[News] AI will be smarter than humans in 30 years

[MattiasNYC]

@MattiasNYC
Is it ignorance to ask questions? Or is it ignorance to assume there is a naturalistic explanation for everything?

It's not ignorance to ask questions, of course it isn't.

However, the way we as a species have moved forward in our understanding of how the universe works is the scientific method. This method works by taking a hypothesis, making a prediction, conducting an experiment and then measure the outcome of it. Once that is done we can either say that the hypothesis was wrong, or we can say that the hypothesis was not proven wrong. This means that we're in science actually not proving things to be literally and absolutely "true", instead we can only prove that something is literally and absolutely false. The reason we're saying that something is "true" or "proven" is because we've experimented so many times and our predictions have always been shown correct that we might as well consider something to be "true" or "proven". Like gravity for example. Enough people have fall down to their deaths that we can with certainty say that the earth has a gravitational pull on objects that are close to it. If someone all of a sudden 'fell up' we'd have gotten closer to disprove the theory. But since we keep finding out it's true it's a theory, not a hypothesis.

So, is it ignorance to assume there is a naturalistic explanation for everything? No, it's actually not really all that ignorant. Why? Because any and all issues that we have settled we have settled using science, and science is the study of the natural world. IF there was any proven super-natural 'issue' then there would be reason for doubt. But since there is no such case the odds are greatly in favor of natural explanations for all phenomena.

Further more, it's not without a sense of irony that I read what you wrote above. Because typically the only reason a young-earth creationist has gotten to the point he has is because of what the bible says. Now, the text of the bible doesn't change. Sure, people have reinterpreted it - not to mention both edited and translated it - but the text for the most part remains exactly the same. This makes this type of faith inherently fundamentally different from science. If a scientific theory is proven wrong it goes out the window. It can no longer be useful. If the theory of electro-magnetism was shown to be wrong it wouldn't be used. Contrast that to religious scripture which remains the same. Rather than simply throw out that which the scripture says which is literally wrong it gets 'reinterpreted' to be figurative rather than literal, because if one didn't do that then one would have to question one's entire faith, which of course one doesn't want to do for 'various reasons'.

You ignore the reasons and generalize!

I didn't. I listened to the reasons you gave and I told you why they don't apply the way you think they apply. Unavoidable contamination creates a margin of error, and if the measurement is within the margin of error the measurement results are ignored because they are unreliable. It's essentially like statistical noise. You need your relevant signal to be sufficiently above the noise floor in order for it to be useful. But just because some signals are below doesn't mean that others that are above are now not useful.

And in addition to that I told you that C14 dating is only one out of several dating methods that use radiation. So really, who's ignoring whom?

What on Earth has the possibility of having the decay rate accelerated in the past having anything to do with planes? Do planes run on Uranium? Is present impossible if there was accelerated decay in the past? Please check your private messages.

I told you already why it is relevant. It's relevant because we use our measurements to deduce how nature works, and if the argument is that maybe one natural law was different 4,000 years ago, then there is not reason to assume that no other natural laws also were different. And if we assume that any natural law could have been different in the past it's logical to assume it could also change in the future. And if it could change in the future what I said is absolutely valid.

[MattiasNYC]

The burden of proof trap is thrown every time when it comes to religion.
"God exists" - Can be true or false and by definition, cannot be proven. Why by default the community assumes "false" position?
"Radioactive decay rate was constant" Can be true or false and it cannot be proven for anything more than 100 years. Why by default the community assumes "true" as position ?

In those two specific cases because we have evidence for one but not the other.

In general because making a claim is extremely easy. I'll illustrate it for you: "I have 13 toes". See? Super easy for me to claim that. Anyone can claim anything really. So in order to move forward we need to have a discussion, and in a discussion and investigation into a topic we need more than just claims. We need proof. If our discussion topic was "I have 13 toes" then we could have the following two scenarios:

Me: "I have 13 toes."
You: "No, you have 10 toes."
Me: "No, I totally have 13 toes."
You: "No, you have 10 toes. I have however have 12 toes"
Me: "I have 13 toes, but you have 10 toes."

As you can see it's just claims. Nobody gets anywhere. Instead;

Me: "I have 13 toes."
You: "Prove it!"
Me: "Ok" and then I post an image of my feet, with 13 toes.

See? The burden of proof is on the person who makes the claim. In addition to that the bigger the claim the bigger the burden of proof. Suppose instead of talking about the number of toes I have we're talking about something that's actually important. Perhaps we're talking about your father being a murderer. Now, rather than just accept or dismiss the posted image it actually has to be evaluated critically because the claim is so severe. With my 13 toes it really didn't matter if it was true or not, if the image was fake or not. Maybe you didn't even need an image, maybe it would have been enough if a friend that you trust told you I had 13 toes. But it would maybe not be enough if it was about your father being a murderer.

