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Re: Sinosauropteryx filament melanosomes challenged
The crucial point is therefore the advent of "the great intermediate net": a
barrier of intermediate neurons that interposes itself between the sensory
neurons and the motor neurons early in the evolution of animal life.
--Walle J. H. Nauta and Michael Feirtag
"The Organization of the Brain," Scientific
American, September 1979, p. 92.
René Jellyfish
I shall think of the sea.
I am the agent of thoughts of the sea
by the great intermediate net.
The sea brooks only one thought
even to my great intermediate net:
The sea is.
Without my thought it would not be so.
Cogito ergo mare.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sim Koning" <simkoning@msn.com>
To: <pristichampsus@yahoo.com>; <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2010 12:17 AM
Subject: RE: Sinosauropteryx filament melanosomes challenged
Supernovae
I wouldn't exactly call the death of a giant star after it went through
long series of stages in stellar evolution, before exploding and releasing
heavier elements that lead to solar systems like this one a simple
process, same goes for everything else you listed.
white and brown dwarfs, black holes, quasars, pulsars etc. Just because
your brain is perceiving a trend in the universe doesn't necessarily mean
>that such trend actually exists.
I think you took what I wrote the wrong way, since I'm guessing you would
agree that the universe as it exists now is more complex than the
singularity it once was.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! This is the endothermocentric fallacy brought to its
most extreme. What is your basis that endothermy gives one the capacity
to do >all that you say (and by "endothermy" I assume you are talking
about automatic endothermy, or the classic "warm-bloodedness" of mammals
and birds)?
You know that the next "most advanced" animal society is in the world?
The one that also has agriculture, architecture, war, slavery, and maybe
even >language and culture?
Social insects. Especially the various ant and termite species out there.
These are "cold-blooded" animals that have a series of ganglia housed in
>mushroom-like bodies, instead of having a "brain."
Yes I agree, but I was worried that bringing up an extremely speculative
eusocial alien species that has developed technology and/or society
comparable to our own would take this thread more off topic than it
already is.
Again, this is a trend, or pattern that your brain has perceived, but is
there any statistical, or other empirical data to back it up?
I never claimed it was anything beyond hypothetical in nature, I never
described this as a theory. I find it a little strange that most here have
no problem speculating on the social lives of animals that have been dead
for over a 100 millions years, yet now I'm getting a rather harsh reaction
for something that is no less speculative in nature.
The Kardashev scale is a neat though experiment, but this piece of
science fiction says more about the biased nature of humans (and western
>civilization in particular) than anything else.
No, it is just hypothetical scenario regarding a *possible* exponential
increase technological advancement and expansion, you know, like
speculating on whether dromaeosaurids hunted in packs based on scant
evidence and living analogs. I honestly don't understand this reaction. I
never claimed that I believe this as some sort of faith or absolute truth.
There is no reason to believe that any civilization should progress in the
way suggested by the >Kardashev scale, just like there is no reason to
>suspect that a tribe of bushmen in Papua New Guinea should go through a
"bronze," or "silver age." >The only reason we see things like
>industrialization in "third world" countries is because of the global
nature of our society. We are extending >knowledge gained from one
culture, to >others, rather than having it evolve separately.
I agree, I never expressed any degree of certainty on this issue. My point
was that the idea of "higher" or "lower" forms of life would have some
meaning when speaking of things such as the emergent properties of the
universe. The human species may just eradicate itself with some new
weapon, and most intelligent species in the universe may self
destruct...it's just specualtion at this point.
Besides, how trustworthy can something like the Kardashev scale actually
be given that we don't even have an example of a type I civilization?
How trustworthy is hypothesis regarding how a deinonychus used its claws
to kill its prey? Cosmologists are simply taking observations on current
trends and extrapolating into the future, in the same way a paleontologist
might look at modern animal behavior and make inferences on the social
behavior of extinct animals.
when I used the word "higher" I meant higher degree of complexity in an
organism, vs a lower degree of complexity. Life is more complex now than
it was 3 billion years ago. Birds/dinosaurs are more complex than
jellyfish, so dinosaurs have a higher degree of complexity. How that got
equated to "superior" when I said that was *not* what I was referring is
beyond me.
Sim Koning
----------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2010 20:22:02 -0800
From: pristichampsus@yahoo.com
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
Subject: RE: Sinosauropteryx filament melanosomes challenged