The place to ask China-related questions!
Beijing Shanghai Guangzhou Shenzhen Chengdu Xi'an Hangzhou Qingdao Dalian Suzhou Nanjing More Cities>>

Categories

Close
Welcome to eChinacities Answers! Please or register if you wish to join conversations or ask questions relating to life in China. For help, click here.
X

Verify email

Your verification code has been sent to:

Didn`t receive your code? Resend code

By continuing you agree to eChinacities's Privacy Policy .

Sign up with Google Sign up with Facebook
Sign up with Email Already have an account? .
Posts: 112

Governor

0
0
You must be a registered user to vote!
You must be a registered user to vote!
0

Q: Where do you think love comes from?

Ditto.

9 years 35 weeks ago in  Relationships - China

 
Answers (13)
Comments (63)
Posts: 9631

Emperor

0
0
You must be a registered user to vote!
You must be a registered user to vote!
0

Love is a chemical reaction in the brain that makes us feel all funny inside. This mechanism releases dopamine and we feel "rewarded". A mother gets a dosage too when she breastfeeds her baby and the baby has the same expirience, helping to strengthen then bond between the two.

Any person gets a dosage too when petting a cure puppy, and so does the puppy. 

 

Then you say. Ah crap, you are just taking out all the romance, but wait there is more....

 

Why does humans and other animals (I honestly have no clue about insects and other lower forms of life) have this mechanism? It is something developed throughout millennia to make us stronger. A person who feels a lot of love for his spouse will have children who feel the same. A person who feels a lot of love for his spouse will stick with the spouse, and teamwork is the way to survive in the world. It may not hold true for us humans anymore, but look at ducks. They mate for life, and when they have ducklings, they both do the parenting. One duck simply cannot carry that load. :Love is natures way of making us work together. 

Survival of the fittest is not just about physical strength, it is about a lot of things, empathy and other emotions being part of it. 

Scandinavian:

oh. Try putting this in the context of China. !!!

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

louischuahm:

Here in China, no money = no honey! go figure. Maybe we should all go back at look at ducks and how they spawn? Good one, Scan! 

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

Your explanation of love is superficial and childish. I hope that is not the full capacity of your love. In fact, sounds a lot like evolution which is scientifically impossible.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

DrMonkey:

@xinruyen Evolution scientifically impossible ? So, all those thousands of researchers working on DNA, counting mutations and tracing back evolutions of organism down to single mutations, they are seeing stuffs that are not there ? And when you can observe evolution over years on fruit flies and other organisms with a short lifespan, it's just in their heads ? Those people who work on evolutionary computation, and who show how random mutation + selection can produce very complex designs, it's also all in their heads ?

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/misconceps/IIFnotscience.shtml

 

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

Scientists are scrambling to try to interpret the data thru evolutionary eyes. But they keep running smack into those pesky basic laws of science. I will give you one to start: The Law of Conservation of Energy. This makes pulling matter out of a hat impossible. Something cannot come from nothing. Therefore, no Big Bang. I'll give you another one. The Scientific Law of Information. Information cannot create itself. Something intelligent must create information (DNA code is information) Information is immaterial. It cannot be the result of a physical action. DNA code (not the strands themselves) can't be derived from "soup". Here is the kicker: In order for natural selection to exist, DNA (as well as RNA) has to be already there! So natural selection could not be a cause of DNA anyways. This is only a small sample of obstacles scientists are trying to leap to keep the faith in evolution. Evolution has a long road to travel before it can be a real science. It's foundation is based on breaking several scientific laws. Maybe you can write a paper on how we can abolish these basic principles in science.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

Scandinavian:

@Xin. I am sorry for you you find it childish. Sure it is a quick and simple explanation, but the process of "love" is measurable. Beauty can be quantified scientifically, and I am sure you can take apart all little girls dreams through science. That doesn't mean it is not a beautiful thing. Don't get me wrong, I love my wife. Does it matter to me why? Nope it doesn't, but I prefer an evidence based explanation rather than some metaphysical mumbo jumbo. 

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

Scandinavian:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkyard_tornado

 

The thing most people forget when talking evolution is that in 4 billion years a lot can happen. And given enough time, even a tornado can assemble a 747, or at least 1000 DrMonkeys with a 1000 typewriters could write something meaningful in a 1000 years. 

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

DrMonkey:

@xinyuren This topic is closely related to my field, so don't take offense about me being chatty... it's just a topic that I enjoy very much ;)

 

Really, random mutation + selection pressure is a sufficient explanation for
the emergence of very complex organisms, behavior and whatnot. Nothing more is required to explain all the complexity observed so far in natural life. As early as in
1994, Karl Sims did just that. He created a computer simulation, where small articulated and actuated assemblages of blocks are virtual creatures. One virtual creature is represented as a graph (graph per the math definition of it). The best performing creatures (those who jump higher, grab the most food pellets, or whatever criteria you come with) are cloned several times, and small random mutations are made to the creatures graphs. Do that for a few hundred rounds, and you get this:

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNTgyMjk4MjI0.html

Karl Sims experiment have been reproduced independently several times, with the same result every time : creatures with astonishingly natural behaviors, simply from
random mutations and a selection pressure.
From Karl Sims himself http://www.karlsims.com/evolved-virtual-creatures.html

