After Darwin and the dissemination of evolutionism, it became scientific to disprove Bible, the new philosophy was born and captured scientists' minds as well.
You are simply repeating creationist propaganda.
There's no such a thing as "evolutionism". That's just a term invented by creationists in order to make science sound like "just another religion". Scientists are not out to "disprove the Bible". They are out to discover how the universe works by observation, measurement and testing, without bias. (That doesn't mean no scientist exists without bias, but in general science is unbiased.) Creationists invent these terms and attack and belittle science simply because they feel threatened by it.
(And by "creationist" I do not mean "someone who believes there's a god who created the universe". It's a much more specific term. Most of these creationists are so-called young-earth creationists, although there are also some "old-earth creationists" that fit the bill.)
feos wrote:
I afraid of nothing because I can feel the truth, by intuition. And I feel what is right for me and what's wrong.
So you are basically saying that human feelings are more trustworthy than physical observation, measurement and testing. I hope you understand why many people would disagree with you.
(except the nowadays paradigma, based on atheism).
Based on atheism? Where did that idea come from?
The scientific paradigm is based on what can be observed, measured and tested. Atheism has nothing to do with that.
The Bible says that both sea life and birds were created from the water though. Maybe fish could have evolved into birds, like these flying fish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmWRCdUw17E
Many birds like ducks also live in water, and they are able to fly.
You never fail to amuse. Sometimes I suspect you are just a very clever poe who has been able to keep his disguise for years.
feos wrote:
And talking about the word 'day', if you accept that those days weren't just one dark part and one bright part and that's it, if you think that those days lasted for millions of days each
So "day" is figurative, but everything else is literal. And what exactly is your justification for this?
And even if "day" means really "millions of years" it still doesn't help, because what the story says and what we see are in contradiction. God would still have to had deliberately make the history of the Earth look different than what is written, in all possible ways that this can be measured.
I still don't understand why exactly it is so important that the genesis story must be literally true and not a figurative parable, like many of the other parables in the Bible. Would your faith in God be diminished the slightest bit if it happened to be figurative? Would you start doubting? If not, then what exactly is the problem?
The problem in general is: If God cannot be trusted in one thing, how can he be trusted in another thing?
I'm not sure you understand the meaning of the word "figurative".
If I say to you "I'm so hungry that I could eat a horse", am I lying to you and being untrustworthy? If Jesus tells you that you are a lost lamb, is he lying to you and being untrustworthy?
(In fact, what young-earth creationists are proposing isn't much better. They are basically proposing that God created the universe about 6000 years ago and then went to extreme lengths to make it look like it's much, much older. For what purpose? To deceive? Would that be a sign of being trustworthy and caring?)
We know from archaeology (well, at least I know from archaeology) that some parts of it did happen as written, so it stands to reason that everything else also did happen as written.
I hope you understand that's an argumentative fallacy (regardless of whether it's actually true or not).
Is there a reason that people feel a need to present a scientific argument in order to disprove a faith based belief?
Because that's the proper way of scrutinizing beliefs, misconceptions, hearsay, legends and mythology? If someone makes an extraordinary claim, then the scientific approach is "ok, let's study this to see if there's anything to it".
Some people believe that the Earth is hollow and that there are advanced civilizations on the inner surface of the hollow shell (yes, really). How do you assess the veracity of this claim? By measurements and applying the scientific methodology and principles.
Please note that rather than questioning the veracity of the genesis story, I was questioning its literality in my earlier posts. Is it a story to be taken literally or figuratively? (Whether you believe it is another question entirely.)
I have a question for Bisqwit (which is what this thread is about, after all): You have not directly said that you are a young-earth creationist, but you have given subtle hints that you might be at least leaning towards that position. So my question is: What exactly would be the problem if the genesis story were figurative rather than literal?
In that case, how exactly have they come up with a chronological order of fossil records?
When sedimentary layers are studied, they are pretty consistent: Lower layers consistently contain certain types of fossils that upper layers don't, and vice-versa, and this throughout the world. The mineral contents of these layers are also often pretty consistent. The formation of sedimentary layers is pretty well understood in geology. The only possible rational conclusion is that there were only certain types of animals in existence when those layers formed, and no animals of much lower or much higher layers.
The radiometric dating of crystallized igneous rocks is pretty reliable (with an error margin of about 1%), contrary to the lies that young-earth creationists spout. The reason for this is that the contents of a crystallized rock are preserved superbly, and they do not get contaminated. The formation and contents of such rocks is also pretty well understood, because it can be measured and tested both in nature and in a lab. (You can go and measure rocks created in volcanic eruptions that happened last month, 100 years ago and a thousand years ago, from all around the world, and verify that the content of radioactive material vs material they decay into is consistent. You can also pretty accurately measure the half-life of such materials.)