It's the same thing here. God as a hypothesis is the ultimate claim because he is the ultimate being. There is no larger claim. The burden of proof is therefore not just on you but it is very significant. That's the difference.

Secondly, radiation has been measured for decades, and we can predict what happens. Try the same with god.

What I am not fine with is the closed mind view of interpreting the evidence and suppressing any kind of questioning that does not fit the core assumptions. In this regard atheism in scientific community is the equivalent of fascism in political regimes.

That's actually a terrible thing to say. Fascism is an actual ideology that prescribes specific things. Atheism is just the lack of theism. The two aren't even remotely comparable. You seem to have absolutely zero understanding of science as a concept if you really believe the above.

Richard Dawkins once stated the ultimate outcome of evolution is fascism.

This is another terrible statement. I'm 99.9999999% sure you're 100% wrong about the above.

Find a quote of him saying that and post that here please.


PS: This is why I generally comment on these discussions, because if you had stopped at saying "I believe in god" then that would have been one thing; but when you attribute statements like that one to actual biologists and they're wrong (unless you now prove they aren't) I feel the need to correct you because otherwise you're spreading misinformation and therefore ignorance.

[Ket]

*Grabs milk and dark chocolate mints* This I feel is about to get interesting

[sergiu]

"No decent person wants to live in a society which works according to Darwinian laws... A Darwinian society would be a Fascist state" - Richard Dawkins, Die Presse (July 30, 2005, p8).

@MattiasNYC
The reasoning is not convincing. I reason for example that gravity is the same because the implications of a different gravity law even for a few hours would be an Earth crashing into Sun or flying away. I agree that E=m*c^2 instead of E=m*c because otherwise sun wouldn't shine (however there are interesting conversations out there that argue E as constant, c higher and atomic masses lower in the past). To argue that electromagnetim wouldn't have existed in the past would be to argue that matter would have been without electrons. Those are well known phenomenas. The radioactive decay is different. It is not a hypothesis but already a prediction. Let me illustrate with two simple formulas how a prediction differs from a hypothesis from a mathematical point of view:
hypothesis: e = m*c^2 .
prediction: f(n)=f(n-1)/2
Based on first one (e = m*c^2) you can make a prediction (compute how much energy is released by splitting plutonium), conduct an experiment (blow up something) and then measure the outcome of it (the radius of the atomic bomb). Second formula is a pure prediction because it just allows us to compute the output based on input. In the case of radioactive decay, the hypothesis is not even a formula of why it happens, but a constant which is used as root value for prediction. Therefore in order to do a prediction, you either have to know the value of f(0) either you have to assume an arbitrary value. The big problem is that we do not know the value of f(0). And we have no idea what N is. And what's worse, the experiments can only validate a subset of the prediction, not the complete domain. Not to mention that the complete phenomena assumes a specific environment (closed system) which is not true.
Radioactive dating is not science. But for the sake of entertainment, let's assume it's top class, irrefutable science. What do you do when two different radioactive dating methodologies give you two different results? what do you do if Uranium-Lead gives you 1.3billion years while Potassium-Argon gives you 900 million (as it commonly happens)? 400 million years is a matter of life and death for poor dinosaurs. What do you do when you have contradictory evidence? At some point you have to take a decision: you either recognize that the complete methodology is flawed and you move on and try to find a better one, either you choose to take a faith position and sustain it no matter what, case in which you rely on credibility to discard opposing views. I see more the later then the former. Creationist are just scientists that moved on for a better methodology. After all nothing turned up into something which blew up and created everything .

The C14 problem still stands... in one mole of Carbon you have 6.023*10^23 atoms, out of which around 6*10^11 are C14. Most coal/diamonds can be dated to about 50K plus or minus 10K. That's rounded 10 half-lifes. You have then roughly 1000 times less atoms, that's still a whooping 10^8 atoms in just 12 grams of carbon. You can "renew" the C14 by transforming the same N14 atoms back in C14 but I have not seen any credible evidence that the neutrons needed (which by the way can be shielded quite easily) are available underground in the required quantities. You have to be very lucky to hit constantly the nitrogen atoms in the sea of carbon.

