiological changes in highly complex species, but the little buggers we trod upon are adaptable, and they way outnumber us.

Mother nature has always been a brutal bitch, and you're card carrying nazi analogy is far more accurate than the anthropomorphic, sentimentalist view. Yet with the failure of experiments like Habitat II and our extremely limited understanding of the impacts our collective actions on the biosphere, I hesitate to give the finger to Mother nature - she's a lot more powerful than us, and always has a few new PB's to flip our way.

posted 06-05-99 02:25 AM ET            

No... Nell's no babe. She's....
a Bible Thumping Believer Whomper,
a Tree-Hugging Gaian Stomper,
she'll suck the brains out thru Zak's eyes,
rob poor Morgan until he cry's,
lop off Corazon's trigger finger,
run Lal's turban thru the wringer
and, if she ever found the Hive,
she'd boil old Yang in oil, alive!

In short, she's one lean, mean SMACking machine, a Long, Tall Sally, a pbem goddess, she's no babe! She's the hottest!

posted 06-05-99 03:09 AM ET            

Now, I am GLAD to here that you hold stronger beliefs than DNA. I can't understand anyone not. But my dad is a Die-Hard Aethiest, and that makes me sad. To him, life is is a simple one-way trip of a cosmic accident. Sad sad sad (to me at least).

You will have to give BETTER examples of self-sacrifice. Clustering around the young and females is NOT self sacrifice. Its a survival trait. A mean ole powerful predator swipes at me, I fall/dodge, and you slam it. It wheels on you, and Goob slams it from the other side. It wheels AGAIN to face Goob, and I slam it. Defence Game continues until predator has its fill and leaves (it can't risk taking the punishment any of the defenders can) or it slips through the defenders and gets something smaller and weaker to eat. Self sacrifice is diving off a bridge or bank into the Potomic river in the middle of winter to haul out anything recognizable as human. Self sacrifice is a private smother a grenade with his stomach to protect his buddies. THAT is self-sacrifice, doing the act and knowing you are DEAD. No other species other than the communal insects do that. The bird feigning the broken wing is a survival BEHAVIOUR to lead the danger away from the nest and then taking off and returning to the nest. If they didn't succeed at it, they would stop doing it.

De-evolution is a concern. But in terms of the overall species survival, its VERY good to have the largest possible pool. Not that I am into genetic superiority. But its something I have thought of. How many early men were near-sighted? How many deaf? I've always wondered as I was born with poor vision, and that affects capability. As a young person, my friends knew I could hear like a owl/dog/cat. But I was lousy at most sports... until I got glasses. Everything changed. I am sure others here know what I mean since most people need glasses to SOME degree in this age. What survival trait does being near sighted serve? Very little that we knew until the scientists discovered that certain genetic traits of near-sightedness are resilant to certain OTHER disorders and diseases. The Genome is an amazing and highly gnarled thing.

Anyways, getting back to a SMAC topic... I hope we got another hot babe in the SMACX and the Ladies get a couple of slices of beefcake as well. I take it Nell's vote is for a young Obi-wan Kenobi?

posted 06-05-99 06:01 AM ET            

Firstly, I do think this is way too deep a topic for discussion on any BBS, let alone one that's supposed to be devoted to talking about SMAC (OK, so I'm one of the worst off-topic culprits, but this is getting beyond even me!!)... but I can't resist just one parting shot, so here goes...

Goob:
> The idea that there is any(!) driving force to an individuals over all behavior other than their own will is completely unfounded. Individual traits and reactions may be hardwired or conditioned, but every individual has the ability to overcome the wiring and the conditioning.

That's a very moot point. Free will itself is a moot point... favoured by humanitarian/religious individuals, disputed by biologists/determinists/psychologists. How can you be sure that you have free will? How do you know whether or not your instincts and/or early conditioning have produced your adult mindset, and therefore have determined the parameters of your so-called free will? (Playing devil's advocate here btw, as I do in fact believe in free will, to a certain extent).

> Yes every biological creature has some built in desire to procreate. That does not mean that their total behavior is based upon that same desire. It is the result of an internal chemical reaction. A chemical reaction that can be overcome/suppressed/ and ultimately ignored if someone chooses.

Sure... and the ones who ignore it, are the ones who don't procreate, and therefore are the ones who don't cast their genes down through the ages. Natural selection at work again... no desire to reproduce = useless individual as far as Nature's concerned = that individual's genes don't get replicated = fewer individuals are born who have no desire to reproduce. The old DNA driving force wins again.

> [our intelligence] is a product of evolution but it is both more and less than that product. You state elsewhere that we are now capable of stopping our own evolution. That alone refutes this argument. It is not our intelligence that matters though it is our will and freedom of choice.

