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The Terrifying Future Threat of Nuclear Waste According to the Government
A Shoggoth on the Roof:
well yea, that's why we shouldn't let beliefs cloud the facts, but there's no harm in letting the facts lead us to our beliefs.
KharBevNor:
I'm confused here. The Gaia Hypothesis is that the earth's ecosystem is homeostatic, not that it is a living organism. Even if you created a model of the biosphere as a living organism, that wouldn't mean it was alive. If it did then every ecosystem would be alive. The reason these things aren't alive is because the things within them are independently alive. The reason you are an organism, and not, say, your liver, is that if you hack out your liver it is not capable of life on its own (and neither, unless you get a quick replacement, are you). Scientists have got some use from using organic paradigms to model complex systems (like the earths biosphere), but the leap from that to claiming that the biosphere is alive is huge and unfounded. As mentioned above, the earth ould not possibly qualify as life under any standard definition. Reproduction is the main hurdle, though I think we could also argue growth. Reproduction is your kicker. Taking as red that earth's reproduction would be asexual, there's no way that there is going to be a genetically similiar or identical copy of the earth. Terraforming Mars is nothing like reproduction: Mars is farther from the sun, smaller than earth, with a completely different gravity and tidal system. There's no way that a terraformed mars would produce anything that really could be said to resemble earth, except in broad details. This is what you get when you try and blur the boundaries between organism and environment.
@OWW: I don't think you need protection from anything except yourself, though I do think the way you seem to view drugs and religious experiences makes you prime material for cult recruitment. I do think you will have significant trouble attaining your life goals or gaining the respect of your scientific peers if you keep on spouting some of the stuff you have in this thread. And don't pull the 'experimental' defence, or whatever it is you are trying to say. What does that even mean? That you are deliberately lying? If nothing you say is even what you believe, let alone true, or rational, or interesting, why should anyone ever pay attention to you?
snalin:
--- Quote from: pwhodges on 26 Apr 2009, 13:53 ---
--- Quote from: snalin on 26 Apr 2009, 13:47 ---if we hurt it on one side, the whole of it will eventually take the consequences.
--- End quote ---
That's called cause and effect, and has nothing to do with being alive. You could mention feedback as well, but the same applies
--- End quote ---
Sure, but it's still a good picture to use to help people understand that driving their SUV to work instead of taking the bus is killing something, like a bush or a beehive, somewhere in the world, in the long run.
You could probably get into a broader scientific discussion about the world actually being alive, and argument that if we see a human alive, even though it's just a combination of living things, why can't we see the world as living? But that doesn't seem to have any meaning outside discussion, what OWW is getting at here is alive in a broader sense, like alive and able to somehow interact with it's surroundings.
How the hell did we get to this from The Terrifying Future Threat of Nuclear Waste According to the Government after only two pages?
ledhendrix:
If you take any part of us away it would die on it's own, the liver analogy Khar gave was a good one. If you took a big chunk of rock out of the earth and launched it into space it's still going to carry on being a big chunk of rock regardless of it not being attached to the earth any more.
The word alive shouldn't be thrown about like that then, there's probably better words out there to describe what OWW is talking about.
KharBevNor:
Yes, homeostatic.
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