Research, Innovation, Risk Taking and Living Forever

Compare Bookmakers

2010-08-09T22:05:00.000+10:00

Compare Bookmakers has finally been launched. Still brand new there is a lot more work to do on it, but it will continue too develop, and eventually offer a brilliant resource for online punters to use to find the best bookmakers online. So, just announcing the fact here. Head over to Comparebookmakers.com now and take advantage of this fact.

Shane Greenup

2010-02-04T13:23:00.000+11:00

Shane Greenup has moved his personal blog across to www.ShaneGreenup.com. You can also find Shane's projects at TDMSKP.com, SportsArbitrageGuide.com, SureBetBookies.com, SomePerspective.net, HalfBraveHalfStupid.com, PapersAloud.com, and 42ity.net. ImmortalOutdoors.com is currently under development too.

Shane Greenup approves this message.

Top Grade Engrish

2009-10-16T20:57:00.004+11:00

This is the best engrish I have ever seen in my life. Found in a dock department store in Madagascar (Mananara), this hair care product was clearly confused. You have to read the text in the third image below...
(click on the image for full size)

Shane's Ultimate List of Things Online That You Must See

2009-10-10T16:32:00.003+11:00

This list will continue to grow and change as I remember things which need to be added.

Funny
Eddy Izzard

Flight of the Conchords

The Lonely Island

Others

Oddities

Inspiring and Impressive

A few tips for beginners...

2009-09-25T11:01:00.002+10:00

It is possible to love more than one person at a time. Love is not a resource that needs to be carefully allocated. It is an emotion which can be felt completely, over and over again, without ever running out.
Following rules does not make you moral, it makes you lawful. Morality requires the ability to decide right and wrong for yourself based on valid reasoning - not on doing something because 'you are supposed to'.
If you care enough about someone to interfere in their life (for their own good of course), at least take the time to understand what you are interfering in. Ignorance is dangerous at the best of time, but when wielded with absolute conviction it is nothing short of devastating.

Welcome to The Post Developed World

2009-09-22T00:24:00.005+10:00

This is something I was working on for a while in Madagascar. This is an early version - I want to write a more thorough, academic style article on the subject, but until that is completed, here is this:

I know I am not alone in the modern generation with my love of technology and the amazing benefits it brings with it, yet simultaneously dissatisfied with the world which provides us those technological innovations. The ‘Developed World’ – our capitalist consumerist society. Driven by profits, marketing and constant competition, each individual is pushed into working longer and harder in order to satisfy ‘needs’ largely based on artificial manipulation by other workers.
Thankful for my position as a member of the ‘Developed World’ I have always appreciated the privilege that comes with it. Science, information technology, luxury, entertainment and general abundance. I have appreciated these gifts of our modern world, loved them dearly yet also felt an overwhelming dissatisfaction with the modern ‘developed world’ itself.

The 9-5 working day has never been appealing to me. Rush hour, traffic jams – everyone doing the same thing at the same time everyday – it has always bemused me. Spending the majority of your pay cheque – usually earned from a job you hate – on fads, well marketed gimmicks, hollow indulgences and image based products. I have never really partaken in this pointlessness. Excessive rules and regulations which seem to be designed for the lowest common denominator of human stupidity. Individual accountability is lost in our world as every possible way of idiots hurting themselves seems to be necessarily considered in advance before you can do anything – otherwise it is somehow your fault when said idiot hurts themselves. Mass media selling us mindless rubbish stories. – prioritising stories about the private lives of pop stars over stories that actually affect our world, like environmental catastrophes, change in governmental regulations and freedoms or the like. –spin- On top of all of these bizarre obsessions of our world is the perpetual ‘Crisis’ we are being sold. Whether it is the cold war, world war 3, Y2K, Terrorism or dramatic climate change, everyone in the developed world knows for sure that the end is near! (still) I don’t put much stock in any of the doomsday prophecies anymore, but a small part of me still thinks that being out of the way of everyone else who does might save me one day.

So in order to distance myself from the over protection of my nation, avoid any semblance of a 9-5 job and maintain a well rounded perspective of ‘what matters’, I have long desired to move myself and my loved ones to an essentially self-sufficient property on the outer edges of a large city. From this property, with our broadband internet access, we will be free to earn money (business activity or work from home jobs), educate ourselves, research topics of interest, entertain etc all while living a cheap non-commercial lifestyle.

Getting out of the city is not a new idea, but doing so used to involve significant compromise. For me, loss of employment options, lower income potential, isolation from family and friends and significantly fewer entertainment options were the most obvious costs of leaving the suburbs. Now, and even more so the coming years, widely available broadband internet is removing all of those compromises/costs. As such I have come to believe that more and more people will make the same move as I wish to make. As the number of these people increase, I believe it will warrant the naming of a new ‘world’. This lifestyle does not exist within the developed world anymore – too many of the attributes of that lifestyle have been discarded. Nor is the lifestyle anything like those in the undeveloped - or the developing (the 3rd and 2nd) – indeed it is the exact opposite direction that the quality of life has progressed for people who make this change. I therefore think that the individuals who make this move will form the first physically-non-localised world; the Post-Developed world. The Zero’th World. Or perhaps in the spirit of ‘The Naughties’, the final few months of which I am currently in, ‘The Naughtieth World’.

The Post Developed World
I believe the PDW is worthy of its own title for two main reasons. The individuals who make it up, although not physically localised, have essentially removed themselves from all 3 of the other normal ‘world’ structures. Secondly, their unity comes through the internet – they are the first virtual world, unbounded by geo-political borders and agendas.

So how is this world made? It emerges as the current internet culture continues to remove themselves from the mass media driven, popular culture, commercial world. It emerges as those individuals choose self sufficiency and personal accountability over governmental protection. Just as members of the Developed world enjoy the fruits of the Developing and Undeveloped world (cheap labour primarily), so too the members of the PDW will enjoy the fruits of the developed world without really exposing themselves to the problems of it. Self sufficiency in most areas protect them from first world economic fears, energy crisis’s, water shortages etc. While their location outside of major cities protects them from terrorism, pandemics, pollution, and even wars to a large extent. All of the usual ‘fears’ of the first world are simply removed by moving into the PDW.

The main limitation of moving into the PDW will be getting away from governmental constraints which no longer apply (or shouldn’t). Developed world governments will continue to be a pain to all PDW individuals – yet ironically still required. Undeveloped governments too.

While exorcising themselves from these problems they are still free to buy products locally, travel into the cities etc without hassle.

Becoming PDW
Becoming PDW requires some success in the developed world and a strong desire to get out of it. Money is required to be able to buy the property and technology required to achieve sufficient self-reliance. But in the scheme of things, the entry requirements are quite modest. Certainly easier than getting out of an undeveloped world.

Mere power generation, supplemental food generation, and water catchment don’t make you a PDW citizen though. It is also a freeing of the mind from one sided media, from fear and propaganda. It is the ability to genuinely take care of yourself within a communal society, rather than expecting a society to take care of you. Because online, borders fall away and sense of community is valuable.

Table 1: Comparison between Undeveloped World, Developed World and the Post-Developed World - Sorry I can't figure out how to make Blogger display the table in a reasonable position!

News	Undeveloped World	Word of mouth news with little concern for the outside world
	Developed World	“The News’ from one or two dominant sources. Very little critical analysis present.
	Post-Developed World	Internet based headlines and self directed research on topics of interest. No single source of information, much critical analysis.
Food	Undeveloped World	Local food and some traded food. No concept of ‘Nutritional requirements’ – you eat what is available.
	Developed World	Huge variety. Much processed and mass produced food. Most “Try to be healthy”
	Post-Developed World	Private Agriculture supplements DW supermarkets. Internet used to find optimal techniques, and best sources of seeds and livestock.
Work	Undeveloped World	No hours or deadlines, simply a requirement to produce enough for survival. Seasonal variation and various in nature.
	Developed World	9-5 structure, rush hour, salary, OH&S, leave etc. Productivity at work is not directly related to survival.
	Post-Developed World	Balance between income earning work and survival based work. All home based, no rush hour, no salary, no leave.
Entertainment	Undeveloped World	Basic entertainment, usually self made. Alcohol common.
	Developed World	Nightclubs, Pubs, Movies, Parties, Cultural, Computer Games, Home entertainment, Holidays.
	Post-Developed World	Computer games, Home entertainment systems, The Outdoors, Holidays, Local Pub
Power/Energy	Undeveloped World	Primarily fire based. Supplemented with oils, fats and waxes.
	Developed World	Government controlled and fee driven. Usually reliable. Centralised vulnerable distribution.
	Post-Developed World	Free self sufficient sources. Wind, Solar, Hydro. Fire.
Water	Undeveloped World	River, Irrigation channels, Wells and Tanks. Unfiltered, dirty. Usually lots of effort required to collect and use it.
	Developed World	Government controlled and fee driven. Large water reservoirs for populations, mass filtered and treated prior to piping to final destination. Limited supply with growing populations.
	Post-Developed World	Rain catchment, Dam, River, Well, Bore and water Recycling all used as necessary to ensure sufficient water. Water filtered and treated at point of consumption according to use.
Connectedness	Undeveloped World	Face to face only. Walking distance.
	Developed World	Phones, Mobiles, Internet, face to face, meetings, parties, interest groups, universities etc.
	Post-Developed World	Primarily Mobile phones and internet.
Infrastructure	Undeveloped World	Usually very little. Sometimes roads, sometimes expensive public transport on those roads. Usually nothing else easily accessible.
	Developed World	Nearly everything is within driving distance or public transport. Hospitals, education, sanitation etc
	Post-Developed World	Depends on location. Usually within driving distance to major development and infrastructure.

Back from Madagascar - New Projects and Old

2009-09-04T16:06:00.002+10:00

I returned from Madagascar a few days ago and I am already hard at work trying to catch up with all of the overdue work I had waiting for me back here, PLUS another few ideas I have had while I was away.

I will be working on actually arb trading primarily probably. Simply because I am broke and I need some immediate money and arb trading is the only means of immediate money available to me atm (other than a job of course, but that would really interfere with all of my other loftier goals)

So I am working on perfecting my arb spreadsheet while trying to update SAG and SBB - I need to make some changes to how SAG deals with the numerous alert services. I have several days worth of solid typing to do in order to put all of the articles I wrote in Madagascar into TDMSKP.

Probably most interesting new development though, is that I am going to create a website for Carmen, my friend that I travelled with. She has been travelling for over 16 years now (6-9 months every year) and has done a lot of writing in that time. So I am going to make a blog for her and start posting her travel stories, short stories, poems and other odds and ends for her.

She was actually the page 3 spread in the Sydney Morning Herald back in June:
Article
Multimedia

So I have the relevent domain names registered now: www.HalfBraveHalfStupid.com and www.CarmenMajor.com and I have a host sorted out. I will start installing and setting up the blog in the next couple of days.

A quick mention for Klaus' new website too. He has created a forum website to help people with scams. So if you have ever been scammed, or know of any scams which you want to warn people about, or even if you just feel like getting into some interesting political or religious discussions, then go to www.ScamsHelp.com and register and participate there!

Shane

Sports Arbitrage Guide almost complete

2009-02-19T21:27:00.003+11:00

Wow. That is a big deal. After almost three years of working and ignoring and procrastinating on this website - it is almost finally complete. I have about 4 more pages or articles to write for it and then I will be at a point where I can't think of anything else that needs to be added. No doubt more posts will be made to the blog as news comes up and small details change from time to time, but ultiamtely, the core content of the website will be complete.

My current plan is to complete these last few articles. I will then get Klaus to re-do the flash menu for the site to account for all of the new pages I added to it. And then finally, I will go through all of the pages one more time (for a while at least) and re-read and edit them all carefully AND add small images, cartoons and pictures to each page to help break up the wall of text that you currently encounter on each page.

With that done, it will be complete complete. Ongoing maintenance will simply consist of updating the alert services listing, the free trials and the accesories page. The occasional blog post will also be made, but from then on it will almost entirely just consist of random news announcements.

Anyway, this is pretty exciting. With a complete Sports Arbitrage Guide website I will be able to focus my efforts onto the redevlopment of TDMSKP. Klaus is dilligently working away on the database system behind the new wiki right now, and will shortly be moving on to integrate the map with the wiki. I have sorted out a colour code system for the wiki finally, but I think I will need to sort out specific details for most of the articles so that each one can be entered into the wiki with a range of important specific information. That being said, i think the most important thing I can do is ensure that it is easy for Klaus to continually update those elements in the wiki over time, so I can get user feedback to indicate what information is required for each activity, sport and location article.

OK, thats all. For parting, have a look at these articles I have recently added to SAG. More will follow shortly:
1. Bookmaker Registration and Funding for Arbitrage Trading
2. How to Place Arbitrage Bets - Step 1, Check Everything
3. How to Place Arbitrage Bets - Step 2, Place the Bets
4. How to Roll Over a Stake Returned (SR) Bonus
5. Matched Betting - How to Claim Stake Not Returned (SNR) Bonuses
6. Palps - How to Spot Obvious Errors

Bye bye.

Waterfall of Moss

2008-12-08T14:44:00.002+11:00

Just finished adding Waterfall of Moss to the TDMSKP guide book. Already uploaded photos from the trip yesterday for Waterfall of Moss and Koombanda Canyon. Next job is to add the guide for Koombanda Canyon.

Jon has volunteered to write a trip report for the two canyons, while Trev has volunteered to put together the video, so I really appreciate that. Meanwhile, I found out while I was away that two of my photos actually made it into the OzCanyons calendar for 2009, which was pretty cool. See the OzCanyons 2009 calendar here.

Why would you do that?

2008-11-06T13:56:00.002+11:00

A common phenomenon that I have noticed over the past few years is people seeing someone else doing something strange, something a little abnormal or simply doing something a sub-optimal way, and upon seeing this asking their friends "Why would you do that?" or some similarly judgemental question. And it is always asked with such a condescending tone - there is no doubt that the question is not really a question, but an attempt to point out the 'failing' they see in the person in question. What they are really saying is "That is such a stupid thing to do/stupid way to do that, I would do it better than that"

It is interesting that I hear people 'asking' this question all the time, yet I never see any indication that the person 'asking' the question has ever bothered trying to 'answer' the question they have (not really) 'asked'.

