1. Chemical brain controls nanobots

Comment #142644 by xale666x on March 12, 2008 at 11:42 pm

The gray goo... it's coming! We're all screwed.

2. Ayaan Hirsi Ali versus Timothy Garton Ash

Comment #97910 by xale666x on December 12, 2007 at 8:26 pm

'Enlightenment fundamentalist'... 'atheist fundamentalist'... 'secular fundamentalist'... when are these fools going to realize how ridiculous this crap sounds? What's next, reason fundamentalism? Extremist logic/rationality?

3. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93025 by xale666x on December 2, 2007 at 2:29 am

I find it ironic that Dinesh paints a caricature of Dennet disbelieving in things in earlier times such as other planets (I forget what the other thing was). 'Well, there's no evidence for other planets existing!' Well, look at yourself, Dinesh. The apparent 'fine tuning' and 'first cause' point to a god existing? Surely in the earlier time to which you transported Dennet, you would have cited rainbows, lightning and the sun as things that point to a god. You're simply filling the remaining gaps with God.

The fine-tuning argument is no problem when dealing with any reasonable person under normal circumstances, but under the conditions inherent to a formal debate (and against someone like Dinesh), it poses a problem. There is no one-line knock down argument to be provided.

There is the possibility that the universe must exist this way for reasons currently unknown. RD talks about this briefly in TGD. Perhaps the constants are no more free to vary than the proportion of a circle's radius is to its circumference.

Of course, there is the idea of a multiverse. Of all the possible universes, we necessarily exist in one friendly to our form of life.

Then again, who's to say that a different configuration of the constants wouldn't be friendly to life in some different way, or to life unlike any we can imagine? Dinesh baits one questioner into making his point that we as humans aren't capable of knowing/understanding everything. So, why assume that matter must be made of atoms? "For all we know, there might be intelligent beings in another universe arguing that if fundamental constants were only slightly different, then the absence of free quarks and the extreme weakness of gravity would make life impossible."

Any argument of fine-tuning assumes life as we know it is a given. The universe does not care if we're here. We happened to come into existence in the only known part of this vast universe that seems conducive to our form of life for a brief period of time (considering from the BB to whenever we die out, which I see as a small blip on the timescale of the universe). Does any of this imply a designer? If it does, said designer appears to be quite inept, and at best lucky that his 'finely tuned' creation actually gave rise to life on this obscure lump of rock.

Anyway... people actually clapped at Dinesh's handling of parsimony? Well, I suppose it was an impressive 'tactic'.

Also, there's Dinesh's assumption that the BB need a 'first cause'. Yes, time began with the BB… and 'cause' is a temporal concept that only applies to a situation in which time exists. Despite any need you have to invoke a cause and give that cause the attributes of your god, the BB (beginning of time) does not need one.