The Need to Start From Scratch

[Blaggard]

Incidentally do you know why beavers build dams, it's fascinating. They basically micromanage an environment to create more food for themselves and of course one can't underestimate the safety of their lodges from predators, I would digress but it would be way off topic. Product of watching too many nature documentaries I suppose... David Attenborough is a God...

Ironically humans create dams and often sometimes if not always do the opposite, but that's by the by.

[the Hessian]

And if you play the sound of running water in a dry environment, a beaver will build a dam despite the fact that doing so is effectively useless.

[Blaggard]

Pavlov's dog but instinctual rather than programmed by scientists in a lab... Interesting...

[cladking]

Part of the problem too might be the perspective of nature.

Nature exists independently of man and life. Even if the planet weren't here 2 + 2 would still make four. The first two of something would still be half the whole if the whole were four. The logic and rules of nature are independent of the observer and the observer IS part and parcel of these rules. Nature has wired these rules right into our brains to help us succeed. More accuratelty stated, individuals who lack the logic wired into their brains don't succeed, they are food. In a very real way babies are mathmaticians; at the very least they quickly learn to count mommies and daddies. This applies whether mommy is a person or a blue jay.

Think of it this way; math is the same extrapolation of logic as the wiring of the brain that once gave rise to natural language.

[Blaggard]

Minor point but Edison didn't invent the light bulb, with reference to something some said...

Carry on.

Intelligence or sentience though...

[cladking]

Crap.

I tried to quote and accidently edited away a long post.

I'll try to recreate it later.

[cladking]

Minor point but Edison didn't invent the light bulb, with reference to something some said...

Carry on.

It's a shame you didn't quote the post.

[Blaggard]

Minor point but Edison didn't invent the light bulb, with reference to something some said...

Carry on.

It's a shame you didn't quote the post.

You deleted it too fast for me, someone said it but it is lost to antiquity now.

Doesn't really matter, it wasn't a point that meant anything at all to the thread on my part at least. So who cares?

I liked the post though what I read of it for what it's worth, but I am damned if I have the sort of memory that has short term in its library, so you'll I guess just have to repost. I would of course of replied to it in depth given the chance, but I am watching a movie and clever bon mots are the limit atm.

j/k

Sorry though one post after there's no need to quote, so I didn't, if you would give me a heads up psychically or by whatever mind powers you have, Jedi or whatever, when you are going to delete I might be more up on quoting stuff in directly following posts.

[cladking]

Minor point but Edison didn't invent the light bulb, with reference to something some said...

Carry on.

It's a shame you didn't quote the post.

You deleted it too fast for me, someone said it but it is lost to antiquity now.

Doesn't really matter, it wasn't a point that meant anything at all to the thread on my part at least. So who cares?

I liked the post though what I read of it for what it's worth, but I am damned if I have the sort of memory that has short term in its library, so you'll I guess just have to repost. I would of course of replied to it in depth given the chance, but I am watching a movie and clever bon mots are the limit atm.

j/k

Sorry though one post after there's no need to quote, so I didn't, if you would give me a heads up psychically or by whatever mind powers you have, Jedi or whatever, when you are going to delete I might be more up on quoting stuff in directly following posts.

No problem, it's just a shame. In the post I had responded to The Hessian's observation that beavers are hard to think of as scientists.

The alternative to believing a beaver invented a dam is believing somehow mother nature endowed it with the ability to build dams. In other words we believe that a beaver has this inate knowledge encoded in its DNA or is "instinctive". My contention is simply that like all animals beavers have brains that are hard wired with logic and this is "activated" through observation. Building dams is almost certainly "instinctive" now but it wasn't instinctive when the first dam was built. A beaver simply observed that rains could cause the creek to swell and pick up lots of fallen timber which fell to a rapids where it formed a dam that retained water. These things are "natural" for an aquatic animal to observe and doubly so when it's capable of felling trees. It was a flash of cleverness that built the first dam just as it's flashes of cleverness that drive human progress. It is flashes of cleverness that build on what language created.

There's not really such a thing as "intelligence" in nature. What we think is intelligence is a manifestation of language in knowledge and technology. It is a reaction to consciousness that is shared by all animals. Ancient people were animals and did not consider themselves in any way intelligence or distinct from other animals. Certainly they believed in "humanity" which holds our concerns are more important and the long term is even more important than knowing the past or the needs of the here and now. Eating the seed crop is suicide.

[cladking]

Minor point but Edison didn't invent the light bulb, with reference to something some said...

