The Origin of Life and the Hidden Role of Quantum Criticality 188
KentuckyFC writes One of the great puzzles of biology is how the molecular machinery of life is so finely coordinated. Even the simplest cells are complex three dimensional biochemical factories in which a dazzling array of machines pump, push, copy, and compute in a dance of extraordinarily detailed complexity. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how the ordinary processes of electron transport allow this complexity to emerge given the losses that arise in much simpler circuits. Now a group of researchers led by Stuart Kauffmann have discovered that the electronic properties of biomolecules are entirely different to those of ordinary conductors. It turns out that most biomolecules exist in an exotic state called quantum criticality that sits on the knife edge between conduction and insulation. In other words, biomolecules belong to an entirely new class of conductor that is not bound by the ordinary rules of electron transport. Of course, organic molecules can be ordinary conductors or insulators and the team have found a few biomolecules that fall into these categories. But evolution seems to have mainly selected biomolecules that are quantum critical, implying that that this property must confer some evolutionary advantage. Exactly what this could be isn't yet clear but it must play an important role in the machinery of life and its origin.
"Complexity" is very subjective. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Complexity" is a very subjective thing. It's solely determined by the intellectual capabilities of the person or people involved.
Just look at computer programming. We have smart people who understand C++. To them, it isn't complex. It's just a really powerful tool. Then we have less-smart people who use Ruby. They don't have the mental capacity or acuity to understand C++, so they see it as being complex. The complexity of C++ really just depends on who you are and what your mind is capable of working with.
It's totally the same for the SQL versus NoSQL issue. Some people are intelligent and totally capable of understanding and using SQL. They don't find it complex. But there are other people who lack the intellectual ability to comprehend SQL. To them, it's "complex". So to try to combat their inability to understand SQL, they come up with NoSQL and shenanigans like that. SQL itself isn't complex. It's just that some people find it to be complex, based on their limited intellect.
Complexity is subjective. While these biological phenomenon may appear difficult for some people to comprehend, they aren't really all that complex at all.
Re:"Complexity" is very subjective. (Score:4, Insightful)
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What is the step count cutoff on complexity? Please quantify that for me. If you can't give me a formula that works across the board (you, after all, are using CS in a discussion about biology), it's subjective.
The subjectivity is bound by a constant factor. That's why big O notation works in the first place.
Re:"Complexity" is very subjective. (Score:4, Interesting)
While these biological phenomenon may appear difficult for some people to comprehend, they aren't really all that complex at all.
Really? So you can predict how proteins fold? Which drug candidates will interact with which proteins and what effects they will have? How about just modeling the interaction of a protein and water? These all fall under NP-complete, which is a pretty much the epitome of complexity.
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and somehow reactions to posts in this thread are very predictable, almost simple, as if most of you are just children.
Change the topic and make an ad hominem attack - You're right! Predictable and childish!
Hard to compute != hard to understand
But these biological problems are both hard to compute and hard to understand, What part of electron transfer to and from proteins do you find easy to understand? Can you use this understanding to make useful, non-trivial predictions?
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Hard to compute != hard to understand
...because Complexity != Comprehension.
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The OP is not 100% wrong, but as others have pointed complexity is not just subjective. There are systems with greater complexity than others, regardless of the beholder.
It's a mistake to say that, because someone has eyes which can be forced to focus on a distant object, those who can't see it are on a lower rank. This is exactly what leads us to marginalize some people who are deaf, or color blind, or too tall etc.
Furthermore, sometimes complexity signals a field not well understood. Someone, somewhere, s
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"Complexity" is a very subjective thing.
I disagree. Complexity is effectively the shortest description of something using a given, sufficiently expressive language with finite words. While relatively complexity can vary between languages a little, the variance in complexity is bounded by a finite amount, the description of translating between the two languages. That makes complexity an objective measure.
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" Then we have less-smart people who use Ruby. They don't have the mental capacity or acuity to understand C++, so they see it as being complex."
Jesus, where shall I start?? Less smart people use Ruby??!!! Get real.
Ruby is very LISP like. The smartest programmers I know are into LISP, Clojure and Ruby because it allows you to construct large system by using meta-constructs at a much higher level. Seeing the forest for the trees and stuff.
Most C+ hackers I know can do lots of high-details low leave things be
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More likrly a ruby or noSQL users sinve the bull of the post was centered around why they are not smart. It says nothing of crestion or cteationists.
