Mankind's biggest issues is due to?

Originally posted by KellyJay
The way it works is a programmer setups a test and a means to solve it,
you really want to take programmers out of the equation? As soon as a
human designs the process ID is now part of the process. The program
is also loaded into a piece of equipment designed to make it all work!

Random bits of code are tested, but they are random bits of code! You w ...[text shortened]... hey would always fail unless all the proper steps were taken
everywhere needed to support life.

Ok we are talking about two distinctly different things here:

One, evolutionary algorithms which design computer code and/or circuitry [or anything really]
to perform a function or functions.

Two, the formation and evolution of life in the natural world.

A similar [but not identical] process operates in both, because we have observed evolution
and deduced how it functions and realised that we can use similar techniques to more easily
achieve some of our goals. We are copying an process that occurs in nature [with a few
modifications] and so there will of course be similarities. One of the differences is that the
environment and artificial selection is done by us, an intelligence, whereas in nature NATURAL
selection operates and no intelligence is needed or present to guide the process.

You cannot draw conclusions about the need for a designer by looking at our designed imitation
of a natural process. We copy 'ideas' from nature all the time. We see a substance/structure/process
that does something useful, or potentially useful, to us and we then improve on and replicate
that process artificially. But it does not follow that because we can replicate it artificially the
process being copied must also be artificial and a product of intelligence.

If life's beginning required ID so that no
random chances could do it, than all the random numbers would never
open it, they would always fail unless all the proper steps were taken
everywhere needed to support life.

Life's begging does not require ID and thus your point is mute.

I don't want to get into another 'is evolution by natural selection real' or 'how did life first start'
argument in this thread because that is not the thread topic, and it's not what I was talking about.

I am surprised that none of you have remarked on the fact that I just argued that ~30~50% of
the workforce will be made unemployed in the next ~ 10~30 years.

I would have thought that that would have got more attention, it's also relevant to the thread topic.

Originally posted by KellyJay
I was excepting guns and religion, seeing the fault rest with us was refreshing.

Guns and religion are both the fault of people... So they're included.

Big problems we face today are things like [in no particular order]:

Technology advancing to the point where it can be used to automate so much of
economically valuable human labour that huge sections of society will be permanently
removed form the workforce.

New technologies plus irrational fear and overreacting to terrorism leading to erosion of
vital civil liberties and privacy by both corporate and government interests.

Man made Global warming changing the climate.

Other man made pollution causing unnecessary deaths and suffering.

Political and ideological [religious or otherwise] stand-offs and conflict.

Resource scarcity inducing conflict.

Dangerous disease outbreaks that our modern transport network can spread worldwide.

The beginning of the sixth "Great Dying" or mass extinction in Earth's history, caused in
various ways by human activity, with ~40% of species currently under threat and likely
to go extinct if we don't change our behaviour.



All of which are man made problems of one kind or another.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Guns and religion are both the fault of people... So they're included.

Big problems we face today are things like [in no particular order]:

Technology advancing to the point where it can be used to automate so much of
economically valuable human labour that huge sections of society will be permanently
removed form the workforce.

New techn ...[text shortened]... on't change our behaviour.



All of which are man made problems of one kind or another.

A great list (slightly scary).

My only query would be in regards to 'man made Global warming changing the climate.'

I seem out of step with a lot of great minds on this, but remain unconvinced about the extent to which man is changing the climate. (In any significant way). Destroying the planet sure; using up its resources and cutting down all the trees, certainly, but actually changing the climate? i think the sun is more of a major player in this regards and perhaps man, in an almost mass hysteria, is over egging his true influence.

Originally posted by Ghost of a Duke
A great list (slightly scary).

My only query would be in regards to 'man made Global warming changing the climate.'

I seem out of step with a lot of great minds on this, but remain unconvinced about the extent to which man is changing the climate. (In any significant way). Destroying the planet sure; using up its resources and cutting down all ...[text shortened]... in this regards and perhaps man, in an almost mass hysteria, is over egging his true influence.

This isn't really the right forum for that discussion...

But then again as it stands any discussion on that topic at the moment is being completely
derailed by metal brain in the science forum, so I'll briefly respond here.

http://skepticalscience.com/

and

http://theconsensusproject.com/

and

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent

are good places to get info on this... Phil Plait with his "Bad Astronomy" blog on slate is also
a good source of information

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html

But that's not a dedicated climate blog/site.


But the basics are really pretty simple:

The sun outputs the vast majority of its energy as visible light.

Our atmosphere is mostly transparent to visible light [clouds reflect/disperse that light, and dust absorbs it].

