The future research sciences testify to academic openness and scientific legitimacy

313 תגובות

1. And in relation to the human culture and knowledge systems - these are indeed not alive yet, but they are in intelligent health.
   If you look at the development of science and technology, it is possible to liken their gradual development to Markian developments and their revolutions to an intelligent creation from the beginning.

2. sympathetic:
   I agree with you regarding the advantage of the Lamarkit system.
   In fact - in terms of the order of benefits, I would rank evolution at the bottom of the scale, above it are systems of marques and then - at the top of the scale - intelligent creation.
   Our whole argument was not about the merits but about the programming.

3. R.H. and Michael,

   I think this is more or less a good place to close the discussion even though there are interesting questions to discuss.
   The a priori advantage that I see in the Lamarkian system is its ability to respond quickly, evolution takes a very long time to produce a significant change in the organism, which also guarantees that most of the changes will not be fatal, the Lamarkian mechanism enables much faster adaptation.

   It is also possible to refer to the extension of the biological models to human societies. Does the fact that man developed writing make the acquisition of knowledge and its transmission to offspring a Lamarkey mechanism or does knowledge survive only when it is distributed in many book copies, which is more similar to the Darwinian principle (all the subjects of various memes).

   R. H. Rafa*im,
   I am sorry to see that your contribution to the discussion amounts to slander. Your inability to understand the amazement of existing natural laws and the fact that many of them are imposed on us shows in my opinion a basic lack of understanding of what science is and how it works. I recommend you, as many people better than me have already done, to learn more about the subjects you are talking about before you express yourself decisively, and in general it would be desirable that you refrain from speaking rudely and insolently.

4. Year:
   I don't even know how to begin to address such a colossal misunderstanding of my words.

5. Machal - contrasts Marxism with evolution - these are not opposites at all. If Marxism exists, it stands in contrast to the Darwinist convention, and not in opposition to it, but in contrast to it. Two hypothetical mechanisms of evolution.
   R.H. - Claims that it is surprising that no Marxist mechanisms have been discovered. But have Darwinist mechanisms been discovered in vertebrates? Is there an observational description of a non-unicellular Darwinian process? And also in the monotheism, as far as I know, the description is of the existence of the case and not of the process.
   It's a question of resolution.
   Kamila R.H. - Regarding Wiseman's and Jenner's attempts, (297,298,300,301) the most important thing we can learn from them is the willingness of people who yearn for achievements to ignore the suffering of others.

6. Rah:
   I don't know if you noticed but your muscle pattern is covered by the theoretical giraffe pattern with the flexible neck.
   If I had more time, I would emphasize this more strongly, but all the considerations I raised are correct about her.

7. R.H

   The fact that no Marxist mechanism has been discovered to date can only surprise people of your kind.

   With biologists like you in the country, the idea of ​​a brain drain sounds like a good solution.

8. Ehud and Michael,
   You keep coming back to the example of the giraffe, which is an example that doesn't exist, so it's hard to imagine it. But there are feedback systems that are influenced by the environment, such as the muscles. Exercise, make the muscle cells divide and multiply. Another example is tanning, exposure to the sun increases the concentration of melanin as feedback. Why is it so hard to imagine that the child of a person who is constantly exposed to the sun will be born darker?

   The evidence for this is that there was a very stormy debate between the supporters of Hallmarkism and the Darwinists and during the debate experiments were made like what Camilla described with the mice's tails. That is, it is not at all trivial that there are no mechanisms for Marxists.
   Today we know a little more, but in my opinion what is surprising is precisely the fact that no mechanisms were discovered for the Marxists.

9. sympathetic:
   Since I see that I am not free so soon, I will only send what I have written so far on the matter (with the exception of the reference to the bacteria matter, everything was written already this morning and was not sent because I had hoped to complete it after dealing with the local problems in the returnees - something that turns out to be unfinished).

   Feedback mechanisms that can solve part of the problem (but cannot be created):
   Theoretically, one can think of complex mechanisms that will supposedly solve the problem.
   I am not currently talking about the creatures that exist in our world, but about theoretical creatures, but I am comfortable using the (theoretical) giraffe as a metaphor.
   Let's say, for example, that the neck of the giraffe has no vertebrae and that its structure allows it to elongate and contract within certain limits (like a large amoeba or Barba Abba). Let's say it's an average length plus or minus a meter.
   One can think that the fact that the giraffe keeps its neck constantly on the high side of the length range reports in some way to the cells that define the characteristics of its offspring and these will be born when the average length around it can move higher.
   Maybe there will be someone who will call it an evolution to Markit, but it does not deserve that name.
   In fact - both the length change mechanism and the feedback mechanism must be created in normal evolution and in principle - everything that will be "invented" in "Lamarckian" evolution has already been invented in normal evolution and the intergenerational changes are a consequence of this evolution.
   More than that: the question arises as to whether such a feedback mechanism might even develop in evolution and the answer to that is in my opinion - "almost certainly not".
   This is a mechanism in which the only cases in which it gives an advantage are cases in which the most suitable neck length changes all the time. In any other situation - this mechanism is just an excess.
   If, in addition to this, we take into account the reasonable assumption that animals are born small and gradually develop to their peak size - then the experience in "childhood" is irrelevant, and each individual born can only benefit from the "experience" accumulated by the body of its parents until its birth and has no benefit from stretching and contracting neck that occur in the parents after he is born, it seems that even in a situation of constant change of the required length of the neck - only individual offspring will be able to assimilate in their body the full experience of their parents' body.
   One can even think of a giraffe born with a neck with a predetermined number and length of vertebrae and with a mechanism that ties its length to the number of uprights on the hind legs, but again - everything I said about the previous mechanism holds:
   1. The solution that was supposedly received in a "Lamarckian" way was already received earlier in an evolutionary way.
   2. The likelihood of evolutionary development of this type of mechanism is extremely low.

   A topic on which I would write a few words beyond what appears here (and maybe I will write more if it is still interesting when I turn) is the topic of the development of neuron networks.
   Neural networks also exhibit feedback-based development.
   Artificial neural networks are usually based on a feedback method (and the effect of feedback) called Back Propagation
   Is the development of a network of neurons lamarkic?
   Not really (or not really).
   Man-made neural networks are the result of intelligent creation (one of the possibilities I mentioned).
   The training of a network of neurons is also carried out by a person who serves for it as the ultimate feedback returner whose presence in nature I questioned in a previous response.
   A neural network that is not man-made is a consequence of evolution

   To your question at the root level - it very much depends on your definition of Lamarckism.
   After all, a germ bequeaths every trait it has acquired because it is its own germ cell.
   Therefore, here - more than anywhere else - it is important to emphasize that we are talking about Lamarxism that solves problems and not about the (obviously inappropriate) interpretation of the inheritance of acquired traits.
   As mentioned - I don't know of any way to solve problems other than the two ways I mentioned - intelligent creation and evolution.
   Evolution can certainly develop (and as I mentioned - it did develop) a tendency to mutations under conditions of stress and even a tendency to mutations in a favored region (by the way - such phenomena do not necessarily need an evolutionary explanation because it is possible that under conditions of stress - for purely chemical reasons, the ability to copy accurately decreases and more mutations are created anyway) but this In the interpretation it is not for Marxism because it is normal evolution with natural selection and with variants of the bacterium that are sacrificed on the altar of discovering the version that will fit the conditions of oppression.

10. R.H.

    I don't know if quantum phenomena are responsible for genetic mutations, but the renowned physicist, Nobel Prize winner Erwin Schrödinger (yes, that one from the equation) wrote an amazing book called (if I'm not mistaken)"? What is Life"
    In the aforementioned book, Schrödinger precedes microbiology by decades from physical considerations, he guesses the mechanism of heredity with surprising accuracy even before they knew what DNA was and its connection to heredity.

    Schrödinger shows from physical considerations that our properties come from non-classical stable states, that is, the fact that our bodies are resistant to being hit by atoms from the environment and these do not change it. Its origin is in quantum theory and not in statistical physics, and his claim is that the changes are also carried out at the quantum level. I do not know today the status of Schrödinger's claim regarding the origin of the mutations.

11. Michael,

    You referred to the giraffe in your answer, but what about the bacterium which is a much simpler animal? Beyond that, I don't see a fundamental problem that physical effort will lead to a physiological change or simply increase the rate of cell growth when it comes to the principle level. I don't see why stretching the neck of the Lamarckian giraffe can't cause the vertebrae to thicken or maybe even produce another vertebra, all this in principle.

12. the last camila,

    As Michael answered you, the question we were dealing with is the fundamental question:
    Is evolution a law of nature in the sense that it is not possible to think about the development of life in an alternative way? Or is evolution just something that happens to exist on Earth or does every life form on any planet where life has evolved must obey it?
    The question of the mechanism by which the development of the Markite can develop is a technical question. If you manage to show that, in principle, such a mechanism cannot exist, this will be a significant claim in the discussion.
    Michal, if I understand his claim correctly, claims that the animal must have intelligence or prophetic ability to develop through a Lamarckian mechanism. In my response (286) to which I responded, I tried to argue that feedback is enough for the animal to develop into a Markit.

13. Yair,
    You can't judge the science of then by the poor of today.
    Edward Jenner, who invented the vaccine and is considered one of the greatest researchers, would go to prison today without the possibility of parole. He took his kindergartener's 8-year-old child. He vaccinated him with a substance he had no idea what it was and if it really worked. Then infected him with smallpox, which was one of the most common causes of death in the period (~1800). Luckily for the boy (and the human race) the vaccine worked and he was saved.
    Today the regulation on animal experiments and of course on people is strong and strict despite what the opponents of animal experiments try to present.
    Today, I suppose that instead of cutting off the tails, they would simply put the mice's food in a high place so that they would stretch their necks and then check if their offspring have longer necks...

14. withering,
    It does not seem to me that such an experiment was of special value even then, and certainly did not require planning who knows what, and in general, our attitude towards animals, and different people, etc...

15. Michael (294)
    Since I did not read the entire discussion, I qualified my words at the beginning of the response (293). However, and especially in light of what you write about the purpose of the discussion is the question: "Is it possible in principle for a process of evolution to Markit.",
    In his response, Ehud jumps over the hurdle of the mechanism that can explain the Lamarckist model as if there was no hurdle at all, but as you well know, this is precisely where the mine is planted and it is the lack of the mechanism that upset me. Even if the question is discussed in principle, the most important thing here is the mechanism that may enable the process. In my response, I mentioned Waddington who proposes a mechanism (backed by elegant studies) that produces evolution that is somewhat similar to the Marxian approach. In biology, as in biology, evolution has produced many solutions to similar problems so it is not so surprising that there is more than one mechanism that results in phenotypic changes in the offspring. The interesting thing is that those other mechanisms are so relatively rare (not that they weren't looked for in candles) compared to the main mechanism. If these points were also brought up earlier in the discussion, I apologize in advance (more correctly in retrospect).

16. Yair (297)

    The experiment in question was carried out by August Wiseman
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Weismann) in 1891
    And it is considered a classic experiment (it is possible to debate what meaning one wants to give to the term classic experiment today, but that is how the same experiment is treated to this day). The experiment showed an example, somewhat blatant, that changes in somatic cells (in the phenotype) acquired as a result of "life experience" are not transferred to the sex cells, that is, to the offspring, thus this was a strong example against Lamarck's theory. However, this does not mean that there is no criticism of him: see for example here:
    http://www.jstor.org/pss/4608123

    Saying about an experiment that it is idiotic is very easy. Doing any experiments is difficult, understanding the meaning of experiments especially in their period context is very difficult and requires a good knowledge of the history of science and of the period in which the experiment was performed.

    You wrote: "In the seventeenth century the genius Descartes argued that animals have no feelings so convincingly that people who admired him began to commit acts of violence on animals, proving that geniuses can be incredibly stupid."
    And you give an example for what? After all, the fact that even geniuses can talk nonsense says nothing about the case I mentioned and the fact that there are many stupid people who listen to the advice of those geniuses certainly has no relevance to the research I mentioned. What did you actually want to say?

17. to camila
    And for those who read her long answer,
    The experiment in cutting mice tails, which until now I thought was only mental, which Camila calls "classic", is simply idiotic.
    In the seventeenth century the genius Descartes argued that animals have no feelings so convincingly that people who admired him began to commit acts of violence on animals, proving that geniuses can be incredibly stupid.

18. ghosts,
    I'm sorry but your correction in 288 only makes the situation worse. In addition to all the tasks you need to find out, you now also need to check whether radioactive radiation affects heat and pressure??? Or you didn't write that either???

19. ravine,

    You are entering into a philosophical discussion here as to whether randomness exists at all. It is clear that, as you say, if we knew all the parameters of the coin, we could calculate exactly its fall. The thing is that these systems obey chaotic nonlinear equations and as such they are very sensitive to the initial conditions. That is, even if you weighed the coin with an error percentage of say 0.00001%, it is still possible that the error will have an effect and the coin will not fall on the side we calculated.

    Regarding mutations, as far as I understand, quantum effects are involved here that have been proven to be truly random (maybe Ehud can help here). In any case, for all intents and purposes the mutations behave in a random manner and to date no mechanisms have been described that control their creation in a controlled manner. As a result, the Marxist is not allowed.

    However, and here I agree with Ehud in the debate with Michael, I believe that there is no principled obstacle to creating such a mechanism.

20. withering:
    I think you should read the entire discussion because the discussion is not about the question "Is evolution Lamarkite?"
    As far as I understand, Ehud doesn't think so either.
    The question is whether, in principle, a process of evolution to Markit is possible.
    I claimed that to the best of my understanding even to this question the answer is negative and Ehud is trying to show that it is not necessarily so.

21. Ehud (286)

    I didn't delve into the whole discussion that was here so maybe I'm missing something important but your comment contains a serious mistake and I wanted to draw your attention to it.
    You wrote: "The Lamarckian giraffe tries by trial and error to find food, it raises its head and discovers to its surprise that the leaves on the trees are tasty and now it tries to reach them as much as possible. Stretching the Lamarckian neck causes it to lengthen (just as exercising the muscles of our body strengthens them) there is also feedback, the lengthening of the neck allows the giraffe to reach higher and it exerts itself again. The neck of the giraffe gets longer, the giraffe has a better chance of surviving, it eats better"

    Up to this point everything is about right, the problem starts with the sentence that comes now: "And the long neck she developed she bequeaths to her descendants." Hops... wait a minute, she produces her share of the future offspring of that giraffe in the gametes. There is coded the majority of the information that determines what the anatomical physiological structure of the junior giraffe will be. Assuming that no mutation occurred in this generation in the genes that affect the length of the neck (for example, in growth hormones, etc.), then the traits that the giraffe acquired during its life are of no importance. The genes that Giraffe Jr. will receive (for the sake of it, let's assume that both the father and the mother have genes that ultimately code for the same neck length X) are genes that contain the same instructions for a neck length X. Look around you, do people who have exercised all their lives pass on muscle volume theirs to their children? They may be bequeathing the tendency to sports that was inherent in them even before they entered the gym or the sport in which they are engaged, but everything achieved in "learning" does not pass on unless it has penetrated the mechanism of information transfer which mainly includes the sex cells and to a lesser and more general extent the specific environment in which the fetus develops. In the same way, if you study at the university, your child will still remain completely ignorant if you send him to Shas camps. One of the classic experiments (which was a bit cruel in my opinion, although very simple and direct) showed that if you cut off the tail of mice, then the next generation is born and develops with a complete tail and at full length and it doesn't matter how many times you repeat it, it doesn't get shorter not even a little bit. Maybe today it seems a bit primitive, but it certainly illustrates that life experience in the vast majority of cases is not passed on. Why only in the vast majority and not always? Because there is a mechanism, quite old, that reminds a little of Marxism, although it is clearly not Marxism, and it is related to a certain freedom of play that exists in classical genetic expression (and certainly within the framework of conventional genetics) so that there is an influence of life experience on the degree of expression of the genes that are passed on to the next generation. To be clear, this is a very small number of examples that were found and which probably mainly reflect the exception and not the rule. However the mechanism is interesting. It seems to me that the researcher most associated with this topic is Weddington who was active in the forties and fifties and his main concepts are genetic assimilation and canalization of the epigenetic landscape. He did some elegant experiments that showed the phenomenon. But as mentioned, it is more the exception that indicates the rule and it is certainly not for Marxism in the classical sense that no mechanism has been found that can realize it.

    For further reading on the subject see also:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canalisation_(genetics)

22. incidentally,
    I said that I have something good to write about feedback and I feel that the moment is approaching that I should do so.
    Although even after this "something good" the matter remains impossible in my opinion, but fairness requires that I describe it.
    The problem is that both the time and the fact that I have to get up tomorrow oblige me to postpone the formulation of things.
    I hope to fill the gap when the pressure of the public activity that was imposed on me recently has eased a bit.

23. By the way, as far as I know, the muscles have absolutely no ability to exert pressure on the vertebrae in an "extending" direction

24. The truth is that I probably should have written "the vertebrae are getting longer"

25. sympathetic:
    got it.
    She stretches her neck, stretches, stretches and suddenly boom - another link is added.
    Then she passes it on to her offspring.
    The truth is, it's quite simple.

26. R.H

    I wrote (269):
    'In an environment of radioactive radiation - compared to an environment without radioactive radiation - there is a very high number of atoms where both the temperature and the pressure are extremely high.'

    It should be written: 'Sheba' instead of 'Shabham'.

    This means that the amount of force exerted on/by the atoms within some assembly (from an energetic point of view, that is), and the kinetic energy of the atoms in that assembly (a field saturated with radioactive radiation), are high, compared to an environment free of radioactive radiation.
    And not to temperature and pressure inside an atom, as you said (probably no such thing exists).

    You're stupid anyway, that's your problem. But when you lie and portray me as one who is telling your lies, you should be ashamed.

27. R.H.:
    If I understood you correctly then a mutation can be called random in the same way that the result of a coin toss is random. When I toss a coin I know all the factors that determine the result. These factors include the strength of the shot, the characteristics of the coin such as its shape and weight and environmental factors such as the direction and strength of the wind. Knowing these factors does not help me in accurately predicting the result though
    In the case of the mutations, the situation is slightly different because not all possible factors have been mapped yet, but they can be similarly divided into environmental factors and factors within the system.
    In both cases, a decrease to a sufficient resolution will allow me to accurately predict the phenomenon

28. Michael,

    I don't understand what kind of prophetic ability we are talking about here? Let's take the case of the giraffe for example. The Lamarckian giraffe tries by trial and error to find food, she raises her head and discovers to her surprise that the leaves on the trees are tasty and now she tries to reach them as much as possible. Stretching the Lamarckian neck causes it to lengthen (just as exercising the muscles of our body strengthens them) there is also feedback, the lengthening of the neck allows the giraffe to reach higher and it exerts itself again. The giraffe's neck is getting longer The giraffe has a better chance of survival, it eats better and the long neck it has developed is bequeathed to its offspring. If you insist on the nomenclature mutations, then traits that the giraffe does not adopt degenerate and she does not pass them on to her offspring. Now all that remains is to add the lion and we will get the story of raspberry juice, or the giraffe can be replaced with a bacterium or any other production that searches for food that has the possibility to regulate the rate of food search.

    Lemarki's example of a bacterium: the bacterium moves and looks for food, the rate of its movement is such that it is dictated by the density of the food. One day the bacterium discovers that when it moves faster, it finds more food relative to the energy it invests, there is feedback here, it starts moving faster and finds more food, its chance of survival increases. He moves too fast, he gets tired and can't find food and slows down his pace. The optimal rate of movement that the bacterium found is bequeathed to its offspring.

29. ravine,
    You understood the experiment correctly.
    The mutations, at least as of today, are random because the environmental conditions affect them overall and not individually. We have not yet found an environmental condition that will take let's say the 100th nucleotide in protein X and always change it from A to let's say G.
    Conditions and materials have been found that change A to G with some frequency without any specificity, sometimes yes and sometimes not, sometimes here and sometimes there so it is indeed random.
    Think of it as a text file that you copy millions of times on your computer. Every now and then an error comes in. How would you check if it is random or not? And the answer in my opinion is that if you find a certain regularity you will know that it is not random, until then you will have to assume that the error is random.
    It should also be noted that if there were such substances that specifically change a certain base, it would make life much easier for the molecular biologists who are constantly making targeted mutations in a much more complex process than just pouring a substance on a cell.

30. Rafa*im, if there isn't, then why did you write in 269????
    And immediately also say that you didn't write that there are individual atoms in a cell?
    Is 10 to the power of 11-12 odd for you?

31. R.H.:
    An interesting experiment. If I understood correctly, then the experiment shows that the mutations that were created were not caused by the exposure to antibiotics, but were created regardless of this factor.
    If this is indeed the case, then I still would not call the mutation random but influenced by other factors - for example, any other environmental factors or factors within the system itself.
    Do you agree with that?

32. R.H
    There is no such thing as 'pressure and temperature inside an atom'.
    But let it go, I don't feel like correcting you anymore, I'm ending this conversation with you.

33. healers,
    So did you check how many atoms are in the cell? More than 100?
    And what is the meaning of pressure and temperature inside the atom you have already figured out?

34. ravine,
    Lederberg's idea was as follows:
    He took germs and seeded them on a plate and got colonies.
    He "copied" the bacterial colonies by touching them with a needle and transferring a sample from each colony to a plate containing antibiotics. Some of the colonies grew on the antibiotics, meaning that they contained resistant bacteria (so far this is an experiment that has been done before with thousands of variations). Now the question he asked was, was the resistance acquired as a result of the contact with the antibiotic? To test this, he returned to the original plate and showed that the resistance was there even before the bacteria "saw" the antibiotic. So the conclusion is that either the mutation is random and happened by chance or the bacteria have the ability to predict...
    I hope I wrote clearly, if you don't ask me.
    This experiment was done in the 30s and since then the methods have progressed a bit, but the result is still strong. All mutations tested to date have been found to be random.
    Another way is to expose the bacteria to a mutagenic environment (that is, that increases the frequency of mutations) and then count how many mutations happened in each gene and what you see again is that the frequency is the same. The number of mutations in the X gene is equal to the one in the Y gene (except for more complex cases that are shorter to describe, the so-called hot spots, where more mutations occur).

35. Also, how do you try to prove that a phenomenon is random?

    I understand trying to show that a specific factor does not affect the rate of mutation, but to prove randomness you must show that no factor has an effect...

36. R.H

    You have registered:

    "Rafa*im,
    Before you lecture so much I would suggest you check:
    1) How many atoms are there in a cell? Few?
    2) What is the temperature and pressure in the atom and is it affected by radiation?
    3) Do atoms change their fields randomly depending on radioactive radiation?
    4) What is the lifespan of the cell?
    5) Does a cell feed on radiation?

    And after you check and understand what nonsense you wrote, maybe we'll continue"

    You should have written:

    "Rafa*im,
    Before you lecture so much I would suggest you check:
    1) How many atoms are there in a cell? Few?
    2) What is the temperature and pressure in the atom and is it affected by radiation?
    3) Do atoms change their fields randomly depending on radioactive radiation?
    4) What is the lifespan of the cell?
    5) Does a cell feed on radiation?

    And after you check and understand what nonsense I wrote, maybe we'll continue"

37. R.H.:

    Don't you think that the randomness is due to factors that are simply unknown to us today?
    If I understand your claim, then there is a phenomenon here that you at least suspect is random by nature (random like quantum states).

38. ravine,
    There used to be a very big debate about the randomness of the mutations and mountains of words were written about it. To date, all the mutations that have been tested and all the mutation creation mechanisms that have been discovered (with the exception of certain translocations) are random.
    One of the famous attempts to prove randomness is the experiment of the Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg who showed that mutations for resistance to viruses or antibiotics happen with the same frequency whether the above-mentioned factor exists or not, that is, they are random.
    The environment affects the frequency of mutations. There are mutagenic substances (in cigarettes for example) or radiation that increase the frequency of mutations, but their effect is not specific but general on the whole genome.

39. I share the question:
    You claimed that there are other factors beyond the genetic load that are inherited and that they change according to environmental conditions.
    Why is the above in contrast to mutations? The way I understand the randomness of mutations is that it is also the result of changes in the environment.

40. R.H.:
    What is the nature of the randomness of mutations?

41. Michael,

    "What is passed on to the offspring is a mutation." - This is an outdated approach, today it is clear that not only the genetic load is inherited. The fertilized egg contains proteins, RNA, modifications of the DNA and histones, mitochondria and other cell organelles and more that pass to the emerging embryo and determine its fate. All of these, unlike mutations, are not random but controlled and change according to environmental conditions. This is epigenetics and indeed it behaves to a certain extent according to the Marxist model.

42. Year:
    Let's agree on terminology.
    Secretion of hormones or no secretion of hormones - what is passed on to the offspring is a mutation.
    I didn't understand anything about the feedback you are talking about.
    Let's stick with the example of the giraffe.
    She is not a prophet and her cells are not prophets either so they must guess what will allow her to reach the higher leaves.
    The body decides on a certain mutation (I'm talking about a mutation because we want it to be passed on to the offspring).
    It is said that the first mutation he thinks of is one that increases the production of saliva.
    Who is supposed to give the body the feedback that this is an unnecessary mutation and who is supposed to rewind the tape so that you do not drag this unnecessary mutation further.
    Let's say that the mutation was rolled back and now we are trying a mutation that increases insulin production. Well - here is feedback. The giraffe is dead. Who will bring her back to life?

43. Machel, 268, 269,
    Fish that are able to operate on land, their limbs are not adaptive to a dry environment, therefore if there is a Marxian process, it is a biochemical feedback between the limbs and the endocrine and sexual system.
    Regarding epigenetics, I commented at the end of 266 an intention for a process in which normal processes may occur in terms of quality, but different in quantity, for example hormone secretions. That is, it is not necessarily a mutation.

44. healers,
    Before you lecture so much I would suggest you check:
    1) How many atoms are there in a cell? Few?
    2) What is the temperature and pressure in the atom and is it affected by radiation?
    3) Do atoms change their fields randomly depending on radioactive radiation?
    4) What is the lifespan of the cell?
    5) Does a cell feed on radiation?

    And after you check and understand what nonsense you wrote, maybe we will continue

45. R.H

    The concept of intelligence is probably not familiar to you.
    What you described the bacterium does, is not intelligence, and no intelligence is necessary in order to do what the bacterium does.
    one more time:

    The cell (let's say a certain cell that is made up entirely of a few individual atoms), reacts to an environment where there is radiation, mainly electromagnetic, in such an environment, the atoms that make up such a cell are able to interact with other atoms in their environment as a whole/body/cell (in this case 'interaction'- This means that one atom of the cell that has a proton in it, for example, in a certain case, can prefer to connect with another atom (which is in its vicinity) that has a neutron and a proton, for example. Of course, there are other possibilities as well).

    The environment of a single cell is small (relative to a multicellular organism for example),
    Therefore, the chance (of a single cell) to grow and 'push aside' the other cells, is small ('push aside' in the sense of stopping or reducing the growth of the other cells in its environment).
    Therefore, the conclusion obtained: in an environment where a single cell will have the most chances to connect with the most atoms, it is the cell that will grow faster in its environment and have a greater impact on its environment.

    In an environment of radioactive radiation -compared to an environment without radioactive radiation- there is a very high number of atoms where both the temperature and the pressure are extremely high, and of course the amount of atoms in that environment is high and also the activity that the atoms perform, that is, exchanging electromagnetic fields between them, is with many random variables , and not fixed (in other words - the exchange of the fields is carried out without any fixed order or fixed pattern, and the atoms do not exist as an 'assemblage' in this situation).

    And as we know, the radioactive radiation around the focus of the radiation (let's say on Kada'a) can also last for decades.
    Relative to a single cell - decades of human life are a lot of time.
    Therefore, a single cell that needs only single atoms to exist/survive,
    In an environment where there is very strong electromagnetic or radioactive activity - it is an ideal environmental condition for that cell.
    That is, the individual cell 'feeds' on radiation.
    All this and more:
    In the environment where the radiation will be the strongest and for the longest period of time, the cell will have the ability not only to survive in that environment, but also to grow, take over its environment, and maybe even reproduce.

46. And regarding epigenetics - will you never agree to remember that the term gene was invented before DNA was discovered?
    What does it matter in our case if the mutation is in the genome or in the epigenome (yes - a change in the epigenome should also be called a mutation).
    No argumentative argument was based on that arbitrary division that was mistakenly introduced at some point where all traits were thought to be due to protein coding.

47. Year:
    It goes without saying even if you haven't heard anyone say it - and that's at best because it's much closer to the truth that Hallmarkism requires prophetic ability (and I guess you haven't heard that either).
    The word "feedback" represents nothing but self-deception.
    What feedback exactly is this? How does the organism know which correction advances it towards what is good for it and which is not? What is the thing that returns this feedback? What supreme intelligence already knows everything and tells him hot/cold?
    And what exactly is the feedback? On a change made (and then rolled back in all the cells?) or on a planned change (who is planning it?)?.
    All this - as I said - is just mumbo jumbo.

    I must say that I have something positive to say about feedback that has some connection to this conversation but I decided to hold back for now because I see that every time I introduce a new topic into the discussion the closure of the previous topic is avoided.

48. Machel 260,
    That's obvious?
    That the Lamarckist principle in evolution requires intelligence? To date I have not heard anyone suggest this, neither as a possibility nor as a matter of course.
    You rejected my answers, and also some of R.H.'s answers, but Ehud offered something else, feedback - his example, Pavlovian conditioning is not successful because it requires brain training. But the feedback, and the control, and the repair, exist at all levels of the organism, whether in the activation of the genes, in the control of the proteins born from the ribosome, up to a skin wound or a bone fracture.
    All that the Lamarckist principle differs from the conventional principle you prefer is that the Lamarckist is activated (ostensibly) in the processes of feedback, control and correction, while the dominant convention offers neutrality of the mutation of change in relation to the actions of the organism.
    It is also worth noting that the epigenetic branch alludes to the possibility that evolution does not move in the two processes we are debating, and that an initial mutation is not necessarily necessary for a change process.

49. Michael,

    There are countless examples of creating complexity in nature, in particular the still nature without what we would call intelligence. It is enough to observe the possible solutions of systems of nonlinear equations to understand how complex phenomena can be obtained from simple laws. To get a study of an organism that it will bequeath to its descendants, it is enough to observe a non-linear system whose feedback allows it to learn and deal with new cases.

    So far you have presented me with many questions, but perhaps we will return to the question that R.H. asked you. If everything is physics and chemistry, what is the magic in learning or intuitive systems, what enables them to learn or what makes the human or perhaps animal brain unique? Do you think plants can learn?

50. R.H.:
    There are indeed serious differences between the cells of an organism and a single cell and certainly there is a difference between a multicellular organism and a single cell, but none of this belongs to the issue of dealing with problems.
    Marxism (just like intelligence) - is supposed to solve problems without sacrificing life for it.

51. from the devil,

    correct. But even a eukaryotic cell hardly survives, the one that survives is the multicellular organism composed of many, many cells. This is one of the reasons for the view of the multi-cellular behavior of bacteria, which holds that bacteria behave many times and under many conditions as tissue or a simple multi-cellular organism. Coincidentally (or not?) this is also the subject of my research.

52. R.H.:
    My definition was abbreviated and you stick to the words and pour meanings into the content that I clearly did not mean.
    By "dealing" it is meant to "solve problems".
    Besides - a single bacterium does not deal with almost anything, even in the sense you are talking about - what survives is the population of bacteria.

53. from the devil,
    According to your definition of intelligence - "the ability to deal with unfamiliar situations" bacteria have much more intelligence than any mammal including humans.
    There is almost no condition in which you can surprise the bacteria, including a nuclear holocaust, pollution of any kind, a significant change in temperatures and pressures that they will not be able to handle. Is this the definition of intelligence?

