ChatterBank2 mins ago
Self-Replicating Molecules.
How did certain chemicals combine to produce the first self-replicating molecules?
Answers
We don't know. Writings on the subject are still full of the words 'possibly' and 'perhaps'.
17:56 Wed 13th Nov 2013
Dear Khandro,
Sorry you have failed to answer either of my questions by quoting your 2012 question in which you asked "Does Ming the Merciless really live on planet Mongo?".
This is not an answer.
It's just your usual fiction- or mystical-based load of frollicks!
Anyway we still love you - you trouble-making imp!
SIQ.
Sorry you have failed to answer either of my questions by quoting your 2012 question in which you asked "Does Ming the Merciless really live on planet Mongo?".
This is not an answer.
It's just your usual fiction- or mystical-based load of frollicks!
Anyway we still love you - you trouble-making imp!
SIQ.
Dear Naomi24,
Ty for your response. Good that's done and dusted. So nice to have a concise sensible discussion here at present, lol.
My 2 questions were in no way linked. Both were carefully seleted based on comments made on this thread only. No tricks like "when did you stop beating your wife".
They were designed to flush out the contributors who favour wild strange theories. But of course they won't answer or will try one of the old tricks: (a) of discrediting: the questioner or the question; (b) "answering" the question with a question or (c) putting forward a complicated theory which is a pure blind and avoids the question.
I've met them all in my research career after publicly presenting my team's results. From your style I suspect you are similarly experienced.
Credit to Khadro, from his debating experience, he can identify such tricks.
Pity I couldn,t accept his response as an answer but he tried something at least.
Kindest Regards,
SIQ.
Ty for your response. Good that's done and dusted. So nice to have a concise sensible discussion here at present, lol.
My 2 questions were in no way linked. Both were carefully seleted based on comments made on this thread only. No tricks like "when did you stop beating your wife".
They were designed to flush out the contributors who favour wild strange theories. But of course they won't answer or will try one of the old tricks: (a) of discrediting: the questioner or the question; (b) "answering" the question with a question or (c) putting forward a complicated theory which is a pure blind and avoids the question.
I've met them all in my research career after publicly presenting my team's results. From your style I suspect you are similarly experienced.
Credit to Khadro, from his debating experience, he can identify such tricks.
Pity I couldn,t accept his response as an answer but he tried something at least.
Kindest Regards,
SIQ.
SIQ; I know the topic is about material (s. r. modules), but would you not agree that whenever throughout all these posts I mention words like 'consciousness' and attempt to raise the subject of 'dualism' - identifiable entities existing within our universe - there has not been a single answer, and I hear a distinct shuffling of the feet from the materialist-scientists? Where do you think 'memory' fits in to the material world for example?
Khandro, //would you not agree that whenever throughout all these posts I mention words like 'consciousness' and attempt to raise the subject of 'dualism' - identifiable entities existing within our universe - there has not been a single answer, and I hear a distinct shuffling of the feet from the materialist-scientists? ….. Where do you think 'memory' fits in to the material world for example? //
No, I wouldn’t agree. Until now I’ve seen no relevant question from you and I’ve heard no shuffling of feet. Although you have badgered Jom to define a connection between mysticism and dualism, as always, despite being pressed to do so, you’ve offered no opinion for anyone to consider, agree with, or dispute – so where do you think 'memory' fits in to the material world - or don't you - and why?
No, I wouldn’t agree. Until now I’ve seen no relevant question from you and I’ve heard no shuffling of feet. Although you have badgered Jom to define a connection between mysticism and dualism, as always, despite being pressed to do so, you’ve offered no opinion for anyone to consider, agree with, or dispute – so where do you think 'memory' fits in to the material world - or don't you - and why?
But if people don't know what you're asking how can you expect an answer? For instance, 'Where does memory fit into the material world?' Unless you offer some explanation, how are people, who don't necessarily think as you do, and therefore have no idea what you're thinking, to know what you mean by that?