I maintain that intelligence is no more nor less than a function of the brain, which is the product of evolution. Find me one biologist who thinks that intelligence comes from anywhere else than the gradual evolution and refinement of simple brains, into complex brains, into Man's enormous brain. If you damage the brain, the intelligence is damaged: if you destroy the brain, intelligence is destroyed. Therefore it is a biological function of the brain. And our "will and freedom of choice" are symptoms of our intelligence... in fact, they are non-existent terms, invented by ourselves to describe our state of being. If we did not exist, nor would they, for all they are is ways in which our intelligence attempts to understand and express itself.

> [intelligence] has also given us the ability and thus the choice to end the perpetuation of our DNA.

Exactly. I believe that we may in fact be over-evolved, to the point where we have become capable of our own destruction. Our brains have developed not just useful intelligence, but destructive qualities which may prove to be the end of our species. Just as dinosaurs died out because they could not adapt to their environment, so may we die out because we will adapt our environment too much... what was a useful trait in primitive Man (the ability to change the environment) may turn out, with modern machinery and mass-production methods, to be the very thing that destroys us, for we may well end up changing the world so radically that we can no longer survive. Intelligence may turn out to be an evolutionary mistake rather than a benefit!

Ted:
> Are you saying that science has actually taken single celled creatures and created multi-celled creatures out of them? Ones that can reproduce and sustain themselves? That is something that I think would have been big news and I can't say that I have heard anything along those lines.

I can't quote you the exact papers (hey, I'm a computer nerd, not a biologist), but yes, I believe that even if multi-celled animals have not been created (the timescales required are enormous and the ethics are a problem), the means by which unicellular animals evolved into multicellular has been demonstrated.

> I was given to understand that drastically mutated sex cells could not combine with their sister/brother cells anymore to produce zygotes and if they were similar enough to be able to combine then the resulting offspring would be sterile (ala horse and donkey leads to mule). Where is the mechanism then to propogate the drastic mutation?

Obviously evolution doesn't proceed by the interbreeding of different species like horse and donkey, but rather of slightly mutated individuals within the same species. Interestingly, as has been proved with Dolly the Sheep, even complex mammals can in fact reproduce asexually, which is how many simple animals reproduce. The sexual phase isn't a necessary part of reproduction, but it IS a necessary part of renewal, as any clone is always the same age as its parent, and it is only by the recombination of chromosome pairs from different individuals that a young offspring can be produced. Theoretically, human beings can be cloned, using only a female reproductive cell, but the cells of the resulting individual would be the same age as its parent (though the individual would be young in appearance, its cells would be pre-aged and it would die very young). For this reason, even animals and plants which reproduce asexually always have a sexual phase every so often, to renew their DNA. It's fascinating stuff.

icosahedron:
> Psychology is not a direct result of DNA, and social influences can alter DNA.

I'm not quite with you here. Psychology, i.e. the functions of the brain, can be nothing else BUT the result of DNA, as it's via natural selection and evolution that our brains have developed to point where they now are, and without brains, psychology does not exist. Social influences are also the result of evolution: at some point in the past, those human individuals who combined together into societies succeeded better than those who didn't (bearing in mind our individual physical weakness), and therefore the tendency towards social behaviour became part of our genetic makeup. Everything we are now is a result of everything we have been, and what we were originally is a small anthropoid creature which learned to live in social groups. This is borne out by fossil records.

> Also, social creatures can propogate socio-psychologically in addition to genetically, and in many cases the propogation is deeper and more lasting.

This is exactly the point made by Huxley in "Evolutionary Humanism". He views social and psychological development as just another phase in evolution, and his arguments are very compelling. I'm not going to repeat them here (too complex) but I think he's right... our complicated social behaviour patterns are just another phase in our evolution, and social patterns which benefit us will be preserved, while those which disadvantage us will be lost, just as with physical characteristics.

Darkstar:
> we are the only species that will give up our life for others.

Not so. Almost all female mammals, and other types of animal, will fight to the death to defend their young, or in the case of some group animals, the young of others. Most male animals will do likewise to protect their females and offspring. We may think we are doing it out of a noble sense of duty, but actually we are doing it to defend our species. This is what makes us so successful: our ability to empathise, to put ourselves in the position of another, and to realise that the sacrifice of one can benefit the many. This is what the other animals, even the higher apes, don't have. It is empathy, even more than intelligence, that has put us where we are: no other animal will die for other members of its species that it does not even know, as humans sometimes will.

> But for every study you can show that men are single tasked and women are multitasked, I can show you another that says its the other way around.

I've only heard the former view, and have seen no experiments which support the latter view. And looking at the people I know, I think it's safe enough to say that the former view is very much better represented in everyday life than the latter.

> Truth is, it's condition and social circumstances that determine a good part of such items. For instance, during the initial space race, it was determined that ... women should have been the first astronauts ... But, as that was the late fifties, they HAD to send a man, not a lady.