    This is also an answer to you, dear Rev*im (253). By the way, what is a multicellular bacterium? Do you have any idea what is a complex problem and what is a simple problem?

54. Just another repetition of the obvious:
    If you accept the definition of intelligence as "the ability to deal with unfamiliar situations", it can be argued with certainty that Marxist evolution cannot develop new mechanisms without intelligence because developing a new mechanism is dealing with an unfamiliar situation.

55. sympathetic:
    I'm tired
    I have written everything I have to say on the subject and I do not see your words dealing with my arguments.
    Maybe I wasn't clear enough but it's a waste of time.
    I only suggest that you think about the question of how a substance can organize itself into one of the "solutions" you are thinking of.
    In my opinion this can only happen through billions of years of evolution.

56. ravine,

    I also believe that this type of quantitative research is possible, when answering focused questions you can get answers from quantitative analysis. The expression begins in my opinion with greater pretensions.

57. sympathetic:
    I don't know how to tell you, it seems to me that such research is still in its infancy and by the nature of scientific research it is difficult to know in advance what the results will be.
    I'm quite skeptical about the possibility of predicting the future for another 30 years, but I don't know many sciences whose business is forecasting for another 30 years (although there are certainly some, for example astronomy deals with time spans much larger than those).
    The results of such research can give rise to new insights into how the language developed, cultural influences throughout history, etc. It is possible to develop models and test them quantitatively with the help of the accumulated information and even predict such future effects.

58. ravine,

    I have no problem with the collection of quantitative data by computers or by people, the only question is what can be learned from it about human behaviors. Do you think that a supercomputer that will track all the activity that is done today on the Internet will be able to predict the future of another 30 years?

59. Michael,

    Regarding your basic claim "Marxism therefore requires that all cells of the body have the intelligence of a brain" in order to learn or gain knowledge you don't need a brain (I will avoid sarcastic comments here regarding one of the commenters who is interested in IQ questions) two-way feedback is enough. A desired action entails a positive incentive that increases the action and God forbid, there is no need for sophisticated information processing or the ability to calculate or evaluate the results of the action, this is Pavlovian conditioning. If Pavlovian conditioning also worked on puppies that were not directly exposed to it, would we be surprised.

    Secondly, you assume that creating a genetic change following learning is a complicated and complex process. It seems so to me too, but I think that we are all captive to the concept of genes and DNA as a way to encode genetic information, but in the time of Lamarck and Darwin, this information did not exist, so it was possible to think about Simpler mechanisms in which genetic changes can be made in a non-complex way.

    Regarding alternatives to Darwin's evolution as a possibility for utilizing resources and sustaining life, you argued against me that I am bringing parts of a description, but there are many such mechanisms that can be detailed, it is enough to look at all the computational algorithms for solving optimization problems and apply them to living productions.

    As soon as the mutations are not completely random as happens under stress conditions, it is a feedback mechanism (which is not natural selection) between the environment and the genetic code. Now the question is how synchronized and accurate this mechanism is, it is a question of quantity not quality and it is a Lamerki mechanism on different scales in my opinion The key word in the discussion is feedback and not intelligence.

    A side note linking the current discussion with the initial discussion. The fact that predicting the future is problematic is what made the Darwinian algorithm so efficient it is able to respond to changes in the environment. If the conditions of life were to change very slowly, the production that was educated to calculate the situation for the farthest time would be the one that would survive and also have the ability to adapt to changes, since the future is difficult to predict, it is better to create random changes that prepare us for any eventuality that does not occur.

60. For those who had doubts about the use of quantitative information for scientific research in the fields of social sciences, here is another example:
    http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2010/12/15/science.1199644

61. R. H. Ehud and Yair
    I had to clean my glasses to read, and understand well, what you wrote.
    And I realized that the only thing funnier than that, is going to a funeral.

    Can you answer the questions I pose to you (probably, they will be a rebuke to how much you have studied):
    1- What is the IQ of the bacterium?
    2a- Do you know the quantitative difference between the IQ of a person, and the IQ of a bacterium (unicellular or multicellular)?
    2b- Do you know, and can you elaborate and explain, what this difference boils down to?
    3- Do you know what the term 'higher than average IQ' means?
    4- Do you understand the meaning of the sentence: 'to solve complex problems' or 'to provide a solution/ability to deal with unfamiliar problems'?

    R.H
    It will be enough for a simple bacterium to do simple (not complex) operations. (Let's say if you were a bacterium - then like in your case, I guess, solve known problems from the field of biology according to solutions that are also probably already known)
    To solve complex (familiar) problems you need an average IQ (you can probably handle it).
    To solve complex, unfamiliar problems, you need a high, and sometimes extremely high, IQ. (You won't be able to deal with such problems anyway)
    This means that a bacterium can solve very simple problems, but,
    To solve problems unfamiliar to the bacterium it needs more intelligence to deal with them.
    Wisdom that he has nowhere to get.
    Therefore, in the end, a brain developed - and in it reason developed - that would allow many bacteria (which had enough time to unite) to provide solutions to such complex problems - that one bacteria could not deal with them.

62. God,
    According to Lamarck, a giraffe does learn to lengthen its neck. What he claims is that a giraffe that learns that there are tasty leaves up high and stretches its neck will have offspring with long necks.
    I agree with Yair even though the details he adds "strains will penetrate the blood, etc." are trivial and unnecessary as long as we don't have a phenomenon and we certainly don't have a mechanism.

    In any case, this discussion is a bit unnecessary. After all, it is clear to both of us that to date no Marxist mechanism has been discovered. I claim that it is possible that one day such a mechanism will be discovered and you claim that there is no chance. If you are right, the debate will never be decided, but if I am right, the day the mechanism is discovered, thank your mistake and invite me to a beer.

63. Rah:
    Just not true!
    A giraffe does not "learn" to extend its neck.
    Lemark spoke specifically about physical changes.
    The difference between learning and physical change is the difference between information accumulated in the genes and information accumulated in the central nervous system.
    Marxism therefore requires that all the cells of the body have the intelligence of a brain and in addition have the ability to carry out the conclusions that that intelligence reaches - something much more sophisticated than all the genetic engineering laboratories combined (all this, as mentioned, in every cell).

    The brain is really more flexible to learn and change but it is not a coincidence that the brain developed so late in evolution.
    Life begins from matter and what it does - both during evolution and during study - is to accumulate information about the world.
    The existence of a decision-making and execution mechanism at a level that surpasses that of our brain requires a tremendous accumulation of information that everything that happens before it must happen in blind evolution and only what happens after it can be based (as I said) also on intelligent planning.

    Year:
    I think all your points have already been answered.
    I think you didn't read it carefully.

64. For a system to behave in a Marxist manner, it does not need any intelligence.
    What is necessary for Lamarckism is that the activity of the organism will cause changes in the sites of activity, not by chance but because of the activity. If a small animal that eats plants looks for its food at the height of the plants, and the effort to stretch its neck every day for many hours and many generations will cause the local strains to transmit to the blood, the immune system, or in some other way signs of distress that for some reason will be transferred to the genome, then changes will apply that will prevent the strains and cause the organism to act accordingly Good for the environment, and the changes in those sites will stop.
    The currently accepted claim says that such changes take place, but not because of the activity, but regardless of the activity, by chance in relation to the activity of the organism.
    That is, in terms of the need for reason, there is no difference between a change caused by an accidental mutation in relation to the activity, which by sheer chance was suitable for improving the adaptation of an activity site to its activity, and a similar change caused by a mutation that was induced in the same site because of the distress signals it transmitted.
    That is why I brought in 244 the case of a fetus at the beginning of its development, the most sensitive to processes originating from the mother. I brought the example of shock as a result of chemicals that the mother consumes, this is a prominent example. But small changes that the mother may instill in the fetus are very difficult to detect. These changes do not have to be harmful, they can be part of an evolutionary process, which in the future will be expressed in the observable structure of the organism.
    I am copying here what R. H. wrote. in 206. This is a short summary of what I wrote.
    "The fundamental difference between the Lamarckist and Darwinist approaches is that Darwinism claims that all mutations are random and there is non-random selection. On the other hand, the Hallmarkist approach (and it doesn't matter what exactly Mark himself said that he didn't know about mutation mechanisms) says that the mutations are not random. Both agree on the issue of non-random selection."

65. Michael,
    It seems to me that you have taken the Hallmarkist theory to extreme areas far beyond what it is.
    Lamarck's idea was that learning something new could be inherited. It's not such a ridiculous or impossible idea. Take for example a monkey that learned to pull beetles out of a hole with a stick. We take it for granted, even though the mechanisms are not at all clear to us that:
    A. He will remember it
    B. He will show it to other monkeys
    third. They will understand what he did
    d. They will and soon the whole tribe will know

    Why if he had a son who knows how to do that would we be so surprised?
    The reason, in my opinion, is that there is apparently no assimilation of learning to mutations on Earth, but it can be described as Ehud tried another planet with productions that would do it.

    You say we wouldn't know what mutation to make to make a dog have a long neck, but we also don't know what change to make in a monkey's brain to make it know something new.

66. R.H.:
    You bring exactly the examples I gave in the explanation and expect them to convince me of the opposite of what I claimed.
    it will not work.
    Also from the very fact that I claim that the mind is material and physical, the claim that the mind is event-driven comes as it were.
    It's true but it's not interesting.
    This is about a complexity that is immeasurably higher and when I talk about will or consciousness - I'm actually talking about this kind of complexity.
    In other words - for a system to start behaving in a "Marxist" manner, it needs more intelligence than we have (even if it can be argued that intelligence is merely a physical system guided by events).
    We have this intelligence as a result of a very sophisticated mind and Hallmarkism expects such an intelligence to be found in the solitary cell.
    Of course, the ridiculousness increases if you think about the fact that the mutation that was more beneficial to the organism than all the mutations that occurred to it is a mutation that will allow it to use the intelligence that is hidden in it for additional needs - beyond planning the mutations - but for some reason - that supreme intelligence does not reveal this tribal fact.

67. sympathetic:
    I already mentioned the possibility of faster mutations occurring in the organism as a result of stressful conditions in one of the previous responses (209), so it is a bit strange that you ask me what would have turned out if such a thing had been discovered.

    This is by definition Darwinian evolution and it is by definition completely different from the claim attributed to Lamarck.
    Note: Lamarck did not speak of natural selection, but rather that the creature simply evolved in the right direction without sacrificing all kinds of attempts and fell on the altar of discovering the necessary mutations.

    I have no interest in a long description of something that amounts to saying that it is difficult to describe a solution other than evolution.
    Either you can describe such a solution or not.
    If you can't then the description parts are not interesting.
    In addition to this - as I have already said - from the moment intelligence was created - evolution can also progress intelligently and all the particles of the examples you mentioned are of this type.

    A mutation rate that depends on environmental conditions is not a deviation from the conditions of evolution. It definitely fits her well.
    More than that - it really exists in reality. Even the trivial example of the atomic bombs in Japan is such an example and examples in bacteria are not lacking.

    It is not difficult to find examples of mathematical sentences that are not relevant to nature.
    In nature, due to the curvature of space, it is not true that the sum of the angles in a triangle is always 180 degrees.
    But you will never find an example of a mathematical theorem whose conditions are true in nature without its conclusion being true in nature and the conditions for evolution clearly being true in nature.

68. from Israel,
    In my opinion, a goal-driven system according to your definition is simply a refinement of an event-driven system.
    You can teach your child to be careful with scissors, be careful with a knife and be careful with masks, but at some point you will realize that it is worth teaching a sign that sharp things are dangerous and that first he should ask about a new bone "is it sharp", then he will handle it carefully.
    Likewise with the will. In my opinion, our will is simply a complex expression of a sophisticated system like no other, a learning system, but at its base, in its biological hardware, it is based on the same principles and materials that make up the system that guides the events in the bacteria.
    It is a fact, for example, that our nervous system includes the reflexological system that guides events, no matter what, the leg will always jump with a crippled knee at the right point. The same nervous system also knows how to decide whether to eat an omelette or a hard-boiled egg in the morning and changes its decision from time to time. Exactly the same nervous system, the same cells and the same signals. What is different is the complexity and the method of processing the information, not the hardware.

    Ghosts, I hope you enjoy being the site's side kick. By the way, beyond what Ehud bothered to answer you, I will just add that there is no such thing as human seals and refrigerator seals. The carbon in the plastic in the refrigerator is exactly the same carbon in your body and the "behavior" of the atoms and their fields is also the same. The atoms of the refrigerator are no less chaotic than those of man. Believe me, the secret of life is not in the structure of atoms. Maybe try molecules.

69. Year:
    I don't know why you insist.
    If you don't need an intelligent planner to determine what mutations are necessary to lengthen the dog's neck so that it is the length of a giraffe's neck - please list these mutations.
    If you insist on simply calling inheritance acquired traits, even if they are only harmful to the organism, which are not the result of development in response to some of its deficiencies but simply an expression of food that was fed to it or something else that was done to it in the name of Marxism, then the whole debate is only about the definition of the word Marxism (definition that you decided for some reason that you have the right to change) but since you said that your words are "contrary to the words" then if you are not impaired in reading comprehension - you mean my definition and this is the definition that corresponds to the neck of the giraffe and therefore I expect you to answer my question regarding the necessary mutations.
    The fact that you make announcements doesn't change anything and you haven't provided an iota of reasoning to refute my reasoned arguments.

70. Another note on Lamarxism. I am not referring to Lamarck himself who I have not read a single line of his. The definition I have for Lamarckism that I am referring to is -
    Transmission of acquired traits to offspring and development of the species under the influence of such trait transmission.
    Contrary to Michal's words that an intelligent creator or prophecy of the biological system or teleology is apparently necessary in the evolutionary process for a Marxian case to occur, the Marxian case arises - if at all - from normal biological processes, and just like the random mutation is a consequence of the conditions and is in no way goal-oriented.
    The famous experiment conducted about 90 years ago: newts or salamanders that lived in a coastal area were moved to a mountain area. Many changes took place in them and they became similar to local members of the same species. For several generations the creatures lived in the mountains and it seemed that they had become the mountain species. But then the offspring were returned to the shore, and in a short time returned to the characteristic features of coastal newts.
    It turns out that the changes were apparently hormonal, and not genetic. But, the question is what would have happened if the experiment had continued for thousands of generations. If for thousands of generations the hormonal system was in a state of stress, wouldn't there have been a change in the genes in response. Regarding hormones, we know that they are transmitted in the blood, and therefore the information they carry also reaches the sexual system.
    Even during early pregnancy there is access of information to the fetal genome. A pregnant woman who uses chemicals, such as drugs, alcohol, the child may be genetically damaged. It is not at all clear to me why the possibility that normal processes in the mother will also affect the fetus should be ruled out.
    The arguments for and against Marxism are based on partial knowledge. It is worth remembering the change that has taken place in the last 10 years in relation to the question of whether immune cells penetrate the brain. In the recent past there was a strong consensus against this possibility, and today the consensus is the opposite.

71. Michael,

    If it turned out that the rate of mutations in any production depends on the environmental conditions, for example when there is a shortage of food, the rate of mutations would be increased, would you call the development of the aforementioned production by the name of evolution (Darwin's)? This is just an example of a possibility where feedback affects genetics. One can think of a possibility where the mutation rate and character changes in a certain region of the DNA depending on the environmental conditions.

    Regarding the possibility of productions that develop not according to evolution, for example without reproduction, I do not find anything wrong with the example of the unification of the genetic load in analogy to business companies. As soon as one production recognizes that it is stronger than another production, it digests the weak production into it while adopting its genetic load or the knowledge that the production has accumulated (again, this is only an attempt to think of imaginary productions that do not have to develop according to evolution).
    Regarding the possibility of integrating knowledge into the genetic load for Marxism, it is possible to think of such possibilities as a small change in the animals here on Earth. Man, for example, accumulates knowledge about his environment and passes it on to his descendants in writing or through technology. You can think of a production that transmits knowledge that he has accumulated genetically (not the right word in this context) to his descendants. I admit that it is difficult to think of alternatives to evolution, but I see no principled reason why such cannot be held in principle. It is enough to break one of the fundamental assumptions that lie at the base of the mathematical theorem,
    For example, there is no need to assume culture by reproduction or even culture at all. It is enough to even claim that mutations depend on the environmental conditions, for example in terms of their rate of creation, to get a deviation from Darwin's evolution.

    By the way, as an example of mathematical theorems that made claims about nature and were found to be irrelevant, there is the example of superconductivity. About fifty years ago there were mathematical theorems that showed that it is not possible to obtain superconductivity at temperatures higher than 30 degrees Kelvin. Today, as we know, there are entire families of superconductors at much higher temperatures, the question of the mechanism that enables them is still an open problem.

72. R.H. healers,

    I already regret asking you to intervene in the discussion only when you have something meaningful to say. In response 228 you admit that you are not well versed in physics, but you insist on making a barrage of wrong and embarrassing claims on this subject.

    Several corrections to your meaningless language (and I apologize in advance, I don't have the time or desire to correct all the nonsense you spoke):
    "There are photons in the world that interact with each other, they create electric and magnetic fields"
    Photons do not create electric and magnetic fields. Photons are fluctuations of the electromagnetic field that maintain a wave equation.
    "And almost every atom in the universe has an electric and magnetic charge" every atom in the universe has zero electric charge exactly this fact allows atoms to exist. For your information, atoms consist of a positively charged nucleus and electrons with a total charge opposite to that of the nucleus, so atoms are neutral. I wonder what they learn in high school today if even this fact is not known to you. It is not clear to me what you call a magnetic charge, but as far as I know there are no magnetic monopoles so it is not possible to talk about a magnetic charge.
    "The proton of the atom consists of an electric and magnetic field, so do the components of that proton." The proton is made up of quarks the electric charge is a property of it not what makes it up. The proton also has an inherent magnetic moment, but as far as I know, it does not consist of magnetic charges, which I am not clear about.

    "Almost everything in nature has an electric and magnetic charge. which reacts to its environment (electric and other magnetic fields)."
    Most things in nature are electrically neutral, but they were not stable structures like atoms.

    In conclusion R.H. Rf*im, I'm not sure what high school you graduated from or you're about to graduate, but I see your situation as a serious failure of the education system and once again I'll be saddened to see where my tax money goes.

73. What is desire?

    I will try to discuss the question from two aspects: the subjective aspect and the objective aspect.

    The subjective aspect:
    The truth is that it sounds a bit strange - to discuss subjective aspects in public, but I hope that we all have the ability to introspect and that people who are honest with themselves will still understand.
    Think - for example - about the difference between the automatic action of pulling the hand that touched the hot oven - and the desire to finish a university degree.
    Both things lead us to action but I guess you still feel the difference.
    Now, consider, for example, the things said by Professor Sompolinski In this link
    We have known for a long time that it is possible to cause the hand to move by stimulating a suitable point in the brain, but both Sompolinski and his interviewers, and I assume that the readers of these things understand the difference between this and what Sompolinski describes in the above link.
    The difference between the "will" and the chemical and physical factors that lead to action is what stands behind the whole discussion in the above interview.

    The objective aspect:
    Here I intend to address the question "How do we recognize desire in others?"
    I intend to focus on just one aspect of the issue at the moment, hoping that it will be enough to clarify my claims.
    Anyone who has ever dealt with artificial intelligence may know the difference between the terms Goal driven and Event driven.

    For the convenience of writing, I will use my personal translations for these terms - "goal oriented" and "event oriented"

    When you build an event-driven system, you define how it reacts to any situation it may encounter.
    This is a good strategy when you know all the situations in which the system is expected to encounter and their number is small enough to name them all and define the expected response.
    Such a system tends to look less "intelligent" but has the advantage of being able to respond quickly. The calculation process of "what is the desired response" actually depends only on the complexity of identifying the situation.
    Our reflexes work like this. If you feel the touch of something too hot in your hand - pull it away.
    There is no thought here.
    When building a goal oriented system the situation is different.
    Here the system is "aware" of the goals for which it operates and when it encounters a certain situation it thinks, based on its knowledge of the world - what are the ways it can take to get from the current state to the desired state.
    Beyond just calculating the possible ways of doing things, such a system may also try one way and when it doesn't prove itself - decide to try another way and depending on the need - more and more ways.

    Think of a dog wanting the slice of pizza in your hand.
    There are dogs that know you and know your weak points.
    These dogs may at first - just sit and stare at the pizza with a sad look - hoping you will get the hint.
    Then they may whimper or reach out a "hand".
    If that doesn't help either, they may start barking and later, depending on their nature, they may also jump up and try to grab the pizza from you.
    There are also dogs (especially the cats 🙂 ) who will take the last road straight.

    This is goal-directed behavior and is one of the characteristics of behavior that is followed by desire.

    That is why it is said "there is nothing that stands before the will".

    In humans - reflexes and all automatic behaviors are event driven. Other behaviors are goal-directed.
    A combination of them can be a situation where a person sits in the chair at the dentist and overcomes the urge to run away from the pain of the treatment because of the desire to heal the tooth.

    In order to act in a goal-oriented manner, the system needs, among other things, to know what the goal is and to know the reality in which it operates in order to look for ways to achieve the goal.
    By the way - sometimes there are no such ways or the system does not find ways that exist and then it does nothing (unlike a bacterium that will try to escape from the toxin even if it encounters an opaque wall).

    Note that I contented myself with describing goal-directed behavior as "one of the characteristics of behavior that is driven by desire." There are other characteristics, but for the purpose of illustrating the difference between the bacterium's response to the toxin and the goal-directed response, the goal required of the intelligent planner within the giraffe for the problem of leaf inventions is too high, this characteristic is enough.

    The existence of additional characteristics is required by reality because, as I mentioned - we are able to build computer systems that behave like target systems.
    In this context, it may be appropriate to tell a transitional story:
    In 1980 I won the prize of the Israeli union for information work on a system called "Manufacturing Works Monitor" which I developed. This system is designed to replace the shifts that our unit used to leave every night to make sure that all the work that has to be finished by morning will be entered into the computer and their faults will be taken care of.
    Just as there are people who discover after many years that they actually spoke prose all their lives 🙂 , so I also learned only later that the system I built can be associated with a department of software solutions called "expert system" and its mode of operation is called "goal oriented". It was the first expert system I had seen and perhaps the first written in the world for solving real problems.
    The shifts that this system was designed to eliminate, it must be said, were no small matter at all. They required a complete understanding of everything that needs to happen at night and a considerable ability to improvise in malfunction situations (and all this, even before the ongoing confrontation with the computer operators who sometimes seem to be doing us a big favor by doing their job).
    When we started to activate the system, we did it accompanied by people on duty - just to be sure that it doesn't go crazy.
    The experience was dizzying! Almost every time the watchmen were sure that the system did go crazy until it became clear that the solutions it found to the problems were better than theirs. They were locked on a "school solution" and the system actually improvised and took advantage of occasional situations much better.
    The result was that MRAM's computers were able to finish the execution of our unit's nightly collection of works in one third of the usual time - and this without any change in the works themselves.
    Our society - which, after all, are indeed only humans (and not computers) - but intelligent humans - realized very quickly that the system coped with the challenge better than them and stopped trying to follow its decisions.
    Instead, they simply started calling it "Yaakov Monitor" because they felt that they were facing a system with a personality.

74. R.H.:
    As long as we agree on what is happening and the problem is only with the question "why is it allowed to call Marxism" - the situation is not serious.
    I have a feeling this is roughly the case.
    I'm only afraid that the way you use the word gives encouragement to people who believe that Marxism in its original meaning exists - to persist in their error.

    Perhaps I will now write a few words about the difference between the bacteria's action factors and what we call "will"

75. R.H

    First of all you prove that you are learning (which is the only thing you prove so far).
    Second, I really thought you would say something like: "I have the impression that the refrigerator has a little more atoms than a human and yet it does not show any consciousness." I just didn't know what word to write where you wrote the word 'refrigerator'.
    So you chose the word 'refrigerator'.
    Okay, I'll try to explain to you what the difference is between a refrigerator and a person and I'll try to explain what consciousness is in my opinion:

    The refrigerator is mostly made of, say, steel, iron, plastic...
    The way in which the atoms of, for example, a piece of iron (and especially that of the refrigerator) are arranged or grouped and behave is different from those of, say, the atoms that as a whole form a human liver.
    It could be that the refrigerator generates an electromagnetic field around it that is higher than a person's (I don't know),
    But the arrangement of the atoms and their 'behavior' (that is, the way the atoms exchange electromagnetic fields among themselves), as an assembly called a refrigerator, create different electromagnetic fields than those produced by the atoms of man.
    If the atoms of a refrigerator as a whole, behave in a way we call it, 'uniform' or 'dense', then the general behavior of the atoms as a whole called a person - can be called 'random' or chaotic.
    Assuming that one's atoms behave 'randomly',
    The exchange of the electromagnetic fields between them (as a body) will be carried out, for the most part,
    in a random and unpredictable manner with a higher probability than the chance of randomness in the structure and behavior of the atoms that make up the refrigerator.
    In other words, compared to the atoms of a refrigerator, the chance that the atoms of a person will behave, in a random manner, is much higher.
    Therefore, it is possible to 'predict' the 'behavior' of the refrigerator, but you cannot predict the behavior of the person for example.
    Another thing:
    Following the random activity of atoms in a certain section of the assembly, unexpected or random situations can arise in the structure and behavior of the atoms in that section of the assembly. And this actually increases the chance that a change will occur in the atomic structure of that segment in the assembly. And any such change actually results in a change in the general structure of the material, and of course entails consequences such as a different effect than what was before, on the environment.
    This change, for example, can be a trigger for a chemical and even spontaneous process in a certain section of some assembly.
    That is, a difference in the structure and behavior of the atoms, whether of the person or of the refrigerator, is also expressed in the difference in the shape and behavior of the material itself at the time of the environment's influence on it and at the time of its influence on the environment.

    Assuming that there are many random processes that take place between the electromagnetic fields of the person, the chance of changes in the way the body/assemblage develops increases. And in fact, the chance is much higher than that the electromagnetic fields of the refrigerator will produce changes in the refrigerator itself.

    Therefore it is only logical, that the chance that consciousness will be created in man is much higher than the chance that it will be created in the refrigerator.

76. Okay, so we'll disagree

77. And I say again - genetics according to Darwin's concept unites both genetics and today's epigenetics.

78. R.H.:
    It doesn't seem to me that we agree because no reasonable mechanism seems appropriate to the name "Marxist".
    That a certain mechanism that evolution has tuned to choose between a set number of structures that solve predetermined problems is able to switch between these structures as needed is completely normal evolution based on natural selection and not on anything similar to the ideas attributed to Lamarck according to which evolution is driven by teleological changes that adapt the structure to situations new ones

79. Michael,
    I think we agree and exhausted the issue.
    In conclusion, my opinion is that a Lamarckist mechanism is one that modifies DNA in a deliberate manner according to environmental conditions. I see no problem in creating such a mechanism. His own creation will be random, but from the moment he is created, he is the one who will change the DNA and is therefore Marxist by definition. And this is exactly what happens in epigenetics.

80. R.H.:
    Any mechanism can be presented as Marxian after it was created, but this is a misleading presentation because, as I mentioned in previous responses, this is not a mechanism that finds evolutionary solutions to any problem, but a mechanism that applies solutions selected by natural selection to very specific problems.
    If evolution created a mechanism that knows how to lengthen and shorten the neck according to the circumstances, it seems a little funny to me to come and claim later that the neck lengthening (which is a private case of the above) developed (later! while basing itself on the above mechanism that already knew how to both shorten and lengthen! ) in a Marxist way.

81. God,
    I am not claiming that the mutations were created in the first place with the aim of creating a long neck. It is indeed predicting the future and intelligent planning. But if by chance a mechanism was created that changes the sequence of genes when the giraffe stretches its neck and returns it when it is not stretched, this mechanism would probably confer an advantage and it would survive. Such a mechanism, although created randomly, meets from the moment it is created the Lamarque definition of creating mutations as a result of environmental conditions.

    I agree that describing a pure Marxist world without evolution is probably impossible without intelligent design.

82. R.H.:
    You know I don't think we have anything else in mind either but:
    1. Our mind is the result of evolution.
    2. The brains of other animals are also like this.
    3. Even our minds are not sophisticated enough to solve the problem of intelligent planning necessary for Lamarckism, which is actually a complete solution of the question of the relationship between genotype and phenotype (that is, to answer the question of how it is possible to deduce all the characteristics of a creature from its genetic code).
    4. A mechanism capable of doing this is obviously much smarter than us and its planning is intelligent.

    If you don't see the difference between the automatic responses of a bacterium and the problem of "What mutations are needed to lengthen a dog's neck to the length of a giraffe's neck?" I suggest you write me the answer to the second question.

83. from the devil,
    I don't think there is anything in our brain beyond chemistry and physics. Despite this, he manages to cope with new situations. A bee and even a bacterium cope well with uploading/downloading/communication between species and the stochasticity inherent in the system. I don't see why mutations are different from all of these.
    How do we know how to raise the level of serotonin? This is done by controlling the intensity of gene expression by transcription factors and others. It is equally possible to describe a mechanism that lowers and increases gene expression by creating mutations in them.

84. R.H.:
    Not everything that can be written equally is equally true.
    The accepted definition of intelligence is the ability to deal with unfamiliar problems.
    As soon as you base yourself on a mechanism that is able to solve unknown problems (and not by means of a blind experiment as evolution does) you base yourself on intelligence (in Hebrew - wisdom).

    Proofreading RNA does not require intelligence.
    This is a mechanism that was built in evolution and does the same thing over and over again. There is no dealing with unfamiliar situations (and when an unfamiliar situation happens by chance - the mechanism fails).

    The solution to the problem "the leaves are too high" is unknown (certainly not at the cellular level) and it requires intelligence - and not just intelligence, but supreme intelligence.
    I suppose that even if I gave you the much simpler problem that no longer talks about leaves or any problem in the outside world - the one that is only part of the solution to the above problem - something along the lines of "take a dog and think about what mutations it has to go through in order to grow a neck like that of the "Let go" - all your intelligence and knowledge were not enough for that.

85. from the devil,
    What is the connection between intentional mutations and intelligent design? In the same way you could that every genetic control mechanism is "intelligent design". I don't see any difference between directed mutations in RNA that have been described (RNA editing) and mutations in DNA.

    healers,
    I'm glad you finished solving the problems of dimensions and particles and found the Higgs boson so you have time to solve the problems of consciousness and will too. By the way, just for your information, a cell or a bacterium does not consist of a single number of atoms. In addition, the number of atoms does not determine consciousness. I have the impression that the refrigerator has a little more atoms than a human and yet it does not show any consciousness. Although between us I know some talkbackists on this site with less sense than him.

86. R. H. and Ehud

    Machal shows you where the fish urinates from, but you still don't understand.
    Try to look at the world from an angle that is a little more proportional to the world than your own angle of vision:
    The 'will' is a desire in the sense of - the intelligence's ability to process information towards a very specific thing, something that will be relevant to, say, a certain action to be performed by the body, in which a brain exists, and that will make sense and that will benefit that brain owner to develop (and not the other way around) within the environment - in which the brain and the body are present.
    It must seem like a more complicated explanation than an explanation like: ""Desire" is not only found in the advanced BHs, but in every cell in the world."
    But it seems to me that you do not really understand what desire is.

