XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: Taemon@zonnet.nl   
      
   Uhm. Sorry? Bit of an empty phrase by now. Let's wrap it up, I've got   
   just a few things left to say.   
      
    > Paul S. Person wrote:   
    > Actually, in my experience, idiocy is pretty easy to recognize ... as   
   > long as it isn't your own.   
      
   Yes. So I'd say it isn't easy to recognise at all.   
      
   > Paul S. Person wrote:   
   > Of course, I did have that discussion some time back, which I lost and   
   > which nobody helped, which led to the conclusion that "random"   
   > actually means "fully deterministic, we just can't compute the   
   > outcome".   
      
   That's true in a lot of cases. But not all.   
      
   > It is my understanding (and therefore quite possibly wrong) that   
   > mutations are random, or at least, those mutations produced by cosmic   
   > rays and other forms of radiation, are random. That being the case, I   
   > don't think it can be said that that there is /nothing/ random about   
   > evolution.   
      
   Yes, I meant natural selection. Some kinds of mutations are random, some   
   are not. Selection isn't. Of course, there would be no evolution at all   
   if selection was random. Apologies for my less than stellar word choice.   
      
    > Taemon wrote:   
   >> It is very hard for human beings not to think in terms of agency, it   
   >> lies at the core of our thinking and feeling. One of the strenghts of   
   >> science is that it is a mechanism to protect ourselves against the   
   >> faults in our reasoning. I think it is very important to keep all hints   
   >> of teleology out of our theories.   
   > It occurs to me that you are using "teleology" in much the same way I   
   > am using "religious belief".   
      
   An astute observation.   
      
   > Paul S. Person wrote:   
   > Another fascinating pair of developments reported in /Science News/   
   > involve some strange uses of information theory: one uses it to recast   
   > gravitation as a sort of diffusion, and replaces Dark Energy (the   
   > current explanation, if that is the word, for the expansion of   
   > space/time, if I understand it at all) with a very large amount of   
   > information at the outer edge of the universe. Starting from the other   
   > end, another group has used the principles of information theory plus   
   > one more to derive quantum mechanics. Neither article mentioned this,   
   > but, theoris of both gravitation and quantum mechanics based on   
   > information theory could lead to the GUT -- or even the TOE.   
      
   I read that piece...  well, not in Science News. I read an   
   article by one Michael Moyer called "Is Space Digital?" which covered   
   the - the - sphere of information. Fascinating!   
      
   Feel free to not reply, obviously.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)