A portion of the incoming visible light reflects back passing back through the transparent air and into space.

The rest gets absorbed, and one way or another, gets turned into heat.

Warm objects emit infra-red radiation, and so the warm surface of the planet [and the warm air around it]
emits infra-red radiation [thus cooling down]. The warmer an object is, the more heat it radiates.

The emitted infra-red light then heads out through the atmosphere into space. [or some of it does...]

The planet is thermally stable IF the thermal radiation outwards is equal [on average] in energy content to
the visible radiation inwards from The Sun. If the energy in is greater than energy out the planet will warm up,
and if the energy in is less than the energy out the planet will cool down.

The interesting for this discussion element is this...

The atmosphere is nowhere near as transparent to thermal radiation as it is to visible radiation.

Many gases in the atmosphere absorb infra-red wavelengths, which means that they block the emission of
heat energy and thus act as an insulator.

And we can clearly observe this from space.

Satellites can look at the incoming spectra of light from the sun, the reflected light from the sun, and the
Earth's thermal emissions after passing through the atmosphere. [We can obviously see the Earth's thermal
emissions pre-atmosphere from the ground.] By comparing the spectra of the light emissions from the Earth
on the ground and after passing through the atmosphere we can see all the heat energy that got blocked and
by matching the spectra to known chemical absorption lines we can see what chemicals in the air were responsible
and by how much.

CO2 is one of those gasses. Another is water vapour.

We have changed the concentration of this gas from about 260~270 ppm to ~400ppm, or a roughly 50% increase.
And we have done so absurdly rapidly, in geological or historical climate change terms.
Reveal Hidden Content

This increases the amount of outbound thermal radiation that gets absorbed by the atmosphere, increasing the
insulating effect it has and raising the temperatures and heat content of the land and oceans.

This increase in air temperature increases the ability of the air to hold water and increases evaporation rates
thus increasing water vapour content in the air... And water vapour is not only a green house gas, it's ~twice
as powerful as CO2. Thus increasing the insulation factor still further.

The increasing heat melts snow and ice, exposing darker water and land, which absorb more of The Sun's visible
radiation and generating more heat.

These effects are not evenly spaced around the globe and thus not only are the average temperatures and
humidity levels changed, there are large regional differences.

This causes fairly substantial changes in the climate as there is now more energy and moisture in the climate system
and the locations and scale of the temperature differentials that drive the climate have changed.

This causes changes in the biosphere as habitats change faster than species can adapt [along with other things
like cutting down trees and agriculture ect ect] which in turn has knock-on effects on the climate.
Different vegetation reflects different amounts of light, and transports differing amounts of water into the air.

This causes rising sea levels, as the water heats and expands, and as land ice sheets and glaciers melt.

All of the above is actually observable, and has been observed. It's basic physics.

There is much more, way more than enough to be convincing.

But I don't have the time or space to post it all here, and as I said, this is the wrong forum for this debate.
So I recommend checking out the links above.


The final point being, this is a consensus view among the experts in the field with ~97% of them agreeing on this.
There is no serious debate any more about whether this is an issue within the scientific community.

And that is really hard to achieve, because you advance in science, and get yourself noticed, by overturning
other peoples established ideas.

If everyone Reveal Hidden Content agrees on something, when under huge pressure to have the truth be something else, over many
decades of time and multiple generations... It's very likely true, and it would be foolish to operate on the
assumption that they are wrong.

You buy house insurance and flame proof materials because of the small possibility your house might burn down.

Not acting to help prevent further global warming would be like refusing to buy house insurance when there was
only a tiny chance of it not burning down on the hope that it wont happen.

You might just luck out, win the lottery, but it's a bad and stupid strategy to take.

Thanks for the comprehensive answer. Will check out the links.

Originally posted by googlefudge
This isn't really the right forum for that discussion...

But then again as it stands any discussion on that topic at the moment is being completely
derailed by metal brain in the science forum, so I'll briefly respond here.

http://skepticalscience.com/

and

http://theconsensusproject.com/

and

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/cli ...[text shortened]... happen.

You might just luck out, win the lottery, but it's a bad and stupid strategy to take.

I agree with the lion's share of this post.

A problem I see with the slow reaction of politicians to own up to what's happening is mainly financial, and partially a desire to "push it down the road" so they don't have to deal with it now.

To admit that the warming climate is caused by man is to say that it is someone's fault. And therefore those corporations who have done the most changing of the greenhouse gases should fund a clean-up. Conservative politicians are loathe to admit this, being pro-big-business (since a huge portion of their campaign contributions come from these same corporations), and so mainly follow a policy of foisting the problem onto their children or children's children to solve by just simply denying the science behind the problem.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Guns and religion are both the fault of people... So they're included.