    In the world there are photons that interact with each other, they create electric and magnetic fields and almost every atom in the universe has an electric and magnetic charge (except for a photon and a neutron they have no electric charge. But a neutron has mass unlike a photon. Maybe there are other particles that have no electric charge, but I'm not an expert in physics and even Not close to it so I don't know), the proton of the atom consists of an electric and magnetic field, so do the components of that proton.
    Almost everything in nature has an electric and magnetic charge. which reacts to its environment (electric and other magnetic fields).
    The cell or a bacterium, for example, consists of individual atoms and therefore they are limited in their movement. They have not developed a brain or a sophisticated central processing unit that can perform many operations - if only because, for the most part, their electromagnetic field is weak compared to the environment they are in (that is, if they are in an environment where there is an electromagnetic field higher than theirs, they will be affected - and not affected - from the same electromagnetic field, and usually they are in such an environment).
    What a bacteria does, for example, is to respond, as a whole, to the individual electromagnetic fields that are in its environment and not according to any will (which requires a high processing capacity of the brain and many atoms that maintain a relationship between them). In other words, the bacteria exist in chemical processes and as a whole in the same chemical process.
    Man, as a whole, is not directly affected by the atoms of chemical processes, but rather,
    It is affected by them only indirectly through other atoms, which were affected by the atoms - which were closer to the atoms that were closest to the atoms (for example, bacteria or cells) in which the particular chemical process took place.
    An animal like man, and the developed brain of man, the amount of atoms in it is immeasurably high.
    And of course, when there are so many atoms (that exist as a whole or some body) that exchange electric and magnetic fields between them, they greatly influence their environment - so much so - that they influence more the environment closest to them (an environment - which ends with the last atoms found at the ends of the limbs, for example) than The environment closest to them affects them.
    If this whole was called a person then he could make his immediate environment act as he wished or not.

    sympathetic
    In other words, desire is a consequence of consciousness in the process of evolution. And like her there are many histories in evolution. The point is that you need a brain to develop a consciousness that will develop a will.

87. R.H.:
    I say again: "directing the mutations" is intelligent planning (if the direction is such that the mutations will be useful).
    I explained exactly why I don't think Marxism is possible and I have yet to see any example that solves the problems I presented in Marxism. The example you presented didn't solve them either - it simply ignored them.

88. We all know that Marxism was not discovered (with the exception of epigenetics). The debate is about your decisive ruling that it is impossible for a Marxian mechanism to exist and in my opinion it is possible.
    As I wrote above, the whole difference between Lamark and Darwin is whether mutations are random or they are intentional.
    Today it is clear to us that mutations are random, but can we be sure that where there is a mechanism there is also a mechanism that directs mutations?
    If such is found, it will be a Marxist mechanism. He will not negate the Darwinist one but only join it.

    It is clear that a Lamarckist mechanism could not have created the first cell and it is clear that if such a mechanism exists it developed during evolution.
    And read my words to the end, they are important 🙂

89. R.H.:
    The mistake is in your hands and not only because stretching the neck of the giraffe does not create any genetic change but the opposite (which is one of the reasons why I said that Marxism is wrong).
    The truth is that I probably didn't read your words to the end because I stopped at the first sentence, but when I go back to them I see that even though the mechanism is more Marxist than I thought - it still isn't.
    It is enough for a Marxist to be impossible (because what exactly will cause a mutation - how will the bacterium find out that it is the mutation it must undergo?) and it is not really a Marxist because it does not develop anything from nothing - it is only a game - as I said - in the expression of properties that have already developed.

90. God,
    You're wrong, it's exactly a Marxist mechanism. A giraffe mother stretches her neck and as a result the gene changes along the neck (Lamark). As a result, Tzatia will have a long neck until the day there is another giraffe that does not stretch its neck and then maybe the above gene will return to its original state, it is just like the imaginary mechanism I described that changes the absorption of lactose by changing DNA.

91. R.H.:
    The mechanism you described is not Marxist at all.
    This is a mechanism that has already developed in evolution and is activated as needed and not in a new evolution for the purpose of solving a problem.

92. sympathetic:

    There is nothing to apologize for. I admit that I myself tried to push the discussion in a slightly different direction (the meaning of probability) and I do not feel that I have much to contribute to the current discussion.

93. from the devil,
    It is not true that Marxism cannot work. One can easily imagine a Marxist mechanism. For example:
    The first and perhaps the simplest genetic control mechanism discovered is the lactose operon of the bacterium E. coli. In this mechanism there is a repressor protein that disables the activity of the genes for lactose utilization as long as there is no lactose available. When lactose arrives, the repressor binds to it, leaves the DNA and the genes are expressed.

    One can easily imagine an alternative mechanism that when there is no lactose, a Stop mutation is introduced that prevents gene expression, and when lactose appears, a sense mutation is introduced in its place, which enables gene expression. To date, no such mechanism has been discovered, but only similar things on the border of Hallmarkism, for example the determination of mating in yeast by the controlled movement of entire segments of DNA, the phenomenon of RNA editing in parasites and much more. Therefore, I will not be very surprised if this is also revealed.

94. sympathetic:
    Although in my opinion there is a serious difference between just positive or negative feedback and desire, I have come to the conclusion that there is no point in expanding the discussion (currently) towards this difference because the same problem exists with positive and negative feedback.
    A bacterium that escapes from a toxin would be very "happy" (that is, it would receive extremely positive feedback) if it developed resistance to that toxin and could stay in the environment to enjoy the food instead of wasting energy on escaping.
    Is this enough for him to really overcome the toxin?
    In order to overcome the toxin, he needs one of two things: to undergo evolution (over many generations trying different variations on the genome until Fox falls on a suitable genome) or study chemistry, analyze the chemical structure of the toxin and himself, and genetically engineer himself (without killing the itself) so that its structure is not sensitive to the toxin (this is what I called intelligent planning).
    The second option seems clearly implausible to me.
    And all this - when it comes to a single-celled creature.
    When it comes to a multicellular creature - you understand (in addition to the above - which translates at the tissue level to intracorporeal evolution such as the immune system or an intelligent tissue planner) all the additional reservations I raised regarding the incompatibility of a mutation in one tissue with the functions of another tissue, and regarding the (justified) absence of a mechanism The transfer of the information (which, as I said - its chances of harm exceed its chances of benefit) are also caught.
    Therefore Marxism cannot work.

    Evolution is a mathematical law of nature and its foundation is the mathematical proof of the law.
    In fact, it is a completely synthetic law whose relation to life is not necessary (and the fact is that it is used in the computer for needs that have no relation to life).

    Please note that I have never claimed that there is a mathematical law linking life and evolution and of course I would not have done so while I was the same person who came up with the computer example.

    The connection between evolution and life is a connection that I make myself out of what is called a "gut feeling" and I already said in a previous response that this type of statement requires courage because it is actually a prophetic statement.
    This gut feeling comes from, I must admit that it is actually an "argument from ignorance" - that is - because I personally do not see any possible way to create life other than through evolution or intelligent creation - I conclude (but admit that it is actually just a guess) that there really is no such way.
    That's why I also tried to challenge you to present other ways - to check if this is my private ignorance or a world-wide ignorance.
    My conclusion at this point is that this is a world-wide ignorance (but it should be noted that the counterclaim that says "there is a way to create life that is not through evolution or intelligent creation" is a claim from ignorance as long as no such way has been presented).

    What you described in response 218, beyond being more fiction than science, is not an alternative to evolution.
    In fortifications of the first type, you would still expect evolution at the gene level (assuming that genes are the same material structure that carries the traits from generation to generation).
    Creatures of the second type are indeed quite inconceivable and in particular it is not clear what will cause them to be created in the first place and what will guide their "decision" to split or unite.

95. sympathetic,
    In my opinion, the principle of natural selection will also apply in the two examples you presented. Even in the business market you can see how products develop from each other and push or change the balance in favor of the "suitable". See Record/Cassette/Disc/MP3 case. Evolution in its embodiment. A new, more suitable creature was created that multiplied more (because we bought more of it) that finally supplanted its predecessors.

96. R.H.

    I will try to give you several alternative examples of evolution as you described it in response 212 as standing on 3 principles. This is purely speculation on the border of science fiction and it is difficult to imagine alternative forms of life to all that we know, but I will still give two examples that came to mind:
    1) Creatures in which the species can reproduce and give birth to offspring, meaning that a species is not defined by its ability to reproduce, but by its external characteristics. For example, if it were possible to hybridize between a bird and a frog, would it mean that such a form of life develops evolutionary? It can be assumed that if there was such a form of life then all the features would have mixed and a single creature with an average collection of features would have been created (that is, this was the recovery point of this development) but it is also possible to think of restrictive rules that would still allow differentiation.
    2) Think about a producer who is not dead but connects to him properties of productions with which he unites and from time to time he produces additional productions by severing some of his properties. The human analogy for such production is business companies that occasionally merge and occasionally spin off a subsidiary. It's hard to imagine, but I'm not sure that such a development can be ruled out.

97. ravine,

    I would like to apologize for interrupting the discussion with you on the subject of objectivity. The topic was very interesting but the general discussion drifted into other areas...perhaps in the future we can return to it. Unlike Michael, I find it difficult to conduct several discussions at the same time.

98. I sincerely apologize for not being able to respond in the next few days, but I would be happy to continue the discussion next week.

    Michael,
    I didn't understand what prevents a living creature that learns through trial and error from passing on the information it learned to its offspring? Or more precisely, why isn't positive and negative feedback enough to allow Amrakism? Why do you think a will is needed? And if so, how do you define desire, does it also exist in plants or only in animals or only in some?

    I think we agree on the claim that there may be life that does not obey evolution (I really liked the computer example). Therefore, evolution is not necessarily a law of nature in the mathematical sense, but its foundation is only empirical, and since we live on a small planet in a huge universe, it is reasonable to assume that at some time we will discover additional life forms that do not necessarily obey evolution. At the moment, I also do not see any other way regarding the creation of life other than evolution and intelligent design, but I have not yet thought about the problem in depth. Even if we assume that life was created by evolution, we cannot rule out the possibility that the later development was carried out by a different mechanism.

99. Rah:
    I am aware of all the new discoveries in the field of epigenetics, yet I claim that epigenetics is not a new thing in principle, but only now they decided to give it a name because the examples have multiplied and some of the mechanisms have been studied in greater depth.
    I intentionally gave the trivial example of the effect of radiation, but even beyond the effects of radiation there were already many known epigenetic phenomena that were simply not called that.
    The most prominent of which is of course tissue differentiation (after all, every tissue has the same genes and yet they are all different. Why? Because epigenetics).
    Yair in 208 said, as I said, what I said in some of my responses and I even brought the intelligent creation as an example of the possibility of life without replication (this can be the intelligent creation of a living cell that was not created through replication, and if you want to be yikes then you also kill it before it replicates and this can be creation intelligence of a conscious computer that never replicates).

    I also wanted to add some clarification to my 211 response.
    Another reason why no information is created in the tissues that can be transferred to the sex cells is clear because for this too (that is, to guess the genetic change that will give the tissue the desired characteristic) one of the two is needed: intelligent planning or evolution. That's why most tissues are unable to do this and the only one that does - the immune system does it (but what?) through accelerated evolution within the body.

100. And a final point regarding the desire. In my opinion the difference between the bacteria's decision to swim for glucose or the giraffe's decision to go to a new leaf or our decision which shirt to wear this morning is only in the complexity of the process. With all of us, from the bacteria to the human, it is chemical and electrical signals that undergo incorporation and processing, and a decision is the output of the process, and there is nothing beyond what is called "will" that we have and bacteria do not. It's all in the complexity.

101. I wrote a lot and then I saw that Yair 208 nicely summed up what I wanted to say.

     Hell, you're wrong that epigenetics was known a long time ago and it's only now that PR is being done for it. Epigenetics is a relatively new field that talks about reversible and dynamic changes such as DNA methylation, histone modifications and other changes that:
     A. affect gene expression
     B. are inherited from cell to cell and even from production to production
     third. Reversible in a controlled way that is not random (which is the big difference from mutations)

     Epigenetics is considered the most significant breakthrough in biology in recent years. See for example the research of Yamanaka from Japan who managed to turn a sorted cell back into a stem cell by epigenetic changes and will soon, presumably, receive the Nobel Prize for this.

102. sympathetic,
     When you say evolution, the question is what exactly do you mean. Evolution contains three principles:
     1) Culture by reproduction
     2) The replication is not perfect and there is a certain chance of errors (which for the sake of interest will be called mutations) and thus a variety is created
     3) Selection according to environmental conditions.

     2 and 3 derive from 1 and are, in my opinion, mathematical laws of nature. If 1 is true, then 2 and 3 will also be true.
     2: If 1 is true, it is not possible to always have an exact copy and there will be mistakes even in the exact system with the more perfect proofreading.
     3: Since mistakes occur, variety is created. There will always be competition for resources and someone from the aforementioned variety who is a little more suitable than the others will take over and win the competition. Note that victory is not always a knockout. A dynamic equilibrium will be established. Just because there are lions eating deer doesn't mean there won't also be wolves eating deer.
     In my opinion, this is true for living creatures, consumable products, ideas and anything else that reproduces. In all of them, the evolutionary principles are observed.

     The question is whether life is possible without principle 1, that is, without replication?

103. And something else I forgot to write:
     Even in the individual tissue there are almost never changes (genetic or epigenetic) intended to support the action it performs.
     The rule - if it exists at all - is reversed and the tissue cells are damaged by excess activity.
     What usually happens are changes in the amount or size of existing cells without any additional information being created in the DNA of those cells.

     The only exception to this rule is the immune system, which actually develops new types of cells in a process of evolution within the body.

     Therefore - not only is there no mechanism to transfer information created in the tissue to the sex cells and not only was this type of process more harmful than beneficial, but the information that is supposed to pass is not created at all.

104. By the way - in response 204 I wrote "Ada Yonat" instead of "Hava Yablonka"

105. Yair (205):
     Not true.
     Marxism did not become such an umbrella term.
     There are those who push for this, and in my opinion it is a mistake that a large part of the confusion in the current discussion is caused by Atiya.
     Epigenetic Lamarckism is indeed a trivial thing in the sense that it was actually always known and all that happened recently was that they started doing PR for it. It's part of evolution. In fact, when the word garden was originally invented, they did not attribute to it the meaning that is attributed to it today. After all, at that time the DNA structure had not yet been cracked and a gene was simply "something that causes a trait" and not the coding of a protein in DNA.
     Only when they cracked the structure of DNA did they start calling a DNA segment that encodes a protein a gene and thus - since not all traits are encoded in DNA - created the need for the term "epigenetics" which actually deals with things that Darwin originally called genes.
     It is also true that the transfer of the relevant information from the body cells to the sex cells seems very very unlikely.
     The body has many tissues that all have the same DNA. Transferring information from the body cells to the sex cells - most likely it will damage its function because the adaptation required for a muscle cell is not the adaptation required for a brain cell.
     Therefore, it is also unlikely that evolution will bother to develop a mechanism that supports the transfer of this type of information, and any transition that occurs is necessarily random - and then it is beneficial or harmful - just like a mutation.

     Rah (206):
     A will is a will.
     It is an action that the animal can do or not do and he chooses to do it.
     He can see a tall leaf and want it but at the same time see a lion and decide to run away from it.
     This is not an automatic reaction that has a trivial chemical explanation.
     The reaction of the bacterium escaping from a toxin has a trivial chemical explanation and it and all of its kind will always behave this way.
     Animals with a will will sometimes choose one way and sometimes another and not all of them will necessarily choose the same choice.
     The truth is, I find it hard to believe that someone doesn't see the difference.
     When Marck said that mutations are not random, he was referring to the organism's prophetic ability.
     In order for such a thing to happen, an intelligent planner must sit inside the organism to decide what changes must be made to the proteins and their switches in order to reach a desired result.
     It's an absurd idea like no other.
     What Chava Yablonka calls today Marxism (and she explains explicitly that it is not Marxism in the conventional sense) is a completely different thing (and I will not quote here all the phenomena it includes but it clearly does not include will-oriented adaptation). The closest thing it includes - and this is only a speculation - is an attack of mutations in the region of the genome that is relevant to the type of rickets that the bacterium has encountered similar to in the past and the tendency for it has developed in evolution because it has proven itself in dealing with this type of rickets.

     sympathetic:
     The words of R. H. and Leyar also answer the first part of your words.

     I did not say that the claim that when the conditions are met, evolution takes place is equivalent to the fact that no other life is possible.
     More than that - in my words in previous comments I even brought intelligent creation as a non-evolutionary way of creating life, so obviously I could not make this kind of claim.

     Nor did I base my claims on the fact that we are seeing evolution on Earth.

     What I did say - and I still stand by it - is that, having nothing to do with the aforementioned mathematical theorem, I do not see any way to create life other than the way of evolution and the way of intelligent creation.
     You have not convinced me that you see such a way.

     Yair (208):
     I agree with this comment of yours (roughly - decline and death - as part of the cycle are not really necessary - but that is a marginal detail) and this is also what I said in my previous comments.
     What I added beyond that (and it is clear to me that this requires courage because this is a prophetic claim) is that apart from evolution and intelligent creation, no way will be found that will allow the formation of life.

106. The question of whether there can be life without evolution depends less on mathematics and algorithms and more on the main characteristics of life. A life that is characterized like the ones we know, by birth, growth, birth of similar, decay and death and repeats itself for many generations will be evolutionary. A life that lacks one of the characteristics - birth, or many generations, will not be evolutionary.

107. R.H.

     First, there is no way I will confuse you and R.H. healers You have something meaningful to say! Regarding the question about the Lamarckian approach I completely agree with you.

     Michael,

     In addition to the response of R.H. The Lamarckian approach, as I understand it, does not require a sufficient "desire" for feedback. The living production does something that gives it pleasure or satisfies its need, it links the action with the reward and what it has learned it burns in the genetic load so that it transfers knowledge of how to use the existing resources in a better way to its offspring.

     It could be that evolution is a mathematical law. In this sense, I accept your argument, but you write:
     "If the initial conditions are met - that is - the existence of replicators, etc. - there will be evolution", it is clear that this claim is not equivalent to the claim that in order for life to exist, evolution is necessary, that is, life is possible without evolution. It is not clear that the method in which production gives birth to many offspring is the best method to survive, as is known to solve optimization problems there are genetic algorithms but they are not necessarily the most efficient algorithms for solving the problem. In my opinion, evolution was successful on Earth, but the conclusion that since we see evolution on Earth it must exist wherever there is life in the universe is unfounded, it is an induction from a single case which is obviously not justified. Evolution is not a law of nature in the sense of physical laws of nature, it is a case or a method that was particularly successful, but it is not bound by reality.

108. from God,
     What is desire? Wouldn't you call a bacterium moving towards glucose or alternatively running away from a toxin "wanting"? What is the fundamental difference between this and a giraffe stretching its neck up to reach the leaves at the top? "Desire" is not found only in the advanced media, but in every cell in the world. Do macrophages that move towards a bacterial infection, engulf them and distribute chemicals that activate the entire immune system not show "will"?
     The fundamental difference between the Lamarckist and Darwinist approaches is that Darwinism claims that all mutations are random and there is non-random selection. On the other hand, the Hallmarkist approach (and it doesn't matter what exactly Mark himself said that he didn't know about mutation mechanisms) says that the mutations are not random. Both agree on the issue of non-random selection.
     As of today, no targeted mutation creation mechanisms have been found. However, I wouldn't be surprised if one day some are discovered. What is clear is that if they are discovered they will probably be very rare. There was a heated debate about a decade ago when a researcher named Susan Rosenberg claimed to have found a mechanism for non-random mutations, but in the end it turned out that she was wrong. You can read on the subject if you are interested in something like - adaptive mutations

109. Machel,
     For Marxism it became an umbrella term for the inheritance of the transmission of acquired traits.
     Your claim that the epigenetic Hallmarkism put forward by R.H. Erroneously trivial, sometimes this type of heredity leads to evolutionary branches.
     Most importantly, the possibility of transferring acquired traits does not depend on will and consciousness, but on the question of whether it is possible for changes in the body to be transferred to the sex cells. Is there a chance that biological processes resulting from the actions of an organism will transmit information to the sperm cells. Theoretically, according to existing biological knowledge, such a possibility exists, but there is no place to explain it here.
     The example of Ehud about the giraffe and countless other examples should be examined not according to the question of desire. I don't know how Lemark himself explained his claims, but in our time there is no need to ask about his explanations. When an animal carries out a certain activity, such as obtaining food, for a long period of hundreds of thousands and millions of years, if the routine movements activate local adaptation processes, and their information is transferred to the sex cells, then Marxist evolution can take place.
     Basically, the disqualification of Marxist evolution stems from the mistaken confidence of most biologists that there can be no entry of information from the body cells to the sex cells.

110. Rah:
     The problem with Lamarxism is extremely serious - to the point of a real lack of programming.
     It is not only a question of the formation of life but also of the formation of consciousness.
     To me - will is a characteristic of consciousness, but even if you don't agree to call it consciousness - at least it is about the formation of will.
     I remind you of what is called "Marxism" (which is the term Ehud was talking about. The term that earned the public the name Marxism and which may not reflect what Mark really thought).
     The (very acceptable) example given by Ehud of a giraffe trying to reach the high leaves is an example that requires will, but will is something that only exists in advanced animals - those that, in the case of life on Earth - are endowed with a central processing unit - but it is quite certain that any other mechanism also that enables intentions and a binding will that includes serious.
     Now - not this one either:
     A mechanism is needed that will cause the desire to have a relevant influence on the development of the organism and more importantly - on the development of its germ cells (or any of their equivalents).
     Even such a thing - even if it can exist (and in my opinion it cannot exist because it requires a prophetic ability to guess what the relevant change is to achieve the goal) - requires evolution in order to create it (since it cannot act before it has been created).
     Marxism of the type you refer to is a trivial matter which is not the one attributed to Lamarck.
     After all, it is known that the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima also caused genetic defects in future generations due to an external effect of radiation that damaged the germ cells, but this is not what is known as Marxism. Even Ada Yonat, who started with all this confusion to promote her book, wrote in it that the epigenetic phenomena she talks about, even though they are reminiscent of Marxism in a certain sense, are not what is usually called Marxism.

111. By the way Michael, I don't see any fundamental problem with Marxism. It is true that this will not explain the formation of life, but it is certainly possible to imagine a cellular mechanism of creating targeted mutations as a result of environmental conditions. In fact, epigenetics has Marxist principles in which there are changes that are inherited and they are not random but dictated.

112. sympathetic:
     Evolution is a mathematical law and it will not help you even if you repeat a thousand times that it does not commit.
     If the initial conditions are met - that is - the existence of replicators, etc. - there will be evolution.
     point.
     This is why evolutionary programming works. You cause the initial conditions to exist, you cause the ability to survive to be better the higher the value of the objective function you want to calculate - and everything else follows naturally and produces solutions that were not known about before.
     Just because you can imagine a world where evolution isn't necessary doesn't mean evolution wouldn't work in that world. Evolutionary programming would also work in this world.
     By the way, there are excellent reasons why Marxism does not work and I do not believe that it is possible for this world to be the principle that guides the development of life in it, but that is another discussion.
     What is certain is that Marxism cannot explain the very formation of life while evolution can.

     Now I see that Sh.H wrote a large part of what I wrote here, but it is already written and I have no power to change it.

113. sympathetic,
     The thing that differentiates Darwinism from Lamarckism is whether the mutations are random or not.
     Beyond that, the two theories agree on natural selection, meaning that there is competition and if one of the groups has even a slight advantage it will take over.
     That is to say that there may be a planet with acquired mutations, but even in it we will see the natural selection at work, which, as Mac*el said, is a mathematical necessity and it applies to everything that reproduces, from products to computer programs and ideas.

     (Please don't confuse me with ghosts above me)

114. sympathetic

     To Mark? Why stop there? If anything, Aristotle explained biology already in 2002. Oh no sorry, that was BC.
     In this way you will go back in time and start believing in an intelligent being who created life.
     Well, your right.

115. to Michael,

     My argument is that evolution is not a necessity and that at best it is a coincidence and it follows that evolution is not what we would like to call a "law of nature".
     Living things according to definitions that I think we would both agree on can evolve in a lot of ways I can imagine at least 5 completely different possibilities. For example, the possibility of exploiting resources in the case of competition is development according to Lamarck. I assume that the teachings of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck are familiar to you. According to this theory, which preceded Darwin's theory of evolution, creatures adapt themselves to the environment throughout their lives and pass on the traits they have acquired to their offspring. For example, giraffes according to this theory have long necks because they stretch their necks to eat from the tall trees and thus lengthen their necks, a trait they pass on to their offspring.
     The only reason that evolution according to Lamarck is not true on Earth is that it has not been found, there is no motive that prevents it from evolving in principle. I can think of other ways in which living things adapt to their environment that are not covered by Darwin's theory of evolution. Since the universe is large, I assume that different forms of life developed in it and there is no reason that life developed on one of the planets according to Lamarck's theory. Therefore, I see evolution not as a law of nature but as a case that developed on Earth.

116. R. H. Rafa*im,

     You did not understand my words at all and it seems to me that you also do not understand the concept of evolution. I will explain it again because you refuse to listen. If you have nothing to contribute to the discussion sit quietly and read and maybe wait.

117. By the way, Ehud:
     When I gave the example of a living computer - did you even then think that in my opinion it must be created by two parents?

118. sympathetic:
     I explained why evolution must take place under certain conditions and I explained what those conditions are.
     When the conditions are met - evolution is a mathematical necessity.
     This is also the reason why there is evolution on earth. It's not like we see her by chance.
     Among the conditions there is no condition on the number of parents and I have not found such a condition in any of the others you are contacting.

     I explained what I think are the only possibilities for the formation of life and the formation of a variety of animals.
     Feel free to suggest another reasonable option.

119. If I understood you correctly, you claim something like: there is some star in some galaxy far away from us and on it there is a 'volcano' that emits living beings that do not undergo evolution? Is that the kind of claim you're making?

120. sympathetic
     'My argument was that there is no rule or law that states that the development of life involves evolution.'
     'Development and change' is the general definition of evolution. Hence if life evolves it necessarily evolves.
     Machal explained to you that life can exist that will not undergo evolution (in the future).
     But in order for such life to exist, it has to be created somehow, right?

121. R.H. healers

     You are welcome to remain silent if you do not want to discuss and if you have nothing to contribute to the discussion. Just stop reading the comments.
     Besides, who put you as a police officer on what is allowed to be discussed and what is not? Oh, sorry, I wrote about a different topic than the topic of the article, sorry. Healers, pay attention to people who have something to say, sometimes the topic of conversation turns to other topics. As for you, it seems that apart from completely stupid comments about religious people, you have nothing to say, so again it's better to keep quiet.

     Now for a slightly more objective answer. My argument was that there is no rule or law that states that the development of life involves evolution. I argued that the fact that evolution takes place on Earth is not a sufficient reason to generalize it to the entire universe, it is an unjustified generalization. For the sake of analogy, I said that this is similar (note that it is similar) to the claim that animals must mate in pairs in order to create offspring. This is the situation on Earth, but it is not obligatory. You can think of other possibilities. Refa*im I am aware that evolution can exist by chance and more than three creatures reproducing themselves.

122. sympathetic
     Maybe enough already? You grind water! If there are creatures that create life from the mating of 3 creatures, then evolution takes place in them as well (admittedly different from that on Earth, but still evolution!) because they reproduce or dangle or multiply or arm themselves or - invent a new word to define 'replication' in the evolutionary process.
     It's strange that a rational person like you doesn't understand what evolution is, like you're just looking to argue. Hellas already.
     Except that it has nothing to do with the topic of the article..

123. Netzer, Avi and Michael,

     Netzer, it seems that only my father and then maybe Michael understood my intention. The discussion of aliens was not to make assessments about alien culture but to discuss the question of whether evolution is a law of nature. My father writes, "And if there are other creatures, they too must obey the laws of nature, including evolution." I do not understand this, where is it written that evolution is a law of nature, is this enshrined in the tablets of the covenant? There is nothing sacred in evolution, you can think of a form of life that changes its properties during life and passes the new properties to its descendants, this is an example of Lamarck's theory. There is nothing sacred about evolution. According to studies, it seems that evolution does take place on Earth, but there is no reason to throw our tiny planet out into the entire universe. The concept that life must carry out evolution is completely unfounded, therefore evolution is not a law of nature, it is simply a case that takes place on our planet and there is nothing sacred about it. It is similar as if you claim that the necessity is that an offspring will be the result of the mating of a pair of creatures at most because this is how it exists on Earth as far as we know. There is no reason why on another planet life would not be created by the pairing of three or more creatures.

124. If I may be allowed to link the topic of the article (futurity) with the topic of evolution and life, which took a central part in the discussion, I would say the following:
     In my opinion - every form of life we ​​will ever encounter will be the result of evolution (in the broadest sense of the word - including evolution from inanimate to living) or intelligent creation.
     I cannot compare in my mind any other way for the formation of life.
     As I said before - I do not disbelieve in the possibility of intelligent creation. After all, we ourselves are engaged in trying to do this and in my estimation - most of the days we will also succeed in this.
     I only disbelieve in the following two claims:
     1. The variety of life on Earth is the result of intelligent creation (as opposed to life itself. Although I think that the first living cell on Earth was created in the evolution of a living to a non-living thing - whether on Earth or elsewhere, but I cannot rule out the possibility created elsewhere by intelligent creation and arrived here in panspermia).
     2. Intelligent creation is the source of life in the universe.

     I reject the first claim because beyond the fact that evolution is a necessary result of the existence of replicators such as living things - the entire fossil record and all the genetic findings testify that not only did evolution occur, but that it explains all the findings.

     I dismiss the second claim for logical reasons. Every intelligent creator is alive and therefore the formation of life precedes his action.

     In my previous response I mentioned the importance of defining life for the purpose of giving an answer.
     In this context, I would like to expand on the following point:
     I do not accept the definition that many use - as if the ability to reproduce is a necessary characteristic of life. The reason I rejected the definition is not only the tribal fact in my opinion - barren people are also alive.
     I deny it because I do not rule out the possibility of the creation of a computer that has to be defined as alive and even alive and conscious.
     In fact - the existence of this possibility is the reason why in my previous response I emphasized that evolution will only apply if life "replicates". I knew that according to my perception of life and according to my perception of computerized life as life - there could definitely be life that does not reproduce and therefore - does not undergo evolution.

125. And what about the doss who do not 'obey' the rules of evolution? What to call these creatures?

126. sympathetic:
     As Netzer pointed out, to put more politely what he meant, the answer to your question depends on the definition of life.
     If the creatures living on another planet reproduce in a similar way (not necessarily technically, but in terms of the fact that the offspring inherit, to the extent of minor changes, the traits of their parents and these traits affect their ability to produce offspring), they will undergo evolution.
     This does not mean that the theory of common descent will be correct there. After all, if they manage to get here and settle here at the same time as us - and assuming that we and they were not created from the same panspermia - this theory will no longer be true here either. It is possible that several trees of evolution will exist on their planet at the same time (in principle, this may be the case here as well, but it is already quite likely to assume that all creatures on Earth that are not microscopic belong to the same tree because otherwise we would probably already have encountered a representative from another tree)

127. The simple principle according to which we are neither in the center of the universe nor in the center of the galaxy - the conclusion, the earth is in no way different from anywhere else in the universe, and if there are other beings they must also obey the laws of nature, including evolution.

128. Ehud, you are a clown.

     You assume the existence of other creatures and then ask how they evolve….

     According to your assumption….

     for example….

     1. I guess the only other life form is the infinity spaghetti monster…

     She does not breed because there are no other spaghetti monsters and therefore does not evolve either.

     2. It seems to me that Vogons, Klingons, Minbari, Capricorn Knights and the Hutt subculture do indeed live according to evolution.

     3. On the other hand, the Dralks evolved into a more aggressive species in evolution, but Doctor Who went back in time and made them evolve into a less hostile species

     4. In contrast to all the ones mentioned above, there are several commenters from www.eura.co.il hanging around here
     Despite what quite a few people think they are not really aliens just weird. Therefore your question is not valid about them.

