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Old 02-08-2003, 10:13 AM   #11
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Quote:
Originally posted by j ford
Please elaborate on how ridiculous my mind works.
If I might accept Daggah's challenge for him:

You speak of "strands of energy", energy being "attached" to things, and energy being "perfect". If you are using the term energy as physicists use it, these statements are absurd. The energy of physics is a descriptive quantity of a system. It can not sensibly form strands, isn't really attached to anything, and is by no means perfect (whatever that means -- see below). It is a mathematical artifact, not a physical object or fluid.

If on the other hand, you are using the word energy as defined in a completely new way by yourself, then you must first go to the effort of demonstrating that this new rendintion of the word actually corresponds to some actual concept in the real world. You haven't done that.

The "energy" you describe seems much more akin to Hollywood special effects, (where "energy" is always some kind of semi-transparent glowing fluid, possibly only detectable on sensors) than any actual concept that has ever been demonstrated to exist.

Furthermore, I find your concept of perfection to be ill defined. The goodness or badness, (and hence perfection,) of an object or situation is always made relative to some objective function. The idea of some sort of absolute "perfect", independent of any objective function, is absurd.

And, as was already pointed out. Evolution, as currently formulated, does not have perfection (whatever that means) as it's long-term goal. If fact, it has no goals at all.
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Old 02-08-2003, 10:22 AM   #12
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Thanks, Undercurrent. What you said is sufficient. I have little patience for this kind of pseudoscientific touchie-feely BS.
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Old 02-08-2003, 10:40 AM   #13
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J Ford:

I think that people are having a hard time following your logical progression here, myself included. It seems that there are a lot of non-sequiturs in the thought experiment. In other words you postulate A, B, and C and seem to try to interelate them, but you haven't demonstrated how we get from A to B to C. Perhaps if you break it down into smaller steps? I also agree that perfection means nothing without an outside abserver to make a comparison to something else which is not perfect.
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Old 02-08-2003, 11:18 AM   #14
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Okay, I understand where you are all coming from. My use of the term "Energy" was simply lack of a better explanation. I'm slowly learning that people take things very literal on here, and not loosely even if stated that way.

I also haven't figured out all ways for A, B, and C to meet. That's why I posted it on here, to see if anyone was interested in taking it further with me. It was a simple attempt to have a fun discussion, I'm sorry it's gone awry.
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Old 02-08-2003, 06:40 PM   #15
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Quote:
Originally posted by j ford
Okay, I understand where you are all coming from. My use of the term "Energy" was simply lack of a better explanation. I'm slowly learning that people take things very literal on here, and not loosely even if stated that way.
That is because its impossible to have a truly meaningful discussion when the terms under consideration are "loosley" defined. Imprecise definitions invariably lead to "talking past" each other, and in the end go nowhere.
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Old 02-08-2003, 08:08 PM   #16
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jf, I'm going to move this to Science & Skepticism; I do think you should take wade's critique of your posts to heart. Let me put it this way- I need my vision corrected, because I can't focus on distant objects. Everything looks fuzzy; I know there's something there, but I can't tell what it is unless I wear my glasses. What you are trying to describe sounds a bit like my attempts to describe some distant object without my glasses. You should either focus on it more precisely- with more exact words- or you should move closer, and try describing some smaller part of your subject.

We here are very good at doing both of these things. I suggest you browse about some, and see how we put ideas under the microscope of precision language.
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Old 02-08-2003, 10:26 PM   #17
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Thanks. Most of your replies definitely made me realise how vague what I had written was. I do apologize for the loose terminology, as I've explained to Jobar already, I don't educationally know how to word or express what I'm getting at sometimes. I can take this train of thought much deeper and closer in explanation, but I would like to research on how to do that better first.

After I settle in here, and do some more reading and analyzing, maybe I'll bring this up again much more ready for discussion.

Thanks,

Josh
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