Are Insects Downloading Data in Time and Space?

[NeonLX]

Well. That sucked a lot. I just wrote a monster of the post and it disappeared. Fuck. Now I have to summarize what was in that post.

OK, so the universe came to be as the result of a "Big Bang". That sounds like a kind of creation event to me, where you get something from nothing. Not Creation in the sense of what the funnymentalist religious folk think, but a creation nonetheless. The usual non-religious answer is that this event was the result of quantum fluctuation or some such. I dunno nothin' 'bout that.

For decades, I've been uneasy about the perfection of Earth for life. It's just the right distance from the sun. Its axial tilt causes seasons. It has an abnormally large moon (who parked it?) that causes tides, which seem to have encouraged evolution. The solid form of water is ice, which floats instead of sinking like most materials do. If ice sank, then we would be...well, sunk.

I saw a bunch of birds fly out of some shrubs as I walked by. They spontaneously flew away, all of them at the same time. They also were in a formation, immediately. That is an amazing sight to behold, even if it is commonplace.

[jakell]

Well. That sucked a lot. I just wrote a monster of the post and it disappeared. Fuck. Now I have to summarize what was in that post.

OK, so the universe came to be as the result of a "Big Bang". That sounds like a kind of creation event to me, where you get something from nothing. Not Creation in the sense of what the funnymentalist religious folk think, but a creation nonetheless. The usual non-religious answer is that this event was the result of quantum fluctuation or some such. I dunno nothin' 'bout that.

For decades, I've been uneasy about the perfection of Earth for life. It's just the right distance from the sun. Its axial tilt causes seasons. It has an abnormally large moon (who parked it?) that causes tides, which seem to have encouraged evolution. The solid form of water is ice, which floats instead of sinking like most materials do. If ice sank, then we would be...well, sunk.

I saw a bunch of birds fly out of some shrubs as I walked by. They spontaneously flew away, all of them at the same time. They also were in a formation, immediately. That is an amazing sight to behold, even if it is commonplace.

Interestingly, the 'Big Bang' is not as cut and dried as some assume, there is no solid evidence of such an event and it is merely an extrapolation to a point of incomprehensibility. What we do have evidence of is what I usually refer to as 'the Early Universe' where all matter was a lot closer together. the combination of the motion of galaxies plus the Cosmic Background Radiation pretty much nails this.
Before that point is pretty much guesswork and seems motivated to some degree by the desire to define a beginning point, an unexpected echo of religious themes (although scientists and science fanboys will vehemently deny this)

[82_28]

I'm down with all things science and always have been but have never quite bought the "big bang" theory as absolute. It makes some sense and I'll roll with it, but it is sacrilege to question it in equal parts in that of creationism. Dogma's a bitch.

Here is what I think: There is a creator and I don't believe it is "god" as it is explained to the litany of religions, but something far more vast. I guess I have to skew into yet again, PKD. Vast Active Living Intelligence System or VALIS. Dick was basically saying nothing when you think about it, yet saying nothing was saying something. It's a vast paradox. I think it was last night that I was watching some re-run of South Park and it dealt with the Catholic church and how priests should not rape children and god revealed himself to be some giant spider to the Vatican people. It's actually what caused me to even start this OP. I was just gonna let my original idea go into the mists of my brain. Fuck those guys are good at weaving at least three different absurdities together per show. I know no one cares to hear this again (I prolly will say it again) but Parker and Stone lived a few blocks from me growing up. Their humor is something that was rife in those days. I hope it still is!

[jakell]

I'm down with all things science and always have been but have never quite bought the "big bang" theory as absolute. It makes some sense and I'll roll with it, but it is sacrilege to question it in equal parts in that of creationism. Dogma's a bitch.

'Big Bang' was actually named so by an opponent of the idea, it was supposed to be poking fun at it but it sort of stuck and became the (un)official name.