The original poster doesn't seem as smart as he thinks he is which is likely why you posted AC
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Polite? "Stupid people use Ruby?". How is that polite?
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Polite? "Stupid people use Ruby?". How is that polite?
I have a question. You put that in quotes You do realize that when you put something in quotes, you are saying that the person wrote it. S you are challenged to show me exactly where he said exactly that.
Never mind, because we both know he didn't write that.
I don't agree with his example that People who use Ruby are "less intelligent", (that phrase is a quote, btw) but that's just maybe not the best example.
His point is that people who don't know as much about something as others are likely to find it
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I'm sorry, but the parent post is anything but polite. I'd even say it is also off-topic has it only pretend to talk about the article, and use that to gratuitously insult people.
It takes very thin skin to be insulted by a person saying that familiarity breeds understanding.
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Wow, really hitting a sore spot there, funny that you feel justified in attacking others as wannabe slashdoters (ohhh what an exclusive club) because somebody hurt your feelings. Personally I do not understand nosql options, pretty much because I spent a couple of decades with sql and haven't had a reason to use it
The example could be flipped the other way to say that I find nosql complex because of its unfamiliarity to me... wha...? Did I suffer injuries or insult from being used as an example? No, because
Re: "Complexity" is very subjective. (Score:3)
Complexity of the type has a mathematical definition similar to entropy. It's related to the number of interacting parts and/or the number of states the system can be in. It doesn't need to be subjective at all, although our gut instinct estimates may be.
Re:"Complexity" is NOT subjective. (Score:2)
Perspective from a chemist (Score:5, Interesting)
I did my Ph.D. in physical chemistry, focusing on electron transport in DNA, proteins, and other organic molecules. I read the arxiv paper and found it almost incomprehensible from this perspective. There is no reference to existing models of electron transport in biological systems(*), and it's not clear that their "generalized fractal dimension" for a protein has anything at all to do with electron transport. While it's possible that this approach is just so revolutionary that it doesn't need to be grounded in what's already known/believed about this field, it's more likely that this is just pseudoscience. Further supporting this hypothesis is the existence of phrases like "Why life persists at the edge of chaos is a question at the very heart of evolution" in the text. Serious science doesn't need that kind of hype in the paper.
*except at the end where they reference a couple experimental papers that tangentially relate to this topic
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That's my impression as well. I'm just a layman, but to my untrained eye this looks like word salad. I'm seeing phrases I have never read in a microbiology paper, book or article. My Spidey senses start tingling as soon as I see the word "quantum" outside of a physics article. It's not always true, but as a general rule of thumb that some throwing "quantum" into a biology discussion is usually talking crap. Add in words like "fractal" and the stinkometer just starts reading off the scale.
Anybody look up the
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I'm just a layman, but to my untrained eye this looks like word salad.
I'm a biochemist specializing in molecular biophysics, and I agree.
It's not always true, but as a general rule of thumb that some throwing "quantum" into a biology discussion is usually talking crap.
Definitely not always - there are actually enzymes which take advantage of electron tunneling, and even proton tunneling, for catalysis. Here's a particularly cool paper [jbc.org] (no paywall) about a light-activated oxidoreductase which encourages a proton to tunnel.
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This fake paper seems to have fooled you.
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I agree; i am a quantum physicist. The paper goes seomwhere between effortless phenemenological observation, overgeneralizations and claims which are so remarkably undefined (like that biomolecules are neither insulator nor metals - thanks) hat it not clear which theoretical hypothesis they are going to make here.
The really impoertan question is: can i use their theoretical observation to predict parameters of molecules at some places? Can they actually reduce the number of variables needes to describe a pr
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There are some pretty cool examples of quantum effects in biomolecules (e.g. this paper [jbc.org] about enzyme catalyzed proton tunneling, and Marcus theory for electron transfer), but this paper doesn't seem either to reference any of that past work at all, or make sense given that context.
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There is no reference to existing models of electron transport in biological systems
I was struck by the same observation. It also seems like the authors are unaware of the newish linear-time DFT codes.
In case anyone has some knowledge of quantum mechanics and biology, and is interested in electron transfer in biomolecules, Wikipedia has an article on Marcus theory [wikipedia.org] that is an OK place to start. Not the best article, but it discusses the inverted driving force effect and has references to follow up.
