Comments on: The Falsehoods https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/ Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:58:56 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.6 By: All https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542372 Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:58:56 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542372 Hello. All dots in the screen are molecules, but yet they represent something more than themselves – information. If you ‘see’ what I mean, then you really see beyond matter. Yes, information is immaterial. Matter is the medium.

So youre not ‘blind’ matter inside a totally blind biochemical world. A ‘blind’ matter can not understand, can not plan, can not design. And it doesnt mean that when you cant understand or dont know a code that this code does not exist. It doesnt need an observer to EXIST, it just need a decoder in order to be understood, but NOT to exist.

Yes, I know all this sounds disguisting. But what is more disguisting is war and hatred. Im really far from debates and hatred talks.

K N O W L E D G E

]]> By: Collin https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542371 Thu, 13 Oct 2011 12:20:53 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542371 Another falsehood I just thought of:

* Free will is part of the human condition — or more broadly, the condition of being alive. (re 143)

To clarify, free will is — for physical purposes — simply the tendency that if two states linked by a causal junction have timelike separation, the later state is more mixed than the earlier state.

]]> By: Collin https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542370 Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:23:22 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542370 Two falsehoods relating to these comments:

* Scientific discourse must be constrained to prevent the ignorant from behaving badly over it. (re 58)

* Quantum mechanics disproves reality. (re 103-104)

]]> By: Kapitano https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542369 Tue, 28 Dec 2010 00:56:48 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542369 A few idiocies I often come across:

Intelligence is inborn.

Inborn traits can’t be changed.

Humans are naturally selfish.

Alternative medicines do no harm.

People are either good or bad.

Doing something for a long time makes you good at it.

The truth is always between two extremes.

Extremes are bad.

Birth parents are better parents than adoptive parents.

Some people are born geniuses.

Social Science is a science.

Computer hackers are 14 year old boys.

]]> By: Jared https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542368 Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:25:11 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542368 To answer your question, Greg:
When we wish to be more specific than just “primates,” usually to refer to humans, chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas collectively, but also (occasionally) to include gibbons and ancestral hominoids; even though hominidae would suffice for the former exclusively. It is a simple word which does not require delving into the taxonomic hierarchy of our relationship with these organisms.
Why don’t we use panoids, panines, and panids instead of the “homi” root word?

]]> By: Greg Laden https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542367 Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:00:08 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542367 Jared: Apes fit into the monophyletic group “primates” but we call them “apes.” Why do we call them apes instead of just primates?

Anyway, my post on this is almost done, just putting the finishing touches on it.

]]> By: Jared https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542366 Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:33:58 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542366 How are humans NOT apes? We fit so nicely into that monophyletic group…

]]> By: Jared https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542365 Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:25:04 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542365 suncrush, the implications in that statement are:
1) that we are no longer apes
2) our common ancestor looked exactly like modern apes
3) we are “more evolved” than modern apes because they look like our ancestors
4) if you read the comments, you would realize this

]]> By: Greg Laden https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542364 Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:24:04 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542364 That’s actually my next falsehood, to be posted a bit later today.

To me, it is an open question that we are apes. Well, to a cladist we are apes, but to a cladist we are also fungi.

]]> By: suncrush https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542363 Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:46:55 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/17/the-falsehoods/#comment-542363 It really burns my shorts when biologists say that the statement “humans evolved from apes” is false. We did evolve from apes. We are Hominoids. Hominoids are apes. The first Hominoid was an ape. We are descended from the first Hominoid, and many other Hominoids, and are in fact evolved from several apes. We are also currently apes.

Biologists really can’t complain that the person in the street misunderstands evolution when they play stupid semantic tricks like this to obfuscate the issue.

]]>