I don't mean to make myself sound like I am above this phrase - I am sure I have said it myself many times. What I am interested in now though, is qualifying the statement by following it up with a genuine thought process. I want to think "Why would you do that?" then follow that with a genuine introspective questioning process: "No really, what reasons would a person have for doing that? Maybe they can't do it the better way? Maybe there is more going on here than I can see, maybe they have some sort of disability, maybe they are actually smarter than myself and it is myself that doesn't understand" etc.

I can't really expect the population at large to pick up this method of introspective consideration, but I think it is more valuable to attempt to understand 'why they would do that', than it is to simply ask an empty rhetorical question designed to indicate how bad/stupid/uncoordinated/social inept someone else is.

Exercising

2008-11-05T11:04:00.002+11:00

I have been working my arse off over the last few weeks (wow, Firefox doesn't recognise the word 'arse' as a word.) I have played squash at least twice a week, been rock climbing once or twice every week for about 4 weeks. I have been canyoning, white water kayking, jogging, regularly doing crunches etc and push ups, and a little bit of weights work. And it is paying off. I feel good, and I am getting quite a few comments, but I am starting to worry about what happens when I get bored with working my arse off.

It will happen. It always happens. I'm not really a long term worker. I get an idea, and I run with it until it bores me. Now what happens when I get bored with doing intense physical exercise almost every night of the week? I'll go back into some sort of stupid comatose lifestyle where I don't leave my room, and I slowly lose all the tone and definition and put all the fat back on. Stupid bloody body. Why can't I just work to my ideal body shape, and then just 'lock it in'. That'd be awesome.

Oh well, whatever happens happens. As per the normal rules of the universe. I still have a goal to get down to 85kg by the end of this month - achieving that I expect I will finally have my real goal achieved: a six pack. I have never had six pack in my life, and I want one. And this time, I will have one.

Squash, Uni Break and Newnes

2008-09-30T16:58:00.002+10:00

Played Squash with JV this morning. He won all of the games actually, except for the two left handed games which I have decided we must have everytime we play to offset the imbalance I have become aware of in my arms. I really enjoy playing squash - it actually pushes me, something I don't find myself doing nearly enough.

It is Tuesday of the one week uni break we have at the moment, so I actually have a fair bit of time at home atm. I have a ton of marking to do from the last weeks worth of biology labs. And of course there is the usual work that needs doing with the websites and arb trading (which I am winding down now, and withdrawing all of my money back out of.)

This weekend we are all (family and many friends) heading out to Newnes to go camping for the long weekend. I'll be taking a large group canyoning on saturday through a low grade canyon (possibly Deep Pass), and then a smaller group through Starlights canyon on Sunday. Should be fun - I just hope it doesn't rain too much, because apparently rain is forcast.

Polyamory vs Monogamy

2008-09-28T20:01:00.004+10:00

Part Two of Two - Read part one first: Stranger in a Strange Land - Love vs Jealousy

On Polyamory
Polyamory is the desire, practice, or acceptance of having more than one loving, intimate relationship at a time with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved. Most people have heard of it, and I imagine that everyone who has heard of it just as quickly dismisses the concept as one of those ideas that "can't work" or simply "doesn't work". I want to explore that instant dismissal briefly.

I don't know of any rigorous studies done on the subject, partly because I haven't looked (this is just a topic on my mind, not something I have studied extensively), and partly because such a study would be very difficulty to do as most such relationships would be very private arrangements - polyamory still being something not accepted by society at large. So I think it would be hard to actually know how many of these relationships there are, let alone how many of those relationships 'fail', and more difficult still - how many of those failures are caused by the structure of the relationship, as opposed to normal reasons for relationship failure and outside factors.

So if we consider the scenario created by a polyamorous relationship we are immediately struck with two strongly negative forces: 1. The social conditioning of the participants and 2. The constant non-subtle judgements passed by people outside the relationship.

It is difficult to really say anything about the first negative force because it will vary greatly from person to person and from one childhood environment to another. However I don't think there is a person (at least in our western society) who doesn't know that you are 'supposed' to have one partner and only one partner, and that anything else is 'evil' in one way or another. 'Knowing' it isn't really the problem though - the real problem is the underlying subconscious thought processes, the trained ways of thinking, the assumed roles and consequences which have been bred into us by a consistent world that will create mental hurdles. I guess that most people are unable to jump all of these hurdles, and inevitably trip on one or another, and find themselves 'unable' to be polyamorous.

The second negative force is probably just as powerful as the first. Most people simply won't understand polyamory. Not that they can't - but they won't. And they will express that choice in numerous judgemental ways that will constantly drain on the energy of someone 'trying' to be polyamorous. With the self-doubt already well implanted in the mind of anyone raised in our society, the constant barrage of 'concern' by their family and extended friend group will only help to rock the delicate balance of the mental boat.

So, are Polyamorous relationships destined to fail? Probably - but not for the right reasons. Not because people can't love more than one person - you have to be a very special case of 'protected from life' to think that someone can't love more than one person at a time. Also, as I argued in the point above, I also do not think that they are destined to fail because of jealousy - we have as much opportunity to ignore and overcome jealousy as we have opportunity to ignore emotional desire, lust and affection for people who are not our spouse. Maybe it is failure will come from the complexity of maintaining relations with more than one person?

I expect it would be harder to maintain extremely intimate relationships with more than one person at a time, and that would cause difficulty, but that is a problem to be tackled on individual merits case by case as we currently do when dealing with our single spouses, friends and family. As a matter of fact, having said that, I can't think of anything else to say about the difficulties of possible polyamorous relationship structures, because the number of possible ways it could be worked are extensively numerous. For every difficulty, there is a way to do it which avoids, compensates for, or embraces that difficulty. When the real idea here is simply dispensing with jealousy, and embracing those you are close with into a closer circle of affection, the way it is done is immaterial to the ends.

Regardless of whether polyamorous relationships are destined to fail or not, it is worth noting that a large proportion of monogamous relationships also fail - repeatedly. Most people practice monogamous relationships from their mid teens, always looking for 'the one', and still about 40% of Australian marriages and up to 50% of marriages in the USA end in divorce. Take into consideration that these are the monogamous relationships which both individuals decided would last 'forever', and that was after (in most cases) a series of monogamous relationships which were discarded leading up to this marriage because of not meeting the requirements. Also consider that these are just 'divorce' rates - this does not factor in other de facto relationships, and versions of 'life long' monogamous relationships which break up.

When you factor all of that together, you end up knowing that the clear majority of monogamous relationships 'fail'. Take the time to consider the fact that most of these relationships started because of an emotional closeness between the individuals involved - an affection, a desire, sometimes a sense of love. Two individuals who love each other, and nonetheless statistics say that that relationship will fail. Why?

Maybe monogamous relationships aren't are great as we have convinced ourselves that they are. Divorce rates for second and thirds marriages enter the 70 percentile range too... so it only gets worse.

Maybe if both partners of a monogamous relationship allowed each other the freedom to love openly - repressing the 'bad' jealous emotion rather than the 'good' affection/lust/desire emotion, more marriages would last. Why would you leave the man/woman you love for someone else, when you can have both?

Jealousy makes no sense at all.

Stranger in a Strange Land - Love vs Jealousy, and On Polyamory

2008-09-28T12:49:00.016+10:00

Stranger in a Strange Land deals very much with social taboos, and with the concept of polyamory (amongst other topics). It was an interesting book for me to read at this time because I have been actively engaged mentally on this topic recently. I have thought quite extensively about polyamory and other forms of non-monogamous relationships in the past, but I think the past few years have helped me refine my understanding of relationships and people in general.

There are two primary things I am interested in talking about in this post. Firstly I want to talk about the 'goodness' and the 'badness' of certain things/actions/feelings. This comes almost directly from Stranger in a Strange Land and is something which has really struck me. Secondly I am interested in the idea that "everyone knows that open relationships/Polyamorous relationships never work".

Love and Jealousy
To start with, I want to quote 'Mike' (The Man from Mars) directly. This quote directly follows on from a friend talking about how he felt while 'making love' to one of the women in Mikes inner circle, and how if he was younger he would have eagerly married the woman:

"That's what it should be. But that's what a I slowly grokked* it rarely was. Instead it was indifference, and acts mechanically performed, and rape, and seduction as a game no better than roulette but with poorer odds and, prostitution, and celibacy by choice and by no choice, and fear, and guilt, and hatred, and violence, and children brought up to think that sex was 'bad' and 'shameful' and 'animal,' and something to be hidden and always distrusted. This lovely perfect thing, male-femaleness, turned upside down and inside out and made horrible.

"And every one of those wrong things is a corollary of 'jealousy.' Jubal, I couldn't believe it. I still don't grok 'jealousy' in fullness, it seems an insanity to me, a terrible wrongness. When I first learned what this ecstasy was, my first thought was to share it, share it at once with all my water brothers - directly with those female, indirectly by inviting more sharing with those male. The notion of trying to keep this never-failing fountain to myself would have horrified me, had I thought of it."

*understood in a holistic way

Several times throughout the story this very pertinent point is made. Sex is not a bad thing in and of itself. The sexual act is physically pleasurable, and emotionally enjoyable. Sex is made bad by social pressures. When all social stigma is removed, Sex is distinctly a 'goodness'. It is positive in every way - It causes pleasure, and helps people grow closer with one another.

On the other side of the coin there is Jealousy. Jealousy appears to be pure 'badness'. Jealousy will drive 'good people' to do terrible things - insults, accusations, violence, abuse, and murder to name some of the obvious ones. There is nothing good about the emotion 'jealousy' itself, and nothing 'good' comes of it.

I find it odd that our society is as tolerant of jealousy as it is. Worse than that, we often find ourselves or others like ourselves even promoting it! Everything which comes from this emotion is negative, yet we still see family and friends protecting each other's jealous feelings; sure, it has been written numerous times that jealousy is an ugly emotion, but when it comes to how we actually live, jealousy is by far more acceptable than embracing the infidelity of a partner. How many times have we heard the story of the boyfriend cheating on his girlfriend with her best friend? The automatic assumption is always that she has been betrayed and he deserves whatever retribution she wants to dish out to him. Never is the case made that she should be happy for him and her best friend. She loves both of them doesn't she? So why is she systematically destroying everything that was ever good between herself and the both of them? What has she gained by falling prey to the emotion of jealousy in this instance? And why does everyone always support her in this course of action? Jealousy is a 'badness' and there is no justification for succumbing to it.

At this point it would be fair to question the point of talking as if an emotion is felt by choice. "Surely jealousy will be felt regardless of whether I want to feel it or not?" Well, yeah, to an extent. But a married man will lust after women he can't have whether he wants to or not - yet we have the Bible telling us we must never do it - most social codes seem to generally agree with that sentiment. We are outright expected to suppress a powerful emotion (a fundamental driving biological emotion to be specific) and act as if that emotion simply doesn't exist. There usually isn't much support for the 'cheating' spouse when everyone finds out what they have been doing...

So can we stop ourselves feeling jealousy? No more or less than we can stop ourselves lusting after other women or men while married... So why do we choose to block the emotion which drives us towards a 'goodness', and allow ourselves to be exposed to the emotion which drives us towards 'badness'?

Think about what it is like to 'fall in love', what it is like to find yourself attracted to someone, what it is like to feel 'connected'...and think of the consequences of allowing yourself to explore those feelings without regret and guilt. What consequences do we see? We see growth, we see happiness, pleasure, enjoyment, we see increase in well being all round.
Now think about the consequences of jealousy. A wife catches a 'cheating husband' and the jealous reaction is an overwhelmingly negative one. If it isn't immediately violent, then it is probably immediate depression, despair, and collapse. Allowing jealousy to rule will result in despair, heartache, loss and overwhelming depression - with or without a divorce. Jealousy often drives people to particularly vindictive actions too - malicious divorce where the slighted partner's sole purpose is to get us much money out of their 'cheating' partner as possible, and where kids are involved the jealous individual will even go so far as to attempt to stop all access between their ex-spouse and their children. Further extending the 'badness' effect of jealousy, and having the unfortunate effect of impressing upon those children that it was the 'cheaters' fault that this has happened - "if only he had stayed true and been monogamous, then none of this would have happened" - a strong lesson to impressionable children. Never is it taught that jealousy is the real cause of the pain and suffering.

I can't see how this topic can be any more lucidly clear than that. There is a confliction, but one is clearly good, and the other is clearly bad - why does society insist we keep choosing the bad option?

Love is a positive emotion. Affection, friendship, closeness - all of these feelings of kindred-ship we experience with one another are the most beautiful and positive things available in the human experience. We have an endless supply of these positive closeness emotions in all of their varying intensities. It is an 'endless fountain' within us, but we constantly let that fountain be blocked by the jealousy of another - and ironically we only let that other person do it because we love that person, and we have been convinced that they have the right to feel 'jealous'.

What would the world be like if our moral guidelines dictated that no one should allow themselves to feel jealous of another persons good fortunes, and just as importantly recommended that we all openly embrace our love for one another without guilt?

Part Two Follows - On Polyamory

TOOL-Pink Floyd, and Stranger in a Strange Land

2008-09-27T10:23:00.002+10:00

Two quick topics on my mind atm that I want to quickly go into:
1. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, by Pink Floyd reminds me an awful lot of Wings for Marie part 1 and 2 by TOOL. I can;t imagine TOOL not taking a lot of influence for their later music from Pink Floyd's older music. I would also LOVE to see TOOL do a direct cover of Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.

Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun (Live at Pompeii) - Pink Floyd

Wings for Marie (part 1) - TOOL

10,000 Days (wings part 2) - TOOL (1/2)

10,000 Days (wings part 2) - TOOL (2/2)

Second topic for this post - Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein. I am about to finish reading it, and it is a book expressing numerous ideas which I am very at one with - I grok them (feel very corny saying that). Actually, I don't feel like writing about this now. I feel like watching all of the video clips I just posted above. Maybe I will talk more about this book later.

Bye.

TDMSKP and E-Thumb idea (42ity.net)

2008-09-27T10:06:00.004+10:00

I did Better Offer canyon yesterday. I should go through the photos and upload them to TDMSKP, and write a guide article for the canyon in the wiki sometime today while it is all still fresh in my head. Klaus is actively developing the new version of TDMSKP at the moment - I hope to get a beta version of the new site live by November, but the final version of the site probably won't be ready for a few months more. It is looking very sexy so far though...

