Horowitz-Hill: Serious scholarly query

My biggest problem, now that I've got this interrupt code fixed (13.7 microseconds max!) and the waveform generator perking along, is where to go to lunch.

John

Reply to
John Larkin
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Always my most difficult decision of the day ;-)

...Jim Thompson

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|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

If I want a burger I just go out on the patio and fire up the BarBy ;-)

...Jim Thompson

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|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

about

design.

done

is

I can't think of any - to my mind, engineering exploits science whenever we engineers use science-based theories to predict how our carefully engineered machines will perform if we ever get to build them, while science exploits engineering to get the data that tests the theories. Engineers have been known to do science in order to check out or extend the theories on which their designs are based.

The art in engineering design hasn't got much to do with science - it s a matter of understanding your problem in way that makes it possible to devise a solution.

My example of that is the guy that worked out a closed form approximation to the surface tension force acting on the rim of a single crystal of gallium arsenide being pulled out of a bath of molten gallium arsenide (Czochralski crystal puller). The guy did the work as a scientist and published it in the (referreed scientific) Journal of Crystal Growth. As soon as I saw the paper, I saw the possibility of controlling the growth process by monitoring the second harmonic content of the fluctuations in apparent weight of the crystal when you weakly modulated the heat input to the bath.

So did the relevant action editor of the journal, who saw the paper six months before I did, and had patented the idea six months before I had suggested it to my boss.

------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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bill.sloman

[snip]

There are at least some bacteria that use rotating flagella. The proteins that make up these motors have been pretty extensively analyzed. Schistosomes -- in the USA, best known for causing "swimmer's itch" -- are in this class; these use similar motors (at least, I think they are similar) to attempt to drill into the skin. In some hotter climes there are variants which are better attuned to human immune systems -- and are the cause of schistosomiasis, a truly nasty and widespread water-borne disease.

Human sperm flagella, as conjuctured, just wiggle. Seems to be adequate, though.

-frank

Reply to
Frank Miles

No doubt made more difficult when one works at home. At work we have ten restaurants plus a mall with a 20-vendor food court no more than two blocks away. Yet I often end up having lunch from the vending machine. Granola bar and diet coke. At 3pm.

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    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill

Register one at

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I'm already subscribed to the LTSpice and PCB groups, they seem to work fine. Everything you need is already in place, no hassle with setting up a server and specific software.

- YD.

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Reply to
YD

Q: Why does it take millions of sperm to fertilize one egg?

A: They just *WILL* not stop and ask directions.

Bob

Reply to
Bob Stephens

Ok,

, and unless you're

The enslaved are not merely those under chains and whips, but those whom willing choose servility, delusion and injustice. You have rationalized injustice by a greater injustice, you have advocated consoling yourself with a lesser evil rather than striving to attain a good. Are you not choosing evil and enslavement by delusion?

.... no slaveowner would let out of the cotton fields long enough

Few slaveowners let their slaves walk away. Freedom and liberty have been attained at the cost of blood by men of wisdom and courage who can see it and know its value, not by peasants that rationalize their servility against the pathetic plight of their peers.

My whining essays are my public testimony and repentance for my delusions, the service I've rendered to looters, and an opportunity for others to recognize our common injustice, delusions and evil.

There are concepts of "opportunity cost", "self esteem" and "belief in self", that are prerequisites to being able to create anything, and we peasants are enslaved by haveing these concepts degraded and destroyed. Those are the chains, the values, beliefs and rationales.

it's not hard to find

If only I could get a stable Windows build, perhaps I could. If it isn't one devil its another. None of my devils are metaphysicaly given, they are a result of the injustice of men.

Reply to
Scott Stephens

Many of the programs (and justifications thereof) of socialists are borrowed directly from the moralist tones and teachings of religion. Sometimes the connection is quite blatent, as repeatedly exemplified (for example) by Jesse Jackson and Bernie Ward.

As Hayek keenly notes, socialism *is* a religion. It simply is camoflaged, unlike the most other religions. Therein lies its danger.

Reply to
gwhite

Oh... leave it out mate. Any one who don't think like you is a Robot?

Kevin Aylward snipped-for-privacy@anasoft.co.uk

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SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture, Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

Reply to
Kevin Aylward

Rather than seeing Marxism, socialism, communism, altruism as a derivative or mutation of religion, I think it is more direct to see it as an adaptation of the "will to power" expressed in a mutated and innovated form.

As I pointed out, and I think you've caught the connection, the arrogant self hatred of enviro-fascists is similar to the arrogant self-hatred of Christians.

I don't get the connection with Jackson (whom I, as a white victim of his black extortion) who offends me as a fascist. I don't know who Ward is.

Yes, a horrible deli ma is posed by mainstream atheists and theists alike. Which Rand so profoundly identified:

I hate to say "God" or "Nature's God", by which I mean an integrated concept of truth and wisdom intrinsic to objective morality. My God is not a subjectivist; there is only one Periodic Table of the Elements, only one, Mu0, E0, Fine Structure Constant, Plank Constant, Mass-Energy of the whole universe, Universe At Large, et.

I believe one that believes God is principled and rational, or one that believes the universe is principled and rational, is exempt from the labels of theist/atheist. They would mean the same thing, from our perspective.

Different people mean different things regarding the god they use to employ their political excuses, myself notwithstanding, as is self-evident.

I must read Hayek. I suspect I will find I am discovering we're on the "road to serfdom". Have you heard of Burkett's, "Pentagon's New Map"? His minimalist prohibitive rule-set seems like a gentler, kinder empire than the maximal proscriptive rule-set of histories former empires.

But when fiat currency controlled by a Randian "aristocracy of pull" is jerking the value of our wages and savings, a whip and chain by any other name is still a whip and chain.