This is just an example of social prejudice. It doesn't determine whether or not the male or female brain was more suitable for sending into space, but rather simply shows that, at the time, men thought women were stupid.

> Jealousy is motivated out of a lack of security.

Totally agree. We're not monogamous because we love our partner so much that nobody else will do, but rather because we can see that we stand to lose an awful lot if said partner sods off. This has arisen because of our (learned and not instinctive) habit of living in exclusive pairs, or, in the case of some societies, groups consisting of one male and several females, each of which mutually depends on the other(s). Interestingly, there is one African society which works in reverse, each woman having up to twelve husbands. This is an ancient remnant of a way of living that was once far more common, but died, as I've said, when the partriarchal religions were born and the line began to descend through the male rather than the female.

> Evolution is always going. The Biological Scientists have discovered that on average, every human being has 3 mutations over and above those of its parents.

That's true... my point was that natural selection is not being allowed to operate in the human species, as every person, no matter whether they are more or less successful, tends to have more or less the same number of offspring (and, in fact, less successful individuals tend to have *more* offspring). Therefore, no positive selection is made and we are not likely to improve in evolutionary terms, unless we organise some system of artificial natural selection.

> Culture can and DOES shape biology.

Indeed it does... but culture is just yet another stage in Mankind's evolutionary process. It's not an independent phenomenon that descended on us one day from the skies, or was given to us by God, or anything else but an evolving process that's based on our evolution to the point where those individuals who developed a society, and therefore a culture, survived, whereas the loners didn't. Likewise, successful cultures proliferated and unsuccessful ones didn't. Natural selection again.

Michael:
> Producing multicellular stuff is around the corner, but starts to get into sticky ethical issues - where do you draw the line on created species? Cloned sheep and engineer tomatoes caused quite a ruckus, what do you think would happen if new multicelled species were to be created?

Absolutely. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some geneticist, somewhere, has already created a human/great ape hybrid, although no doubt they wouldn't have allowed the zygote to develop very far, due to the massive ethical issues involved (and the fact that they'd probably get car-bombed by religious maniacs). As far as I know, it's theoretically possible to create a hybrid between humans and our nearest relatives, who are about as close to us as a horse is to a donkey... and obviously that combination works. I believe that even dog/cat hybrid zygotes will live for at least a few days, and they're way dissimilar. As you say, the common structure of DNA across all life forms is a heavy, heavy hint as to our common origins... and what about the fact that human embryos pass through an early stage of possessing gills, not to mention the fact that some babies are born with quite well-developed tails? For sure we come from the same source, and to deny this is to close one's eyes to a mass of weighty evidence.

Ted:
> Can it not also be argued that commonality of DNA is evidence against evolution? Why this particular kind of genetics? Why only four building blocks? Why didn't another genetic mechanism evolve coincidentally with what we observe? Why only one?

The answer would be that this particular type of genetics was the one that succeeded... or perhaps the only one that is possible. In my view (and that of Huxley, whom I never shut up about, but who really is the expert in this field), the evolution of living matter from inanimate matter was as inevitable, given the pre-existing conditions, as the combination of certain chemical elements with other elements to form compounds, or the attraction of masses due to gravity, or the behaviour of objects due to magnetism. You might as well ask: why only one type of gravity? Why not many types? The Universe is ruled by immutable laws and constants, and life is one of them. No more, no less. We think life is pretty terrific because we are alive, but it seems most probable to me that life is simply yet one more law in a Universe filled with laws, each of which behaves according to its nature. Gravity attracts. Life lives.

Goob:
> Nell, Your are invited to my parents 50th Wedding anniversary next January, my wife's Grandparents just celebrated their 60th anniversary.
Unless the vast majority of my married friends are lying to me none of them, nor I have ever had an affair. So there must be a blip someplace else to get up to 95% of married men admit to having an affair. (I have never heard that stat.)

I'm not saying that people don't stay married, just that they don't stay faithful!! I have no personal knowledge of your family, and it isn't really fair to argue from the particular to the general: I might as well tell you the fact that my own parents are divorced, as are the parents of almost all my friends, and my friends themselves. You can't base a theory on an individual's experience. And the 95% statistic is from the UK Government's annual statistical record... people are more honest when talking to anonymous survey-takers than they are when talking to their friends and relatives, who could get them into trouble! Btw, the figure for married women is 80%, so we're almost as bad... hehe

> I am convinced of the existence my free will, and your free will, and of everyone elses as well.

It's a moveable feast. For example, were I to have been brought up a Muslim, it would be anathema to me to show my body in public. Therefore my free will in that area would not exist. Free will is heavily subject to social conditioning... and to inherent instinctive behaviour. Some people choose to commit suicide. This, to me, is an example of a faulty mental process, not an example of free will in action. There's something inherently wrong with an individual that destroys itself for no good reason... it's a piece of bad brain wiring, not an example of supreme free will. Free will exists because we say it does, which isn't a very good evidential base.