Complexity is not a property of the observer (Score:3)
Complexity is a real property of natural systems. Biological systems are highly complex by any measurable standard. Proteins and protein complexes are nanomachines that operate on principles that have no counterpart in modern technology, such as computers. Take a look at detailed maps of protein complexes like the ribosome, proteosome or F1/F0 particle in mitochondria, and how they operate and are regulated. They are extremely complex despite being only nanometers in size.
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That is nice, but so what? A star is more complex than the gas cloud it originated from, a galaxy is more complex than the cloud of stars it originated from. In nature complexity always comes from simplicity.
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That's really easy to say, but hard to prove in fact. Biological systems are not based on simplicity. The "so-what" is that biological systems, even at the single protein level, are doing things with electron conductance that can't be done in non-biological systems. From the article: “biomolecules belong to an entirely new class of conductor that is not bound by the ordinary rules of electron transport,”
That is the "so what"?
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biological systems, even at the single protein level, are doing things with electron conductance that can't be done in non-biological systems.
There really are some very cool quantum effects in biomolecules, for example enzymes which take catalyze electron tunneling and even proton tunneling [jbc.org]. Electron transfer in proteins in particular is actually pretty well understood via Marcus theory. There is extensive theoretical and experimental work going back five decades in this area - all of which is totally ignored by the unreviewed manuscript under discussion.
biomolecules belong to an entirely new class of conductor that is not bound by the ordinary rules of electron transport
Unfortunately, your post and TFA alike do not appropriately distinguish between wildly differ
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I'm still compelled to ask the same question, so what? Biological systems had 3.5 billion years to evolve. That is a lot of time for evolution and surviving of the fittest. If you look at biological organisms, they are in fact based on simplicity. Our mammalian brain is based on the amphibian and the fish brain. That is because we evolved from fish ancestors and then from amphibian ancestors. That is one example of from simple to complex. In the cell we have DNA->RNA->Proteins. That is also from simpl
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And the nonsense string carries more information than the nursery rhyme. If you're using lowercase letters and digits in your alphabet, that's more than five bits per character. Comprehensible English is more like one bit per character, or a little more. Any information content difference in your examples is because you deliberately made a semi-random string with no information actually in it, not because it couldn't carry information. Even so, the first would make a much safer encryption key than the
The Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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arguments from personal incredulity
How about skepticism of claims made in unreviewed manuscripts which flout five decades of theoretical and empirical investigations of charge transfer and quantum effects in biochemical systems?
Re:The Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
So, you find the article's proposal... incredulous?
Do note that all scientific progress derives from a willingness to look at a given model (say, Newtonian mechanics, "Luminiferous Ether", the Copenhagen Interpretation) and say "I don't really believe that", though.
So you figure I said that people are not allowed to "not believe"?
Hell no!
If a person wants to have a different idea that's just fine. But the idea that a person can invalidate a whole lot of dat by saying "I simply cannot believe, and having their "I simply cannot believe be the crux of their argument - well now that's different.
If I were to say - "I look out, and the whole world doesn't look curved, I simply cannot believe it is round." or "Look how the sun, moon, and stars rotate around the earth - I simply cannot believe the earth is not the center of the universe." is no different than saying "Life is so complex - I simply cannot believe anyone other than My particular Deity made it" is the exact same thing.
There is a whole lot of evidence that the world is a globe.
There is a whole lot of evidence that the earth is not the center of the Universe.
There is a whole lot of evidence for life forms evolving, from fossils to DNA to biology, and all of the evidence fits into the timelines delivered by physics.
So no, someone saying "I simply cannot believe" means they cannot comprehend, not much else.
The dumbest person in the room.
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Well, only insofar as the "center of the Universe" isn't defined under our current cosmology.
Do note that, under General Relativity, the equations work out just fine if you assume that Earth is the stationary center of the Universe and everything else revolves around it.
The equations also work out if you assume Sedna is the center of the Universe.
Or your belly button, for that matter. Relativity is interesting that way....
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If you assume the Earth is the stationary center of the Universe, the equations will work out but will get strange and hard to use, since the whole Universe would be rotating around the Earth, most of it far faster than light. It's much easier to use general relativity when you pick a coordinate system with no local rotation.
Misleading assertions (Score:3)
>>"But evolution seems to have mainly selected biomolecules that are quantum critical, implying that that this property must confer some evolutionary advantage. Exactly what this could be isn't yet clear but it must play an important role in the machinery of life and its origin."
A scientist should understand evolution sufficiently well to not use arguments like this.
