Evolution: A theory disproven?

[Eibborn]

I'd write a review, but I suspect I would cause severe damage to my keyboard in the process. Anyway, it looks like many others have it covered.

[Vidar]

As an actual biologist with a masters degree, and as a Christian as well, I simply must weigh in!

The biological definition of evolution has changed several times.  Now it is simply 'genetic change over time'.  Genetic structure does indeed change over time.  One can see this in the rapid mutations of viruses and bacteria.  Therefore, the genetic basis of evolution is proven factually based on current measurable effects.

The big problem, however, lies with the beginning of life.  There is no single hypothesis that accurately accounts for how the first cell came into being.

As a biologist you would know that the beginning of life isn't actually part of evolution.
That's being covered by a study called abiogenesis. It's a fairly new field, but they are making progress. They have gotten as far as the spontanious rise of RNA in the conditions of the prebiotic earth. More research needs to be done, but a gap in our knowledge does not automatically point towards a supernatural explanation.

The problem with irreducible complexity comes up when experiments are done to see how many genes the simplest cell needs to live and reproduce.  I don't know the exact number anymore, but at least 100 genes are crucial for a free-living bacterial cell to survive.  Let us then assume, given that many amino acids are somewhat interchangeable in proteins, that some variability in the genetic code will still allow for the genes to produce a functional protein and carry out the vital function.  The odds of this system arising by random chance (not counting the fact that protein and/or ribozyme (RNA enzymes) machinery for expression of the randomly assembled genes must also pre-exist are simply staggering. 

Please don't try to use the irreducably complex argument. It got spanked, crushed, smooshed and obliterated during the Kitzmiller vs Dover trail.
Also, life didn't begin with a complete bacteria. Modern bacteria are not primitive animals, but one of the survivors of over 3 billion years of evolution. The origin of life was likely something far simpler than anything that exists today. one of Porholer54's videos on youtube has a descent explanation of the origin of life, and the explanation doesn't involve the first bacteria popping out of the prebiotic earth all at once by sheer random chance alone. It involves a natural process not unlike natural selection, and as a biologist, you know that random chance + natural selection = deterministic, and not random chance.

There is also the problem that random formation of long strings of nucleic acids is energetically unfavorable.  Random chance evntually breaks them down at the same rate they assemble, and there is no guarantee that only nucleic acids will bind to the chain.  All the biochemical experiments are done in very pure and clean conditions.  When you throw all the elements and compounds likely present in a primordial ocean into the mix, the system becomes very messy and even the small strings are less likely to form.

You might find this to be an interesting article: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479777,00.html
It shows how scientists managed to create self-replicating RNA in a lab. After that, a form of evolution took hold, and things got even more interesting.

Clearly, much is missing as to how life emerged or was created.  I chose to believe in God because a God of order certainly would overcome that chaotic system and harness entropy itself to bring forth life, which at all times depends on a delicate balance between carefully regulated and orderded structures and chaotic jitterings of molecules into enzyme active sites and free energy reactions resultant from the entropic progression of the universe to exist.

A God would, but you need more evidence then "I don't know how else it could have happened" before god becomes science. Unless you have actual scientific evidence of a god, you would have to admit that you don't actually know how things have happened.
You can still believe god did it, but you can't honestly say you know god did it.

Either life is the most extraordinary accident of all the universe, or a being of vast intelligence took it upon itself to create a system of extraordinary chemical machines. 

That's a false dichotomy. It could also be that life is actually somewhat common in the universe. We haven't travelled to other stars to see what is there yet.
Also, the universe is really, really big, and even extremely unlikely events would happen somewhere in the cosmos on a regular basis.

Then, if we decide on intelligent design

Wait, WHAT?
Please don't tell me you're an ID proponent? ID has been proven in court, in front of a Bush-appointed conservative Christian judge to be not science.

Then, if we decide on intelligent design we must ask why was life made.  Well, that's the simplest thing to understand.  Intelligence breeds creativity and imagination, this we know.  An infinite intelligence would have infinite creative tendencies, and intellilgent beings tend to desire communication with other intelligences, and if one is the sole intelligence, but one possesses the power and knowledge to create other intelligences, then the only solution is to create these other living intelligences.  And along the way, the ideas for life of many forms spring to mind.  Simply look at the complexity writers can create in fiction worlds.  At least this part makes perfect sense.   