129. I will elaborate more on how I see the issue of the Bayesian approach to probability and its relation to the objectivity versus subjectivity of science.
     In the classical approach, the probability of an event means as follows:
     First the sample space consisting of a series of atomic states must be defined. The probability of an event corresponds to the percentage of situations corresponding to this event. (For example, let's look at a fair cube, there are six situations and the probability of getting an even number is 3/6=0.5). This definition is problematic because it is not clear what these situations are, for example when the die is not fair.
     This led to an approach called the "frequentist approach" - in this approach a probability is associated with a random experiment. The sample space is all possible outcomes of the experiment. An event is defined as a subset of such outcomes. The probability of an event is estimated by the ratio between the number of times the event happened in a series of random trials and the number of trials, and is defined as the limit of this ratio when the number of trials approaches infinity.
     This approach supposedly attributes to events an objective property which is the probability that they will happen. The problem is that the probability of an event when it is defined like this is something that cannot be measured. Another problem is that it does not correspond to our intuition of the term chance. According to this definition, it would be very difficult for me to talk about the probability that I will go on vacation in the next month (although we do it all the time, for example when we estimate the chance that it will rain today and thus decide whether to take an umbrella).
     These problems gave rise to the Bayesian approach. In this approach, probability reflects the degree of knowledge we have about a particular event, some hypothesis or some model of the world. The difference is that here the hypotheses or the model are an internal representation that we have and we can talk about the probability of any hypothesis given a series of evidence (what is called the a posteriori probability). For example, one hypothesis could be "this die is fair" and another could be "this die is biased". Given a series of rolls of the die, the Bayesian inference rules tell us how to calculate the probability that it is a fair die versus the probability that it is a biased die.
     This approach is accepted in the artificial intelligence and machine learning research community. When you want to make a computer understand the world around it, it is very difficult to talk about objective truths. If you want to build a robot that is able to move around the world and understand what is going on around it, it is important that it can create models of the environment, update the models based on new evidence and decide on the preferred model given observations

130. Michael,

     In my opinion there are many ways to search for the truth, science is only one of the methods. In addition, I have a narrower conception of the concept of science, in my opinion not every rational conclusion about the world is scientific.

     As for evolution, I would like to know if you believe that it is a universal theory or is it only valid for the earth? It is reasonable to assume with a fairly high probability that there are other living beings in the universe, is their development also determined by evolution or not?

131. ravine,

     Our understanding of the concept of objectivity is different. In my opinion, when something is said to be objective, it does not mean that it is true, but that it does not depend on the researcher's personal worldview.

132. Dos Reform,

     Thanks for the detailed explanation on options and shares.

     You write "the price of the shares, however, have a secondary effect (if any) on the prices of the options." What then determines the price of the options? In the following sentence you seem to explain this: "The main difference between pricing options and stocks is that in order to price options we only need to know the future distribution of stock prices and not the stock price in the future." What then determines the future distribution of stock prices? If there is suddenly a strong fall in the stock market, does only the value of the stocks fall and their distribution remains similar? What does affect option prices?
     In the framework of your description, you managed to convince me that actually in this sense economics is not a science, it is simply an agreement between people that both parties undertake to uphold. If the value of a certain product is clear to both parties and one pays the other for it, this is not science but human agreements. Is playing chess scientific? It is not possible to calculate the outcome of the game, but it is possible to build models predicting who will win in each situation and run them on a computer and check their correctness as part of the calculation. Is it science even then?

133. Dos Reformi (179):
     You are trying to teach me economics by force.
     It will be difficult. I know how difficult it is to teach those who want to learn, so all the more so...
     I'm not sure what you mean.
     The law of uniform price seems to me (intuitively, I admit - as a layman) to be more or less equal to your premise so that it clearly follows from it.
     The other two laws - if I understood your intention correctly (and I certainly may not) tell us how to calculate something. That is, they do not predict the same thing but determine it.
     If what I said is true - then it doesn't seem to me that you justified calling economics a "science", but even if you did - as someone who does not understand economics and is not interested in it - then I said from the beginning that I am not discussing the subject.
     Since there are certainly quite a few people who understand and are interested in economics, I am a little surprised that you choose to discuss it with me.

     As for the 180 response
     There are two parts here: the business part and the cheeky part.
     Let's start with the important part:
     Medicine does not deal with these estimates for nothing. These estimates are based on controlled double-blind studies of thousands and even tens of thousands of cases. The ability to evaluate comes from these studies.
     To the best of my knowledge, there is no way to do this type of research in the economy, so it is not clear what the estimates are based on.
     You can't compare at all!

     As for the cheeky part:
     You don't need to be an expert in economics to know that it is not possible to buy fractions of shares or to read on Wikipedia - in the article you pointed to - that the assumptions of the model do not correspond to reality.
     I don't know if your friends will lose their jobs as a result of what is written in Wikipedia, but as a result of my words they certainly won't lose it.
     As I said - I don't know if economics is a science, but I do know that in society there are many workers who are not scientists. I also know that among those who find work there are quite a few charlatans. Tarot card readers are certainly like that and maybe economists too.

134. Another example to close the issue for good:
     One of the most important branches of research in medicine is assessing the risk of heart attacks. In this framework, we group a population and ask them about various characteristics (smoking, blood pressure, physical activity, heredity, etc.) then we estimate a model that predicts the probability of a heart attack.
     One of the branches of research in economics is the probability of bankruptcy. As part of the research, we collect data about the company that we have reasonable grounds to believe are related to the probability of bankruptcy (profitability, the amount of debt, the variability of profitability, share prices, etc.) and then we estimate a model for the probability of bankruptcy.

     Both models use the same statistical techniques, the product of both models is similar (probability of heart attack and probability of bankruptcy) and both have a random factor. The predictability of a bankruptcy model is better than that of a heart attack model. Still another Aliba Damkal, one is science and the other is not?

     In closing, I must compliment you on your amazing grasp of economics. You have indeed undergone an amazing transformation, from someone who does not understand economics, to one who can analyze the assumptions of the Black and Scholes model and determine the connection between them and reality. In particular, I must compliment you on the sentence:
     "Their basic assumptions are not met (some are never met and some are met in an undetectable percentage of the cases). In other words - regarding the Black and Scholes theory - although there is a consistent mathematical model - no way has yet been found to indicate the connection between it and reality."
     Honestly, I'm a bit ambivalent about this sentence. On the one hand, it adds a wonderful store of knowledge, but on the other hand, it will cause some of my acquaintances to become jobless, because the main part of their work is finding the close connection between the Black and Sholes formula and reality...

135. Machel
     According to the "new definition" of science, we examine the relationship between the basic assumptions and reality.
     So here is a basic assumption in economics: in large financial markets, there are no situations of profit without risk (over time).
     This assumption is closely related to reality because in large markets there are arbitrageurs who, as soon as they discover the possibility of profit without risk, they trade and by their trading they make sure that these situations did not exist.

     The existence of this assumption leads to:
     1. The uniform price law
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_one_price
     2. It accurately determines (along with the laws of the time value of money) the price of futures contracts and another line of financial instruments
     3. It is used to determine the relationship between the price of Call options and Put options
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Put%E2%80%93call_parity
     4. As previously discussed, it is used in the development of the Black and Scholes formula
     At least in the first three examples there are no further significant assumptions.

     So here is what you asked for
     "Confrontation of theory with reality is based on a comparison of the claims of the theory (its basic assumptions and the assumptions obtained as a logical/mathematical result from the basic assumptions) with what happens in reality."
     I think my example fully meets the requirement you put.

136. sympathetic:
     Evolution in the meaning of the first instruction is a collection of mathematical theorems that can be applied wherever the axioms are met - and this includes economics as well.
     If you find replicators in the economy, competition between the replicators for resources, etc. - you can apply the sentences of this theory to them, and if the conclusion that the replicators do reproduce, the competition is indeed a competition, etc. is true, then there will also be an evolution of the replicators.
     This is just as true for vector spaces.
     Once you can show that something in the real world obeys the definitions of a vector space (fulfills its basic assumptions/axioms) you can know about that something everything that has been discovered about vector spaces.

     The idea with the optimal solution sounds extremely strange to me.
     Who said that evolution has to be an optimal solution to something?
     Evolution is what according to all the evidence - exists - and that is what science is looking for.
     After all, part of the evidence for the absence of an intelligent planner and as a result - in support of evolution - is precisely the nonsense that evolves from time to time - like fish with eyes that do not see or birds with wings that do not fly. Obviously, these are not optimal things.

     By the way - I agree with your claim towards Guy that science strives for objectivity and to a large extent indeed achieves it.
     This is also the basis for the frequency requirement of the experiments - everyone should eventually be able to reach conclusions on their own.
     I also don't think that we can have another way of searching for the truth - apart from the existing scientific method and I'm willing to bet that this will be the scientific method forever (by the way - as it always was - only that it was not brought from the particular to the general before the Renaissance. Experience and logical conclusions have always been The only way in which the individual could understand the world and our Sages to some extent predicted science when they expanded and said "what a wise man - he who learns from the experience of others").

137. sympathetic:
     "The meaning of objectivity and universality is that models to describe such phenomena do not depend on the researcher's worldview and different researchers can agree among themselves on the starting conditions."

     Agreement between researchers sounds more like consensus to me than objectivity. Scientific theories change. Isn't this enough evidence that they are not objective?
     It is hard to argue with the claim that scientific research on social behavior is not interesting, at least we will agree that it is a subjective claim.

138. Michael,

     I didn't understand what you said. Is it possible to contain the "first teaching" on economic systems and thus prove the basis for economics? By the way, if I'm not mistaken, Darwin himself was quoted as saying that he got the idea for evolution from a book he read that discussed economic ideas.

     Regarding the "first teaching" or the mathematical formulation of evolution. Today, evolutionary algorithms are used to solve various optimization problems. I'm not sure that the evolutionary algorithms are the optimal way to find a global minimum, if I'm not mistaken, it depends very much on the problem. Genetic algorithms allow a relatively good examination of the space of possible solutions and their advantage is that they prevent the wrong choice of a local minimum. Given that evolutionary algorithms are not the best way to solve optimization problems, what are their validity for living systems in nature. Clarifying the words of an optimization problem can be an optimal utilization of resources. Given a collection of replicators trying to improve their ability to use resources, the optimal solution will be maximum utilization of resources.

139. ravine,

     Some of the methods for exploring the world that were used 600 years ago have been replaced and some have not. The methods for researching companies have changed less. By the way, the change of methods over time does not necessarily indicate their effectiveness, sometimes it is a matter of fads, see for example the article you referred to from Haaretz newspaper discussing anthropology. Following the successes of the natural sciences, anthropologists tried to build anthropology as a science and today they probably realize that they were wrong.

     You asked what objectivity and universality mean when studying weather on Earth? Or when studying the human body? Or biodiversity in the rain forests?
     The meaning of objectivity and universality is that models to describe these phenomena do not depend on the worldview of the researcher and different researchers can agree among themselves on the starting conditions. We will differentiate the research in the weather, the human body and biology into anthropological research for example. The perception of an anthropologist coming to investigate a certain society depends very much on the society he comes from, for example a western person will have a very hard time understanding the codes that dictate behavior in Japanese or Indian society. Trying to understand a society from the outside in an objective way is in most cases bound to fail from the start.
     Again I want to emphasize that the main problem is not in the complexity of the system because all these systems (weather, the human body and human societies) are complex and the ability to make predictions for them is limited, the problem is in the type of research questions. Regarding human societies as well as individuals the interesting questions are not universal or objective. The research I carry out throughout my life depends on my worldview and is not objective.
     It is possible to conduct objective and even quantitative research on human societies and such research is currently carried out in social science departments, but in my opinion this type of research is not interesting beyond the fact that its ability to predict is limited.

     By the way, in contrast, the question of researching the future is limited in my opinion by its complexity. Let me elaborate.
     While the weather models are built by trying to find solutions to the Navier-Stokes equation under certain initial conditions, social models have no formula or set of equations. It is not clear to us what the parameters are at all that will affect the future and how they can be quantified. When you look at systems like the human body or biological diversity, the system is defined and you try to find dynamics for it. Attempting to study the future is problematic because it is not clear how to formulate the parameters that determine it, what the connections between them are and how to measure them. This is a completely different complexity than that of a set of physical equations.

140. R.H. healers,

     First you assume (this is an unfounded assumption at least regarding) that all people build models about reality that arise from their field of dealing. Second, you are making assumptions about my age, my origin, and my line of work (baseless assumptions given that you are not bashing me and I have not confirmed any of them). On the basis of two unfounded assumptions you assume what my opinion on the theory of evolution should be and you are surprised that it is not my opinion?

     There are several possibilities: either your theory is incorrect regarding the relationship between a person's occupation and the models he builds, or the personal details you attribute to me are incorrect, or my occupation does not specifically obligate me to a certain conclusion regarding evolution. In any case, in my opinion, it is advisable to have an objective discussion about the issue and not a psychological discussion. I'm sorry for not satisfying your curiosity but I understand better the source of the question.

141. Fan
     I disagree with two conclusions in your analysis:
     The first is that the Black and Sholes formula is a self-fulfilling prophecy
     The second is that factors such as investor irrationality play a central role in option pricing
     I think the main problem is that I was not properly explained what an option is. The option price is a derivative of the stock price. You can think of an option as a type of intervention. The conditions of the intervention are:
     1) If the share price on a predetermined date is above a certain price X, I will pay you the difference between the price and X. For example, if we agree on X=100 and the share price is 110, I will pay you NIS 10.
     2) If the price is below X I will not pay you anything.
     Of course, in this case you are always in a positive profit range. It is clear that the option must have a price. That is, in order to buy this intervention you have to pay me money. The price of the intervention the Black and Scholes formula tries to estimate.

     The Black and Scholes formula gives a forecast regarding the price of the option at any given moment. In order to calculate it, you need to know the details of the "intervention" (that is, what is the agreed price and what is the date on which the intervention ends), the interest rate (which has a small effect on the price), the stock price today and the future price distribution of the stock. Note that since it is a relatively simple intervention it is also easy to know whether the buyer of the intervention (you) or the seller (me) made money. In the example above it is easy to see that if the stock price at the end of the intervention is 110, then if you paid less than NIS 10 for the intervention (I ignore interest considerations) you make a profit and vice versa.
     These features of options make your argument that the Black and Sholes formula is a self-fulfilling prophecy very problematic. Let's assume that the Black and Sholes price is lower than the correct price of the intervention. In this case the buyers will win the intervention more times than the sellers. The research departments of the banks as well as academia study the results of these interventions in depth. As mentioned, even if the pricing itself is complicated, determining the winner in the intervention is a fairly simple procedure. If the Black and Sholes model had systematically erred downward, then the traders would all prefer to be on the side of the buyer and not the seller. The excess demand would have caused the price to rise to the right price.
     In practice, consistent deviations from the Black and Scholes model were indeed discovered. However, science knows how to explain most of these deviations and correct the formula accordingly. Today, the vast majority of large traders use revised Black and Scholes formulas. Attempts have been made both by academia and traders to develop replacement models for Black and Sholes, but none of them (as far as we know) have proven to be superior to the revised Black and Sholes formulas.

     Your second claim as if the validity of the model is affected by the irrationality of investors or information asymmetry is also problematic. These factors are very important in determining the stock price, but they have a secondary effect (if any) on the option prices. The main difference between pricing options and stocks is that in order to price options we only need to know the future distribution of stock prices and not the stock price in the future. This fact frees us from the need to understand what affects the stock price, but only to analyze the distribution of stock prices. Based on decades of experience, today we have quite good predictions about these future distributions. We know that stock prices are distributed in a similar way to normal (hence the deep connection between the Black and Scholes model and reality) but with thicker tails. Much research has been devoted to the question of how to correct the formula to include the fact that the tails are thicker. Another research direction that has developed is a better estimation of the future variation. These directions keep improving the predictions of the option pricing models. Any substantial deviation from the model prices will be met with the action of traders who will take advantage of it in order to make money from the intervention.

     I hope I didn't bore you too much with the technical details
     Shabbat Shalom

142. Year:
     Logical thinking is mathematics.
     Building a model with rules of behavior is mathematics.
     What Darwin did when he formulated the principle of natural selection is mathematics - even if he didn't know how to call it that.
     There are many areas of mathematics.
     There are some in which a complex formalism is required before one can even begin to talk about the problems, and there are some in which all the definitions used are on the surface.
     The fact that no great work of definitions is required before reaching the goal does not make things unmathematical.
     Evolution cannot predict the future beyond a certain level of accuracy - but no science can do that.
     The reasons for this lie in the uncertainty of quantum theory, in the congestion of data that must be relied on - data that is mostly unavailable, and in computational problems of mathematics itself (there are computational problems that cannot be solved in a reasonable amount of time). If these problems are solved in quantum theory - they will be solved automatically in evolution as well.

     As I mentioned, in evolution the more complex mathematics is used for validation and not for prediction (ie - yes it is prediction but it is the prediction of the results we will get in an experiment that will measure what has already happened).
     The example I keep coming back to is the example with the evolutionary trees that are built in a computational process based on different genes and come out similar to the extent that nothing but the assumption of development from a common origin can explain.

     I mentioned that soon a detailed article on the subject will be published here (since I guessed it in response 85, the Odyssey system has already approved the publication of the article to the scientific website so that at the moment it is no longer a prediction but a promise).

143. Machel,
     The discussion goes along dividing lines that it is not known if they will ever meet.
     I'm asking now not to argue, but because I don't know math.
     According to the best of my understanding, in physics, mathematics is used as a discovery and explanation tool, and without it, in fact, many phenomena cannot be explained.
     To what extent do you think mathematics is used as a discovery and explanation tool in biology and evolution. This is what I asked about the ability of mathematics to explain what can be explained verbally in 161, and this is what I commented on that Darwin built the theory without using mathematics.
     I invite anyone who can give a good answer to my question to answer.

144. Yair (161):
     Is your ignoring the phrase "briefly and while omitting details and definitions" intentional?
     Did you also not notice that these are "resources that affect the ability to reproduce"?

     It seems to me that you just decided to attack without waiting to have a justification for it.

     You did not understand my words to Ehud.
     I didn't claim that evolution explains what you said it doesn't.
     I just wanted to draw his attention to the fact that his arguments against evolution could equally be directed against quantum theory which also does not explain why the crocodile is greener than a snake.
     Therefore there is no consistency in his position that quantum theory is fine and evolution is not.

     I don't know what the matter of how Darwin arrived at the theory of evolution has to do with our case.
     As I have already said before - mapping is important, but mapping is not a theory. When a theory is developed, it is actually a leap of science and this is Darwin's main achievement - not the journey on the Beagle, but intellectual enlightenment.

     Regarding your guess about metaphors - I never disputed it (although I don't approve of it either). If they invent a science around metaphors that would be great. So far they have not done so.

     Ehud (166):
     Your words are a way of taking an advantage and presenting it as a disadvantage.
     You refer to what I described in response 153 as "the first teaching" - the one that, out of its universal mathematical validity, is used by us both in biology and outside of biology, when each time the replicators are different and presents this as a disadvantage.... And more of... the second instruction!
     In second order evolution the replicators are well defined.
     Actually there are all kinds of levels where you can set the replicators and evolution works in all of them.
     A single gene is a replicator.
     A genome is a replicator.
     A living being reproduces.

145. sympathetic:

     What does objectivity and universality mean when studying weather on Earth? Or when studying the human body? Or biodiversity in the rain forests?
     Is a theory about the human body universal and objective but a theory about human behavior subjective and local?

     The question is about methods for studying the world around us. Did the methods used to study the world 600 years ago have the same validity as the scientific method? If so why were these methods replaced? For example, is religious research of the world of phenomena equal in validity to scientific research? Are numerology or astrology equivalent substitutes?

     I believe that the scientific method is the best method for studying the world of phenomena, but it is in no sense objective or universal, but always reflects the current knowledge (that is, the existing models and the observations accumulated so far).
     In the terms of probability theory, I would say that both people and science operate according to the Bayesian rules of inference:
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference

146. sympathetic
     Another thing:
     I assume that you are around the age of 60 or 50+ and that you are involved in physics or engineering (something from this field - i.e. exact sciences) and that you are born in Eastern Europe (therefore you have a mindset that is both that of a person from the East and that of a Western person - and there is a difference between these two types of people , and the difference is even scientifically proven by one world-renowned professor whose name I have forgotten but I read his research in this regard)
     Therefore, it is not clear to me why your conclusions towards evolution are the way they are, which is why I asked you such a question (response 160).

147. sympathetic

     acceptable to me Why did I ask you this question? Because I think that man tends to understand things in the world according to certain models which are models that are related to man's involvement in everyday life. As for example - a mathematician will try to understand the world according to models based on mathematics (mainly).

148. Michael

     Unlike quantum theory, evolution does not define the objects for which it is valid. There is no definition of what they are
     "Replicating"? How is their reproduction carried out? What time scale? What are "resources"? And in addition, your definition of evolution contains the word "evolution" itself. Is it possible to accommodate the theory of evolution on economics? Even in the economy there is competition for resources. Have we thereby turned economics into a proven science?

149. ravine,

     Your question relates to the point that Michael raised, what is the definition of science. So, first of all, in my opinion, not every rational conclusion about the world of phenomena is science. Science has a narrow definition and about 600 years ago, in my opinion, science did not exist. The people who lived 600 and more years ago were no less wise than us and had fascinating insights into life, but the method through which they drew conclusions about the world was not scientific.
     My personal attempt to organize my life to try and achieve things that seem important to me, to avoid things that cause me discomfort and suffering as well as to try to achieve things that will bring me happiness are done based on the knowledge I accumulate in my life and the conclusions I make regarding this knowledge. Although I hope my thinking is rational, it is certainly not science. My personal life mainly concerns me and those around me, there is no general universal statement in them that I would expect scientific theories to have. I would suggest that you read the definitions written by Michael, which in general I tend to agree with except for a few mistakes, and thus you will come to the conclusion that not every rational statement about the world is scientific.
     In addition to the definitions suggested by Michael, I would add that science requires objectivity and universality.

150. R.H. ghosts,

     Thanks for your interest, but I don't want to report myself. I hope to conduct discussions on an objective basis and not on an authoritative basis.

151. R.H. healers,

     Thanks for your interest, but I don't want to report myself. I hope to conduct discussions on an objective basis and not on an authoritative basis.

152. sympathetic:

     Further to comment 156:
     I thought a little more about your statement about the shortcomings of the scientific method, and I would like to pose the following question:
     Are there some methods of equal validity to the way phenomena can be studied in the world?

     For me, this question is connected to the separation that is implied in your words between the behavior of a person in the world who tries to understand and put order in the events that take place around him, and a scientist (or "science" in general) who studies phenomena. Are there really two competing methods here, or, as I believe, are these essentially two identical mechanisms?

153. Machel,
     Your claims in 153 are problematic and contain errors.
     ""Given replicators competing for resources that affect the ability to reproduce - evolution will occur in which the descendants of the replicators will improve their ability to use resources."
     The main concern of the theory of evolution is an explanation of the development of life and its survival. The question of the use of resources is secondary.
     From this, the second instruction you wrote is also wrong.
     What you wrote to Ehud in 157 "Quantum theory says nothing about life and in this sense it is much more general. For her, there could be life of a completely different kind and there could also be life that developed in evolution." - seems to me to be true to a considerable extent also regarding the mathematical formulations of the theory of evolution, if we try to explain countless questions about the diversity of life.
     For example, could you explain in mathematical sentences a question that can be explained in words: Why does a crocodile that weighs hundreds of kilograms have a brain of about 20 grams, while an animal of similar weight, such as a camel, has a brain of about 700 grams?
     When you write about evolution, haven't you forgotten what I wrote in an earlier response, that the theory of evolution was written by Drowin using the same methods that archeology uses - collecting data, investigating them and drawing generalizations? Is it of no importance?
     Regarding your comments to me on 151 152,
     I have a guess that if he makes an effort, it will also be possible to formulate theories about metaphors mathematically. It is necessary for this to edit the data according to the requirements of mathematics.
     As far as I remember, modern logic was born in the basement (or penthouse) of philosophy.

154. sympathetic

     I have a question for you, out of curiosity, and of course it is your right not to answer me if you wish:
     What do you do (at work)?

155. And one more thing - Ehud:
     Quantum theory does not predict what will eventually happen in the real world.
     She can predict what will happen to a collection of particles whose wave function is known in advance, but if she knew how to do this in the real world (as opposed to theoretical or synthetic situations) she could also predict the mutations that will occur in the evolution process and then evolution would also become more deterministic.

156. Even the group of people engaged in the joint activity of commenting on the science website does not have a leader and this - even if we narrow it down to the group of people whose goal in the discussion is to find out the truth - that is - even their goal is common.

157. sympathetic:
     I do not know what your claims against the generality of the theory of evolution mean.
     The question was whether it is science or not and it is by definition science because it is possible to test the truth of all claims - including the claim that all life so far has developed through evolution.

     Quantum theory says nothing about life and in this sense it is much more general. For her, there could be life of a completely different kind and there could also be life that developed in evolution.

     The whole question in relation to a scientific theory is whether it says something meaningful and verifiable about the world.

     It should also not be a trivial theory like the theory with the leader (whatever the theory with the leader is not true and the group of people consisting of me and Ahmadinejad does not have a leader and we both engage in activity - and even joint activity like breathing)

158. sympathetic:

     See the link I referred to in response 144. There are disciplines in which the methods used to study social phenomena do not approach the rigors of scientific research. In my opinion, there is still a lot to advance, especially when there is now access to huge amounts of information collected from human activity and we are only beginning to scratch the surface in analyzing this information.

     The goal of the scientific method is not to know how to evaluate books or to have an exciting human experience.
     The scientific method is designed to answer questions such as what is the explanation for this and that phenomenon, while assuming a minimal number of unnecessary assumptions and with sensitivity to the results of experiments that determine the validity of the explanations.
     Why do social phenomena not enter the world of phenomena that this method can investigate?
     You said that social phenomena are too complex. Is this the reason to switch to art to explore them? Will I also move to art and literature to describe the weather?

     You claim that science cannot predict how people will behave. And yet people are able to do this with one level of accuracy or another. What does it mean that people you know well, their behavior is more predictable than a stranger? The answer is that people have a model in their mind of those close to them. If you have a friend who tends to get angry when he loses a game - this 'rule' is added to the model you have for that friend.
     What do you think is the source of Asperger's syndrome in which sufferers have difficulty understanding social situations? According to your view, it seems that there is no such difficulty:
     It is implied from your words that social situations are completely unpredictable chaos. One person's chance of understanding a social situation is no greater than anyone else's.

159. ravine,

     You ask "Should we give up trying to describe human society in scientific terms?" I think we hardly tried." The first attempts to scientifically describe human societies were made almost from the moment modern science was born. Compare the progress in the exact sciences with that achieved in trying to produce a scientific description of human societies. It's not that they didn't try, but many failed attempts. My argument is also that it is not worth trying.

     Science is a method and it has advantages but also disadvantages. We know how to appreciate works of art and literature in which there is knowledge and we do not need science to appreciate them. Our daily conduct and our lives are not rational and it is good that we are emotional beings and that is what makes our lives interesting. Trying to look at society through a scientific framework reduces the human experience and takes the content out of it.

     As an example, let's take a single person. I believe that there is nothing but the laws of nature. However, it is convenient for us to argue about people who have free will, who have a spirit, and why? Since man is a complex system, in that we claimed that his behavior is controlled by electric currents, we did not say anything because we cannot predict how he will behave. Therefore, although I believe in the laws of nature, I am comfortable using the concept of mind and body and I think that an attempt to understand human action through science is powerless, it is a system too complex to calculate. I find that the same principle applies to human societies.

160. Michael,

     I don't seem to have understood my point. I do not claim that evolution does not predict anything or has not been verified, I go against its generality. For the sake of analogy I took the claim "Every group of people engaged in an activity has a leader" This is a theory, it is testable and it predicts things, but I find it more of a way to describe groups of people than a theory.

     Similarly to the claim "given replicators competing for resources that affect the ability to reproduce - evolution will occur in which the descendants of the replicators will improve their ability to use resources", does not tell us who the replicators are, is it possible for replication to prevent them from replicating? Do the replicants have to live a finite amount of time? What is their rate of reproduction? How will evolution occur? How does replication occur? And more and more questions. I see evolution as more of a frame story than a scientific theory.
     On the other hand, we will take a physical theory like quantum theory for a theory with clear rules:
     Given any system, it will be described mathematically by a wave function in Hilbert space. Measurements on the system will be described by operators in the Hilbert space. Given a measurement, the chance of obtaining a certain value is given by the collapse of the wave function to that state according to Bourne's principle. The dynamics of a system between measurements is given by the Schrödinger equation for classical mechanics and by the Klein-Gordon and Dirac equation for relativistic dynamics.

     Although quantum theory applies to all matter in the universe it is well defined. Given a system, it is clear how it will develop in a clear time, what is the probability of obtaining results in measurement, all of this is different from evolution, which is more of a framework story or a structure that content must be poured into it through theories.

161. More definition refinement:
     As I have mentioned in previous discussions, the word "evolution" is also used by us in two related - but different - instructions.
     The first instruction It is the mathematical one and its meaning (in a vigorous summary and while omitting details and definitions) "given replicators competing for resources that affect the ability to reproduce - evolution will occur in which the descendants of the replicators will improve their ability to use resources."
     The second instruction It is the accepted one and its meaning is "the life we ​​know today all developed in the process defined by the term 'evolution' in its first instruction".

     The first meaning was created because unlike many other sciences - the mathematical part of the theory of evolution (from the second meaning - which is actually the original meaning) - the one that is used after the basic assumptions are made - there is a lot of use in topics that are not related to the biological science for which the explanation was invented.

     The first meaning is actually a collection of proven mathematical theorems and in this sense there is no need to really call it "science" because it is, as mentioned, mathematics.
     However - since attempts were made to attack the power of the process and to demonstrate its connection to the development of life - this part can still be called "science".
     The uses that are made of evolution in this sense are many and I have already listed some of them in a previous response.

     The second meaning - that of the biological theory - actually means that not only in the development of life, an evolutionary process operates because the conditions for the existence of replicators and competition are met in biological reality (something that can be directly and immediately tested), but also that all the biological diversity we know developed as a result of this process.
     In fact, this is the addition of one basic premise, beyond the one that defines evolution in the first sense - the assumption of the development of biological diversity - beyond a precise definition of the factor that generates mutations whose action is random and unpredictable (both from considerations of quantum theory and due to the chaos arising from the multitude of "players") - Evolution is the vision of everything.
     The correctness of the theory of evolution in this sense has also received many confirmations (beyond the proof of the existence of the basic assumptions of evolution in its first sense) - both through the fossil records, both through genetic relationships whose probability of existence in any other way is zero (such as the union of two chimpanzee chromosomes into one human chromosome) and through The same systematic way I described for deriving the "tree of life" from each protein separately and comparing the resulting trees.

162. Year:
     And regarding response 149, in my words I definitely stated the importance of the correctness of the theory - not for the purpose of its scientificity but for the purpose of its inclusion in "science" (in its second meaning - that of the collection of claims that have not been refuted).
     In other words - for a theory to be included in "science" it must be both scientific and - as far as our knowledge can reach - correct.

163. Year:
     I said that theories consist of basic assumptions and conclusions that are deduced from these basic assumptions mathematically.
     Is there any conclusion you mathematically draw from the basic assumptions you stated?
     Otherwise, maybe you can call it a theory, but I would invent a special concept for this type of theories, for example "obviously uninteresting theories".

164. Machel,
     Addendum: In my earlier response I commented that in the study of metaphor there is a comprehensive investigation and there are theories. The question, as you also mentioned, is not whether the theories are correct, but whether they are built according to the scientific method. Well, the theories I knew are indeed based on basic assumptions and are logically built from them.