Karl Sims experiment is so famous and easy to reproduce, it became a Master level assignment for students... With a similar procedure, Thomas S. Ray made a whole ecology of self-reproducing programs emerging solely from random mutation, not even explicit selection pressure is involved

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierra_%28computer_simulation%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avida

Things like a fully functional eye have been obtained with those kind of procedures:
http://www.indiana.edu/~iubphys/undergraduate/theses/dj_rhodes_thesis.pdf

 

So evolution is not just some theory that have no solid argument nor verifiable, testable arguments. Your entropy argument is correct, entropy can only increase in a system. In the case of life, entropy is reduced *locally* as a cost of globally increased entropy. It's an idea introduced by F. Varella
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoiesis

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

@ Monkey - I don't mind chatty as long as it makes sense. Random mutation can't under any circumstances create something from nothing. That would be violating establish scientific law. Something must already be there. In fact, all mutations leave the DNA with LESS information, not more. There is no undisputed observation of a mutation ADDING information to the DNA gene pool. In addition all computer models are based on PRE-SUPPOSED assumptions. Assumptions that are biased toward evolutionary model. Time and randomness can produce a living thing? from nothing? This is less believable than a man walking on water and it breaks major scientifc laws. Where are the laws that govern this "science"? Make no mistake, everyone is biased. Evolutionists, Creationists, me, you.... Nobody was there to observe the beginning so our interpretation of the data is biased. The difference is, your belief is based on concepts that go against the laws of nature and observation (matter coming from nothing. No designer of very complex organisms. DNA and RNA making themselves) and my belief is based on what I observe every day (Everything has a designer) Which bias is more reasonable and plausible?

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

DrMonkey:

The Miller-Urey experiment, 60 years ago, shows how all the basic components of life (Amino-acids and the RNA/DNA) can be synthesized from typical chemical elements found in the Solar system. 3 billions years with a lot of solvent (water) and energy is plenty of opportunities for interesting things to happen. It might have took 3 billions years, it took half a billion year more to come with articulated creatures made of many cells (PreCambrian Explosion). Things like the Game Of Life from Conway shows how from simple components and lot of room for combinations give emergence to complex self- substaining forms. Or Turing patterns. Or the Avida experiment. We have quite a few pieces if the puzzle there. Not all of them, but enough to be useful in biotech for instance. We don't have all the pieces of the puzzle for gravity or electricity ("where the electrons came from"), but gravitation and electromagnetism are still solid enough for most purposes. So is evolution, for a large majority of scientists.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

Dr.Monkey, you are missing the point entirely (respectfully speaking). Sure anything can be synthesized if you have the right ingredients and someone who know how to mix them. But for one thing, the physical structure of DNA is NOT the DNA code. The fact that you need RNA to decode DNA code is proof of this. A DNA strand is the vessel that contains a code. Coding and decoding implies intelligence. And coding isn't material and it isn't a social construct. It is information. Please see the Law of Information. And you have yet to answer where all these ingredients come from. Saying they come from the Universe is not an explanation. Lots of mental calisthenics are necessary and then you're still breaking laws of science. As my favorite detective said, 'Take away the impossible, and what's remaining must be the truth'. Impossible to create matter from nothing. Impossible for information to create itself. Evolution requires these things, and many more, in order to be valid. Therefore evolution is impossible. Only remaining explanation is intelligent design. It breaks no laws and is easily observable every day. ....... On a side note, if anything can be done, given time and enough soup, where is all the evidence of clocks, forks knives...every day simple things being produced from evolution? Surely these things are easier to "evolve" than people. Not a single evolutionary gadget or widget. Strange and telling.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

DrMonkey:

@xinrunyen Hum... The components synthesized by the Urey-Miller experiment are all the basic bricks of life (amino-acids, bases, etc.). One crucial aspect of that experiment is the initial state : only very basic chemical components which are available in large quantities in many of the other Solar system planets & moons. It does not depend on a very precise dosage, a very precise temperature, etc. The outcome is robust to fairly large variations of the initial conditions. The intial components are what we expect to find on the initial Earth.

I of course don't believe that DNA helixes, RNA strands and ribosomes formed randomly *at once*. The idea is that there have been many intermediary, simpler steps to that. Was the DNA or RNA first ? Nobody knows for now. Ribosomes (those things that translates RNA fragments to proteins) are RNA and proteins mixed-up, so they can definitely appear without a mysterious architect. There are many ways to get a functional ribosomes. It did not popped at once, it took 3 billions years to come to existence and leave a trace. Complex structures appearing after 3 billions years is not *impossible* it's just not very likely to appear in a minute or two. In the Game of Life of Conway, you have complex structures able to self-reproduce or generates a lot of other structures. They can provably appear just from a random configuration, given a large enough initial state and enough time. Life as we know it can be explained as a very, very slow scaffolding process, from very simple components. It's not a violation of any know laws. Your entropy argument would prevent crystals to form, they are a localized reduction of entropy, at the price of global entropy increase.