You also have a poor understanding of religion, which I would forgive given atheistic views. The God of the Bible does not command blind faith nor He forbids science. Contrary, He commands reasoning and research of the truth. By the Bible, all things where created by God for His glory. Also it's stated in the Bible that nothing is impossible. Therefore I do see God creating the beautiful laws of nature of for us to discover and use to do good (or evil). You see in this view, the only thing supernatural is the creation itself. Once the laws of nature are defined and fine tuned, God does not need to stay behind the ATM machine and make sure the bits are flipped correctly when you withdraw money. Nor does he has to keep the planes in the air by his hand, there are the aerodynamics law created for that (although I do appreciate God being around while I fly, it makes me feel safer).

And a question: how do you recognize a supernatural event in a natural environment when you are trained see and explain everything through naturalistic views? If an ounce of gold would materialize out of nothing in front of someone, one would rather come up with a very fancy quantum theory explaining how all the atoms of gold in the room just tunnelled in a nice lump of metal instead of recognizing the supernatural event.
Irony is that the apparition of life which is the best candidate for a supernatural event is twisted over and over, stripped down of the details and sold later as naturalistic event.

@Ket: enjoy the chocolate!

[MattiasNYC]

"No decent person wants to live in a society which works according to Darwinian laws... A Darwinian society would be a Fascist state" - Richard Dawkins, Die Presse (July 30, 2005, p8).

And that is a completely different statement from what you attributed to him. Do you not see the difference between the two?

[sergiu]

And that is a completely different statement from what you attributed to him. Do you not see the difference between the two?

My bad, indeed is completely different. I forgot that the core idea can be changed radically if we have different ways to interpret English language. Our friend Richard surely agrees that survival of the fittest applied in a society has nothing in common with fascism ideologies.

[MattiasNYC]

Sorry, I can't tell if you're being serious now or are attempting sarcasm. Which is it?

[sergiu]

Make a prediction and test it

[MattiasNYC]

Funny. I can't tell. Just explain if it was sarcasm or a serious comment.

[sergiu]

Wondering what the supposed smarter than humans future AI would say...

[MattiasNYC]

Ok, so now you're just trolling. Nice.

[sergiu]

Of course I was sarcastic, wasn't it obvious? "completely different" ... you must be either joking either in denial. Or maybe paraphrasing is not scientific...
Richard knows very well many of the problems of naturalistic interpretations of the evidences but he chooses boldly to believe anything can be explain at a latter stage therefore there is no need for God to exist. However he is fully aware of the moral problem. There is no explanation for the existence of moral laws. And without God, you don't have absolute moral values and without absolute moral values there is no point of reference for judgements. Nazi judgements were based on the idea of the absolute moral law above state law which is missing in Darwinism. Moral law is the bottleneck in naturalistic Darwinian centric views. If there is no accountability, what stops one to kill someone? One could argue the killer was smarter and killed the weaker one. Can you imagine yourself living in such a society?

Whole creation/evolution can be debated forever. My desire was to move the conversation over PM where we can just exchange ideas peacefully but apparently open forums are preferred where the counter arguments were more inclined to be politically correct and lacked deep detailed explanations. Anyway, creation versus evolution can be debated forever and that's because evolution is sold as a fact even when there are scientists with Ph. degrees who are expressing their concern that it might be mathematically and physically impossible. The common way to refute the concerns is "we are here, therefore it happened". And cold hard truth is that for many topics you have to take a faith position. The core explanation that whatever we do not understand now we will understand later requires faith. We can twist the argument by playing with words, season it with "science", anoint it with dictionary definitions and claiming authority in the interpretation but we cannot hide the truth.

[AliG]

Y'all crazy.

Calm down and enjoy life. I don't know about where you live, but this is the nicest winter I personally have ever experienced!

[AliG]

As a further incentive to calm down and enjoy life, here is a video on barbecuing lobster:

[MattiasNYC]

Of course I was sarcastic, wasn't it obvious?

If I agreed with you and thought you were right then it would have been "obviously" sarcastic. I was actually hoping for a second that you would notice how the two statements weren't the same, but alas...

"completely different" ... you must be either joking either in denial. Or maybe paraphrasing is not scientific...

I am only talking about this because it is incredibly unfair of you to claim that Dawkins said something he didn't say. Here's what you say he said:

"the ultimate outcome of evolution is fascism."

It doesn't take much to see what that statement means. It means that evolution, evolution being the cause here, leads to fascism. That's what it says. It says nothing about anything else. Evolution is the cause. But compare that to what Dawkins said - in its entirety btw:

?No self-respecting person would want to live in a society that operates according to Darwinian laws. I am a passionate Darwinist, when it involves explaining the development of life. However, I am a passionate anti-Darwinist when it involves the kind of society in which we want to live. A Darwinian state would be a Fascist state.?