^ :o) Just a little clarification here, I did attempt to answer Khandro's vague original question and I even answered some of his increasingly silly supplementary questions despite his ungracious replies. As he has now raised a completely unconnected question which I predicted earlier all I can say is 'told you so'.
jim //Great observation, Khandro. So, now that Naomi has asked you a question...?//
No sorry, she has 'replied' by asking me back my own question.
However, I will re-phrase it; Close your eyes and conjure up a clear image of an object from the past - your first pet or bicycle or a person, anything, where does that image exist in the physical world of self-replicating molecules, or does it?
No sorry, she has 'replied' by asking me back my own question.
However, I will re-phrase it; Close your eyes and conjure up a clear image of an object from the past - your first pet or bicycle or a person, anything, where does that image exist in the physical world of self-replicating molecules, or does it?
Don't know. But computing gives us a sort of hint -- information can easily be stored in a physical way. No reason to suppose that the same doesn't apply, albeit in much more complexity, in our own brains.
Naomi's asked that question a number of times in different forms. Since no-one understands memory perfectly there is no definitive answer, to be sure, but there are nevertheless strong reasons for thinking that it's entirely possible for the brain to carry memory without the need to invoke anything "on top of" the physical.
Naomi's asked that question a number of times in different forms. Since no-one understands memory perfectly there is no definitive answer, to be sure, but there are nevertheless strong reasons for thinking that it's entirely possible for the brain to carry memory without the need to invoke anything "on top of" the physical.
jim; //...computing gives us a sort of hint -- information can easily be stored in a physical way. No reason to suppose that the same doesn't apply, albeit in much more complexity, in our own brains.//
True to some extent, but the computer can only reproduce what it already 'knows', just like we can see things which we once knew but no longer exist via our memory, but we can also imagine things which do not, nor have never existed; if I ask you to visualise say, an apple nailed to a dartboard by a 6 inch nail, you can see that in your 'minds eye' but it is beyond your experience. So I'm wondering how that image can exist in the physical domain, and if it doesn't, it must exist outside of it, wouldn't you say?
(To be sure, I have just typed it into Google images, and it isn't there. :-) )
True to some extent, but the computer can only reproduce what it already 'knows', just like we can see things which we once knew but no longer exist via our memory, but we can also imagine things which do not, nor have never existed; if I ask you to visualise say, an apple nailed to a dartboard by a 6 inch nail, you can see that in your 'minds eye' but it is beyond your experience. So I'm wondering how that image can exist in the physical domain, and if it doesn't, it must exist outside of it, wouldn't you say?
(To be sure, I have just typed it into Google images, and it isn't there. :-) )
A public mental-health warning!
Stay away from attempting to "debate" dualism with Khandro!
I saw this coming like an exocet missile days ago.
Khandro has already defined his dualism as separating the material and mind/conciousnesss (rough but I believe an acurate version of his definitition).
So what's his trick?
By definition he will certainly include the brain under "the material element"-thus ruling it out of discussion. Hence by discussing this, one concedes his dubious premise that mind/conciousness are totally independent entities from our bodies.
Easy - dealing with Khadro's tricks is like shooting fish in a barrel!
Oh Khandro, by ignoring this subject I am not surrendering to your greater wisdom nor conceeding any part of my earlier chemico/physical arguments about life.
SIQ.
Stay away from attempting to "debate" dualism with Khandro!
I saw this coming like an exocet missile days ago.
Khandro has already defined his dualism as separating the material and mind/conciousnesss (rough but I believe an acurate version of his definitition).
So what's his trick?
By definition he will certainly include the brain under "the material element"-thus ruling it out of discussion. Hence by discussing this, one concedes his dubious premise that mind/conciousness are totally independent entities from our bodies.
Easy - dealing with Khadro's tricks is like shooting fish in a barrel!
Oh Khandro, by ignoring this subject I am not surrendering to your greater wisdom nor conceeding any part of my earlier chemico/physical arguments about life.
SIQ.
Of course if there is no way for such information to be carried in the physical domain then its existence implies something more. We're nowhere near even close to thinking that we need something like that though. For that matter, given raw data or some program a computer is capable of producing the new or previously unimagined (if not, we wouldn't have needed the computer!). It's not doing it deliberately, but it's still producing results that were not expected or seen by humans, nor had they previously existed. And a computer for all its complexity is many times simpler than a human brain. So if something so simple and rigid and physical can achieve all that, what is the human brain capable of doing physically? Probably quite a lot more than you are giving it credit for.