I am still really excited by the idea of this website. I think there is a reasonable chance that it will be successful. Even if it isn't world domination successful, it will be a reasonably well received site with decent traffic almost guaranteed.

Meanwhile, after more than a month of consideration, I finally found a name for my E-thumb idea that I really like - 42ity (four-two-ity). The .com domain was taken though, and I emailed the owner, but he wasn't interested in selling. After some discussion with Brian last night though, I am convinced that the .net is acceptable in this instance. 42ity.net rolls off the tongue pretty well, and 42ity is really just a network of people anyway - so .net is appropriate.

I love this name so much now. Of course, having not explained in this blog what my 'E-Thumb idea' is means that anyone reading this has no idea what I am talking about, but chances are no one will read this anyway. So let me explain why 42ity.net is the perfect name regardless.
1. 42ity.net implies fortuity, and the idea of having a complete stranger driving past your locations, heading past your destination, and offering you a (safe) lift, is a 'fortuitous' event.
2. 42ity.net includes the number 42, an obvious reference to "Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy", a book which not only has a lot in it about hitch hiking, but also has it's own e-thumb in it - Ford Prefect's 'Sub-etha sensomatic'.
3. 42ity.net is easily branded, easily converted to a logo (thanks for that insight klaus), and easily remembered. (unlike my second option - 4tuitous.com)

It is perfect. Now that I have a domain, I guess I should host it, and have a good long talk with Andrew and Wanna about what to do next (they are the two software engineers who have agreed to do the software development on the project).

I need to design layout and process for how I see the website working from user-interface level.

I also need to keep doing that with Klaus and TDMSKP.

I need to keep driving SAG and SBB to ensure I continue to have any money at all to be able to drive these two projects.

Session has almost ended at Uni now. This is good because I really need to time - but it is also bad because it means my main 'living' income is about to stop again. I don't feel poor yet, but give it 3 months, and we'll see.

Regularity

2008-09-27T09:53:00.002+10:00

I have recently gone through another series of changes, and I am in a space where writing regularly about my life my thoughts and my activities is something which will once again entertain me. I used to keep a public online diary, but I haven't updated it properly for about 4 years now. Until I once again get bored of doing this (and I will, without doubt, because that is how I work), I plan on making this blog my public online diary.

SO, if you are one of my subscribers, and you don't feel like getting emailed everytime I want to write about my favourite song of the moment, or 'what I did today' etc, then please, just unsubscribe to this feed.

I hope at least half of my posts will be more meaningful than that - the main reason I want to start doing this again is because I have a lot of complicated and interesting thoughts streaming through my head atm and I need to get them out, rationalise them a bit and hopefully sort them out more thoroughly by writing them.

Anyway, I'll write the few ideas that I wast to get out to start this all off with over a few separate posts after this one...

Everyone Hates Ads

2008-02-13T18:58:00.002+11:00

And everyone hates giant corporations manipulating them into buying things they don't want - but surely everyone likes finding things that make their life easier, more pleasurable, or more entertaining?

This topic crossed my mind recently and I have been mulling it over for a while now - the difference between 'Marketing', 'Advertising' and the modern version of 'internet marketing' vs the future of internet marketing.

In general people think of marketing and advertising as the same thing, and I doubt anyone (not in the industry or studying it in any meaningful way) before now has bothered to seek out a difference between them and internet marketing, and so in general when people talk about their hatred of ads, they apply the hatred very generally, without any remorse for one particular version over the other...

And if there is any doubt that people hate marketing and advertising, take a quick moment to watch this classic bit of 'comedy' by Bill Hicks:

I don't want to get too caught up on strict definitions, so humour me here for a moment while I distinguish between marketing and traditional advertising. I think advertising is a blanket attempt to show your product or service to as many people as possible in the hopes that at least some of them are in the market place for your product or service, or they know someone else who is. While I think Marketing is a blanket attempt to create mental and emotional associations in the public mind about the brand being marketed - marketing has no regard for need, it is all about creating a desire.

So for instance, John Smith's Compensation Lawyers will run a billboard advertisement in the hopes that someone who needs a compensation lawyer will see the ad, and decide to go with them, while Coca Cola runs a TV ad showing how much fun people have while drinking coke. The first AD informs the public about a service being offered, while the second 'Ad' (marketing) doesn't care whether the people are thirsty or not, it simply attempts to create desires in the publics mindset, so that when the conditions are met, the decision process is decided by the mental associations, not by any rational thought process (like hydration capabilities...)

Maybe that distinction isn't as real as I imagine, but that really isn't what I am interested in. IN fact, it probably has no relevance at all to what I am interested in, so I will end this post here, and start again, and hopefully get a better post next time!

Best Ron Paul Q&A

2008-02-07T15:22:00.000+11:00

I have been following Ron Paul in the US elections for a while now and watching quite a lot of videos from his channel and through searches on youtube. This video was only added a few days ago and it is by far the best example of real people asking real questions and getting real answers.

Watching Ron Paul and how the american elections run, I am really impressed. What is most disappointing is that it is still unlikely that he will win. In other words, it seems like the US has this great 'showboat' system, where their process looks really really good....but the results are still incredibly mediocre.

Anyway, if you know nothing about Ron Paul, then please watch this. Inspirational politics. It is making me want to get into politics.

Claustral Canyon

2007-12-27T15:46:00.000+11:00

I recently posted the trip report and video from our trip through Claustral Canyon on TDMSKP. I'm really happy with the video, and I would be really happy if everyone could rate and favourite it for me! It has already got two honours for being most favourited and rated (but only second page) this week, so if there are a few more, then hopefully we can drive it onto the front page (of most favourited and rated this week)!

Oh an of course, digg, stumble and delicious etc would really help too! :)

Claustral Canyon Trip Report and Video

Scam Compensation!

2007-12-12T10:05:00.000+11:00

I'm so happy! After all this time, all of those emails requesting my name and bank details so that I could be 'benefacted' several million dollars, or because I had won the Euro-Online-Special-Puppies and Kittens-Lottery, or because I helped someone all those years ago (whos name I just can't quite place...) - But they were all Scams! Did you know that? Bunch of scammers! All that money....gone...*sob*

But it's OK now! I just got an email which will rectify all past scams! It is from the "Nigerian Security Department" More importantly than that, the opening to the email reads:
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA
CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA/
NIGERIAN SECURITY DEPARTMENT
FEDERAL HIGH COURT OF NIGERIA.

Can you get any more official than that? No way can that be faked.

It goes on to say:
"Attention Beneficiary,

This to acknowledge you that your contact information was found among the list of foreigner that have been scammed by Nigerian Fraudster. It might interest you to know that we have signed an agreement with your COUNTRY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT during our first meeting last month with our PRESIDENT Commander In-Chief Federal Republic of Nigeria,ALHAJI UMARU MUSA YAR'ADUA and the AUTHORITIES to fight against this and to return all contract funds that has been stolen and people who has been scammed too."

Finally, someone in Nigeria is doing something to combat these evil scammers. It must be legit, otherwise how could they know that I was scammed? Well, they have convinced me.

now where are my bank details?....

TDMSKP Progress

2007-11-16T10:42:00.000+11:00

My latest website, TDMSKP.com.au is coming along very nicely now. I am actually very happy with the progress I have made with it. A few more tweaks and I will be happy enough with what is there (there are always super tweaks which I would love to implement but which are beyond my coding capabilities), and then the real challenge will be to bring in the people.

As TDMSKP is half wiki-guide, and half forum based community (and half trip reports), most of the content on the site is dependent on user interactions and additions. So now is the gargantuan task of bringing in enough people so that some of them add to the site, as well as working on the site full time myself to grow the content as much as I can.

TDM SKP

2007-11-01T17:01:00.000+11:00

I've started to make the first moves on yet another website. This one I am very excited about. http://www.tdmskp.com.au is the URL I have for it, and the website will be called TDM SKP (Tedium Escapee) and I aim to make it the number one resource for outdoor sports information in Australia. I'm starting with canyoning, but it will grow from there.

I will be canyoning pretty much every week over summer, filming and photographing the canyons around sydney. The website will have a blog with trip reports, video footage from each canyon, and then a wiki guidebook where users can edit and over time we will hopefully have a complete guide for every outdoor sports venue - track in Australia.

There will also be a forum where the community can get together and chat about whatever, ask questions about safety etc, as well as find groups to join and go adventuring with.

It shall be fun.

My Utopia

2007-07-29T20:39:00.000+10:00

This is a final draft of the opening section to the first chapter of the book I am working on. Criticism will be gladly accepted, as will any advice.

My Utopia

I would like to share with you a vision that I have for our future. This future requires no political revolution to happen, nor is any great social movement required. Its realization should be gradual in nature, causing no great disturbance or war. I believe that this future, or something like it, will come about through the creation of a particular medical intervention which the rest of this book will be dedicated to. The world of my vision is one where a child is born and both parents are able to raise it full time without needing government support, handouts, or financial assistance from family and friends. The parents are not part of the wealthy elite; their financial status is in fact quite average for people at their position in life. They choose to raise their child full time in order to provide him with all that they can, without having to worry about work commitments, lack of time, and fatigue from other responsibilities. They chose to have this child, and they have chosen to dedicate a few short years to doing the best job they can for it.

The early years of this child’s life, let’s call him John, is much like they have always been: feeding, changing, bathing, playing, (crying, tantrums, strange smells,) and bedtime stories. As the first few years pass, the parents will start taking the John out to play groups so that he can interact with other children. They will take him to parks so that he can play outdoors, and they will expose him to the world around them.

During this time and for the years that follow the parents will also start educating John. They will teach him how to read, write and do arithmetic as well as teaching him right and wrong, cultural values, and all of the general life lessons that are passed on from one generation to the next. The parents will play the primary influence in their young child’s life, but they will also expose him to the influence of trusted family, friends and respected members of their community. They will ensure that their child is not raised with a narrow perspective of the world, and they will do their best to broaden the information sources it has access to. To this end Johns parents, their extended family and friends will each take John to museums, science fairs, art galleries, dramatic plays, operas, car races, extreme sports demonstrations, various expos and anything else which could introduce his mind to the possibilities of the world around him.

School as we know it no longer exists. The parents do everything they can to provide John with the best start on education possible. They teach from their own knowledge and understanding as well as regularly involving friends and family in the process to help fill in the gaps. They also have ready access to a large number of tutors with experience should they feel the need. In addition to those resources, the internet has a wealth of knowledge, curriculum style courses, methodologies, educational strategies, ideas about what parents should teach their children and other support material of that nature, all designed to make the average parent a proficient teacher. The crucial function of the parent during this time will be to enable their child to learn, discover, and understand things for themselves. Instead of force feeding facts and providing answers, the emphasis will be on how to learn. The parent will learn from readily available materials that they don’t need to force their child to learn, it is natural for children to be inquisitive. The task is to turn that inquisitive behavior into a method of teaching the child how to learn about and understand its world. Thus answer questions with simple and obvious answers is discouraged, while a proactive “How would we find the answer to that?” approach is encouraged. This not only empowers the child to achieve more than those who preceded him, but also overcomes any ignorance held by the parents themselves.

As part of this process it is inevitable that John will find a topic of particular interest and thirst for more knowledge of that topic. Having exhausted basic investigation methods of the topic (internet search and libraries for instance) and with a child wanting to know more the parents will then simply search for a local teacher with specific knowledge of that topic and then enroll John to attend a course on the subject. There is no need to force him into this course because he chose the topic himself and is genuinely interested in learning more about it. This could be repeated numerous times and probably will be.

There is no structure to this system of education and that is precisely the point. It is a free spirit approach to education where the individual child decides what it would like to know next, and then engages with that topic while it otherwise carries on being a child. There are no rules (other than the normal rules imposed on a child by their parents), there are no timetables, and there are no age based restrictions on what they can and cannot learn. They can learn as fast or slow as they want or need to. Most importantly, there is no deadline for when this education ends. It could produce children with a thorough understanding of Molecular Biology by the age of 12, or the child could continue learning a little bit of everything well into their twenties. This system caters to individual capabilities, needs and desires.

As John enters his late teenage years he has a solid basis of knowledge from a diverse range of topics explored throughout his developmental years. As with many kids he gained a fascination with dinosaurs at a young age and that fascination has stuck with them into his teens so he has decided that he is interested in becoming a paleontologist. He registers at a university and has to take some short entrance courses which ensures that he has adequate background knowledge to undertake the rest of the Paleontology course. Failing any of these entrance subjects would preclude entry into the course, but only on that intake. Someone dedicated to a subject could easily go away and do some more private study, take more community college courses and private tuition and then reapply in the next intake very easily, so there is no real exclusion in this system. After a few years of studying paleontology though, John starts to find that he simply doesn’t enjoy the process nearly as much as he imagined he would. As the course progresses he actually finds it more boring and even starts to lose interest in the whole idea. He completes the course anyway, but decides to not pursue the career further. He goes back to living his life as before; exploring the ideas around him and the options available to him, until one day his parents decide that they want to start sailing around the world and so start urging him to find something which means they won’t have to support him anymore.

At the age of 26 he decides to become a police officer. The progress of his career is much like it is today; he goes through the academy, receives training, advances through the ranks always acquiring more experience and regularly undertaking additional training courses. The years seem to pass quickly and after 34 years on the force he has started to reach the end of his patience for the legal system. He is tired of always watching hardened criminals get off with lenient sentences while some of the more innocuous crimes are punished with strict malevolence. The system just doesn’t seem fair and he is sick of it. He makes a big decision and at the age of 60 firmly decides that he is going to start a new career as a judge.

He starts taking some educational courses on the law in his spare time while working and after a year or two actually quits his job and enters full time study of law. Within 4 years he is a lawyer working his way up through the ranks, creating networks of colleagues, learning more about the legal system than he ever understood as a police officer, and generally enjoying this exploration of how to prosecute criminals to the full extent of the law. After 30 years of experience in the legal system, increasing his influence the whole time as well as his understanding, his application to become a judge is finally accepted.