That is entirely different. What he is talking about - clearly - is human beings adopting the principles of "Darwinism" to structure society. He is NOT saying that evolution in and by itself has fascism as an ultimate outcome. There are some people that think society should be structured according to how they understand Darwinism, a sort of "social Darwinism" if you will, but it is clear they want to make those choices consciously.

Do you see the difference now? You're attributing something to Dawkins that he never said. If it was supposed to be a paraphrase then you failed miserably.

Richard knows very well many of the problems of naturalistic interpretations of the evidences but he chooses boldly to believe anything can be explain at a latter stage therefore there is no need for God to exist. However he is fully aware of the moral problem. There is no explanation for the existence of moral laws.

Again you misrepresent Dawkins:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLBd6_9Liic

And without God, you don't have absolute moral values and without absolute moral values there is no point of reference for judgements. Nazi judgements were based on the idea of the absolute moral law above state law which is missing in Darwinism. Moral law is the bottleneck in naturalistic Darwinian centric views. If there is no accountability, what stops one to kill someone? One could argue the killer was smarter and killed the weaker one. Can you imagine yourself living in such a society?

First of all you're wrong. There are millions and millions of people on this planet that have opportunities to kill other human beings without the type of accountability you speak of who choose not to do so. The video above clearly shows reasons for not killing that have nothing to do with god. The very thought that people like you only stop killing other human beings because you think there is a god is horrifying. god forbid (!) you should ever lose your faith; your neighbors would be in great peril!!! Personally I just know killing people is wrong. I don't need a god to tell me so. However,

Secondly, it's ridiculous to argue that god has the monopoly on morality given what an absolutely disgusting entity he was according to scripture. And a lot of religions have gods with views on morality that for normal human beings that aren't psychopaths are indeed obviously immoral views. Clearly so. There is only one way one can argue that god has acted morally, and that is if one thinks that whatever god says is moral is then moral, because god said so. And it's that line of thinking that gets us everything from people that drown their children because they heard god's voice, to people flying airplanes into buildings because god mandated it.

So, no thanks; if this Abrahamic god you speak of is the moral compass you wish to apply I'm out. And I'm proud of not bending to his immoral nonsense.

Whole creation/evolution can be debated forever. My desire was to move the conversation over PM where we can just exchange ideas peacefully but apparently open forums are preferred where the counter arguments were more inclined to be politically correct and lacked deep detailed explanations.

I don't have an interest in discussing religion with you via PM. I've lurked this forum for a while and now started to revisit because of Ryzen's release. I would have said nothing on the topic had you not tried to misinform people that the earth's age is measured in only a few thousands of years, and if you hadn't misled people about what Richard Dawkins said. We don't need more ignorance on the planet, we need more education. Listening to Answer In Genesis or whatever creationists like to listen to as a source doesn't teach you science, studying science does.

Anyway, creation versus evolution can be debated forever and that's because evolution is sold as a fact even when there are scientists with Ph. degrees who are expressing their concern that it might be mathematically and physically impossible.

Those scientists with degrees probably don't have a degree in biology, and if they have their views are vastly outnumbered.

The common way to refute the concerns is "we are here, therefore it happened". And cold hard truth is that for many topics you have to take a faith position. The core explanation that whatever we do not understand now we will understand later requires faith. We can twist the argument by playing with words, season it with "science", anoint it with dictionary definitions and claiming authority in the interpretation but we cannot hide the truth.

That's just more nonsense. It's a worn creationist argument that again just boils down to "you weren't here 1,000 years ago so you don't know", meaning that there is apparently current physics and historical physics, and they're not necessarily the same. Therefore nothing can be said about the past with certainty, and neither can anything be said about future physics with certainty. Why? Because god can do whatever he wants, including changing physics. That's what it all boils down to.

What I don't understand is why you people are never satisfied with "I believe god did it" and leave it at that. That's really the only thing you need to say, because in the end that's where go. No matter the discussion it always ends with "you just have to have faith, and god can do anything because he is omnipotent". Well, since that's the argument that can't be refuted why not just say that from the beginning then and be done with it. Don't pretend to be open minded when any and all objections can be countered with "god can do anything".

- "Physics tells us the half life of a bunch of stuff points to the age of X being 500 million years old"
- "Well, physics says that now, but god can do anything so physics was different 6,000 years ago because god did it."

ok.... can we argue with that? No, we cannot. Because it's unfalsifiable nonsense. That's why.