165. Machel,
     Below is a quote from your words, which is in line with the accepted approaches in the humanities and social sciences: "As I see things, the word "science" is used by us in two meanings.
     One meaning is "the scientific method" or "a method for investigating the world and for revealing the things that are true in it or at least for describing them as accurately as possible".
     The second meaning is "the collection of all claims about reality as received to date as a result of using the scientific method".

     The scientific method is founded, as everyone knows, on the examination of the theories proposed as a possible description of this or that aspect of reality, by confronting them with reality...
     And what is a theory?
     A theory is a collection of fundamental assumptions (what is commonly called in mathematics "axioms") that the drafter of the theory does not undertake to prove logically and that he claims to be correct despite this, together with a logical development of all the conclusions arising from these assumptions."
     Regarding your claim to the axioms of the humanities: First, we will prefer your wording, "fundamental assumptions".
     They exist of course, if not necessarily formulated. I will use your example anyway
     "...evolution because its basic assumptions (the existence of replicators and the existence of competition for resources whose success affects the degree of reproduction) can be directly verified." - To present a basic premise in the social sciences and the humanities:
     The existence of duplicators - I will replace the word duplicators with "people acting according to their desires"
     And the existence of competition for resources - this verse remains as it is.
     that its success affects the degree of reproduction - I will replace the phrase "degree of reproduction" with "their status in society".
     Now we will formulate a basic sentence in the social sciences and the humanities -
     "The existence of people acting according to their desires and the existence of competition for resources whose success affects their status in society"
     This sentence articulates one of the most important basic assumptions in the social sciences and the humanities.

166. sympathetic:
     It seems to me that there is a certain error in your words about evolution.
     After all, even quantum theory does not predict what creatures will develop and I assume that you actually see science in it.
     Evolution predicts - as I said - for example - adaptations between the "kinship trees" between creatures - trees that will be built separately based on the differences between different proteins.
     If you build the tree of kinship (I used this expression - but it is actually the tree of evolution) according to protein A, you will get the same tree as according to protein B. This is by definition a prediction and it confirms evolution amazingly.
     The purpose of science is ultimately to discover the truth and the role of predictive ability is to confirm the truth of the theory and not necessarily for any practical purpose.
     Evolution passes this test with flying colors

167. Father, please confirm my previous response - it was blocked for some reason

     sympathetic:
     Regarding managing my life scientifically:
     The way I understand human behavior is that people are not rational beings. They have computational limitations that do not allow them to weigh all the options at any given moment and make the best decision. People have many biases in the way they make decisions and "rules of thumb" according to which their decisions are made. In my opinion, all of these justify a scientific investigation into the mechanisms that explain and describe human behavior.

     However, there are parallels between the scientific process and the way a person accumulates and stores knowledge and behaves in the world. People build models of the world. They use these models to predict events, and keep information about the world.
     "Simplification of processes and their association in the model" are actions that each of us does every day without noticing it.
     The cases in which people fail in their conduct, make wrong decisions, etc. are the cases in which the model we built is a wrong model - and here we are limited in the place where science is able to supervise. There are models that are so deeply rooted in our minds that we have no ability to correct them.

     The claim that the scientific method is not the only way to accumulate knowledge is true, but I am not talking only about accumulating knowledge. Information can be duplicated blindly and the act of copying information is not science.

     Should we give up trying to describe human society in scientific terms? I think we hardly tried

168. ravine,

     I wanted to refer to your previous comment (141) earlier but I haven't had time yet.
     You write "My claim is that the only way to deal with questions of this type, such as what are the laws that dictate the dynamics between people (or even if there are any at all) is the scientific method." The scientific method is not the only way to accumulate knowledge, it is only a method that has its limitations.
     Do you conduct your life in a scientific way? Do you conduct experiments and decide which profession to choose based on the experiments? Do you choose a partner and manage the relationship on a scientific basis. In our daily life we ​​accumulate knowledge it is not scientific but we use it. It is clear to us in our day-to-day life that it is not necessary to set rules for behavior or rules that are too strict because the reality will grow in our face. The scientific knowledge, the abstraction of processes and their union in a model is not a correct way to manage life and this is due to the complications of life. The same is valid for groups of people.

     You ask "even gas molecules moving in air are too complex?" So yes, in your opinion there is no physical model that will tell us at any given moment where every gas molecule is, the complexity is simply too great. There are theories that provide us with information about the averages. In the human context, it doesn't matter how something will affect the average, I would like to know how it will affect me. Theories about the average that discuss human societies are at too high a level of abstraction and are irrelevant. If I add more and more details to the model it will become descriptive and less scientific, this is the direction I am talking about and I do not see this as wrong. Non-scientific truths can be described and are difficult to impossible to test experimentally.

169. sympathetic:

     My claim that a group of people has a leader obviously does not deserve the name of a scientific theory. The questions you raised are valid questions that the only acceptable way I know of to answer them is the scientific method.
     If and when these questions are answered, and these questions will be integrated into a body of knowledge that describes human behavior that is also based on the scientific method - then it will be absolutely appropriate to call this body of knowledge a "scientific theory".

     Note that my claim does not mean that there is such a theory, but that the only acceptable way in my opinion to answer questions such as how people behave, what is the dynamic between them, is it possible to predict this behavior, in which situations, is the scientific method.
     The overall name for the body of knowledge that purports to answer these questions, and is based on the scientific method, should be "social sciences" and it certainly deserves to be called "science".
     The claim does not speak about the way in which this science is conducted today (as you can read in the article I referred to in the previous message, it turns out that there is a struggle over the way of conduct and methods of anthropology, for example).

170. To add a little fuel to the fire, here is a piece of news that was published today in Israel (which supposedly complicates my position) and shows that our discussion is very relevant:
     http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1202840.html

     What do you think?

171. Michael and Yair,

     I will use Guy's response to explain my opinion about scientific theory in general and about evolution. In the narrow sense we want to define information that is incorporated under a theory and examined under the strict eye of the scientific method as science.

     Let's take Guy's claim "a group of people engaged in a certain activity has a leader" is this a scientific claim? In a certain sense yes, but on the other hand I don't see it as a significant claim about the world but a certain way to hide information, in a similar way I refer to evolution.
     I will try to explain this in more detail. The claim that every group has a leader does not say what a leader is, it does not say when the leader will change, it does not define what the group of people is and it does not say how the leader affects the chances of success of their activity. Similarly, evolution does not tell us what creatures will evolve, what is the rate of changes in production traits, when productions will become a different species, how many productions there will be. That's why I see evolution as a general claim that helps gather information about the world and less as a scientific theory.

     From a scientific theory that talks about change, I would like to receive quantitative information, which change will take place or with what probability, what determines the change, the rate of change, and many more unequivocal statements. A statement like this group has a leader is empty of content regarding. According to me, scientific theories should be better defined and have more decisive statements about the world of phenomena.

172. Year:
     If my words are also suitable for the humanities, you are welcome to give me the axioms of any theory from the humanities.

173. sympathetic:

     You are right about gathering information and that is only part of the scientific work.
     The example of the dynamics between people is a hypothesis (and in order for it to be scientifically valid it is necessary to define exactly what a leader is, to think of methods to identify a leader, etc.). I don't see much point in deciding a priori that it is invalid - isn't that the purpose of an experiment?
     My contention is that the only way to deal with these kinds of questions such as what are the laws that dictate the dynamics between people (or even if there are any at all) is the scientific method. You have a mysterious way of knowing that people are chaotic creatures with no rules in their behavior. This is also an interesting hypothesis. Experiments must now be carried out to determine its validity.
     You claim that human society is too complex - what is too complex? Also gas molecules that move in the air are too complex?
     I agree that human society is a complex phenomenon. But when science investigates a phenomenon it is customary to investigate certain aspects and I have shown that there are some that have legality.

174. A long reply I wrote to Makhal and Ehud disappeared due to overload. Here is the summary: Machel's words about scientific theories are also suitable for the humanities and social sciences.
     Lahud, your mistakes in 137 do not catch on. Religions in the light of history do grow oppositions, and likewise the lack of egalitarianism, whether you are afraid of communism or not.

175. Michael

     I would like to address your words at length and since it is already late I will try to do so tomorrow.

     ravine,
     Collecting information helps in any field, not just in the field. Even before buying an apartment, or a car or investing money, it is advisable to gather information. A union of information does not exactly make a field scientific, therefore the Sherpa analogy does not explain why the study of human societies can be carried out scientifically well.

     The claim that a group of people working to achieve a goal will always be a leader demonstrates the problematic use of scientific tools regarding societies. First, how would you define a leader? If you define a leader in a very general way, your claim will be completely trivial. If you define a leader narrowly, in most cases your claim will not be correct. That's why it's out of the question
     In a well-defined theory and I see theories of this kind as either tautologies or improbable generalizations.

     Again the definition that every company has systems designed to protect itself is an unclear generalization or it is too general or it is incorrect. Are these warriors? Does the company of Christian pastors have systems designed to protect them? Are these the same systems used by the warriors in the Zulu tribe or the armored men of our time? Human society is too complex for us to define universal rules for it, and if we try to do so, we will make gross generalizations and trivial claims.

176. What is science?

     Many of the debates on the site revolve around the question "What is science?"
     At least in part these debates stem from the different terminologies used by the debaters.
     Language is essentially a collection of conventions regarding the relationship between words and meanings and when arguments arise arising from different terminology, it is advisable to agree on terminology to allow the discussion to focus on the essence.
     What I am trying to present here, therefore, is not an answer to the question "What is science?" Because this question is, as mentioned, a matter of convention, but rather a proposal for agreement on the definition of the words in the debate surrounding this question.
     The idea is to offer words that will be effective and their meaning will be clear to both their speakers and their readers, without straying from their accepted meaning.
     Of course, the debates on the question "What is science?" There was meaning even without the definitions I propose, but this meaning was less interesting because the very existence of the debate in general revealed the fact that the debaters (if they understood the role of language) do not agree on the question "What do most people call science?" (essentially a statistical question) and not about the question "Which definition of the word 'science' will serve us better?" (A question that should be asked and later try to make a PR answer to the answer so that the statistics will also support this meaning).
     In the enclosed article he says that to the extent of a certain confusion that exists among people, the statistics already support the proposals I am making and that is the reason why I allowed myself to say earlier "without straying from their accepted meaning".

     The way I see things, the word "science" is used by us in two meanings.
     One meaning is "the scientific method" or "a method for investigating the world and for revealing the things that are true in it or at least for describing them as accurately as possible".
     The second meaning is "the collection of all claims about reality as received to date as a result of using the scientific method".

     The scientific method is founded, as everyone knows, on the examination of the theories proposed as a possible description of this or that aspect of reality, by confronting them with reality (and I will touch on the meaning of the aforementioned "confrontation" later, after additional terms are clarified).

     And what is a theory?
     A theory is a collection of fundamental assumptions (what is commonly called in mathematics "axioms") that the drafter of the theory does not take upon himself to prove logically and that he claims to be correct despite this, together with a logical development of all the conclusions arising from these assumptions.

     A confrontation of theory with reality is based on a comparison of the theory's claims (its basic assumptions and the assumptions obtained as a logical/mathematical result from the basic assumptions) with what happens in reality.

     For a theory to be considered "scientific" - such a confrontation must be possible. Science has no interest in theories that do not relate to the reality that we can feel because these types of theories have no effect on our lives and it is difficult to claim that they have any meaning.

     A scientific theory can be wrong. This does not rule out its scientificity. Sometimes even on the contrary - the very fact that we could prove that a certain theory is wrong is proof of the theory's scientificity because the refutation of the theory is obtained as a result of a confrontation with reality and the possibility of carrying out such a confrontation is all the requirement we place on a theory in order to earn it the title of "scientific".

     But a scientific theory that has been proven to be wrong, despite its scientificity, is not included in the body of knowledge obtained through the scientific method and is therefore not included in the word "science" in the second meaning I was talking about - the one that deals with "the collection of all claims about reality as received to date as a result of using the scientific method".
     This collection includes only scientific theories that have not yet been disproved, although there is a principle possibility to disprove them in case they do not correctly describe reality.

     The more a theory accumulates a history of failed refutation attempts - the greater the degree of our belief in its correctness.

     It is very important to understand the fact that the basis of the theory is its basic assumptions and that everything else is conclusions drawn from these assumptions in a logical manner.
     Therefore, it also makes more sense to be convinced of the correctness of a theory whose basic assumptions are easy to test experimentally (since everything else is logic and mathematics) and attempts comparing the basic assumptions with reality should convince us more than attempts comparing the conclusions with reality (because the same conclusions can sometimes be reached on the basis of assumptions fundamental difference).

     Sometimes, as mentioned, it is not possible to check the basic assumptions directly. No one expected to see an electron when its existence was first assumed. There was simply enough evidence to support experimental results that were obtained after the theory of the existence of the electron predicted them, but, as mentioned - if the existence of the assumption is directly observable - it is easier to accept the theory.

     Sometimes the theory is integrated into a chaotic reality where many factors are at play and therefore the mathematical development cannot yield reliable predictions for the simple reason that not all the data necessary for the complete theoretical model are available. In such a case, the predictions given by the theory are more vague, but if the basic assumptions can be directly tested, then there is no doubt about the correctness of the theory.
     This is the case, for example, with evolution.
     Evolution has a huge priority, in this matter, over the dark matter theory, all the evidence for its existence is indirect, that is, it verifies the conclusions of the theory that assumes the existence of the dark matter (but despite this, the dark matter theory is also very accepted in the scientific community).
     Even if the theory cannot predict the future precisely or in every aspect, it can sometimes predict relationships between different data that will be obtained in the future.
     This also happens in evolution.
     Evolution cannot predict which creatures will evolve because mutations happen randomly (at least in terms of our ability to discover their causes) but that does not mean that it cannot predict anything. It can, for example, predict connections between the evolutionary trees that will be obtained from the analysis of different genes even if it cannot say in advance which trees will be obtained.
     It is somewhat reminiscent of our ability to know that the spins of two quantum entangled particles will be coordinated when we measure them - without being able to know in advance what these spins will be.
     People do repeat many times the claim that evolution does not provide predictions even though this claim is clearly not true and the predictions I have mentioned here many times (including, recently, in this response) disprove it without a doubt.
     But, as mentioned, even without the predictions, there could be no doubt as to the correctness of evolution because its basic assumptions (the existence of replicators and the existence of competition for resources whose success affects the degree of reproduction) can be directly verified.

     The situation is much more problematic when assumptions are made that do not hold in reality.
     As long as there is no way to determine - at least in what percentage of cases the assumptions are met or to block the error that can be received as a result of the difference between the situation that the theory assumes and the situation in reality, then all we have is a mathematical model whose relationship with reality is shrouded in fog.

     In the past, the dome was dominated by the assumption that the prevailing space in our universe is Euclidean space.
     Today we already know that space is not like that.
     In other words, the premise that physical space is Euclidean has been rejected and today we know that space is curved and the extent of its curvature is determined by mass and energy.
     We can still use Euclidean geometry in many cases because we have a way to calculate the distance between the results obtained using it and the correct results.
     We can estimate this distance because we have another theory that is not yet hidden by the measurements and we calculate the distance between Euclidean geometry and reality - simply by calculating the distance between it and the geometry of general relativity.

     Therefore, the Euclidean geometry theory of space - even though it is not a correct scientific theory, can be a useful tool.

     Black and Sholes equations are not even like that.
     Their basic assumptions are not met (some are never met and some are met in an undetectable percentage of cases).
     In other words - regarding the Black and Scholes theory - although there is a consistent mathematical model - no way has yet been found to indicate the connection between it and reality.
     As I said from the beginning - I do not rule out the possibility of finding a reliable scientific theory in the field, but I find it difficult to call the existing theory by that name.
     The difference between it and the theory of evolution screams to the sky - both on the subject of the ability to test the basic assumptions and on the subject of the ability to predict.

     Many years ago I was involved in a certain development in the Navy (I don't know how classified the issue is, so I won't detail the matter fully).
     The Navy had a particular strategy to estimate the location of a vessel picked up by a submarine's passive sonar. It was an unproven strategy that worked many times quite well but was usually not very accurate and sometimes got it big wrong.
     Someone who knew my fondness for puzzles asked me if I could find a reliable solution and I did find such a solution that could locate the vessel precisely and that anyone who read its description could understand why it always worked (while the strategy they had used until then was heuristic and no one could explain why actually It usually works and what percentage is the same "usually" and what is the degree of accuracy of the results obtained.)

     According to the example of Black and Scholes (and I do not pretend to know more about economics than the little I learned from this example) it seems to me that the economy is at that heuristic stage where - the inability to predict things accurately does not stem only from the congestion of data and its unavailability but also from the fact that they do not know how to formulate such basic assumptions as possible to indicate the degree of connection between them and reality.

177. Yair,
     You write:
     "Also, almost every religion will cause the development of resistance, either in a religious way or in the negation of religion." The point is that there are almost no religions that are objectionable. Objection to something is society dependent and culture dependent
     and is not universal therefore rules or laws cannot be determined as in the exact sciences and one must be satisfied with the description.
     The same comments apply to the building of empires and their dissolution, perhaps it can be said that an empire will fall apart, but science will also try to say when. Were experts able to predict the fall of the communist bloc?

     You write "Every unequal society is destined to develop fierce power struggles. All the things I pointed out about the possibility of Nabam have already happened many times around the world." It sounds almost like the communist ideology that describes the entire history as a struggle between the classes, as we know this concept does not hold water. The attempt to build one model of history into which the whole can be classified is the attempt of the great ideologies which, as mentioned, failed miserably.

178. Dos Reform,

     Thank you very much for the explanations on the Black-Scholes equation. There is a place for equations in areas where the objects being studied can be abstracted and it is possible that the economy is such an area because it is possible to establish rules similar to the rules of a game that players must follow. On the other hand, I think that you also claim that the human world does not always obey these rules, while nature is obliged to obey its laws.
     In any case, as you also mentioned, the Black Sholes equation suffers from a number of failures, the main one of which in my opinion is "that all financial assets are traded perfectly" as we know traders do not have equal information and not all trade rationally so the ideal model is often mistaken. It is possible that with the help of computerized trading the assumptions will be more correct, a computer is able to examine a large number of data and find out from them the successful stocks at a given moment.
     Beyond the modeling problem there is the problem of conducting experiments as I have already claimed and I think you agree with me when a model is known to everyone and everyone uses it it proves itself. In examining human systems, it is very difficult to perform experiments that do not affect the system being examined.
     In conclusion, I am less fanatical about evolution and tend to agree with you that its foundation is not much different from that of the Black-Scholes equation. The mathematical proofs that Michael talks about in the context of evolution depend on a model and the model does not always taste the complex reality. I tend to see evolution as more of a possible research direction that gives the big picture but does not complete the details.

179. sympathetic
     I don't like you, first I miss your response and then I get confused by your name.
     Anyway, in a rather long answer I will try to explain to you why the Black and Scholes formula does not suffer from the black swan problem and why in my opinion it is (at least) as effective as the Price formula and many other models that are used in the natural sciences. For the sake of full disclosure, I must point out that the field of options is not a field in which I deal with in my day-to-day life, at the same time I dealt with it intensively once or twice in the past in different settings.

     The Black and Sholes formula links the prices of the underlying asset (for the purposes of this matter you can think of a stock) and the prices of the option that is listed on it. The formula is built on the idea of ​​arbitrage (profit without risk). The genius idea of ​​Black and Sholes was that instead of trying to price the option like any other financial asset, the relationship between the stock prices and the option prices can be used to create a risk-free asset. Intuitively, you can think of a strategy where you buy a stock and sell several options. If you make a profit from the stock, you will lose the same amount from the options and vice versa. After they calculated the amount of options that should be sold for each share (called delta in the professional language) they created a risk-free asset whose price can be calculated.

     So if it's so good why doesn't it work in reality you must be asking.
     In the natural sciences, it is customary to perform laboratory experiments that isolate the subjects from other environmental influences and manipulate them. For example, a researcher in the evolutionary sciences can isolate a population of rabbits and cats in a lush carrot field. He can then activate a mutation (suppose for the moment we know how) which will make one rabbit bigger so that a cat cannot devour it. It is likely that after several generations most of the rabbit population will have the mutation. The researcher can claim (and rightly so) that his finding confirms the theory of evolution. This experiment corresponds to observations in nature which (in retrospect) showed such adjustments.
     In the social sciences, the experimental method is less accepted (although there are fields in which it is the main research method, such as psychology for example). Instead the models are built around a number of assumptions. These assumptions do not necessarily represent reality but simplify it so that a mathematical solution can be reached. In the case of Black and Sholes, two essential assumptions are that there are no jumps in the price of the base asset (for the purpose of the matter, a normal distribution) and that all financial assets are traded perfectly. Under what assumptions is the Black and Scholes model perfect. Every time you are willing as a buyer to pay more than the Black and Sholes price, you will (probably) lose money. Moreover if you tell me how much you paid for the option I can tell you your profit expectancy. That is, if we conduct an experiment and let the computer pull the stock prices out of a normal distribution, the Black and Sholes model is the best at predicting the option prices even if the computer pulls a 50% drop in the stock price.

     The problem with both experiments is the transition from the "laboratory" phase to the reality phase. In reality if you give rabbits a mutation that will make them bigger it is very possible that they will not survive because apart from cats they will have to deal with larger predators and a lack of food. Similarly we know that stock prices jump (ie the probability of falling is higher than in a normal distribution). In order to deal with this complexity, the researchers developed models that are based on distributions that allow jumps (such as the Poisson distribution). If these developments the model becomes more and more accurate.

     The model certainly does not explain 100% of the phenomenon, but I highly doubt if there are many models in the natural sciences that can predict reality with 100% accuracy. Even physics, which is many generations away in terms of its development compared to evolution and economics, cannot in many cases give 100% predictions. For example, we have no idea what the motion of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy will be six billion years from now.

     And finally, based on the Black and Sholes model, models were developed that predict bankruptcy. These models are much more accurate than models that predict a heart attack in humans. Nevertheless, according to your method, one is science while the other is not science.

180. sympathetic:

     I think you have defined it well. Science can be viewed as a way to unify information by collecting observations and combining them with the current body of knowledge (the model) while trying to make as few a priori assumptions as possible.
     Regarding the possibility of predicting specific events:
     In analogy to the great fire in Carmel, it was said that we had real-time control from many points in Carmel, each measuring the direction of the wind at that point, whether the fire had already reached it and more information about the dryness of the vegetation was said. And there was a large monitor that would display this data in real time on a map. I think it was easier to control the fire because it was easier to predict its spread based on such a situational picture. The spread of fires in this way, I believe, has the laws of physics that dictate them - but we still need to collect and combine a lot of data.
     Would it have been possible to prevent the ignition? No, but this matter is outside the fire outbreak model
     The same goes for social phenomena. I believe that, for example, the dynamics in which groups of people carry out joint tasks or go out together to revolt against the government have rules. I will come up with one such simple rule - groups performing a common task always have a leader. Now the hypothesis must be confirmed or refuted - how will we do it? You can look at examples from the past and investigate how it happened and you can even perform controlled experiments. For example, take groups of people and investigate the dynamics between them, i.e. transfer of information, influence of individuals on their environment, etc. in some task. The next step could be to identify the leader, remove him from the task and see the change in the behavior.

     Regarding the systems in the body, the social analogue to the immune system, for example, is the defense systems of a society. Almost every human society has systems designed to protect it. Whether it is the warriors of the Zulu tribe or the armored men of Yamanu.

     I think that most of the time we don't see legality in the conduct of human society because we don't have a good point of view. We see spikes here and there, random flares, but not the overall picture

181. Machel
     Thanks for the link. In the link it is written that in the countries of the Netherlands, Finland, and Canada a law is implemented that is similar in its format to the Law of the Commissioner for Future Generations.
     If in such advanced European countries, from a social point of view, such a law exists, why would this law not exist in the State of Israel? Does it temporarily not exist, or will this law really be repealed in the future because it does not suit our country?
     In my opinion, this law is very important, because it is the only law that takes care of our children's future, what do you think about canceling this law?
     Is there a law or other organization that takes care of the future of our children in the State of Israel?

182. sympathetic,
     You ask some questions that you could have answered yourself "Are there historical moments that repeat themselves? Are there historical processes that repeat themselves or is every moment in history unique?"
     "It gives the impression that questions about human societies (I deliberately avoid the phrase "social sciences") are more complex and very period dependent"
     Historical moments do not repeat, they are specific to the people who carry them out.
     But yes, there are processes that repeat themselves, for example the building of empires and their dissolution, and also smaller kingdoms and their dissolution, as well as the efforts of rulers and property owners to maintain their status, and the efforts of the poor to seize power and wealth, these are all recurring processes, and it can certainly be predicted that wherever there is imperial rule , even on a small scale, like in Israel, it will have to defend its existence in war, and eventually disintegrate. And so on, any unequal society is bound to develop intense power struggles. And almost every religion will cause the development of opposition, either in a religious way or in the negation of religion.
     All the things I pointed out about the possibility of Nabam have already happened many times around the world.

183. Ghost:
     I don't know if this is what you were looking for but this is what I found:
     http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A0%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%91_%D7%94%D7%93%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%94%D7%91%D7%90%D7%99%D7%9D

184. Can you explain a bit about the law of the 'Commission for Future Generations'?
     And why can its cancellation affect the future of our children?
     Thanks.

185. ghosts

     Again you didn't say anything of substance or interest. Sometimes discussions develop that are not directly related to the topic of the article but are of interest. I would be happy if you would join this kind of discussion if you have something interesting to say, but it gives the impression that you are only interested in slandering, which is a shame.

     ravine
     You raise several interesting points in my opinion. I will use them with your permission to return to the previous discussion.
     First of all, medicine is a science for your taste because of the way it gathers information and uses the information it has collected to predict phenomena, where the prediction is a confirmation of the theory. Now we will compare this method to studies concerning human societies and ask the question, can we learn from history? Are there historical moments that repeat themselves? Are there historical processes that repeat themselves or is every moment in history unique? Human society changes frequently, mainly technologically. Can we learn from the history of the Middle Ages about the way in which the world should be run today? Can we learn from the battles of World War II about how we should manage our military today? It seems that questions about human societies (I deliberately avoid the phrase "social sciences") is more complex and very period dependent. This is one of the reasons that make me doubt the ability to build a science of studying the future.
     Another point you raise is:
     Medicine is a science because it can differentiate between systems, unlike alternative medicine, there is no need to talk about the whole, you can talk about the immune system and make claims against it while assuming that it is an almost autonomous system from the rest of the body's systems. Can such distinctions be made regarding human societies? Is the economy disconnected from science or technology? Or from society and the government?
     Another point you mention is that medicine is a science due to its examination in controlled experiments, whether it is possible to perform controlled experiments on human societies to test theories and whether the very experiment will not lead to an unexpected change. It is therefore difficult in the discussion of human societies to talk about a controlled experiment.

186. I agree with Machal Ehud and Yair that medicine is a science.
     There are models in it (for example a model describing the role of the circulatory system in the body and its components),
     You can develop theories, test them in controlled experiments, etc.

     Regarding Ehud's question:
     "What about alternative medicine? Do you think that alternative medicine can be considered science?
     To make it difficult for you, let's assume for a moment that quantitative studies show that alternative medicine is indeed beneficial"

     I believe that alternative medicine is not science (I will make the assumption of usefulness and I argue that it does not affect scientificity). I will apologize in advance to the experts of alternative medicine, what I am describing is my impression of this field and not in-depth knowledge.
     First of all, alternative medicine does not follow the rules of the scientific method. In particular, it lacks the classic elements of collecting data (or observations), defining a problem or raising hypotheses and predictions, testing the prediction by conducting an experiment and God forbid.
     Second, there is the model that conventional medicine assumes against alternative medicine.
     When a doctor talks about the immune system or the circulatory system or the respiratory system, is that equivalent to an alternative healer talking about the energy flow system in my body?
     I believe there is a profound difference between the two. The immune system is an abstraction of the complex operation of organs in our body, which react in a certain way when, for example, a foreign object enters our body. Many scientific questions can be asked about this model of the immune system - which organs are involved in it, how it works when one or another bacteria enters, how it distinguishes between foreign objects and non-foreign objects, how it developed, how it works in other animals, when it Failed, etc., etc. and each of these questions can be tested experimentally.
     And what about the energy flow system? What makes it up? What are the mechanisms that activate it? What is energy anyway? Is there one scientific question that can be asked about it?
     Another thing is the way in which knowledge is accumulated. Is alternative medicine developing? Is she gaining new knowledge? Are there any discoveries? How was it developed?

     Regarding the usefulness - as has been shown many times, placebo drugs are also useful. A day off from work and a run on the beach is also helpful.
     The usefulness is an important part, but an equally important part is understanding the mechanisms that brought about the benefit.
     When I have a headache, maybe if I drink a drink of medicinal herbs from China and lizard tails with crocodile saliva it will help me. But maybe a glass of water would have achieved the same benefit.

187. Year:
     I did not neglect collecting stamps. On the contrary - I mentioned that it is important.
     But medicine is already much (a lot!) beyond this stage.
     Not only have drugs been found that have been proven (experimentally!) to work, but today they already know how to develop drugs based on the characteristics of the cause of the disease and even, sometimes, taking into account the encounter between the cause of the disease and the patient.
     It's not just science - it also has the engineering component within the framework of which, for example, every year, a vaccine against the expected flu is developed for that year.
     Alternative medicine is not a science because as soon as serious experiments are done to examine an alternative healing method, one of the following two things happens:
     1. The experiment proves the validity of the healing method and it becomes part of conventional medicine
     2. The experiment failed and then - the only real alternatives are to deceive the public and offer them to be cured by this method.

188. sympathetic

     Do you want something relevant? Here is a relevant question: 'Why is the content of your comments unrelated to the content of the article'?
     The subject of the article is not: what Adon Ehud thinks about science and what is science according to his definition.
     The topic is about how the study of the future has become scientifically legitimate, thanks to 'open-minded' people from academia.

     And what is related to your statement: "Following the aforementioned formula, there was a huge demand for physicists on Wall Street and physicists received a huge salary partly due to the analogy of the Black-Scholes formula to the Schrödinger equation"??
     Kudos to those physicists who received huge salaries, and it's a toffee that the Black Shoals formula is similar to the Schrödinger equation! I guess you're knee-high just hearing about it…but still, what's the deal???
     The fact that you didn't understand the intent of my response is your problem.
     'In short, if you don't have anything relevant to say, maybe it's better to be silent.'

189. Medicine is undoubtedly a science in my eyes, but exactly of the kind that Makhal and Ehud mockingly called a "stamp collection". Medicine uses all sciences to create its insights, but its way of gathering information is no different from archaeology.
     Medicine collects the characterizations of diseases according to symptoms and in-depth processes, adding detail to detail until a doctor is able to say about a patient's complaint that he has disease X.
     And of course he is often wrong, because of the nature of the data.
     I don't see any fundamental difference between the way medicine builds its database and the way of, for example, archeology or the study of the Tanach, which are considered humanities.
     In the same way the theory of evolution was built, and without entering into arguments about the definitions of the sciences,
     Those who don't see that collecting data makes it possible to create not only catalogs of information but also systematic generalizations and in-depth pictures of the reality being studied,
     Blinds his own eyes.