Michael:
> I'm not an atheist, and I reject the notion that creation (in some form by some mechanism at some level) and evolution (same disclaimer) are mutually exlusive.

I'm not an atheist either, although I don't belong to any organised religion (they all may have some share of the truth, but none of them has the monopoly). In fact, I can never understand why some religious people insist that Darwin (who was, after all, a vicar!!) and his theory of evolution were contrary to a belief in divine creation: I think it's actually *more* impressive to have created evolution, which ensures a constant and never-ending perfection of an infinite number of forms of life, than to have created a bunch of animals and plants "as is" and then left them to get on with it. Evolution is a perfect process by which only the best will succeed... surely a wonderful thing

> I vehemently disagree with one point of Nell's - the idea of devolution and who's superior or inferior, etc. I disagree both on philosophical and scientific grounds.

I realise that my ideas on this can be abused by prejudiced people who are only interested in stupid notions of "my DNA's better than yours, therefore I want to disenfranchise/kill/otherwise disadvantage you". I do not mean to imply that anyone has more *rights* than anyone else, but merely to observe that some of us are, in terms of intelligence and ability, more equal than others, whether we like this fact or not. These days, nobody has the courage to admit this, but it remains true. Of course everyone should have equal rights and equal opportunities, but this will never give them equal brains and talents. If you agree that natural selection operates by ensuring that the fittest individuals produce the highest number of offspring, then how can you disagree with the idea that if *all* individuals produce the same number of offspring, then no natural selection will occur? And, to face the horrible reality of the thing, it is an observable fact that the more intelligent and capable the individual, the *less* likely they are to have many children, and vice versa. This must, by any scientific test, lead towards the devolution of our species. I have no prejudice against anyone, nor do I make any suggestion that we should attempt to stop anyone from reproducing, but I believe that my observation is true. Once again I refer back to Sir Julian Huxley, whose theory this originally is, and who was a better man than I am, Gunga Din

> Endangered bacteria? It's the other way around as we get things like Vancomycin resistant staph, etc.

You're so right. In the end, it probably won't be nuclear holocaust or even environmental destruction that kills us off, but a humble micro-organism that's simply more able to wipe us out than we are to wipe it out. Nature doesn't care whether Man or staph rules the world... so long as life carries on, that's what counts. We are too arrogant... "I think, therefore I am"... well, only for the time being, buster!!

Darkstar:
> Now, I am GLAD to here that you hold stronger beliefs than DNA. I can't understand anyone not. But my dad is a Die-Hard Aethiest, and that makes me sad. To him, life is is a simple one-way trip of a cosmic accident. Sad sad sad (to me at least).

Sad indeed, but still the only view that can be supported by any kind of evidence. Huxley (yes, him again!) puts forward the hypothesis that religion is itself merely an evolutionary phase, which was, and still is to a certain extent, necessary to ensure social cohesion between human individuals, which is our main strength... he was a humanist and he proposes replacing a belief in an all-powerful deity with a belief in the common good of Mankind... if only more people thought that way, there'd be fewer wars and more love in the world

> You will have to give BETTER examples of self-sacrifice.
Self-sacrifice still benefits the individual, in terms of the satisfaction to be gained from being seen as a hero... not to mention the benefits gained by protecting members of your group (not necessarily your immediate relatives) against the members of another group or against a common danger that threatens all members of one's own group. Again I say, it is our ability to empathise which leads to self-sacrifice, and which has made us the success that we are. It may disadvantage one individual (the one who is sacrificed), but it benefits the mass of the group. Hence, it's an advantageous trait. The same can be said for altruism: it has apparently no reward, but is not the satisfied feeling that the altruist achieves a reward in itself? We have big brains and big emotions, and reward can take the form of more than just material success: the feel-good factor if often reward enough in itself, but it means that altruism doesn't really exist, because true altruism has no reward at all. A saint who dies for his religion actually does so in the expectation of eternal bliss... not really altruistic or self-sacrificing at all. And so on.

> THAT is self-sacrifice, doing the act and knowing you are DEAD.
Yes, but you also know that the individual(s) for whom you sacrificed yourself is/are ALIVE. Empathy in action again... a unique human trait, sure, but still a product of evolution. One dies for many = more survive = the race proliferates. Boring but true.

> Anyways, getting back to a SMAC topic... I hope we got another hot babe in the SMACX and the Ladies get a couple of slices of beefcake as well. I take it Nell's vote is for a young Obi-wan Kenobi?