Why are we carbon based and not silica based? Either works just fine. Evolution doesn't pick the "best" option, it picks a "functional" option. After something has proven to function, evolution stops caring (until it no longer functions). Why iron and not copper in our blood? Either works fine.
Why quantum critical "bio"molecules? Because they work. There is NO other criteria. They could be better than the alternative, they could be worse, they could be the same. But they work. That is all we can assert.
Re:Misleading assertions (Score:4, Informative)
No it doesn't. If you do the chemical equations for respiration using carbon, you end up with CO2 as a waste product that's easy for an organism to get rid of since it's a gas. If you substitute silicon for carbon, the equations still work but you end up with SiO2 as a waste product -- sand -- a solid that's pretty much impossible for an organism to get rid of.
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If you think organisms can't get rid of solid waste products, you must be full of shit. Chuckle.
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Re:Misleading assertions (Score:4, Informative)
Do you have any examples of silica-based lifeforms to back that assertion?
Iron is more efficient [wikipedia.org] in environments humans live in.
Duh. (Score:2)
Now ... researchers ... have discovered that the electronic properties of biomolecules are entirely different to those of ordinary conductors.
Ya, everyone already knows this - duh. That's why Voyager [wikipedia.org] has bio-neural circuitry.
criticality is.. well... critical (Score:2)
my friend dr alex hankey - someone who is himself slightly err critically stable shall we say - has written several papers on exactly this subject, well ahead of their time. from my understanding of conversations with him, criticality of biological systems is critical to life as well as consciousness. from his training which includes two PhDs, one in mathematics and one in physics (MIT and Cambridge), dr hankey actually had to invent a new form of quantum mechanics in order to properly do this justice: on
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think of a cell being attacked by a virus, or going cancerous. you'd, obviously, want the *entire* immune system to react to that, instantly, wouldn't you? otherwise it could well be far too late by the time the virus spreads to more than one cell.
I'm not an expert, but I doubt you want the entire immune system jumping into full panic mode for a single virus. The side effects from such a response would probably kill you.
Also, from personal experience I can tell that even dealing with a common cold takes more than a week, and that plenty of cells are infected.
Is it really such a puzzle? (Score:2)
One of the great puzzles of biology is how the molecular machinery of life is so finely coordinated.
Is it? Surely the answer is that if it wasn't so "finely coordinated," it wouldn't work and you'd have a lump of goo, not a hamster.
Sounds like the sort of "puzzle" the creationist types like to invent to give their god a gap to live in.
extraordinarily detailed complexity.
By whose standards?
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I despise these quasi "anthropic principle" arguments that explain precisely why they are wrong, and then triumphantly declare thereby they are right.
No, it remains the case that causality works forward. It remains the case that things existing means evidence for models of how they could get that way.
Note that reality, as well as empirical science, demonstrates that the results are not a lump of goo. You can correct your reasoning as needed from there.
And no, the "gap" exists only in your willfully irrati
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Jeez. Do you have to be so belligerent about being smarter than me?
No, it remains the case that causality works forward.
I don't remember saying it didn't...
It remains the case that things existing means evidence for models of how they could get that way.
Models like evolution?
Nobody, ever, thought that a direct intervention of a god was needed for fire to cook their food, for water to roll downhill, or for a knife to cut something.
Again, not something I recall saying. Anyway, weren't some ancients pretty hot on the idea of direct intervention being required for all manner of other things, like the sun coming up in the morning, or the end of winter?
Try recognizing historical reality rather than parroting your Dawkins paperback.
Never read him.
Why don't you try not being such a condescending dick to people just because you think you know better than they do?
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I'm not prepared to conclude I am smarter than you, as I only have two data points (posts) to go by...
I don't remember saying it didn't...
Yes, it's intrinsic and not necessarily obvious in this type of argument. As is often the case, the underlying premises need to be surfaced to properly evaluate it.
Take a look at this, as likely relevant, whether or not you've thought about it in detail. [wikipedia.org]
Carter's SAP and Barrow and Tipler's WA
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Does it? Given a point in spacetime, it's just as easy or difficult to calculate possible pasts or futures. You might say event A caused event B, but physics only says they're causally linked.
Universe described by General Relativity is best thought not as a stream of events but a jigsaw puzzle. You have a piece (observable variables at some point in spacetime) and laws of physics describe what other pieces can be connected to it, then what other pieces c
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I despise these quasi "anthropic principle" arguments that explain precisely why they are wrong, and then triumphantly declare thereby they are right.