At the age of 95, John, the child from the beginning of this story, finally enters the stage of his second career that he was aiming for all those years before. His illustrious career will end up lasting over 50 years before he willingly retires from it on account of something which happened only 3 years after he became a judge, he met his first wife. He had had 3 long term relationships prior to this point, the longest one lasting 30 years, but for the first time in his 98 years he met a woman which he knew he could spend the rest of his life with, however long that will be. They don’t rush anything though, nothing is really rushed when you are 100 years old with no definite lifespan, and they aren’t married for another 20 years. It isn’t until he is 148 that they both decide to retire from their present careers and have a child. They both have savings accounts which will provide more than enough income for them to both live very comfortably while providing full time care for their child and even still re-invest most of their interest back into savings. They are in fact eternally funded by their own savings.

At 149 years of age John has his first daughter. She is raised by both parents full time with all concerns taken care of. Both parents have extensive life experience and education and they both pass their wealth of knowledge on to their daughter the best they can; not by giving her all of the answers necessarily, but by enabling her to find the answers for herself, and enabling her to pursue the knowledge that she wants to pursue.

After 25 years of raising his daughter, John starts to consider giving paleontology another go. With no need of money, and with a great deal more patience and respect for silence the idea of quietly sitting and working on a dig site seems a lot more appealing to him now than it did all those years ago. Whatever he does though, he chooses to do so freely, without concern for time or money. He is respected in society from his history as a fair judge, and he is as physically capable of being as police officer as he was when he was 26. His years of experience make him one of the most valuable assets in society, and he charges nothing for his time or his advice. He regularly helps out new parents with the education of their children, providing the older kids with lessons on morality and the law, or just helping the younger kids with their reading and writing.

Just as John’s parents were not particularly wealthy or particularly special for dedicating themselves to his fulltime care; his freely offered assistance to those around him is not special or abnormal. In a society full of people who have no limitation on their time and already have two lifetimes worth of savings to support their own needs, there are a lot of people who gain a lot of pleasure out of being able to help other who need it.

What If We Had More Time?

2007-07-28T16:42:00.000+10:00

I have decided to write a book. I think this decision has been a long time in the coming, and it actually feels like it pulls everything together. My molecular biology, my philosophy and my History and Philosophy of Science. Two fields of study which develop my ability to rationally explore objects and communicate complicated ideas, and one area to understand the cutting edge science. So I think I am capable of doing it. The task will be to actually write something the public will want to read, because that is the real objective here: reaching the people.

Thanks to a stroke of genius by Joseph at ImmInst, I think I am going to call the book "What if we had more time?" and the current plan is to launch it alongside the flyer posting idea I wanted to run for ImmInst back in June which never happened. This time there will be a reason for it, and we will have a landing page. I have registered the WIWHMT domain and Joseph is working on flyer and graphic designs to express the sentiments of that question. The website will be a simple step by step guide into the world of the immortalist movement, also inviting them to read my book, and then to participate at ImmInst and become involved with the community.

The goal is to get the attention of the global community and get them more involved, and of course have that happen in a positive light.

I will continue to post in here occasionally, as I write things which may be interesting as stand alone essays or stories from the book as I progress.

Kurzweil - Law of Accelerating returns and Evolution

2007-05-14T16:43:00.000+10:00

Thanks to Stumble Upon, I finally found my way into reading one of Ray Kurzweils essays a couple of weeks ago, and I can honestly say it is by far the most compelling essay I have ever read in my entire life. I have never been so compelled to just keep reading ever before. So, needless to say, I highly highly highly recommend reading this paper:
The Law of Accelerating Returns by Ray Kurzweil
There are so many interesting insights in it, and far more incredibly interesting exponential graphs (better than that, the exponential logarithmic graphs) all demosntrating the accelerating rate of improvements that we are undergoing.

One of the points made in this essay, which isn't in anyway particularly new, but which struck me at the time as a lesson worth repeating, is the idea of how technological advance is constantly building on its predecessor technology. That is, no new peice of technology ever comes out of a vacuum, it is usually made possible because of other pieces of technology which were created before it. Penicillin probably wouldn't have ever been invented if it wasn't for microscopes. Microscopes probably would never have been invented if it wasn't for teh technology to smelt metal ores and create fine glass. Smelting and glass making wouldn't be possible without the invention of fire... etc. Each step up doesn't just happen, it builds ON TOP OF all of the technologies which preceeeded it.

I think that this is quite self evident.

The paper makes another connection as part of its flow (it doesn't make a big deal out of this, it is just assumed to be a natural progression), and that is of the progress from biological evolution, through single celled organisms, to multicellular organisms, to tool using organisms, to intelligent conscious organisms, to extensive tool innovation and upwards throughout the numerous technological innovations that we have seen leading to today.

Whether you agree with biological evolution being another phase of the same progress which we now see in technological innovation or not is irrelevent to what i want to say: i think the 'building on top of' idea of technology, the concept which seems incredibly self apparent to most of us, is indeed identical to the same sort of thing we see in evolution.

Let me explain...

When a cell 2 billion years ago, one in trillion trillion trillion cells perhaps...just one is all that is needed, when that one cell randomly finds itself mutated so as to produce a particular protein which say, provides a better digestive method of nutrition, then that protein is done. It is MADE. Unless killed by accident, that protein will last forever and serve as the scaffolding upon which every single following biological innovation after it will be built upon.

We can see the results of this early period of development in life all around us. There are some genes which are ubiquitous - that is they are in every life form on earth. Heat shock proteins, Polymerase, histones(?)...I don't know all of the proteins/genes which are completely ubiquitous in biology, but there is no doubt a huge collection of genes which are present in every single life form on earth in one form or another, and they all show a common descendency in their code (as opposed to convergent evolution where the same thing (EG the eye) has independently evovled many times over with no common descendency).

I'm having a great deal of trouble explaining this easily. It all works so clearly in my head but I think I need to dedicate a number of days studying some topics in order to find good practical examples of what I am saying so that i can tell the 'story' of this idea.

So i'll just leave it with these closing comments: Just as technology has reached the sophistication that we now have because every step of the way builds upon foundations which have been developed for several thousand years, so too does evolution acheive the incredible sophistication that we see in biology simply because it has built upon foundations which were developed several billion years ago.

polymerase is like fire. Without that gene/protein forming, life would never have got anywhere.
The first heat shock protein is like developing an understanding of engineering. Without it cells wouldn't have had half as good a chance at surviving in diverse environments, jsut as humans wouldn't have been nearly so good at expanding into cold/hot climates through building climate controlled dwellings...

Each step of the way makes 'life' easier, and as life gets easier, more innovation is made possible.

And eventually you end up with monstrously complex entities like humans and the internet.

Shane

Challenge to YE Creationists : Recreating the Ark

2007-05-10T11:15:00.000+10:00

I want to see someone organise a demonstration, in real life, of the possibility of Noahs Ark actually happening. This is no easy feat to organise, but the organisation required is nothing compare to the fact that the realisation of it would simply be impossible, and I think that that is the main reason it hasn't been done. (infact, what does the discovery institute do with all of its money and people anyway? They should be doing these sorts of experiments to prove their theories correct!)

But seriously, we have had people try to recreate the Pyramids (or at least miniaturised versions of them), and they did that with like 50 people or something instead of the hypothesised hundreds of thousands of people used to create the real ones. So I think it shouldn't be hard to demonstrate that if 1 man can build a boat, and then get all of the 'kinds' of animals on earth onto that boat, and then keep them alive for a year afloat on the ocean...then surely a squad of 50 or 100 fundamentalist christians can acheive the same feat in a few years?

All they need is a Zoo with a strong christian association (they have a Dino park, and fundamentalists are in over-abundance in the USA, surely there is a Zoo with STRONG christian associations somewhere in the USA). In fact, it would probably be necessary that the Zoo take care of most of the stuff to do with the last stages of this project. (highlighting yet another problem for the Flood story, how one family could possibly take care of all the animals which a zoo requires hundreds of caretakes to do) But the Zoo takes on this challenge. A team of 50 people or more are assembled to build this boat. hell, they can even all be professional boat builders. They can use modern technology if they want, but then, for their own sake, they should probably do with technology available at the time of Noah. but whatever. Use all tools available, but the boat MUST be wooden.

Now, they should be allowed as much time as they need to build the boat. Once it is built though, 8 must be selected to then load the boat, organise the animals and ensure all of the animals are safe and secure and fit into this boat they have made, and they have to do it all in 1 week. THEN, they have to keep those animals in that boat, alive, unharmed, for 1 year. 8 People, all of the 'kinds' of animals just found in one Zoo (guaranteed to not be close to all of the kinds found on Earth) , 1 boat, and 1 year.

And of course, no supplies to be loaded on or off. They have to all be loaded ahead of time. Maybe Water can be allowed to be taken on, on the premise that it rained a lot, and we should assume they captured that rain in tanks...

I guarantee it can't be done, and I guarantee the Zoo will pull the plug before the first week of loading is completed as they start watching the animals get sick and injured.

And yet fundamentalists continue to believe that 1 man built this boat 4,000 years ago by himself, herded all of these animals onto this boat by himself, and then cared for them all, with the help of his family for 1 year without resupplies.

Insanity.

Maybe the Discovery Institute isn't the best organisation to make this happen. They support Intelligent Design, not Young Earth Creationism (YEC). So we need a large, well funded organisation which believes in YEC, and we need to request that this experiment be done! Any suggestions on who might be able to do it?

LibriVox Volunteering

2007-05-03T23:59:00.000+10:00

I have finally started participating in LibriVox. I meant to start months ago, but I have been very busy (not that that has changed...) . I'm going to start by assisting with the reading of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a collection of philosophical works which I have enjoyed in the past, and definitely a collection which we want in Papers Aloud.

I'm really impressed with the layout of LibriVox. I hope to really get to know the members there very well and collaborate closely with LibriVox as Papers Aloud grows in its influence.

Oh yeah, the Papers Aloud forum has been setup, although SubJunk is still adding extensions and other features. Plus of course, the whole look will be redesigned once the infrastructure is set up.

Creationism and Flood Mythology

2007-04-29T14:03:00.000+10:00

I have been participating in a discussion on DP Forums lately about whether the biblical flood really happened or not. Of course I think the whole idea is complete rubbish and that there is no possible way that the entire earth has been covered in water for any period (let alone a whole year) anytime in the last several milli...EVER.

But of course I am having trouble making the creationists see this, so I need to figure out a stronger argument which can't be questioned. From the discussion so far I have figure out that they (the particular creationists I am responding to, every creationist has a different version) question virtually every scientific method of extrapolation. Basically their stance is that Pre flood was essentially an entirely different world. Then the flood destroyed everything, there was rapid changes since then, and then things settled down into something more similar to what we see today. Thus all of our methods of extrapolation into the past is flawed because we don't take into account the drastic changes that occured during and shortly after the flood which are different to modern times.

Thus when we talk about Ice Core samples which we believe go back 150,000 years, their explanation is that they were formed shortly after the flood, and then settled into a steady pattern in recent times. I was surprised to find that the oldest living tree only went back about 4,000 years, so that couldn't disprove the flood, and in anycase the fact that our tree ring history still reaches back 10,000 years, I guess the creationist reply to that is that it is still prone to the same extrapolation flaws as the ice rings. That the way things were back then was very different, and so it doesn't actually work.

Similarly I have been told that geologists are wrong about the time for geological formations to occur (like stalagmites etc). And rapid geotechnic changes happened shortly after the flood, thus the few species which went on the ark started migrating out from Mt ararat and they started to diversify rapidly and get isolated on islands etc in the couple of thousand years following the flood, rapidly speciating etc into all of the modern species we see today, before settling down into the pattern we now expect. Thus objections about the number of species required to fit onto the ark are shrugged off because the animals back then were different.

So, if we ignore all of our evidence from molecular biology, geology, ice core sampling and everything else which science tells us about how the world works, how do we still conclusively show that the flood didn't happen?

So looking through the list here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html I'm going to see what arguments really stand out.

The first one raises a valid point, but clearly creationists just assume it would be possible. I have browsed through most of the other arguments and can see how the average creationist can shrug them off as assumptions of science (as usual, the creationist assumes they know how scientists collect this stuff without any knowledge of the field), but getting down to this section: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html#georecord

i think this raises a few very valid points which can't be easily ignored.

How was the fossil record sorted in an order convenient for evolution? Ecological zonation, hydrodynamic sorting, and differential escape fail to explain:

why some groups of organisms, such as mollusks, are found in many geologic strata.

why organisms (such as brachiopods) which are very similar hydrodynamically (all nearly the same size, shape, and weight) are still perfectly sorted.

why extinct animals which lived in the same niches as present animals didn't survive as well. Why did no pterodons make it to high ground?

why small organisms dominate the lower strata, whereas fluid mechanics says they would sink slower and thus end up in upper strata.

why no human artifacts are found except in the very uppermost strata. If, at the time of the Flood, the earth was overpopulated by people with technology for shipbuilding, why were none of their tools or buildings mixed with trilobite or dinosaur fossils?

why ecological information is consistent within but not between layers. Fossil pollen is one of the more important indicators of different levels of strata. Each plant has different and distinct pollen, and, by telling which plants produced the fossil pollen, it is easy to see what the climate was like in different strata. Was the pollen hydraulically sorted by the flood water so that the climatic evidence is different for each layer?

How do surface features appear far from the surface? Deep in the geologic column there are formations which could have originated only on the surface, such as:

Rain drops. [Robb, 1992]
River channels. [Miall, 1996, especially chpt. 6]
Wind-blown dunes. [Kocurek & Dott, 1981; Clemmenson & Abrahamsen, 1983; Hubert & Mertz, 1984]
Beaches.
Glacial deposits. [Eyles & Miall, 1984]
Burrows. [Crimes & Droser, 1992; Thackray, 1994]
In-place trees. [Cristie & McMillan, 1991]
Soil. [Reinhardt & Sigleo, 1989; Wright, 1986, 1994]
Desiccation cracks. [Andrews, 1988; Robb, 1992]
Footprints. [Gore, 1993, has a photograph (p. 16-17) showing dinosaur footprints in one layer with water ripples in layers above and below it. Gilette & Lockley, 1989, have several more examples, including dinosaur footprints on top of a coal seam (p. 361-366).]
Meteorites and meteor craters. [Grieve, 1997; Schmitz et al, 1997]
Coral reefs. [Wilson, 1975]
Cave systems. [James & Choquette, 1988]

How could these have appeared in the midst of a catastrophic flood?

