OT? Rigol clearance

I have a few minor issues with it. I have an older one (4-5 years?) and the FFT shows extra "stuff' at the high frequency end*. I also wish it had a pair of knobs for each voltage input. Not one pair you have to share. That makes X-Y mode a pain. (I think I use x-y mode more than most people.)

George H. BTW I love that you can see the FFT and the time domain at the same time. That can be very educational.

Somewhat unrelated, but I was looking at the quacf (quasi-auto-correlation-function, trigger at top of noise waveform and average.) of a noise apparatus that wasn't quite working right. The quacf was unsymmetric, (a bit of ringing/something on the tail end, even when triggered on the rising edge.) I finally replaced the first opamp and that fixed it. (Opamp is in socket for just such an emergency.)

I use my Rigol sig gen more than the 'scope. (An old/slow DSO tek 1101B? is my fav... kinda like an old shirt, comfortable and I know all the holes/ faults/ birdies.) Rigol must be slowly eating TEK's lunch. I was talking with some Rigol salesperson at a trade show. He said Rigol was very flat company.. Engineer's and production intertwined.

George H.

Evolution is now at about 5 or 6 nines (99.999 to 99.9999) It is always good science to admit a 10-5 to 10-6 chance of being wrong.

OTOH the theory that Jesus actually existed (leave alone untestable things as "went to heaven"), is in my estimate a 10 to 15%.

If the Adam-Eve-apple temptation was caught on video by extra-terrestials back then, I would be more inclined to think they were pulling the leg on religious people, than believing the footage. (10-30)

Thanks for pushing toward quantification.

Groetjes Albert

--
Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS 
Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters. 
albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst

Can't this law be used to object to any and all religiious teaching in schools? That would be great.

Groetjes Albert

--
Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS 
Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters. 
albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst

No way. Nobody can explain how life started on earth, or how evolution and cellular mechanisms actually work.

When cancer, and aging, and viral diseases are eliminated, I might acknowledge that some people understand biology.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

Why would that be great?

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Because leftists don't like religions that compete with theirs.

I don't think it is good science to assign numbers like that without clear justification. It's fine to say "the chances of this event occurring randomly are 1 in 10^6" - using that to say "we are 99.9999% sure of our theory" is wrong.

Having said that, the principles of evolution have been scientifically demonstrated and tested to such a degree that evolution is considered an established theory, like the theories of electromagnetics, gravity, relativity and quantum mechanics. That is, we know they are solid theories that are justified by the evidence, fit together with the rest of science, have logical and rational explanation, give quantitative results, provide predictions that can be and have been verified, and are falsifiable if contrary evidence is found. In all these cases, there are things we don't yet know or understand, and they may be replaced by new theories in the future, but they are excellent approximations to reality as we see and measure it.

Biogenesis - the /start/ of life - is not part of the theory of evolution. You have been told this before - but I guess it has not sunk in.

Newton's theory of gravity tells us that if you drop a brick, it will fall to the floor - it does not tell us where the earth came from (though it is involved in the astronomical theories of the creation of the solar system).

Similarly, evolution tells us how life has progressed since it started - but it does not tell us about the start itself (though it can be a useful tool there too).

There are a variety of theories about abiogenesis. Some of these can explain quite a number of the parts of the process - and indeed, most of what is needed for a simple protobacteria can be produced from processes that are believed to have been in action in the early days of the earth. No one has yet figured a way to put it altogether yet. And even then, it is highly unlikely that we will ever be able to say "/this/ is how it happened" - merely "this is a way that it /could/ have happened".

A great deal is understood - but not everything.

"Science knows it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it'd stop. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you."

See above.

Like, not 99.99%.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

So lets all worship the God of the gaps. Ignorance is bliss.

Science deniers love to keep the people ignorant and superstitious it makes them so much easier to control. It's God's will whatever happens.

We would still have high levels of infant mortality but for modern science having discovered antibiotics (and we are squandering them).

We don't have a complete explanation of how life started on Earth but we can get a pretty interesting cocktail of likely starting chemicals from the initial atmospheric composition and UV light or around undersea volcanic vents. My money is on the latter but either or both could have been the initial step where self organising chemical reactions arose.

If you have a few billion years to play with you might find an answer.

They have a damn good idea. It is just that you are too stubborn to actually look at the evidence. So much easier to invoke magyck.

Evolution works so well that simulations of it are routinely used to optimise problems that would not otherwise yield to conventional techniques. The bootstrap version of the Google AlphaGo Zero program is a result of one such evolution based development and it found several new joseki positions previously unknown in human play as a result.

Smallpox already has already been eliminated or didn't you notice? (though reference samples have been kept and its genome pattern)

The DNA genomics process had made designer drugs and crispr edits targeting specific inherited genetic defects possible. It is now a problem of ethics as to whether or not it is acceptable to modify the human genome in such a way as to affect the germ line.

People are also figuring out ways to alter the messenger RNA instead which just affects protein synthesis without altering the DNA core.

I'm a little wary of these new techniques since you never know what other collateral damage may occur when you set loose a global edit of one string for another inside a huge document.

Science is always on the search for new knowledge and is prepared to adapt in incorporate it as novel experiments show the way forward.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

That is indeed still a hot topic of discussion. But that doesn't mean it will never be understood, as more people stand on the shoulders of those that have gone before them.