The actual part I question above is just a pimple (timewise) on top of the whole theory, and it's perfectly fine in science to follow a theory as far as the evidence goes and regard the rest as irrelevent speculation. The notion that we have to accept the whole thing is actually a throwback from religious attitudes (all or nothing), people tend to mix science and religiosity together when it comes to big existential issues, to the extent that I think that, where there is overlap, we need a third discipline to understand the issues. (Not that I'm offering one)

Here is what I think: There is a creator and I don't believe it is "god" as it is explained to the litany of religions, but something far more vast. I guess I have to skew into yet again, PKD. Vast Active Living Intelligence System or VALIS. Dick was basically saying nothing when you think about it, yet saying nothing was saying something. It's a vast paradox. I think it was last night that I was watching some re-run of South Park and it dealt with the Catholic church and how priests should not rape children and god revealed himself to be some giant spider to the Vatican people. It's actually what caused me to even start this OP. I was just gonna let my original idea go into the mists of my brain. Fuck those guys are good at weaving at least three different absurdities together per show. I know no one cares to hear this again (I prolly will say it again) but Parker and Stone lived a few blocks from me growing up. Their humor is something that was rife in those days. I hope it still is!

[DrEvil]

I don't believe in compromising with idiots.

...disingenious fucktards trying to push their personal beliefs on everyone.

and not a hint of irony.

Right back at you.

Also: It's not belief (in the religious sense) when it's backed by facts and observations. There is zero evidence to support the idea of ID (but tons of evidence to support evolution), it's pure speculation and no better than religion when it comes to explaining the world.

[DrEvil]

jakell wrote:

The advantage of non-supernatural ID is that it can now be considered alongside Darwinian Evolution, as there is no qualitative difference. Absence of evidence here is not evidence of absence. If we take certain forms of ID that don't involve massive sudden changes and works alongside evolution, then the evidence we have for evolution would be indistinguisable from that of ID, there would be no way of telling interference in evolution (artificial selection) from natural evolution.

Sorry, but I don't buy this. You could say that fairies/gremlins/God/the Flying Spaghetti Monster/Santa Claus are tinkering with our genes and it would be equally valid. There's no evidence either way.

It's just another version of the teapot orbiting Mars argument. You can't prove that there isn't a teapot orbiting Mars, and the onus is on whoever is claiming that there is a teapot in orbit to prove it, not the other way around.

Edit: This is why this subject riles me up so much:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016 ... ary-runoff

Ex-teacher who says Noah's Ark killed dinosaurs loses board of education bid

Mary Lou Bruner loses runoff for seat in Texas that would have given her a say in what more than five million children learn in classrooms and read in textbooks

When Texas takes up always-contentions revisions of science and social studies coursework in 2017, a former schoolteacher who believes dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark and Democrats killed John F Kennedy won’t have a vote.

Mary Lou Bruner lost her Republican primary runoff for a seat on the powerful Texas state board of education on Tuesday night, just two months after a near-outright victory that would have put her on the brink of having a say in what more than five million schoolchildren learn in classrooms and read in textbooks.

The 69-year-old Bruner has posted on Facebook claims that Barack Obama is a gay prostitute, climate change is a hoax concocted by Karl Marx and that Obama’s healthcare overhaul was an orchestrated plot to wipe 200 million people from the US population. She also wrote that the flood from the biblical story of Noah’s Ark is what destroyed the dinosaurs, not a meteor as “concocted” by atheists.

In March, Bruner came within two percentage points of avoiding a runoff altogether. But Republican voters flocked this time to Keven Ellis, a local school board president in Lufkin who ran a mainstream campaign.

“I honestly believe that in the primary – that was during the presidential primary, too – our race just got buried,” said Ellis, who wouldn’t criticize Bruner following his victory and instead thanked her for her career as a teacher.

“Voters just may have selected a name,” Ellis said.

Ellis easily won with nearly 60% of the vote. Bruner’s fade was perhaps tied not only to increasing attention surrounding her since-deleted Facebook posts but also to an influential Tea Party group recently withdrawing its endorsement. Grassroots America did not cite Bruner’s conspiracy theories and fringe political screeds on social media in taking back its support but rather her making inaccurate school data claims.

Bruner did not respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday night.

In an interview with Dallas television station WFAA in the weekend before the runoff, she did not disavow her Facebook posts.

“When I wrote those things, I wasn’t even intending to run for the state board of education. I had no idea that I would,” she said.

Ellis will be heavily favored to beat his Democratic opponent, a college professor, in November because the East Texas district is so staunchly conservative.

