tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post8191878150852045847..comments2024-03-14T11:09:32.759-05:00Comments on Falkenblog: Beware Liberal ScientistsEric Falkensteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07243687157322033496noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post-26085802018658881772009-05-29T12:47:47.508-05:002009-05-29T12:47:47.508-05:00I'm surprised by the whole questioning of the bull...I'm surprised by the whole questioning of the bullet issue by an economist. We have a lot of gun violence in the US. The cost is high, because it primarily kills younger people. If you reduce gun violence, whether it be suicide, accidental, or murder, reduce the consumption of guns and bullets. Tax those to reduce consumption. Use the revenue to reduce income taxes. <br />There is something very Clintonian about arguing that a decrease in guns and bullets would not reduce accidental death and murders from guns and bullets.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post-16997012126236586652009-05-28T15:47:57.029-05:002009-05-28T15:47:57.029-05:00evolution schmevolution. the state space of senten...evolution schmevolution. the state space of sentence 'eric falkenstein' is some 26^16 or 4.36E+022. dunno how much this is but looks big. yet a computer can hone into it cumulatively in about 2,500-3,000 steps.<br /><br />for further reference i refer everyone to this:<br />http://rathergood.com/slayer<br /><br />i mean, i like slayer and all but damn...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post-80760387029674332102009-05-28T14:16:48.990-05:002009-05-28T14:16:48.990-05:00Like you, I did not foresee many events that actua...Like you, I did not foresee many events that actually happened, but I don't see how that proves evolution must be true for explaining speciation and the diversity of life. It suggests I could be wrong, but so could anyone about anything, which is not helpful. Should all our beliefs then be 50-50, because I've been wrong in the past? All states have equal probability measures, including the probability of me getting hit by an asteroid, or not? But then, are Darwinists stating they give a significant chance their mechanism is insufficient because they have been wrong, repeatedly, about the evidence (eg, the relevance of the finch beak, Stanley Miller's experiments, the necessity for lots of transitional forms, punctuated equilibria being the exception and not the rule for phyla, etc.).Eric Falkensteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07243687157322033496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post-11991540894251320202009-05-28T14:06:45.020-05:002009-05-28T14:06:45.020-05:00My intuition was that a AAA rated MBS would have a...My intuition was that a AAA rated MBS would have a miniscule probability of becoming worthless - is this now your intuition?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post-39897894142064708452009-05-28T07:51:17.219-05:002009-05-28T07:51:17.219-05:00'could be' large swaths of codons. Could be. Any...'could be' large swaths of codons. Could be. Anything is possible, including monkeys writing the complete works of Shakespeare and all the atoms in my room going into a corner, and a statue waves its hand at me as I take a picture. These are all non measure-zero events, and the universe is large, so it probably happens all the time somewhere.<br /><br /> But how probable are these mutations? What are there success rates, ie, what are their probabilities of generating non-lethal changes? What is the number of such changes necessary to generate a new phenotype? Do you have and empirical estimates of these probabilities, and the size of organism pool this is acting upon? Surely the number of organisms is large, and billions of years is a long time, but the probability of these mutations, cumulatively, is equally small. My intuition is they are smaller than the other numbers are large.Eric Falkensteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07243687157322033496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7905515.post-55269077504550732952009-05-28T06:11:23.274-05:002009-05-28T06:11:23.274-05:00i meant to tell you this before. your critique of ...i meant to tell you this before. your critique of evolution is silly. it's not like the towers of hanoi at all because it's cumulative. you don't have to start all over again. the combinatorics drop orders of magnitude. run a computer simulation to match a certain word or phrase and you'll see the state space is nothing.<br /><br />and your math is wrong. mutations don't occur only at letter level. it could be large swaths of codons.<br /><br />and of course that nematode didn't have to have the proteins we observe today.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com