Darwin's Illusion

[YoursTrue]

The way I interpret the idea of fish ancestors is simply that all of the first complex life forms on earth were fish or fish like. All these species changed suddenly into something else and over a very long time we came into being. I don't think we must think of our ancestors as "fish" but I doubt there was a more direct path to the emergence of humans (at babel). It's unlikely that life evolved on earth anyway so one of our ancestors was quite possibly something very similar to us on another planet. Or perhaps it was in most ways similar but very different in appearance. Life and consciousness are highly complex and there's plenty of room for almost any belief in reality. Indeed, from our poor perspective Darwin mightta been almost right. If you torture definitions sufficiently you can even describe the earth as being "flat". It makes the equations needed to go to mars a lot more complex though!

I often say Darwin was completely wrong because all of his assumptions were wrong but in point of fact it's impossible to be completely wrong in a parseable language or with a species that always reasons in a circle right back to our assumptions.

To say it another way humans share a lot of our genome with acorns so why be distressed that we share a lot with fish as well. "Evolution" is wrong but it's impossible to really be completely wrong. You can't even be not even wrong so long as your definitions are consistent.

I'm not distressed that humans and acorns have similar genomes. I was taught as a child that the earth was round, like a ball. It made sense to me. So when my mother took me to the beach I'd try digging to get to the other side of the earth, maybe China. Instead little sand bugs popped out of the hole.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

"If Thot comes in this his evil coming; do not open to him thine arms; that which is said to him is his name of "thou hast no mother.".

1271a The Pyramid Texts: The Pyramid Texts: 26. For The Protection of the Pyramid Enclosure Against Osiris and His Cycle, Utterance 534

A homo sapien long dead wrote this. Tell him it makes no sense because, as I said, it makes perfect sense to me.

Tell him about the Greeks too. I'm sure he'll get a kick out of it. Then explain to him how he invented agriculture and built cities and pyramids. Explain to him how you've come to know everything and why he's wrong to believe in gods when he doesn't even have a word for god. Be sure not to use even one abstraction and don't let your explanation obey Zipf's Law or he'll surely not understand you.

You understand all of reality in terms of assumptions that are not correct. He won't be able to explain this to you because he won't understand the concept of "assumption" or why it has to lead you to the wrong answers.

"If Thot comes in this his evil coming; do not open to him thine arms; that which is said to him is his name of "thou hast no mother.". If you read this as being literal and solve the words in context it might make sense to you too.

"If Science comes in this its evil coming; do not embrace it with thine arms; [As] that which is said to it, in its name of "thy mother is metaphysics.". This stuff is simple enough but between not wanting to understand, not understanding how our science works, and so many bad premises people are missing it. To understand the speciation event 4000 years ago you need to understand the nature of consciousness. To understand ancient people you have to reject the premises you learned on your parents knees. To learn anything at all you must be aware you don't know everything.

My job is more difficult than a homo sapien's job of explaining all of thot to you. You only have to unlearn language to communicate with him.

Like I said, double down.

 

[YoursTrue]

You could try reading G. Brent Dalrymple's books The Age of the Earth (Stanford University Press, 1991) and Ancient Earth, Ancient Skies (Stanford University Press, 2004). Chapter 3 of The Age of the Earth and Chapter 4 of Ancient Earth, Ancient Skies are particularly useful, since they describe radiometric dating methods.

You could also read Age of Earth - Wikipedia and Radiometric dating - Wikipedia and the references attached to these articles.

I've read about these things. They still don't explain how exactly things are dated like billions of years ago, do they? Which things? And/or the descent chronologically from fish to humans. By that I mean details regarding the method and tools used for every circumstance they're dating.

 

[cladking]

I'm not distressed that humans and acorns have similar genomes. I was taught as a child that the earth was round, like a ball. It made sense to me. So when my mother took me to the beach I'd try digging to get to the other side of the earth, maybe China. Instead little sand bugs popped out of the hole.

Live and learn.

 

[YoursTrue]

Live and learn.

yup

 

[cladking]

Not only do you have no evidence for any such thing, but the evidence against you is total.

No. If language didn't change and the nature of language didn't change then;

Why are there no abstractions in Ancient Language?
Why are there no taxonomies?
Why does it breaks Zipf's Law?
How can they have beliefs without words like "believe" or "think"?
How can they communicate with only several hundred words?
Where was the metaphysics that allowed them to build cities and invent agriculture?
Why didn't history begin for twelve centuries after the invention of writing?

