More "miscellany" PARTS ONE & TWO (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, January 10, 2023, 11:52 (444 days ago) @ David Turell

T-cells

DAVID: The cells automatically do their chores. In order for immunity to work and protect, it all must be put together at one time, irreducibly complex.

dhw: For immunity to work, cells must find solutions to an almost endless flow of new problems. The enabling mechanism (e.g. cellular intelligence) must be present and functioning from the start (from bacteria onwards). The solutions, however, will require step-by-step evolution as the “library” expands. You wrote that evolution moves from simple to complex. The immune system follows the same pattern

DAVID: The bold is totally wrong. Creating antibodies is a complete system from the beginning: the system identifies the "non-self" protein and adds a specific killing set of molecules, which are never changed. The immune system starts as very complex. Each new antibody is different because each invader is different.

Hence the evolution of the complex immune system, which becomes even more complex by adding new antibodies to its ever expanding “library".

dhw: In your new theory, his firsthand experiments have a 99% failure rate, so I would suggest that “secondhand” design would be far less damaging to his reputation for efficiency.

DAVID: Stop beating a dead horse. 99% of all evolving forms disappeared.

Precisely. And so instead of a firsthand designing God making mistake after mistake, we have him giving organisms the means to do their own ("secondhand") designing. The failures then become theirs and not his. It’s an alternative to the weak, bumbling God you have advocated in your new theory.

Four types of nothing
DAVID: And Guth et al proved there was no 'before', before the Big Bang. That seems to mean there was nothing material preceding the Big Bang.

dhw: [...] We agreed long ago that nobody could prove there was no “before”! Your view was that your God preceded the BB, and may have designed other universes before ours. I don’t recall any definition of nothing as being an immaterial mind which might have created universes before ours.

DAVID: Guth must get involved in this discussion!! God is an immaterial nothing. No material matter existed before the Big Bang.

dhw: Your God’s conscious, creative, planning mind may be immaterial, but why is it “nothing”? If you believe in an immaterial soul that survives death, does that mean nothing survives death?

DAVID: Nothing material is the issue!! An immaterial mind is something to discuss recognizing it exists in a realm in witch we do not.

You accepted the possibility that your God created material universes before ours, which directly refuted Guth. Now you are agreeing that an immaterial mind is not “nothing”, but you say that there was no material matter before the BB!

dhw: A year ago, prior BBs were possible, today apparently they are impossible, tomorrow who knows?

DAVID: Possible prior BB's means there was possible previous time! Nothing changed!

And possible prior BBs meant there were possible material universes before our BB, so why do you continue to defend Guth?

Far out cosmology

QUOTE: "What's really out there in the Milky Way galaxy, and beyond, may be very different from what we actually see."

DAVID: it is just too soon to reach any conclusion. The technology needs further development.

dhw: I wish you would maintain the same open-mindedness when you discuss the conclusions reached by folk like Denton, Siegel and Guth.

DAVID: I present Denton, Guth and Siegel open mindedly with full quotes. It is your pre-established wishes for theories I constantly have to refute.

You present their theories, appear to find them acceptable, and I explain why I find them unacceptable. I don't know what my “pre-established wishes” are meant to refer to.

Reality: in quantum mechanics

The question asked at the beginning of the article is: “What is the true nature of our quantum reality”? The quotes that follow are misleading, as they seem to imply that quantum reality is the only reality.

QUOTES: "The idea that there is a fundamental, objective, observer-independent reality is an assumption with no evidence behind it, just thousands upon thousands of years of our intuition telling us “It should be so.”

"But science does not exist to show that reality conforms to our biases and prejudices and opinions; it seeks to uncover the nature of reality irrespective of our biases. If we really want to understand quantum mechanics, the goal should be more about letting go of our biases and embracing, without additional assumptions, what the Universe tells us about itself.

If I step in front of a moving bus, I have no doubt that I'll get hurt. If I have no food, I have no doubt that I'll starve. I once had a wife. She died nine years ago. When we talk of “reality”, we do not confine ourselves to quantum mechanics, and the goal of science is not confined to understanding quantum mechanics, and whatever may be the “reality” of quantum mechanics does not alter the realities of our everyday experiences.

This careless use of the word “reality” is a constant source of misunderstanding. If Ethan Siegel truly believes that neither he nor the moving bus exists independently of an observer, then so be it, but I’d strongly advise him to avoid the moving bus.


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