They are typical examples of truisms. Effect happened, so causes of the effect happened.
Nobody, ever, thought that a direct intervention of a god was needed for fire to cook their food, for water to roll downhill, or for a knife to cut something.
Let me introduce you to Occasionalism [wikipedia.org], which has as a primary precept that everything happens due to the will of God.
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Long discussion possible here, but essentially my objection was toward a particular popular "science versus religion" simplistic narrative of history. Occasionalism avoids framing events in terms of a "natural or supernatural" dichotomy in the first place. For the question of history, I think it fair to say that, for example, every single action of Jesus, such as simply walking from point A to B (or for that matter any other individual doing
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The point is, yes you can. The "anthropic principle" is an erroneous word-game. As discussed in a different branch of my responses, it is merely a tautology reducible to "if things were different they would be different" and presents no evidence at all for the thing being argued for on the basis of it.
Merely insisting reality is divine is merely redefining what i
Assuming a grand meaning seems to be overreaching (Score:4, Interesting)
As a former molecular biologist who happens to be in the middle of a course on the design/synthesis of biomolecular electronics (biological semiconductors, conductors, LEDs, solar etc.), I wonder if the solution isn't as simple as this:
Essentially all biomolecules are synthesized by enzymes. Most are acted upon by enzymes or have some enzymatic activity during their functional life. Quantum criticality could be a useful property to enhance binding and catalysis at enzyme clefts (or other active sites) by enhancing charge/electron transitions in/on a molecule. Criticality may allow transitions and thresholds to be sharper, snappier, more selective.
"Quantum criticality" is just a label we give to a group of mechanisms (and the structures that encourage them) based on some test. I might label the many things that scare my friend's neurotic but otherwise imposing German Shepard as "Fido-phobic". This category might even be scientifically interesting -- if pulling pranks or stealing from my friend were major scientific goals at this point in time. That doesn't mean that squeeze toys that groan, rubber cubes that bounce erratically, and electric toys that "awaken" at random or after a delay share a fundamental property. They simply have properties that have interesting effects toward a certain goal (keeping her dog from interfering in our hijinks)
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Stop anthropomorphizing evolution. (Score:3)
But evolution seems to have mainly selected biomolecules that are quantum critical, implying that that this property must confer some evolutionary advantage. Exactly what this could be isn't yet clear but it must play an important role in the machinery of life and its origin.
Why talk as though evolution has a purpose, a mind , as if evolution itself is some sentient being?
Stop anthropomorphizing or deomorphizing evolution. Evolution hates such talk. :-)
Knockdown dragout (Score:2)
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The reaction to seeing a tiger in the bushes is a mix of chemical and electrical. Electrical signals in the nerves are pretty fast. Release of stress hormones takes a little longer. Of course, at the microscopic level, pretty interesting stuff happens, with plenty of details that we don't fully understand yet. Nothing that involves unknown energy though. It's pretty much all the same electromagnetic force throughout.
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If cells communicated instantly - and they don't - there would be no use for a central nervous system.
Meanwhile do you know about the History 2 channel? I think their content would suit you just fine.
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Exactly, 'a split second' is actually a well defined thing called 'reaction time', which ranges in the tens to hundreds of milliseconds and is provably related to the distance between brain and the origin of the signal in the body.
'Quantum [whatever]' really brings out the Dunning-Kruger in the comment section.
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Of course, there's some processing and then sending the results back down. Fortunately, there's a lot of simple testing [humanbenchmark.com] that is going on so we know i
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i made a separate reply http://science.slashdot.org/co... [slashdot.org] but briefly, if you are interested, transporter_li, look up work by dr alex hankey.
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So does ordinary chemical reaction, especially in conductors specifically designed for fast propagation, such as nerves. In fact, even the exotic phenomenom called "sound" moves at 340+ meters per second, and will thus take all of 1/150 of a second to cross your body.
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Were that to be the process implemented by the body, how much information do you believe the communication would contain?
If you say "About 1 bit, and it means be more alert." I might consider this a plausible scemario to investigate. Quite dubious, but not totally beyond possibility. Once, however, you get as far as 2 bits I become considerably more skeptical. If you go as far as "There's a hungry tiger off to the right, and he's looking at me." I become totally incredulous.
FWIW, I also believe that much
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Yes, the gut reaction is call it pseudo science and get a good laugh out of it
No, the gut reaction would be to test the effect by placing a transmitter next to somebody's head, see that nothing happens, and then get a good laugh out of it.
