It is important to remember she was a human, though intelligent and deep thinking. I would lean toward the closed Objectivism but I live my life myself. I doubt anyone can make every decision based solely on her point of view. She still represents the best person to review since she spent so much time building the foundation. I want to thank my John Galt (khalling) Ragnar,(Dbkhalling) Dr. Akston(EF) Midas Mulligan(Seezy) and .Ellis Wyatt(MikeMoratta and Zepharim) for showing me the Galt. Yes indeed I saved a place for Fransisco.

As long as you say "you think" and not scholars think, that is fine with me. I would like to see the movie you mention.

>You also do not understand the 2nd the law of entropy.

Ah, yes, I'd forgotten. Your expertise is in "science in general" (whatever that means). So why don't you explain to us environmentalists what the "2nd law of entropy" (LOL!) is all about. Waiting patiently.

>1) Natural Selection. Even a creationist will not try to plant a palm tree in northern Alaska

And no one knew that until 1859, when Darwin published "Origin of Species"?

And thanks for reaffirming a point I've made several times in this thread: natural selection *weeds out* palm trees planted in Alaska; it doesn't create anything new, as Darwin mistaken believed.

2) Mixing (mating) that offspring are not exact copies of either parent.

But neither are they radically different from their parents, either — a little detail you accidentally-on-purpose forgot to mention. That baby tree tree-shrews differ in small details from their parents in no way means that after a million generations a baby chimp will emerge from a mommy tree-shrew's womb.

3) Mutations. Some offspring have features that are not part of either parent.

And those offspring with radically different features from their parents — such as mutant baby fruit-flies with an extra pair of wings (which don't function), or an extra set of feet growing out its head where antennae should be DON'T SURVIVE. The important lesson that you're denying is that radically different mutants are evolutionary dead-ends.

Can't help noticing that not only is your understanding of classical Darwinism sketchy, but your appreciation of the theory's fundamental inability to explain things like biochemical codes and the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record is utterly non-existent.

>Darwin proposed that evolution was a result of radiation bombardment?

Darwin proposed that randomly occurring modifications in an organism would provide the raw material from which natural selection would select for survival. Radiation was later discovered to be one method of creating modifications in the genetic makeup — the "genotype" — of an organism, especially if it is one that reproduces quickly (such as the fruit fly).

Oh. Wake me when we get around to Dyson.

Darwin proposed that evolution was a result of radiation bombardment?

I don't know of these Christians in the gulch; I do know of Christians who maintain that those are not rightly aspects of the Gospel.

I don't understand the 2nd law of entropy...

What is the 2nd law of entropy?

I have heard Peter described as stubborn by one person and open minded by another. Both are plausible both have morality lessons.

>You are confusing measurement error with repeatability. If experiments were not repeatable then we could lean nothing about the world.

Grab a box of tissues because this will make you cry:

At some point, so-called "measurement error" becomes "experimental unrepeatability."

When your measurements eventual become so precise as to fall outside the margins of error you have established for yourself in previous measurement, then the original experiment — using the new, more precise tools — not only cannot be repeated, but will be seen as having led to a mistaken conclusion (or will be seen as being true only with a more limited context than originally thought).

In any case, the argument in "Landé's Blade" shows that statistical/probabilistic situations (radioactive decay, coin tosses, weather patterns, economic cycles, etc.) are completely describable by means of statistics and probability, and that no matter how far back you claim to push the causal chain, you can never — short of an impossible omniscience — replace that statistical/probabilistic description with a mechanically causal one of the form y=f(x), in which some function acting in a variable, x, uniquely determines some final value, y.

"Landé's Blade" has nothing to do with measurement error. In fact, it assumes, hypothetically, perfect 100% certain knowledge at each point of the analysis.

>Newton was causal. Chemistry is based on causality, even Relativity is based on causality. You cannot point to a single science before the CI that was not based on causality and A is A.

(Yawn) The point is that CI is based on hypothesis/experiment. Ergo, it is consistent in that important regard with the last 400 years of western science. Mechanical causality might have been assumed at some point in the past, along with the conceptual metaphor of a mechanical clock symbolizing the smooth running of the universe, in which the state of everything at t=n will allow one to predict with 100% certainty the state of everything at t=n+1.

With more observations and more stringent experiments, it was discovered that the universe is not like that, and predictions at t=n+1 can only be approximated, or sometimes, not made at all.

None of this denies "A is A", which is, after all, an empty tautology. It does, however deny that mechanical clockwork causality holds supreme over everything. There are, of course, other kinds of causality.

>quantum waves

LOL!

First you wrote that everything would be found to be a "wave"; now you qualify that word by adding the important adjective "quantum". Guess what? A "quantum wave" is simply a "quantum" — a particle-like entity — that also has wave-LIKE properties.

It's not a "wave."

>Newton did not brand, trademark, or market his work. Ayn Rand did.

Trademark? You mean "copyright", no?

Newton's "Principia" was doubtless published by the "Crown" and protected by royal copyright decrees.

Regarding Rand's works:

They are, of course, copyrighted, but you cannot copyright an idea; you can only copyright a concrete work: a book, an essay, a play, a screenplay, etc. The idea that "concepts subsume units" is not, per se, copyrightable, even though you can copyright a monograph with the title "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" which contains that idea.

Yep.

Additionally — and, I believe, significantly — the modifications that scientists have caused to appear in fruit flies by means of radiation (extra sets of wings, legs growing out of the head, etc.) always made the flies either sterile, or just so butt-ugly that no other fly would agree to mate with it! So these mutants were all evolutionary dead-ends. Obviously, if Darwinian evolution were true, it could not have proceeded in that way.

>but science in general is my expertise

???

I was unaware that there's such a subject as "science in general."

Do you have a Ph.D. in "science in general"?

Just wondering.

>Dr. Peikoff suggested that online forums for discussing Objectivism reward rapid-fire responses rather than integrated writings

Which make online forums closer in spirit to spoken discussion and debate — something Peikoff has avoided his entire career, preferring contexts in which he can tightly control the discourse.

Ayn Rand was very much the same way, as her unprofessional (and frankly, immature) reaction to John Hospers' Q&A after her lecture at Harvard.