A layer of crystallized lava is a pretty good timestamp in geological strata. It's pretty certain that layers under it are older and layers over it are younger. (Sometimes geological changes cause sediments to fold, making them vertical and even invert them, but these cases can be traced and determined.)
Do not believe the lies and distortions of young-earth creationists. They are no different from any other conspiracy theories. They use all the same tactics of cherry-picking, building straw men, misinterpreting and distorting science and evidence to try to justify their arguments. None of it holds any credibility when you examine them further.
Kuwaga wrote:
A prominent argument is that natural constants, such as c could have changed over time, citing evidence that it has already changed since its first measurement.
I find it amusing that some creationists argue how the natural constants have been "perfectly fine-tuned for life to be possible", yet others claim (without any evidence, of course) that natural constants have changed. So which is it? They can't get their story straight.
There's no compelling evidence or any reason to believe that c has ever changed. And even if it had, it would have to had changed really drastically in order to make the light from galaxies which are billions of light years away reach the Earth in a few thousand years. That's like six orders of magnitude in difference. That's such a humongous change in such a short period of time that c would still be measurably changing today. Or are these creationists going to explain why c isn't changing anymore?
Still speaking of menus... I am using Windows 7 for the first time right now (just bought a new computer), and it looks like Microsoft has had this magnificent idea that menus are obsolete. I can't see menus anywhere.
I'm quite lost without them, frankly. For instance, I would like to set up Windows Explorer a bit (eg. to start showing file name extensions) but I have no idea where to set it up because Windows Explorer has no menu anylonger.
How much dumbed down must Windows become before there's nothing left?
I'm not very comfortable in doing this, but I just can't help but to somewhat agree with the sentiment that a video that shows nothing else than program code appearing on screen isn't very educative, nor is it very entertaining (especially since it's 15 minutes of basically nothing but code appearing on screen).
If you wanted to explain your code eg. for educational purposes, a much more fluent medium for this would be a simple web page, rather than a video. (The exception would be if the video would be in the form of a spoken lecture. But then it would probably require a rather different kind of presentation and editing to explain the relevant parts properly. As well as speech, of course.)
A web page would allow the viewer to go through the contents at their own pace, trying to understand difficult parts of the code, reading the explanations, going back, etc.
There's no need for them to forge evidence, that's truly ridiculous and only the Satan would do that.
The genesis story says that birds were created before land animals, and that sea life and birds were created at the same time, yet all the evidence points to the contrary. Either the genesis story is figurative, not literal, or God deliberately made the world look like it contradicts the real events.
What puzzles me is why so many Christians so desperately cling to the genesis story being literal. Why does it have to be literal? There are lots of parables and figurative text elsewhere, and people don't have any problem with them. But the genesis story? It must be literally exact! Some even go so far as to claim that God deliberately made the world look different than what is described in the genesis story, just to confuse non-believers. (In other words, it's more plausible that God is deliberately deceiving people than it is that the genesis story is figurative.) Why?
One thing that has always ground my gears about Windows is that Microsoft has this odd policy of always introducing UI changes to each new version of Windows just for the sake of it being "different" rather than the changes being actually useful. In other words, the principle seems to be "a new version of Windows must be visibly different to justify people buying it" (rather than, say, "a new version of Windows must be better to justify people buying it").
Sometimes the changes are actually for the better, once you get over the resistance to change. However, often the changes are for the worse. And the major problem? Quite often these changes end up being permanent, appearing in all subsequent versions of Windows forever, without any setting to use the old behavior (for whatever reason) and, what's worse, other producers will often copy these bad ideas (to third-party Windows programs, and sometimes to even other operating systems).
These are often minor things, but they can be pretty annoying. For example, in Windows 3 you could pop up the context menu (basically anywhere that supported a context menu) with the right mouse button and then, keeping the button pressed, drag to the desired menu entry, and release the button. The entry would then be activated. This was especially handy for a "power user" especially in situations where you needed the first or second entry (most prominent example: The "back" entry in a web browser's context menu).
But no, they had to change this for the worse. Now the context menu only appears when you release the right mouse button, hence requiring you to perform two clicks to make a selection. (Yes, a small thing, but it still annoys the hell out of me even to this day!)
The worst thing? Many third-party programs (such as web browsers) started copying this bad idea, and even some linux/unix window managers. Luckily the current KDE as well as MacOS X use the better method.
