|
Welcome to the International Skeptics Forum, where we discuss skepticism, critical thinking, the paranormal and science in a friendly but lively way. You are currently viewing the forum as a guest, which means you are missing out on discussing matters that are of interest to you. Please consider registering so you can gain full use of the forum features and interact with other Members. Registration is simple, fast and free! Click here to register today. |
1st January 2019, 09:22 PM | #161 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 14,185
|
|
1st January 2019, 09:26 PM | #162 |
Muse
Join Date: Dec 2018
Posts: 536
|
|
1st January 2019, 09:48 PM | #163 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Shanghai
Posts: 16,041
|
It has to do with the fact that you are denying that when a cell reproduces that after that process the original cell is still alive. Either that, or you can differentiate between the cell which was alive before cell division and the cell which was created through that process.
I really don't understand how you can't see the importance of this fact to what you are arguing. |
__________________
"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov |
|
1st January 2019, 09:52 PM | #164 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Shanghai
Posts: 16,041
|
|
__________________
"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov |
|
1st January 2019, 10:28 PM | #165 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: South Africa
Posts: 2,934
|
I still don't see your argument. All of that is again, completely besides the point. You have a very odd definition of living or being alive. Life is a complex chemical reaction, it continues as long the reaction continues. The fact that the specific molecules involved in this reaction are not conserved but food is taken in and incorporated and waste products produced and excreted is the very essence of how life works. Really? What has that to do with anything? Why are you so fixated on things being exactly the same? Just answer this. If you cut a planarian in two, both bits heal, recover, start eating and growing. Now do it again and again and again. Were the planarians you end up with continuously alive since the first one? |
__________________
"... when you dig my grave, could you make it shallow so that I can feel the rain" - DMB |
|
1st January 2019, 10:33 PM | #166 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 12,632
|
Kind of along the same line of thought, nobody knows what causes identical twins. The "what happens" is known, but not the "why" of the early split.
|
__________________
"We are enjoined, no matter how uncomfortable it might be, to consider ourselves and our cultural institutions scientifically — not to accept uncritically whatever we’re told; to surmount as best we can our hopes, conceits, and unexamined beliefs; to view ourselves as we really are." - Carl Sagan |
|
2nd January 2019, 12:48 AM | #167 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: Nelson, New Zealand
Posts: 25,306
|
|
__________________
If you're not a scientist but you think you've destroyed the foundation of a vast scientific edifice with 10 minutes of Googling, you might want to consider the possibility that you're wrong. Its TRE45ON season... convict the F45CIST!! |
|
2nd January 2019, 01:00 AM | #168 |
In the Peanut Gallery
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Melbourne
Posts: 54,892
|
|
__________________
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. Sir Winston Churchill |
|
2nd January 2019, 03:38 AM | #169 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Nov 2014
Location: Dharug & Gundungurra
Posts: 16,809
|
I suspect it is some technicality involving the dateline. Or the definitions of "most eastern" and "most western".
Also, all US military ships and boats operate on Zulu time. So could it be whichever state has the main navy headquarters? ETA: It's the dateline thing! The Aleutians extend across the dateline into "tomorrow". https://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/nsewusa.htm |
__________________
...our governments are just trying to protect us from terror. In the same way that someone banging a hornets’ nest with a stick is trying to protect us from hornets. Frankie Boyle, Guardian, July 2015 |
|
2nd January 2019, 05:08 AM | #170 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: May 2011
Posts: 22,841
|
|
2nd January 2019, 05:29 AM | #171 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Dec 2010
Posts: 32,124
|
You seem here to be arguing that when a cell divides it dies and two newborn daughter cells replace it, rather than that the cell continues living as two new cells. Can you link to any scientific source that says the same?
Furthermore, this is different to what you previously argued, where you talked about a cell that had divided remaining alive and there being a new cell that continued on to divide while the original died: |
__________________
I don't trust atoms. They make up everything. |
|
2nd January 2019, 07:58 AM | #172 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Feb 2017
Posts: 6,661
|
|
2nd January 2019, 08:30 AM | #173 |
Disorder of Kilopi
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: State of Flux
Posts: 17,625
|
Not a single fact, but an important perspective based on many facts: More Is Different. Truly enlightening, especially when I first read it.