To explain how life started, if you prefer to invoke The Flying Spaghetti Monster, (or equivalent), then that hypothesis cannot be falsified. Boring.

How evolution works is *extremely* well understood.

Some (but not all) key cellular mechanisms are understood, but not all of the interactions are understood. That's standing on shoulders again.

Much the same might be said about cellular comms systems and/or all the "mechanisms" in the internet. But analogies are easy to misuse.

When the bathtub curve is eliminated I might acknowledge that some people understand electronics.

Yes, that makes as little sense as your statement.

We could build computers by putting a few thousand transistors and resistors in a box and shaking them.

Cure cancer and aging and diabetes and I'll be impressed.

The smallpox vaccine was discovered accidentally, hundreds of years ago, and its use requires no knowledge of cellular chemistry. A lot of things like vaccines and antibiotics are just random trial and error, evolution if you will, but not knowledge-based. We sometimes manage to block a pathogen cellular mechanism on purpose, as savages can disable an airplane by throwing a rock into the propeller.

We have so much to learn.

Yes, it's dangerous to mess with a mechanism that you don't understand.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

Electronic wearout mechanisms (electromigration, diffusion, capacitor dry-out, radiation damage, ESD) are well understood. With enough engineering and money, you can launch a spacecraft like Pioneer that survived for decades in deep space, until its power supply predictably decayed. The failure machanisms of electronics are well understood because the failures are available for analysis.

Nobody has any serious ideas of how the human brain works. Neural network concepts are absurd cartoons.

One big problem with thinking that you understand stuff like this is that you block radical concepts and wonderful revelations. Neo-Darwinism orthodoxy held progress back a bunch.

I'm prepared to be astounded by the cleverness of nature; maybe you're not. So many people don't want to actually believe in evolution, to admit that they may not understand what's actually going on.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

All true, of course.

But that doesn't affect the (in)validity of your statement - to which my bathtub curve statement is a tongue-in-cheek response.

We are beginning to get glimpses, but have a long way to go.

Emergent behaviour is a well recognised phenonema; for example, where in the description of a sand grain does it specify that they will form a pile with a half-angle of 35 degrees?

But this train of thought is orthogonal to the demonstrated validity of evolution through random mutation and natural selection.

Not at all.

A good understanding of part of the observed phenomenon doesn't mean a mind closed to improvements. OTOH, denying mechanisms because they don't explain everything is characteristic of closed minds.

That doesn't follow.

Is that how you think evolution (as opposed to biogenesis) works?

Cure the bathtub curve and I'll be impressed :)

Indeed, but the fundamental mechanisms of evolution aren't in that category.

Yes, that is too close to putting a large number of dikes, resistors and transistors in your cells.

The Crispr/cas9 stuff is amazing. I'm listening to a Sam Harris interview with Jennifer Doudna.

George H.

I suspect that once network connectivity of a computer model of the brain go beyond some critical value we will see a step change and it will become self aware in much the same way that we are. Given Moore's Law I expect to see this day dawn. We are not all that far off for a restricted class of problems - I thought we were still a decade away from a computer that could beat the best human at Go. Now we have two.

A nicer one which is a very simple mixture of two active ingredients and a catalyst is the B-Z reaction which self organises into ripples and the ripples obey Snell's law of refraction in diffusion limited gels.

About half way down and very pretty. Make allowances for non native English of the authors. The originator of this reaction was actually a victim of the prevailing orthodoxy not believing him. It didn't help that he was behind the iron curtain.

And there are plenty of computer simulations that behave exactly like real isolated populations. I worked on a very simple one back in the

1980's. It was surprising how quickly things adapted when put under selection pressure with just random mutation and competition for food.

These days virtual fruitfly is good enough to teach students without all the faff and time wasting of breeding zillions of fruitflies (or genetic mice as we used to breed at school). Other versions are available :

If you can explain things better by some other model then the present orthodoxy will make way for a more powerful predictive theory. If you want to use the answer "Goddidit" to every hard question it is neither testable nor useful and ensures only that ignorance proliferates.

Denying science is increasingly popular in the USA :(

Nature is fascinating but you don't invoke handwaving magyck every time you encounter something new or unexpected by way of an "explanation". You are no better than the just so stories of Rudyard Kipling.

He doesn't understand chemistry or genetics.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

Heinlein's novel "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" was only published

51 years ago. (And "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus" 200 years ago, less one month and one day).

Yes. The exquisitely written "The Blind Watchmaker" contains sufficient information to create such worlds. The explanations are so clear I never felt the need to recreate the code.

"It is Allah's will" has always struck me as a cop-out. I thought that most Christians had understood that; wrong again :(

There are echoes of it over here, in the form of especially oleaginous politicians saying "we've had enough of experts". If that b*****d gets cancer, I'll volunteer to treat him.

Fortunately in the UK we are increasingly secular, but that may change. Never underestimate the ability of Dunning-Kruger exemplars to rationalise their dimly-glimpsed ignorance.

Yes, that is puzzling. Or rather "not understanding" is perfectly reasonable, but the "therefore it is false" is outside my comprehension (except, of course, in people that have never had any "education" other than the Koran/Bible/Ramayana/etc).

Let's say I show you a simple circuit where you cannot predict the output (because it is a chaotic Lorenz oscillator).

Would you then deny that we can understand the behaviour of transistors and resistors to a useful and usable extent?