It doesn't really make all that much sense to me.
If said 'infinite intelligence' doesn't want to be alone anymore, then why didn't it just create more infinitly intelligent beings? Instead it chooses to create things through a slow, messy and brutal process we now call evolution? That would mean that this 'infinite intelligence' also has a really big mean streak.

But as for which beginning is correct, I can only speak on faith. 

I'll go with the evidence, wherever it points to, and whether I like it or not.

But I seek absolute truth always.  I can accept anything as the truth as long as the facts surrounding it are totally complete.  

But the facts never are totally complete, are they?

The conflicts around the beginning in both religion and science (how many physics theories exist now for the universe's structure?) make me think that neither side has the whole story.  The truth may be far too complicated for our short-lived minds to comprehend.  But we'll never know until we truly reach the limit of our understanding.

I certainly hope that there is God and that there is the possibility of immortality in some form.  There is certainly enough universe to learn about to keep me occupied forever, and if any of a number of theories are correct, there may be many more universes to see as well; many being created as others are destroyed; and endless, limitless progression of the new and unique stretching through a dimensional network the construction of which is almost impossible to fathom; reaching both before and after and all that we perceive as time all at once for it exists outside of what we call time and space, and instead dwells upon only some type of primal cosmic formula and as such is all things at once and from it all universes emerge.

*POP!!*

My head jus asploded.   

I'm going to end this post with a quote from a  well-known youtube user known as Thunderf00t on the issue of eternal life.

"Ah, the snake oil merchant peddling the promise of eternal life to the short-sided neurotic mortals who can be seduced by the vacuous promise of eternal life.

Eternal life would be no gift, but arguably one of the most horrific tortures that could be laid on a sentient being. I mean, sure the first million years might be fun, but what about the next million? And the billion after that? And the trillion after that? And you still have eternity left. This is never going to end. There will never be an end in sight.

Eternal life is merely the poorly thought-up fiction of mortals who have gotten greedy. Eternal life would be a curse. Without death, there is no reason to do things. Eternal life would rob you of purpose. And this is how things would remain for eternity. And eternity after that. And eternity after that.

I strongly urge you to accept your mortality. Do not let your fear of your inevitable death make you waste your only mortal life pursuing phantasms and delusions. Look at yourself in the mirror, for billions of years those particles, which are currently looking back at you, have circulated in the universe. But for a brief moment they have coalesced in you. Rejoice in the impressive instant until they dissipate whence they came. Delight that you are a spark of life in the universe.

Life is so much more vibrant and vivid without Bronze Age paranoid superstitions that cloud and contract the mind with some empty and undesirable promise that sparks can burn forever. Our time is finite. This gives our lives meaning. This gives our lives purpose. This gives our lives urgency. Live life today. Savor it."

[LionHeart]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aplt9IGsmQA

[Reese Tora]

As far as I know, a scientific law is merely an outdated bit of terminology. These days we call them theories.

Also, sorry for the massive wall of text I posted earlier. The slab of lies 'article' seriously rammed on my berserk-button.

yeah, Law isn't an official scientific term any more, everything is a theory.  (for one thing, we know more about how Evolution works than we do about how gravity works!)

[superluser]

yeah, Law isn't an official scientific term any more, everything is a theory.

There are official scientific terms now?

[Alondro]

Many mortals believe eternal life would be terrible simply because they can't fathom what they could do with it.  It's more due to limited imagination and a mentality of defeatism.

It's the fox and the grapes way of thinking.  You see no way to have it, so you decide it wouldn't be worth having.

Even in a billion years you could only visit a tiny fraction of the total number of stars in the universe.  Maybe in a trillion years I'd start to get bored.

Hmmm, a trillion years vs 100.  Frankly, I'd like to experience that for myself and seeif boredom actually does set in, or if without any limits the mind expands to levels we can't imagine.

Simply knowing that you would not die would change ones way of thinking instantly.  All fear would vanish, because there would be no need for it.  Greed would be pointless and creativity unbounded because there would no longer be any worry about wasted time on a project that might fail.  You'd literally have all the time in the universe.

Perhaps it's because I've never limited myself to a flimsy mortal way of thinking that I rejoice in the possibility of life eternal.  I've imagined projects that would take a million years to complete on a single world, scales of creativity that a limited lifespan could never accomplish, and there are variations of those projects... hundreds of variations, thousands of different styles and millions of nuances to experiment with!  And I would have the time to test each and every one.

