Answer To Why People Are So Stupid These Days

[ccc]

Can she cook and clean?

If I ever meet her I will ask. After I finish wiping the drool away from my face.

[bogbrush]

This thread is a bit too deep. Here is a pic of a nice bird to cheer everyone up.

The Universe created this. Now how it managed it I am not really too bothered. Excellent result. And as any football manager will tell you - the result is all that matters.

See? Self-copying molecules have got to the point where when the light bounces off her into my sensory apparatus, and maybe a few other sensory inuts too, I do all kinds of things and if Mrs Bogbrush found out the very last thing I'd claim was free will.

[newbonic]

See? Self-copying molecules have got to the point where when the light bounces off her into my sensory apparatus, and maybe a few other sensory inuts too, I do all kinds of things and if Mrs Bogbrush found out the very last thing I'd claim was free will.

Aye, and apropos of nothing, if your ancestors had gone down a different evolutionary route 4 hundred odd million years ago you might be going 'phwoar' at this beauty:

:

edit for typo

Edited January 3, 2011 by newbonic

[Guest The Relaxation Suite]

Well a nice name-drop, but an absolute fail in terms of a clear definition that means anything. I just love these amateur internet debates where everyone goes around in circles talking about "free will" and "consciousness" as if they are all engaging with the same concepts. The professional debates are bad enough!

Scepticus and his "anti-entropic" life molecules still tickles me though! The idea that life somehow breaks the second law of thermodynamics is a stone cold classic schoolboy error.

The professional debates are perfectly easy to follow, and the history of this subject is clear and largely progressive. It strikes me you know nothing about this and are content to give the impression that you do by offering little snippets like the above, If you want to, and are able to, discuss these ideas, then get back to me and we might have some fun, if not, then go for a walk or something.

[scepticus]

When you stop inventing concepts you don't need to conjure up answers to explain their existence. The equations simplify and the solution becomes obvious; ordinary chemistry run n million times through an iterative process explains it all.

Your billiard balls view of the universe, a snooker table on which interesting patterns emerge, is very out of date with respect to the current frontier of theoretical physics, it however typical for believers in hard AI (as you seem to be). The key word here is 'believers'.

Really you ought to spend some time updating yourself with regard to the issues that the best physicists like Penrose, Verlinde, Hawking and so on are all grappling with.

One cannot explain chemistry without recourse to physics, and physics has major holes in it, the main one being gravity, along with the related question of what gave rise to the existence of matter (your snooker balls) in the first place.

The equations (let alone the solutions) are not 'obvious' to these physicists I cited above, so either you are wrong or the world of theoretical physics is suffering unecessarily by missing out on Bogbrush's 'solution'. Which do you think it is?

[bogbrush]

Your billiard balls view of the universe, a snooker table on which interesting patterns emerge, is very out of date with respect to the current frontier of theoretical physics, it however typical for believers in hard AI (as you seem to be). The key word here is 'believers'.

Really you ought to spend some time updating yourself with regard to the issues that the best physicists like Penrose, Verlinde, Hawking and so on are all grappling with.

One cannot explain chemistry without recourse to physics, and physics has major holes in it, the main one being gravity, along with the related question of what gave rise to the existence of matter (your snooker balls) in the first place.

The equations (let alone the solutions) are not 'obvious' to these physicists I cited above, so either you are wrong or the world of theoretical physics is suffering unecessarily by missing out on Bogbrush's 'solution'. Which do you think it is?

So having completely failed to find any logic for your position you fall back on being high-handed and doing some name checks (all meaningless in the context of this debate as nobody is saying there's a thorough theory of everything for physics and it's irrelevent to the question of why complexity is misinterpreted as life anyway). All you really needed to do was converse sensibly, offer some thoughts (of your own) and engage.

Read your post again; it makes you look like a complete ar$e. Honestly.

EDIT to add: and given the nonsense you wrote earlier about complex molecules requiring gravity to force them as they are anti-entropic, I doubt you know anything about what thise guys study outside of the wiki check you did to get the list.

Edited January 3, 2011 by bogbrush

[scepticus]

So having completely failed to find any logic for your position you fall back on being high-handed and doing some name checks (all meaningless in the context of this debate as nobody is saying there's a thorough theory of everything for physics

let me stop you there. You said that the "equations all simplify to prove your point", or something similar. That is a claim to a theory of some mind. What equations are your talking about.

and it's irrelevent to the question of why complexity is misinterpreted as life anyway). All you really needed to do was converse sensibly, offer some thoughts (of your own) and engage.

You can't keep stating that life doesn't exist and is all an illusion as if its fact - you are pulling an injin on us there.

Read your post again; it makes you look like a complete ar$e. Honestly.

well lets allow the rest of the readers of this thread to be the judge of that shall we.

EDIT to add: and given the nonsense you wrote earlier about complex molecules requiring gravity to force them as they are anti-entropic, I doubt you know anything about what thise guys study outside of the wiki check you did to get the list.

I offered that as an example. Having said that, if gravity wasn't doing its work all we'd have would be diffuse clouds of dust in space. The question for you I guess is whether the brownian motion of said clouds would have given rise to delusions of free will somewhere.