190. Rafa
     Read a little before you respond and it is desirable that you respond to the matter. The Black and Sholes formula is used by most of the economic sector, not just Doss. Following the aforementioned formula, there was a huge demand for physicists on Wall Street and physicists received a huge salary partly due to the similarity of the Black-Scholes formula to the Schrödinger equation. In short, if you don't have anything relevant to say, maybe it's better to stay silent.

     ravine
     In my eyes, medicine is a science due to the ability to perform controlled experiments. On the other hand, you wouldn't want your doctor to develop medicines according to a formula. The maximum I'm willing to bet on is that the doctors calculate the dosage of the medicines according to a formula based on body weight.
     The question you raise is interesting. On the one hand, the human body is a very complex machine, on the other hand, they know how to identify diseases and treat them in an almost comprehensive manner. The "ball horse" model works well in medicine, that is, the assumption that basically all humans are the same machine.
     In my opinion, the next step is to leave the "ball horse" model. The development in medicine is in the direction of personalized medicine, adjusting individual medicines to each patient according to his specific immune system. By the way, what about alternative medicine, do you think that alternative medicine can be considered as science? To make it difficult for you, let's assume for a moment that quantitative studies show that alternative medicine is indeed beneficial.

191. No wonder that 'reformists' use such a formula. I also wouldn't be surprised if they rely on it in the stock market and then when they fall, economically, they are forced to live as parasites on the money of the secular public.

192. More from the same link:

     Reliance on models based on incorrect axioms has clear and large effects. The Black-Scholes model[8], for example, which was invented in 1973 to price options, is still used extensively. But it assumes that the probability of extreme price changes is negligible, when in reality, stock prices are much jerkier than this. Twenty years ago, unwarranted use of the model spiraled into the worldwide October 1987 crash; the Dow Jones index dropped 23% in a single day, dwarfing recent market hiccups.

193. Reform Dos:
     I don't intend to start studying economics, but because of the debate I just entered the link you gave regarding the Black and Scholes formula and I must say that I was surprised.
     I expected to find something there that would be so complicated that it would be difficult to contradict and that is not what happened.
     Already in the basic assumptions of the model we see that these are assumptions that simply do not exist in reality (such as the possibility to buy fractions of shares and more).
     That's why I was no longer surprised to find under the title Black–Scholes in practice the following opening sentence: The Black–Scholes model disagrees with reality in a number of ways, some significant.

194. ravine:

     In my opinion, medicine is definitely a science.
     The doctor, in this context, does not have to be a scientist - he can sometimes also be defined as an engineer or a technician, but medical research is science and the instructions he produces for doctors are the fruit of scientific research based on experiments and disprovable theories (and indeed - the fact is that not every drug is approved And sometimes drugs are taken off the shelves. These are drugs whose usefulness theory has been disproved)

195. What about medicine? Is it considered a science in your eyes?

     Specifically, can laws be discovered in it? Are there models in it?
     How to answer questions such as:
     Is medicine helpful?
     What is the reason that caused this symptom and that?

     Are these scientific questions? Are the answers provided by medicine equivalent to scientific theories?

196. correction:
     Once I actually got dragged into using the term "social sciences"

197. Dos Reformi (113):
     A short lesson in telling the truth.
     I have never defined science as requiring the ability to predict the future.

     Regarding the matter of the industry - you did not understand the intention at all.
     I had no intention of defining an industry but to provide an example of your logical fallacy. I guess you knew that but you didn't have a straight answer so you took the demagogic route of clashing with the industry definition.
     pathetic.

     Regarding response 109 - everything is not true.
     Regarding the ability to predict the future, I have already answered you.
     In this regard, it is important to emphasize that if you demand the ability to predict the future from a scientific theory, you get - consider it a miracle - a definition that includes evolution and does not include the economy - something you said is not possible, but I have already seen that you ignore it, so it is not important.

     You simply did not understand the difference between what I said in response 84 and response 107.
     You are really exhausting to the point of horror in your stubborn effort not to understand, but instead of me explaining things to you again - I will send you to re-read the comments you are referring to.

     In addition to that, you refer there to the social sciences and not to the humanities. Maybe you didn't notice but I never talked about the social sciences. It is true that the same link in Wikipedia talks about them, but the separation you asked for between the social sciences (which I have never discussed) and the natural sciences - including evolution - the same separation in the possibility of which you are a heretic, is better achieved by the requirement of predictability.
     Again - I'm not saying this is my definition. This is just a refutation of your claim.

     In general - response 109 is all a response to a person's body and in fact it should have been deleted.

     In relation to your motivation - I agree that you probably did not try to harm the status of evolution - although in the false statement that it has no predictive ability you did (unintentionally).

198. DOS Reform,

     Response (80) is mine (Ehud) and not Yair's. Full disclosure, I do not understand much about economics and I have never studied the subject, but from an external perspective it seems to me that it is difficult to call this field a science (in the narrow sense of the natural sciences) and that it belongs more to the field of social sciences, as you can see from the discussion I had with Guy, I perceive it separately.

     You brought as an example the Black and Sholes equations as an example of the use of a model that describes with the help of mathematical equations the prices of options. There are several problems with this claim. First, when we describe phenomena in science, we do not want the description to affect reality, the fact that an equation
     Black and Scholes is so popular that most traders use it and therefore by the very act of using it it changes the market it is supposed to describe. There is a scientific problem here. If I'm not mistaken, the use of the Black and Scholes equation almost caused the collapse of the world economy several decades ago when everyone used it even though it was far from matching the economic reality. In addition, it is not clear to me that the Black and Sholes equation always works even in cases of severe economic crises, and Taleb's black barber argument also comes into play...

199. Machel
     The story of my secret motivation has already become rude.
     First, the claim itself lacks any logic. I claim that economics in particular and social sciences in general are science and compare them to evolution. How can you conclude from this that I want to tattoo evolution? Moreover, I have already stated in the past that I see evolution as science and now I take this opportunity to state it again.
     But in order for the issue to finally drop from the public agenda, a few facts:
     First of all, today is Saturday and here I am responding to you, I don't get along with being a dos.
     Secondly, in the discussion I had recently with Yuval Hankin (from whom you can learn a thing or two about respectable discussion) I wrote:
     "The issue of the Book of Deuteronomy was raised to illustrate to you that the "Book of King Josiah" is very far from being childish. The XNUMXth source (from the words) is usually identified with the circles of prophecy partly because of the great similarity in moral issues and the literary similarity with the books of Hosea and Jeremiah."
     Can I really be an orthodox deus and argue that the Torah was not written by Moses?

     In short, your sister's method of attack... even when there is no sister is their last escape for those who are left without any substantive response. It is very sad that the editor of the site Avi allows a commenter like you to manage the discussions here and degrade the level of the site to personal defamations and debates whose only goal is to win instead of adding knowledge.

200. Comment 113 is mine

201. Machel
     A short lesson in Hebrew:
     Definition (from Wikipedia):
     "A successful definition is one that delimits a concept, or the meaning of a term, precisely. Defining a concept accurately means detailing its essential features and only those, using well-defined concepts, in such a way that the set of features in the definition will exist only in what is denoted by the defined term."
     http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%94%D7%92%D7%93%D7%A8%D7%94
     Therefore, the humblest of all, when you define science as requiring the ability to predict the future, then it requires the ability to predict the future.

     If we go to your example, you define an industry as:
     "Industry is a way to produce products we use for existence and comfort"
     Under your (bad) definition then everything that does not produce products that are designed for convenience is not an industry. Since it is clearly not true (for example an industry that produces doomsday weapons to destroy the planet, or an industry that produces computer viruses) it means that there is a problem with the definition.
     The wonder and wonder when we look at the definition of an industry, the term of convenience disappears and we learn that an industry is:
     Industry refers to the production of an economic good (either material or a service) within an economy.
     At any opportunity, I am ready to give you a private lesson about what an economic product is and why your definition is inferior compared to this definition.

     And finally, one of the beautiful things on the Internet is that everything is in writing and can be read again. Please indicate which of my examples (response 109) is incorrect. If you ask nicely, I might give you some more time in order to show you more cases in which you contradict yourself in order to try to win the argument.

202. Dos Reformi (109):
     Let me help you a little in reading comprehension:
     If he says: "Industry is a way of producing products that are used by us for existence and comfort" would you conclude from that that creating comfort products is not an industry in my view?
     I guess not.
     So why, when I say "Science is a systematic way of investigating the world that yields laws that make it possible to understand its behavior in the past and predict - up to a defined resolution - its behavior in the future - reliably" do you treat things differently?

     Your entire defiant response is littered with this type of failure and it's clear from which part of your body it came from.

203. Dos Reformi (108):
     From the beginning, I claimed that I do not judge economic science.
     Since you stick to it anyway - I also explained that it falls from evolution in terms of predictability as well.
     There was no reason for your insistence on comparing the economy and evolution - not only because, as I said - there is no possibility of comparing a science that provides testable predictions to a science that does not, but because according to you (which I am not arguing with you because the subject - as I claimed from the beginning - does not interest me) - If it is true - all in all, it also defines the economy as a science (and I - how many more times will I have to repeat this?) I did not come to judge the economy.
     The only obvious conclusion is therefore that in this comparison you are trying to drag evolution down.

     I repeat and explain:
     Evolution - as a process that takes place under certain conditions - is something that can be proven mathematically.
     The process predicts the future with a certain resolution (just like the physical law that states that entropy will increase - without specifying how the energy will be distributed in the end).
     Evolution - as a historical fact - is confirmed by experiments that show that the reality we encounter today could not have been created without evolution under any circumstances (as mentioned the probability of such an impressive success of the experiment they did with the proteins without them being created in an evolution smaller than ten to the power of minus 12).
     I don't know if there is a mathematical proof of the mathematical necessity of any economic process.
     I don't know if it is possible to show experimentally that the economy did indeed operate according to this process.
     But again - even if so - (and you claim that yes, then why did you say at the beginning of the pointless debate that I defined science as taking economics out of the definition?! Did you change your mind during the debate?) - after all, it follows that economics is indeed a science - something that never I didn't claim it wasn't true.

     Therefore, it is also clear what your motivation was in the whole business.

204. Yair, I'm sorry but I managed to miss your response. In your claim (80) you claim that:
     ” A reformist dos
     My argument is not only against the resolution of predicting the future, but against the way in which it is carried out. An attempt to build a simple model described in equations as in the natural sciences is banal and uninteresting and will only take hold for a short time."

     Please read the Black and Scholes equations link:
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_and_Scholes
     And you have a model that describes the option prices with the help of mathematical equations. The model has been around for 37 years and its predictions are far from trivial.
     Shabbat Shalom

205. The truth is that while I was preparing the previous comment I started to worry a little. Could it be because you suffer from a split personality?

     The suspicion arose because following several cases: In response 58 you say you define science as:
     "Reform Dos:
     Science is a systematic way of investigating the world that yields laws that make it possible to understand its behavior in the past and predict - up to a defined resolution - its behavior in the future - reliably."
     is black and white. You define science as depending on the ability to predict behavior in the future. When I answer about predicting the future, you attack and say (84):
     ” It turns out that you do not understand what science is.
     Science is not necessarily meant to provide predictions for the future and it is certainly possible to be satisfied with a convincing explanation of the past."

     Also on the subject of the Price formula, you show remarkable consistency:
     In response 84 you write:
     "And now regarding the mathematics of the whole thing:
     The theory of evolution is actually a collection of proven mathematical claims (which even give numerical predictions but not the kind you were looking for). See, for example, here:
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_equation
     In fact, all that is needed to prove that evolution takes place is to show that the conditions set by mathematics for its existence are indeed met, and these conditions are really simple to test (the existence of creatures that reproduce with the probability of small changes that affect their degree of success in the fight for resources and in bringing forth more offspring."
     whereas now (107):
     "I was not proud of the Price formula, but only presented it as an example"

     And right at the end, I will refer you to another one of your links:
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science
     In Wikipedia, the natural sciences are separated from the social sciences according to the field of practice and not according to the ability to explain (and predict in a previous version). Which actually fits with my argument...

     May you also have golden dreams

206. Machel
     When there is no answer then they run away to exhaustion.
     Come and I will make it easier for you (considering your exhaustion) - forget about all the arguments that have happened so far and let's focus only on the end:
     Your last definition of science is (84):

     ” It turns out that you do not understand what science is.
     Science is not necessarily meant to provide predictions for the future and it is certainly possible to be satisfied with a convincing explanation of the past."

     The current argument from your creator settles the debate. The Beckel and Scholes formula explains very well the development of option prices in the past. Moreover, contrary to your claim that it is not possible to conduct experiments in economics, the formula has been successfully tried in thousands of academic articles. We even know how to predict the deviations from the formula, calculate them and explain most of them. Here's to you from Kal. A first-rate practical problem such as calculating the value of the options held by the employee was solved by academics (earning Schulz the Nobel Prize - Black died before the prize was awarded to him).
     Now explain to me why the economy does not meet the condition you set?
     (Oh, I forgot, you're tired...)

207. Reform Dos:
     You are merely proving that the attrition method works.
     I have no more power over you.
     I have explained things to you in dozens of ways.
     I have shown you a method where you can perform trillions of experiments that have not yet been done and disprove evolution and you continue to claim that evolution is like economics where no experiment can be done.
     I wasn't proud of Price's formula, I just presented it as an example, but I really don't have the strength for you anymore, so sweet dreams

208. From * Al
     You are right. There is only one deaf person here who, as soon as the word evolution is mentioned, he immediately assumes that he has to defend it and slander those who argue with him. Read (for a change) what they write to you (yes, I know you're too smart for that, that's why you don't bother) and maybe it will turn out for you that despite your excessive wisdom and your captivating modesty, you can learn new things.
     Let's focus on the stupid comparison between economics and football. Please go to the Black and Scholes formula (you claim to be a mathematician you should understand the formula) is this not a definite prediction? Try to define how this formula differs from Price's formula that you were proud of as an explanation of evolution? Why is the Price formula science and the Black and Scholes formula is not?
     For your convenience (and for the convenience of an anonymous user who is invited to learn before passing judgment on the economy) here is the link again:
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes
     I am waiting for an answer from *Kal

209. Ehud and Guy:
     I did not read the entire discussion between you, but Guy's response 104 also expresses my opinion, as has been expressed several times in the past (for example here: https://www.hayadan.org.il/lizard-fast-evolution-230408/#comment-47460 )

210. Ehud (96):

     I wanted to address the following point you mentioned:
     "Even small children ask questions about the world and try to explore it and they are not scientists. Science in my opinion involves building a model of reality, a model that can in principle be refuted and preferably a quantitative model and an examination of the model against observations of the world, preferably controlled experiments."

     I think there are many parallels between the way children or people in general explore the world around them and the scientific process. This does not entitle them to the title of scientists, but the point is this:
     The human brain produces models of the world in which we live. What is this model?
     My argument is that this model is no different from a scientific (mathematical/computerized) model. When a child examines a balloon, throws it in the air, bounces it, etc. he is actually creating a model of the balloon in his mind. This model was built based on observations from the world, it has the ability to predict quantitatively (for example when the balloon is going to fall and where after I threw it) it separates variables (when the child receives a balloon of a different color, but made of the same material and of the same weight, he will understand - aha! I can use the same model to predict the behavior of this balloon, i.e. color is not an important parameter for the model to predict the ball's position after being shot in the air)
     And it can even be disproved - if the child now for the first time receives a ball filled with helium - the ball will behave differently and then the model is updated and the material filling the ball also has a representation in the model.
     Games are children's controlled experiments

211. Yair,

     I see biology as a science, but in my opinion it cannot be built on physics. It is not possible for something to come along and explain the richness of the biological world from atoms and the interaction between them. For each type of phenomena, the level of description and explanation that they deserve must be chosen, therefore I am also satisfied if it is possible to define equations that describe biological systems. There are beautiful works in biophysics but they are on the fringes of biological research.

     By the way, Yair according to your definition:
     "Science, any science, collects data on anything and tries to find out as much as possible the nature of the thing.
     Science is a learning process, and not a final state for the world." According to this claim, philosophy is also science, so it's no wonder you call the ancients scientists. In my opinion, the differentiation of the fields of knowledge since the pigeons indicates a development, today we know how to differentiate between different levels of description of the world of phenomena and the tools needed in each of them. To say that in reality there is only "what exists in the world is "nature", including human thought and its results" is an inclusive and meaningless claim. Only by distinguishing between types of phenomena can knowledge be advanced, and it has advanced a lot since the Greek philosophers.

212. ravine,

     By the way, the link you brought touches me in a way that is more interesting and although it is also used in the exact sciences, it can also give results for human systems. This is a direction that, among other things, is promoted by Wolfram. The idea is instead of describing complex systems with equations to use a computer program that runs thousands of details to which certain laws apply. The collection of individuals moving according to defined rules and laws often gives interesting collective behaviors. In my opinion, this direction is more promising.

213. ravine,

     Even in human systems there are cases where behaviors can be predicted, this is an exception to the rule. In order to achieve human systems in which development can be predicted, clear and strict rules must be set. This is the exception that proves the rule. Since it makes no sense in the sciences that study human societies to adopt the methods of the natural sciences. In addition, the questions about human societies are different from the ones that are asked in the exact sciences, so often when you ignore this and ask the same type of questions as in the natural sciences, you get banal, simplistic and uninteresting answers. I do not claim that quantitative tools should not be introduced into the social sciences, I do claim that these sciences should not strive to describe social reality through formulas.

214. And by the way, Yair:

     I wish the ancient Greeks were in the business of collecting facts.
     Unfortunately - many of them engaged in "armchair science" and simply invented theories that lacked any factual basis.

215. Year:
     You burst into an open door.
     You probably already forgot what I wrote in response 67.

     The point is that this stage - the mapping stage - with all its importance as part of scientific research - is after all just (as Ehud once quoted) collecting stamps.
     The interesting and important part is the part that proposes laws and in this regard the humanities "sciences" have not yet taken even one step and therefore it can be said that in the meantime they have not even justified the trouble of collecting the facts.
     Since there is no longer any understanding in these areas, I also find the attempt to "teach" them pathetic.

216. Machel,
     I read your reference, the definition is insufficient. For the benefit of other readers, here is a translation of the definition of science in the English Wikipedia in abbreviations "Science is an enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the natural world... In a narrow sense, science is an enterprise for identifying the laws of nature... and includes physics, chemistry, geology and biology... Human and social thought is classified as scientific Society...mathematics is a formal science.”
     How did the thought of evolution come about and was the current theory developed? The researchers collected a huge amount of details and based on looking at the collection of details they formulated generalizations.
     This is how archeology works. In the past, archeology only worked on the basis of collecting fragments and combining them into wholes. Today it uses all the scientific and technological tools, and still cannot create models except in very broad aspects, lacking specificity, or very narrow, and cannot be generalized. According to the narrow definition given above, archeology is not a science.
     Paleoanthropology also works with this method. If this branch were a discipline in itself, it would not be considered a science.
     According to what Ehud writes to me, "The assumption that you and I are operated by the same laws is the spherical horse assumption that works well in exact sciences, but you must agree that no horse is spherical and it is a distorted model for the living world", not at all sure that he sees biology as a science.
     I don't have to argue if someone prefers to honor only 4 or 5 disciplines with the title of 'science', and the other disciplines are called? ? 'Knowledge'? Or maybe this is also excessive in someone's eyes?
     I add to the extended definition from Wikipedia above:
     Science, any science, collects data on anything and tries to find out as much as possible the nature of the thing.
     Science is a learning process, not a final state for the world.
     The narrow definition is not acceptable to me.
     According to the approach I presented, and I assume that you and Ehud's opinion will not be accepted,
     The ancient Greeks operated according to the same principles of collecting data and making generalizations, according to which researchers operate today, and forgive me for the comparison, in light of the fact that most of what the Greeks said has long been rejected.

217. sympathetic:

     I agree with your claim that there are systems or human phenomena that are complex. However, there are some in which scales can be separated and in which there is no dependence between many variables - we have seen several examples and even the example you referred to is like this. This situation exists in physical systems as in social systems.
     If we call every social phenomenon that can be modeled as trivial or uninteresting then indeed every system we model will be trivial or uninteresting (but what did we actually say?)
     Here is another example of how supposedly complex systems behave in a way that can be explained by simple models: (you decide if it is trivial or simple)
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flocking_(behavior)

218. Machel
     Regarding the 'economy' - you could reduce the response to the following sentence:
     Economics is not a science, it just uses the scientific method.

     But, you can be understood,
     The struggle with people who have 'fuzzy logic' can exhaust a reasonable person.

219. ravine,

     In physics, subdivisions can be made and they will be effective precisely because scales can be separated. The macroscopic behavior of the material does not depend on its microscopic nature. In biology, which is a complex science, it is no longer the case that the behavior of an organ is dictated by the cells of which it is composed. In the human world, it is not possible to investigate different aspects separately because there is no separation of scales, there is a dependence on many variables (see the response (92) of Dos Reformi, on this point I agree with him).
     Regarding the laws of the road, this is an excellent example. This is a relatively simple system, cars are required to drive on the road, drivers are required to drive according to the traffic laws, there are clear rules and laws (not natural laws, as I have learned that there are drivers who break the traffic laws). Now try to build a model that will predict on which road and at what time there will be a traffic accident. I don't think that it is possible to determine which roads have a higher probability of road accidents, but for that you don't need a scientific theory, simple statistics are enough. In addition, it is a very defined system that is isolated from its surroundings, even though sometimes there are vehicles that cross the road or go on it. Regarding systems such as roads, it may be possible to develop a relatively good theory, but if it depends on the human factor, it will also depend on countless variables: what is the weather that day and what is the visibility, what is the load on the road, holidays, etc.. Was there a holiday that week, which increased the number of drunk drivers , is oil spilled on the road in a certain area, are repairs being carried out, what day of the week is it? In the bottom line, in contrast to the natural sciences, where the phenomenon usually has one cause, there is not a single cause that leads to traffic accidents, so it may be possible to write a formula for them, but it will be too general and average over all the factors I mentioned, and in addition, it will be necessary to average over, for example, the number of accidents per month to avoid the fluctuations produced by the parameters I mentioned. I hope you're starting to get the hang of it.
     Try to compare this case with a controlled experiment in a laboratory that tries to explain a phenomenon that has a control group and the possibility to define and control the variables that affect the system.

220. Yair,

     Not every question about the world is science. Writers and poets study the world and our lives and they are not scientists, just like philosophers and they are not scientists so did Hippocrates, Aristotle and Euclid and they were not scientists. Even small children ask questions about the world and try to explore it and they are not scientists. Science in my opinion involves building a model of reality, a model that can in principle be refuted and preferably a quantitative model and an examination of the model against observations of the world preferably controlled experiments.

     The fact that you and I are composed of the same materials does not make us identical. While in physics we are satisfied with general claims about an ensemble of molecules and this description does not teach us about a single atom and its movement in a gas, in the social sciences we would not want a model that assumes that you and I are the same, we would like more information. The assumption that you and I are operated by the same laws is the spherical horse assumption that works well in exact sciences but you have to agree that no horse is spherical and it is a rough model for the animal world. The more complex a system is, the more my simplistic description is baseless, trivial and provides nothing. Therefore the human sciences have to describe the world with different tools than those of the natural sciences.

221. Year:
     Read the definition of science in Wikipedia
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science
     The interesting part begins with the text The more narrow sense of "science" that is common today
     Do you understand? This is not my definition.

     Reform Dos:
     There is a maximum of one deaf person here.
     I didn't write the phrase "you don't know what science is" without knowing that the debate is about the definition of science.
     You are also welcome to read the text from Wikipedia.
     For some reason - most people actually understand the difference that you refuse to understand and therefore defined the "sciences" that are not natural sciences separately.
     I didn't think for a moment that you would admit that you are actually waging a fight against the legitimacy of evolution, but in my opinion that is what you are doing even if you don't admit it, which is why I found it appropriate to write what I wrote about the scientific nature of evolution.
     I also explained well the essential difference between her predictions and the "predictions" of the "sciences" of the humanities.
     I did not claim that the existence of chaos makes a logical system unscientific.
     As soon as the theory manages to provide predictions with real content - those that do not justify any development but only developments that can be clearly distinguished from others - it is justified, in my opinion, to call it a scientific theory.
     Evolution does this in many ways and the humanities do not do this in even one way.
     I say again - the forecast required to justify the name science (and I repeat: I'm still talking about science - as I did in the previous comments) does not refer to the future of the world but to the future of our knowledge.
     I refer to the thing we saw in the experiment as "known" and prediction is the ability to predict in advance what the results of the experiment will be.
     The many experiments that were done with the proteins - they are enough to justify the definition of evolution as a science - and, as mentioned, many more experiments were conducted.
     I have already said that I do not refer to the economy and I explained that I do not do so mainly because I have never been interested in the subject but the truth is that there is another reason: the economy, in my view, is a formal system that we have built and in which there are certain laws that we have decided on and which we try to keep and therefore they are usually kept.
     To say that in the economy so and so will benefit is like claiming that in football each team will try to score a goal for the opposing team.
     This is what they decided to do and therefore this is what is usually done.
     Why only usually? Because as we were told when we were children - not everything we want we can have.
     To call it science is not really serious in my opinion.

222. Price formula
     Price's formula predicts the rate of spread of a trait in a population. In order to use Price's formula to predict the rate of spread you need to calculate the correlation between the trait (the mutation for the sake of discussion) and survivability. The main problem is that for all practical purposes this correlation cannot be calculated in a complex system like the animal kingdom. Using the formula allows us to estimate each of the variables given that all other variables are known. I assume that controlled experiments were done in which they tried to see if it was possible to estimate the other variables given the existing variables and the results were mostly positive. However, the formula does not allow you to predict who will survive and who will disappear because we do not have the scientific tools to measure the correlation.

     In many ways the Price formula is similar to the Black and Scholes formula for calculating options:
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes
     As in the case of the price formula, if we know all the variables (the rate of the base asset, the exercise rate, interest and the standard deviation of the base asset) we can calculate the price of the options quite accurately. The big problem is that in this case we don't know the share price tomorrow and therefore we can't calculate the option price tomorrow. As in the price formula, if you tell me the development of stock prices, I will be able to calculate the price of the option (and the other variables in the equation) with great accuracy.

     In both cases, the simpler the basic phenomenon itself (e.g. bacteria in evolution and government bond rates in the Black and Scholes formula) the forecast is much more accurate. In both cases, the non-existence of the formula does not allow a reasonable forecast for the future in the systems in which they are supposed to operate. Just as the theory of Black and Scholes does not allow me to predict the price of the option tomorrow, the Price formula also does not allow me to give a prediction regarding the evolutionary changes in the animal kingdom

223. From * Al
     This discussion is worse than a deaf messiah. For the second and last time the issue in the discussion is not evolution but the definition of science. In order to finally remove the issue of evolution from the agenda, I selfishly declare that in my opinion there is no need for the existence of God (or any other higher power) in order to explain the development of life. Are you relaxed from *Kal? Here I am not Doss who is looking for a hidden agenda to attack evolution under the guise of reformism. The example of evolution is science which gives a good explanation for existing phenomena but is very limited in its ability to predict (see the reference to Price's passenger in the next comment). The reason that evolution is so limited is not because the science is less "scientific" than others but because (as you mentioned in another context) the complexity of the system and the fact that there are random elements (the Homo erectus probably would not have become extinct if there had not been a volcanic eruption 85,000 years ago, the jaguar Probably would never have developed with a number of tigers would have decided to migrate beyond the Bering Straits, etc.).
     These problems also exist in the social sciences. There are areas in which the social sciences will give you an almost perfect forecast (for example, if you invest 100 NIS in a large bank at 10% interest for two years, you will have 121 NIS at the end of the two years) there are areas where there is a good probabilistic forecast (for example the inflation forecast for next year) and there are areas in which the social sciences will not be able to give a forecast at all (for example who will win the elections in the United States in 10 years).

     Let me ask you another question, let's say there are two sciences:
     The science of "music" in its framework found that every composer maintains repeating patterns in his works. For every composer who has existed until today, there is a certain pattern in the music he created (that is, the composer "Mozart" has a "Mozart" pattern, the composer "Beethoven" has a "Beethoven" pattern, etc.). Moreover, recently 10 new works by the composer "Mozart" and 15 new works by the composer "Beethoven" were discovered, all of which have the patterns previously identified in "Mozart" and "Beethoven". At the same time, there is no possibility for the science of "music" to predict the patterns of the next composer because the number of possible patterns is very large (there is no end to any practical need).
     The second science is the science of "public opinion polls". This science samples the population and for the purpose of discussion it is able to give a perfect forecast about how the population will vote in a week.
     Which of these two sciences is science in your opinion?

224. Machel,
     You start science late. I don't know when your definition of science begins to catch on.
     The knowledge and experience and tools used by science from the moment you define the beginning of science were built on learning processes that began much earlier for the aforementioned Greeks, and would have been impossible without the Greek layer - these people were scientists. - and they are remembered today thanks to their originality and excellence - in their time.
     Science is an endless learning process - not only in its continuation, but also in its beginning.

225. Year:
     According to our current definition of science, Hippocrates, Aristotle and Euclid were not scientists at all.
     Certainly not excellent scientists

226. Ehud, (81),
     Your question is simplistic, and can be answered clearly: surely my life and my life are governed by the same laws, and I am guessing that it is even possible to write mathematical sentences for these laws. We are all made up not only of atoms but also of biological materials, and of the same organs... and even meet on this site... So the remaining debate is about the most trivial cases of our lives, quite similar to the gas phenomenon, where the "debate" is where each molecule is located - as far as I know science describes The phenomena of the gas as a whole are noted, but he cannot say anything about the position and the trivial movement of each molecule.
     Machel
     When Hippocrates and Aristotle and Euclid wrote their errors and laid the foundations of the sciences they were excellent scientists. The resolution of their work did not exceed the resolution of the humanities and social sciences today.
     Science is a learning process, not a final state for the world.

227. Regarding the first claim - it is too inclusive in my opinion.
     As in physics there are subdivisions - there are theories that describe subatomic particles, there is astrophysics, there is molecular physics, optics, geophysics - each field investigates a different aspect of the world of phenomena and each field of its theories. The naive view that physics operates according to only 4 laws (not to mention a single law or principle) is perhaps the ambition of physicists but is far from reality.
     In the same way, different aspects of the human world can be explored. When studying the dynamics of traffic jams on the road - this is also a phenomenon that can be described mathematically, it is very useful, it can be tested experimentally and even if it turns out to be a completely chaotic phenomenon - this will be a very surprising and non-trivial result that is based on the uncertainty principle.
     There are disciplines that examine other aspects of human behavior - for example, how a person reacts when electrodes are inserted into different areas of the brain (or how a person's brain activity looks in different situations) - here, too, it is possible to discover laws of nature related to the way the human brain affects behavior.

     Regarding the second point - here, too, some kind of idyllic image of physics is expressed in which the world can be described almost deterministically by the laws of physics, but in fact, the more physicists research, the farther away from this world image - see, for example, the studies of Ilya Prigogin:
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Prigogine

228. ravine,

     I will try to explain myself better.
     Depending on the type of system we are looking at and our desire to describe it, what the comparison of options are is determined. In the context of human society, we are not interested in questions and answers in the style of women's newspapers (readers will forgive me) for example statistics showing that bald people prefer blondes Our ambition in any research (not necessarily scientific) is to say something valid and relevant. When you base on differences between people and ignore culture, you may be able to get a scientific theory (perhaps even in formulas) about the average person, but that theory will not be of much interest to me nor to you. In the theory of human society we would also like to learn something about ourselves. The average abstraction are all methods of the exact sciences that work well for a certain type of questions and a certain type of systems. There is no reason for the scientific method of the natural sciences to grasp the set of phenomena we want to describe.

     As an example, we will take the attempt of physicists to describe biological systems, which in my opinion is not always successful. The physical method talks about a spherical horse, it strips away all the details that make a horse a horse and talks about idealization. The systems that physics deals with are usually in equilibrium or it can be assumed that they are optimal. Biological systems are far from optimal because they were created by countless "mistakes" and random changes that led to a good but not the best solution. In biological systems there is usually no separation of spatial and temporal scales, the phenomena do not have a single cause but several factors and therefore biology is more descriptive in nature than chemistry and much more descriptive than physics. Is it possible to build physics-based biology? I don't think so, and even if it were possible, it wouldn't be a relevant description for the biological questions.

