we're up to post #141, and noone has yet posted an error that he has made.
kt2020,
Not my definition but Dawkins, so know we finally have agreement.
I agree with you that a lot of what Dawkins says is so spurious as to be almost nonsensical.
2020 just remember Dawkins is not infallible, although as the Taliban of Athiests, i guess he probably thinks that he is.
We are better than that, we use reason and logic.
Dawkins is so intolerant in his writings that it is not hard to see why the Gulags of Stalin, the killing fields of Pol Pot, Hitler's gas chambers, the cultural revolution of MAO and so on were all made possible in our so called enlightened societies.
i.e. he uses the "perfect 4 suites hand" as extremely unlikelyWhat Dawkins does is to get us to imagine (no less!) a "spectrum" of probabilities. At one end we have events like rolling a double six with a pair of dice, where the probability is 1 in 36. At or well toward the other end is the probability of four players at bridge each receiving a complete suit of cards, which he calculates to be 2,236,197,406,895,366,368,301,559,999 to 1.
Between the double six and the perfect deal at bridge is a range of more or less improbable events that do sometimes happen.
Now: "Go back to our mental picture of a graduated scale of improbable events with its benchmark coincidences of bridge hands and dice throws. On this graduated scale of dealions and microdealions, mark the following three new points.
Probability of life arising on a planet (in, say, a billion years), if we assume that life arises at a rate of about once per solar system.
Probability of life arising on a planet if life arises at a rate of about once per galaxy.
Probability of life on a randomly selected planet if life arose only once in the universe."
The actual probability of life originating (in some such manner as hypothesized above) "probably lies somewhere between the extremes represented" for a planet at once per solar system and at once per universe.
http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199601-02/0312.html
>DM>I think that you may have made an error in assuming that Dawkins
>was talking about the same "bridge" event on page 162 as he was on
>page 161.
SJ>Sorry Derek, but that won't wash. Most readers would regard "a
>perfect deal in bridge" (p161) as the same as "a perfect bridge
>hand" (p162).
DM>I don't see why? On page 161, Dawkins clearly describes "a perfect
>deal in bridge" as being "where each of the four players receives a
>complete suit of cards". On page 162, Dawkins writes, concerning his
>hypothetical long-lived aliens, "They will expect to be dealt a
>perfect bridge hand from time to time ..." For a person (or alien)
>to be dealt "a perfect bridge hand" it only requires that the cards
>*in their hand* be all of one suit. This is the common usage of the
>terms "deal" and "hand". I don't play bridge, but I have played
>enough euchre and 500 to know the difference between a deal and a
>hand.
It may be that by detailed analysis one could argue that the "perfect
deal in bridge" (p161) is different from the "perfect bridge hand"
(p162). But the average reader would not make that distinction,
especially since Dawkins introduces the idea of a "perfect bridge
hand" with no explanation.
SJ>If Dawkins has switched meanings between pages then it is just
>another example of his use of subtle "tricks of the advocate's trade"
>("The Blind Watchmaker", 1991, ppxiv).
DM>Is it? How do you know? Is it not more likely that he simply
>assumed that his readers would know the difference between a deal and
>a hand. If he is remiss, then it is because he did not explicitly
>state the probability of receiving a perfect hand in bridge (for the
>record, it is approximately 251,963,120,000 to 1), which would have
>made more evident the difference between a deal and a hand.
If he had said *anything* about "the difference between a deal and a
hand", it would have helped.
ripper bb lolHeh heh what a crack up i just you tubed it quality is a bit how ya goin but heres the link t have a look, love the last comment "how we suppose to use it again" LOL
On one of the Moon missions, NASA astronauts decided to prove Galileo Galilei right.
He reasoned that if there was no atmosphere, no dragging force then two objects of different mass falling from the same height would hit the ground at the same time.
The astronomer drops a hammer and a feather on the surface of the Moon.
---
It's Never too Late to Study:
http://www.FreeScienceLectures.com
It`s time to grab Leela and K9 for another journey in the Tardis because come middle of next year (2008) we will be closer to understanding the Universe we live in.
Hmmm, that's supposed to say- "why are fundamental (Elemental by the above video) particles called gluons and quarks?""who named these fundamental particles?"
:topicHmmm, that's supposed to say- "why are fundamental (Elemental by the above video) particles called gluons and quarks?"
Don't know what I was thinking... I was at work
from article said:Saturn’s orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new Cassini data. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes.
Boomerang returns, even in space
Posted 18 minutes ago
In an unprecedented experiment, a Japanese astronaut has thrown a boomerang in space and confirmed it flies back, much like on Earth.
Astronaut Takao Doi "threw a boomerang and saw it come back" during his free time on March 18 at the International Space Station (ISS), a spokeswoman at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.
Mr Doi threw the boomerang after a request from compatriot Yasuhiro Togai, a world boomerang champion.
"I was very surprised and moved to see that it flew the same way it does on Earth," the Mainichi Shimbun daily quoted the 53-year-old astronaut as telling his wife in a chat from space.
The space agency said a videotape of the experiment would likely be released later.
Doi travelled on US shuttle Endeavour on the March 11 blast-off and successfully delivered the first piece of a Japanese laboratory to the ISS.
I mean, perhaps it's based on Einstein's theory that if you look in a telescope long enough you see the back of your head2020 said:wouldn't you love to know what the diameter of the arc was!
derty-on-the-did-you-know-thread said:A solid state fan has been invented!
It's got no moving parts and it blows air! It blows air and it's got NO moving parts!
We really are in the 21st Century.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/72400,silent-microchip-fan-has-no-moving-parts.aspx
http://www.thorrn.com/technology.html
cripes - it's back to square 1 for me ... never heard of this stuff."why are fundamental particles called gluons and quarks?"
Definitions of charm quark:
noun: a quark with an electric charge of +2/3 and a mass 2900 times that of an electron and a charm of +1
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?