I could easily spend a billion years tinkering with just one world, taking hundreds or thousands of years on each square mile's design until I decide it's perfect.

Those who don't wish for the immortal do not understand the meaning of it.  They limit themselves to their way of thinking.  Certainly a couch potato who has no ambition or motivation would be bored after a mere century.  People who are fascinated by virtually everything, on the other hand, would find something interesting about even the smallest asteroid orbiting a distant star.

[Vidar]

Even in a billion years you could only visit a tiny fraction of the total number of stars in the universe.  Maybe in a trillion years I'd start to get bored.

And what are you going to do when you start to get bored? It's not going to end after a trillion years.
What are you going to do for the next trillion trillion trillion years, knowing that you still have eternity after that?
It's not about the time that you enjoy, even if it lasts a trillion years. The problem is when eternity stops being fun, and start being boring. Can you imagine being bored for ever after you have already done everything ad nausium? That's the reason why I don't want to live forever. It's not going to end when it is no longer appealing.

[superluser]

And what are you going to do when you start to get bored? It's not going to end after a trillion years.
What are you going to do for the next trillion trillion trillion years, knowing that you still have eternity after that?
It's not about the time that you enjoy, even if it lasts a trillion years. The problem is when eternity stops being fun, and start being boring. Can you imagine being bored for ever after you have already done everything ad nausium? That's the reason why I don't want to live forever. It's not going to end when it is no longer appealing.

False dichotomy there.  Most faiths teach that the soul lives on eternally in any case.  So you can be bored in Heaven or bored in Hell.  Buddhism teaches that the soul lives on until it attains the state of Nirvana, at which point the self ceases to be, but even there it's taken that many souls don't attain Nirvana, and live for millions or billions of years.

The various theories for the end of the universe have matter ending at around 10**40 if proton decay proves to be right, or the much longer timescale of 10**100 for heat death.  If there really were an eternal life (and I do believe in life after death), it certainly wouldn't take place in this universe's time and space, which leaves the question of whether eternity actually involves progressing through time at all in this case.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

One thinks that we've strayed a little far afield.

Are we allowed to lay bets as to how many more posts it'll take before the thread gets locked?

[Noone]

I always get a chuckle out of those who try to 'disprove' evolution with pseudosciences. The article in question has more than it's fair share of inaccuracies and dishonest debating tactics within it, but alas, they're already covered.

However, when the topic of evolution comes up(in this fashion anyways)... I often think of this: http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Lenski_affair

[Tezkat]

Some people gaze upon the Great Pyramids or Stonehenge and can't understand how human civilization could have created them 5000 years ago... so, naturally, aliens must have done it. But that mocks the accomplishments of our ancestors. With the simple tools at their disposal, they erected wonders.

Evolution is like that. Simple tools generate marvellous complexity. A universe so finely tuned that its component pieces naturally form into atoms that form into molecules that form into cells that form into plants and animals and people... the very existence of life on earth is a wonder. But it's something we're meant to celebrate through understanding, not dogma. I would take far more comfort in a Creator who generated the perfect conditions for life and then set it free than in an Intelligent Designer who's been hacking our source code for eons and still hasn't got the bugs out.

One thinks that we've strayed a little far afield.

Are we allowed to lay bets as to how many more posts it'll take before the thread gets locked?

Thus far, the thread has been remarkably civil for such a hot button issue. Maybe we don't have enough Creationists around to defend their views...

Regardless, the concept of immortality is perfectly relevant to discussions of evolution, even if you ignore the religious side. Biological evolution drives a seemingly endless cycle, but it does have end conditions. A genetic line can die out, lost to extinction. Or its carriers can transcend the need for biological reproduction and quit the Darwinian rat race. We're facing the very real possibility of superseding purely biological intelligence within our lifetimes.

And what are you going to do when you start to get bored? It's not going to end after a trillion years.
What are you going to do for the next trillion trillion trillion years, knowing that you still have eternity after that?
It's not about the time that you enjoy, even if it lasts a trillion years. The problem is when eternity stops being fun, and start being boring. Can you imagine being bored for ever after you have already done everything ad nausium? That's the reason why I don't want to live forever. It's not going to end when it is no longer appealing.

Now that's just silly. You may as well cite angsty vampires, instead.

Eternal life would undoubtedly change someone in profound ways. Our experience now depends on a mortal existence that is quite heavily adapted to a specific physical, biological embodiment and social context. Far more interesting would be to consider how much of the human condition would survive immortality.