The ideas presented are the reason I normally say, for example, that calculating the probability of your existence, starting from the BB, is pure rubbish. Humans are [undefined] at that time; there is simply no probability to calculate (i.e., constructionism does not work). (Ignoring, of course, that such arguments have other issues, and implying along the way that I am not a determinist.) |
__________________
"His real name is Count Douchenozzle von Stenchfahrter und Lichtendicks." - Da Joik |
|
2nd January 2019, 09:22 AM | #175 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Apr 2011
Posts: 17,646
|
Dear Brainache,
SB's and other upthread posts are the way to see it: Cell A divides, its guts go into two daughter cells, B and B' and those cells carry on. Cell A continuously becomes cells B and B' even as it is being pinched into two: it doesn't cease to exist just because it is pinched into two and cells B and B' go on doing what A was doing. There is no real halt. If the cells divide evenly (many or most do): the contents of the original A are pinched evenly into the two new cells B and B', which are each half the size of the original cell right after the division but are fully made of the contents of the original cell A at that time. Cells B and B' then grow over their life times, acquire and assemble new molecules to add to the contents they got from the original cell A until they are big enough to divide. At that time each of the two new cells B and B' are half made up of old cell A's guts and half made up of the newly synthesized stuff (ignoring wear and tear and repair, which happen equally in both cells) . When B and B' divide they are pinched into two to each form two new cells of their own. The result is four new cells, C, C' and D, D,' each of which starts out half the size of its mom B or B' and each starts out fully made up of the guts of its mom cell B or B' (which means half the guts of cell A). They then grow by synthesizing and assembling new molecules until each is big enough to divide and each is 1/4 the guts of cell A and 3/4's new stuff acquired by the B and B' cells and by themselves. They divide, etc. BTW: DNA replicates "semi-conservatively." That means at each division the original double stranded DNA divides into two single strands, each of which synthesize a new strand to become double again. So each of the daughter double stranded DNAs is half an original strand and half a new strand. So each daughter cell gets a DNA that is half original and half-new; there is no cell that gets to keep all the original DNA. Sure the cell's contents are diluted at each generation but it is a continuous process. The biochemical events continue all throughout this time. The chemical processes and materials that make the cell a living cell never cease as this happens: they continue. It is this continuity that is being emphasized in the story that the living reactions that comprised the original cells 3 billion years ago have passed unbroken to comprise the cells of our bodies today. This occurs even within one's own life time. Each of us began as a single fertilized zygote and as an adult we are composed of about 10 trillion cells. That boarders on homeopathy and, given Avogadro's number, means that the amount of original zygote guts (even assuming no loss) becomes a molecule here and a molecule there among the 10 trillion cells of the adult But I know of no one who would argue that we as adults are not the continuous cellular heirs of what we were as fertilized zygotes. The very same ideas apply between generations, from primordial ooze to us. There are some twists. Not all cells divide equally. Baker's yeast for example divides unequally leaving a big cell (conventionally called the mother cell) and a budded cell (conventionally called the daughter). Nonetheless the contents of the original cell are pinched off so both the mother and daughter start out completely composed of the contents of the original cell; it is just that the daughter starts off smaller and has to grow more until it can become a mother cell, so the original cell's contents are diluted more with newly synthesized stuff as the bud grows to full size compared to the mother cell. There is also wear and tear such that some of the guts in all cells get turned over separate from division. And many cells are discarded over this time (in fact all of our 10 trillion cells except few, the lucky sperm or ova that give rise to our children,, are discarded when we die. But the concepts are the same. Apologies for the length of this reply. |
2nd January 2019, 09:23 AM | #176 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 19,788
|
|
__________________
Any sufficiently advanced idea is indistinguishable from idiocy to those who don't actually understanding the concept. |
|
2nd January 2019, 09:24 AM | #177 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Sep 2001
Posts: 21,398
|
|
__________________
Gunter Haas, the 'leading British expert,' was a graphologist who advised couples, based on their handwriting characteristics, if they were compatible for marriage. I would submit that couples idiotic enough to do this are probably quite suitable for each other. It's nice when stupid people find love. - Ludovic Kennedy |
|
2nd January 2019, 09:25 AM | #178 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 19,788
|
You can sail through the panama canal underwater in a full sized submarine.
|
__________________
Any sufficiently advanced idea is indistinguishable from idiocy to those who don't actually understanding the concept. |
|
2nd January 2019, 09:51 AM | #180 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Apr 2011
Posts: 17,646
|
Brainache:
Life is a bit the Ship of Theseus concept of identity except it occurs even within the life of a given cell, continuously, and at a very finely detailed level. For example retinal cells do not divide in adults, so one retinal cell must last 70 years. That cell is maintained by continuously adding new molecules to repair those that wear out. At any given moment only a few of these new molecules are added, but over 70 years virtually all the original molecules have been replaced by new. Is it the "same" cell? I think the easy answer is yes: it has the same architecture, position, and does the same things it always has for 70 years and has done so continuously. A Ship of Theseus but with molecules of wood and bronze being replaced instead of entire rudders and keels, and with the replacements being done under sail so that the function of the ship never stops. Oh - btw - I think our 3 billion year discussion only relates to the time since the rise of cells and is easiest (but not necessarily limited) if restricted to the time since the appearance of DNA as the genetic material although it does still work okay if stretched back to RNA life. |
2nd January 2019, 09:52 AM | #181 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Apr 2011
Posts: 17,646
|
|
2nd January 2019, 10:20 AM | #182 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Apr 2011
Posts: 17,646
|
Yes, all the ova of the adult female are formed when they are still a fetus. And it is generally believed therefore that females are born with all the oocytes that they ever will have.