 

The keywords here are "scaffolding" and "slow". We have examples of such scaffolding (cellular automatas) and we have serious clues about where the basic bricks formed. Intelligent design breaks no law, it's just a gigantic Deus Ex Machina which propose to replace slow scaffolding from simple elements by "something intelligent did it". It's a place-holder explanation that work for anything and everything "something intelligent/omnipotent did it" with zero predictive power. Evolution, on the other end, is routinely used to make predictions about mutation rates, likelihood of a genetic disease to appear, classifying living specie into a phylogenic tree, and so on.

About coding and decoding... DNA/RNA is pretty good at storing information and making it available, so information science term are I used when speaking about it.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

Science uses information terminology to describe the DNA sequence because DNA code is information. Scientists aren't being vague about it. It is just like the information in your computer and the instructions that tell your operating system how to perform. DNA and RNA work in tandem to build something. One is useless without the other. You say evolution is a slow process?  I say not nearly fast enough.   Evolution has to concoct DNA, RNA, and the supporting cell before it can begin to work.  The organism can't work piecemeal and carry it's progress on to the next generation because it can't send it's genes without a fully working gene system.  So it must start again until everything lines up perfectly.  The simplest one celled organism has around 300 gene "letters".  The chances for just the DNA to form randomly is astronomically small.  50 billion years is not nearly enough time for this to happen, let alone  RNA, code, cell, etc... to form.  50 billion years is just an infant compared to the numbers required for the theoretical random forming of this matter.  If this were any subject other than evolutionary religion, scientists would long ago have dismissed this as impossible.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

DrMonkey:

If you assume that the DNA of this 300 bases organism appeared ex-nihilo, that would be indeed unlikely. But nobody seriously claims that. I mention the term of scaffolding, where current organisms and their inner cellular machinery is the result of a long process where simpler components makes more complex components. Typically, chloroplast in plants and mitochondria are highly suspected to have been independent organisms that became cellular components, loosing a lot of their own machinery on the way.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

What scientists really know about his topic is so very small.  Everything is "suspected to" , "is thought to be", "theorized" to happen.  There seems to be as many different ideas as there are stars in the sky.  There is no agreed to science on how evolution happened.  The only thing evolution scientists (not all scientists) agree to is that evolution happened.  How do they know?  Because there is no God.  That thought is too disturbing.  So the crusade must continue.  New hypothesis must be formed to cover for the fact that evolution is impossible with the present laws of nature.  Let's look at what we have in common.  We can agree to these facts.

 

1.  This universe had a beginning.  No arguments there.

2.  A large amount of energy was involved.  Again no argument

3.  Energy can't come from nothing.  Firm science there.

4.  This energy was the ultimate cause of life.  Assumed, but logical.

 

Logically, if 3 and 2 both are true,  Evolution as defined by current popular evolutionary thought can't be true.  Under all the scientific gobbledygook, it's as simple as this.  You see, evolution has it's own deus ex-machina.

 

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

DrMonkey:

The only thing evolution scientists (not all scientists) agree to is that evolution happened.  How do they know?  Because there is no God.  That thought is too disturbing.  So the crusade must continue.

 

So you know the intentions of every damn researcher doing work related to evolution ? It's been a long time that the question "where life comes from" have been asked. Eventually, fossils have been found, heredity have been observed, cells and their functioning is being studied, etc. And there's a really nice simple link to it with a predictive power, which is helpful to design reproducible experiments, and so on. Like in any field, many questions are open, things can be really blurry, there are approximations, etc. Maybe the whole evolution will become an obsolete theory, if simpler and better explanations to connect the known dots comes. So be it. As for now, it's good enough and useful for a lot of people. Like, the whole biotechnology sector... Evolution is an idea that can be disturbing and it seems to tickle some religious people in the wrong place. Sorry about that, but it was not intentional *I think*, in the same way that if Earth does not seems to be the center of the Universe, well, sorry if it makes you sad. At least it useful for astronomy.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

A simpler and more logical solution has been put forth!  In fact there can only be two options.  

 

1.  Someone designed the Universe.

2.  Noone designed the Universe

 

That's it.  There is nothing else.  This is what evolutionary scientists know.  I'm not saying all evolutionary scientists don't want to believe in a God.  I'm saying your worldview developed from the idea that an Intelligent Creator is impossible.  If this is not so, why in the world don't you come to the obvious, simple conclusion of option 1?  Everyone comes to this same conclusion every day when we look at objects in our home, in our neighborhood and in our workplace.  We assume these every day objects are designed.  It is rational to assume this.  Nobody, anywhere  assumes they were the result of evolution.  Yet, somehow, life (and obviously space, planets, and everything not made by man)  is "different", according to these scientists.  They don't know how or why it's different.  It just doesn't jive with their worldview.

 

In conclusion,  The simplist and most logical conclusion is life,  just like everything else, got here by someone intelligent.  The fact that we haven't seen our designer makes it no less believable.  I have never seen the designer of my computer.  But scientists tell me it didn't come from evolution.  Your worldview keeps you believing what you believe.  It obviously puts food on your table too.  But it will never answer the ultimate questions about this Universe and life.  It was nice discussing it with you, though.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

Scandinavian:

@xin. you 1 & 2 options, that is a hypothesis.

 

Big Bang and Evolution are theories, backed by evidence. 