If you no longer needed to feel fear, for instance, would you still carry it with you into eternity? Would you savour it as a precious remnant of your mortal life? Would you eventually lose your taste for it? Would you deliberately cleanse your mind of this obsolete throwback to reptilian neurology? What would life be like without fear?


I don't know about you guys, but I plan on living forever, so these questions are important for me.

[superluser]

We're facing the very real possibility of superseding purely biological intelligence within our lifetimes.

I don't mean to go off topic, but is this based on the Ray Kurzweil ``The Singularity is Near'' type of thinking?  Because that sort of expansion has limits.  Moore's Law will end in less than 80 years, and the author thinks it will probably break down about 20 years from now.

[Janus Whitefurr]

Eternal life would undoubtedly change someone in profound ways. Our experience now depends on a mortal existence that is quite heavily adapted to a specific physical, biological embodiment and social context. Far more interesting would be to consider how much of the human condition would survive immortality.

If you no longer needed to feel fear, for instance, would you still carry it with you into eternity? Would you savour it as a precious remnant of your mortal life? Would you eventually lose your taste for it? Would you deliberately cleanse your mind of this obsolete throwback to reptilian neurology? What would life be like without fear?

I actually had an old RPG mage-character along that line. Plot events gave him immortality of both the ageless and physical indestructibility kind (and phenomonal power, naturally). As the RP developed, he ended up almost completely disconnected from the world at large, caring for little beyond his immediate (quasi-immortal) family. The only emotions he even remained attached to were love (for his wife and children) and hate (for anyone who messes with them). His entire justification for stopping someone bringing on the equivalent of Armageddon was that it would be inconvienent for his family.

We stopped the plot eventually mostly because it was hard to keep coming up with motivations. Though it was less that he deliberately discarded such things and more that they just seemed to be... filtered out over the years and years of being an immortal. There's my anecdote about the ideas of immortality, anyway.

[Tezkat]

I don't mean to go off topic, but is this based on the Ray Kurzweil ``The Singularity is Near'' type of thinking?  Because that sort of expansion has limits.  Moore's Law will end in less than 80 years, and the author thinks it will probably break down about 20 years from now.

Even the conservative scenario of Moore's Law grinding to a halt after 20 years would bring us to zettaFLOPS in supercomputers and large distributed networks. The field of computational neuroscience should be growing fast enough to give us the tools necessary to use the all that processing power. Even if predictions are off by an order of magnitude, they're still within the expected range required for brute force simulation of a human brain. I doubt that we'll actually create many artificial intelligences that way, let alone use it for uploading actual people, but cognitive neuroscience will flourish as more power to develop and test models becomes available. Comprehensive reverse engineering of the human brain will allow for both AIs with very humanlike behaviour and fairly advanced neuroprosthetic enhancement for the rest of us.

So, yeah... it shouldn't be that long before purely biological intelligence starts feeling a little out of date. No magical leaps in technology required--simple extrapolation from the current state of the art should suffice. (I might add that this is where a lot of my own academic background lies...)

We stopped the plot eventually mostly because it was hard to keep coming up with motivations. Though it was less that he deliberately discarded such things and more that they just seemed to be... filtered out over the years and years of being an immortal. There's my anecdote about the ideas of immortality, anyway.

SF&F writing and roleplaying are great ways to explore the concept of immortality, and your experience is hardly unique. Taking immortality to its logical conclusions produces something a little alien, divorced from the human condition. Conversely, the more humanity is retained, the more disturbing eternal life becomes. More interesting from a storytelling perspective, mind you--angsty vampires and suicidally bored moogles make more sympathetic protagonists than apathetic demigods.

But it is vital to explore these topics now, because the technological infrastructure required for some form of immortality could arise almost as a side effect of developing all the other things that we'll want to improve our lives. Humanity is both smart enough to make it happen and too stupid to prevent it.

[superluser]

Even the conservative scenario of Moore's Law grinding to a halt after 20 years would bring us to zettaFLOPS in supercomputers and large distributed networks. The field of computational neuroscience should be growing fast enough to give us the tools necessary to use the all that processing power. Even if predictions are off by an order of magnitude, they're still within the expected range required for brute force simulation of a human brain. I doubt that we'll actually create many artificial intelligences that way, let alone use it for uploading actual people, but cognitive neuroscience will flourish as more power to develop and test models becomes available. Comprehensive reverse engineering of the human brain will allow for both AIs with very humanlike behaviour and fairly advanced neuroprosthetic enhancement for the rest of us.

The guy who did the simulation of a rat cortical column seems to think that it will take a computer 20,000 times more powerful than Blue Gene/L to simulate a human brain, which seems very optimistic, given that the model will have to evaluate 10 million times that number of neurons, let alone the 100 million times the number of synapses.

I'm rather skeptical of futurists, in case you haven't noticed.  With a few exceptions, the future tends to be rather like the present, except more so, and even with those exceptions, the futurists are almost always wrong, particularly about the social implications.  The internet is a great example of this.  Vinge predicted an explosion of use of the internet just a few years after The World, and a couple of years before the public at large became interested in it.  But his vision of the internet looks a lot like USENET, which is now quite moribund and quite different from the centralized server methods most used for worldwide public communication.  The people who prophesied that the world's great libraries would be at everyone's fingertips didn't get it exactly right, either.  Most of the libraries have their content behind paywalls, and only a few sites--generally independent of the actual libraries--have the full content online. (For someone who actually got it right, look here.)

I find it very hard to believe that we can accurately model human brain intelligence when the most sophisticated AI sounds like Zippy the Pinhead.  YOW!

So, yeah... it shouldn't be that long before purely biological intelligence starts feeling a little out of date. No magical leaps in technology required--simple extrapolation from the current state of the art should suffice. (I might add that this is where a lot of my own academic background lies...)

I won't deny that there will probably be benefits to some sort of electronically augmented brain, and that we'll probably see something like that at some point, but I still think the prospect of completely modeling a human brain seems unlikely any time soon.

[rabid_fox]

I evolved from God.

[Alondro]

Several scientists have abandoned the old way of trying to create artificial intelligence with just 1's and 0's.  There's a push to mimicing the brain's messy firing patterns and probabilistic neural processing.  The brain uses summations of firings to process, a certain threshhold of firings in one direction of thought vs all the random firing going on, rather than a very specific set of pathways.

This has both the effect of allowing creativity by sometimes letting the information meld with random generations of signals and information from other areas, and also oddly enough is more energy efficient than the neurons fervently trying to constrain their firing to the binary equivalent.

There is a simple messy logic computer in the works.  It's different than the 'fuzzy logic' in that the pathways have a built-in tolerance for random activity.  It's circuits have a certain level of activity all the time.  It's the majority or plurality of firing in response to stimuli that gets counted rather than the background buzz, as seems to be the case with the brain.

I will try to find the Discovery article on it.  It was from a couple months ago.

[Reese Tora]

The guy who did the simulation of a rat cortical column seems to think that it will take a computer 20,000 times more powerful than Blue Gene/L to simulate a human brain, which seems very optimistic, given that the model will have to evaluate 10 million times that number of neurons, let alone the 100 million times the number of synapses.

wait... was he simulating its function, or simulating it's structure and chemical reactions and so on?

If you can create simplified logical structures to simulate the function of nerves, it would require less computing power than a full simulation.  I think there's a big difference between simulating a brain and simulating brain function.

[MT Hazard]

I cannot hope to match some of the posts here but I have several things to say.

I am heartened that so many are willing to have informed discussions about evolution and matters arising from it

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" can be applied to the theory of evolution and the theory of creationism.

For those who think the bible and other religious texts are accurate, have a long hard think about human nature and fallibility. Then play Chinese whispers, see what come out after a couple of hours, then apply it to several thousand years.


For me the theory of evolution explains a lot about the wonderful, terrible, flawed and unique state of mankind, the ape that could.

Darwin may have not got their first (and stole the glory from the guy who was ahead of him) but people needed a person to admire, hate and remember.

Scientific theories change with new evidence, religion changes under pressure.

If religion is true, why are there so many? and why can't the religious relax knowing their going to be okay?

I think that's all maybe more later.

Edit: "We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes." - "
— Gene Roddenberry

[Vidar]

I cannot hope to match some of the posts here but I have several things to say.

I am heartened that so many are willing to have informed discussions about evolution and matters arising from it

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" can be applied to the theory of evolution and the theory of creationism.

You're making an equivocation error here.

the theory of evolution is a scientific theory, and creationism is not. In science, the word 'theory' does not mean what it does in the colloquial sense. In science, a theory is an explanation of the facts, and can be tested, and potentially falsified.
The usual meaning of the word 'theory' is something like a guess. Scientific theories are certainly not guesses.

Creationism can never be a scientific theory, because it can not be falsified or tested, and does not make any predictions about what we should find, nor does it explain anything. Calling creationism a theory next to the theory of evolution is lending creationism credence it doesn't deserve.

[Tezkat]

It's sad that science and religion spend so much time fighting. They have a lot to teach each other.

wait... was he simulating its function, or simulating it's structure and chemical reactions and so on?

If you can create simplified logical structures to simulate the function of nerves, it would require less computing power than a full simulation.  I think there's a big difference between simulating a brain and simulating brain function.

The rat brain NCC simulation modeled neurons at a cellular level of complexity--phenomenological abstractions of neurotransmitter action on individual ion channels in fairly biologically detailed neurons. The Blue Brain project is now working to extend its model down to molecular level interactions that will capture the influence of genes on electrical response. Even that's would constitute neuron-level simplification, however. Fully modelling even a single cell at the level of, say, gene transcription and protein folding represents an exascale computing task in and of itself.

That's a brute force effort to simulate the brain in as much biological detail as we can reasonably afford. From there, we'll be able to work back and reverse engineer what the brain is actually doing.

The guy who did the simulation of a rat cortical column seems to think that it will take a computer 20,000 times more powerful than Blue Gene/L to simulate a human brain, which seems very optimistic, given that the model will have to evaluate 10 million times that number of neurons, let alone the 100 million times the number of synapses.

If EPFL had the money to fully upgrade their new Blue Gene/P, Markham's current system could scale up to 100 billion synapses. Another team at IBM's Almaden Research Center has already simulated a rat cortex in 1/9 realtime and since moved up to cats. It's mostly a matter of scaling up simulation capacity. The human brain contains only about a thousand times more synapses than a rat's, so a ten year timeframe is not unreasonable. We should have exascale computing by then.

Furthermore, while Blue Brain's detailed cellular and molecular simulations offer the most comprehensive models, we know that a building-sized megawatt supercomputer isn't actually required to run a human brain. That much processing power can fit into something roughly the size of a human skull--and only consume about 20W at that. It's already been done. Thank evolution. Or God. Take your pick.

Several projects (notably FACETS and Neurogrid) are instead going the route of neuromorphic hardware--silicon neurons that are very much cheaper, faster, and more energy efficient for synaptic processing than general purpose von Neumann architectures. A number of these teams are now collaborating on the DARPA-funded SyNAPSE.

I'm rather skeptical of futurists, in case you haven't noticed.

You don't need to be psychic to see technology from ten years into the future. You just need to get yourself invited over to the labs where talented, well-funded people are working on it right now.

I won't deny that there will probably be benefits to some sort of electronically augmented brain, and that we'll probably see something like that at some point, but I still think the prospect of completely modeling a human brain seems unlikely any time soon.

Comprehensive modelling and simulation of the human brain are a prerequisite for sophisticated augmentations. How else would you design and test them?

I suppose it all depends on what you mean by "completely modeling" and "any time soon". The crude simulations of an entire brain's synaptic processing? Yeah, that's ten years away, give or take. I don't see many scenarios derailing that development. There are many teams. Lots of funding. We've already got most of the theoretical framework and algorithms. The mapping work is proceeding at a good clip. Failure to overcome architectural challenges to communication efficiency in exascale computing could throw a big wrench into the plans--assuming that we don't jump headlong into neuromorphic circuitry. Busybody politicians passing laws against the creation of artificial people might set things back, too, at least until the projects moved to more receptive countries.

Of course, what that first simulation will give us is unlikely to be an artificial person so much as a research tool for understanding our neural hardware. Hopefully, anyway. If consciousness does emerge that early in the game, its life would really suck.

Indeed, creating something that we recognize as sentient before we have a very good idea of what's going on neurologically could actually set the field back as much as it catapults it forward. The social, ethical, and political ramifications of experimenting on a human level sophont, even a digital one, are quite profound.

[MT Hazard]

I cannot hope to match some of the posts here but I have several things to say.

I am heartened that so many are willing to have informed discussions about evolution and matters arising from it

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" can be applied to the theory of evolution and the theory of creationism.

You're making an equivocation error here.

the theory of evolution is a scientific theory, and creationism is not. In science, the word 'theory' does not mean what it does in the colloquial sense. In science, a theory is an explanation of the facts, and can be tested, and potentially falsified.
The usual meaning of the word 'theory' is something like a guess. Scientific theories are certainly not guesses.

Creationism can never be a scientific theory, because it can not be falsified or tested, and does not make any predictions about what we should find, nor does it explain anything. Calling creationism a theory next to the theory of evolution is lending creationism credence it doesn't deserve.

I refer to "the theory of creationism" for convenience and comparison sake, what would be a more accurate term?

Also conspiracy theories don't need any (real) proof to be popular.

P.S apart from that little issue, did the rest of my post work? I can never tell.

[superluser]

I suppose it all depends on what you mean by "completely modeling" and "any time soon". The crude simulations of an entire brain's synaptic processing? Yeah, that's ten years away, give or take. I don't see many scenarios derailing that development.

Ah.  I was thinking of Ray Kurzweil's ``We'll be able to upload our brains and live as electronic demigods'' BS.

That, and I think I missed the `doubt' in this sentence:

I doubt that we'll actually create many artificial intelligences that way, let alone use it for uploading actual people

I think we're in agreement here.  Comprehensive modeling will happen, and its implementation will have beneficial applications in medicine and AI, but we won't be able to have a fully accurate virtual human brain in ten years time.

If that's what you're saying, I'm sorry to have wasted both our times.

[Vidar]

I cannot hope to match some of the posts here but I have several things to say.

I am heartened that so many are willing to have informed discussions about evolution and matters arising from it

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" can be applied to the theory of evolution and the theory of creationism.

You're making an equivocation error here.

the theory of evolution is a scientific theory, and creationism is not. In science, the word 'theory' does not mean what it does in the colloquial sense. In science, a theory is an explanation of the facts, and can be tested, and potentially falsified.
The usual meaning of the word 'theory' is something like a guess. Scientific theories are certainly not guesses.

Creationism can never be a scientific theory, because it can not be falsified or tested, and does not make any predictions about what we should find, nor does it explain anything. Calling creationism a theory next to the theory of evolution is lending creationism credence it doesn't deserve.

I refer to "the theory of creationism" for convenience and comparison sake, what would be a more accurate term?

Also conspiracy theories don't need any (real) proof to be popular.

P.S apart from that little issue, did the rest of my post work? I can never tell.

Since creationists amongst themselves can't even come to a consensus about who, where, when, or how everything was supposedly created, you couldn't even call creationism a hypotheses.
You might call it an idea, or a belief.

[MT Hazard]

Fair enough.

I wonder, Where does the 'God's Debris' idea sit among these theories ?

[Vidar]

Fair enough.

I wonder, Where does the 'God's Debris' idea sit among these theories ?

If you mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God%27s_Debris ,that's a thought experiment, not a theory. It's interesting fiction, but nothing more.

[Reese Tora]

I refer to "the theory of creationism" for convenience and comparison sake, what would be a more accurate term?

Also conspiracy theories don't need any (real) proof to be popular.

P.S apart from that little issue, did the rest of my post work? I can never tell.

Probably "concept of creationism" would be the most acurate thing to call it.  What creationists call it really doesn't factor in, since  the people who originally proposed it did so as an attack on science rather than legitimate intelectual inquiry, and they are apt to call it soemthing that would lend it more creditability than it deserves (kinda like any used car dealership that has "honest" in it's name, or any of a slew of other companies that name themselves to sound official)

[rabid_fox]

Gosh, turns out we really worry about the opposite viewpoint no matter how silly it is.

[Reese Tora]

Probably "concept of creationism" would be the most acurate thing to call it.  What creationists call it really doesn't factor in, since  the people who originally proposed it did so as an attack on science rather than legitimate intelectual inquiry, and they are apt to call it soemthing that would lend it more creditability than it deserves (kinda like any used car dealership that has "honest" in it's name, or any of a slew of other companies that name themselves to sound official)

Lemme rephrase that...

concept of intelligent design, because it was formulated... yadda yadda yadda

Creationism is a world view that something supernatural created the universe and all within it, and there are certainly versions of creationism that are 100% compatible with all observed evidence... though none supported by any observed evidence.  There's so many different and conflicting versions (ie: everyone's different creation myths) that it's unfair to lump all that in to one group.

Intelligent Design is a concept put forth as a supposed competing theory to Evolution, and was formulated specifically to get around the fact that creationism cannot be supported by science.