Dear All,
Oh dear, by shooting from the lip I did so without reading very recent posts - most unlike me - honest. I stick by what I said of course but now see that Naomi, jim and jomifil have already got Khandro's meaure - sorry folks.
Dear jim, get out of it fast - he'll drive you insane!
Note to Khandro: If you wish to raise the concept of "universal conciousness of organised matter", on a new and different thread (!) I might put forward a few "guessy" and limited knowledge comments. But not here.
Kind Regards to All,
SIQ.
Oh dear, by shooting from the lip I did so without reading very recent posts - most unlike me - honest. I stick by what I said of course but now see that Naomi, jim and jomifil have already got Khandro's meaure - sorry folks.
Dear jim, get out of it fast - he'll drive you insane!
Note to Khandro: If you wish to raise the concept of "universal conciousness of organised matter", on a new and different thread (!) I might put forward a few "guessy" and limited knowledge comments. But not here.
Kind Regards to All,
SIQ.
Khandro, when you 'conjure an image' there is no image, it is just some information about an 'image' encoded in your brain in a similar way that a computer encodes a compressed image file. some people (possibly even you) are good at reconstructing real images (external to the brain) after a lot of practice and training,most are rubbish at it.
Interesting selective quoting there, Khandro, since the rest of my post goes on to say "I don't think that the first half of the above sentence is at all likely."
Ultimately of course we don't know how the brain works and how memories work. But we do have some pretty good ideas and it's a safe bet that there are lots more to be imagined, explored and tested before we have no other choice but to accept that there is a second, "unknowable", layer of existence. Until such time it's worth not jumping to that conclusion so easily. 100 years ago if you had asked a question about how even the Hydrogen atom is stable the answer would be "we don't really know... by all laws it seems as if it shouldn't be", and then perhaps your answer would be "there must be some unknowable force that holds it all together". What a shame for human endeavour if we'd all jumped to the "unknowable" answer so quickly without trying all other ideas first.
Of course, in the case of the hydrogen atom, a physical answer followed shortly afterwards and led to so much more understanding of our world, and so many more questions. Asking those questions, and thinking that they might have answers, is what drives us forward -- far more than thinking that they might not have answers ever did, or ever will.
Ultimately of course we don't know how the brain works and how memories work. But we do have some pretty good ideas and it's a safe bet that there are lots more to be imagined, explored and tested before we have no other choice but to accept that there is a second, "unknowable", layer of existence. Until such time it's worth not jumping to that conclusion so easily. 100 years ago if you had asked a question about how even the Hydrogen atom is stable the answer would be "we don't really know... by all laws it seems as if it shouldn't be", and then perhaps your answer would be "there must be some unknowable force that holds it all together". What a shame for human endeavour if we'd all jumped to the "unknowable" answer so quickly without trying all other ideas first.
Of course, in the case of the hydrogen atom, a physical answer followed shortly afterwards and led to so much more understanding of our world, and so many more questions. Asking those questions, and thinking that they might have answers, is what drives us forward -- far more than thinking that they might not have answers ever did, or ever will.
jomifl; //when you 'conjure an image' there is no image, it is just some information about an 'image' encoded in your brain in a similar way that a computer encodes a compressed image file.//
Please explain how you think an image suggested to you, which has never been seen before by you or anyone else, can be "encoded" in your brain?
jim; later, I mustn't overload.
Please explain how you think an image suggested to you, which has never been seen before by you or anyone else, can be "encoded" in your brain?
jim; later, I mustn't overload.
Khandro, someone describes an image, you recall the bits of coding for the constituents of the image ie. you have a mental image, you assemble them to make a compound image and remember the encoded version.
That didn't take long did it?
The process depends on what the description recalling remembered 'images' or bits of them.
That didn't take long did it?
The process depends on what the description recalling remembered 'images' or bits of them.