[sergiu]

@MattiasNYC
Dear friend, your replies are getting boring, same old, same old. You are attacking my logic in a pure subjective way and you claim authority while hiding behind the curtain of pseudo-science. I have explain you clearly, true science deals mostly with facts. If you make assumptions, you have to draw a line about what kind of assumptions you can make and what you cannot. You can make an assumption for something you can prove later. If you make an assumption about something you cannot prove, then better be a very solid one. Your line of reasoning is flawed and the proof is your lack of the understanding of the details. To illustrate, I have stated clearly that radioactive dating assumes a closed system . Lead can be washed away from rocks and so many other minerals. The implication is that you can add lead and therefore have a rock with an apparent older age or you can remove lead and have a younger age . Please comment about this fact, I am not interested in long subjective critics full of nonsense. I just gave you an argument that makes the dating flawed. For me, the non constant decay rate is game over, but if you claim yourself as true scientist then you have no choice but to dismiss the methodology because the first assumption is disproved by a fact.

Regarding Dawkins, you're just trying to cleanup the bleeding of your God. We are talking about language which is not 0 or 1. Yes, he did not said it like I express it, rather like a possibility but essence is the same: fascist ideology is in line with natural selection. His idea about the moral laws is flawed. Mutual dependencies do not imply moral laws. It's kind of stretched to call mutual benefits as altruism.
Here is a more lovely Richard Dawkings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-kWeo0o-Jw , 2:00-2:10 for the lovely part.

I will forgive you for calling me a murderer because you imply that if suddenly I would not believe in God, I'll go to a killing spree. How can you reason something like this? Do you use your brain ? You do assume like Darwin that all religions are equal. I can conclude that like Dawkins you source of information about religions books is wikipedia. I would challenge you to try to read completely the Bible, understand the message and then comment. Until then you are making foul of yourself. If you do accept with humility that you do not know anything about religion, I would warmly recommended Ravi Zacharias as a good source. While I like to entertain myself with Richard Dawkins, I see orders of magnitude more wisdom at Ravi Zacharias.

Bonus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgWl4OqAH6I

[kromosto]

A good argument is going on. I love to read messages from both of you.

I am with MattiasNYC on this one. By the way from what I read I think I also have to say "I am not an atheist".

[Stevethegreat]

We are quickly heading for the inevitable self aware AI system movies so greatly predicted. Tell me why the gargantual investment in this segment without any regulation again?

How about no? I know this is a trope of sci-fi (as were robots and flying cars), but I'm not aware of any such hints from within the field.

The misapprehensions around AI remind me similar ones around experimental physics (i.e. people thinking of black holes as cosmic vacuums that even a tiny one created within CERN would swallow the earth... or whatever).

For example you conflate 3 separate things, consciousness, intelligence and a self-consistent form of will. Within the field we're only generating one of those, in fact we only know how to generate one of those.

We most certainly don't know what consciousness is to even begin developing it and I very much doubt that it has anything to do with intelligence.
We're certainly not infusing a concentrated form of will as evolution would on to a creature that it develops for billions of years (namely -in the case of biology- passing on the genes).

In fact intelligence is the weakest of those 3 elements as it is merely one tool that the above use to express themselves. It's not an accident that it came last in the evolutionary history of biology, so -no- very few expect that by developing intelligence you'd actually get more ancient variants of brain function, in the same way that you won't get a system of autonomous breathing (I mean you *can* if you specifically develop for it, but you won't chance on it merely by developing intelligence in general).

Sci-fis, especially the ones on the big screen are not exactly very imaginative or indeed informative of the human condition. A bit of how junk food is delicious but not the best thing to eat in the long run. I suggest reading more into brain function, the evolution of biological intelligence and indeed actual developments within the field of AI.

As for the headline itself, the guy is not even in the position to speak of those matters, he's a salesman hoping to generate interest to his company's acquisition, whatever he says should be taken with a grain of salt. AI would be huge, but most probably in a different way than most people (and especially movies) would expect it to be, in important ways it already is.

[MattiasNYC]

Steve, I agree completely with about half of what you say. But rather than immediately restate what's been said, would you comment on the other 'points' people have made?

[Ket]

@MattiasNYC
I have stated clearly that radioactive dating assumes a closed system . Lead can be washed away from rocks and so many other minerals. The implication is that you can add lead and therefore have a rock with an apparent older age or you can remove lead and have a younger age. Please comment about this fact

Even I have to chime in on this one. While radiometric dating assumes a closed system inappropriately assuming no parent isotopes were added or removed through other processes through the history of the sample multiple samples approximate a closed system to the point of multiple radiometric dating methods all recording results within 1% of each other. You also do not mention that even under laboratory controlled conditions there is no such thing as a absolute closed system, you can't just pick and choose whats convenient to your argument buddy, never mind try to make a argument based on less than 1%.

