Just in: Faster than light neutrinos confirmed for now, contra Einstein

PS: Remember, too, to get incremental evolutionary adaptation to niches, you have to first build a system with complex function. As has been pointed out over and over, the focus of design thought is how to get to those islands of function in vast config spaces. let's note from Durston and Chiu on the protein space, in the first gene:

“The primary feature of FSC that distinguishes it from RSC and OSC, is the imposition of functional controls upon the sequence.” (p. 161) They then measure the FSC for various protein families, showing that functional protein sequences are rare. They believe there is “almost infinitesimal size of functional sequence space relative to the size of the entire sequence space for a given number of sites.” (p. 175)

kairosfocus

P: Nope, you can provide the analytical framework for the problem. Engineers do this all the time with complex, chaos-riddled systems, you just make sure the system does not get out of hand by being left to itself, a good technique being inject a feedback control loop or an algorithmic, step by step controlled development of the system, which is of course exactly what we see in life; cf the algorithmic code based formation and chaperoned folding of proteins. KF kairosfocus

Onlookers, when P is reduced to setting up and knocking over strawmen in two different threads, you know things are progressing. :-) kairosfocus

Petrushka, you know or should know that the materialist ideologisation of current origins studies is a problem in an entirely different domain. The problem is not science, but materialist ideologisation of science in certain specific domains. KF kairosfocus

More to the point, the current situation is a prime example of a moment in science where unexpected results open up the world of ideas, and everything must be re-examined. I would bet a small amount of money that the result will be resolved by finding some error in the analysis of the experiment. But that's just a guess. Regardless of the outcome, it's a moment when science is at its best, reconsidering core assumptions. Petrushka

Emerging phenomena are by definition not predictable. One cannot predict the properties of water from the properties of hydrogen and the properties of oxygen, and yet the properties of water are deterministic. Similarly one cannot predict either the properties nor the potential usefulness of a protein fold except by doing it. There are whole classes of complex problems that can only be solved by evolution, because one cannot anticipate the effects of small changes. Petrushka

Materialism and mainstream science really fell down in the first quarter of the 20th century, when it was unable to cope with the implications of the ultraviolet catastrophe, and was unable to cast off the blinders of billiard ball determinism and embrace new and revolutionary ideas like general relativity and quantum theory. Yes. mainstream science is perpetually opposed to new ideas. It's a historical fact that attributing not-yet-understood phenomena to demiurges has historically been the successful way to go in science. Petrushka

The first significance is that we see a responsible, open-minded scientific response to potentially radically transforming and unexpected evidence. Caution, waiting for cross checks, but open to a radical alteration in our understanding of the world, if necessary. It helps that physics underwent two major revolutions in the past 350 years, to create Newtonian dynamics, then the Relativistic-Quantum world. KF kairosfocus

ForJah: Nobody can really say. But the point is, materialist reductionism is dogmatically stuck to a vision of the world were already existing scientific knowledge is considered the only religion. Any expansion of that knowledge, any new, unpredicted insight, is potentially dangerous for a dogmatic religion based on what science believes today. ID, on the contrary, is truly empiric and scientific, and in no way reductionist. Therefore, any new understanding can only be truly welcome :) gpuccio

Ditto MedsRex

I'm waiting for someone to answer your very question.. I'm very curious as to what this might mean. KRock

Can someone tell me what implications or effects this will have on ID? If any... ForJah

Warp-factor ten here we come! George R.

"If physics were run like Darwinism, they would have settled to problem weeks ago by saying that Einstein really had predicted it." This points to a major difference between Darwinism and physics (first pointed out, I believe, by David Berlinski), namely that physical theories like Special Relativity actually make quantifiable predictions, so it really isn't possible to say that "Einstein really had predicted it" unless the mathematics supports that statement. Darwinism, on the other hand, makes no predictions at all. Darwinists frequently make predictions based on their understanding of what Darwinism means, but they are never quantifiable, and thus really aren't testable either. And, of course, they are almost always wrong, but since they were never the result of strict mathematical calculation, Darwinists can always back track and revise their predictions to correspond to the actual results. Bruce David

all true, bornagain and kairosfocus, but so far it has not proven to be merely an error. There may be something to know here. News

Of note: OPERA fail to find error in Faster Than Light Measurement - Philip Gibbs PhD. Excerpt: Factoring in my prior probabilities from preconceived theoretical prejudices I can now say that the probability of the result being correct has increase from 1 in a million to one in 100 thousand (numbers are illustrative :) ). http://blog.vixra.org/2011/11/18/opera-fail-to-find-error-in-faster-than-light-measurement/ bornagain77

Folks: We can afford to wait and see. If this is real, it may point to some sort of extra dimensionality that in effect folds local space-time. Sci Fi fans, do please hold on the rush. Confirmation would be most welcome before conclusions are drawn. GEM of TKI kairosfocus