Does it not follow that if a language contains all knowledge in just a few hundred words that it will become complex as new knowledge is gained?

How is it possible that archaeologists never thought to ask any of these questions?
How did every linguist who ever lived miss it?

Why are there so many anomalies and mysteries when it concerns ANYTHING before 2000 BC?

Why does PIE date only to 2000 BC?

What caused the various dark ages between 2000 and 1200 BC?

Where did the many stories about the tower of babel and a change in language arise? Why?

How did early humans survive with nothing but ignorance and superstition?

Why were no stories (history) written down when writing was invented?

What changed to cause us to forget everything before 2000 BC?

You're wrong. ALL the facts, evidence, and experiment point to a fundamental change that is invisible to us. This change was so dramatic that it can be considered a speciation event.

 

[cladking]

This change was so dramatic that it can be considered a speciation event.

Everyone who could remember it properly was a homo sapien. All homo sapiens are dead. All we have is myth and disjointed stories in and out of the Bible.

This is remarkably simple. When you start with bad assumptions you end with bad conclusions.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Everyone who could remember it properly was a homo sapien. All homo sapiens are dead. All we have is myth and disjointed stories in and out of the Bible.

This is remarkably simple. When you start with bad assumptions you end with bad conclusions.

Yep. Double down.

There you go. No one saw that coming.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Live and learn.

It is a shame to see when people decide to stop learning.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Everyone who could remember it properly was a homo sapien. All homo sapiens are dead. All we have is myth and disjointed stories in and out of the Bible.

This is remarkably simple. When you start with bad assumptions you end with bad conclusions.

Yes, that is your reasoning in a nutshell.

Ironically you are answering yourself so it looks as if you do realize that all you have are bad assumptions.

 

[exchemist]

oh ... you personally cannot claim your way back ancestor as a fish or a couple of them, is that right? Naturally there are no birth records billions of years ago. But you do agree you, not personally, but as a member (?) of the human species (and not fish) evolved from fishes that started the descent or ascent (however one may look at it) in part from fish. Thank you for your response. But naturally there are still fish. According to the theory, they didn't all evolve, leaving no fish behind. Only some of them evolved.

One type of fish led to tetrapods. Others led to modern fish, which are not the same as ancient fish, but are still fish, yes.

As for me, since I am a tetrapod, my ancient ancestors were fish. Lobe-finned fish. What you asked though is whether I personally had evolved. The answer to that is no. Evolution requires the passage of generations. I’m just one specimen of a single generation. Species evolve. Individuals do not.

 

[blü 2]

No. If language didn't change and the nature of language didn't change then;

Why are there no abstractions in Ancient Language?

I'm looking at a translation of the Sumerian tale The Debate between Bird and Fish, from about 2500 BCE ie half a millennium earlier than your "4000 years ago". It has numerous abstractions eg "the divine rules", "wisdom", "the master of destinies". "watercourses", "sheepfolds", "cattle-pens", "shepherds", "herdsmen", "cities", "settlements", on and on, just in the first few lines. So I see no substance to your claim.

Why are there no taxonomies?

Each of those abstractions above is simultaneously a category, a τὰξις.

Why does it breaks Zipf's Law?

Leaving aside that Zipf's Law is a pragmatic observation and not a generalized claim, how does Sumerian break Zipf's law? Who says so?

How can they have beliefs without words like "believe" or "think"?

"Bird [...] was convinced of its own beauty".

How can they communicate with only several hundred words?

On what basis do you assert that there were "only several hundred words" in Sumerian?

Where was the metaphysics that allowed them to build cities and invent agriculture?

They have words for cities and sheepfolds, so it seems a fair bet that they had cities and sheepfolds and indeed agriculture.

Why didn't history begin for twelve centuries after the invention of writing?

When do you say was "the beginning of writing"?

Pharaoh's account (1274 BC) of the Battle of Kadesh ─ it's generally seen as propaganda, but why is it not history?

Not one of your claims has stood up so far.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

People are married to the belief in survival of the fittest and that the fossil record must show gradual change because that's what everyone sees.

Why shouldn't people see evolution in the fossil record? That's what it represents, unless you believe somebody planted them such that the forms most resembling contemporary forms appear in the more superficial strata and with younger ages radiometrically. You accuse others of tendentious interpretation of the data to support a preconceived notion, but that's what you're doing. Like the creationists, you have decided that you don't like the scientific interpretation of the fossil record, and so reject the only reasonable understanding of the evidence.

