Creation vs. Evolution

[Freanan]

I think NotTheCheat means that there must either be one "last" computer which is in some real world outside of us, that started the toplevel simulation (with maybe other simulations inside)
OR
that there would be an endless loop of computers in worlds simulated by the nect higher level computer.

But i think there would be no problem with the first alternative, since we as inhabitants of the toplevel simulator would have no possibility to find anything that is beyond our simulation, ie the processor we run on in the toplevel real-physical world.

But yes, that was just one idea

I actually think that all this ideas about dreams or computers or whatever are possible but i think that it is irrelevant whether any of them or none of them is true, as it does not affect the world - to us as it's inhabitants it is still very physical.

[Eero Ränik]

Throwing a that sophisticated computer in a forever loop sounds too much like Star Trek. I would probably need two hands to count the episodes Captain Kirk did it.

Thinking about that can throw you there, though. What was there before the Big Bang, anyway? Nothing? Where were the borders of that "nothing? What is dark matter, anyway? We can't answer to these questions yet, neither can we really tell whether any of this happened or does exist.

By the way, I don't accept 42 as an answer.

[Crazed123]

I can't answer your scientific questions, as in my view they only happened as a functional extrapolation of present-day data.

As to the computerized realities: by nature of computers these realities (if they exist), can only exist in a hierarchy. The reason for this is that the physical matter used in describing a computerized reality, by nature, cannot contain enough data to describe its physical self. Thus, each universe up must be larger in data or material capacity than the last, and therefore there must be a top level universe if there are a finite number of universes.

[NotTheCHEAT]

By the way, I don't accept 42 as an answer.

Well I do

Seriously, I have never been thrown into an infinite loop thinking about such things. Also, since I don't believe in the Big Bang, I have no trouble wondering what there was before the Big Bang - I think it's foolish to believe that the universe came from Nothing which exploded into Something. However, if you're worried about these things, ask the Quantum Physicists. BTW, I foresee all the quantum physicists literally going crazy because of questions like that which even they can't answer except with complex theories and mathematical formulas.

And...

I agree with Crazed123. You would have to have an infinite computer in order to simulate a computer simulating a computer simulating a computer simulating a computer simulating... earth.

Throwing computers into infinte loops may sound like science fiction, but if there were a computer tht could simulate the earth it would have those types of problems. Give it something very simple:

-Chickens come from eggs.
-Eggs come from chickens.
Where did the first chicken come from?

And you have an infinite loop right there.

[Crazed123]

I was actually speaking not in terms of infinite loops, but in terms of memory capacity. Assuming each universe has a finite amount of material for making RAM that is less than the total matter in the universe, hard disks and other memories each computer (real or simulated) COULD NOT simulate a universe its own size due to lack of memory. Simulating one byte of physical RAM (meaning the silicon, oxygen atoms and molecules and whatnot) takes more than one byte of RAM.

[NotTheCHEAT]

That's what I meant. You can't have a computer within a computer within a computer within a computer...

Unless the computers have graduating capacity until the last one has 1 byte of memory or something

While it's theoretically possible, I suppose, I think the overall computer would have to be huge, with Petabytes of memory and let's not even talk about disk space. And the processor speed, probably 100,000 Petahertz might be fast enough...

To simulate all the supercomputers and normal computers, never mind all the humans and animals and everything else in this universe, would require an incredible amount of processor power, memory, and disk space.

In my last post, I did also tie in the fact that infinite loops would be all over the place in such a computer.

[Crazed123]

Infinite loops may or may not be present in such a system. If the state of the world is computed from given commands and the current world-state, then yes, infinite loops will be. However, I get a feeling the people a universe or two up actually load the initial world-state from a pre-built disk file (like Bochs!) thus creating chickens from nowhere without having to worry about where they come from.

[AR]

The chicken/egg thing wouldn't trigger an infinite loop if the thing was written properly, it would simply give up saying not enough information was provided. (Oh and the answer is egg, where'd the egg come from? The animal that evolved into the chicken layed it, simple as that - if you want to believe otherwise then the choice is yours though)

You seem to lack the comprehension that anything outside the universe is under different physical laws (ie. no time, no space, no light, no motion, etc, etc), if the world was simulated, how do you know that the computer simulating this one is in a place where the physical laws are the same? It could be a 6quadlon looptospinner speed computer where each looptospinner corresponds to one pass of infinite instructions per tiligath.

[Solar]

To get this from the question of metadimensional computers back on topic.

Just some data from an article about the decoding of the chimpansee genome. Interpret as you like.

Pan troglodytes (chimpansee) and homo sapiens (mankind) are seperated by about 6 million years. (Unless you're a young earth creationist or someone denying that man and ape were "created" from the same mould. To those I say, I'm not talking to you. )

In those 6 million years, 35 million locations of the genome changed, another 5 were removed / added.

That is 40,000,000 / 6,000,000,000 or one change in the genome every 150 years.

Less than one percent of those mutations in the genome actually lead to the mutation of a protein; i.e. it took (on average) over 1500 years for one change to manifest.

And of those changes, again only a small percentage actually changes anything significant in the organism.

I found this interesting for those who think of (the concept of) evolution as hundreds of horribly mutilated creatures (as in some horror movie...) fighting over who's the fittest for the next generation. The process is much slower, and much more subtle.

[Candy]

In those 6 million years, 35 million locations of the genome changed, another 5 were removed / added.

That is 40,000,000 / 6,000,000,000 or one change in the genome every 150 years.