Isochron methods don't assume the parent or daughter concentrations are known, so Isochrons taken from multiple samples can detect contamination and to some degree correct for it. Contamination would need to affect each sample in the same way to create an isochron that seems okay but is wrong.

For example;

With uranium-lead dating, closure of the system may be tested with a concordia diagram. This takes advantage of the fact that there are two isotopes of uranium (238U and 235U) that decay to different isotopes of lead (206Pb and 207Pb, respectively). If the system has remained closed, then a plot of 206Pb / 238U versus 207Pb / 235U will fall on a known line called the concordia. Even if samples are discordant, reliable dates can often be derived. - Faure 1998, 287-290.

[sergiu]

@Ket
That's a much more constructive comment! I was more familiar with standard radioactive dating, my bad. I do agree isochrons methods are much stronger and much better when accounting for contamination, but consistent less than 1% margin is a bold statement even for the scientists who wrote the papers. Proof for me would be a complete survey taking tens of thousands of samples from all continents and major islands, have them analyzed in at least 3 different labs with at least 3 different techniques and have them cross checked. I would not say it's impossible, just I would like to see the proof since this is fully verifiable. If there is one already, please post a link, I'm interested. And there are some concerns about the methodology (http://creationwiki.org/Isochron_dating ). Overall better, but still susceptible to the core assumption of constant rates. And it does not account for transmutation events that could change the ratios of the stable isotopes. There is a lot of hype around LENR processes these days which are labelled as pseudo-science by many mainstream researchers. I would rather keep an open mind on it.

Anyway, here is a simple hypothesis: the subatomic particles or the arrangement itself could absorb a specific type of energy or could interact with some other unknown subatomic particles that would make the configuration to break in various ways. This energy/particles are currently not detectable with current technology but could be detected with future technology. If this would be the case, then the decay would be constant as long as that form of energy or particle flow is constant. The focus should then be to try to measure and generate this energy/particle flow. If such a hypothesis would come up to be true, it would then explain easily accelerated decays as simple earth/cosmic events. And it would allow for cheap and infinite sources of energy, all while cleaning the nuclear waste that we have. As you can see if such a hypothesis would be found as true, it would not need, nor confirm the existence of God, but would weaken if not destroy the arguments denying a God (like dating methodology on which complete evolution theory stands).

According to the Bible, world was judged before once and destroyed by water. The event was a global one, therefore all world was under water for over one year. As humans are resilient and according to the Bible also advanced at that time, you can assume the event was so violent that no ships or shelters except the ark survived. You need a tremendous amount of energy to move the earth crust and reshape it, and here I think there is room for the earth/cosmic event that could have generated the accelerated decay. The energy release from the accelerated decay could have heated up the oceans, evaporate a huge amount of water that would in turn translate to continuous rains. The energy would have heated the crust underneath to destabilize and make it sink or shift, which would have generated super tsunamis that would have leveled out and rapidly buried marine organism, plants, mammals, dinosaurs and everything that lived on the surface of the earth. The event would have split the original continent and recreated the world we know now with mountains like Everest and so on. The event would have left as evidence a complete earth filled with layers and layers of mud filled with marine and terrestrial life rapidly buried. This would beg the question: are modern, naturalistic scientist able to detect the evidence of a possible global flood using current science knowledge? As long as radioactive dating is seen as a natural phenomena immune to any kind of cosmic event, then answer is no, no matter how strong would be the evidence. Also according to the Bible, there will be a second and last judgement, this time by fire. One of the signs would be the moon getting red which would be quite possible if the judgement will start again with an event that speeds up the decay so much that moon crust will heat up to become red.

[drmrlordx]

As a further incentive to calm down and enjoy life, here is a video on barbecuing lobster:

Maine prison authorities used to feed lobster to inmates since it was one of the lowest-price foods available to them at the time. Some prisoners sued to make them stop since it was apparently so terrible.

Whaddya think about that, hypothetical future AI-driven Richard Dawkins bot? Huh? Huh?!?!?