229. Trying to predict the future:
     In the future, news will be published on this website fully describing the experiment with the proteins.
     I base the prophecy on the fact that I asked my father Blizovsky to "import" this article from the last issue of Odyssey and on the fact that my father promised me that he would try.

230. Yair:
     My reservations about the humanities are from what is in them today and not from what will be in them in the future.
     Their "defined resolution" at the current stage simply does not create any distinction between situations or results and therefore I do not think it is appropriate to describe them as science in their current state.

     A reformist dos:
     It seems to me that this time you did not give the reformers in you an opening here.
     I was not confused about the essence of the discussion and all the experiments I described concern the future.
     They did experiments that deliberately created new species of animals and plants - species that did not exist at all before.
     The cultivation of animals and plants is intentional.
     The programs that implement evolutionary programming do so deliberately while striving to reach certain results.
     This is a particularly interesting thing because the evolutionary programming method is used when no algorithmic solution to the problem is known and therefore we certainly do not know what algorithm will be developed. All that is done in this case is to place the quality criterion of the solution as a dictator of the success of the selection.
     In fact, it is based here on the fact that most of the theory of evolution is nothing more than a proven mathematical theorem (really proven!) and I will come back to this point, but I will do so at the end because my words in the previous response and in the first part of the current one are intended to show you not only that evolution is a process that must exist for mathematical reasons, but that it gives predictions Test sons.

     It turns out you don't understand what science is.
     Science is not necessarily designed to provide predictions for the future and it is certainly possible to be satisfied with a convincing explanation of the past.
     By the way - cosmology also deals with the past and in fact every experiment you do in physics is already past as soon as you become aware of its results.

     The experimental test does not talk about the real future but about your ability to predict according to the theory results that are currently unknown to you and to verify these results by confronting reality.
     Otherwise, even deciphering the structure of the atom is not science in your eyes - after all, the atom was already there before and we verify its assumed structure by the results of experiments.

     Your reservations about the examples I gave are meaningless to me.
     1. There is a huge difference between "yes they will develop resistance to antibiotics" and "they will not develop resistance to antibiotics" and this difference is sometimes the difference between life and death so you rule it out just because you don't know how to predict exactly which mutation will occur and when it will occur? There is no similarity here to what is happening in the country because the fact that the government will be replaced does not say anything about the qualities of the government that will replace it, while regarding the bacteria we are predicting exactly the quality that will characterize the upgraded strain. Your example is more similar to the claim that a biologist who knows nothing about evolution could make by saying "if there are mutations then the animals in the future will not be exact copies of the animals in the present".
     2. Your reservation This section is similar to what I said about the structure of the atom. She just lacks any logic. I repeat - the ability to confirm claims by testing things we did not know before is the scientific test and that is exactly what is happening here. The parable of the empires you gave is completely unrelated to the matter and suffers from the same logical fallacy as the previous example you gave.
     3. It was convenient for you to ignore other examples I gave, especially the protein example.
     I say again: the experiments done here are simply conclusive proof that all life developed through evolution. Calculate the evolutionary tree of several species of animals and plants according to the differences in the occurrences of protein A between them. Then they did it using protein B. The chance that the two proteins will give the same evolutionary tree by chance is slim - but that's what happened. Do this with protein C and see it's a miracle - the phenomenon repeated itself both with it and with proteins D and E. The chance that this result will be obtained by chance is precisely calculated and found to be less than ten to the power of minus 12.
     You are welcome to repeat the experiment with additional proteins and continue to improve the result.
     Again: this is an experiment whose results were not known in advance and was used to confirm or refute the claim that the animals developed through evolution.
     There is no pretense here to describe the future and in fact it is clearly not an accurate description of the future because today we are developing animals through genetic engineering and in the distant future we may already create life out of nothing and it certainly cannot be claimed that they developed through evolution.

     And now for the math of the whole thing:
     The theory of evolution is actually a collection of proven mathematical claims (which even give numerical predictions but not the kind you were looking for). See, for example, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_equation

     In fact, all that is needed to prove that evolution takes place is to show that the conditions set by mathematics for its existence are indeed met, and these conditions are really simple to test (the existence of creatures that reproduce with the probability of small changes that affect their degree of success in the fight for resources and in bringing more offspring)

     That's why there is absolutely no point in the question of whether there is evolution because it is simply obvious that there is.
     The only question that interests scientists is not whether there is evolution but whether it explains all biological diversity without any intervention. This is a point that the opponents of evolution do not understand and scientists generally do not understand that this is what the opponents of evolution do not understand (they find it difficult to compare such stupid people before their eyes).

231. sympathetic:

     I gave several examples that do not match your claim.
     Another question, at what point in the hierarchy of complication does nature become too complicated to be a worthy candidate for a scientific theory? At the molecular level? At the cellular level? At the insect level?
     Are living creatures no but inanimate objects yes?
     Is the weather a phenomenon for which a scientific theory cannot be formulated or has one not yet been found?
     If not, then why?
     If it is possible and one such has not been found - why is human behavior not worthy of the same hope.

232. A reformist dos
     I think you do not understand what is being explained to you.
     In my opinion at least, if there is anyone on this site who responds to the matter and tells the truth, it is Michael Rothschild (I say this even if I disagree with him on some things), and I suggest you at least try to understand what he is telling you.
     Another thing, you wrote:

     A parallel "prediction" of political science is that when one empire falls another will rise in its place. Again both predictions deal with explaining the past and have (almost) nothing to do with predictions for the future.

     Try to understand where your mistake is.
     Hint: the sentence 'Both predictions deal with explaining the past and have (almost) nothing to do with predictions for the future.'
     Inaccurate, if not wrong. Why? Read the sentence you wrote before this sentence:
     '...that when one branch falls another will rise in its place.'
     In this sentence you rely on the past tense to make a claim in the future tense.
     Explanation: When the empire falls, another will rise in its place - this is a sentence that can be attributed to the future tense and formulate a theory - that when an empire falls, another will rise in its place - and this can be tested scientifically, which means that the study of the future (such as whether this or that will happen - will an empire fall and another take her place) legitimate also in the scientific way.

233. Yair,
     If you think that everything is "nature" and there are basic laws that describe everything, do you think that there are laws according to which your life is conducted? Are these the same laws as those that determine my life? The fact that we are all composed of atoms still does not dictate that we behave in the same way. The description of complex systems is complex and it cannot simply be claimed that it is dictated by its components. See how many types of living cells there are when they all have the same composition.

234. A reformist dos
     My argument is not only against the resolution of predicting the future but against the way in which it is carried out an attempt to build a simple model described in equations as in the natural sciences is banal and uninteresting and will only take hold for a short time.
     In a certain sense it also relates to the resolution. In my opinion, the social sciences should be more descriptive to talk about trends and not be formulated in equations like in the natural sciences. It follows that the resolution determines the nature of science and the tools it uses to describe the world.

235. ravine,

     My argument was not that it is not possible to obtain correlations regarding human behaviors but that those obtained would be trivial and any person could infer them without the need for a model.

     I will explain my words with an example, which can be applied to landslides in the stock market.
     If we look at all the people on the street, it will be difficult to identify a trend of who is going where, but if someone takes out a gun and shoots in the air, it is quite clear that everyone will run away from the incident. How is it possible for everyone to have their own will and their own plans? As I said, predictions can be made about anodic behavior at the trivial level. The natural sciences are built on abstraction
     It is none of our business what the falling apple tastes like, its color and shape to determine how fast it will fall to the floor. In trying to predict human behaviors, all these details are of interest to us, and another attempt to make an abstraction and examine a single parameter will give a result that is either experimental or uninteresting.

236. From * Al
     It's not only that you failed, but you are not even close to separating political science from evolution in terms of their being "worthy" to be called science.
     First I'm afraid you're confused about the nature of the discussion. Our discussion is not whether evolution knows how to explain the past (I have already agreed that in this field evolution surpasses political science), or the endless discussion about the confirmation of evolution, but whether with the help of this knowledge I can improve the predictions for the future "to a definite resolution". Therefore, the argument about the chromosomes of a chimpanzee and a person is not relevant to our discussion as well as the discussion about the existence of new species found (or not). The other examples you gave are so inclusive that political science (not to mention economics) has no problem dealing with them.

     We will now move on to the examples you gave:
     1. Bacteria will develop resistance to antibiotics - as I mentioned in the previous response, I accept that the ability to predict among bacteria is slightly better. But this particular forecast is extremely inclusive. When the bacteria will develop resistance, whether in 10,000 or 100,000 generations is something that evolution (as far as I know) cannot answer. Beyond that, what type of bacteria will be the ones that develop resistance to antibiotics and which bacteria will not? The equivalent of political science is to claim that in a country where democratic elections are held (not Egyptian style) the ruling party will be replaced. In political science (as opposed to evolution) there are additional indices that help to calculate the chance in a given electoral system, although the accuracy percentages (as we all know) are quite low in the range of more than a year from the electoral system.
     2. Evolution predicted the existence of intermediate species that were found - this is about explaining the past when the present is known and not about predicting the future. It's one thing to predict a creature like Homo erectus when you know about apes and modern man and another to predict what the next cat species to evolve will be. A parallel "prediction" of political science is that when one empire falls another will rise in its place. Again both predictions deal with explaining the past and have (almost) nothing to do with predictions for the future.

     Political science and evolution have a common problem, both trying to describe incredibly complex systems for which the prospect of predicting the future with high resolution seems impossible at this point. The examples you gave only illustrate how far evolution is from reasonable predictions.

     And finally, in order to avoid a circular discussion, I suggest that at this stage you try to define what is that 'defined resolution' under which evolution will be defined as science and political science not.

237. sympathetic
     The social sciences will never pretend to predict phenomena with precision. What the social sciences claim to predict (with varying degrees of success) is the probability that a certain event will occur. Since recently we are learning that parts of physics are also predictive in probability (although of course much more accurate with much more repetitions of the experiment) I have a hard time finding the distinction between the two

238. sympathetic,
     Assuming that all the participants here believe that everything in the world is "nature", including human thought and its results - i.e. writing and buildings and machines and everything that comes to mind - what principled reason do you have for your hypothesis that there cannot be basic laws, not for the phenomena that are studied by the natural sciences and the humanities?
     Michael, a scientific theory regarding the humanities is too general a statement. Regarding the natural sciences there are many theories.
     If we take for example one thing, the metaphor, there is a comprehensive investigation of this subject and there are theories.
     your statement
     "up to a defined resolution"
     It is the key to both your objection to the scientific claim of the humanities and social sciences, and also to Ehud's claims. But biology and other natural sciences are also limited in the resolutions they achieve.
     I completely accept your opinion that when the humanities are combined with biology, there will be significant progress, as happened in psychology, which used to be part of the humanities.

239. Guy and Ehud:
     Personally, I prefer not to predict and since I have no possibility of proving that it is not possible to develop a scientific theory regarding the humanities I do not declare that it is impossible.
     On the other hand - since no one has ever succeeded in doing this and I do not know how to prove theoretically that such a theory can exist - I do not make a judgment in the opposite direction either.
     Of all the things I do know about it, it seems to me that the fact that even though such a theory has not yet been found, people are still being charged tuition to "teach" them the subject is the most significant.
     As we have already seen - the collection of "tuition" is not only monetary and is not carried out exclusively by the universities. We have already come across cases where the "tuition fee" which is actually the "grade fee" was a sexual bribe to the lecturer. In real science, a lecturer's chances of being able to collect such a salary are extremely low.

240. Regarding the black swan analogy, I haven't read the book in question either, but if I'm not mistaken this analogy has long been used by philosophers of science in discussing the problem of induction. That is: does the fact that so far I have only seen white swans allow me to conclude that all swans are white. This problem exists in all sciences, even the exact ones

241. In order not to get caught up in a debate about terms, I will try to avoid using the terms "humanities" or "social sciences" because, as I said, I do not know in depth how they are conducted.
     My argument is that it is possible to develop (if this has not already happened) and establish scientific research and theories for everything that describes and models human and social behavior (and if I had to think of a name for these sciences it would be "social sciences").

     "The social sciences and the humanities cannot have basic laws, i.e. laws of nature, because of the multitude of variables and their interdependence. In order to lay down basic laws, many implicit assumptions must be made."
     – The argument of the multiplicity of variables can be equally valid for biological systems. In fact it can also be valid for chemistry and astrophysics. Isn't only particle physics multivariable?
     When will you say there are too many variables and when are there enough?
     - With the claim of the many assumptions I can perhaps agree, but first every scientific theory assumes assumptions. Secondly, the important thing in a scientific theory is the ability to test the theory or model in an experiment and this can be done. A scientific theory tries to make as few assumptions as possible in order to explain as much as possible of the existing experimental knowledge, when does the number of assumptions become too large? Can you count the number of assumptions needed to build a model for cell activity in our body? (I assume that biology is considered a natural science in your eyes...)

     Sticking to the Google search graph example, trivial/surprising or not, I purposely took a simple example because it makes the point well.
     First, according to your claim, it is not possible to develop a model that will predict the amount of searches for words on Google. why?
     If I try to describe your train of thought - searching for words is a human activity. People are complex creatures, it is impossible to predict what someone unknown will search for and when because it depends on many variables (the person's mood, what happened to him that day on the way to work, where he works, when he works, with whom he works, how old he is, Is he married, does he have children, how much money does he have, was he insulted, is he sick, etc., etc., this list can be extended as much as we want). Is this a reliable description of your position?

     As we have seen sometimes things are not so complex (for example Hanukkah). Now I will ask - are all the variables we described relevant to predicting the amount of searches for the word "Hanukkah"? I can think of a fairly limited number of variables that would give a pretty good prediction:
     If I know about each person who performs a search the following data:
     - Geographical location
     – Age
     – faith/religion
     I can probably predict with a fairly high probability when he will search for the word Hanukkah.

     If you notice even in this trivial example there is much more than the mere correlation of the specific graph - there is a causal model here, that is, you claim that the reason for the search is a holiday. This model allows predicting additional results.

     Searching for words like "Hanukkah" is indeed a relatively simple task to predict, but Google has the best scientists in order to build models to predict the search frequency of many, many other words.
     In fact, Google uses these models to "sell" the search terms. The advertisement messages seen by those who search on Google are the product of a system in which it is possible to "buy" a search word and display an advertisement for searches for this word. When Google anticipates a large amount of searches, the word familiar increases accordingly.

     Regarding the use of the Boze Einstein analogy, could you explain to me how it was used in the work in question?

242. ravine,

     My argument is stronger than Michael's. I claim that the humanities and social sciences cannot be based on the same basis as the natural sciences.

     The partial success in weather forecasting originates from the fact that the weather laws are based on known physical laws described by the Navier-Stokes equations. The problem is in solving the equation due to its high sensitivity to initial conditions.
     The social sciences and the humanities cannot have basic laws, i.e. laws of nature, because of the multitude of variables and their interdependence.
     To lay down basic laws, many implicit assumptions must be made.

     Let's take for example the correlation that Google found in a search for the word Hanukkah on the Internet. This example explains my claims. First of all, the correlation is trivial, it is not surprising that a search for the name of a holiday will increase especially around the date of that holiday. I am willing to bet that this happens for other holidays as well. So the correlation found is first trivial. Second, if a world war breaks out next year, I assume that the number of times people will search for the word Hanukkah on the Internet will decrease and then suddenly the correlation will break. You will probably argue that I meant that the correlation is valid in all normal cases, but this is where Taleb's black swan analogy comes in (I heard the analogy, not read the book). The laws of nature have no cases in which they do not work.

     A note on the banality of correlations: when you take a multivariable system and throw it in one direction, you test a single variable, you will be able to discover correlations, but these will often be extremely trivial.

     Regarding the use of Bose-Einstein condensation-like physical models for human systems, this is nonsense. In most cases, they search under the flashlight, which means that there are the physical laws and they are looking for systems that can be adapted to them. The logic should have been that researchers of a social phenomenon formulate laws for it and then suddenly discover that it corresponds to a physical system and this is not the case in my opinion.

243. Reform Dos:
     Not really true.
     First of all - I did not condition scientism on the ability to predict, but even if I did it would negate the scientism of evolution.
     Note the fact that I used the phrase "up to a specified resolution"
     This is necessary - and not only for evolution because it is not always possible to predict things exactly, but that does not mean that there is no reliable prediction.
     There are many examples of this (quantum mechanics only predicts distributions of results and not the result of a single measurement, the theory of gases links pressures, temperatures and volumes without saying anything about the position of the molecules that make up the gas. The theory of evolution can also predict compatibility but cannot predict exactly the changes that will lead to her).

     Evolution predicts that bacteria will develop resistance to antibiotics and they do.
     Evolution predicts that insects will develop resistance to pesticides and they do.
     Evolution predicts that evolutionary algorithms on a computer will work and they do.
     https://www.hayadan.org.il/evolution-of-an-efficient-search-algorithm-bgu-2907079
     http://myxo.css.msu.edu/papers/nature2003/Nature03_Complex.pdf
     http://avida.devsoft.org/
     http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000292
     http://ccsl.mae.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/Science09_Schmidt.pdf

     Explicit experiments were also made with plants and animals and evolution was explicitly demonstrated in them.
     http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
     https://www.hayadan.org.il/lizard-fast-evolution-230408/

     Evolution predicts that you will find intermediate forms between the fossils and such forms are indeed found.
     Evolution predicts that cultivating new varieties of animals and plants will work and it does.
     Evolution predicts that if man evolved from a common ancestor he and the chimpanzee and man has only 23 pairs of chromosomes while the chimpanzee has 24, man will have a chromosome that is a chain of two chromosomes of the chimpanzee and this is indeed the case:
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMj_45epINM&feature=player_embedded

     Evolution predicts that if we try to build the evolutionary tree of animals based on mutations in protein A and then try to build the tree based on mutations in protein B - the resulting trees will be very similar and this indeed happens (and this has been tried with many proteins).

     There are many, many more confirmations for evolution and I just took the opportunity to list some of them.
     But as mentioned, I did not define the experiment as the only test of scientificity, and the ability to explain what happened in the past can also be sufficient.

     So here it is:
     What you said is impossible is simply a fact

244. Zarathustra,
     In my opinion, Taleb is indeed very right in his arguments, but he is not talking about the success of trends but about betting on them...
     If I prepare for a danger such as the reduction of the number of producers in the US (or most of the world) or ignore it, it is not to bet on a stock/currency that will rise or fall to a certain rate tomorrow..
     In my opinion, Pasig from Paris is slowing down in his ability to predict things with such high confidence, what is important is the general picture seen from the predictions.

245. 68 Response to *Machal

246. I think your definition of science is very problematic. Your definition dismisses very respectable sciences that I assume we both agree are science. For example, the science of evolution concentrates almost entirely on the understanding of historical processes. The science of evolution has almost no ability to predict future processes. In the field of predictability, political science (not to mention economics) is better able to predict the future than evolution. The main prediction of evolution (perhaps with the exception of bacteria) is that the fittest will survive, this statement is equivalent to the statement that the one who is chosen by more people will win the election. However, political science is able to predict much more accurately who has the best chances of winning the election than evolution has a chance to predict which of the animals will survive (what mathematical model would assume that Homo erectus will become extinct and the chimpanzee will survive?) The advantage of evolution over political science is that we have a comprehensive explanation about The reasons that lead to changes while in the state the knowledge is much more limited.

     Ehud noted the fact that the details have an effect on the macro processes. This comment is also true of evolution. The development of a single mutation can change the fate of many animal species. Therefore, once again, the social sciences cannot be dismissed.

     In general, in my opinion, there is no reasonable definition of science under which evolution would be defined as science and political science would not. Similarly, I do not see a definition under which physics would be defined as a science and economics not.
     The only claim that would disqualify the social sciences is if we assumed that the processes are completely literal. I think there are very few people who think political science is completely literal. For example, it is not recommended to run a right-wing Republican candidate in an area with a black majority.

247. Yair and Guy:
     I think there is a misunderstanding here.
     I am not claiming that the issues discussed in the humanities are not worthy of a real scientific discussion or that there is no possibility in principle to develop scientific theories around them.
     All I'm claiming is that it hasn't happened yet.
     This is not due to the fact that the issues are too simple, but on the contrary - they are so complex that no one has yet been able to "crack" anything in them.
     I do claim that since the subject has not yet "exploded" - the pretense of "teaching" someone these subjects is charlatan.
     This is the basis for my claim that the path to "producing" writers does not necessarily go through the university - unlike the path to "producing" engineers.
     I was deliberately talking about engineers and writers and not about scientific researchers and researchers in the field of literature. There is room for research that may eventually produce knowledge that can be imparted to others.
     Scientific research usually goes through two stages.
     In the first stage, he collects data and tries to find initial connections between them - this is called the mapping stage.
     In the second stage, he also formulates theories that explain and enable prediction.

     As far as I understand, the humanities falter somewhere in the first stage.

     If I ask for a bit of futurism (and this is the topic of the article) I estimate that the humanities will become a real science as a result of brain research much more than as a result of the mappings being carried out today.
     Some of the articles I personally wrote on the site are aimed at this goal.

248. Social sciences and humanities are sciences just like physics and biology.
     Science, any science, collects data on anything and tries to find out as much as possible the nature of the thing.
     The fact that it is difficult to formulate valid rules and laws regarding the writing of literature or the behavior of individual people and groups stems not from the lack of science but from the nature of the data. Quite similar to weather. Just as it is possible to ascertain climatic processes only to a limited extent, the same applies to historical processes.

249. Here is a link to the research page of Prof. Albert Barbashi who was involved in revealing the model in question in the context of human behavior:
     http://www.nd.edu/~networks/HumanDynamics_20Oct05/human_dynamics_.htm

250. Full Disclosure:
     I do not claim to be an expert on the Bose Einstein model. My claim is a general claim.
     There are human behaviors like the ones I mentioned and many, many other human phenomena such as the dynamics in which social networks are created, the distribution of resources in society, the creation of traffic jams, the movement of people on the street, trends in buying products, etc., etc. different from any physical law.

251. sympathetic:

     I have nothing but to disagree with you. I will try to explain why the list you mentioned does not rule out the use of models to describe human behavior.

     1. There are indeed aspects of human behavior that are difficult to model and predict. This example you gave is such an example.
     But equally there are aspects in the world of physical phenomena that are equally difficult to model and predict (the example of the weather is like that). In addition, if I try to predict the position of a single gas molecule located in the room I am in in a minute, I do not know of a computer capable of performing the necessary calculations for this.
     2. There is no need to assume the independence between economy, culture and science. I don't know of any model that tries to introduce "economy" for example as a variable, not least a variable independent of the variable that is "culture". When examining specific phenomena, choose the factors related to that phenomenon.
     For example, when you model the number of daily searches in the Google search engine for the word "Hanukkah" - what are the relevant variables? It was possible to think that each and every person should be included in the calculation, their personal history, age, origin, mood that day, location, etc., etc. Do you think it is necessary to include all these variables in the model that predicts the amount of searches?
     3. True, in many ways the system can be sensitive to minor changes.
     This claim is true for certain phenomena in human society and is equally true for certain physical systems
     4. I absolutely agree. The laws of nature are model dependent and reality dependent.
     Here, too, this claim is true for physical systems as well as for social systems

     The reasons why using the Bose-Einstein model for modeling human behaviors is not far-fetched at all can be found somewhere in the list I wrote above

252. ravine,

     Indeed, the level of abstraction is the basis for the success of the natural sciences. For example, the ability in physics to describe macroscopic phenomena does not depend on the existence of atoms and characters.
     The reasons that, in my opinion, the methods that work well in the natural sciences will not work in principle in the social sciences and the humanities, for which different (more narrative) models must be built are the following:

     1. It is not possible to separate rocks. For example, the character of the individual, a certain leader, can influence the course of history. The micro affects the macro.
     2. Parameters cannot be isolated. It cannot be assumed that the economy, culture, science are independent variables. Their development is interdependent and they are not always identifiable and separable.
     3. In many ways the system can be sensitive to slight changes and chaotic. There are also periods in which it is apparently possible to predict the future for a longer term, but which are rare.
     4. The "laws of nature" will necessarily be model-dependent and reality-dependent. When the environment changes, different laws of nature will be needed - back to Taleb's books (probably).
     Therefore, from a principle not practical point of view, in my opinion it is not possible to put the humanities and social sciences on the same basis as the natural sciences.

     Regarding the Bose-Einstein condensation analogy, this is complete nonsense. The comparison was made because under Bose-Einstein condensation the particles lose their particle "character" and the system can be well described using a total wave function. The reasons why using such a model to describe human behaviors is fundamentally unfounded can be found in the list I wrote above.

253. Sorry, correction of the last paragraph, Tsal says: 'That the subject in it is different from the things he talks about and different from the things you explain to him.'

254. sympathetic
     What Zaratostra does is try to push the concept of 'faith' into the discussion.
     So it's great that you understand him, I would suggest that you continue to explain to him via email and not on this page that the topic is different from the things he talks about and different from the things you explain to him.

255. sympathetic:

     I don't have enough background in the humanities or social sciences so I can't have an opinion about the way they are conducted.
     However, I do believe that the scientific method can be used in these disciplines as well.
     I believe that it is possible to discover natural laws related to the conduct of people in different situations and to predict people's behavior.
     The key is the ability to look at phenomena at the right level of abstraction.
     This does not mean that with the help of these laws I can predict the behavior of a specific person in 20 years or in two days.
     As you also mentioned the weather is difficult for us to predict although I appreciate that you also believe that the laws of physics dictate the weather.

     The laws of biology are also dictated by the laws of physics, but biological phenomena are often not described at the physical level. This is because it is possible to look at phenomena in the world of biology at an appropriate level of abstraction that eliminates and simplifies the need to go down to the levels below.
     In my understanding, certain aspects of human behavior can also be looked at at a level of abstraction that eliminates the need to look at a lower level and allows fairly accurate predictions.
     In fact, the most surprising thing is that there are physical phenomena at the subatomic level, which behave according to the same laws as human systems such as the Internet or telephone networks.
     See for example Bose-Einstein condensation:
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose-Einstein_condensation:_a_network_theory_approach

     That is, there is a mathematical model that allows predictions for both physical and social phenomena

256. Reform Dos:
     Science is a systematic way of investigating the world that yields laws that make it possible to understand its behavior in the past and predict - up to a defined resolution - its behavior in the future - reliably.

     The social sciences do not meet this criterion and the fact is that the good writers do not actually come from within the walls of the academy.

     It is possible that theories that meet this criterion are beginning to take shape in economics. I don't follow the subject because it doesn't interest me very much (and I apologize to Zaratostra for not worshiping his god).

     Zaratostra:
     The meaning of the sentence you quoted is completely different and therefore your last response is nothing more than another lie.

     Rah is right in his claim that science has no purpose, if only because science is not a living being and has no desires.
     Science is a method for investigating the world - a method designed to allow us to reach correct conclusions about the laws by which it operates.
     There is a difference between science and scientists - and like all human beings - scientists too can act from different motives, but these motives do not belong to science.
     Maybe you call all the motives of the people by the name "economy" although it is difficult for me to see the economic motive of a suicide bomber, but the way you call things has long ceased to interest me.

     I never claimed that I didn't need faith and I don't know where you got this nonsense from.
     The point is that my collection of beliefs is limited to what all humans (even you) believe in and nothing more.
     I believe in the correctness of the laws of logic (which are eternal and have no expiration date), I believe that nature is governed by laws that do not change from place to place or from time to time (and that they exist even if I don't know them), I believe that the input that my senses bring to my mind is related to reality. that's it.
     Everyone believes in all these things, only that all kinds of other people add all kinds of other delusional beliefs to them and ignore the contradictions that arise between their different beliefs.

     I don't know what you mean when you say that the proofs are short-term when I repeat and say (and I really say and really repeat - that is - I myself and not your scarecrow) that there are no proofs in science.

257. R.H. ghosts

     I understand what he wants and it is appropriate for you to speak in a less firm tone... and I am not sure that you are the right person to determine what everyone understands. In addition, I think that you are adopting a style that is not yours.

258. Zarathustra

     I'm not R.H
     R.H. is a different person. (And I guess he also understands more than you)
     In short, no one understands what you want. Maybe ask one short question, so we can understand what you want?

259. ravine

     My claim is that the humanities and also part of the social sciences cannot be based on the same rules as those of the hard sciences (physics, chemistry and biology). The aspiration to use the same rules is essentially unfounded.

     In the humanities and social sciences it is not possible to find natural laws and the system also depends on too many parameters. That is why in sciences like history it is possible to study the past but not to predict the future using models. The way to investigate these systems (humanities) is through a story.

     I'll give you an example, let's say you want to plan your life for another 20 years from today. Will you use scientific tools? Choose the city with the lowest air pollution and the lowest crime rate from statistics. Read studies in the newspaper about the type of relationship that lasts a long time and according to which you will choose a partner, look at which professions are prestigious and that way you will choose a profession for you. I guess not. Statistics about human behaviors that reveal correlations eg: blondes like red cars more are either stupid or meaningless.

     A good book written by a writer based on his personal experience can teach us more about life than a thousand statistical studies. We plan our lives many times in an emotional way that is difficult to impossible to put into a model and also the environmental conditions change very quickly. For example, a good job today is not clear that it will be attractive in another 20 years (a very short time even in human terms).

260. Machel
     The meaning of the sentence has not changed, so I shortened it.
     There is one of your followers here, R.H. expressed more or less similarly
     Full quote from R.H.-
     "Science itself has no goal. There are goals that are achieved through the scientific method, but science itself does not have a direct goal."
     You have nothing to show off with the bagel of punctuality over your head.
     You just aren't willing to admit that you need faith to establish many things.
     The proofs are short term beyond which there is a sea of ​​uncertainty that requires faith to cross it. So don't tell me you're scientific and everything is proven and scientific truth.
     At least that's what you get from reading your words.

261. Message 51 is mine

262. I definitely agree with sux rpurnh. (My theory says that this is actually a reformist dos)

     That is, it is possible to develop a real scientific theory whose inference methods and manner of development are not at all different from a physical theory.
     The question of whether the social sciences are currently conducted according to the rigorous rules of physicists is a separate question. I believe that they should conduct themselves this way whether this is the case or not.
     There is another big question related to all sciences and especially to those whose role is to outline policy and influence.
     How do we distinguish between correlation and actual causation?

263. Correlation is an important thing, but more important is the explanation for the correlation you found.

     In your Hanukkah example, you can test my hypothesis by checking the number of searches for "Pesach" or "Shavuot" or more generally you can also search for Christian and Muslim holidays. A positive answer will provide confirmation for the theory that before holidays there is an increase in the number of events. A negative answer will oblige us to examine alternative theories or the finding is coincidental.

     Let's say a researcher wants to investigate what affects elementary school students' scores on a calculus exam. As part of the research, he collects various data on the students and then examines them all (that is, students of grades XNUMX-XNUMX) in the same exam.

     After extensive research, he comes out with the claim that there is a high correlation between the size of the shoes and the bio grade in the exam. Should we start nurturing children with big shoes?

