Crazy things Creationists have said

[turbo]

rewebster, you already have your answer. The future Aether did not send a tachyon message to the near-past Aether warning against offering the life-time guarantee, so the guarantee is good and you'll never collect. Now watch out when you open drawers and containers. The "firecrackers" of the future are 'way scarier than today's stuff.

 

[mgb_phys]

Did you get the message yet from the further future Aether warning the future Aether that talkign to the present Aether would cause problems (obligatory Timescape reference)

 

[rewebster]

Did you get the message yet from the further future Aether warning the future Aether that talkign to the present Aether would cause problems (obligatory Timescape reference)

I thought--"hold it--wait--what?--what?--wait--what?--what was that again?"


maybe its futile to wait for the further future Aether to much farther, for further future's Aether's father may figure a formula for a former Aether to falter.

 

[turbo]

Surely the further future Aether would appreciated the dangers of talking to the future Aether and refrain from contact, leaving the future Aether in the dark about the dangers, as it were.

 

[rewebster]

Surely the further future Aether would appreciated the dangers of talking to the future Aether and refrain from contact, leaving the future Aether in the dark about the dangers, as it were.

fo' sure!

 

[rewebster]

I should have asked if there were any dinosaurs in the future

 

[turbo]

Troublemaker!

 

[Aether]

I should have asked if there were any dinosaurs in the future

The first step toward bringing back any extinct species is to reconstruct the genome for that species. One way to do this is to piece together fragments of degraded DNA from biological relics, but maybe there is also another way.

Supercomputers are just now becoming powerful enough to predict the 3D structures of individual proteins based only on their 1D genetic codes (a protein's 1D genetic code defines a set of atomic forces that causes the protein to fold into a predictable shape).

IMHO (maybe this is less of an opinion than a dream), supercomputers will soon be powerful enough to simulate the life cycles of entire organisms from their genomes, and then we may be able to reverse engineer the entire evolutionary history of life on Earth and recover the genomes of every extinct species in the process.

 

[zoobyshoe]

... to reverse engineer the entire evolutionary history of life on Earth and recover the genomes of every extinct species in the process.

I don't think so. Given a specific animal it would be anyone's guess what it evolved from: we wouldn't know what aspect of it caused it to flourish, what environmental change it was responding to. If I give you bird-x how can you figure out how it represents some sort of better adapted animal without knowing what environmental change made it the better adapted animal?

 

[turbo]

Good point, Zooby. Adaptation and speciation do not happen in a vacuum. The Galapagos finches are a great example of this.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Good point, Zooby. Adaptation and speciation do not happen in a vacuum. The Galapagos finches are a great example of this.

That's exactly what I was thinking of: Galapagos finches. Larger beaked finches recently flourished there when all but the large or tough seeded plants they feed on died out. But confronted with the bird by itself there is no way to determine what about it constitutes the advantage over the previous version. We have to know the concommitant history of its environment.

 

[rewebster]

I was thinking they could have just 're-evolved'


(wouldn't that tick off the ID people just as badly?--or, at the very least, that person alluded to in the first post)

 

[Aether]

I don't think so. Given a specific animal it would be anyone's guess what it evolved from: we wouldn't know what aspect of it caused it to flourish, what environmental change it was responding to.

I'm just speculating here, but it seems to me that if we are able to simulate the life cycles of entire organisms from their genomes, then we would also be able to simulate entire ecosystems; and ultimately the biosphere itself.

If I give you bird-x how can you figure out how it represents some sort of better adapted animal without knowing what environmental change made it the better adapted animal?

If we wanted to deduce the conditions under which bird-x most likely evolved from its closest known predecessor, then we could take advantage of the fact that there are only a finite number of genomic variations separating any two known species; and then we could simulate all of their life cycles and see which of them (and their required environments) were consistent with the rest of what we know about Earth's history.