If true then why not parse "metaphysics" as "basis of science" or at least tell me what word you're willing to accept to mean this?

I just explained to you in the last post that you have defined metaphysics with a vague phrase. I don't know what you consider the basis of science to be.

We have a rule in contract bridge, where opponents are entitled to ask you what your partner's bids mean ("What did his three club bid mean there?"), that you answer specifically, not with the name of a convention, such as, "That was an Reverse Bergen raise," since the opponents might not know what that means. A proper answer is, "It shows 10-12 points and four-card spade support." Every bridge player understands that second description, but some would not understand the first.

Can you do something similar and choose words that have more specific meanings than "the basis of science"? Give me a sentence or two I can agree or disagree with. Did you see my definition of metaphysical. Did you understand it? I don't ask if you agree - but did you understand it well enough to agree or disagree?

I never used to notice that religious people made sense and have good arguments ofttimes because I couldn't get past their premises. People make sense only in terms of their premises so if you reject all the premises it's easy to miss the sense.

That's why I reject theology and all scripture associated with an alleged deity. It's basic premise, that a god exists, is insufficiently evidenced and thus unshared (not mine or any atheists' belief), and thus no conclusion, however valid the reasoning, can be sound.

The evidence purported is that humans have some physical characteristics reminiscent of fish. That's the evidence scientists apparently use as backing up their claims. And let's not forget the land walking fish types. That is also, I suppose, claimed evidence by scientists who say that humans evolved from fish. Over billions of years, of course. Not overnight. It is also not proof tested by watching fish develop ability to breathe out of water, grow feet and eventually leave water entirely as their basic necessary breathing environment.

I would make the same comment about your posting as I did to cladking. Your words, like his, are what it looks like when somebody has decided that they don't like where the evidence leads others. You've described the world one might expect to find in which human beings had piscine ancestors, where human embryos develop through a stage with primordial gill slits and branchial pouches, and where transitional forms between finned, obligate marine vertebrates and tetrapodal, amphibious vertebrates are found. Yet you will not be persuaded. Your answer: "Not proof," as if that were a rebuttal or even relevant.

That's a choice. You choose not to be among the critically thinking, scientifically literate. But you shouldn't expect others to have much interest in what you believe instead if they have to ignore evidence to believe it.

I've read about these things. They still don't explain how exactly things are dated like billions of years ago, do they?

They don't explain it to you. Nor to anybody else who either [1] has never learned the fundamentals of the science or [2] has a stake in not understanding (or both).

 

[cladking]

I'm looking at a translation of the Sumerian tale The Debate between Bird and Fish, from about 2500 BCE ie half a millennium earlier than your "4000 years ago". It has numerous abstractions eg "the divine rules", "wisdom", "the master of destinies". "watercourses", "sheepfolds", "cattle-pens", "shepherds", "herdsmen", "cities", "settlements", on and on, just in the first few lines. So I see no substance to your claim.

There are numerous problems with your contentions here and before you spend more time trying to prove me wrong I'll delineate some.

Most importantly the story is from very late. I was sure it would be because text in Ancient Language is usually highly fragmentary.

The Debate Between Bird and Fish (c. 2000 BCE) is a Sumerian poem dated to the Ur III Period (2047-1750 BCE) when the genre of the literary debate was especially popular. The poem is the earliest extant on the theme of difficult neighbors and how quickly problems can escalate.

But the big problem is between your ears and between the ears of the translator. Modern language speakers can't understand even the simplest sentence without first parsing it. We assume this applies to Ancient Language as well and never even consider not parsing it. Meaning in AL is destroyed when the words are parsed. This is the means by which all the fantastical ancient writing arose. It was parsed. Part of coming to understand the meaning is to recognize that it can't be parsed. If the word "love" appears it is not an abstraction. It is the experience of having someone close from your own amygdala. Every word used has a single fixed meaning so don't parse them. If you think its's an abstraction or taxonomy you are misunderstanding it. We use taxonomies as mnemonics, they did not.