How could a flood have deposited chalk? Chalk is largely made up of the bodies of plankton 700 to 1000 angstroms in diameter [Bignot, 1985]. Objects this small settle at a rate of .0000154 mm/sec. [Twenhofel, 1961] In a year of the Flood, they could have settled about half a meter.

Also worthy of a special mention is:
How did all the modern plant species survive?

Many plants (seeds and all) would be killed by being submerged for a few months. This is especially true if they were soaked in salt water. Some mangroves, coconuts, and other coastal species have seed which could be expected to survive the Flood itself, but what of the rest?
Most seeds would have been buried under many feet (even miles) of sediment. This is deep enough to prevent spouting.
Most plants require established soils to grow--soils which would have been stripped by the Flood.
Some plants germinate only after being exposed to fire or after being ingested by animals; these conditions would be rare (to put it mildly) after the Flood.
Noah could not have gathered seeds for all plants because not all plants produce seeds, and a variety of plant seeds can't survive a year before germinating. [Garwood, 1989; Benzing, 1990; Densmore & Zasada, 1983] Also, how did he distribute them all over the world?

Why is there no mention of the Flood in the records of Egyptian or Mesopotamian civilizations which existed at the time? Biblical dates (I Kings 6:1, Gal 3:17, various generation lengths given in Genesis) place the Flood 1300 years before Solomon began the first temple. We can construct reliable chronologies for near Eastern history, particularly for Egypt, from many kinds of records from the literate cultures in the near East. These records are independent of, but supported by, dating methods such as dendrochronology and carbon-14. The building of the first temple can be dated to 950 B.C. +/- some small delta, placing the Flood around 2250 B.C. Unfortunately, the Egyptians (among others) have written records dating well back before 2250 B.C. (the Great Pyramid, for example dates to the 26th century B.C., 300 years before the Biblical date for the Flood). No sign in Egyptian inscriptions of this global flood around 2250 B.C.

How did the human population rebound so fast? Genealogies in Genesis put the Tower of Babel about 110 to 150 years after the Flood [Gen 10:25, 11:10-19]. How did the world population regrow so fast to make its construction (and the city around it) possible? Similarly, there would have been very few people around to build Stonehenge and the Pyramids, rebuild the Sumerian and Indus Valley civilizations, populate the Americas, etc.

Why do other flood myths vary so greatly from the Genesis account? Flood myths are fairly common worldwide, and if they came from a common source, we should expect similarities in most of them. Instead, the myths show great diversity. [Bailey, 1989, pp. 5-10; Isaak, 1997] For example, people survive on high land or trees in the myths about as often as on boats or rafts, and no other flood myth includes a covenant not to destroy all life again.

How can a literal interpretation be appropriate if the text is self-contradictory? Genesis 6:20 and 7:14-15 say there were two of each kind of fowl and clean beasts, yet Genesis 7:2-3,5 says they came in sevens.

How can a literal interpretation be consistent with reality? How could Noah have gathered male and female of each kind [Gen. 7:15-16] when some species are asexual, others are parthenogenic and have only females, and others (such as earthworms) are hermaphrodites? And what about social animals like ants and termites which need the whole nest to survive?

And these are just the arguments which are left over if we choose to ignore reality.

PhD in Evolution of Aging

2007-04-28T13:16:00.000+10:00

I'm looking into a possible PhD project with Dr Russell Bonduriansky at UNSW studying the environmental affects on the ageing of wild and lab colonies of some Australian species of flies. I've got a few months before I need to get my application in, so I am going to spend some time reading his articles and getting familiar with the topic (since I am coming from a molecular biology background and this is a population genetics field more than anything else).

Not much else to say on that for the moment. Still early days.

In other news I just complete my transcription of a the Debate on the Ethics of spending money on a project to advance our progress in lifespan extension from the Edmonton Symposium. You can see the forum thread on the topic at ImmInst. I will also be writing a commentary on it soon, which I might be able to publish here. And I do have quite a lot to say about what was said in that debate! :)

One more piece of news, completely unrelated this time, I also just completed an article on website construction and marketing as a means of working from home. It will be published on work-at-home.org sometime in the coming week I expect.

Shane

Papers Aloud - Academic Audio Articles

2007-04-26T17:27:00.000+10:00

PapersAloud.com is my newest website which I am working on, which will involve distributing audio versions of books, chapters, papers and articles to its users. This is my big idea, which I have ruminated over for at least 3 years now, but which is slowly actually happening now. It is a big process, because it involves very very grey areas of copyright law as well as generally trying to implement the goals of the website.

Now providing Audio Articles to the public for download isn't particularly new, and particularly since LibriVox was created, most of what PapersAloud planned on inventing has infact already been invente. Nonetheless PapersAloud will still implement new functions and capabilities which no one else has. I don't want to say anymore, because this is honestly my big thing. I don't want to risk anyone else beating us to our goals, because I am really excited about this project, and I really want to ride it all the way to the end.

Part of facilitating this project to happen involves inviting Klaus Burton to work on the project with me. Klaus is the designer of the new versions of SAG and SBB, and is known around the forums as SubJunk. See Klaus' Website and Print Design company website here. He also operated the Multiple Monitor chain of websites: Dual Monitor backgrounds, Triple Monitor backgrounds and Quad Monitor Backgrounds.

So, busy times ahead. Like usual.

Shane

Sports Arbitrage Guide and SurebetBookies update

2007-04-26T16:58:00.000+10:00

SureBetBookies database is live now and has been for a number of weeks. I have been adding new bookmakers into the DB irregularly, and need to up my rate quite a bit to keep things moving. Even more importantly though, i really need to finish a number of other pages on the site, just to give it the completely rounded our feeling. For example, I need to finish editing the Moneybookers and Neteller pages, which I am actually creating moreso for the SEO towards those phrases, which will then bring in more general traffic to SBB, which is always a good thing.

I have also added a few new domains into the mix, and intend to add a single page of content to each of www.sportsbook-listing.com and www.bookie-index.com and optimise those two domains specifically towards those keyword phrases. The domain will be a thorough explanation of how to work SureBetBookies, and will simply act as a portal to SBB. It is a bit of an experiment, but if it works, those phrases should pull in substantial amounts of traffic from Search Engines alone.

Over in Sports Arbitrage Guide I have fully integrated the new SureBetBookies database with the Guide, providing links to the bookmakers for every alert service and functions like that. I believe this will increase profit substantially over the long run, as well as providing far greater functionality for our users. Having that sort of information at your fingertips is incredibly helpful.

Continuing on in my efforts with SEO, I have also been re-evaluating my page designs, titles, descriptions etc. I have created a sub-page for the Work At Home phenomenon. At the end of the day, sports arbitrage trading is simply a method to work at home on your computer, but SAG is optimised for sports arbitrage trading, not 'work at home', so there is a huge market of people looking for what SAG offers, but not knowing how to find it. I think that is one of the biggest failings of SERP's. The fact that specific words on the page do not necessarily give away the most relevent purpose of that page.

But anyway, thats my problem. I have also put a Link Exchange on my Links page, but I need to revise much of that, and I probably need to get one of those 'Are you a human' turing tests on the page since I am already getting bloody spam bots submitting links which are total rubbish. *hate spam with a fiery passion, and would happily see all spammers dead*

I have also paid someone to submit both Sports Arbitrage Guide and SureBetBookies to around 500 Directories. So we'll see over the coming months how much that affects the ranking of both of them in the search engines.

I think as soon as I have those pages on SBB done, the two external sites (sportsbook listing and bookie index) completed, I will actually start working on the Arbitrage Trading section of SAG. Which is long overdue. However, as I say that, i just realised that I already need to start working on a couple of new alert programs which have just come out on the scene, which means more reviews, more page editing, and changes to the SBB database already to incorporate them. So still quite a lot of work going on with them. And lately I have completely renigged on my commitments to ImmInst. I need to do more with ImmInst. Plus work is starting on PapersAloud, which I am about to write another post for.

Shane

More Proactive Blogging

2007-04-26T15:41:00.000+10:00

OK, it is time to stop avoiding this blog because I have set such a strict design on what i wanted this blog to be. From now on, this is just going to be my blog, to do with it what I want. I still want to write those articles on evolution, moral theory and aging, but I shouldn't exclude all else until i acheive those goals. So I am going to start blogging on stuff that I am doing. I dunno why, chances are no one will care what I am doing, but I like to record stuff.

For a start, Ryan and I registered 1d4 Pty Limited as a company a few weeks ago. We are now directors of a limited liability company. I think that's pretty cool. Now we just need to ensure it keeps growing and increasing in profitability.

I have also been engaging an aweful lot in a new forum at DigitalPoint.com. An incredible forum really, when I decide to make my own forum, I am sure I will be copying a lot of their good ideas. That aside though, they are a forum about internet marketing and website construction, so very topic relevent to what I am spending all of my spare time doing now, and something which I really do need to learn as well as I could. Invariably though, I have ended up engaging in a religion debate. LOL. I can't help myself can I?

So far it is only one, but it's on the topic of the Flood, as usual. And I still fail to understand how anyone aside from a small child can actually believe that rubbish is real... The thread is here, and the ultimate answer to people who just don't see it, is as usual, at talk origins.

In other news I saw the movie 300 last night, and I recommend it highly. F'n awesome MOVIE. And I highlight the word movie, because it has been getting bad reviews because of the obviously political inuendos made in the movie, and because of the mythical exagerations added to the telling of the story. That's right, this movie, isn't accurate to reality! *gasp*

Nonetheless, it has entered into my top movies of all time area, right up the top of action films with some of the best fight scenes and "Pure Pwnage" that you are ever likely to be able to imagine. At the end of the first battle, I just kept thinking of the old arcade game: Mortal Kombat... "Flawless victory". I know when I think of the idea of 300 vs 1 Million, i certainly assume that it is ridiculously impossible for them to win, but after watching the first few battes, i started to understand the difference between well trained soldiers vs slaves forced to fight. it is sort of like getting a group of homeless people together and telling them to beat the Australian Wallabies Rugby Union Team at a game of Rugby Union. Even if the homeless had 50 people on the field, it wouldn't change the fact that they are useless, unskilled, slow, probably drunk or whatever, and the skilled players working in unison as a team would just demolish them every time without fail. When it comes to combat like the type in 300, total domination of skill is infact possible. Unlike modern warfare where even the most undisciplined soldiers can get their hands on a bomb or get a lucky shot off on their automatic weaponry.

But anyway, watch 300 while it is still at the cinemas. Well worth it.
300 Trailer
Some of the first battle. Don't watch if you are going to see this at the cinemas, watch the real thiing first.

And now I have to go and talk to the creationists again over at Digital point. But I will be back soon with a couple more updates about SAG and SBB and PaperAloud....the sleeping giant.

Shane

Progress

2006-09-17T16:53:00.000+10:00

The lack of post recently has come about because of much action elsewhere. I have hired Klaus Burton (AKA SubJunk) of www.redskiesdesign.com to redesign my two websites www.sportsarbitrageguide.com and www.surebetbookies.com. So I have been busy working with him to plan that out and also to start doing the work that I need to do on my end of the deal. So I have been busy with that. Also, I am in the progress of research adn implementing my next website, which is going to be the coolest website ever. *too excited*

Ahhh I can't wait till I can start revealing that...

So anyway, I haven't forgotten this blog or its goal, in fact this blog represents the true end goal of all of these other websites. This Blog is who I am and what I want to do. But do to the nature of reality, we can never just do what we want without consideration of other things.. like eating and warmth for example.

The sooner I can find myself out of full time employment, the sooner I will be able to dedicate myself to something meaningful, like explaining why evolution is a brilliant marvel of scientific enquiry, why morality is easy to derive from first principles, and why it is that things get old and die.

They are the goals and the means by which I hope to come by them.... Ahhh the future to come.

Shane

Update on Challenge to Intelligent Design Believers

2006-09-01T19:36:00.000+10:00

Well after a few weeks of this challenge running, the purpose of me starting it: To find worthwhile creationist claims to reply to, has been fulfilled without one succesful attempt. I would like to thank Kazza from scam.com forums for finding this for me (and not taking advantage of me in the meantime :)) Actually, I should give him $50 just for finding this for me.

Anyway, this: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
lists every single argument so far know presented by creationists, ID'ers and anti-evolutionists in every form known, and presents the reply argument and case.

unbelievable. talk origins is truely remarkable and a wealth of knowledge for anyone with any questions about evolution. I am sure I will be refering people to that list and specific arguments from it time and time again as they continue to present the same old worn out claims over and over again.

Everyone curious about evolution: GO HERE

Are Humans Still Evolving?

2006-08-31T00:16:00.000+10:00

Evolution may be defined with or with out the requirements of selective pressure, but in terms of discussing the possibility of current human evolution it is only sensible to accept a definition that is selection inclusive. Accepting this, fact based arguments which suggest the absence of current human evolution may seems valid, but can be easily refuted on the basis of 4 common misperceptions of evolution that lie as hidden assumptions behind such claims. These four classes of error will be outlined below and the relevance to the types of arguments raised that claim humans are no longer evolving will be made apparent.

Originally, evolution meant ‘unfolding’ [1] and was most often used to refer to the process of development - the unfolding of a series of specific events leading to a final product. For instance, an acorn would evolve into an oak tree, a fetus into a baby. As the world view gradually changed during the enlightenment period of the 18th century - from that of a stationary world created by God into a world which gradually shaped by geological change over a considerable period of time - it was natural that this term should be applied to the ‘evolution’ of the world. The association to biology quickly followed as the idea that species may not be immutable gained favour and several possible theories emerged, including Lamarck’s and eventually Darwin’s. Since this time Evolution came to be particularly strongly associated with biology and the ‘unfolding’ of species over time. Although Ernst Haeckel’s famous claim that ‘Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’ may no longer be accepted, the word once used to describe ontogeny was quickly adapted so that phylogeny could be described in exactly the same way: Evolution. From our modern standpoint though evolution is much more explicit than just the unfolding of species - it has come into a much more meaningful and exact description, commonly defined as ‘the change in the gene pool of a population over time.’ [2]

Using this definition, the possibility of questioning whether humans are still evolving is not even worth asking. The simple fact is that change in the gene pool over time in any species is completely unavoidable. Eyre-Walker and Keightley claimed in 1999 that humans have had on average 4.2 amino acid altering mutations every generation since humans separated from chimpanzees [3]. This measurement ignores the synonymous substitution of base pairs, and all of the mutations which occur in the non-translated regions of Genome DNA. Since only about 1.5% of the human genome is translated [4], this number is quite incredible. With this introduction of change every generation, the ‘change in the gene pool over time’ is assured. Genetic drift is another mechanism through which gene frequencies are changed overtime, and its occurrence is an undeniable phenomenon. Chance events lead to the increase or decrease of numbers of a particular gene in a population, occasionally leading to fixation of a gene (no other variants exist) or extinction of that gene.