I was thinking they could have just 're-evolved'

Maybe they could. Biological evolution continues for every living creature, but only at a very slow pace. Technological evolution is already going millions of times faster than biological evolution though, and it is speeding up.

 

[zoobyshoe]

If we wanted to deduce the conditions under which bird-x most likely evolved from its closest known predecessor, then we could take advantage of the fact that there are only a finite number of genomic variations separating any two known species; and then we could simulate all of their life cycles and see which of them (and their required environments) were consistent with the rest of what we know about Earth's history.

I think it's possible in principle but completely impossible in practice: aren't they always asserting that we haven't yet identified all current living species of plants and insects?

 

[Aether]

I think it's possible in principle but completely impossible in practice: aren't they always asserting that we haven't yet identified all current living species of plants and insects?

I will stipulate that we have not identified all current living species of plants and insects. Do you think that it is impossible in practice to ever deduce the genome of any extinct species by the method that I have described, or that it is impossible in practice to ever deduce the genomes of all extinct species by this method?

 

[turbo]

Consider that the genetic code shared by chimps and humans is huge compared to the differences. Yet the differences in outcome is pretty darned significant. How is a computer simulation supposed to evaluate such differences, especially in organisms that it has no information on apart from relic DNA? I can't for the life of me imagine how the computer simulation might account for the differentiation of the beak morphology (and crossover characteristics) in the Galapagos finches, much less start reconstructing the genomes of creatures that are no longer extant.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I will stipulate that we have not identified all current living species of plants and insects. Do you think that it is impossible in practice to ever deduce the genome of any extinct species by the method that I have described, or that it is impossible in practice to ever deduce the genomes of all extinct species by this method?

To the extent you have to take any individual species' environment into consideration, don't you have to know the genomes, and life cycles of every plant and insect and microbe it would have encountered? In other words, to be sure of your accuracy you'd have to be working back from a sort of onmiscience about the present, which we don't have, and take everything back all together step by step. To do it for one species you'd have to do it for all, and you'd also have to do it for the Earth's weather and climate.

 

[Aether]

Consider that the genetic code shared by chimps and humans is huge compared to the differences. Yet the differences in outcome is pretty darned significant. How is a computer simulation supposed to evaluate such differences, especially in organisms that it has no information on apart from relic DNA?

The first step would be to simulate the life cycles of known organisms from their known genomes based on observing how nature actually works. Maybe more information will be needed to do this than just an organism's genome, but any such information should be readily available to us in time. As I said before, we are only just now beginning to simulate how proteins are made from DNA. Do you have some reason to think that there is a limit to how far biotechnology can go beyond this, short of simulating the complete life cycle of an organism, given the current exponential trends in advancing biotechnology and computing power?

I am currently reading Ray Kurzweil's book The Singularity is Near, and that is where some of these ideas are coming from.

I can't for the life of me imagine how the computer simulation might account for the differentiation of the beak morphology (and crossover characteristics) in the Galapagos finches, much less start reconstructing the genomes of creatures that are no longer extant.

We would begin by sampling the DNA of these various finches, and then run simulations of their life cycles based on their genomes, and see if the simulations accurately reproduce the observed differences between the finches. If the simulations are flawed, then they aren't ready for general use. However, if the simulations are not flawed, then we can use them with confidence to simulate other creatures based on hypothetical genomes.

To the extent you have to take any individual species' environment into consideration, don't you have to know the genomes, and life cycles of every plant and insect and microbe it would have encountered? In other words, to be sure of your accuracy you'd have to be working back from a sort of onmiscience about the present, which we don't have, and take everything back all together step by step. To do it for one species you'd have to do it for all, and you'd also have to do it for the Earth's weather and climate.

Not necessarily. Consider these eleven species:

http://hometown.aol.com/darwinpage/whale1.gif

We have apparently deduced that there is an evolutionary progression between these species. No doubt, if we compared the genomes of these species we would find a pattern that is consistent with this progression.