Big problems we face today are things like [in no particular order]:

Technology advancing to the point where it can be used to automate so much of
economically valuable human labour that huge sections of society will be permanently
removed form the workforce.

New techn ...[text shortened]... on't change our behaviour.



All of which are man made problems of one kind or another.

In the spirit of this post, I offer this quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”

I would grind ALL of the problems of this world down to a list of seven basic causes.

These causes are all the direct fault of men, in that they are weak, and they fail in their most honorable endeavors directly because of one or more of them. These are also the causes of every other failure ascribed to man.

They are, in no particular order:

1. Lust

2. Gluttony

3. Greed

4. Sloth

5. Wrath

6. Envy

7. Pride

Originally posted by Suzianne
In the spirit of this post, I offer this quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”

I would grind ALL of the problems of this world down to a list of seven basic causes.

These causes are all the direct fault of men, in that they are weak, and they fail i ...[text shortened]... ular order:

1. Lust

2. Gluttony

3. Greed

4. Sloth

5. Wrath

6. Envy

7. Pride

Good list. Now I see why God gave the Israelites the 10+ commandments.
It shows our Creator knows what the problem is also.

Originally posted by googlefudge

"evolved to solve" is another way of saying that they were programmed by
us to do what it is they are doing.

No, it really isn't.

The way this works [hidden] [in very simple terms] [/hidden] is that the programmer creates a test to see if a program solves
the desired problem.
Then a whole bunch of randomly generated bits of code ...[text shortened]... replicate something doesn't make the
original something artificial, or intelligently designed.

Okay, this is the same as selective breeding cows to get more milk, or dogs for herding or some other pupose. However, one must start with cows, or dogs, or horses to begin with. The same is true of computer programs. Where do you get the original programs to artificially select, if not from the person or persons who programmed them?

Originally posted by googlefudge
You have utterly no clue about what you are talking about.

Perhaps you would be more comfortable discussing this in the Science Forum where everyone knows what they are talking about. 😏

Originally posted by Suzianne
In the spirit of this post, I offer this quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”

I would grind ALL of the problems of this world down to a list of seven basic causes.

These causes are all the direct fault of men, in that they are weak, and they fail i ...[text shortened]... ular order:

1. Lust

2. Gluttony

3. Greed

4. Sloth

5. Wrath

6. Envy

7. Pride

Maybe, it would be prudent to make the following addition to the list:

8. Women

😏

The Holy Bible seems to suggest that Satan's influence is a cause of mankind's biggest issues.

Originally posted by RJHinds
The Holy Bible seems to suggest that Satan's influence is a cause of mankind's biggest issues.

An adherent of Manichaeism is called, especially in older sources,[9] a Manichee, or more recently Manichaean. By extension, the term "manichean" is widely applied (often intended as an insult) as an adjective to a philosophy of moral dualism, according to which a moral course of action involves a clear (or simplistic) choice between good and evil, or as a noun to people who hold such a view.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Ok we are talking about two distinctly different things here:

One, evolutionary algorithms which design computer code and/or circuitry [or anything really]
to perform a function or functions.

Two, the formation and evolution of life in the natural world.

A similar [but not identical] process operates in both, because we have observed evolution ...[text shortened]... ld have thought that that would have got more attention, it's also relevant to the thread topic.

"One, evolutionary algorithms which design computer code and/or circuitry [or anything really]
to perform a function or functions. "

I'll leave the life evolutionary debate alone, we disagree there and have for
some time now.

Here I still think you are missing the point! I can setup a program to do so
many different things and I'm not a programmer, I've written scripts to do
a few things I felt the computer should do, because I do them all the time
and the data and inputs never changed.

With the evolutionary algorithms it is no different in my opinion! The
program is simply preforming that which it was designed to do, nothing
more. Granted the programmer may not have come up with some of the
solutions, but that isn't the point! The point is in the environment the
program was written in, it was created by someone to do exactly what it is
doing, nothing more and in this case nothing less. I say less because as
the old story goes computers are not designed to do what we want, only
what we tell them.

Originally posted by KellyJay
"One, evolutionary algorithms which design computer code and/or circuitry [or anything really]
to perform a function or functions. "

I'll leave the life evolutionary debate alone, we disagree there and have for
some time now.

Here I still think you are missing the point! I can setup a program to do so
many different things and I'm not a programmer ...[text shortened]... e as
the old story goes computers are not designed to do what we want, only
what we tell them.

With the evolutionary algorithms it is no different in my opinion!

Your opinion however is wrong.

I have already explained why.