[Ket]

@Ket
That's a much more constructive comment! I was more familiar with standard radioactive dating, my bad. I do agree isochrons methods are much stronger and much better when accounting for contamination, but consistent less than 1% margin is a bold statement even for the scientists who wrote the papers. Proof for me would be a complete survey taking tens of thousands of samples from all continents and major islands, have them analyzed in at least 3 different labs with at least 3 different techniques and have them cross checked. I would not say it's impossible, just I would like to see the proof since this is fully verifiable. If there is one already, please post a link, I'm interested. And there are some concerns about the methodology (http://creationwiki.org/Isochron_dating ). Overall better, but still susceptible to the core assumption of constant rates. And it does not account for transmutation events that could change the ratios of the stable isotopes. There is a lot of hype around LENR processes these days which are labelled as pseudo-science by many mainstream researchers. I would rather keep an open mind on it.

Anyway, here is a simple hypothesis: the subatomic particles or the arrangement itself could absorb a specific type of energy or could interact with some other unknown subatomic particles that would make the configuration to break in various ways. This energy/particles are currently not detectable with current technology but could be detected with future technology. If this would be the case, then the decay would be constant as long as that form of energy or particle flow is constant. The focus should then be to try to measure and generate this energy/particle flow. If such a hypothesis would come up to be true, it would then explain easily accelerated decays as simple earth/cosmic events. And it would allow for cheap and infinite sources of energy, all while cleaning the nuclear waste that we have. As you can see if such a hypothesis would be found as true, it would not need, nor confirm the existence of God, but would weaken if not destroy the arguments denying a God (like dating methodology on which complete evolution theory stands).

According to the Bible, world was judged before once and destroyed by water. The event was a global one, therefore all world was under water for over one year. As humans are resilient and according to the Bible also advanced at that time, you can assume the event was so violent that no ships or shelters except the ark survived. You need a tremendous amount of energy to move the earth crust and reshape it, and here I think there is room for the earth/cosmic event that could have generated the accelerated decay. The energy release from the accelerated decay could have heated up the oceans, evaporate a huge amount of water that would in turn translate to continuous rains. The energy would have heated the crust underneath to destabilize and make it sink or shift, which would have generated super tsunamis that would have leveled out and rapidly buried marine organism, plants, mammals, dinosaurs and everything that lived on the surface of the earth. The event would have split the original continent and recreated the world we know now with mountains like Everest and so on. The event would have left as evidence a complete earth filled with layers and layers of mud filled with marine and terrestrial life rapidly buried. This would beg the question: are modern, naturalistic scientist able to detect the evidence of a possible global flood using current science knowledge? As long as radioactive dating is seen as a natural phenomena immune to any kind of cosmic event, then answer is no, no matter how strong would be the evidence. Also according to the Bible, there will be a second and last judgement, this time by fire. One of the signs would be the moon getting red which would be quite possible if the judgement will start again with an event that speeds up the decay so much that moon crust will heat up to become red.

I'll do this bullet style, faster

- The people who wrote the papers are going to be some of the best there are, they clearly know what their doing and talking about so arguing their findings is frivolous, we are far from qualified to argue their findings. To do so is only to make us look all the more the fools by not possessing a level of knowledge or understanding as high as theirs. I've never made a habit of trying to disprove something I don't know enough facts about.

- Taking samples from different locations would not improve anything, Terra is a diverse place, the processes that create something at one location, while being fundamentally the same when creating the same thing at another location, will still differ on some level. Some might argue you can allow for and filter that difference out, but as we know, such allowances are not perfect. The best you can do is take samples from the same localised area for cross-referencing. As I understand it, thats whats already done.

- Lab conditions are not absolute either, meaning you can't rule out a level of contamination even with controlled transportation that could give different results. Thats often why only one lab analyses things at any one given time. As long as the test methods are varied and thorough, thats as good as it gets. If anything the error metric is higher the more people that examine the sample as the acceptable margin of error will grow with the more people that examine it as you are increasing the risk of contamination of the sample(s).

- I don't know if what you are asking has already been tried this isn't a area I have a particularly deep seated interest in. From what tests I do know of of a similar nature to do with other things the results had to be thrown out each time as the level of possible contamination / error couldn't be determined, which somewhat suggests again the line at which the level of accuracy actually starts to deteriorate as too many variables start to come in to play.

- There are already completely clean energy sources, of which the best would have to be He3, Terra does not contain much He3 but it is extremely easy to extract from the Moons regolith. Clicky.

- Subatomic particles: Theory and hypothesis hold equally as little meaning to me as stories in the bible. Until there is something concrete to prove or disprove a notion there is no point in arguing it as it is purely conjecture with little to no meaning as far as I'm concerned. I'm only interested in what actually is, or what there is sufficient evidence to support what probably is. Until either of those points people are free to believe whatever they want, it only concerns me that some people have a extremely narrow or arrogant perspective. For example; those who deny climate change is real and humans are largely responsible for it, or those who think no other intelligent life exists and humans are the apex of complex life.