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The reason it's called pseudo science is because studies =shown there is no difference in effect between placebo groups and the group receiving EMF radiation.
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studies =shown there is no difference in effect between placebo groups and the group receiving EMF radiation
Which only goes to prove that the negative health effects of placebos can be as severe as the negative health effects caused by EMFs.
We need a law banning EMFs *and* banning placebos.
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Yeah me too... I want to ask him/her how many failed attempts it took to evolve this great decision... It does look like an infinity or similar number of attempts before one of them stuck... And then those other things that don't stick are still attempted even though the right one has already been chosen...
Re: Meet (Score:3, Funny)
The Zoroastrians and Greeks called. They want their afterlife back. And it's not hard to imagine doing a better job of creation than Yahweh, especially with infinite power and knowledge to hand. Plus, sacrificing yourself to yourself to stop yourself from doing something you can freely chosse to do or not to do makes as much sense as a screen door on a spaceship, especially when it mostly doesn't work (and a bad weekend isn't much sacrifice...)
There ay be a God. I think there is. It's not the genocidal egom
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Are you trying to claim that life was created like watches are and although seemingly endlessly complrx, all we have to do is understand the same physics the creator used?
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Are you trying to claim that life was created like watches are and although seemingly endlessly complex, all we have to do is understand the same physics the creator used?
No, I'm saying that the theory of evolution is being called upon to explain increasingly complex layers of life's intricacies that are more simply explained by the existence of a creator.
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No, I'm saying that the theory of evolution is being called upon to explain increasingly complex layers of life's intricacies that are more simply explained by the existence of a creator.
That's only true if you completely ignore the complexities of the creator itself.
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Same thing. You haven't explained the creator itself. You haven't explained the creation process. You can't predict anything.
I agree it's simple, but it's also meaningless. You have no answers. The only thing you've accomplished is that you've stopped asking questions.
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I don't have to explain anything
My point exactly. You haven't explained anything, and you've stopped trying.
The atheist's position that "it must be, because we reject any alternative explanation" is not science
I reject any explanation that requires unexplainable and untestable magic. I'm not aware of any reasonable alternative explanations that don't require magic.
Evolutionists want to claim their theory is "settled science". It's not. It's not even a testable theory
It's perfectly testable in lots of different ways. Maybe you're thinking of abiogenesis ?
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You have to account for the fact that your theory's predictions have been disproved by evolution's better explanations again and again and again. Your god of the gaps is shown wrong every time a new gap is filled by science. Obviously there are always more gaps, but the fact that you were wrong the last thousand times is plenty strong evidence that you're wrong in plugging your god into the next gap, and is a strong motivation to abandon your concept of god as an active meddler.
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Correction. Evolution does not disprove anything, it just shows another viable path to the same goals. Saying anything in evolution disproves any other theory is like saying 3+1 disproves that 2+2 equals 4. This is especially true when something is created as the entire idea or concept of evolution can be a product of the creation and thereby incorrect but still useful to reality.
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You might try understanding evolution before deciding it's false. Evolution and general relativity are the two most-tested theories in science, yet for some reason they're the two people seem to have the hardest time believing. I blame the schools.
The basic fallacy you're committing is to argue "I'm not smart enough to understand how X could be true, therefore X is not true", which of all the fallacies is the one that makes you appear the least smart.
To your deeper point, science is about useful predictiv
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Darwin was quite some time ago, and while he had some remarkable deductions for his day, and deserves credit for establishing the field, he's practically speaking irrelevant to the science of evolutionary biology. Even in Darwin's day, however, before genetics, his theory made a remarkable prediction: that taxonomy would be cladistic (to use the modern term). That is, you could organize species in a hierarchy based on common features.
You can't do this with e.g vehicles: there are features common to all pi
As an Engineer/Journeyman Machinist I can tell you (Score:4, Informative)
that watches are not really all that complex. Nor do they ever evolve to better survive in a changing environment, or reproduce of their own accord. But (scientifically) the fact that we do not completely understand how something works does not mean that, a "God" must therefore have created it. The fact that we find something difficult to understand is not an excuse to abandon the Scientific Method, shrug our intellectually lazy shoulders, and attribute (said difficult to understand thing), to a creator...You are not suggesting we do...are you...really?
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Gentlemen, I submit to you another shining example of the Salem Hypothesis.