These two prime examples of random changes in the genetic makeup of populations are accepted biological phenomena which apply to humans as much as any other species. To say that these two phenomena are classified as evolution means to say that Humans evolve. Of this there can simply be no question.

It is therefore clear that another more specific definition of evolution must be used in order for any sort of productive inquiry into this subject to take place. To account for the affect of random changes alone being considered evolutionary a definition that requires a selective pressure can be used. By defining evolution as ‘the change in a gene pool over time due to a selective pressure’ we no longer have the random changes problem, and the people claiming that humans are no longer evolving actually have something that they can use: The possible lack of selective pressures. From now on this will be the meaning of evolution for the rest of this paper.

Evolution may be directed by a number of selective pressures, one being sexual selection, and most of the others falling under the general title of natural selection. Natural selection affects the evolution of species in every aspect of their life, from their developmental rate, to their ability to survive to reproductive maturity, their ability to find and copulate with a mate, the viability of those offspring, and how much longer after sexual maturity/copulation that organism may continue living. Natural Selection is the true driving force behind any sort of adaptive evolution.

With selection included we can now describe evolution according to a theory described by Dennett in 1995 based on the earlier work of Lewontin and Brandon [5]. In this definition evolution is said to occur whenever there is variation, heredity and a differential ‘fitness’ (i.e.: allowing a point of action for a selection pressure). In the case of all biological creatures heredity is an absolute standard which goes without saying. The fact that there is replication of the genetic makeup from one organism into the next generation is the backbone of the process of evolution. It is upon this backbone of heredity that variation may build up, brought about by mutations, and that differential fitnesses may arise and in turn be selected. So the question now becomes, “Do humans have variety in their gene pool, and is there a differential fitness to these variants?”

Those who believe that humans are no longer evolving accept that we have variety. As pointed out above with the previous definition of evolution, we have 4.2 Amino Acid altering mutations every generation, and then we have genetic drift; it is entirely unreasonable to claim that we do not have variety between humans. What they do doubt though, is that there is any selective pressure left. They claim that due to the advent of modern medicine, technology, farming techniques, food distribution, heating and cooling systems etc, there are no longer any selective pressures in our lives to separate the fit from the unfit. The fitness differential is irrelevant in the environment that we have made for ourselves because we do everything we can to make sure ‘everyone’ survives. Additionally, even if some people die to unforseen virus or bacterial outbreaks etc, then although they may die, the reaction of medical intervention will be infinitely quicker than that of the evolutionary adaptation to the new selective pressure, and so no net evolution will actually occur. The capabilities within our modern society and the speed with which our culture adapts to change has completely overruled the process of natural selection and so stopped evolution.

There are several problems with these claims. These problems can be placed into several classes of error including;

1. Misunderstanding the nature and power of Natural Selection,
2. Forgetting other forms of selection, such as sexual selection,
3. Assumptions about the entire world from the specific first world lifestyles of the very people claiming this, and
4. Mistakenly taking the term ‘current evolution’ to mean that evolution must happen before our eyes.

Class 1

The first class of error may actually be the most subtle. It comes from the assumption that selection only works on the more obvious phenotypic traits and little else. In its worst form this error is manifest in the claims that humans are de-evolving (an oxymoron in itself) because we are creating easier lives for ourselves, resulting in future generations who have evolved weak skeletons, fat bodies and slow reactions etc. While an easier life may allow for these phenotypic changes to exist, to say that we would evolve in that direction is to either revert to the previous definition of evolution, or misunderstand how evolution due to natural selection works. Evolution due to natural selection occurs only in such a way that better adapted creatures become more prevalent than less adapted creatures. If bodies with weaker skeletons (for example birds), more fat (for example seals), and slower reactions (for example sloths) were advantageous to humans, then that is how we would evolve. If that happened to be the case, then the irony would then be that these phenotypes would be advantageous (direct inference from how evolution works), and the claims of ‘de-evolutionists’ would be shown for exactly what they are, oxymoronic.

The more subtle side of this can be made clear though, in realising that this altering of what is and what is not advantageous from era to era is entirely unpredictable to us. We perceive certain things as ‘good’ attributes (commonly: Sharp teeth, strong muscles, fast runner, intelligence) and other things as ‘bad’ attributes (commonly: obesity, skin prone to sunburn, unco-ordination) and we decide that anything which departs from the good and/or acquires more bad attributes is losing its selective advantage. While this may often be true, the fact of the matter is that our own judgement has been crafted by evolution and we are biased in our judgements towards the things which were adaptive in the past. We have no idea what is going to happen next and so we can’t be sure that our crafted judgements are any longer valid. As well as that we have no way of knowing what hidden benefits may lay under some superficial phenotype. Combine these two consideration and you are faced with a situation in which you may have superficially ‘bad’ (according to our current judgement) phenotypes with underlying attributes which may in the next few hundred generations come to be so advantageous that they create a selective pressure in themselves. Darwin himself observed that “the struggle will generally be more severe between species of the same genus, when they come into competition with each other, than between species of distinct genera,” [6] and so it is with humans already, and probably will continue to become more and more as we reach the limits of our extended niche. What variation it is that holds the key to the adaptive advantage is surely unknown to us, but it seems incredibly unlikely that the advantage will be with those able to outrun or successfully hunt a lion.

On a less subtle level though there is one more element within this class of error that is ignored by people who claim that humans are no longer evolving. Natural Selection is thorough. Amongst all of the variation which we can and cannot discriminate superficially, Natural Selection screens everything. Natural Selection, unlike our ability to pass judgement, is an unrelenting eternal force sifting through every single probabilistic relation within an organism, between members of a community, between organisms in a species, and between an organism and its environment; all at once. To say that modern humans are no longer under a selective pressure is to claim two things: It is claiming that we know what Natural Selection works on; and it claims that we have used this knowledge to control every single instance of potential selective pressure. We certainly do not know this, and we most certainly have not controlled it. Humans are just as subject to selective pressures as every other organism, even if we can’t see them.

Class 2

The second category of error is simply a case of forgetting that there is more to selective pressures than mere survival. The need to procreate is just as important in evolution, and to procreate humans need to find mates. Sexual selection is present throughout nature and is undoubtedly present in Homo sapiens too. One theory even claims that our enlarged brains, our paedomorphic ape appearance, the size difference between males and females, and various other factors are all consequences of sexual selection [7]. Medicines, technology and abundant shelter will never affect the role sexual selection plays in the evolution process, but culture itself may. It is almost impossible to guarantee that our sexual desires, choices and behaviours are guided by our own and our potential mate’s genetic make up, rather than being guided by the culture we live in. To make it a little more complicated, its not even easy to figure out whether our culture is largely guided by our genetic make up, and therefore only an intermediate between our genes telling us what we want and what we actually choose. Whatever the case one fact remains: Sexual selection - on whatever level – occurs. As long as it continues to occur there will be a selective pressure present, and evolution will occur.

Class 3

The third category of error is the belief that the entire world is like the society we are lucky enough to live in. A society where medicine is provided for everyone, where housing is plentiful, where there is available electricity, running water etc. The fact of the matter is that this isn’t the case at all, but instead around 80% of the world’s population lives in developing countries [6]. If we are to talk about the evolution of Humans and we want to focus on one lifestyle, it would in fact make much more sense to focus on developing countries and talk about their way of life. Of course though, if we were to do this, then most of the points raised about medicines, technology, distribution of food, and general ease/comfort of life would no longer apply, and there would be no case. Obviously when the claim ‘Humans are no longer evolving’ is made, the claim is actually meant to be ‘Humans in developed countries are no longer evolving.’

Class 4

The fourth class of error actually intermingles with every other class on some level. Evolution takes many thousands of years to occur and must be discussed accordingly. To talk only about the way things are now and then to try to infer facts about evolution from that flash of existence, is to fall into this error.

This particular error is all encompassing in its nature and is the sort of error that humans are very prone to make. Being organisms that deal with time in units like seconds, minutes, hours, years, and even up to decades, the concept of hundreds of years or several hundred years turns into ‘A long time’ and nothing else. To think of a hundred years, is to think of something only just graspable. To think of a thousand years though, is really something beyond our grasp and we tend to resort to ‘a really long time’ and that is as far as our imagination goes. We may be able to grasp some sort of awe over the length of it, but we do not comprehend it. Tens of thousands of years, millions of years, billions of years all meld into this one conception of ‘a really long time’ and nothing else. There is little meaning in any of it. To then speak of evolution, something which takes thousands of years for any real changes to start being apparent, is to talk of something which we can’t grasp the timeframe of. Falling into this class of error when talking about Evolution is almost inevitable for anyone not consciously aware of this problem.

Understanding now that evolution only works over the course of many thousands of years means that the claim that ‘humans are no longer evolving’ translates into ‘humans will not evolve at all over the next few thousand years’. Realising this, to maintain the claim that humans are no longer evolving is to claim that our control over our environment is so all encompassing and so certain that nothing that happens will break our control. It is a claim that we will never run out of food, that our population growth will never reach maximum capacity, that rising waters will never cause massive loss of farmland or living space, and that no virus or bacterial pathogens will ever break out into a pandemic. It is to claim that humankind has already completely conquered nature in all of its forms.

Whether we accept evolution as something that occurs with or without a selective pressure, the arguments presented to show that humans are no longer evolving tend to become meaningless in light of how evolution actually works. The points may seem valid in some regard, but they all miss a vital point somewhere and so can be easily shown as the empty claim they are. Humans are varied, humans are being selected, and a time will come not so far off in the future when massive selection may be applied as a consequence of our own actions. Humans are still evolving.

References

1. Webster’s 1828 dictionary, http://www.christiantech.com/
2. Chris Colby. Introduction to Evolutionary Biology, Version 2. 1996. http://talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html
3. A. Eyre-Walker, P.D. Keightley. 1999. High genomic deleterious mutation rates in hominids. Nature 397:344-347
4. B Alberts, A Johnson, J Lewis, M Raff, K Roberts, P Walter. 2002. Molecular Biology of the Cell 4th Edition, Chapter 4, p 202, table 4-1.
5. D Dennett. 1995. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: evolution and the meaning of life. New York. p 343
6. C Darwin. 1859. The Origin of Species, first edition, reprinted in penguin classics 1985, chapter 3:p127.
7. D Brin. 1996. Neoteny and Two-Way Sexual Selection in Human Evolution. Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 18(3):257-276
8. http://www.unfpa.org/sustainable/demographics.htm

Evolution as a Scientific Theory

2006-08-26T22:02:00.000+10:00

Evolutionary theory is the current Paradigm of biologists. Evolution provides the framework for our biological belief structure and allows scientists working in Molecular Biology, Microbiology, Botany, Zoology, Ecology, Marine Biology and Archaeology to put all of their observations and experiments into a theoretical framework. It is from the theory of evolution that scientists feel free to assume that a gene found in Saccharomyces cerevisiae may have a related gene in mice and humans and have a similar role to play in all three organisms. It is from the theory of evolution that scientists tend to classify relatedness between species, and work within the assumption of those relationships. It is from the theory of evolution that archaeologists are able to make assumptions about extinct animals and their bone structure and skeletal organisations based on extant species. It is from the theory of evolution that medical researchers are able to understand the recurrence of bacterial infection and viral infection year after year of the same organism that has been inoculated against time and time again.

The theory of evolution undoubtedly plays an active role in our approach to biological science and affects every medical and scientific advancement made under its paradigm.

And more importantly than acting like a scientific paradigm as described by Kuhn, Evolution acts like an Ideal science as described by Karl Popper. It has a number of tenants that if shown to be wrong, would clearly disprove much of the theory if not the whole thing.

A number of these points of falsification are listed:
1. There was a static fossil record
2. True chimeras, that is, organisms that combined parts from several different and diverse lineages (such as mermaids and centaurs) and which are not explained by lateral gene transfer, which transfers relatively small amounts of DNA between lineages, or symbiosis, where two whole organisms come together
3. a mechanism that would prevent mutations from occurring or accumulating
4. observations of organisms being created
5. Fossils found out of sequence
6. Demonstrating similar species have less genetic similarity than dissimilar species; i.e. showing Chicken DNA is closer to human DNA than Chimpanzee DNA
7. Demonstrating that the Earth is not Billions of years old

Some of these points would falsify that evolution could possibly occur (3 for instance) while others would simply falsify that evolution is the cause of the variety of life we now witness on Earth (7 for instance). But if any one of those points of falsification were clearly demonstrated to be true, the theory of evolution would require drastic rethinking or complete dismissal. A brand new theory would need to be formulated which explains all of the existing information as well as the new information which expelled Evolutionary theory from common scientific acceptance.

There is no doubt about the scientific nature of evolutionary theory, and there are plenty of principles of falsification, upon which evolution has stubbornly refused to be falsified by,

Shane

The Scientific Method - First draft of section one

2006-08-23T22:22:00.000+10:00

The goal of this first section is to dispell a bit of myth about Science and 'The Scientific Method'. Science has manged to attain a mythical status for itself: The purveyor of truth, the only avenue to real practical knowledge, "Scientists show that...", and for a day to day purpose perhaps it is appropriate. But from a purely philosophical point of view it is far from an accurate representation.

A naieve point of view of science has it that the Scientific method is all about observing, hypothesising, testing and proving. It is unlikley that any science is ever really done that way. A more sophisticated view was presented by Karl Popper: Hypothesis, try to falsify. Karl popper revolutionised the way the world viewed science; suddenly there was a criteria for whether something was Scientific or not. If it was falsifiable, it was scientific. All scientists were supposed to have a theory on how things worked, and they were then supposed to spend all of their time trying to prove the theory wrong so that an improved theory could be stated. This is of course too idealistic for reality. Scientists rarely set their goal as "Prove general relativity wrong" "Prove the atomic model wrong" "Prove evolution wrong". While the concept surrounding Poppers philosophy of science is logically sound, specifically, no theory can ever be proven correct but a theory can certainly be proven wrong, most scientists actually do neither in their work. Most scientists work to discover new concepts within a theory.

This is where Thomas Kuhn's theory of Scientific Revolutions comes in as a descriptive philosophy of science. Popper seemed to hit on something of a prescriptive ideal for science: Science should forever strive to prove itself wrong so that it may reliably move on whenever it is wrong. It must not cling to theories for the sake of tradition or sentimental sake. Kuhn's theory of science however much more accurately described what scientists do: They use the prevailing theory of the day (the Paradigm) to guide their actions in their research. The Paradigm (for instance Newtonian Physics, General relativity, quantum mechanics or evolution) creates a system of beliefs for the scientists and provides them with a 'Tool Kit' for how to go about studying their field. They use these beleifs so that their observations make sense, then their observations are made to fit with the paradigm, and the combination of their paradigm tool kit logic and paradigm inspired observations are intwined to make predictions and generate new research avenues.

Scientific revolution occurs when anomolies arise from the research which no amount of effort will force into the paradigm belief system. A few anomalies are allowed to exist for a while, rationalised as bad data, bad technique, specific case or simply ignored until a later time, but when numerous anomalies come to the surface it is inevitable that one or more scientists will be forced to acknowledge these anomolies. Contrary to Poppers theory of falsification the paradigm is not discarded at the first sign of trouble. With mounting anomalous results some (certainly not all) scientists will start to question the paradigm, but ultimately will be ignored because a paradigm is required for science to continue. Without a paradigm, how will the data be interpretted? It isn't until someone manages to put the peices of the puzzle together to formulate a new hypothesis which actually manages to cover all of the previous data as well as the new anomolous data in one fancy new theory that some people will start to consider discarding the old paradigm. Even then many scientists will cling to all they know and not accept the new paradigm.

With this quick introduction to the Philosophy of Science it is clear to see that Evolutionary Theory is the paradigm under which Biology currently operates. It is used as a toolbox to make predictions about molecular biology, morphology of organisms, paleantology, even medicine. Evolution came to be the accepted scientific paradigm more than 50 years after Origin of The Species was written after the particulate inheritence of genetic material was rediscovered. Until that was rediscovered it was assumed that all offspring blended the characteristics of their parents and so would reduce diversity rather than increase it as predicted by Darwins theory. Evolution replaced the previous paradigm: Creationism. until the Evolution was set up as the Paradigm, no theory adequately described life on earth sufficiently well at all (Lamarkianism was a contender, but never fully accepted) and in general people assumed "God made it" in whatever form they wanted to believe God did it.

As a scientific theory, creationism is a non-paradigm, it makes no active tool kit and no method of interpretting the data. Everything you see can be explained with "And thats how God wants it". Everything is equally perfect in its own way, and everything has its perfect purpose. The theory is functionally useless from a scientific point of view, and this can be argued on both counts of Kuhnian philosophy as well as Poopperian philosophy. "God made it" is impossible to falsify. Evolutionary theory, from a scientific point of view was far superior to its predessesor.

Clearly no year can ever be placed on the implementation of a paradigm, but a time frame may be indicated from when it started to be taught in educational institutions. Evolution really started to be accepted inthe early 1900's. Since then, the increase in biological knowledge has been staggering. From accepting that genetic inheritence was particulate (that is there is a peice of genetic material which is inherited in its entirety that determines a trait: a gene for blue eyes, a gene for black hair etc) to discovering the double helix structure of DNA and showing that it was the genetic material, to then mapping the entire genomes of over 180 organisms in the last 10 years!!! For a paradigm to encounter that amount of NEW, BRAND NEW information integration and stay as the only contended paradigm is a true indication of the strength of the theory of evolution.

Also interesting to find out: How many paradigms ahve come into phsyics since evolution was proposed? General relativity, special relativity, quantum mechanics... and physics has not advanced nearly as fast or as far as Biology.

Interesting links:
Synopsis of Kuhns Scientific Revolutions
Wikipedia entry on Kuhn
Wikipedia entry on Popper

Proving Evolution Format: First Draft

2006-08-21T17:34:00.000+10:00

This entry should virtually be point form, but i haven't bothered with the actual points. This is really just an attempt to colelct my thoughts, form a logical sequence to the argument and form points where I need to do more research. I would appreciate any feedback or additional thoughts which you think I should add.

The Scientific Method and Paradigms
Under both of the prevailing philosophies of science, Evolutionary theory resides as a strong Science. Under Popperian philosophy, Evolution has many falsification principles and has been tested on many of those principles and never yet ultimately falsified. By Kuhn's theory of Scientific revolutions, Evolution is the current biological Paradigm and it will remain so until formally trained biological scientists continually find fault and error with the predictions made by the theory and it becomes obvious that another theory is required. The new theory must explain all of the previous data better than evolutionary theory plus the new anomalies which evolutionary theory doesn't explain before a revolution will occur.

Examples of previous scientific revolutions include Copernicus et al gradually convincing Europe that the Earth was not the center of our solar system. This took several generations. The second famous example of a scientific revolution is the gradual acceptance of Evolutionary Theory in replace of the previous theory: Creationism.

Falsification Of Evolution

What principles in the theory of evolution are falsifiable? There are many falsifiable principles in evolutionary theory that would either falsify evolutionary theory outright, or cause a major reshaping of the theory. Usually multiple falsifcation principles will be touched upon before a 'revolution' will occur according to Kuhn.

1. a static fossil record;
2. true chimeras, that is, organisms that combined parts from several different and diverse lineages (such as mermaids and centaurs) and which are not explained by lateral gene transfer, which transfers relatively small amounts of DNA between lineages, or symbiosis, where two whole organisms come together;
3. a mechanism that would prevent mutations from occurring or accumulating;
4. observations of organisms being created.
5. Fossils found out of sequence
6. Demonstrating similar species have less genetic similarity than dis-similar species; i.e. showing Chicken DNA is closer to human DNA than Chimpanzee DNA
7. Demonstrating that the Earth is not Billions of years old

Every new fossil that is dug up, could potentially falsify evolutionary theory. Every new genome sequenced could falsify evolutionary theory. Every new organism found could falsify evolutionary theory.

Evolutionary theory has survived over 150 years of this constant bombardment of falsification pressure without any major strikes of falsification. It has been revised a few times in light of Mendels laws of particulate inheritence, then updating to include Genetic theory and many other advances in scientific knowledge, but the core theory remains unchallenged by observations.

The Principles of Evolutionary Theory
The core tennant of evolutionary theory has a beautifully simplistic expression. Wheresoever there is something which:
1. Replicates itself (produces offspring with hereditary information)
2. Encounters small variations in that replication (mutations)
3. There is a differential fitness (Some will replicate more than others, some will not)
there will be evolution.

*This concept has been verified many times since the creation of computers which run evolutionary models.
*Evolutionary algorithms have been used to design things
*Programs have been designed to show proof of principle

There can't be any denying this concept, so the question of the truth of Evolutionary theory as it applies to our Natural world is whether the organisms we see around us are actually the consequence of this process or not.

Darwin argued that our short history of animal husbandry was evidence enough of the existence of the three principles above (Although he didn't ever expresss evolution in those terms). Clearly anyone can see that animals pass down hereditary information with variation, and if we actively select them than we could affect their form. We had done this as a civilisation for a few thousand years and acheived amazing diversity within the species with which we have practiced it. Based on that information, if life has existed for billions of years, that could be enough time for the huge variety in life we witness today to have arisen.

From such a simple central premise 150 years ago, so much more has been discovered which has come to support evolutionary theory. Not only the peripheral information:
Discovering the Sun burns by Fission, hence billions of years old.
Discovery of Radiometric dating techniques.
(others?)

but also core biological information which Darwin had no knowledge about. All of which creates a much stronger case for evolution than that originall posed by Darwin.

For a start, we discovered that Hereditary information is carried in genetic code, a system very amiable to the Descent with modification theory. The modifications could now be substantively measured. This was a HUGE leap for evolution. If evolution was wrong, then being able to quantify and exactly measure the variation in descent should surely indicate the error. But instead it has done nothing but verify it.
Sequenced genomes and found relatedness in them.
Discovered many new species in our explorations of the globe.

This will probably be expanded more, but I need to figure out the bounds between this section and the next section...

Accumulating Evidence For Evolutionary Theory
Before publishing Origin of the Species, Darwin spent 20 years collecting data to support his theory. He understood the ramifications of his theory and wanted to present the strongest case he could.

He presented much evidence for his theory including:
*collect data*

Since his time we have added much to the list..
Relatedness phenotypically AND genetically.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
Junk DNA consistency
...more to come.

I'll revise this again soon and start working on the first section. I'll hopefully be able to fill that out pretty easily. It is the later chapters which will be data intensive and require some solid foundational research.

Challenge to Intelligent Design Believers

2006-08-19T18:13:00.000+10:00

I have spent a lot of time looking around YouTube.com at the Intelligent Design films, and even looking around a lot of ID and Creationism websites and reading the junk that they make. And it has given me cause to set up this challenge. It is rather simple and I sincerely hope to get at least a couple of people succesful in it.

Show me an argument or a claim or a critical questions proposed by an advocate of Intelligent Design against evolutionary theory or in support of Intelligent Design which is not based on:
1. An appeal to ignorance or incredulity
2. An appeal to Emotion (Also explained here)
3. Begging the Question
4. Any other form of logically fallaciouos argument
which has not previously been raised by a supporter of Evolutionary theory.

Then I will pay you US$50 for bringing this argument to my attention. This is a genuine offer. And one I promise to pay out. Simply post the argument/claim etc as a comment (or a link to the argument) and I will then edit this post to show that argument and explain either that I will not pay it because the argument falls victim to one of these fallacies, or I will post it and pay the $50 and explain why it is a good argument and then do my best to provide an adequate argument against it.

Of course, I reserve the right to change any aspect of this challenge as we proceed, but if you get in before I change anything, then I will stay true to my word as it stands when you post the comment.

--------------------------------------------------------------
First Argument:
*waiting*

-------------------------------------
After one attempted challenge which actually was an attempt on the non-existence of God, rather than an attempt on evolution, I feel compelled to cease this challenge because it seems I have a winner: www.talkorigins.org, the most thorough evolutionist website online has won the challenge by listing every single argument ever presented against evolution or for ID.

WOW.

If talkorigins actually submitted this list to my challenge, I would owe them like a million dollars! Check this out: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

Proving Evolution - Rationale

2006-08-19T17:48:00.000+10:00

The reason I want to write a paper called "Proving Evolutionary Theory" is for a number of reasons. It is to firstly explain how scientific theories are never really "Proven" they simply reach a stage of acceptance and use for a period of time until they are replaced by a better theory. I will go into a bit of scientific theory on this topic in an attempt to show people how scientific revolutions occur and how Paradigms are used as a tool kit according to Thomas Kuhn's theories.

With a decent understanding of how scientific paradigms work it should be easy to show how "Intelligent Design" is not a contending theory, nor is it ever going to be the end of Evolutionary Theory. Ironically, Intelligent Design is the very theory that Evolution replaced. It is the theory which was unhinged and replaced by the far superior theory of evolution. The only reason any debate continues to this date is because unlike the earth being the centre of the universe, this is much harder to prove conclusively with a simple observation. If people were still stuck to the ground without Telescopes, I guarantee the Religious majorities of the earth would still be claiming that Earth was the centre of the universe just as vehemently as they claim that Evolution isn't possible.

As such, the second goal of my paper will then be to proceed to show conclusively that Evolutionary Theory can't be denied through inductive logic. That is, case after case after case of evidence which supports the theory where it would otherwise be expected not to.

How I intend on doing this will rely on the fact that Darwin wrote Origin of the Species 150 years ago. Only in the last 50 years have we come to know that the genetic material was DNA, and only in the last few years have we come to know what our genetic code actually is. So with this new data at hand, surely this 150 year old theory would be clearly disproved by now. Surely our understanding of genetic inheritance based on genome analysis would CLEARLY show that evolution was wrong! Right? Well, I plan on analysing some genomes comparatively to show relatedness between species and find some clear evidence which will either show clearly that evolution is wrong, or that it may still yet be right.

Based on the opening sections of the paper, it will be clear that no amount of supporting evidence will ever prove evolutionary theory, and thus I will never claim that any piece of evidence does prove it. Unlike the exponents of ID who regularly refuse to maintain intellectual dignity, I will not take cheap shots and cheap victories at the expense of intellectual honesty. I will not refer to a good argument or superb peace of evidence as absolute proof of evolution, no matter how much it may seem to be so, because I know that the truth of the matter is that Science never actually can know the truth. And in that is Sciences strength. Only believers in God believe they know "absolute truth" and that is why they are so regularly wrong.

Anyway, the culmination of the paper should be to show how Science works, to show why Evolutionary theory is assisting science greatly and justify its use as a tool. In the end my main hope is to simply explain adequately well that evolutionary theory is true enough to be accepted and followed as a theory so that people I know will actually accept it. The debate in the USA is a non-event made public by the media abusing religious. The scientists refuse to 'debate' the matter because they know that there is no debate. In the end, I only right this for the individuals who have been swayed by the circular logic of these religious media manipulators. The people who never actually make a rational argument, but instead appeal to ignorance. Appeal to emotions. Appeal to incredulity. They constantly create straw man arguments against evolutionary theory and the media, and uninformed individuals who know no better feel compelled to accept them. It IS absurd that a monkey should ever give birth to a human. That’s right... but that is not evolutionary theory... And it distresses me greatly that supposedly "educated" full grown men will willingly say that on television in an attempt to "WIN" people over to their side. It fills me with anger to be completely honest. These people who say this thing spend their lives "debating" this topic, and they either do so without having any idea what they are talking about, OR they blatantly LIE. Either of those options is a betrayal of the "faith" of their followers.