- Bible stuff: To me its all just stories, stories might be comforting to some, but it is not in and of itself proof of anything. In fact, to me, a person who was surrounded by religion up until the age of 11, I always found the stories in the bible preposterous. Humans are easily fooled by what they don't understand and will interpret it in to what they can understand - rightly or wrongly, which is why nobody should ever absolutely believe something based on one account unless there is evidence to back it up beyond refute. This is why the scientist in me after reading that paragraph would immediately think of wind and water erosion, tectonic movement, earthquakes, perhaps the thawing of a mini ice age, etc. These are all natural processes well understood now, but back in the "recorded events" of the bible, these processes were not known about what so ever so humans interpreted what they didn't understand in to something they could, which for then was something "divine".

[MattiasNYC]

Come on.... "I see your reason and your scientists and raise you a Noak's ark + flood..... and reiterate that god can do anything and that the laws of physics could have been virtually anything historically...."

You can't win. It's unfalsifiable nonsense.

[sergiu]

@Ket
You're falling in the credibility trap. You give up thinking and have faith blindly in secular scientists without even questioning their methodology or conflicts of interests. It's one of the biggest mistakes repeated over and over in history, a mistake humankind never learns. The scientist who came up with tectonic plates theory was ridiculed for decades by scientific community. It's more than 100 years since radioactivity was discovered and the only thing that we have is a half-life table for most known elements, and even these days the table is revised (https://www.nist.gov/news-events/new...fe-measurement) . The scientists settled too fast for constant half-lifes while there is no reason other than a fixed set of measurements for it. Now I challenge you to think: do you usually gain or loose energy when you switch from one state to another? Isn't it logical that the radioactive decay is a process where there is some form of energy absorbed that triggers the decay? Is there anything that forbids this? I do grant you a faith position in believing the constant rates. I do grant you the faith in evolution in spite of the evidence against. What I do not grant you is scientific certainly and here we can argue as much as we want, truth is constant radioactive decay in absence of full understanding of phenomena is faith. And just as I can use helium dating to say Earth is 6000 years old but cannot prove it, in same position is also someone who says Earth is 4.6 billion years.

I would argue Bible it's accurate. Until now, it was found to be accurate historically. Scoffers pointed that there was no Pontius Pilat 2000 years ago, and recently a large inscription in stone was found about him. Same for the high priests of that time. Lazarus has written in his second tomb: "Lazarus, four days dead, friend of Christ". There are rumors that archaeologists who dig in Middle East read the Bible very carefully in order to figure out where to dig. In once place, it's said that God Himself stretches the heavens, written over 3000 years ago, yet only now we know universe is expanding. There is the "Behemoth" and "Leviathan" which appear to be descriptions of dinosaurs by their ancient names. Many tried to disprove the Bible, however whenever tested, it stands. In case you're thinking automatically at evolution, I would like to point that you are looking at an earth filled with plant and animal life buried rapidly, in some cases fossils being buried vertically and in some others fossils crossing the boundaries of geological layers. You must have a huge amount of faith to believe that some bones or some trees stayed exposed nakedly for a few millions of years until next local flood came. I would say I have faith in one global flood while an evolutionist has faith in thousands if not tens of thousands of local floods.

@MattiasNYC
I was raised in a secular environment with little exposure to religion. I believed in evolution until last year. Then I discovered those "ignorant" creationists and started entertain myself with their presentations and analyzed their claims. Then I've analyzed the counter arguments from specialized sites. I found so many times the counter arguments so weak that I recently just stopped to waste my time. And I have never seen the core arguments attacked. For example bacteria flagellum is ofter given an example of irreductible complexity in creationist circles while evolutionists jump saying it evolved from different components. What all evolutionist ignore is that this is a real nanoscale engine which means a design that has a plan. Even granted it is made from parts found somewhere else, it's not the parts that make an engine, but the order, the assembly instructions. You cannot throw all proteins in one corner, you have to assemble them. Then the apparition of life and the fact that DNA encodes information are the biggest embarrassments. Answers range from "we do not know" to "looks like it's designed but is nothing else but chance", to which any mathematician would laugh at the stupidity of the claim.

I don't believe I can win. But if I believe in evolution, I've lost by default. It's a faith without consistent evidence, a house of cards. It appears logical and scientific until you go deeply in the details where it breaks miserably at every level. There is one saying: the God of the Bible is a God of details. And there is so much science out there, so many ideas that are just not explored because do not fit to evolution.