Another problem is that writing was invented in 3200 BC for the sole purpose of communicating with pidgin language speakers. Meaning didn't drift in AL but messages relayed in our language drift wildly. Translation is impossible but edicts from the state still needed to be disseminated among the population. Perhaps "babel" represented one of these places where edicts were posted or the source. Each pidgin language speaker could read the edict and get a feel for its meaning or have a neighbor read it to him. While all official language from history to science to affairs of the state still occurred in AL writing was used principally for communication with (to) those who were less educated and or less "intelligent". It was almost impossible for anyone raised speaking pidgin language to ever be educated because he must first unlearn language and rewire his brain. A great deal of the very little writing that survives is pidgin. It is exceedingly difficult to differentiate these because translators parse them both so you need an extensive amount of writing to even determine if it's AL or not. I've already researched Sumerian and have not found sufficient writing to crack it. I'm sure it could be done by others but it won't be as easy as the Egyptian dialect of AL. I figured out the meaning of only two or three words and gave up. A virtual corpus of writing is needed to use my methods. It must be possible to deduce the subject of the corpus and ideally it can be studied concurrently.

On what basis do you assert that there were "only several hundred words" in Sumerian?

I've never studied it in depth and am merely assuming if I had a corpus where none exist it would be like the one corpus in Egyptian dialect that does exist. Egyptian has only several hundred words (other than a significant number of nouns that are mostly subject specific). Linguists never noticed this for a multitude of reasons such as assigning various definitions to every word. They didn't notice any of this because they parse the language and began with the assumption that it was magical doggerel to start with. They assumed there was a steady evolution in humans from the earliest times so never noticed the copious evidence that there was instead a massive shift and speciation event.

There are many ways to count words. My brain does this automatically which is how I knew that it breaks Zipf's Law and had so many strange properties. I use word selection to understand author intent even in English. Structure and selection say things about the speaker he didn't intend to say but it also sheds light on what he did intend. I see different patterns than most people which is a characteristic of consciousness and drives speciation but it also shows connections that are between seemingly unrelated phenomena. We each are very different because our brains are wired not only by our beliefs but by the underlying hardware.

 

[cladking]

Why shouldn't people see evolution in the fossil record? That's what it represents,...

No. It is merely evidence and all evidence must be interpreted. I believe it shows change in species. It might well also show these changes are sudden but this is interpretation more than observation.

Later...

 

[gnostic]

"If Thot comes in this his evil coming; do not open to him thine arms; that which is said to him is his name of "thou hast no mother.".

1271a The Pyramid Texts: The Pyramid Texts: 26. For The Protection of the Pyramid Enclosure Against Osiris and His Cycle, Utterance 534

A homo sapien long dead wrote this. Tell him it makes no sense because, as I said, it makes perfect sense to me.

Tell him about the Greeks too. I'm sure he'll get a kick out of it. Then explain to him how he invented agriculture and built cities and pyramids. Explain to him how you've come to know everything and why he's wrong to believe in gods when he doesn't even have a word for god. Be sure not to use even one abstraction and don't let your explanation obey Zipf's Law or he'll surely not understand you.

You understand all of reality in terms of assumptions that are not correct. He won't be able to explain this to you because he won't understand the concept of "assumption" or why it has to lead you to the wrong answers.

"If Thot comes in this his evil coming; do not open to him thine arms; that which is said to him is his name of "thou hast no mother.". If you read this as being literal and solve the words in context it might make sense to you too.

"If Science comes in this its evil coming; do not embrace it with thine arms; [As] that which is said to it, in its name of "thy mother is metaphysics.". This stuff is simple enough but between not wanting to understand, not understanding how our science works, and so many bad premises people are missing it. To understand the speciation event 4000 years ago you need to understand the nature of consciousness. To understand ancient people you have to reject the premises you learned on your parents knees. To learn anything at all you must be aware you don't know everything.

My job is more difficult than a homo sapien's job of explaining all of thot to you. You only have to unlearn language to communicate with him.

That’s all daft.

 

[cladking]

Like the creationists, you have decided that you don't like the scientific interpretation of the fossil record, and so reject the only reasonable understanding of the evidence.

No. I am saying it is not scientific because no experiment underlies the interpretation. Modern science does not exist outside metaphysics.

I just explained to you in the last post that you have defined metaphysics with a vague phrase. I don't know what you consider the basis of science to be.

We have a rule in contract bridge, where opponents are entitled to ask you what your partner's bids mean ("What did his three club bid mean there?"), that you answer specifically, not with the name of a convention, such as, "That was an Reverse Bergen raise," since the opponents might not know what that means. A proper answer is, "It shows 10-12 points and four-card spade support." Every bridge player understands that second description, but some would not understand the first.