You might want to check your maths books again. 6 million years is 6,000,000.

40,000,000 / 6,000,000 is 6.7 changes a year, or about one every 55 days.

Less than one percent of those mutations in the genome actually lead to the mutation of a protein; i.e. it took (on average) over 1500 years for one change to manifest.

You assume that these changes are all selfstanding, and that there was only going forward.

You also assume that there will be only one change made, and that that change will never be undone by a future change.

There's a lot more happening. Consider cancer for a moment. Cancer is a change in a cell that doesn't have a positive effect. It affects a certain type of the DNA, namely the part that controls how often a cell multiplies. It changes the setting from whatever it was (once every month, a week, never) to continually as fast as possible. Just this change alone is counted as cancer. Lots and lots of people die of cancer.

Cancer is lethal because most cells contain a small change from what they should've been. If the change is in something that doesn't matter for that cell, it's harmless. However, if those cells start to spread throughout the body, it'll end up in a place where that bit of the DNA is used. Most of these random variations kill the person to whom they're happening, and even if it's a positive change, you won't have much effect of it. Cancer itself also can be lethal by just plain clogging your arteries.

If the changes happen to your reproductive organs in a way that one of the reproductive cells are modified, and that seed happens to fertilise an egg (or that happens to be the egg being fertilized), and the new combination isn't lethal, then a mutation is born. Note that this isn't a mutant, it's a person like all the rest.

If and only if this new mutation is more functional than the other mutations does it survive. It survives by reproducing more than others.

[Solar]

You might want to check your maths books again. 6 million years is 6,000,000.

40,000,000 / 6,000,000 is 6.7 changes a year, or about one every 55 days.

Bffff...

I blame it on the weather.

Nah. I blame it on posting carelessly, i.e. myself. I have to admit that the numbers (which have been taken from a very un-scientific mainstream news site, btw) are a lot less convincing that way. (Which doesn't shake my belief in evolution, but my belief that they got the basic numbers right. )

[CESS.tk]

While we're on the topic of simulated universes and evolution, I urge you to check out Darwin Pond. Just watching this, helped me understand the process of evolution a lot better than what I was taught in school. Basically, it follows a population of 'swimmers' through times with abundances of food alternated with times of food deficiency. When there's a lot of food, the swimmers will have a lot of energy, and therefore will be able to mate a lot. Children get half of the genes of each parent, and every once in a while a mutation will take place. These mutations are completely random, and a lot of times won't be for the better. Some swimmers won't even be able to move at all. Because of the huge population, food will become more and more scarce. Only the strongest and most agile swimmers will be able to get to the food and survive, the others'll die out. Small population means more food will become available and the swimmers can start mating (and mutating) again. Repeat this a number of times and you'll see how the best genes get passed on from generation to generation. Eventually you'll end up with a failry homogeneous population of mostly fast swimmers with a good sense of direction.
It's really fun and interesting to see this happen. And eventhough it's a fairly simple simulation, it has convinced me that Darwinian evolution indeed works.
I think the problem is that most people think they understand evolution, but they've got it all wrong. A lot of people still think that giraffes have long necks, because they stretch them their entire lifes and because long necks happen to be more convenient to them, they pass this on to their young. What you do in your life does not affect your genes, and I can't stress this enough. If that were the case, Jewish men would be born without foreskins by now, and Kayapo indians with huge lower lips. What happens is this: when there's enough food, the animals (pre-giraffes) will mate a lot. There will be variation amongst their young, just because of the normal passing on of genes (compare with humans: we don't all grow to be exactly the same size). Here and there, a mutation might take place: some will have noticeably longer necks, others might have noticeably shorter necks. This is another thing that should be stressed: mutations are completely random and are - probably more often than not - not always for the best. Now when food becomes scarce, most of the short-necks will die out, because they can't reach the higher leaves. Therefore, they won't be able to pass on their genes, while long-neck genes will be passed on to the next generation. Repeat this process a couple of million of years, and you'll get giraffes.
Food scarcity is the real drive behind evolution. Survival of the fittest is not animals fighting eachother, it's animals surviving through periods of low food levels. And Darwin Pond illustrates this perfectly.



PS: If you're done with Darwin Pond, you might want to check out Gene Pool to see how sexual preference can have its say in evolution.

[Curufir]

In the interest of starting a flame war, I would like to submit to you the following statement which I bet you can't disprove: I believe in creation. Go ahead, try to disprove it. Bet you can't

The appendix.

Believe what you want to, just don't try and put that intelligent design crap in a science classroom.

[NotTheCHEAT]

Well IMVHO we shouldn't have evolution in the classroom either as it has not been proven any more than creation has, and since you weren't there you can't prove it. Since no evidence of macroevolution exists (I DO believe in microevolution), I don't believe in it. And you folks do. We take the same information and view it differently. Problem solved, case closed.

[Crazed123]

In the interest of starting a flame war, I would like to submit to you the following statement which I bet you can't disprove: I believe in creation. Go ahead, try to disprove it. Bet you can't

The appendix.

Believe what you want to, just don't try and put that intelligent design crap in a science classroom.

Who the heck said anything about intelligent design? IMHO, they really shouldn't be teaching ANY theory of the origins of Life, the Universe and Everything in classrooms, as none can be solidly proven and all carry ideological baggage.

Remember, the reason the Scopes Monkey Trial happened was because one man taught Darwin to schoolkids. Why was Darwin banned? Because Darwin itself carried Social Darwinism right along with it, in addition to the reasons given in normal histories.