 

Thinking that a higher being created life and everything, that is a logical fallacy. Saying that MrMonkey and the rest are not capable of understanding that a higher being can exist. I do not thing you are the one who should put forth he word "childish"

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

Scandi, I will not even attempt to debate with you on this.  You have already admitted to not even wanting to think deeply about this topic.  So you are pulling your "logic" out of your @#%!  According to scientific law, the Big Bang can't even happen without a huge amount of energy coming from an unknown source (presumably outside of the universe)  It is not even agreed by evolutionists that a Big Bang is the cause of the Universe!  There are no facts (or very few), and no consensus, only ideas.  The problem can't be solved by science. Evolution is so full of holes and stories made up to cover them that I find it unbelievable.  The only things evolving are the ways scientists are trying explain this mess.  But of course, you are not interested in giving real thought to this, so who am I arguing with.  BTW, you seem to be so butthurt about my "childish" comment.  It was directed to your view about love, not about you personally.  Love has a much more widespread meaning and purpose than the elementary things you wrote.  I'm sorry if that offended you, but as you like to say,  I call it as I see it.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

Scandinavian:

not to worry, not butthurt. I come from a bible belt, I know who the childish people are !

 

You are trying to debate science, science is one sided, it cannot be debated. What can be debated is religion, since there are so many different religions to debate. There is only one scientific world view. 

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

"You are trying to debate science, science is one sided, it cannot be debated."

WHAT THE HECK IS THIS DRECK????  Scientific debate is commonplace and is fuel for scientific advancement.   My god, what universe are you from???  This is what happens when you speak about something you aren't willing to think about.  I'm done here.  There isn't even enough sense in your comment to warrant answering to.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

Scandinavian:

This dreck is what makes you use capital letters and what makes me look up the word "dreck". But you don't want to discuss at what temperature water boils at, the rate of decay of uranium 235, right ? Science is fact. Evolution is fact. 

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

Mr_spoon:

A science vs religion debate...

 

Well, this board has sunk to the level of Youtube's comment section.

Brony debates - coming soon!

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

@Mr.spoon - if you read anything that has been written, you would know that religion is not part of this debate.  It is a debate about scientific data and how it is interpreted.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

Scandinavian:

@Spoon. It could also be a debate about how many times Xin has mentioned God. 

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

Mr_spoon:

Nah I scrolled down and saw words like "God" and "Science", and put on my Jumping-to-conclusions Hat

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

Scandinavian:

@Spoon. I hope you remembered to put out a soft mattress or some such thing to land safely on when you jumped to your conclusion. Safety first. ! (Beer second) 

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse
Report Abuse
9 years 35 weeks ago
 
Posts: 3256

Emperor

0
0
You must be a registered user to vote!
You must be a registered user to vote!
0

Darwinian selection

 

- Imagine living being of specie A with zero interest to reproduce. They live their lives and die with very few offspring, because they have zero pressure for making offspring, the few offspring are accidents.

- Imagine living being of specie B with an inner motivation to reproduce (don't care how, call it biochemistry, romance, tacky angels shooting arrows at people). Most members of specie B make offspring before dying.

Now, let specie A and specie B live in the same place, and wait a millennia. Which specie is going to disappear, and which one is going to be there after a millennia ?

xinyuren:

Love is an immaterial thing, therefore it can't be "selected" by genes. The smartest scientists in the world can't explain it, much less you. The idea that perpetual positive things can happen from accidents goes against the natural laws of science (Which is why there are as many ideas about how evolution happened as there are grains of sand on a beach.)

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

DrMonkey:

The idea that perpetual positive things can happen from accidents goes against the natural laws of science
Well, nobody said that all mutations are positives, most of the time they are neutral or negatives. Every offspring host a tons of small mutations, mostly neutral. Accumulation and environmental changes might give a small edge to some mutations in the pool of common mutations. There's a field called evolutionary computation, where solutions to a problem are optimized with small random mutations and a selection pressure. This kind of methods can be used to design things like turbines, car shapes, algorithms, schedules, etc. So science as of 2014 says "yup, many small, mostly neutral mutations can lead to incredible level of refinement", both in nature (fruit flies and other organisms with short enough life span to observe evolution within one human life) and in simulation.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

DrMonkey:

Love is an immaterial thing, therefore it can't be "selected" by genes. The smartest scientists in the world can't explain it, much less you.

 

That's what you say. There are plenty of scientist who studied and study love, with various angles : anthropology, sociology, neurology, population biologists, etc. Of course, there are not yet ready-made answers, and science is rarely about one single short answer. However, the topic is studied for 200 years, so there are definitely very interesting answers on the topic. What happen in the brain, in your body, mating & seduction rituals across various species, human societies. Picking a word and putting a stamp on it "we will never understand it because wow, human and immaterial", it's a self-fullfilling prophecy. You can refuse any answers about love by saying "but it's not the answers I was looking for and expecting". In science, you don't look for a particular answer, you try to get enough information to make verifiable, predictable predictions about something, *anything*.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

there are no ready-made answers. You mean there no concrete answers from evolution scientists. Agreed. That's what I said. Many of studies, but no real answers. If there are, please tell me but don't say "natural selection" because that's impossible. Thank you. And don't misquote me by saying we will never understand because it is immaterial. I didn't say that. I said it could not have come from gene selection. There is a very established natural law stating that genes can't produce immaterial things. At the end of the day, verysmart people still haven't come to the conclusion of how something immaterial "evolved" from something material.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