Some of Bruner’s Facebooks posts were several years old and were saved by the Texas Freedom Network, a left-leaning watchdog of the state education board, before disappearing from her page.

“Texas escaped an education train wreck tonight,” the group’s president, Kathy Miller, said.

Bruner’s election would have been stunning, even given that the Texas state board of education was chaired until 2011 by a creationist who tried weakening evolution lessons in science classrooms. The 15-member panel next year is scheduled to take up divisive revisions that could change what Texas student learn about science and social studies.

Curriculum battles on the Texas education board are often closely watched over worries that the state’s textbook buying power influences what winds up in classrooms across the US. But publishing experts say technology now allows the industry to more easily customize textbooks for individual markets.

This is the kind of idiot I wouldn't compromise with and what I mean by disingenious fucktards (see her excuse for why she wrote those things). Thank God she lost, but there's more where she came from. People like here shouldn't be allowed within 10 miles of any public school. They're trying to drag the country back into the Dark Ages, and I'm going to just say it out loud: They're fucking idiots. The only thing they deserve is ridicule.

[82_28]

There will presumably be an orbiting teapot around Mars at some time in the fairly soon future. So you're just a prophet. I'd go on the trip so long as there was enough room for 100 kegs.

[DrEvil]

^^

Would be awesome if Musk actually put a teapot into orbit on his first trip there (currently scheduled for 2018 or thereabouts).

[jakell]

Aliens is the obvious one, but we could also posit something dwelling on this planet, and talk of non/pre-humans. the main thing is that this pushes Creationists to stop talking of 'intelligent design' and state their case in open religious terms instead, this undermines some of the pretence of a scientific approach that modern creationists adopt.

The advantage of non-supernatural ID is that it can now be considered alongside Darwinian Evolution, as there is no qualitative difference. Absence of evidence here is not evidence of absence. If we take certain forms of ID that don't involve massive sudden changes and works alongside evolution, then the evidence we have for evolution would be indistinguishable from that of ID, there would be no way of telling interference in evolution (artificial selection) from natural evolution.

The above hypotheses make no difference to the scientific position. Too many science types insist on purely naturalistic (non interventionist) evolution, to the extent that their position becomes unsupportable and dogmatic, playing right back into the hands of the Creationists again (these guys are good!)
All that science needs to show is that natural evolution is a possibility, then it's done it's job (subtle as it is). This apparently subtle position puts the onus back on Creationists who declare that it is impossible, however they cannot show why this is, and there the foot shuffling on their part begins

Sorry, but I don't buy this. You could say that fairies/gremlins/God/the Flying Spaghetti Monster/Santa Claus are tinkering with our genes and it would be equally valid. There's no evidence either way.

I have repeatedly and clearly made a distinction between a supernatural and a natural cause here. You are completely overlooking it

It's just another version of the teapot orbiting Mars argument. You can't prove that there isn't a teapot orbiting Mars, and the onus is on whoever is claiming that there is a teapot in orbit to prove it, not the other way around.

Edit: This is why this subject riles me up so much:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016 ... ary-runoff

Ex-teacher who says Noah's Ark killed dinosaurs loses board of education bid

Mary Lou Bruner loses runoff for seat in Texas that would have given her a say in what more than five million children learn in classrooms and read in textbooks

When Texas takes up always-contentions revisions of science and social studies coursework in 2017, a former schoolteacher who believes dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark and Democrats killed John F Kennedy won’t have a vote.

Mary Lou Bruner lost her Republican primary runoff for a seat on the powerful Texas state board of education on Tuesday night, just two months after a near-outright victory that would have put her on the brink of having a say in what more than five million schoolchildren learn in classrooms and read in textbooks.

The 69-year-old Bruner has posted on Facebook claims that Barack Obama is a gay prostitute, climate change is a hoax concocted by Karl Marx and that Obama’s healthcare overhaul was an orchestrated plot to wipe 200 million people from the US population. She also wrote that the flood from the biblical story of Noah’s Ark is what destroyed the dinosaurs, not a meteor as “concocted” by atheists.

In March, Bruner came within two percentage points of avoiding a runoff altogether. But Republican voters flocked this time to Keven Ellis, a local school board president in Lufkin who ran a mainstream campaign.