Reply to
Scott Stephens

Rather than see Marxism, socialism, communism, altruism as a derivative or mutation of religion or a "will of power", it is more direct to see them as they actually are. That is, simple properties to be expected from a Darwinian process. To wit, "That which is mostly observed, is that which replicates the most",

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Many successful memes, as identified above, are simply memes that are observations of traits that maximise the numbers of their physical replicators, in given circumstances.

Kevin Aylward snipped-for-privacy@anasoft.co.uk

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SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture, Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

Reply to
Kevin Aylward

Same here. I work in the middle of a gourmet gulch/Chinatown hybrid, with maybe 40 restaurants and takeout places within a few blocks. And half the time I eat at my desk, a banana and yogurt or something. Eating is boring and fattening. When I do go out, I usually eat half and take the rest to go for the next day; portions are awesome.

If you skip lunch and don't watch TV, it frees up a lot of time for fooling around.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

I'm shifting all my investments into companies that manufacture black helicopters.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

Mmm - neo-neo-darwinism. Perhaps your random variations will provide the fittest version yet.

"From a Bayesian perspective and according to Popper's corroboration measure, the best hypothesis available is the one that explains the most facts with the fewest assumptions, the one that makes the most confirmed predictions, and the one that is most open to testing and falsification."

I have a big problem with randomness leading to order. Yes, I've tried to read Dawkins. Accidental mutations observed in nature give no ground for belief in the brand of evolution so cleverly promoted. Mutations overwhelmingly tend to be negative. They are not fitter. They will not develop into X-Men. The few positive mutations don't give rise to new species.

Genetic algorithms can be made to work under human design and construction. They are human in origin. It is a big extension to say "therefore this takes place in nature."

See below.

There are more than 30 species. You need more than 29 missing links. If indeed that's what the articles refer to. I will read them.

"The universe is pretty much how it appears to be." is a statement about the common sense so derogated in the link above. It's also rather subjective. Science has to go beyond that. A circular argument is one that starts and ends at the same point. You make the assumption that there is nothing beyond "what appears" and then construct a theory to try and prove it. You then defend the theory by saying "Nothing makes sense in Biology without Darwinian evolution. And we mean *nothing*. There is no viable alternatives." Et voila! We're back where we started, only we haven't proved anything.

It's not enough to say "we don't like the alternatives".

Random colours (etc) occur within species anyway. That's not evolution.

Cheers, Mike.

Reply to
Mike Page

They are different. Nobody's arguing about plane geometry here.

How patient do I need to be to turn a fruit fly into a human?

I don't have a problem with variants. I have a problem with the generation of new species.

Or fog lights. Or why we all die.

Best Regards, Mike.

Reply to
Mike Page

I read in sci.electronics.design that Mike Page wrote (in ) about 'Horowitz-Hill: Serious scholarly query', on Wed, 29 Dec 2004:

That's not a reason for rejecting it. I have a problem with Bayesian probability; no matter how many times I read the explanation, I can't remember it. That doesn't falsify it.

You mean that classical evolution is a political theory, not a scientific one?

It depends on what you mean by 'most', and it would be very difficult to prove. It is true that some human mutations, such as trisomy 13, 18 and

21, occur all to frequently, but that is three mutations, not thousands, and they are a special form of mutation anyway.

The mutation (if that is what it is) that runs in my family and gives us high resistance to dental caries is very welcome, and can be regarded as positive, I think. But it isn't obvious to the causal observer!

'Negative' isn't clear-cut. Consider the single-gene mutation that produces sickle-cell anaemia AND conveys immunity from malaria.

Did anyone (outside 1930s science fiction) claim that they would? Such a mutation is *possible* and may be completed one day, but it is not an instantaneous thing, of course, and may take thousands of years. Selection pressures are highest in the Third World at present, but may be higher in future off-Earth communities.

Do you have proof of that? The Galapagos finches and tortoises don't agree with you.

It isn't very likely (but perhaps not impossible) that just one altered gene results in a new species. But the concept of 'species' itself is now more than ever regarded as somewhat defective. A study of Herring gulls/Lesser Black-backed gulls and Yellow/Grey wagtails can be instructive.

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Reply to
John Woodgate

We are discussing 'assumptions'. Plane geometry is an example.

[snip]

That's just daft. You wouldn't preferably start from the fruit-fly. The common ancestor of fruit-flies and humans (you'd be surprised how many genes we share!) probably lived about 400 million years ago. So you would 'regress' the fruit-flies to the ancestral form (as was done to a very limited extent in re-creating the aurochs) and then proceed up the chain in the direction of humans. Say a billion years. Can you get funding? (;-)

[snip]

That doesn't make speciation invalid.

There are numerous animals with infra-red sensors - pit vipers, for example. The 'death' thing isn't resolved yet. It is known what basically causes 'natural' death (no intervening pathogen). Whether we should try to find a cure is a social question. A Google for 'p53' may be instructive.

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Reply to
John Woodgate

None of them will replicate. A culture dish is not the right environment for any of them. All will replicate when given the right environment. The gene and the DNA need s.t. like a cellular mechanism in appropriate conditions and nutrition, the meme needs a sentient population to which it has relevance.

I think we're agreeing, but...

The concept of "entity" and "self" are human constructions which are not well-defined in the real world. Even more obvious candidates like bacteria etc have "corner cases". It's believed possible that mitochondria in mammal cells originated as symbiotic bacteria, for example.

All one can say is that the notion of "self" exists at this level in processes which are widely re-occurring and sufficiently distinctive (this requires that the process also be sufficiently long-lived). Note that the process also requires certain physical manifestations, but it's the process, not the material, which exhibits identity.

Clifford Heath.

Reply to
Clifford Heath

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