(Not related to Microsoft or Windows per se, but at some point web browsers started to completely destroy the "power user" capabilities of the context menu by making the contents of the menu change depending on which part of the page you click. This was extremely annoying when there was no "back" when you happened to click eg. on an image or link. Who ever thought this was a good idea? Since then I have mapped "back" to a thumb button of the mouse.)
Speaking of changing menu contents, one of the most braindead ideas ever to surface this earth was when Microsoft decided to implement changing menus in Windows ME (IIRC). No longer were the contents of menus fixed (thus you being able to select what you want from "muscle memory"), but the contents of menus could change seemingly at random. What was the second entry the last time you selected it might be the first entry the next time. I really can't understand what were they thinking. I think it tells how braindead idea this was that they subsequently quietly dropped this enormous misfeature from subsequent versions of Windows. (OTOH I haven't really checked if it can be turned on somewhere eg. in Windows XP.)
(Disclaimer: I'm not claiming that Microsoft is the only company doing these kinds of things.)
In my layman's imagination every seemingly fixed distance between two masses constantly increases
AFAIK that's a misinterpretation of "the universe is expanding". The universe is indeed expanding, but that doesn't mean that every single particle is getting slowly farther and farther apart from each other. Why? Because there are other forces keeping them together: The nuclear forces, the electromagnetic force, and gravity.
AFAIK individual galaxies are not expanding because gravity holds them together. However, galaxies are receding from each other because the gravity between galaxies is too weak to hold them (unless two galaxies are very close to each other, eg. colliding).
marzojr wrote:
Modern evidence shows that the Universe's expansion is accelerating; moreover, its geometry is "flat" in the sense that matter density is exactly equal to the critical density.
I know, but that's not what I was asking. The expansion indeed seems to be accelerating, but AFAIK that's not necessarily so, according to GR (and this was an open question up until quite recently). My question was: If the universe were not expanding so fast, or if it were contracting, what would happen if you tried to reach the "edge" of the universe and try to go "outside"?
I have the understanding that it's not possible, and that this is due to the geometry of the universe. Perhaps something like if you try to reach the "edge" you just end up "running in circles" or something. I am asking what exactly happens if you try to reach the "edge" of the universe. What exactly is the geometry of the universe?
marzojr wrote:
The General Theory of Relativity says no such thing.
I would be interested in knowing what you are responding to here.
Suggestion: Try making another youtube account and see if you get it unlimited. Many people have several accounts (often for completely legitimate reasons: They use each account for different things).
If you succeed in having it unlimited, then you can post your long videos there.
What is the grand-scale geometry of the universe?
As far as we know, the universe is expanding faster than c, which means that it's not possible to reach the "edge". However, according to the math, this is not necessarily so. In fact, up until quite recently it was unclear whether the expansion of the universe was accelerating or decelerating. A decelerating expansion was a completely valid possibility.
If the universe were decelerating, it would mean that at some point its expansion would be way lower than c, it would eventually stop expanding, and start to contract (according to GR, unless we discover something else, the universe is "unstable" in that there cannot be a static, steady-state universe).
However, if I understand correctly, even if the universe was expanding so slowly, or even contracting, that you could travel towards its "edge", you would nevertheless still never "reach" it. In other words, it's not possible to cross this "edge" and travel outside the universe. This, as far as I understand, is due to the geometry of the universe.
However, what kind of geometry is this, exactly? What would happen if you tried to reach the "edge" of the universe (assuming it weren't expanding faster than c)?
Obviously, God did not create the sun, moon and the stars for the purpose of providing light, but for some other reason (to indicate times and seasons). There was light even when there was only waters and God's voice. Today, we know from science that it is possible for there to be light even when there is nothing but water and sound. Look up sonoluminescence. (Not to say that that's what God did, he might have just as well provided raw light by willing the light into existence.)
Taking the Genesis story completely literally is problematic because it contradicts almost everything that is known as, for all intents and purposes, facts by science. The most prominent one is that either the formation of the solar system as we know it today took several billions of years, or God created it in an instant and made it look like it's billions of years old using all possible ways of measuring it (for reasons unknown). Among other things, he would have had to make star light from very distant stars and galaxies reach the Earth in an instant, make all radioactive materials on Earth decay the precise amount to make all of them agree on the age of the Earth, and so on.