DrMonkey:

Something immaterial such as a social behavior, fears, love and whatnot comes from material things. Typically, our brains and the associated biochemistry. Make even minute changes to how the DNA will control the brain formation at the embryo stage, and the DNA coding for proteins interaction involved in the brain inner-working, it will impact individual behavior. Change individual behavior, even in very minor fashion, it will impact the breed as a whole. For instance, look at the effect of the some well documented mutations on social behavior.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior_mutation
The DNA does not dictate how our brain is, but it dictates how it forms (it's ontogenesis) and how it functions. Social behavior are emerging from localized (in time and space) individual behaviors. Ants have individually very simple behaviors, but the sum of all the ants behavior is far more complex, due to feedback with environment and the many local interactions.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

Love is not a behaviour. The behaviour sprouts from love. neither is compassion, sense of justice, morality, or wisdom. You need to get your definitions and words together before you can have a discussion about them. I am not talking about behaviour.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

DrMonkey:

All those examples of "not behaviors" are social constructs, emerging from social interactions that you find in various social mammals, at various degree of refinement. Just one example amongst others, cetacean have a sense of justice, they expulse from the herd those who try to rape too often females... As such, love and it's manifestation are a topic of study for anthropologist, sociologist, neurologists... It's not just me who think like that you check out the Wikipedia entry for "Love". That does not make my speech more true, but it goes longer and deeper than what I can type from my sofa on a forum :)

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

Can you please explain to me from your sofa how my idea to write a poem would be a social construct that aided my evolution? It is exactly in contrary to evolution doctrine. What construct selected poem writing to come into existence? or any idea for that matter? Sitting around thinking of ideas is a waste of time from an evolutionary standpoint. So is morality. These things do not make you fit for life. If they were social constructs, they would vary greatly form society to society, but in fact they are universal. Love is universal, so is the faculty of compassion, wisdom and justice. The construct is how these faculties are embodied. I'm not talking about delivery. I'm talking about their birthplace. A hard drive is made up of bits and bytes that REPRESENT information (ideas). My hard disk is not the information. My hard drive is the construct. Is my self-awareness, my consciousness, a social construct? We are talking about two different topics. You seem to be saying it's all part of some chemical program. Well, who did the programming?

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

DrMonkey:

Darwinian selection does not makes altruism or social behaviors impossible, it can promote them. Take the Iterated Prisoner Dilemma. The best solution to the dilemma is cooperation. Therefore, with a selection pressure and enough time, cooperation being the optimal behavior, it would not surprising to see it emerging. And simulations mixing-up iterated prisoner dilemma with random mutation and selection pressure confirmed that...

Compassion, justice, etc... are, I think, natural outcome in social animals with reasoning capacities (unlike ants or termites, but like wolves or cetacean), they are helpful to maintain a stable society. A society without justice or compassion would be self-destructive, as a winning strategy would be to screw-up everyone. That would be a win at an individual level, but the end-game would be the death of the social group. Therefore, compassion, justice, etc can be outcome of a selective process : they are feature of optimal self-substaining societies.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

 Yet again, you avoid the issue.  Love, justice, etc... are not social constructs.  My consciousness is not a social construct.  But they exist.  They can't be created by my body.  According to natural laws, they had to originated from something immaterial.  We are reading the same data in different ways to explain our beliefs, but your's has no way to even exist.  How can evolution create consciousness?  Show me the science please.  Evolution has no beginning.  Without intelligence, there can be no beginning. At the beginning of everything we see in life, there is intelligence. " ...Except life", say evolution scientists.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

DrMonkey:

Yet again, you avoid the issue.
=> Ok. I'll try to debate in a less vague fashion, sorry.

Love, justice, etc... are not social constructs.
=> That's what you say, sociologist and antropologist would beg to disagree.
From what I understand, those concepts *are* the result of social life, and social
life is something perpetually adjusting. It's not just me who affirm that, the
idea is goes quite deep:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_ethic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality

My consciousness is not a social construct.  But they exist. They can't be created by my body.
=> That's an affirmation that is very hard to back nowadays. Minute change in your brains can deeply affect your consciousness, as shown by various rare brain injury. Drugs alter your consciousness. Drugs and brain injury are acting on your body and it's fairly well documented in the nitpicky details. So your consciousness is at least strongly linked to your body and its state.

According to natural laws, they had to originated from something immaterial.
=> Do you mind telling me which natural law you are refering too ?

We are reading the same data in different ways to explain our beliefs, but your's
has no way to even exist.  How can evolution create consciousness?  Show me the science please.

=> Arm-race across 1 billions years. Being able to predict what is going to happen
is a large advantage in term of survival. Predicting requires abilities to do
statistics on past experience, a thing neuron network are extremely good at
(read about Perceptrons, Deep Belief Networks, spiking neurons networks). This
can be a plausible explanation to increasing intelligence levels across 1
billion years. Eventually, with enough brain power and abilities to communicate,
a being can put a very elaborate image of itself in his model of the world.
Consciousness.

Evolution has no beginning. Without intelligence, there can be no beginning. At
the beginning of everything we see in life, there is intelligence. " Except life",
say evolution scientists.