“I honestly believe that in the primary – that was during the presidential primary, too – our race just got buried,” said Ellis, who wouldn’t criticize Bruner following his victory and instead thanked her for her career as a teacher.

“Voters just may have selected a name,” Ellis said.

Ellis easily won with nearly 60% of the vote. Bruner’s fade was perhaps tied not only to increasing attention surrounding her since-deleted Facebook posts but also to an influential Tea Party group recently withdrawing its endorsement. Grassroots America did not cite Bruner’s conspiracy theories and fringe political screeds on social media in taking back its support but rather her making inaccurate school data claims.

Bruner did not respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday night.

In an interview with Dallas television station WFAA in the weekend before the runoff, she did not disavow her Facebook posts.

“When I wrote those things, I wasn’t even intending to run for the state board of education. I had no idea that I would,” she said.

Ellis will be heavily favored to beat his Democratic opponent, a college professor, in November because the East Texas district is so staunchly conservative.

Some of Bruner’s Facebooks posts were several years old and were saved by the Texas Freedom Network, a left-leaning watchdog of the state education board, before disappearing from her page.

“Texas escaped an education train wreck tonight,” the group’s president, Kathy Miller, said.

Bruner’s election would have been stunning, even given that the Texas state board of education was chaired until 2011 by a creationist who tried weakening evolution lessons in science classrooms. The 15-member panel next year is scheduled to take up divisive revisions that could change what Texas student learn about science and social studies.

Curriculum battles on the Texas education board are often closely watched over worries that the state’s textbook buying power influences what winds up in classrooms across the US. But publishing experts say technology now allows the industry to more easily customize textbooks for individual markets.

This is the kind of idiot I wouldn't compromise with and what I mean by disingenious fucktards (see her excuse for why she wrote those things). Thank God she lost, but there's more where she came from. People like here shouldn't be allowed within 10 miles of any public school. They're trying to drag the country back into the Dark Ages, and I'm going to just say it out loud: They're fucking idiots. The only thing they deserve is ridicule.

Will you please leave the headers in posts, it's so easy, and enables people to follow the discussion.

Right I've pasted it all back in, far easier to follow than your 'jakell wrote', and far easier for you to leave in than for me to retrieve

[Mask]

[backtoiam]

[jakell]

A pretty extended speculation from Mckenna here that doesn't really deserve the word 'theory', but then that word does get thrown around a bit in general. I sense that Mckenna isn't taking the whole thing very seriously either and moves too rapidly away from early human evolution to later times.
About apes and psychedelics though. We have apes now and it could be seen whether they like to self-administer mild psychedelics (ie no forced laboratory conditions would be needed) which would be the initial precondition needed for all those other things that McKenna wonders about.

A far cry from insects and computer network metaphors

[DrEvil]

DrEvil spitefully quotes jakell writing:

I have repeatedly and clearly made a distinction between a supernatural and a natural cause here. You are completely overlooking it

Sorry, should have added "aliens/enlightened ancient civilization/extra-dimensional beings/time traveling AI" to my list, but it doesn't change anything, there's still no evidence whatsoever that anything external is guiding evolution, supernatural or not.

[JackRiddler]

Big Bang theory highly dubious but leaving that aside:

For decades, I've been uneasy about the perfection of Earth for life. It's just the right distance from the sun. Its axial tilt causes seasons. It has an abnormally large moon (who parked it?) that causes tides, which seem to have encouraged evolution. The solid form of water is ice, which floats instead of sinking like most materials do. If ice sank, then we would be...well, sunk.

And all of these conditions relatively rare as they are in combination would occur a minimum of millions of times in an observable universe of this size. Which are necessary for the evolution of life in the form we know is not even clear -- distance from sun and atmospheric temperature allowing liquid water on the surface and an active geology might suffice. Also, a relative paucity of bad astronomical events over periods of hundreds of millions of years. The properties of water in its three states would be the same on any other planet. A big moon might help but may not be necessary. Life seems likely to arise almost inevitably.

Which says nothing about the likelihood of the most interesting question for us, which is how often life spawns intelligence, let alone communicative intelligence on our level capable of contemplating one day going out there and looking for other intelligences.

[jakell]

Sorry, editing mix up, will start the post again..