If we accept that the solar system was formed in the slow way, then it's also justified to assume that it formed in the natural way that star systems form: The central star forms by accretion of nebular material, and material that ends up orbiting the star accretes to form planets. We also would have to accept that most visible stars are much older than our Sun (IIRC the Sun is estimated to be a "third-generation" star; iow. a star that formed from the remnants of stars which formed from the remnants of primordial stars, the ones that first formed after the Big Bang; there are many reasons why this is a justified hypothesis in astrophysics). In other words, the Sun and the stars were formed way before the Earth.
The order in which animals were created in the story is also contradictory to what we find in sedimentary layers. If the story is literally true, then God would have had to deliberately create fossils in their proper sediments and consistent ages to make it look like the Earth and its lifeforms are billions of years old, and that older lifeforms are relatively simpler than newer ones. If not, if all animals were created in a matter of days, we would find all types of animal fossils in all sedimentary layers (rather than there being a clear order), or if "day" means something much longer but otherwise the order of creation is accurate, we would find animals in the wrong sedimentary layers (such as birds below land animals).
Why does the genesis story have to be taken so literally? Other parts of the Bible are not taken literally either. If they were, then you would think that Heaven is full of sheep.
So, once someone makes a free game, they're never allowed to charge for any future works again.
No, I suggest reading my post instead of reading... whatever made you say that. Specifically this:
moozooh wrote:
I just very much dislike when a person or a company [...] sees a popular free product and says, "hey, we SO can monetize this! This is a goldmine!" And then they continue to cash in the hell out of it, adding ridiculous "improvements", often making the game worse in the progress.
I think you missed his point as well. It's not like this big evil company took the game without the author's permission and started selling it. If the company makes an offer to the author, and the author agrees with it, who are you to say what he should or shouldn't do? It's his right to do whatever he wants with his property. If he wants to start charging a million bucks for each copy, that's his prerogative.
yet I disregard any "only doers may criticize" as I'm too old for this shit, Riggs.
I don't think the sentiment is "only doers may criticize", but more like "don't criticize a subject you don't understand" (because else you'll just look like a fool who's complaining about something without good reason). This doesn't mean you don't understand the subject (and hence should not present any critique), just pointing out.
Another way could be to let the Lua script read and write from/to a file which each emulator instance share so it knows what seeds to skip so that the emulators never run the same pattern twice.
You'll probably run into mutual exclusion problems, unless lua supports file locking (so that when one process is writing to the file, the others are blocked out until it ends writing, so that none of the other processes would read incomplete or not-up-to-date data).
If you can lock the file while reading/updating it, then it might be a viable solution, unless you need to do it very often in a very short period of time (in which case it would become a big overhead).
Ok. So would it be smarter to have two or more instances of the emulator running, with a different random seed pattern (as two linear patterns would perform the same thing with the same result in both instances) for the bots, or would it just slow down the entire process all in all?
If you have a multi-core CPU, then running several instances of the emulator, each running a lua script with different parameters (eg. searching for different paths) would obviously make testing all those paths faster, as each core gets to perform one of the searches.
However, I'd guess it would be difficult to set up this system so that the separate emulator instances could communicate with each other (so that the optimal found route would win and end up in the final result, or for one of the emulators to tell the others "I found it, you can stop now"). If different emulator instances find different segments of the optimal path, it may be extremely difficult to merge them into one movie file.
It could have some limited use, though. For example, if you are making an exhaustive search for an optimal enemy item drop, you could run the search in parallel like this and when you decide that that the shortest route found so far is short enough, see what keys were used and put them in your actual movie file, and then just continue TASing as normal.
Without any experience on Lua in emulators, I'd nevertheless guess that you could use multithreading between advancing frames, but you'd have to sync or end the multiple threads before advancing to the next frame because the emulator is not running multiple instances of itself in parallel.
In other words, you could not, for example, try several key combinations in parallel. You could only make some calculations between frames in parallel, but no more.
What's the difference between a "scorerun" and a TAS marked with "aims for maximum score"?
(What I mean with that question is: Why would we need a separate category since we already have such a category?)
compact, "elegant" code is typically much harder to understand than straightforward, simple code. Code golf has artistic value but I wouldn't want it anywhere near a serious project.
Don't generalize. That just sounds a bit similar to the attitude of those deluded individuals who deliberately use slow algorithms because they have misunderstood what "premature optimization" means.
I look far up to folks like Ken Silverman, who created the Build engine upon which the game Duke Nukem 3D is based (while he was like 18), and Fabrice Bellard who created QEMU among a dozen other accomplishments.
On that subject, I must mention John Carmack, who is one of the best-known programmers in the gaming industry. Co-founder and lead programmer of id Software, and main designer of all of their game engines. (Also a big fan of open source software. All of their older game engines have been released as OSS.)