Yes, it is unlikely that Edison personally discovered a tungsten filament burning in a vacuum could last. He had many men working on this and many of the inventions credited to him might not be accurate. I thought he once claimed to be personally involved with the one that worked.

In any case he "signed the checks".

[Blaggard]

Minor point but Edison didn't invent the light bulb, with reference to something some said...

Yes, it is unlikely that Edison personally discovered a tungsten filament burning in a vacuum could last. He had many men working on this and many of the inventions credited to him might not be accurate. I thought he once claimed to be personally involved with the one that worked.

In any case he "signed the checks".

He didn't just not invent it he wasn't even in the right ball park he basically took designs tht already invented that were light bulbs and that's all he did: materials work perhaps he was in on the floor, an actual light bulb well he was preceded by at least 40 years, several others invented the light bulb, Edison's gift was to buy them out and nothing more and the do materials work to find the right filament see Joseph Swan et al for details. One might as well say Edison invented the Telephone for all the veracity it would have.

Not that Edison wasn't a great man by any means but as someone once said about him if Edison were to look for a needle in a haystack he would look straw by straw for it, he was a hard worker, but he tended to know what to invest in and what to work on, not to be an inventor per se, while he would of slaved away going through a hay stack let's just say, to put the analogy on a firm grounding, others would have invented magnets and saved themselves the hassle of rooting through hay.

Swan Electric Light Company
Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914) was a physicist and chemist born in Sunderland, England. Swan was the first to construct an electric light bulb, but he had trouble maintaining a vacuum in his bulb. In 1850 he began working on a light bulb using carbonized paper filaments in an evacuated glass bulb. By 1860 he was able to demonstrate a working device, and obtained a UK patent covering a partial vacuum, carbon filament incandescent lamp. However, the lack of good vacuum and an adequate electric source resulted in a short lifetime for the bulb and an inefficient light.

Fifteen years later, in 1875, Swan returned to consider the problem of the light bulb and, with the aid of a better vacuum and a carbonized thread as a filament. The most significant feature of Swan's lamp was that there was little residual oxygen in the vacuum tube to ignite the filament, thus allowing the filament to glow almost white-hot without catching fire. Swan received a British patent for his device in 1878
.
Swan had reported success to the Newcastle Chemical Society and at a lecture in Newcastle in February 1879 he demonstrated a working lamp. Starting that year he began installing light bulbs in homes and landmarks in England. In 1880, Swan gave the world's first large-scale public exhibition of electric lamps at Newcastle upon Tyne England. In 1881 he had started his own company, The Swan Electric Light Company, and started commercial production.

Swan took Edison to court in Britain for patent infringement. Edison lost and as part of the settlement, Edison was forced to take Swan in as a partner in his British electric works. The company was called the Edison and Swan United Electric Company (later known as Ediswan). Eventually, Edison acquired all of Swan's interest in the company. Also in 1882 Joseph Swan sold his United States patent rights to the Brush Electric Company, a successful "arc" street light manufacture.

http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inven ... htbulb.htm

[cladking]

He didn't just not invent it he wasn't even in the right ball park he basically took designs tht already invented that were light bulbs and that's all he did: materials work perhaps he was in on the floor, an actual light bulb well he was preceded by at least 40 years, several others invented the light bulb, Edison's gift was to buy them out and nothing more and the do materials work to find the right filament see Joseph Swan et al for details.

I stand corrected.

My primary point is that so long as we think of ourselves as "intelligent" then we don't know our nature. Far worse is that we do things that are highly detrimental to our best interests. Much of the problem with modern society and financial institutions is caused by unintended results. We try to make each child more comfortable in school by overlooking failure and the result is no child gets an education. The system has failed because we don't understand our nature. In a shark jumping feel good politically correct world no one seems to care that kids aren't getting an education and only a tiny percentage of inner city boys even graduate high school. When we do look at it the solution is always more of the same and more feel goodness. The solution is to throw ever more money at the problem as education gets worse everywhere. We once had he top educational establishment in the world and in a couple generations we have fallen to a third world status. And this is probably despite the fact that education is falling everywhere.

We didn't get to where we are through hedonism but through rewarding proper behavior and flashes of cleverness. We once rewarded good results and valued ideas. Now ideas are a dime a dozen and only intentions matter. The same clowns who ruined education are promoted to ever higher positions.

Maybe a child is supposed to feel a little bad when he fails a test. Maybe he should be encouraged not only to do his best but to get good results.