=> Urey-Miller-style experiments shows plausible initial conditions to get all the basic chemical components used in life as we know it. Cellular automatas (Conway's Game Of Life is the prime and most studied example) shows how very, very simple components which can interact with each other, can form larger and more complex components. A scaffolding effect is observed, where the most simple self-preserving assemblage form larger self-preserving assemblages. As of 2013, it have been shown how to construct self-reproducing structures storing their own plan within the Game Of Life. Evolution scientists don't say that DNA/RNA and the associated machinery popped-out from a primordial soup. They say that extremely elementary but self-preserving structures emerged, and very slowly, composed into increasingly
complex self-preserving structures. The current state would life as we know it.
We have yet to find all those steps in the scaffold, but it's not that far-fetched,
as cellular automatas suggest it. It can be far-fetched to you, I can live with that.

A short reformulation: nobody seriously claim life as we know it popped out
without a really slow progression, especially during the first 3 billions years.
There's the central concept of scaffolding, and many steps of the scaffold have
yet to be found. However, scaffolds of that kind have been built for mediums
simpler that organic chemistry (cellular automata).

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

All I see are theoretical stories upon stories to try to explain what is contrary to nature.  Science KNOWS nothing about this.  They are playing in a playground in which they are clueless as to how it operates.  We only know the elementary, rudimentary facts of the natural universe.   And evolutionary theory breaks even those facts.  Scientists have to create more facts to account for this.  They don't even know exactly what consciousness is, let alone say how it originated.  They can make computer models based on their assumptions but their attempts at reproducing real live examples have gotten nowhere.  A robot is not a living thing.  it never will be.  We can program one to stimulate a human, but it will never exceed it's programming.  Yet you say it doesn't require intellect to create one.  Just  needs enough time. But time doesn't work. Chance doesn't work. Creation requires energy and work. Who is doing the working? You can't say enough gobbledygook to account for it. It is clear you are highly invested in the gobbledygook that can change the natural laws. It is just as clear that I am invested in sound reason and logic that I see every day. Our discussion is over.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse
Report Abuse
9 years 35 weeks ago
 
Posts: 1718

Emperor

0
0
You must be a registered user to vote!
You must be a registered user to vote!
0

China.

 

 

(If not China, then this has f all to do with this forum)

Scandinavian:

it actually has a lot to do with China, because China doesn't have it, like clean air, people who know how to not defecate on the streets and other commonly appearing topics here !

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse
Report Abuse
9 years 35 weeks ago
 
Posts: 369

Governor

0
0
You must be a registered user to vote!
You must be a registered user to vote!
0

From the heart and understanding.

Report Abuse
9 years 35 weeks ago
 
Posts: 916

Shifu

0
0
You must be a registered user to vote!
You must be a registered user to vote!
0

winkLove comes from the heart. We love with our hearts and not our eyes. That's why love is blind!

Report Abuse
9 years 35 weeks ago
 
Posts: 702

Shifu

0
0
You must be a registered user to vote!
You must be a registered user to vote!
0

Love comes from a lot of different places. It depends on the Subject and Object.

Report Abuse
9 years 35 weeks ago
 
Posts: 2587

Emperor

0
0
You must be a registered user to vote!
You must be a registered user to vote!
0

Love is an inherent part of our makeup.  It is one of the qualities, along with a sense of justice and morality and wisdom that make us human.  It's a pity too few of us actually use this faculty to help one another.  Humankind would be in an entirely different situation today if we did.  Love can't be explained by a mere chemical reaction because things like love, justice, morality, and wisdom are not material things.  Laws of science say immaterial things cannot come from a material function or reaction.

DrMonkey:

Laws of science says that if you can not measure it, can not reproduce it, and can not make testable predictions about it, then it does not exists, it's some reassuring social construct or you are missing some serious piece of the puzzle ^^

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

So you are saying love, curiousity, our consciousness, doesn't exist? Ideas don't exist???? Please state this law or provide a link or something. edit.. oh and the "serious piece of the puzzle" that they are missing is the proper measuring device.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

JacobJohn:

Dr Monkey, thanks to this law, the law of love, that cannot be measured, life exists.In the way science goes on, I am glad love cannot be measured. As Xinyuren posted already, the ideas, the great ideas that pushed our human kind ahead are the result of love. Science is a summa of great ideas brought by people whom somehow expressed their love for people. I know you will not agree with this last statement, but being useful for people at such level, is love.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

DrMonkey:

@JacobJohn Call it love if you like, that's reassuring and comforting. Take something, make it too imprecise and volatile to study it properly : it keeps its mystic of course. Some might argue that altruism is simply an emergent behavior : a society with some level of altruism tends to be robust to difficulties (low resources, unexpected disasters, etc.) compared to a society of purely selfish individual. A human baby is born very immature and completely unable to survive on its own. It's also a huge expense of energy for a single human to care for a baby. For a couple, it's more doable and more robust to difficulties...

To me (it's a purely personal opinion and very debatable), love is like the place of Earth in the past. Increasing evidence moved Earth from a very central place to a random chunk of rock in a huge universe that does care about us *at all*. Same thing with love, it's just a bit more recent and need a century or two to digest. That does not makes me a psychopath unable to love or appreciate love, the same as you can love our little cosy planet even if you know it's not the sacred center of the universe.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

RobertZimmerman:

One school of thought is that its in our genetics as means of self preservation. A child loves his mother because she protects him/her. Man and women love each other because without a partner they would not be able to survive in a less modern world. Examples are abound on this point. With that said I don't subscribe to the idea that love is just neurons firing in our brains as part of a chemical chain reaction. It's just too dark for me.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

DrMonkey:

@RobertZimmermann If it's too dark, get a light torch, it will get less scary ^^ Read how millions of neurons synchronize with each other to extract high level concepts from raw perceptions (ie. read about artificial neuron networks and neurology). Read how the brain organize itself from the early embryo stage until the end of your life (ie. read about ontology and embryology). Read about anthropology and animal behavior. Read how the same simple ideas are ubiquitous and leads to such diversity yet such an organization, that is self-substaining and self-starting (provided you have a planet and 4 billions years to spare). It's beautiful, amazingly beautiful :)

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

You guys (Monkey and Zimmerman) are only speaking about the superficial, basic aspect of love. Love much deeper than caring for your family. It also involves helping others when there is no evolutionary reason to do so. It involves mercy, which in evolutionary terms has no reason to exist. It means someone will care for the weak (isn't evolution the survival of the fittest?) In evolutionary thinking, compassion, empathy, and kindness should not even exist! Yet they exist plentifully in humans. Evolutionary scientists cannot explain this. How did these aspects of our humanity help us to "evolve" past apes?

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

@ Dr. Monkey - you sound like a witch doctor or a fundamentalist Christian! Millions of neurons sychronizing themselves? The brain organizing itself? You read too much scientific dogma. The living body follows the design contained in our DNA. The DNA code needs a coder. Haven't you heard of the Law of Entrophy? Order cannot come from disorder. Time and randomness cannot create anything. Leave your messy bedroom to itself for 50 billion years and your will never (never!) return to a freshly made bed and clean room. Any rational scientist will tell you that your room will break down into dust and rubble. No organism will evolve from your bedsheets. Your alarm clock will not turn into a life form. Everything will break down to the most simplist form. THERE IS NO LAW that says simple matter will change into complex organisms. NONE. Nothing has been observed in nature. Its dogma.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

RobertZimmerman:

@ DrMonkey It is an interesting read which I have only skimmed the surface. Agreed with what you were saying and btw I prefer a blowtorch when it comes to something that's too dark. I like your posts, give these bastards hell!  wink

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

RobertZimmerman:

@xinyuren You ignorant rube just because I can't understand what you've written doesn't make you smart.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

Kahns_fury:

Xin, if Dr. was a witch doctor or a fundamentalist I doubt he would subscribe to any form of science at all. Because the great invisible deity would hold all the answers and science would be a flight of fancy.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

@Kahns.. - Evolutionary scientists have their own "god": an invisible hand of chance that created everything from nothing and breaks the basic laws of science. Until they can solve this serious problem, it is scientific dogma and just as bad as Fundamentalists religion and witch doctors.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

DrMonkey:

@xinyuren Thanks for the name calling... Seriously, read about artificial neuron networks. Artificial neuron network is a thing and it's used in modern robots for control purposes. Yes, you can build a network that synchronize itself with what comes in input. Old accessible example : Hopfield Networks. Yup, there's a thing such self-organization and it's studied for decades. It's not magic or anything
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization

 

Evolution is not survival of the fittest, it work on a whole ecology at a time, it includes all species even faintly linked to each other. Evolution is not working on isolated individuals. So if something is an advantage to several species at a time, then it's likely to spread. There comes cooperation... As for entropy... Yes, if you include the whole Universe, entropy can only increase. But it can locally decrease, typically, crystal formation.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

Telling you what you sound like to me is not name calling.  Maybe if you actually looked at the difference between what we are saying....  You are not addressing the major problems with evolution thought.  You can't address them because they do not compute.  Because the evolutionary process can't even begin to happen until you reconcile your explanation of how things got started with some rock solid science (real science) that says you can't do that.  

 

Science says you can't pull even light energy out of nowhere, let alone enough energy to escape the gravity well of singularity more dense than a billion black holes!  Where did that energy come from?

 

Science says you can't even start evolving until you can reproduce!  You need DNA and RNA for that.  They need to evolve along with the cells that support it, along with their ability to code and decode.  Together.  Organism, DNA, and RNA randomly assemble fully functional together without the benefit of natural selection.  There aren't enough numbers or space on this page to express the odds of that happening.  To even entertain the idea of that happening....... yet, the simple coffee mug on my desk is definitely not the result of evolution, scientists say.

 

On top of that, you have the DNA code problem.  No amount of time or random circumstances can think up a code.  Every code in the history of codes have originated with an intelligent mind.  There is even a scientific law about it (real science).  Yet, evolution can't even begin until this code evolves out of nowhere, with no design required.   This is not science.  This is science fiction.  But many people believe in strange religions with no rational logic.

 

I prefer to believe what I see every day.  Somebody designed my coffee mug, as well as my computer, my chair, my room, and my clothes.  Everything in my house, including my house, was designed by someone.  This is rational thought.  So when I look at my body, which is more intricate and organized, more purposefully functional and the most sophisticated organism in the universe, I see the rational solution:  Somebody designed it.