Interestingly these primary oocytes are stuck in a division stage called meiosis I and they will remain stuck for decades until it is each their turn in an ovulation cycle, at which time the primary oocyte that is released will complete meiosis I but then get stuck at a different stage called meiosis II. It is only if they are fertilized that they can complete meiosis II to become haploid, just before the sperm's nucleus fuses with their nucleus to make the cell diploid again. In essence the most important part of forming a gamete, making it haploid, stretches out over decades in oocytes with two major pauses that create unfinished works in progress. Sperm in the adult male go through these processes without any halts. Not clear why the difference. |
2nd January 2019, 10:22 AM | #183 |
Lackey
Administrator
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: South East, UK
Posts: 113,982
|
|
__________________
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
|
2nd January 2019, 10:31 AM | #184 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Dec 2010
Posts: 32,124
|
|
__________________
I don't trust atoms. They make up everything. |
|
2nd January 2019, 10:31 AM | #185 |
Self Employed
Remittance Man Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Florida
Posts: 46,649
|
Jesus Christ this isn't that hard. Yes, life as a continuous biochemical process is never ending but we need to sometimes refer to individual organisms and other collections of cells/biological matter and those can die.
Organism Death and Cell Death are two different things but the term "Death" is colloquially used to describe both. |
__________________
"If everyone in the room says water is wet and I say it's dry that makes me smart because at least I'm thinking for myself!" - The Proudly Wrong. |
|
2nd January 2019, 10:58 AM | #187 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: Sorth Dakonsin
Posts: 29,368
|
I love the old submarine movies where the sub is in the Arctic getting depth charged, and ice chunks are crashing down all around it and into the hull.
|
__________________
Science is self-correcting. Woo is self-contradicting. |
|
2nd January 2019, 11:08 AM | #189 |
Pi
Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 21,797
|
39 digits of Pi would suffice to calculate the circumference of the known universe to the width of a hydrogen atom
|
__________________
Up the River! Anyone that wraps themselves in the Union Flag and also lives in tax exile is a [redacted] |
|
2nd January 2019, 11:33 AM | #190 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 56,425
|
|
__________________
"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
|
2nd January 2019, 11:43 AM | #191 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 6,092
|
The Eiffel tower is up to six inches taller in the summertime.
Every year, Hawaii moves 3 inches closer to Alaska. If you took out all the space between the subatomic particles of our bodies, the entire human race combined would be smaller than a sugar cube. |
__________________
Promise of diamonds in eyes of coal She carries beauty in her soul |
|
2nd January 2019, 11:47 AM | #192 |
Pi
Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 21,797
|
India is moving northwards at about the same speed your fingernails grow.
This one's off the top of my head, I haven't checked it. I find the Himalayas to be convincing evidence though |
__________________
Up the River! Anyone that wraps themselves in the Union Flag and also lives in tax exile is a [redacted] |
|
2nd January 2019, 12:00 PM | #193 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 6,092
|
|
__________________
Promise of diamonds in eyes of coal She carries beauty in her soul |
|
2nd January 2019, 12:11 PM | #194 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Apr 2011
Posts: 17,646
|
|
2nd January 2019, 12:14 PM | #195 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: May 2011
Posts: 22,841
|
Its quite well known. See wiki "Penguin Island, a 1908 French satirical novel by the Nobel Prize winning author Anatole France, narrates the fictional history of a great auk population that mistakenly, is baptized by a nearsighted missionary." In this satire God decides to correct the missionary's error by turning the baptised penguins into human beings, and Anatole France then proceeds to write a parody of French history, in the guise of a mythical country Penguinia whose inhabitants are the descendants of these transformed seabirds.
|
2nd January 2019, 12:39 PM | #196 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Way way north of Diddy Wah Diddy
Posts: 36,113
|
It's been many years since I read that book, but I don't remember that the "aukness" of the birds is mentioned there. It reminds me, though, that it's about time to read it again. I read it first when I was about 17, and named my first car (which had no right to run at all) "St. Mael" in honor of the stone in which the missionary set forth.
|
__________________
Like many humorless and indignant people, he is hard on everybody but himself, and does not perceive it when he fails his own ideal (Molière) A pedant is a man who studies a vacuum through instruments that allow him to draw cross-sections of the details (John Ciardi) |
|
2nd January 2019, 12:43 PM | #197 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: The Antimemetics Division
Posts: 69,914
|
Not if you took out all the space between the subatomic particles of the sugar cube.
I admit to being amused by the (true) notion that most of what we think of as "solid" objects is really just interacting force fields. My favorite scientific fact: A pound of feathers weighs as much as a pound of lead. |
2nd January 2019, 12:44 PM | #198 |
Illuminator
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 3,693
|
|
__________________
Un-american Jack-booted thug Graduate of a liberal arts college! Faster play faster faster play faster |
|
2nd January 2019, 12:45 PM | #199 |
Self Employed
Remittance Man Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Florida
Posts: 46,649
|
Generally in the surface/aviation fleets all tactical systems and mission planning stayed on UTC, all administrative and day to day functions were (usually) adjusted to the local time.
Subs I think stay on UTC. |
__________________
"If everyone in the room says water is wet and I say it's dry that makes me smart because at least I'm thinking for myself!" - The Proudly Wrong. |
|
2nd January 2019, 12:58 PM | #200 |
Illuminator
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 3,693
|
|
__________________
Un-american Jack-booted thug Graduate of a liberal arts college! Faster play faster faster play faster |
|
Thread Tools | |
|
|