Can you do something similar and choose words that have more specific meanings than "the basis of science"? Give me a sentence or two I can agree or disagree with. Did you see my definition of metaphysical. Did you understand it? I don't ask if you agree - but did you understand it well enough to agree or disagree?

You can use any definition you choose and when you use the word i will parse your sentence accordingly. Unless obviously intended otherwise when I use the word I always mean "basis of science" which is "Observation > Experiment" for homo omnisciencis and Observation > Logic" for all other species.

That's why I reject theology and all scripture associated with an alleged deity. It's basic premise, that a god exists, is insufficiently evidenced and thus unshared (not mine or any atheists' belief), and thus no conclusion, however valid the reasoning, can be sound.

Most people who are religious accept this as a premise. I seriously doubt that accepting this premise is necessarily harmful to any individual and is apparently beneficial to at least some.

My point that you are missing is that the original authors of this stuff did not believe in god and understood no abstractions. It is their meaning I am seeking. Bear in mind though that this is ancillary to the development of my theory which is evidence, logic, and experiment based. Nothing I do, say, or believe is based on any assumptions other than I previously stated.

 

[cladking]

That’s all daft.

So why do you believe ancient people said ""If Thot comes in this his evil coming; do not open to him thine arms; that which is said to him is his name of "thou hast no mother."? There must be some reason they used these words to express something. They could have used an infinite number of other words to express this concept but they chose these. Why? What did they mean?

To me this is simple because the meaning is obvious after words are solved in context. They simply meant that if human progress backfired on individuals that one shouldn't be chummy with it; that the goal of every individual is to see that all individuals profit from this process whose origin is unknown to them. Read it again:

"If Thot comes in this his evil coming; do not open to him thine arms; that which is said to him is his name of "thou hast no mother.".

What do you think it means?

The entire corpus means exactly what it says. the entire thing should be taken literally and as 'gospel' because it's all true and in agreement with nature and natural "law" as they understood it. The language is literal and metaphysical.

 

[cladking]

The entire corpus means exactly what it says. the entire thing should be taken literally and as 'gospel' because it's all true and in agreement with nature and natural "law" as they understood it. The language is literal and metaphysical.

Just as a bee's dance is literal and metaphysical. Nature is literal and metaphysical in most senses. Life is nature incarnate and consciousness is literal and metaphysical in the sense we must see patterns in order to learn. Reality is logic and species duplicate this logic in their genome and in the way their brains and nervous system evolve into adulthood. Only homo omnisciencis is the odd man out. We are different because we experience "thought" rather than "consciousness". We experience thought as a result of having beliefs about reality rather than knowledge. Modern language is an operating system that causes this to always be true.

Why don't you tell me a simpler way to say any of this to communicate with other homo omnisciencis?

 

[Astrophile]

I've read about these things. They still don't explain how exactly things are dated like billions of years ago, do they? Which things? And/or the descent chronologically from fish to humans. By that I mean details regarding the method and tools used for every circumstance they're dating.

Have you actually read Dalrymple's books? They explain radiometric dating in detail, including U-Pb, Pb-Pb,, K-Ar and 40Ar-39Ar, Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd, Lu-Hf and Re-Os methods. You could also read The Dating Game by Cherry Lewis (Cambridge University Press, 2000), which gives an interesting history of radiometric dating from the beginning of the 20th century. You can find a geological time scale in any geology book, and most will include some information about dating methods.

Specifically, radiometric measurements of terrestrial igneous rocks have established consistent geological time-scales both for the fossiliferous systems (Cambrian to Recent) and for the Precambrian (Proterozoic and Archaean eras), back to 4000 million years ago. Similar measurements of meteorites and lunar rocks, using Ar-Ar, Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd, Lu-Hf and Re-Os dating, have taken the history of the solar system back to more than 4560 million years. The ages of terrestrial sedimentary rocks and the fossils they contain are obtained by interpolation between the radiometric ages of volcanic rocks (including ash beds) above and below the sedimentary rocks. The geological time scale is by now so well established that the published ages of the geological periods and epochs have changed by only a few percent in the last 40 years, so that it is not necessary to carry out radiometric dating for every rock formation if its stratigraphic position is well known.

If you want to know about the fossil evidence for evolution and its chronology, you will have to read books about palaeontology.