All that I am suggesting here is that in the future biotechnology and computing power will be far more capable, and that interpolating between these known genomes may be possible. We could probably do some creative gene splicing and actually grow these experimental creatures in a lab, but simulations seem both more humane and more practical to me.

 

[zoobyshoe]

We have apparently deduced that there is an evolutionary progression between these species. No doubt, if we compared the genomes of these species we would find a pattern that is consistent with this progression.

I don't understand what you want me to notice. I have read previously that it is believed whales evolved from a cat-like creature based on plain fossil evidence which accounts for the chart. Are you saying someone has already accurately deduced the genome of the cat that became the whale?

 

[Aether]

I don't understand what you want me to notice. I have read previously that it is believed whales evolved from a cat-like creature based on plain fossil evidence which accounts for the chart. Are you saying someone has already accurately deduced the genome of the cat that became the whale?

No, substitute any evolutionary chart that you like for this one. My point there is a general one, and that is that we would expect to see only small differences between the genomes of any given species, B, and its closest known evolutionary predecessor, A. We can already sequence the genomes of both A and B and know precisely how they differ. Interpolating between these two genomes doesn't seem implausible to me at all.

 

[zoobyshoe]

No, substitute any evolutionary chart that you like for this one. My point there is a general one, and that is that we would expect to see only small differences between the genomes of any given species, B, and its closest known evolutionary predecessor, A. We can already sequence the genomes of both A and B and know precisely how they differ. Interpolating between these two genomes doesn't seem implausible to me at all.

OK, I get that point.

What you'd be trying to do, though, is not interpolating between A and B, but trying to deduce pre-A, then pre-pre A, and so forth, back to the dinosaurs. You would never have a reliable genome from back there to check against.

 

[Aether]

What you'd be trying to do, though, is not interpolating between A and B, but trying to deduce pre-A, then pre-pre A, and so forth, back to the dinosaurs. You would never have a reliable genome from back there to check against.

We could interpolate between A and B for every known living species all the way back to the prokaryotes, and then the genomes of long-extinct species like the dinosaurs could be inferred from a forward propagating simulation if relic DNA isn't found for them. We could get this far in the next fifty years.

 

[rewebster]

We could interpolate between A and B for every known living species all the way back to the prokaryotes, and then the genomes of long-extinct species like the dinosaurs could be inferred from a forward propagating simulation if relic DNA isn't found for them. We could get this far in the next fifty years.

The only thing is how to 'program' random mutations, and to figure out how and why each mutation could/would manage in that 'unknown' environment---it would come down to a predisposed/predetermined 'random' selection process---which isn't really a 'true' random simulation.

 

[Aether]

The only thing is how to 'program' random mutations, and to figure out how and why each mutation could/would manage in that 'unknown' environment---it would come down to a predisposed/predetermined 'random' selection process---which isn't really a 'true' random simulation.

That's right, except for where we have a fossil record to calibrate our forward-propagating simulation.

 

[rewebster]

well, I guess what I'm saying, is that if 'the computer' went back, say to 65 million years at it's 'starting point', the 'computer simulation' would probably say that a variant of the dinosaur would become dominate again---if 'it' had to pick the "one" best variation.

 

[Astronuc]

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

. . . .

HHGG

As for the meaning -

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body.

The goal is to skid in broadside; tires smoking, body all dented, leaking fluids and fuel gauge on empty, thoroughly used up and worn out, and loudly proclaiming - Holy ****! What a Ride!"

Anonymous

Zaphod's First Principle (short version): "The basic business of life is to have a wonderfully good time."

Ford had his own code of ethics. It wasn't much of one, but it was his and he stuck by it, more or less. One rule he made was never to buy his own drinks. He wasn't sure if that counted as an ethic, but you have to go with what you've got.

- DNA - HHGG

A portable version - http://flag.blackened.net/dinsdale/dna/dna.html


"Always have an exit strategy - no matter where or when you are!"

"Don't think it can't happen to you".

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.


Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
from "Last Chance to See"

 

[Aether]

well, I guess what I'm saying, is that if 'the computer' went back, say to 65 million years at it's 'starting point', the 'computer simulation' would probably say that a variant of the dinosaur would become dominate again---if 'it' had to pick the "one" best variation.

To accurately model the history of life on Earth we typically wouldn't allow the simulation to continue far down evolutionary paths that weren't consistent with everything else that we already knew about the history of the earth. We would still be free to play "what if" scenarios with the simulation if we wanted to, but we couldn't claim that those represented the actual history of life on the Earth without corroborating evidence.

 

[zoobyshoe]

We could interpolate between A and B for every known living species all the way back to the prokaryotes, and then the genomes of long-extinct species like the dinosaurs could be inferred from a forward propagating simulation if relic DNA isn't found for them. We could get this far in the next fifty years.

You could find the genome for anything currently alive, but how would you find it for anything extinct such that you could have an A to use in your extrapolation. What, for instance, would you do in the case of Man? What are you going to declare to be our closest known predecessor, and how would you find its genome?

 

[Aether]

You could find the genome for anything currently alive, but how would you find it for anything extinct such that you could have an A to use in your extrapolation. What, for instance, would you do in the case of Man? What are you going to declare to be our closest known predecessor, and how would you find its genome?

This has already been done:

In its paper, the Rhesus Macaque Genome Sequence and Analysis Consortium...compared the genome sequences of rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) with that of human (Homo sapiens) and chimp (Pan troglodytes), the primate most closely related to humans.

http://www.genome.gov/25520551

Obviously there were many now extinct species between Pan troglodytes and Homo sapiens, and interpolation between these two known genomes would be the best way that I can think of to see them all again.

 

[rewebster]

This has already been done: http://www.genome.gov/25520551

Obviously there were many now extinct species between Pan troglodytes and Homo sapiens, and interpolation between these two known genomes would be the best way that I can think of to see them all again.

"OK---We need a volunteer---anyone? ...over there!--YOU--there..in the peanut gallery!--GREAT-FINALLY, we had a voluteer for some gene therapy"

 

[zoobyshoe]

This has already been done: http://www.genome.gov/25520551

Obviously there were many now extinct species between Pan troglodytes and Homo sapiens, ...

Your wording or something is confusing me here. It sounds like your saying we evolved from pan troglodytes (chimps), and it's possible to deduce what now-extinct variations happened in between, how we got from chimp to man. This is confusing me.

 

[Aether]

Your wording or something is confusing me here. It sounds like your saying we evolved from pan troglodytes (chimps), and it's possible to deduce what now-extinct variations happened in between, how we got from chimp to man. This is confusing me.

That is what I inferred from the article, but you are correct that it's more complicated than that. Pan troglodytes split from the line that leads directly to humans about five million years ago so a direct interpolation wouldn't be exactly right.

What I gather from other sources is that human DNA only contains about 30-100MB of incompressible information (Ray Kurzweil), and that "human DNA is 98.4 percent identical to the DNA of chimpanzees" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution). I would assume that the vast majority of candidate genomes that could be generated by interpolating between these two species would be strongly maladaptive, and based on the ones that weren't (and by considering the genomes of other closely related species) I think that we could probably work our way back to a close approximation of their common ancestor. However, I do not know what the ultimate outcome of that process will be.

 

[rewebster]

There were a few blurbs on TV (in the last month or so) on how even just different types of food can change the DNA signature with genetically identical siblings even at different stages of life.

 

[Aether]

There were a few blurbs on TV (in the last month or so) on how even just different types of food can change the DNA signature with genetically identical siblings even at different stages of life.

Please try and post a link to an online article that describes this claim in more detail.

 

[rewebster]

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:G2pO78cm-agJ:www.the-scientist.com/2007/5/1/71/1/+dna+food+twins&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=20&gl=us


http://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&safe=off&q=Epigenetic+food&btnG=Search


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics