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An understanding of evolution
by natural selection, does it matter?
Or to put it another way, “Who cares?”
Or, “So what?”
And, “What difference does it make?”
I may not understand general relativity; that doesn’t stop me from using the GPS on my cell phone. So what’s the big deal if I or my children or my elected officials don’t “get” evolution?
The subject line question, “Why is this important?” may seem a bit broad, but your answer to that question will help us focus on the most important part of any production: our audience.
We look forward to hearing from you and will keep you posted as to our progress.
And, please, feel free to forward this to others you think might like to contribute.
Sincerely,
Roger
Wanna help Roger with his production? I am,
and will forward any AWAD thoughts to Roger.
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That's a good question. And it deserves a good answer.
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One reason for having at least a general understanding of evolution is so that you don't waste the time of students who really do care and want to learn about evolution so they don't have the so-called controversy filling up their school time. If I were a early school science teacher and were required to spend some time discussing creationism or intelligent design I would get it out of the way early in a session on the nature of science and why those two ways of thinking are not science.
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Thank you, Faldage, your pragmatic answer will be welcomed.
Roger and his team will be in Oregon Friday to present his interviewing work to the funding committee so any other thoughts offered here can be forwarded to Roger by noon tomorrow.
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Why is understanding evolution important? Because...
We ARE Evolution. And so is everything else. We know this vicariously through every thought and observation we've made since birth. We are wired to experience an ever-progressive cause-and-effect reality with any other reality being beyond our ken.
BANG! Cosmic stuff becomes atoms and atoms become molecular and elements become rocks and rocks become life. And life, mindless as the rocks that preceeded them, evolved and is evolving.
[part I of 2]
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Part II
"To thine own self be true, and it must follow,
as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."
___________________________________ William Shakespeare
And therein lies the problem. Both evolutionists and creationists fail to understand the functions of Free Will and Determinism. And they don't because of the invention and evolution of language.
Mindless mechanical evolution continues the clade rather than the individual. Culture (especially language) serves that end.
Words and thoughts compete against other word and thought systems at the expence of the individual for the continuance of the clade. Morals, customs, belief systems, etc. are created with more vigor when concocted by a free-thinking many rather than by an autocratic few.
So here lies the paradox: Words and thoughts are physical objects (think about it) that lie and claim "Free Will".
Ergo: The Universe Is Deterministic and we have Free Will.
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Free will and determinism are artifacts of language.
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What's the evolution of the troll?
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Free will and determinism are artifacts of language. Of course. And Evolution determines the functions of language.
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What I'm saying is that free will and determinism are just words and phrases that have no referents in Reality.
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What I'm saying is that free will and determinism are just words and phrases that have no referents in Reality. Exactly. But the concepts of free will and self-determination built the computer you are staring into today. A baseball bat has a referent in a physical baseball bat. The abstraction "free will" has a much greater referent in Reality. Ask Germany: ask Japan.
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Words and thoughts are physical objects
Even when you show me the word "stone" carved in stone it will not convince me that a word is a physical object. Nothing proves the true nature of the stone. They can describe it down to atoms and smaller particles still but nothing explains what it really is.
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But the concepts of free will and self-determination built the computer you are staring into today. They may have had some influence on the minds of the people who were responsible for the computer I am staring into today, but that doesn't make them any more Real things independent of our conceiving of them.
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Words and thoughts are physical objects
Even when you show me the word "stone" carved in stone it will not convince me that a word is a physical object. Nothing proves the true nature of the stone. They can describe it down to atoms and smaller particles still but nothing explains what it really is.
Then is a stone a physical object? What are the parameters of being a stone? Is a grain of sand a stone? Is the Earth a stone? A stone is a word that means whatever we say it means. What say we agree that every "word" is as physical as a stone.
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But the concepts of free will and self-determination built the computer you are staring into today. They may have had some influence on the minds of the people who were responsible for the computer I am staring into today, but that doesn't make them any more Real things independent of our conceiving of them. Does not lightning flash and thunder clash? Are they not Real things? Does not the spoken word vibrate the atmosphere when we talk? Do not physical patterns recur in our brain with any certain word we re-think? Are these not Real things?
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Thunder is Donner is tonnerre is гром is any other number of things in any other language. Yes, a word is a vibration in the atmosphere, but that vibration has no intrinsic meaning beyond what we apply to it. Gift pronounced by an English speaker is close to the same vibrational pattern as Gift spoken by a German speaker but the thing refered to is not at all the same in the two languages. I could say barksnoogle but that doesn't mean that there is anything out there in Reality that it refers to unless we, as a reasonably large group use it to refer to something out in Reality. Similarly, we can use a word that we all agree on the meaning of and it still doesn't have to have an actual referent in Reality. We can speak of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and all agree what it means, but that doesn't mean that there actually is a Flying Spaghetti Monster out there in Reality.
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"... Yes, a word is a vibration in the atmosphere, but that vibration has no intrinsic meaning beyond what we apply to it..." Well...name a word that has.
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That's my point. The thing is that some words have a referent in Reality or at least reality as we perceive it, and some don't. I am merely averring that free will and determinism are in the latter category. Here's an interesting experiment that was performed that suggests that rather than having free will, we have free won't. What I am saying is that I believe that the concept of free will is just something we have invented to help us make sense of a Reality only dimly perceived.
Last edited by Faldage; 08/14/13 10:20 AM.
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What say we agree that every "word" is as physical as a stone.
Words are intangible. Sound is as physical as a word gets. IMHO.
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And there's no correlation between the sound and the thing being referred to.
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And there's no correlation between the sound and the thing being referred to. onomatopoeia?
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Even that is subject to the phonemics of a given language. Here is a compendium of dog barks in different languages.
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So as this board now turns, we agree that "words" have no intrinsic relationship to the object or the non-objects they represent, therefore "words" have no meaning; words only have a function, namely -- the transfer of thoughts between human beings and other human beings and to dogs and monkeys and maybe, but not likely, to cats. Right?
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Even that is subject to the phonemics of a given language. Here is a compendium of dog barks in different languages. Great! Very amusing this dog-bark list. Thank you Faldage! Interesting detail: only English and Dutch have the sound of very small dogs included (yip-yip and kef-kef). Basque language is uniquely having a sound of old dogs included (jau-jau). Great list! Everything has the meaning one is willing or capable of to give to it, I think.
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I think that we can all agree that when we use a word, it means just what we choose it to mean — neither more nor less.
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And there's whole lists of words we pay extra.
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I think that we can all agree that when we use a word, it means just what we choose it to mean — neither more nor less. Yes, tsuwm, but usually when we choose a word we choose to have it understood by whomever it is we are to speak, otherwise, why speak? The salient question is: Where and how is a word physically stored in the brain where it waits unobtrusively for our request for retrieval?
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> usually when we choose a word we choose to have it understood by whomever it is we are to speak, otherwise, why speak?
Oh, I think there are a lot of people who speak only to hear themselves.
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> usually when we choose a word we choose to have it understood by whomever it is we are to speak, otherwise, why speak?
Oh, I think there are a lot of people who speak only to hear themselves. Really? Or does the Buffalo speak only for himself?  Still wondering... where do you, Shrdlu, keep the words you use when you are not using them? And in what form?
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Thanks, Buffalo.
Now tsuwm, Faldage, BranShea, and anyone else who would like to add something to this discussion, I ask:
If the words you see here can be physically stored in your computer, are not the words you use when speaking physically stored in your brain?
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We don't understand this sort of thing very well, but there would appear to be some sort of storage in the brain. To say that this means there is some concrete thing which we can, if only metaphorically, point to and say "this is the word" is stretching the meaning of things a little too much for me to buy into it.
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Yeah, what Faldage says.
I don't think of words as being physically stored in my computer or my brain. What are the dimensions of a word, what's its mass? Does my computer/brain get heavier with each new word I store? Is "it" smaller, lighter than "Rumpelstiltskin"? How tiny must the tweezers be to pluck it out? What's its chemical composition, its reactivity? Solid, liquid, or gas? What color? Nope, I can't buy it, either.
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Hallelujah! A happy turn of events.
Tromboniator and Faldage admit that our brains store information. Their only stipulation is that the information stored must be made of... nothing.
How strange, but since Trombo and Faldo are (for-the-most-part) open-minded the paragraph below should transfigure their "inert nothing" into a more logical "dynamic something".
posting interrupted will add by edit in a minute.
[This post to be continued below Faldage's elaboration below.]
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I didn't say that that the information stored must be made of... nothing. I said we don't understand how it is stored.* Besides, any storage of words is no more intrinsically linked to the Reality, insofar as there is a Reality behind the words, of what those words mean than is the vibrations in the air that we perceive when we hear those words.
*Or at least that is what I intended to say. If I didn't do a very good job of it the fault is all mine.
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Faldage.
There is no fault in thinking. And, other than high crimes, there is no fault in living except being rude which you are not.
My construction of the nature of things stems from a fifty year observation of this world without my cock in the fight.
Let me summerize:
I think that our sensory system automatically imputs (filters) selective data from the external world into the data storage system required by the brain.
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Yup. Hence my differentiation between Reality and reality.
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jenny jenny, jenny jenny, jenny jenny, neither of us stipulated anything (or both of us stipulated nothing) about information storage being of "nothing," and certainly not of "inert nothing." Electrochemical, most likely, I suppose, but not physical like putting old lamps into a storage unit down the street, and the one Aunt Lucy broke is the third on the left. I don't "admit" that the brain stores information, I wholeheartedly embrace the concept, but I have trouble with the idea that each word is some discrete brick or package, which is the image I get when you talk about physical storage. Words have meanings and spellings (right or wrong) attached to them when we retrieve them, emotional baggage, memories, associations inextricably connected to other words, experiences, images. It may be that "wherewithal," "girn," and "rapid" all have very specific coordinates in my brain, but I doubt that it's that simple.
I rather think that's a long version of what Faldage was saying a post or two back, but he is of course welcome to contradict me. Not my place (nor is there need) to put words into his mouth.
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FWIW, linguists "admit" that the notion of word is one of the most controversial in linguistics. see also semiotics.
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FWIW, linguists "admit" that the notion of word is one of the most controversial in linguistics. see also semiotics. Yes sir, Buddy. Slowly, carefully, I tried to slip in some precursor concepts that could assuage the entrenched dogmas of word people. Which is to say: If you don't know the semantic nature of words, we can't discuss anything, we can only ramble.
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Thanks, Buffalo, I think. The article says almost exactly what I think about memory storage in the brain, but that which I think is fuzzy so I squinted my eyes the second time I read it and now it makes perfect sense. So Thank You, Shrdlu, but now begin I wonder: When a robot realizes that he is a robot is he still human? I think yes.
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If a tree falls in the forest and no one posts the video on Facebook did it really happen?
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If a tree falls in the forest and no one posts the video on Facebook did it really happen? Yes Ten thousand beetle eggs hatched into grubs and begin reducing the tree to sawdust that attracted secondary predator beetles who ate the succulent grubs but couldn't eat the hard acorns which sprouted cautiously but profusely in the new earth-enriched sawdust --and then -- a new baby tree entered a Brave New World. Don't believe me? Gimmie the tree's coordinates and I'll show you on GoogleEarth if they haven't already UPSed the film to Homeland Security to classify. 
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Two books dealing at least in part with the subjects broached on this thread: Non-fiction; meant to be taken seriously: The Mind's I, by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett, and Science fiction, sort-of; meant to be entertaining/speculative: Anathem, by Neal Stephenson And each intriguing in its own right, I might add.
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Thanks, Wolf, I'll try to get "Mind's I" on my reader.
I started reading "Anathen" but after a few pages I found it juvenile and thought it not worth finishing. I think I burned it at the Great Book Burning Party I held last year. Maybe I can find a copy at the Library and... naw, I'm betting I won't.
I am an invariant snob about what I choose to read.
> TWELVE (12) is the number of I's I used in this post<
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Some time ago I read "The meaning of meaning" by C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards (1923) - a classic in the field.
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Words and thoughts are physical objects
I strongly disagree. Just because physical objects are needed to code, store and transmit information (of which words and thoughts are elements), information is immaterial in itself. E.g. material objects are subject to conservation laws, whereas information can easily be destroyed without leaving a trace. What will remain of a word that falls on deaf ears?
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Words and thoughts are physical objects
I strongly disagree. Just because physical objects are needed to code, store and transmit information (of which words and thoughts are elements), information is immaterial in itself. E.g. material objects are subject to conservation laws, whereas information can easily be destroyed without leaving a trace. What will remain of a word that falls on deaf ears? What remains of lightning after it strikes? Could a brain think without electrical thoughts? Remember HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey? HAL was unplugged as was Dave when he was set-apart from the rest of mankind. The Conservation of Energy idea is like the Newtonian ideas of gravity. Close, but no cigar.
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Words and thoughts may be not unlike lightning bolts in our brains but they bear no relation to the physical objects or mental constructs they represent. When my brain ceases working the existence of all the things referred to by the words I know will not cease to be.
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Looking at these last several posts, I think you folks are just going to have to agree to disagree, and move on...
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I think you folks are just going to have to agree to disagree, and move on..
Sad as it is, you may have a point. There has been little evolution in the dispute.
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I think you folks are just going to have to agree to disagree, and move on..
Sad as it is, you may have a point. There has been little evolution in the dispute. Not me. Agreeing to disagree is the stuff of wimps. Understanding "being" is the essence of being, and to not discuss what we are is the stuff of trees and other living machines. An understanding of Evolution will tell us where the monkey hid the money. Nobody here seems to know but me. And I will tell if I can find the memes and words to tell the few big-eared people here who will listen. If you saw a hand reaching out and up from the muck and mire of a dark swamp would you not lend a hand and help him?
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Why do I feel like I'm back in the freshman dorm?
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Why do I feel like I'm back in the freshman dorm? Because, dear heart, you intuit that you are. But alas, the neural patterns of fifty-five years have cluttered your once good brain and now you must discharge those patterns and embrace the new order of thoughts. Try now, grasshopper, to create a worthy original thought about Evolution and try to express it without using clipped and freshmanic remarks. [kiss and good luck]
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EVOLUTION Part II: Biological Causes of Global Cooling
Public Talk:
"Global cooling by grassland soils in the geological past and near future".
Abstract:
"Major innovations in the evolution of vegetation such as the Devonian origin of forests created new weathering regimes and soils (Alfisols, Histosols), which increased carbon consumption and sequestration, and ushered in the Permian-Carboniferous Ice Age.
Similarly, global expansion of grasslands and their newly evolved, carbon-rich soils (Mollisols) over the past 30 million years may have induced global cooling and ushered in Pleistocene glaciation. Organisms in such coevolutionary trajectories adapt to each other rather than to their environment, and so can be forces for global change.
Some past farming practices have aided greenhouse gas release. However, modern grassland agroecosystems are a potential carbon sink already under intensive human management, and carbon farming techniques may be useful in curbing anthropogenic global warming".
Last edited by jenny jenny; 09/02/13 04:30 AM.
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Here, AWADers, unfolds the beginings of the understanding of semantics.
And if you have ears that listen and a soul that hears you will soon become one of the few folks on Earth who understand our raison d'etre.
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I think you folks are just going to have to agree to disagree, and move on..
Sad as it is, you may have a point. There has been little evolution in the dispute. Which underlines the dull fact that evolution and getting somewhere is not the same thing.
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Of course, the real question is "Why is evolution so hard to understand?"
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Of course, the real question is "Why is evolution so hard to understand?" Evolution is hard to understand because the tyranny of words is such that the more exacting words we use become in their differentiation even more restricting when we attempt to integrate them into the orderings of an objective reality. Why do you ask?
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Aha. I thought so. A basic misunderstanding of the nature of Reality (an almost foregone conclusion, given our imperfect perception of it and our replacement of it by that crude approximation we call reality) leads us to misinterpret all around us. For example, in Reality there is no such thing as species. It is as though we had taken a two dimensional slice of a tree and decided that all the separate and apparently discrete things we call twigs and branches were independent entities. Thank you, jenny jenny, for opening my eyes.
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 Ahso, Faldo, It is strange that you have known these fine things for so long and have not yet become a better person. But no matter, today is the first day of your life. Come, let us reconstruct the world together. 3,500,000,000 BC: Self-replicating lieforms first appear on Earth. Mindless, dumb things (cynobacteria) they non-the-less were able to build reef-like structures to keep the oceanic tides from washing themselves out to sea. Unmolested for three billion years they built the oxygenated atmosphere which we so much enjoy today. [Thanks for not waiting, I'm back.] 550,000,000 BC: O'happy day! After some three billion years of off-and-on frozen seas, mobile, sexual, and happy pre-vertebrate animals, sat, swam, and crawled about in the warm waters. And then... 380,000,000 BC: the animals followed the plants onto the dry lands and crawled about. But not fast enough. Plants and pre-trees flourshed in the heat and high CO2 atmosphere. But when they died there were too few bugs to eat them. The stupid trees could then not return their carbon to the atmosphere. Their remains instead were buried as coal, or, as we like to say today, sequestered as carbon. Atmospheric CO2 levels dropped sharply as the Earth cooled initiating an early cycle of Ice ages. To this let all of us give thanks,(), all we free-thinking people. 28,000,000 BC: continued on a page below
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The ones that couldn't keep the ocean tides from washing them out to sea didn't have any kids. I'd check on some of the details in your little tale.
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The ones that couldn't keep the ocean tides from washing them out to sea didn't have any kids. I'd check on some of the details in your little tale. Like today, Faldom, their "kids" were but extentions of themselves, any single-sex microbe who got washed out to sea was an aspiring Columbus eager to conquer new lands. And Faldome; do you do your checking to prove someone wrong, or to learn something new? Just asking.
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I did check after spouting my mouth off and you were right. I'm still not sure if you were somehow trying to refute my comment about the two-dimensional slice of the tree,
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Not at all, Fabo. As I understand your analogy of the tree slice and our inference of branches, it is (as the Brits quaintly say) "on spot". Besides, speculation is the mother of invention. Don't you think?
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That occurred to me after I got done reacting to your previous post. Now that we're singing from the same dictionary, how's your friend, Roger,
doing with his production?
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I haven't talked to Roger since they returned from Oregon. If I see him at a meeting tonight I'll report back.
28,000,000 BC : Continued...
A lot happened in the 35 million years after a great bolide slammed into the Gulf of Mexico and extinquished almost half of the world's living species.
Floating on plates the continents continued spreading into a configuration approaching their relative positions of today.
Moving at about six feet a century these dancing plates interrupted the ocean's set currents of heat (from the equator to the poles) so the balmy world slowly became cooler.
Then, three million years ago, the isthmus of Panama moved into its current position and stopped the exchage of waters between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. This event cooled the Earth and thereby established a cycle of Ice Ages which literally gave birth to all mankind.
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1,000,000 BC: The best of worlds.
Hallelujah! The great day is here. After 3,000,000,000 years mankind is born to rule the world. A series of hundred thousand years of bitter cold with 10,000 year intervals of warming in between. Caught within these changing extremes some apes evolved into mankind. And then mankind stopped evolving.
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Terrific! So glad to be here. Yet I think some more
evolving is necessary here and there.
----please, draw me a sheep----
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Terrific! So glad to be here. Yet I think some more
evolving is necessary here and there. No, Mister Luke, the last sentence was just a dramatic literary pause designed to empathize the salient point in the concluding paragraph below.
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You mean there's more? he says breath abated.
----please, draw me a sheep----
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1,000,000 BC: The best of worlds.
Hallelujah! The great day is here. After 3,000,000,000 years mankind is born to rule the world. A series of hundred thousand years of bitter cold with 10,000 year intervals of warming in between. Caught within these changing extremes some apes evolved into mankind. And then mankind stopped evolving. In the words of the guy in the back of the room, "Yeah. Right."
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Yes, the apes that became us stopped evolving about 500,000 years ago, if they hadn't we would likely be extinct. Drastic enviormental changes are quite a hill to climb if you are a naked ape walking around trying to feed hungry kids who only become fully functional after a score of years. As well, the apes that became us were too few in tribal numbers to continue in time aided only by the processes of physical natural selection.
I lied. Our biological evolution did stop.
But a new improved form of Evolution kicked in, this time with a capital E.
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I think you're wrong about biological evolution having stopped; the forces have just changed a little bit.
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Yes, Flage, you are ever so right.
But our purpose here is larger than being right. Our purpose is to transfer paradigmatic ideas and not to clutter our narrative with exacting facts.
What I say is clutter enough.
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Late Apes to Early Man:
Rest assured that both pre-man apes and early peoples walked upright, had big brains, and could vocalize a variety of sounds with pertinent meanings. Demarcation between the two types of intelligent animals was in their relative ability to communicate information back and forth within the ingroup via language, the beginings of a Culture.
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DISPLACEMENT: CULTURAL CONTROL OF EVOLUTION
Genetic evolution can be fast or s l o w but when it is fast it is still too slow to protect us from the immediacy of a colliding Comet or from the alternating periods of extreme climate changes during glacial times like those of today.
But what good luck! Those pre-adapted pre-humans (us) evolved words and our isolated words quickly evolved into languages and our languages quickly evolved into cultures and all cultures begin to evolve (those that haven't already died out) and are evolving today. Get it?
Some cultures are bad and some are good, with good and bad being determined by the culture's survival.
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Just some first lines from Noam Chomsky's 'Hegemony or Survival'
"Priorities and Prospects
A few years ago, one of the great figures of contemporary biology, Ernst Mayr, published some reflections on the likelihood of success in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
He considered the prospects very low. His reasoning had to do with the adaptive value of what we call "higher intelligence," meaning the particular human form of intellectual organization. Mayr estimated the number of species since the origin of life
at about fifty billion, only one of which "achieved the kind of intelligence needed to establish a civilization." It did so very recently, perhaps 100,000 years ago. It is generally assumed that only one small breeding group survived, of which we are all descendants. Mayr speculated that the human form of intellectual organization may not be favored by selection. The history of life on Earth, he wrote, refutes the claim that "it is better to be
smart than to be stupid," at least judging by biological success: beetles and bacteria, for example, are vastly more successful than humans in terms of survival. He also made the rather somber observation that "the average life expectancy of a species is about 100,000 years." We are entering a period of human history that may provide an answer to the question of whether it is better to be smart than stupid. The most hopeful prospect is that the question will not be answered: if it receives a definite answer, that answer can only be that humans were a kind of "biological error," using their allotted 100,000 years to destroy themselves and, in the process, much else. The species has surely developed the capacity to do just that, and a hypothetical extraterrestrial observer might well conclude that humans have
demonstrated that capacity throughout their history, dramatically in the past few hundred years, with an assault on the environment that sustains life, on the diversity of more complex organisms, and with cold and calculated savagery, on each other as well."
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Just some first lines from Noam Chomsky's 'Hegemony or Survival'
A few years ago, one of the great figures of contemporary biology, Ernst Mayr, published some reflections on the likelihood of success in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
He considered the prospects very low. His reasoning had to do with the adaptive value of what we call "higher intelligence," meaning the particular human form of intellectual organization. Mayr estimated the number of species since the origin of life
at about fifty billion, only one of which "achieved the kind of intelligence needed to establish a civilization." It did so very recently, perhaps 100,000 years ago. It is generally assumed that only one small breeding group survived, of which we are all descendants. Mayr speculated that the human form of intellectual organization may not be favored by selection. The history of life on Earth, he wrote, refutes the claim that "it is better to be
smart than to be stupid," at least judging by biological success: beetles and bacteria, for example, are vastly more successful than humans in terms of survival. He also made the rather somber observation that "the average life expectancy of a species is about 100,000 years." We are entering a period of human history that may provide an answer to the question of whether it is better to be smart than stupid. The most hopeful prospect is that the question will not be answered: if it receives a definite answer, that answer can only be that humans were a kind of "biological error," using their allotted 100,000 years to destroy themselves and, in the process, much else. The species has surely developed the capacity to do just that, and a hypothetical extraterrestrial observer might well conclude that humans have
demonstrated that capacity throughout their history, dramatically in the past few hundred years, with an assault on the environment that sustains life, on the diversity of more complex organisms, and with cold and calculated savagery, on each other as well."
Doctors Noam Chomsky and Enrst Mayr both seem to have a poor, and less than scientific, opinion of mankind and of, therefore, themselves. Notwithstanding the egoic pronouncements given above, their understanding of man's Evolution is more indicative of their own cultural funk than any insight into man's role in nature.
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formerly known as etaoin...
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Sure Jenny Jenny, but isn't it wonderful to read just a few lines by someone who knows how to write? Clear and understandable, no matter whether one agrees or not?
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No Buffalo, Jenny Jenny - day Mayr and Chomsky -night Especially Chomsky. Chomsky is a phoney prophet who pontificates yesterday's politics and a contrived explanation of language to pseudo-intellectual tenured teenyboppers. As for me I will kindly summerize and conclude my thoughts about Language, Mankind and Evolution here tommorow. *Yes, BranShe, you do have a point. But let me me be clear: So did Marx and 100 million people have been murdered because of his clear words afterwards.
Last edited by jenny jenny; 09/24/13 03:52 PM. Reason: to answer BranShea
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I will kindly summerize and conclude my thoughts about Language, Mankind and Evolution here tommorow
Looking forward to it.
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As for me I will kindly summerize and conclude my thoughts about Language, Mankind and Evolution here tommorow. Indeed. The chill of winter is coming here in the North. We could use with a little summerizing.
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As for me I will kindly summerize and conclude my thoughts about Language, Mankind and Evolution here tommorow. Indeed. The chill of winter is coming here in the North. We could use with a little summerizing. Say, Fallacy, do you up North find your amusements in misspellings? Gee, Faldo, how often you must giggle.
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So did Marx and 100 million people have been murdered because of his clear words afterwards. I wouldn't know Jenny Jenny. I never read him. Did you? Millions of people have been killed for millions of reasons. Take a trip through history.
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Say, Fallacy, do you up North find your amusements in misspellings? Gee, Faldo, how often you must giggle. Only if they're particularly funny or otherwise appropriate. You'll notice I didn't say anything about the eponymous Tom Morow.
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Darn, Phaltus, you didn't think it couth to cite my 'Tom Morrow'? Damnit, Faldich, that was your best line.
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Naw. Summerize was way more fun.
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I wouldn't know Jenny Jenny. I never read him. Did you? Millions of people have been killed for millions of reasons. Take a trip through history.
Quite so, BranShea. You and I are already taking a trip through history. How about you, so far I find it a very nice ride.
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One who likes roller coasters might call it a nice ride. One who prefers some coherence would say it's a bad trip.
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Smile Brandee. And enjoy the trip. Those who follow you will emulate your smile and you will live forever.
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Lie back and think of England. Or, in your case, the Netherlands.
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I'm just back from your Confusing States and I'v noticed some evolutions since the other times I've been there. Maybe that's why I got coherence on my mind. Sorry, roll on, roll on..
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I am still eagerly awaiting your summary and conclusion.
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I am still eagerly awaiting your summary and conclusion. Yes, wsieber, I will. I too was waiting. I was waiting for someone with an honest interest in the nature of objective reality to write for. I will construct my summary expressly for you this week. See you then.
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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
And then one day before there were days, the big bang banged with intent. Then much later, we humans were born in midst of all the banging and we rightly decided to look back, and ahead, to try to figure out the fundamental nature of that original intent.
But you won't find it here. What you will find (if you have a brain that listens) is that you are simply a fleshy robot who has a pretend free will only as much as a will can be considered free by a prudent use of semantics.
Gravity determines what you will do. Your biology determines what you will do. The whole Universe directs you to do what you most certainly will.
( I'll stop here for questions or comments or converts raising their hands to get in line to be washed )
Good. You are right not to argue. Anybody who has the brains of an arthropod will himself extrapolate that life and nonlife could not have come into being any other way.
Next: Whats Words Got To Do With It?
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Socrates knew it, the early Jews knew it, and certainly the great Buddha knew it, so why is it that you people here don't know it and won't listen when I tell you?
Sigh...ok one more time
WORDS HAVE NO ABSOLUTE MEANINGS; WORDS ONLY HAVE FUNCTION
Now listen closely; words and language are physical mechanisms that evolved to aid in the continuance of the speaking clade and not at all for us to understand the nature of the Universe around us.
The senses input; the words output; and if the output has survival consequences for the breeding group it becomes an operating meme.
Logic within our use of words is only logical within an arbitrary set of symbols that are defined by the needs of cause and effect and of the inscrutable concept we perceive as Time.
Or something like that.
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Still don't get it Jenny!
WORDS HAVE NO ABSOLUTE MEANINGS; WORDS ONLY HAVE FUNCTION
No problem there!
Maybe its the Budhha/socrates/In the beginning scenarios that are distracting me.
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Olly, as a meme this Buddhaish quotation will serve..
"In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true."
____________________________________________________
And as for Socrates; dialogues are sometimes searches for truth but they are also circuitous ways to comprehend the obscure ways of the meanings of our words.
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Words are only sounds that we hear. What we think is more important.
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Think, Olly.
What we think is out of our control.
Enjoy the ride.
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