RE: Salem Hypothis: Be careful not to paint with (Score:2)
too broad a brush. I am an Engineer, and can tell you that many of us hold to scientific discipline in solving engineering challenges. We do this without being atheist, or while being atheist as the individual case may be. Wanting something to be true, really badly wanting something to be true, in the absence of good, confirmed, triple checked, data, can be deadly. But really, anyone, of any profession, who attributes the unknown/unexplained to (a) God, are not (should not claim to be) scientists.
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I don't think the Salem Hypothesis asserts all engineers are Creationists, just that as a professional group, engineering seems to produce more than its fair of Creationists.
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Let's say 30% of the population are creationists.
Let's say 10% of Engineers are creationists, because creationists are less likely to pursue the field and/or because their education convinced them to no longer be creationists.
Let's say 1% of scientists are creationists, because creationists are less likely to pursue the field and/or because their education convinced them to no longer be creationists.
Result: Any creationist claiming to have a "science degree" has something like a 90% chance of turning out to
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And yet engineers keep falling into the trap of thinking a. they're scientists and B. they have expertise and experience that give them some special insight into fields they really have no significant knowledge of.
It might be something if a chemical engineer with expertise in organic chemistry were to critique abiogenesis theories, but to have a guy with a degree in mechanical engineering and CS appealing to his own authority is precisely what the Salem Hypothesis speaks to.
It is dangerous enough when a sci
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And the solar system is completely unexplainable with quantum physics, and particles are completely unexplainable with relativity. It doesn't mean we should just say "God does it", and be done.
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And the solar system is completely unexplainable with quantum physics, and particles are completely unexplainable with relativity. It doesn't mean we should just say "God does it", and be done.
The idea that belief in God somehow interferes with scientific discovery is unfounded. Most scientists, until recent history, believed in God without conflict, and made great discoveries without seeing any inconsistency. Mendel, Kepler, Bacon, Descartes, Pascal, Newton, Faraday, Planck and many others handily disprove the idea that belief in God and science are mutually exclusive. Many living scientists today are happy to explain why they believe in God and don't see any conflict
So your statement "It do
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any more than atheist stops seeking truth because they have no reason for living.
And here is where you reveal that you're trolling, rather than just making poor arguments.
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Or.........
as a computer scientist you could look into the field of evolutionary algorithms, discover that evolution is an applied science used by half of Fortune 500 companies, discover how evolution does work, and write your own code and witness first hand that evolution works.
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What you don't understand is the reason for the puzzle. It's not that there's no way to do most of the things that happened, is that there are so many possibilities, and so little evidence, that you can't verifiably select which is the correct choice. (And Paley was an ignorant savage who was proud of being ignorant.)
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Consider the theory that DNA contains information for cellular construction. Based on previously collected data, Pauling, Crick, and Watson hypothesized that DNA had a helical str
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Saying that you can't test the theory is quite different from saying that the theory is false. And often it's just "we can't *yet* test the theory".
OTOH, I do agree that it will probably never be possible to prove that the origin of cellular life happened in a particular way. There will almost certainly be many ways it could have happened, and the evidence won't allow us to choose between them. Sorry. In physics the name of the answer to this is "sum over histories". But you still can't pick one path.
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Tell me, what experiments do astronomers make? There are sciences that are observational, because we don't have the ability to control what we're studying, rather than experimental.
And, in fact, biologists do experiments, including some that test evolution. We have witnessed the creation of a new species in the lab. We have seen natural selection at work all over the place, although splitting into different species in any life-form we can see takes too long to be conveniently observed in a lab. Biol
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Tunneling (mostly of electrons) is actually widespread in proteins, and its not hard to see why that is when you consider that the de Broglie wavelength of a 10 kJ electron is around 18 angstroms (these are relevant energy/distance scales in enzymes). Search "Marcus theory" for more information...
What's really cool is that some enzymes actually boost tunneling probabilities (e.g. through particular short-timescale motions) as an essential component of catalysis. In some cases, tunneling even occurs for larg
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Are there any existing models of electron transport in biological systems?
Good question! The answer is yes, although they are not even mentioned in this unreviewed manuscript (which seems like hokum to me). Electron transfer in proteins is particularly well understood in the context of Marcus theory [wikipedia.org]. The wiki article isn't great, but it has some good information and further references. A key insight is the "inverted driving force effect," an experimentally validated prediction of Marcus theory that electron transfer rates actually start to decrease if the transfer reaction is too