I think I've done more than enough to show sensible readers of this thread that you hold a basically religious position here. I'm not claiming to have any master theories and neither am I saying your position is definitely wrong, merely that your FAITH is unwarranted by the evidence.

But of course that accusation has never deterred theologians like yourself before so no reason to expect it would now.

[Guest The Relaxation Suite]

It is at this point in the thread I would like to ask if there is any evidence to the proposal that people are so stupid these days? What are we basing this on in the first place? The shrinking brain argument is nonsense because it is well established that females have smaller brains than males but this has nothing to do with IQ. Also, the smaller brains of 2010 are clearly carrying more intellectual capacity than the larger brains of bronze-age man, etc.

[Cygnus Alpha]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1343093/Human-brain-shrinking-20-000-years.html

Are we becoming more stupid? Human brain has been 'shrinking for the last 20,000 years'

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 6:05 PM on 31st December 2010

My Stories It's not something we'd like to admit, but it seems the human race may actually be becoming increasingly dumb.

Man's brain has been gradually shrinking over the last 20,000 years, according to a new report.

This decrease in size follows two million years during which the human cranium steadily grew in size, and it's happened all over the world, to both sexes and every race.

About two years ago I picked up a book on Roman Emperor Augustus and how he ran the Empire. An administrative genius that seemed to have a grip on multiple aspects of the Empire that I could not imagine anyone being able to match today. Had the same thoughts watching a WW1 film where men simply "went over the top" into gunfire that systematically killed them all. I said to myself, why couldn't they borrow something from the Ancient Greeks or Romans and go into battle with full armour (Roman Toitoise etc).

Dumb and dumber is how to characterise most of our leaders today. The fact that the Newlabour "genius" believed debt was good and that he could elmiinate the business cycle was really quite startling to me. How could these people be in office I said to myself.

I think the DM article has at last confirmed my theory of years ago: we are getting thicker and the process has been going on for years.

Look, you're a Daily Mail reader so therefore have no room for calling anyone thick.

[Tiger Woods?]

It is at this point in the thread I would like to ask if there is any evidence to the proposal that people are so stupid these days? What are we basing this on in the first place? The shrinking brain argument is nonsense because it is well established that females have smaller brains than males but this has nothing to do with IQ. Also, the smaller brains of 2010 are clearly carrying more intellectual capacity than the larger brains of bronze-age man, etc.

Sigh. You need to go and read the literature. There is a correlation of IQ with brain size in humans once you control for body size - about 0.3 to 0.4 in most studies once body size has been accounted for, iirc. Females tend to be smaller than males last time I checked.

I suspect that comparing a 20th century human with one from 20,000 years ago, might be akin to comparing a malmut with a wolf.

Edited January 4, 2011 by Tiger Woods?

[bogbrush]

let me stop you there. You said that the "equations all simplify to prove your point", or something similar. That is a claim to a theory of some mind. What equations are your talking about.

The "equation" I refer to exists only in your mind. It is that you guys seem to think that there's something going on with matter that requires a "plus" to call it life, and on the causal side you have to add in other stuff like sources of mind or dimensions or whatever to explain where this "plus" comes from. If you could realise there isn't a plus - that all we are is matter driven to ever increasing complex arrangement by the blind process of selection - you can also cross off those imagined required other sources. The "equation" then simplifies to matter & energy in a physical Universe with whatever structure and origin is demonstrated by physical phenomena.

These latter concepts are what the guys you cited are devising equations to explain, and I leave that to the particle physicists.

You can't keep stating that life doesn't exist and is all an illusion as if its fact - you are pulling an injin on us there.

I certainly can because you provide no evidence at all that there's anything else, and I have given a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why there are tremendously complex reactions going on between matter which has got to the point where it looks like something else, which you call "life".

I can't even get an answer from you guys to the simplest of questions such as if there is a special spark which distinguishes a living being from matter, at what point in the evolution from atoms of carbon, oxygen, etc does it kick in?

well lets allow the rest of the readers of this thread to be the judge of that shall we.

Well it was to me that you went to the high handed tone so it's my opinion.

I offered that as an example. Having said that, if gravity wasn't doing its work all we'd have would be diffuse clouds of dust in space. The question for you I guess is whether the brownian motion of said clouds would have given rise to delusions of free will somewhere.

I think I've done more than enough to show sensible readers of this thread that you hold a basically religious position here. I'm not claiming to have any master theories and neither am I saying your position is definitely wrong, merely that your FAITH is unwarranted by the evidence.

But of course that accusation has never deterred theologians like yourself before so no reason to expect it would now.

And once again you repeat the silly line much beloved of adherents of Intelligent Design - that denial of their claptrap is a faith etc, so we all look as stupid as each other. No, I have opinions which are based wholly on observed phenomenon and require no dosed magic; a straightfrward copying process, with mutation and enormous number of iterations including interactions with other similar processes doing the same thing but in different ways, will inevitably produce a level of refinement and complexity that its interaction with the environment will be indistinguishable from what you call living beings. And when it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, what is it?

Your opinions require both a faith that there is something more than matter at work here, and then more faith on top that something you can't observe is causing it. Like all faiths you can't present a shred of evidence for it and fall back on calling a sceptic narrow minded or limited in vision (as you did), and when all else fails and your position is weak you simply accuse the sceptic of being in the same boat as you (as you have again).