Oh yes! It would be worth a �50 upgrade just for that! Now if Lal were to be replaced by Obi-Wan, I for one would never do anything but sit in the Diplomacy Screen and look at him. And if they had voice samples as well... actually, what would happen if they did that, is that my boyf would simply uninstall SMAC from my computer and lock it in a cupboard, so perhaps it's not such a good idea after all!!

JAM:
What can I say... stop making me blush!!! hehehe
PS: For all you guys know, I could be a hideous 65-year old man with warts and a personal hyiene problem... now there's a thought... <evil cackle>

posted 06-05-99 01:24 PM ET            

I don't think this topic's way too deep - it's a lot of fun to provoke people's thoughts and minds and see more of what we SMACers are all about.

One more point on "artificial" or "lab" evolution experiments: The real trick would not be creating multicellular stuff from single cells, but creating prokaryotic single cells at all. That was the true leap of evolution, but the ethical/safety implications are more severe. It is much more likely to fizzle and instead create a relative of Ebola or Q, or even if you do get your prokaryote, there's no guarantee it wouldn't be pathogenic as hell.

"Evidence" supporting theism or atheism:
In a strict, scientific sense, there is none either way, but this gets well into cosmology and particle physics. There are essentially four alternatives to explain our universe:
Guided design, which is being gradually accepted by some heavyweight, mainstream theorists;
Random chance, which is too ugly and gutless to be accepted by much of anyone, since there's no intellectual challenge in saying "we haven't a clue, so let's not bother";
Multiple universes, a la inflation theory, primarily championed by Andrei Linde at Stanford, but recent observations have failed to confirm evidence of inflation;
or the new hot thing, M theory, which is still bouncing around in many immature forms, and like superstrings in particle physics, has yet to give us any testable predictions.
I personally tend towards guided design, because of the incredible fine tuning of physical laws and constants that allow us to be here: the charge on the electron and the gravitational constant are different by a factor of about 4 times 10 to the 42nd power, yet that extreme difference leads to the kind of formation of stars and the distribution of elements that allows our biochemistry to exist, let alone flourish.
There is also a very interesting gap in the periodic table of elements, in that there is no element with a stable atomic weight of eight. The isotopes that form from the fusion of two helium (He4)nuclei are very short lived. Not too short that they immediately break apart, or don't fuse at all, but not so long that they can spit out an extra proton and become nice, stable Lithium 7. A few suck up stray neutrons or Hydrogen isotopes and become Beryllium or Boron, but those are quite rare elements, that make nice tennis racquets and golf clubs, but don't do much for the rest of us.
Throw in a third He4 in that collision, and what do you get? When you add the base energy states of three He4 nuclei, and account for the energy of their momentum, you get the first quantum state of Carbon 12, which spits out a photon and drops to its very stable base energy state. If you look at the isotope tables for the periodic elements, 2 (deuterium) ain't stable, but it's not that bad, 4 (normal Helium) is rock solid stable, 6 ain't that bad, 8 blows up fast, but in just the right way, 10 is stable, 12 is stable (normal Carbon) 14 stable (normal Nitrogen), 16 stable (good ol' Oxygen), 18, stable, and after twenty then you need more and more neutrons to balance the electric repulsion of the protons. So again, you have this very fine dynamic balace between Quantum Chromodynamics (the strong nuclear forces), with the charge of the electron. QCD favors stable Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen and the lesser elements in our bodies, yet it prohibits a stable atomic weight 8 isotope that would prevent formation of those higher elements. The universe would be a very boring place otherwise, but it is not often that we think of the grand structure of the universe and of all of us in it as being dependent on the strenght of the forces internal to the nucleus of atoms.

There are many more examples like this - but they are not evidence for a Creator, per se, though they certainly beg explanation. That is why the coincidence answer is not interesting, and the multiverse aspects of inflation were never popular, though it is a neat theory and something very much like it happened for a while at the birth of our universe. The very fact that our entire universe is dynamic and had a point of creation/birth from essentially nothing is certainly interesting, but not in itself evidence.

So there is no evidence supporting theistic or atheistic views, but a lot of fascinating questions.

Dark Star/Nell - nearsightedness doesn't serve a survival trait, but it did at one time. Now you can get glasses or contacts, and we're at the top of the food chain, so it doesn't matter. In the bad old days, there was a very good likelihood that nearsightedness might make you cat food, unless you had compensatory advantages.

As far as the self-sacrifice thing, what I meant was one trait that humans pretty near universally have, but pretty near universally don't have. The guy in DC made global news, precisely because of the rarity of that kind of heroism and selflessness. Would you or I do it? When faced with the situation, we'll know, but I know that I'd be weighing my odds of survival, my ability to save someone, and the possible risks or consequences to my daughter's life and future, so I honestly don't know what I'd do.
Besides, I'd have all those unfinished SMAC PBEM's.

Someone calling out for help would cause a strong impulse to do so, but in a situation where it is unclear if anyone is alive anyway, and where the chance of futile death is great? I don't remember if they ever said the guy's name, or found him, but that was one of those incidents in human nature that stands out so much that we and others recall it years later. Dropping on a grenade is also a little different. There's long been a saying that soldiers "don't take a hill for their country, they take it for their buddies." I have a good friend who's dad was a 15 year old Marine on Guadalcanal, and who started going to all the reunions a few years ago. Even after decades, the emotional (tribal) bonds are very intense. Unit cohesion is one of the major principles in building an effective fighting force, so that kind of sacrifice is too. So the uniquely human behavior I'm looking for is one that is more universal - there's a lot we CAN do that no animal can.

Nell/Darkstar: I'm not concerned with de-evolutiuon, due to the size of our gene pool, the increasing offsets from social and environmental factors, and the simple fact that "geneticically superior" (assuming there is such a thing - I'm still waiting on the finish of the Human Genome Project) parents do not produce "genetically superior" offspring and vice-versa. That and the fact that the great quantities of chemical pollutants we create will give and the ever thining ozone layer, etc. etc. will offer us plenty of opportunities for changing our DNA in ways we don't want. For the future survival of the human species, our focus has to be on education and our societies, and not on our genes (but Nell, I'd love to focus on your jeans, hehe, please don't tell me your b/f is a 7 foot/350 pound dockworker. And please don't tell me that YOU are. )

posted 06-06-99 01:15 AM ET            

Darned. I should have made mention of that mother defending her young. But you further strengthen my point with yours about Empathy. Point and match, I think.

While I can understand the cold scientist that says "there is no spirit or matters of spirit. That is simply not possible." I can't believe it. Sorry, I am just not wired that way. Noone in my matriarchial relations is. No matter WHAT it is, they strongly believe it and have experienced enough to know its true. Whether its Christianity or Wiccanism. Strange but true. But then a high level of genius runs in my family, and the only difference between genius and insanity is that they don't lock you up for societies protection. Generally, anyways...

MtG - On Guided - That is Spiritualistic/Individualistic view. The fact that the universe likes 1 does not mean that their *is* guidance. [1 meaning the great balance... how matter and energy aren't destroyed, merely transformed for instance, etc etc etc] We would think it takes a guide for everything to line up just so, because we can imagine if things didn't. But all those things are just a snapshot. We haven't been around long enough to *know* or even suspect with any REAL clue. But its nice to see Creationism taking a firm hold in the biggotted realms of science. That is what Religion was... the first science. The explaining of WHY and HOW things work. That was my Physics teacher's defination of Physics. I thought that funny, as that is the same definition of Religion. No wonder the two camps are at war so often. They claim the same Divine Knowledge.

On Intelligence and Life - I think LIFE is probably a common thing throughtout the universe. Its *really* just a form of self-replicating chemical processes. There are plenty of those in any dynamic situation. But INTELLIGENCE is a different matter. High levels of Intelligence will be rare. Very Rare indeed. The reason is that it would take an incredibly dynamic evironment to make it worth the biological resources that would otherwise be wasted. Stable environments would present less of an environmental motive for such, and therefore the rise of Intelligence wouldn't be common. However, anywhere Intelligence does rise and survival will drive up the amount of Intelligence anywhere intelligent species compete... Things other than Mammal are quite intelligent on this planet. Intelligence is demonstratable from mollusks up to (inclusively) Mammal. Intriguing concept to some...

This is an odd thought but I would like to state it here and see what others chime in...
If the universe was crafted from some great sigularity crossing a mysterious threshold and going *BANG* and out of this huge quantom foam clusterings formed our ancestrial matter which formed the first super-galaxies, yadda yadda yadda... well, if that's true, then why is that no matter WHAT direction we peer into the sky, we see the same amount of galaxies and other celestial bodies? This has ALWAYS bothered me as it implies... 1) That WE truly are at the center of the universe (or close enough that it doesn't matter, or 2) the universe is warped at the boundry and we are in its "sphere". Anything approaching the sphere's boundry is bent or warped, so that when we are looking towards the near boundry, we are really seeing the reflection of the interior. I don't believe very much in 1, but lately I have been having the strangest, yet humorful vision, that the entire universe is contracting and we ARE in the center, and too ignorant to know. Hey, the speed of light isn't a constant as its a function of distance travelled versus time passed (as any SPEED is). And since Time is affected by the presence of matter... the more matter you have, the slower is time. The less matter you have, the faster time passes... How much time must pass beyond the universe's boundry?

posted 06-06-99 02:46 AM ET            

Re "guided": All I concede is that the initial conditions (the physical laws and constants) are set up very conveniently and improbably - there are literally infinite possibilities, the huge majority of which lead to nothing, and a very narrow path which leads to us. That doesn't mean there is creation, only that there is a possibility of creation, and that is the possibility which seems more credible to me than the other alternatives. As far as what "guidance" may exist now, i.e. the hand of God - I don't know. I may believe sometimes, and be cynical sometimes, but I don't know in a scientific sense.

Also scientists aren't really that cold - but bad science gets done when you let your personal intuitions and beliefs shape how you interpret your observations. The ultimate thing in science is to find something which kicks the door in on your beliefs - we don't learn much if we merely reconfirm what everyone already knew. It is only by extending the boundaries of knowledge that we get anywhere, and it takes a lot of work to put your preconceptions aside and try to prove them wrong. That's why there are a lot of mediocre scientists, and much of scientific history is full of foibles and pitfalls.

I agree with you on life, but rare is a very relative term. There is such a huge number of stars in a huge number of galaxies, and we are learning that not only are planets common, but there are many configurations for planetary systems we had not believed possible. On at least some of these, intelligent life will thrive - the total number may be huge, due to the size of the planet/stellar pool. Will we ever meet one?
I doubt it. The great grey goobers driving into rocks in New Mexico cultism is hilarious. The engineering and technical and biological issues in interstellar space flight are huge, and the UFO cultists are very rarely possessed of any relevant technical background, so they invent explanations which make no logical or technical sense, then insist it's a government conspiracy. They're out there alright, but a LOOOOONG ways out there.

light and time (new thought) Actually the speed of light in a vacuum is a constant - one of the very few pure constants in physics (pure in the sense that it is not derived from other constants). That was first demonstrated by Michelson and Morley in 1887, and turned the Newtonian world view upside down - and directly led to relativity.

If you are moving along at half light speed, and beams of light reach you from different directions, and you set up experiments to measure the speed, the speed of light is always the same. It's extremely counterintuitive, but it's space and time that change, not the speed of light. If it wasn't a pure constant, but varied in any way under any condition, our universe would not exist in any recognizable form - our existance is also dependant on relativity.

As for the number and density of galaxies we see, there's a lot we don't know:

1. We can't look along the axis of the milky way very well, or at all in many places, due to dust clouds

2. There's a lot of stuff we can't see at all, until very recently, due to the filtering effects of the earth's atmosphere. For example, until the installation of NICMOS in the last Hubble upgrade and support mission, there was not a single permanent observatory in the world able to view the near infrared portion of the spectrum. Other bandwidths are also poorly represented, and time on those instruments that do exist is extremely limited in comparison with the research proposals out there.

3. Even in the visible spectrum, the Hubble Deep Field demonstrated that there is an incredible amount of structure out there that we did not know existed - galaxies by the thousands, and superclusters of galaxies out almost to the edge of the known universe. The deep field image looked at a very narrow segment of the sky for 100 hours. 100 hours of HST time is so precious that many astronomers and astrophysicists would do almost anything for a chunk of time that huge. If HST did nothing else, it wouldn't survey 10 percent of the sky in its remaining program life.

4. The ripples in the microwave backround confirmed by COBE show that there is both structure and a relatively even distribution of structure in the known universe, but the word known is the killer. We have very limited range, and our estimates of the size of the universe are based on what we know, and consensus assumptions about the rest.
We're at the center of what we see, but beyond that we can't say for sure.

5. Time is only affected by matter in relativistic reference frames, as is space. In English, a reference frame in relativity is a chunk of space and time which contains the phenomena you want to play with. Using a black hole for example, you can pick many reference frames, or different scales of time and space, but they can all be translated to each other via Einstein's equations, into a quasi four dimensional array developed by Minkowski in 1908. It is quasi four dimensional because one dimension, normally time, is not reversible, and the Einstein equation (and Minkowski's spacetime array) adds the values in the spatial dimensions, but subtracts the values in the time "dimension." This Minkowski structure is constant, that is it does not warp in the presence of energy, but the separate time and space components do warp.
Inertial reference frames, where the system inside the frame is at rest velocity (and therefor rest mass) are the ones of ordinary life, and the ones we use in talking about things like the age and size of the universe.
In the black hole example, you can pick a reference frame around the singularity, or partly in and partly out of the event horizon, or just surrounding the event horizon, or encompassing the entire universe. (Or anyone in between) Relativity gives us the ability to correlate one reference frame into another, so that the laws of physics and their results are the same in all reference frames.

6. Whether (or when) we are going to get crunched or not is the whole point of the dark matter question. We are moving closer to the Andromeda (M31) galaxy, but that is local gravitational motion. The space in between our Galaxy and M31 is expanding, but slower than the proper motion of the two galaxies. Overriding the expansion of space, we are all moving towards the so-called "great attractor" which is exerting a huge gravitational tug on galaxy clusters in a considerable area of space. Unfortunately, we can't look in its direction, since it's on the other side of the center of our galaxy, but we can deduce a general idea of its distance and mass, by analyzing the motion of nearby galaxies. So we are heading for something, but what we don't know.

Your last question about seeing a reflection of the interior is also a question of overall size and density, and a battlefield for the inflation and dark matter people. What we see indicates the known universe is pretty flat - maybe flat enough to keep expanding forever, except our galaxy and its neighbors has a date with the "great attractor."

posted 06-06-99 04:56 AM ET            

Hey, Michael the Great stuck it to dkl in the censorship thread. I just couldn't stand by while the other side said the Civs didn't have anything so nasty, so why should SMAC? I just surmised a few of the things you can do in SMAC. Any game that has so much War in can't be a Teletubby game.

I thought MtG had said the speed of light in a vacuum was a constant. Not in general. I was picking on him about SPEED as speed is a function of distance (a concept involving space coordinates) and time (a concept that only has meaning in a gravitaional effect).

And I would love to see the article on how to slow down Light to 38 miles per hour. You can do this yourself if you speed yourself up. Or rather, make whatever you choose to look to you as if it was only travelling 38 miles per hour... other than ELECTROMAGNETISM. That being the transport of thought in our brains, you can't get to close to that speed without your thought stopping to your consciousness point of view...

Which reminds me, MtG... Without gravity, there can be no relativity. And the evidence is mounting that there is an "Anti-gravity" force, according to the science coming out of our deepest probes. Which I think is poppy-cock, but I'm not a big brain thinker, so what do I know? Especially since I screwed up the direction of the time dialation... That must be why I think things are going backward. Effects of old age and lazy living, I'm sure.

Gravity COMPRESSES time, therefore without any gravity there is no time. Strange but true. This is evidenced in a few formuli involving photons... A photon is a particle whose half-life is almost instaneous. When its stopped, it degrades (into what, I forget). The reason is that it is no longer in its frozen time stream and catches up with the rest of us.

The idea that our frame of reference on this earth, which is in orbit around our sun, which is in orbit around our galaxy, which is in orbit around our galatic clusters gravitic center (and falling towards that, from what I hear from MtG) which is in orbit around no telling what... There is a LOT of vectors involved. Our frame of reference PROBABLY isn't the best to figure this mess out.

By the way, MtG, where did they publish this noise about us falling towards the great local attractor? Heck, last time I looked, they were still debating about what certain factors were, which would determine if we really were catching up with Andromedia or it was leaving us behind.

And yes, having had the opportunity to schedule a project for Hubble Time, I know how hard it is to gain. Anyone can make a submission request though, so its not like anything special. Believe it or not, they had been looking for more ways to make Hubble useful a few years ago, and opened up their lists and qualifications a bit. Of course, I am surprised that anything on the Hubble works... my former Father-In-Law was in charge of certain teams of construction and design, and I from what I know of him and his style of management... well... (I have forgotten WHICH phases... it was over 10 years ago...) He went on and became a lawyer which is much more fitting.

They are (actually, HAVE ALREADY) done a Deep Sky South project. Most of the data was still being processed/held for public release. And despite all the clamouring for Hubble's mostly sharp eyes, they would to have had to allow the HST to do the Deep Sky Observations. Its part of the Hubble Primary Mission (Determining age of universe). Of course, politics are politics...

Stellar dusts doesn't block X-Rays, and the most knowledge revealing astronomy (overall) that is earth bound is Radio observations. To make near-light and light observations that could do similar science is the reason that NASA wanted to do the Hubble. I can't WAIT to see the science that comes out of the next Great Observatory... I think that one is X-Ray (aka Radio for you non-stellar junkies). What a great age for astronomy... I haven't kept track of which telescope won the fight to be placed on the Internation Space Station either... but they should be able to get some nice science and obs with that as well.

Its getting past my time for me to recharge my big gray Delco. Later!

posted 06-06-99 05:09 AM ET            

The physical constant c is the speed of light, in a vacuum, along a geodesic path between the points of measurement. That last bit is due to the effects of relativity in distorting space and time as a result of the influence of energy (matter - but the equations are based on energy density for technical reasons) Since there are multiple paths between the two points, the geodesic represents the least action path, or the one that the light would normally follow through a curved space.

Light passing through other media is a different story, but that doesn't affect the laws of physics. It is amazing the number of seemingly unrelated places the constant c crops up in physics, in addition to its direct applications in such things as the energy from stars and the relativity equations. In a real strict sense, the Heisenberg uncertainty principal from Quantum theory prohibits c from being a constant in the classical sense of never varying at all. The variations are incredibly tiny, (the larger the object or region of space you consider, the smaller they are - even on the scale of a single atom, the variance is tiny - a proton is a huge object on the quantum scale) and cancel each other out over time, so we still act like the classical constants are absolute, but its only the average effect that is absolute.