I think I will also make a few posts addressing some of these people over time in this blog. Maybe one day I will even inspire one of them to come here and defend their actions.

Shane

Why Do We Age?

2006-08-18T17:18:00.000+10:00

The Evolutionary Context of Senescence

People have rationalised aging and the inevitability of death throughout the past as ‘only natural’, ‘For the good of the species’ or as ‘Making way for the next generation’. Taking a closer look at the evidence though quickly makes it plainly clear that these explanations are simply wrong. In a typical natural environment organisms die through predation, accident, starvation, infection and other such events long before aging becomes a factor [20]. Aging, as a general rule, has virtually no influence in the natural world, and it this fact precisely that explains how it is that aging arose in the first place.

In 1957 Williams wrote a paper called “Pleiotropy, Natural Selection, and the Evolution of Senescence” which built on the idea introduced in 1952 by Medawar [14] that evolution would not be able to exert any real selective pressure on genes which act after the reproductive age. Williams proposed a more practical idea, that genes which produce an advantage early in life but have a later acting negative effect would still be selected regardless of the later effect. He claimed that “natural selection may be said to be biased in favour of youth over old age whenever a conflict of interest arises [20].” This theory, known as ‘Antagonistic Pleiotropy’ has since been expanded once more by Kirkwood in 1977 with the addition of the ‘Disposable Soma Theory’ [10]. This latest addition picks up on the bias natural selection has for youth and suggests that organisms evolve in a way which puts as many resources into ensuring youthful vigour and reproductive success as is required, and only after these two facets are assured do any resources get distributed into maintaining the somatic cells. In other words, evolution cannot select long living individuals if they are going to die before reproduction anyway. Evolution recognises that the body is disposable and so allocates resources appropriately.

These theories are important because they form a basis from which investigations into the mechanisms of aging can be approached from. These theories imply that it is unlikely for there to be any genes ‘for’ aging as such, but instead there will actually be genes ‘against’ aging. They imply that the causes of aging will actually be side effects of otherwise beneficial genes. They also imply that the genes associated with longevity will actually be genes which affect the durability and maintenance of the somatic cells [11].

The Free Radical Theory of Aging

The Free Radical Theory of aging has become one of the main focuses of aging research today. The theory proposes that reactive oxygen species (ROS – The ‘Free Radicals’), largely produced as a side effect of normal mitochondrial metabolism, cause progressive damage resulting in the functional decline that defines aging [4]. A lot of evidence for the theory is apparent in the fact that most lab organisms which have had an increased life span, have also been shown to have an increased oxidative stress response [2][13][19].

The overwhelming correlation between increased stress response and increased lifespan has an incredibly strong implication that ROS may cause some aspect of aging. The stress response which combats the ROS, extending lifespan, happens to be a perfect example of the expected type of relationship to form under the Antagonistic Pleiotropy theory. Aerobic metabolism undoubtedly evolved shortly after the mass extinction of most obligate anaerobes was caused by the flooding of Earth in O2 from Cyanobacteria photosynthesis. The surviving bacteria must have had some sort of oxidation resistance already, but those which utilised their existing photosynthetic electron transport chains to extract energy from the newly abundant energy source of O2 would have had a much larger advantage over its anaerobic competitors [3].

The evolution of aerobic respiration was undoubtedly beneficial in its context and the basic control of oxidative damage was already set up, while the accumulation of damage from the occasional escaped superoxide particle was unlikely to have any noticeable deleterious effect on the quickly replicating bacteria. It isn’t until evolutionary history proceeds, conditions change, life expectancies change as complexity increases, and the small amounts of damage become increasingly important. The evolution of increasingly efficient antioxidants is the only method available to counteract this side effect of an otherwise incredibly beneficial gene.

This hypothetical story may not be completely accurate, but the evidence does support something at least similar. Overexpression of the genes for superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase in Drosophila, the two primary ROS scavenging enzymes, increases lifespan by around 34% [9], demonstrating both the effect ROS may have on lifespan, as well as the importance of controlling the ROS. More interestingly, overexpression of just the human SOD1 gene increased its lifespan by 40% [9], implying the more effective scavenging ability of the human SOD enzyme which would be expected in a longer living organism. age-1 mutants in C. elegans live twice as long as the controls and were found to also increase SOD and catalse activity [9], while the Methuselah mutant Drosophila also demonstrated increased resistance to oxidative stress, high temperature and starvation, and lived 35% longer than their parent strain [13]. Both of these examples also show how counteracting the ROS may be incredibly influential in longevity.

Having said that, an important criticism raised recently by Spencer et al [19] about the quality of specimens used for longevity comparisons may just undermine exactly how meaningful an ‘extension’ of 30-50% in lifespan may be. The breeding techniques employed in labs to maintain their stocks of Drosophila, results in a selection pressure for rapid reproduction and large litters [15]. The Disposable Soma Theory states that this would create an evolutionary pressure to direct resources to those areas at the expense of soma durability and maintenance. Spencer et al demonstrated that the extension in life from overexpression of SOD was in fact dependent on the genetic background the specimen was taken from, showing some results which had a noticeable increase in longevity, and occasional results which actually decreased longevity. Perhaps naturally living Drosophila naturally ‘overexpress’ SOD and catalase already?

Whatever the case may be, it seems reasonable enough to accept that ROS plays a key role in aging, and Antioxidant enzymes like SOD play a key role in controlling ROS. Whether this information can be used to actually extend lifespan or improve the average quality of life in older age is far from certain, but at least we have something to work with.

Other Theories on Aging

Far from being the only theory on aging though, the Free Radical Theory is only one of many theories. There is the alternative version of the Free Radical Theory, the Mitochondrial Theory of aging, which uses the ROS idea in a vicious circle where damage to the Mitochondrion causes more ROS to be created, resulting in an exponential increase in oxidative damage [7]. This theory has lost favour in more recent times, though still attracts interest [7][16][8]. Genome Instability, the accumulation of mutations, rearrangements and changes in chromosome number have been proposed as another cause of aging [9], while an offshoot of this theory is based on the accumulation of ribosomal DNA loops which bud out of the genome then proceed to replicate themselves, growing in number and eventually causing fragmentation of the nucleolus [18]. This has only been observed in S. Cerevisiae though so has little following as a general theory of aging. Research into the WRN gene, the gene responsible for the human progeria disease Werner Syndrome, has implicated the function of DNA Helicases and their actions in suppressing DNA recombination in aging [9]. Genetic programs for aging based on genes found in C. elegans [9], accumulation of potentially harmful abnormal proteins [12], and the cell death theory which claims that gradual loss of cells in postmitotic organs eventually leads to degeneration, are all offered as aging theories. A theory of Systemic Control of aging in the body by something such as the endocrine system has been suggested with evidence from C. elegans. Apfeld and Kenyon (1998) demonstrated that a small number of mutant cells could confer increased lifespan to the entire animal [9], believing that this meant that the gene in question produced a secreted factor which dictated the pace of aging.

An important implication from all these theories and all of the research done on these theories over the years is becoming more and more clear: It is unlikely that we are going to find ‘The’ cause of aging. Even if a systemic control factor of aging is discovered, it is unlikely to provide a simple way out of aging. Assuming we could just trick the body into behaving like it was 18 years old, we would still have to deal with the accumulation of oxidative damage, the loss of postmitotic cells, the risks of cancer, heart disease and other diseases of accumulation/degeneration.

Telomeres

Now implicit in the cell death theory of aging, Telomeres have gained particular notoriety as the biological clock of aging. In 1961 Hayflick and Moorhead reported the limited number of replication events human fibroblasts could go through before entering a quiescent, viable state, unable to enter further rounds of replication [6]. This number of replications was called the ‘Hayflick Limit’ and was explained in 1990 when Harley claimed that Telomeres act as the counting mechanism which limit the replication of the fibroblasts [5].

Telomeres serve several functions in the genome, some of which include solving the “end-replication problem” [1], preventing end-to-end fusions of chromosomes, and preventing exonucleolytic degradation. Telomerase is an enzyme produced by cells which lengthens telomeres, counteracting the shortening of the end-replication problem, but it is not active in somatic cells in humans. Why not? It is most likely not active because it gives too much freedom for rogue cells to turn cancerous and threaten the entire body. The control over every individual cell by the body is incredibly important, and if a cell breaks free of that control, then the inevitable death of that cell is important.

These functions of telomeres are all now unavoidable. As long as we have linear DNA, replicate our DNA through DNA polymerase and exist as a multicellular organism, we need telomeres. The apparent link to aging is unfortunate and stands once again as an example of Antagonistic Pleiotropy.

Interestingly, evidence has shown oxidative damage itself may directly cause telomere shortening [17]. This fact reiterates the confusing intermingling of aging mechanisms faced by researchers, further highlighting the unlikelihood of ever finding a single ‘cause of aging’.

Conclusion

Understanding aging will be a matter of understanding Cell Biology as a whole. The evidence so far seems to be loud and clear that there is no such thing as a single cause of aging let a lone a single solution to it. Instead the evidence implies that aging is just an accumulation of complex side effects piled on top of each other in a somewhat random uncontrolled way, resulting in all sorts of nasty phenotypes that most just wish to avoid. Perhaps when our understanding of Cell Biology reaches a high enough level we will be able to design novel solutions for the issues which cause aging, but until that time all you can do is restrict your calorie intake and avoid standing in the middle of major roads in peak hour.

References

Alberts B, Johnson A, Lewis J, Raff M, Roberts K, Walter P. 2002. Molecular Biology of the Cell - 4th ed. Garland Science, New York, Ch. 5, Pp. 263
Cabo R, Furer-Galban S, Anson RM, Gilman C, Gorospe M, Lane MA. 2003. An in Vitro Model of Caloric Restriction. Experimental Gerontology 38:631-639
Campbell N, Reece J, Mitchell L. 1999. Biology (Fifth Edition) Benjamin Cummings, California. Chapter 27:511-512
Golden TR, Hinerfeld DA, Melov S. 2002. Oxidative Stress and Aging: Beyond Correlation. Aging Cell 1:117-123
Harley CB, Futcher AB, Greider CW. 1990. Telomeres Shorten During Ageing of Human Fibroblasts. Nature 345:458-60
Hayflick L, Moorhead P. 1961. The Serial Cultivation of Human Diploid Cell Strains. Experimental Cell Research 25:585-621
Jacobs HT. 2003. The Mitochondrial Theory of Aging: Dead or Alive? Aging Cell 2:11-17
Jacobs HT. 2003. Rebuttal to Pak et al.: New Data, Old Chestnuts. Aging Cell 2:19-20
Johnson FB, Sinclair DA, Guarente L. 1999. Molecular Biology of Aging. CELL 96 (2): 291-302
Kirkwood TBL. 1977. Evolution of Aging. Nature 270:301-304
Kirkwood TBL. 2002. Evolution of Ageing. Mechanisms of Ageing and Development 123:737-745
Koubova J, Guarente L. 2003. How does calorie restriction work? Genes and Development 17(2):313-321
Lin YJ, Seroude L, Benzer S. 1998. Extended Life-Span and Stress Resistance in the Drosophila Mutant Methuselah. Science 282:943-946
Medawar PB. 1952. An Unsolved Problem of Biology. Lewis, London
Miller RA, Austad S, Burke D, Chrisp C, Dysko R, Galecki A, Jackson A, Monnier V. 1999. Exotic Mice as Models for Ageing Research:Polemic and Prospectus. Neurobiol. Aging 20:217-231
Pak JW, Herbst A, Bua E, Gokey N, McKenzie D, Aiken JM. 2003. Rebuttal to Jacobs: The Mitochondrial Theory of Aging: Alive and Well. Aging Cell 2:9-10
Ren JG, Xia HL, Just T, Dai YR. 2001. Hydroxyl Radical-Induced Apoptosis in Human Tumor Cells is Associated With Telomere Shortening But Not Telomerase Inhibition And Caspase Activation. FEBS Letters 488:123-132
Sinclair D, Mills K, Guarente L. 1998. Aging in Saccharomyces Cerevisiae. Annual Review of Microbiology 52:533-560
Spencer CC, Howell CE, Wright AR, Promislow DEL. 2003. Testing an ‘aging gene’ in long-lived Drosophila strains: increased longevity depends on sex and genetic background. Aging Cell 2: 123-130
Williams GC. 1957. Pleiotropy, Natural Selection, and the Evolution of Senescence. Evolution 11:398-411

The Purpose Of This Blog

2006-08-18T16:31:00.000+10:00

Welcome everyone to my first post in this blog.

This blog is not original. Not for the internet in general, or even for me. I have made websites before when I was younger to express my Ideas and my philosophies. I have even had an online diary which I maintained well for over 3 years. I wrote many many ideas thoughts ruminations and philosophies in that. So this is not original at all.

But it is different

In this blog I will attempt to work towards actual 'academic style' papers on topics of interest to myself. Primarily I have an interest in ageing research, but I also have a lot of other interests which I will explore. Namely: Evolution, Morality and philosophy of the mind. How I will work this blog is by seperating daily weekly and monthly ruminations and data collection from the end products. The regular posts will be my haphazzard thoughts. The tid bits of interesting information I have found. Reveiws of articles which I found relevent to the end goal. Drafts of the final works and so forth.

And then, after perhaps many months of considerations and self-discussion (and hopefully lots of public feedback) I will convert numerous drafts into a final "article" and post that in the "Article" section.

I make no promises of timeline for the completion of articles. i have no idea how complex I will take them until I get there. Knowing me, I may never finish. But hopefully the journey there will be just as interesting. But as a guide, here are a few topics I hope to complete my first articles on:

Proving Evolutionary Theory
Morality: What it is, where it comes from, and why we have it.
The Evolutionary Context Of Ageing (A more thorough version)
What Causes Ageing?

My plan is to tackle the Evolutionary Theory first, because it is my pet interest, and because the rest of my topics all assume evolution is true. While I have confidence that it is, I know too many people question it as if it is madeup. I feel a need to show how solid a theory it is before I proceed to assume it in my following papers.

Once these papers have been completed (which could take a decade for all I know) then i willprobably have plenty of other papers which I am interested in writing.

I look forward to plenty of good discussions to come with everyone who disagrees with me, and everyone with interesting insight into my topics!

Shane