264. Michael
     Please define a science so that I understand how economics is not a science

265. Ehud and Dos Reformi:

     Correlations are an important matter. Measuring sizes and discovering relationships (correlations) between them are an important part of any scientific activity.
     Newton's laws are a product of observations, measurements and drawing conclusions from them.
     When Newton threw an apple he measured its position as a function of time.
     Then he threw a stone, then a dumbbell, then he observed celestial bodies and measured their movement and decided that this movement of bodies is driven by common laws.
     As Ehud pointed out, Newton hypothesized that the important factor is not the color of the apple, its smell, its shape, etc. and this hypothesis was confirmed by the movement of other bodies whose common factor was the concept of mass

     "The example you gave is not surprising and it can certainly be expected that it will continue in the coming years. Near the end of the year, meaning the Hanukkah holiday, there was an increase in searches for this word on the Internet"
     An interesting theory emerges here. Close to the Hanukkah holiday there was an increase in the search. What are the relevant factors here?
     Is it Hanukkah? Is it the google search engine? Is it possible to formulate a more general law?
     For example, in the vicinity of a Jewish holiday there is an increase in searches
     Or maybe it's enough - close to the holiday there is an increase in searches
     Or maybe even - in the vicinity of an important event there is an increase in the search

     How can these laws be confirmed?

266. Ehud and Dos Reformi

     I think we all agree.
     It also seems to me that no one thinks that this is real science, that is - it is science, just like the "humanities" are science.
     Since the name of science was already desecrated when the phrase "humanities" was accepted, I don't think it is justified to start a fight specifically against a law that doesn't even say that futurism is science, but simply claims that futurism has been given "scientific legitimacy"

267. Zaratostra:
     Audio.
     As soon as you start lying, I no longer find any point in discussing with the liar.
     I wrote: "A huge part of scientific research is carried out in an environment that is not at all interested in applications - certainly not in the near term"
     You "quoted: "Scientific research is carried out in an environment that is not at all interested in applications"

     You were even aware of the lie and therefore added "or similar" as if you had no possibility to quote what I really said.

     So not only do I not repeat this mantra over and over, but it is a mantra that has never crossed my keyboard.

     And then you go on and build on this lie "Zionist" missiles in which all you attack is the scarecrow you built yourself.

     I have a burn.

268. Regardless of the discussion going on here, one of the important contributions of the Commission for Future Generations in the Knesset is the promotion and approval of the law for the preservation of the coastal environment. The contribution of this law can already be seen in our generation. The news about the cancellation of this institution is disappointing and discouraging.

269. Dos Reformi, Guy and Michael

     For me, it is necessary to distinguish between predictions that must be carried out and that have important consequences for decision-making at all levels: personal, public, political, etc...

     The thing I stand against is the study of the future as a science. A person who studies in a certain field, for example demography (thanks
     Lados reformist on the example) can make demographic predictions. On the other hand, correlations can easily be found from different correlations, as Guy points out, in most cases they will not be surprising, but from correlations up to a scientific study in which we build
     A scientific model that can predict distance phenomena is tremendous. Michael, even making certain claims and testing them against events is not a proof of the model, it can only be a confirmation of it (of course there is no need to tell you this) and here is my main claim against the science of "exploring the future".

     Science or at least the natural sciences work in the following way: they observe nature and make correlations from those correlations they try to build natural laws. The laws of nature are such that anyone who repeats a certain experiment will get the same results (sometimes it is the same probability of getting a result for example in quantum theory). Repeatability is a confirmation of the laws of nature.

     Given human systems, I think that it is not possible to find basic laws of nature that will form the basis for models. The maximum claim can be that given such and such conditions a group of people will behave like this. But the conditions and parameters that influence people's behavior change frequently. That is, in many cases the system is very sensitive to the initial conditions. In such cases only a charlatan can claim that the starting conditions are known to him and therefore I see the study of the future as charlatanism.

     The predictions in each and every field can be left to the experts. For example, engineers or scientists will certainly be good
     In assessing developments in the field of science or technology, however, it will be difficult to say how these will affect the public.
     The examples are numerous: the discovery of the electron, IBM manager Thomas G. Watson's assessment that there would be a market for only 5 computers in the world (the correctness of this quote is unclear) and much more.

     That's why Michal I don't believe the numbers in percentages that future charlatans attribute to their predictions and my claim is that their predictions are no better than any professional in a certain field and sometimes it's a monkey. If one of them succeeds in predicting non-trivial things, my initial approach would be that it is eye contact in the same way that when I see a person making an elephant fly, I assume that it is a magician and not that the laws of gravitation are no longer valid.

270. "He will use his special ability (and not that he won't) in order to enrich himself, his family, his friends and the friends of his friends..."

271. It is important to separate different fields when talking about predicting the future.

     One of the common areas regarding predicting the future is trying to predict prices of various financial instruments and products. The lack of success of various "experts" is seen as evidence both against the science of economics and against the ability to predict the future. But this example is bad because the science of economics makes exactly the opposite argument. In other words, it is not possible that in a rational world it would be possible to predict the prices. I had a lecturer who once said at the time that if someone told him what the dollar/mark exchange rate would be in a month he would retire us all. The reason why prices cannot be predicted is precisely this. Hundreds and thousands of eyes follow the prices of financial products and assets. Therefore, the chance of someone consistently beating the market tends to zero. If such a person sleeps in the present, then unless he is a complete layman, he will use the special ability not to enrich himself, his family, his friends and the friends of his friends and will not publish his predictions. Therefore, the chance that you will see such a price forecast in the newspaper is similar to the chance that it will snow in Tel Aviv in the middle of August. For this reason the book that Zaratostra cites concentrates on examples from this field and Ehud's monkey will be just as successful as an investment fund manager.

     However, there are other areas where predicting the future is not close to impossible. For example, demographic changes can be predicted with much closer accuracy and carry with them fateful consequences regarding our future. For example, an essential economic question is the question of the labor market in companies that are getting older and older. Predicting the future in this case is essential because if we assume that what was is what will be we will find ourselves standing in front of elderly populations hungry for bread.

     The aging process is also important for the distribution of resources. The aging of the population also means that finding cures for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and the like has become a first-rate economic necessity. Many countries are beginning to understand this and are beginning to allocate resources to the study of these diseases. If you don't find a cure for dementia, countries will have to prepare to face the expected increase in the number of patients. Again pre-estimates can ease the suffering.

     Forecasting demographic processes is also important for making decisions in the political field. For example, an important question of the first level is the meaning of the decrease in fertility in the Muslim population in the world and its effect on religious extremism.

     And finally, Guy - I'm sorry, but the example you gave is not surprising and can certainly be expected to continue in the coming years. Near the end of the year, that is, the Hanukkah holiday, there was an increase in searches for this word on the Internet.

272. Machel
     On the contrary, but I tried to express myself gently. And in fact it is appropriate to speak frankly.
     Sentences such as the ones you wrote-
     "Scientific research is carried out in an environment that is not at all interested in applications"
     Or similar to what you and others expressed.
     This mantra is repeated over and over again.
     The symbol of hypocrisy and narcissism as if science is something special, sublime and superior.
     while it is merely the belief of foolish followers of an idea.
     who allow themselves to dismiss all other believers as primitive.
     While they are people of scientific excellence, they are rational people, they have no need for beliefs.
     Because everything can be proven.
     While the truth is completely the opposite. Enough with the hypocrisy and the pretzels.

273. sympathetic:

     Why is this not an experiment for you?
     If all the theory says is that X will happen then if X happened the theory has been proven correct and if X has not happened it has failed.
     It's totally an experiment.
     The theory itself is not equal for the purpose of predicting the future in additional cases, but it did not claim that.

     Now let's go one step further.
     Let's assume that there is a person who manages to guess what will happen in 50% of the cases and that his guesses are not trivial but definite claims such as "in such and such a year Rabin will be assassinated".

     Would you not use his guesses in planning your steps in the future?

     Let's say he doesn't present any scientific theory.
     This should not hinder you from scientifically testing the theory that he is right in 50% of the cases!

     I agree with the claim that until now - anyone who tried to present a formula for predicting the future - was a charlatan and I tend to think that the next person who tries to claim this will be as well, but that was not the issue I was talking about.

     Zaratostra:
     I think you didn't understand what I said at all.
     Let me ask you: when you make love with your wife, do you do it for financial reasons?

274. From:
     Are you claiming that evolution is driven by forces independent of the material physical side of reality. I find it hard to see you claiming that noble motives other than survival are part of the evolutionary mechanism. curiosity? Beliefs? Higher powers? Can these be part of the motive of the evolutionary mechanism. It goes against everything you say on this site.
     Man created science as part of his survival mechanism. There is nothing sublime about curiosity and other emotions other than the survival drive.
     Those who pay the wages of researchers who deal with purely theoretical issues. These are the researchers who are engaged in useful science that brings economic profit. If it weren't for them there would be no theoretical research.
     Clearly, something more is needed to convince investors. This thing is called Amunah Hess from mentioning this word on this site.
     In short, there is no need to hide behind monstrous definitions of scientific prediction.
     There is no such thing without the innocent faith of those who need this prophet and believe in it.

275. sympathetic:

     I will address some good points raised.
     I absolutely agree that mathematical or computer models (ie simulations) are an important part of any discipline that pretends to describe or predict phenomena.
     Regarding the more complex systems:
     If we look at any social phenomenon that economists or sociologists or futurists of all kinds try to model, on the face of it it will certainly appear that human behavior will be much more chaotic and unpredictable than a free-falling ball on the surface of the earth. As I see things, there is a certain degree of truth in this claim because these are indeed very complex systems, but this is not the whole truth.
     For example, let's look at the following human phenomenon:
     The number of daily searches for the word "Hanukkah" in the Google search engine.
     Even here it was possible to think that there would be no legality. It's about people. Everyone does what they want, when they want without judging anyone. Why would there be a law that would dictate to people what to look for and when.
     I was very surprised to discover the following graph:
     http://www.google.com/trends?q=hanukkah
     It describes the amount of searches as a function of time. A mathematical model can be fitted to this graph with the help of which it is possible to predict the size in question with one level of accuracy or another.
     Will the graph look like this next year? Is it in 10 years? I think so. There is no certainty in this, but this is the nature of all sciences. Basically, the discovery, prediction and modeling process is completely scientific.
     Arguably:
     This is not smart! The law you discovered is not a real law. All you did was measure a certain size and in retrospect you fitted a mathematical model to it. Isn't this the case with all the laws of nature?

276. Although I assume this is obvious, I did not state it explicitly. The example with the monkey that chooses stocks is a counter example to the claim that there is a good model for predicting the future or choosing a stock portfolio.

277. Michael:

     For me x happened or didn't happen is not an experiment. An experiment is about a controlled system where the experimenter has control over the various parameters and the possibility to prove his claims statistically based on a control group.

     I will give you a prediction about the future - in a month from today it will rain! I have a complex model of the weather as a function of the location of the halachites in relation to each other and according to this I predicted in the fordash that it will rain in another month. Even if it rains exactly one month from now, it has nothing to do with my far-fetched model and its success in forecasting relies on the fact that most winters (until recent years) have many rainy days. Now I will do what the charlatans in the science of future research do and firmly determine in another month with 95% certainty that it will rain, can my model then be disproved? A scientific theory needs to pass much more rigorous tests. It is desirable to be able to repeat the experiment independently and for this a control group is needed, it is desirable to be able to define a defined experimental system and it is desirable to be able to control the experimental parameters. All of which do not exist either in economics or in the study of the future.

     I have no argument with the claim that it is necessary to predict the future, my only claim is that there are people who claim that thanks to some scientific theory they are able to do it better than the average person. A good example is the success of a monkey to achieve a higher return on a stock portfolio than economic experts. The underlying claim of predicting the future is that there is some kind of model that, despite the many parameters in the problem, has a better chance of predicting the future than the average person. To substantiate their far-fetched theories, future research scientists use science as a cover to mislead the public. Ostensibly they use statistics but in practice they allow themselves to make a claim and vice versa. How can statistics be used regarding a one-time event?

     If you already mentioned an investment channel, do you use a financial advisor when you choose such a channel or do you rely on your opinions about the future? Financial advisors working in a certain model have the ability to be partially successful for short periods but when reality changes they continue to go along with the same models that are now wrong. If I am not mistaken, Taleb talks about this kind of problems in his books, which I have not read.

278. sympathetic:
     As I said - an experiment in the study of the future is rather simple.
     All you have to do is wait.
     You don't need a review group because there is no meaning in criticizing the claim "expensive X"

     Either X will happen or not - and accordingly - the theory will be verified or disproved.

     It is true that someone can argue about the future "because so and so - X will happen" and someone can come and argue against him that X did happen, but it is not because so and so.
     This claim may be true and in order to test it a control group is needed but that is not what is important in the forecast.

     The study of the future has not yet matured into a mathematically describable science and may never mature, but that does not mean it is not important.
     It should be understood that any attempt to predict the future stands on its own - that is - it is an independent theory.

     If someone proposes a theory of "how to predict the future" it might be worthwhile to test it in other ways (this is where the "because so-and-so" I talked about earlier comes in - that is - the phrase "because so-and-so" expresses some kind of idea about how to predict the future in general and there is worth checking it with a control group)

     If you want to compare it to economics, the statement that there is no point in studying the future is similar to saying that there is no point in studying economics.
     And yet - even those who say there is no point in engaging in economics - engage in economics. Moreover - everyone does this while trying to predict the future.
     Everyone chooses a profession that they believe they will be able to make a living from in the future even though they don't know the future.
     Everyone who has money to invest chooses the investment channels based on his assessments of the future.

279. ravine:

     Although this is not the main topic of the article, it is nevertheless interesting for me to discuss the legitimacy of the study of the future and how such science should be shown.
     First, should the study of the future be based on mathematical models?
     In my opinion, the major successes in the natural sciences stem from the ability to translate natural phenomena into mathematical models. This ability originates from distinguishing between important details and those that are insignificant. For example, a ball moving under the influence of a certain external force can be well described using a mass point that obeys Newton's laws. The color of the ball can be ignored, for example, and soon also its composition and size. All information about the ball can be described using a single parameter, its mass, and we don't need that either when it comes to free fall. Mathematical modeling is what makes it possible to write universal laws that are at the base of the phenomena.
     Now we will move to more complex systems, human societies. Here, the attempt to reduce the system to a few important parameters is, in my opinion, incapable. There are innumerable important parameters at every moment and it is impossible to know which of them will be beneficial, therefore it is impossible to find a simple mathematical model or even formulate simple cause and effect relationships. Every phenomenon will have several factors in retrospect...

     Regarding attempts to build mathematical modules for human behavior, this was done through game theory and luckily the decision makers did not listen to the experts in game theory during the Cold War (the latter recommended attacking the USSR with nuclear weapons).

     The example you gave (regarding economics as a science) is excellent. There are many economic models and experts in the field will sometimes make the opposite claims, the economic models usually only apply to a limited number of companies and for a limited time. So even the attempt to build a mathematical model that would describe economic behavior and not the future in its entirety is not successful in my opinion.

     The possibility of conducting an experiment in the study of the future or even in economics seems far-fetched to me. A minimum requirement of a scientific experiment is a control group. In addition to this, there should be the ability to define the experimental system in a good way, that is, the system should be isolated in such a way that it is not affected by changes outside of it. I am having difficulty with how experiments in the study of the future can be carried out under these requirements. It is possible to raise models and try to disqualify them based on phenomena that occurred or not, but I do not define this type of activity as a controlled experiment.

280. What is this nonsense Zaratostra: A professor calls himself shame. No respect?

281. Zaratostra:
     Some things:
     1. You can rate things by "sublimity" without "sublimity" being their purpose. Factually - a huge part of scientific research is carried out in an environment that is not at all interested in applications - certainly not in the near term. All cosmology is like this, a huge part of mathematics is like this, a large part of quantum theory is like this. It may be that some of the things discovered in these fields will find applications, but surely this is not all that motivates the scientists.
     2. What does motivate scientists is simply curiosity - the desire to discover patterns. In this context, you are welcome to read my articles on beauty: https://www.hayadan.org.il/meta-beuty-2911082/
     It is true that evolutionary - the tendency to recognize patterns was promoted by natural selection because this type of tendency promotes control over the environment, but the need to control the environment is not the direct and internal drive felt by the scientist.
     3. Controlling the environment is not the same as economics. Far from it. It is not for nothing that the Department of Environmental Sciences and the Department of Economics are two separate departments.

282. Mr. Zarathustra
     Let me answer you:
     From Wikipedia - Science is a method of gathering knowledge about the world...
     The knowledge is collected through all kinds of methods.
     The scientific way is one of those methods by which knowledge is gathered.
     Science itself has no goal. There are goals that are achieved through the scientific method, but science itself has no direct goal.
     (I'm explaining this to you because I guess you're tired of everyone. And you especially ruined my desire to visit this site, kudos to you).

283. Machel
     Do you think science has a more noble purpose than allowing man to control his environment.
     Unless you elevate him to idol status.

284. Zaratostra:
     What to do, it's not right.
     As I said, these are certainly not the considerations of the commissioner of future generations.

285. Machel
     What to do but science exists mainly because of the economic impact it has on life.

286. This seems to me to be an interesting direction for discussion - do you think economics is a scientific field?

287. Note regarding the statements about the experiment:
     Surely this is an area that can be tested experimentally.
     The experiment of course takes some time, but we simply wait and check what percentage of the predictions came true.

     In any case, the main goal of working in the field is to prepare for the future and it seems to me that this is something that should be done.

     I don't know why they are trying to divert the discussion to the issue of economics.
     If you notice - the main topic of the article is the commissioner for future generations.
     I don't think the focus of a person in this position is economics.
     It is more likely that he is mainly interested in the future ecological consequences of our actions today.

288. sympathetic:

     These are interesting questions. I haven't read the book either and I don't know the field in question.
     I believe that if there is any validity to this field, it must at least fundamentally use scientific tools. In other words, it should definitely be an "experimental field". He needs to use models and make predictions based on them. He needs to correct the models when the predictions do not match reality. The policy he outlines must first be tested in a simulation, or by inferring from similar past cases.
     Neither is engineering a pure science, but a good engineer must understand the language of science and use it.
     By the way, I apply the same law to any body that is responsible for making decisions. For example, about a government that decides on the economic or security policy or the management of a bank, or even me when I'm about to cross the road.
     I believe that many of us plan and try to predict what will happen to us in 10 years. (Decisions such as having children, where to study, what job to look for are some of the examples of decisions that result from our predictions about the future)

     In my understanding, at the heart of the scientific process is the disclosure of cause and effect relationships. When you want to prevent or cause some phenomenon to happen in the future, you must understand the reasons for its formation.
     The multiplicity of variables is indeed a problem, but this is exactly the problem that every scientist has to deal with. He needs to isolate the relevant variables, create a sterile environment in which the influence of these variables can be tested, build a model that describes the relationship between the variables and conduct experiments that test the model.

     I appreciate that this is not how the science of studying the future is conducted, but I believe that this is how it should be conducted.

289. I also support Zaratostra's opinion even though I have not read Shaltlab's book.

     First, there is a fundamental difference between "exploring the future" and predictions focused on a specific field. The study of the future pretends to understand how a change in one of the fields will affect the entirety of our lives, therefore a future researcher is required to have knowledge in several fields and requires tremendous expertise that is not available.

     Doubts about future research:
     1. Is this a scientific field? It is clear that this is not an experimental field. Is it possible to make claims and refute them?
     Using mathematical tools is not sufficient evidence that the field is scientific even astrologists can use mathematical tools.
     2. Making dozens of claims about the future guarantees success in at least some of them (if they have a reasonable basis) and then the public will focus on that forecast that was successful and not on all those forecasts that failed. This psychological fact is a wide field of action for charlatans.
     3. It is clear that in certain systems it is very easy to predict the future by linear extrapolation or by the simple claim that what was today will be a notch, but in sufficiently complex systems the extrapolation fails quite quickly.
     4. Today's science has difficulty dealing with forecasting in complex systems, for example, what will the weather be like in a month, for example, will it rain that day? Why should we believe that complex human systems have the ability to predict?
     5. There is an importance in building scenarios and preparing for the future, this is an important thing that we should all do, but this is not science.
     By the way, how many of you managed to predict your life today 10 years ago? Our ability to predict is limited due to the multitude of parameters that affect our lives.

     In summary, in my opinion, the ability of a "scientist studying the future" to predict the future is no greater than that of a writer writing a future novel or science fiction, and the attempt to give probabilities to future phenomena is charlatanism. To give a probability we have to know the entire space of possibilities which is either absurd or trivial regarding complex systems.

290. Gali Weinstein:
     The capital market is a field that requires forecasts on a regular basis. and can be used as a measure of the success of predictions for what you called "future science".
     I suggest you read Taleb's book "Illusions of Randomness" as well as the sequel.
     The future plans you are talking about are the predictions of the ivory tower. The connection between them and the actual reality is not so realized.

291. Too bad I missed the conference. I didn't know about the conference.
     It seems to me that some here don't understand what future research science is. It is not predicting the future and saying that tomorrow something will fall here from the sky. It is about determining policy according to scenarios about how technology will look in the future and what research directions will be in science in the future. An important example is energy and energy sources, what alternative energy sources will there be? For example, Nikola Tesla started all kinds of ideas that are returned to today. Here I once wrote about it:
     http://delorian64.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/%D7%97%D7%93%D7%A9%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%A2%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%93%D7%99%D7%AA-%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%A6%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%97%D7%93%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%93%D7%A3-%D7%94%D7%A2%D7%AA/
     Sorry for the long link... 🙂 At the end of my post here the prediction of the future is relevant regarding some "green" fields. For example, types of fuels, biofuels of the next generation and what should be invested in, carbon capture and its storage, prevention of air pollution, beneficial storage of energy in the future, advanced car batteries, solar energy collection and how this can be done while integrating nano technologies, etc. All this while looking to the future. Robotic technologies for medicine and future innovations in medicine and the like. I wasn't at the conference, but I assume they talked about it, and especially about setting policies regarding future trends in science and technology. Today nanotechnology is very budgeted, but what will happen in the future? It is possible that today we can already see technological trends that will affect our lives in the coming years.

292. Machel
     Nicely said and the commenter follows you. In the end these prophecies do not deal with a boring calculation of the probabilities for such and such events.
     But mainly in the main question, what is the probability that the contract was wrong or right in its prediction.
     In my opinion the answer to this is 50% on average or a normal distribution.
     On the other hand, what is the probability that a professional mathematician will make a mistake in calculating probabilities, maybe you can answer that.

293. Dr. Zaratostra,
     Your approach is far too superficial.
     The study of the future may be applied in the full sense of the word, for example in the question of water in the Middle East. All the countries in the region already suffer from a lack of water today, and research into future trends will allow sensible governments - if there are any in the region - to deal with the problem effectively. This is just an example of a very large number of subjects in which the study of the future is useful.

294. I'm a fan of Pasig
     A very, very interesting field

295. When dealing with economic forecasts in the area of ​​stock prices, currency prices, commodity prices, two forecast factors must be taken into account: 1. What is the expected rate level 2. In what time frame will this forecast be realized and for how long will it be correct. For some reason, everyone involved in forecasts only tells us: the level of the rates will reach this and that (in most cases the forecasts are of course optimistic, otherwise for what people will invest...), but they don't tell us how long this forecast is good for and when it will actually happen... it's already too much for the forecasters . Therefore, in regards to these areas, Taleb was right. At the same time, there are areas in the economy where something smart can be said, such as developments related to interest rates (because a handful of people in the central banks set them and not hordes of people who set stock prices), or changes in the level of economic output, or demographic changes.

296. Regarding Pasig's predictions: in 2005 we invited him to a conference where he lectured to hundreds of financial managers on technological and economic forecasts of various kinds. He provided a wide variety of predictions. Meanwhile, in some of the predictions he was right and in some he was wrong. His most correct and interesting economic forecast was related to the drop in GDP in the US. He based this on the size of the working-age population and its effect on growth in the world's largest economies. He showed that in the US, following the retirement of the "Baby Boomers" and the entry of a smaller age group into the workforce in their place (as a percentage of the total population), then the GDP will decrease at a probability level of 80% and this will continue from 2010 to at least 2015. In the meantime he was right, the question is whether his justice is related to the trend he predicted or the financial crisis of 2008 or both. The main prediction in which he was wrong was also based on the age groups, but this time in Japan. He claimed that the Japanese will come out of their long recession (which started back in 2010) by 1992. So far, there is no sign of this in Japan.
     Roubini's extraordinary economic forecast in its success was regarding the subprime crisis. But for every Rubini there were 10 senior economic forecasters who were completely wrong.
     I know of empirical studies that have found that there is no basis for economic forecasts dealing with exchange rates and all the major banks in the world that deal with this are regularly wrong. ZA, they fail to be accurate in their predictions regarding the level of foreign exchange rates, they are sometimes wrong from above and sometimes from below. In general, the worst forecasting errors occur in extreme situations. Almost no one ever succeeds in predicting extreme situations in the markets and if there is such a forecaster who succeeds, then he succeeds only once and then he already misses...

297. Zaratostra:
     Maybe you didn't notice, but I wasn't talking about Pasig at all, but about your statements.
     I didn't even intend to refer to Pasig Av. If you already mention it, then since I just repeated your examples (and you probably intended to talk about Pasig), I must conclude that my words should also be relevant in your opinion to Pasig's words

298. Machel
     The examples you mentioned are not relevant.
     for at least two reasons. One is that the expectancy is not the same for both and the other is that the probability of an event has no meaning if it is not relevant to someone's decision.
     Mr. Pasig sews prophecies according to the taste of the audience he is addressing. Based on the assumption that the target audience has an interest in prediction. A mathematical calculation of a probability that is not relevant to anyone may be of interest to you from a mathematical point of view.
     Mr. Pasig's probabilistic calculation begins with his prophet's customers.
     This can be easily replaced by the following calculation: What is the probability that you, as a customer of predictions, will pay attention to what Mr. Pasig says and evaluate him properly as a scientific istegenin.
     The same is true for calculating the probability in the question of how the pension fund manager will act in relation to share X will he purchase or not purchase. Will he listen to his astrologer or the capital market expert.
     Read Mr. Taleb and you will see that it is often worth listening to the first one.
     Although he does not write this explicitly, his opinion about the various experts is accepted by the opinion of most of his readers.

299. Zaratostra:
     Here you have a bet between two options:
     Option A: The guess who will win next week's lottery is 123456
     Option B: The guess that will win next week's lottery will not be 123456

     50%?

     And a question you asked:
     Will the population increase?
     Option A: Yes (this is the answer that has been proven to be correct almost throughout the last thousands of years)
     Option B: No (this is an answer that may have been proven correct only during huge epidemics or world wars)

     50%?

     In general - your questions are funny.
     What is will the population increase?
     From today to tomorrow: certainly yes.
     From today for another 5 billion years (when the sun will become a red giant) probably not.

     and the farmers' strike:
     For almost all the years of the state's existence, the question of whether a farmers' strike will start tomorrow received a negative answer.
     Here and there she also received a positive answer.
     It's not 50%

     On the other hand, if someone asks if there will ever be a farmers' strike, it would be reasonable to answer "almost certainly yes!"
     it's not even 50%

300. Zaratostra:
     what are you saying?
     really?!

301. Machel
     There is a difference between picking a number out of billions of options
     and a bet between two options. Will the stock go down, will the currency go up, or will the population increase, and if there will be a farmers' strike.
     For the latter, a 50% probability prediction for one of the options is always correct.

302. Zaratostra:
     Not really true.
     By the way - do you really attribute only a 50% probability to population growth?

303. Admittedly, researching possible futures is a welcome and important thing.
     However, my main criticism of Pasig is that it claims to predict trends in many diverse fields (economy, geopolitics, society, culture, technology) and of course there is no expert in all fields together. In my opinion, an economist should engage in forecasting trends in the economy, an expert in international relations in forecasting trends in the political field, a scientist in the scientific field, etc. Engaging in all fields together leads to overly simplistic and shallow results, as I think is reflected in Pasig's latest book "2048".
     By the way, it is interesting that Pasig in his two books almost ignores one of the main issues that preoccupy those who claim to predict the future of the country, and that is the increasing proportion of citizens from the ultra-Orthodox sector who are an increasing burden on the Israeli economy and society. You can accept it and you can disagree about it, but ignoring it in itself does not look good. In his book 2048, he almost ignores China and the European Union as well without bothering to explain why (whereas he focuses on Turkey as a regional power through which the United States will maintain its position).

304. Machel
     Next we will refine it-
     What do these "scientific" futures contracts claim?
     For example, there is a 50% chance that the population will increase. How many options are there in total for this matter? 3 - May it decrease, may it remain, and may it increase. Tossing a coin is enough for that.
     But they do not claim to know how to predict the cell phone numbers that each of the growing population will have.

305. Unlike most sciences whose main concern is the description of phenomena and predictions, it seems that this is a field that, in addition to forecasting, also tries to shape and influence the future.
     In this sense it is a type of engineering field and its importance is greater than mere prediction 

306. I'm not a big fan of futurism but it seems pretty clear to me that our future will be better if we try to predict it than if we don't.
     It is also customary to say about work plans that they are merely a basis for changes.

     There are things that can be predicted with a fairly high degree of certainty (for example, the gradual cessation of fossil fuel use).
     There are things that will certainly cause a disaster if they are not dealt with (such as the ratio between the number of inhabitants of the various regions of the earth and the amount of food that those inhabitants will receive) and there are things whose probability is low but they are a disaster and the time to prepare to deal with them once they become certain is not enough (for example - a volcanic eruption of any Yellowstone Park or the fall of a large asteroid).
     These, as mentioned, are only examples, but they and their kind justify, in my opinion, the occupation of the subject even if most of the predictions end up being disproven.

     By the way, Zaratostra, a prediction with a 50% chance of coming true may be an exceptionally good prediction because many probabilities in reality are smaller than 50%. Imagine that someone was able to predict with a probability of 50% the winning numbers in the lottery.

307. The future doesn't bother me, it arrives on time.

308. By the way 50% of programming is exactly the result of a coin toss.
     And all other events have a normal distribution.

309. Avi Blizovsky
     According to your response, it seems that you favor the author's approach.
     But this is completely incompatible with Mr. Passig's pseudo-scientific approach.
     I don't think you've read "Illusions of Randomness"
     and his sequel to The Black Swan.
     He completely dismisses puffed-up quackers and "experts as if" like Mr. Pasig.
     Brings enough examples from the field of capital markets and the economy.
     Only one thing I did not understand about him is why he admires the opportunist
     Mr. George Soros, the Hungarian Jew who collaborated with the Nazis during the World War.

310. It is equally possible to predict that Israel will be attacked tomorrow, because they always hate us.
     It is not acceptable at all to relate to people who predict things for us based on statistics.
     I somewhat agree with Zaratostra.
     Science is based on experience and result not on maybe

311. The study of the future is not nonsense at all, but a distinct applied science. Even someone who is not a researcher may know a lot about the future, the distant in a range of years, and certainly the near, on a statistical level as well as on a specific level.
     Resistance to the study of the future is probably driven by religious motives. (and if I repeated a previous comment it is because of the disappearance of the previous one)

312. Indeed Pasig referred to Nissim Talab and explained that it is necessary to make scenarios with different levels of probability. The chance of WILD CARD scenarios that have no basis that can be seen from today's trends is 1-3%. We also need to work on 50% scenarios for the decision makers. That means that usually 50% of these things happen in reality plus or minus three years from the estimated date and must be evaluated. There is always something that can be asked in retrospect why they didn't think of it before, but we shouldn't let it take over our lives.
     You can argue but it is still an academic profession with rational rules and methods. What you are asking is actually to cancel rationality and say that only surprising things always happen.

313. What is this nonsense is the study of the future. After all, if we check the prophecies, it will turn out to be nonsense. In the same way, you can give a degree to astrologers.
     And you still pretend to be a rational website writing about a haunted country...
     Just bullshitters.
     I recommend you to read the book "Illusions of Randomness". By: Nissim Nicholas Taleb.
     The author, a professor of statistics and applied mathematics, explains in clear language the nature of all the charlatans who predict the future in the name of science.

This site uses Akismat to prevent spam messages. Click here to learn how your response data is processed.