 

 

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

btw Monkey.  I agree you can build a self organizing network.  No arguments there.  You made my point. Scientists can build.  Engineers can build.  A thinking mind can build.  Cosmic soup cannot build.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

DrMonkey:

Really, assuming that your soup have elements that assemble and interact with a high-enough probability, order and pattern emerges.
Game of Life : increasingly complex patterns coming from a random soup. Since 2013, it have been showed that a self-reproducing structuring containing it's own construction plan is possible. And can the steps to explain how it can emerge from the initial random soup are known. Of course the steps have been found by a human, waiting for it to happen and watching it would take more than a few life spans. However those steps are plausible as random occurrence, because each stage is a self-substaining structure.


Turing Morphogenesis : emergence of organized patterns from a random soup

 

Talking Heads of Luke Steels : emergence of a language between robots that can observe and do statistics, starting with random babbling

Those are experiments coming to mind now, there are others I can di-out if you like. It's called self-organization, it's a topic studied since the 1970's. Of course "who designed the soup so that it can form simple components assembling to more complex components" is left as an exercise, put what you like there :) But once that soup is here, there are plausible explanations for life emergence. The soup itself is made of what is likely to be on primordial Earth, which itself close to what is found on other solar system bodies.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

DrMonkey:

As for how brains, intelligent behaviors and evolution can be linked, you might check out the work of that guys
http://eplex.cs.ucf.edu/

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

xinyuren:

Your soup has to have special qualities that make it probable to form life.  I already know that.  This soup can't be created randomly, especially in only 50 billion years.  Dr. Turing's study says you can find pattern in nature. Of course there are patterns in nature. Did he see patterns in chaos? Not impressive.  Do these patterns have a use?  are they purposeful?  There is a giant leap from finding a pattern and finding a pattern with purposeful order.  The only patterns with purposeful order are ones designed by intelligence.   Finally we agree that scientists do not know how the ingredients for the soup appeared.  Because the logical reason goes against what they want to believe.  Things don't just appear from nowhere.  That's not how things work in the natural world.  Order doesn't appear from nowhere.  Time can't even begin to explain this.  Especially not the 50 billion year second that has passed since the beginning of the Universe.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse
Report Abuse
9 years 35 weeks ago
 
Posts: 4495

Emperor

0
0
You must be a registered user to vote!
You must be a registered user to vote!
0

lately?  my right hand.

xinyuren:

LOL, answer of the day.

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

diverdude1:

< bow >

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse
Report Abuse
9 years 35 weeks ago
 
Posts: 3494

Emperor

0
0
You must be a registered user to vote!
You must be a registered user to vote!
0

Gees.....I didn't expect to have to read all that.

And I kinda wish I hadn't.  That's not to say I don't admire and respect the efforts of the major contributors....I do.

But hell, it was boring.

Then again, I knew that....'Love is a Battlefield'.

Report Abuse
9 years 35 weeks ago
 
Posts: 9631

Emperor

0
0
You must be a registered user to vote!
You must be a registered user to vote!
0

OK guys

 

http://www.conservapedia.com/Love

 

looks like a credible source to me eh ! devil

Report Abuse
9 years 35 weeks ago
 
Posts: 2587

Emperor

0
0
You must be a registered user to vote!
You must be a registered user to vote!
0

I'm sorry, flyingheart. I didn't mean to hijack your thread.  Just taking advantage of an opportunity to engage in intelligent conversation.  I'm sure Dr. Monkey feels the same. Perhaps you asked the question with a philosophical answer in view?

Report Abuse
9 years 35 weeks ago
 
Posts: 156

Governor

0
0
You must be a registered user to vote!
You must be a registered user to vote!
0

My thought is that Love comes from Life, so love your life.

Report Abuse
9 years 35 weeks ago
 
Posts: 9192

Emperor

0
0
You must be a registered user to vote!
You must be a registered user to vote!
0

No one mentioned puppies.

Mateusz:

That's because we already know where puppies come from. 

9 years 35 weeks ago
Report Abuse

Scandinavian:

"Puppies" = http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=puppy&defid=410137 

9 years 34 weeks ago
Report Abuse

TedDBayer:

Love comes from puppies.

maybe not the ones in China cages

9 years 34 weeks ago
Report Abuse
Report Abuse
9 years 35 weeks ago
 
Know the answer ?
Please or register to post answer.

Report Abuse

Security Code: * Enter the text diplayed in the box below
Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <img> <br> <p> <u>
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Textual smileys will be replaced with graphical ones.

More information about formatting options

Forward Question

Answer of the DayMORE >>
A:  "... through ..."?  Only "through" comes to mind is "S
A: "... through ..."?  Only "through" comes to mind is "Shenzhen agent can connect you with an employer, who's authorized to hire waigouren ... and can sponsor Z visa." It's not like every 10th person you meet in Shenzhen's hood can sponsor work visa ...  The only way to change from student to labourer visa is just a regular way by: 1. Finding an employer, who'll apply for an Invitation letter; 2. Exit China and apply for Z visa in your home country's Chinese embassy; 3. Enter China in 30-days after Z visa was stamped into your travelling instrument ...As I am aware, you won't be able to switch to Working permit by remaining in China....,so make ready for a return to your home .... -- icnif77