We just can't be an error...

Guys,

I would like to share a friend of mine’s and my thoughts... with you.

A friend (she’s like a sister to me) and i were sitting in my apartment balcony one night. We looked at the sky and it was full of stars and then we start to discuss about different things until we start to talk about humans beings. The ever asked question “where do we come from?” was not the issue this time but “what are we?”. Me (computers lover) started to think about programming and she started to get interested about what we were opining. Our thoughts are... could we be programmed or something like that? We don’t mean the way you program a computer program but maybe similar. Have you ever thought why we are so perfect? There’s no error in this. This is not a coincidence, i mean (and please think deeply about this) how can we be so perfect? How can we have a hand totally destined to grab things ans so it has fingers? This can’t be an error. How can we have feet that make us walk? This can’t be an error. How can we have a mouth (with a tongue, teeth, etc.) to eat, a nose to breath, ears to hear, eyes to see (so perfect organs). This can’t be an error. I think you won’t tell me nature made an error and a heart, a lung, a rib, etc. were made from this error. No, this can’t be possible, and... what?, a... BRAIN!!! How can a SO PERFECT “thing” appear from nothing? I mean the brain is too perfect to be an error. Someone, something or i don’t know what do the brain. Someone or something must have spent months, years or maybe centurys to create a brain. Again, something so perfect just can’t grow from the ground... from nothing. Let’s thinks about the computer game “The Simms”, they’re a program... and we? Do you think nature commited an error and so you now have two perfect “tools” like your arms, or your heart that manage blood through your entire body?. Your eyes..., how can a two little “balls” have a perfect system that allowed us to see long distances? We create chips that allow our video cards to show us images on the screen? And this took us thousands of billions of years to be finished. Imagine that “eyes” can’t be an error then... they’re too perfect. So... maybe someone or something “worked” to create us, our organs, our body, our thoughts, our soul..., and why?, well..., because we just can’t be an error..., we just can’t come from “nothing”.

My friend and i just hope “they” don’t turn off their machines and end our “program”. :eek:
We just not only want to know “where we come from”... but “what we are” too!!!

Bye.

DKRR

Note: Negative, please don't delete my thread, i assure you i'm not crazy!!! :D

Ok..... let's look at this from the point of view you espoused..... programming.

You want to write a program to, let's say, find the first 100 prime numbers but you are told you must write it in Basic which you have never used before and there are no manuals for you to consult. That correolates to, lets call it, Mother Nature not having a clue where to start.

So off you go typing away and running the progs. You start off small to see if you can make a simple loop run. Many thousands of goes later you manage to get the loop to run - remember, you have no idea of the commands or syntax so this is many many thousands of tries. Then you need to do simple calcs so away you go running progs to carry out additions and divisions etc. until finally you get them to work. Then you go about combining the two until you can do simple looped calcs..... well that takes a while too but you are becoming more proficient.... and finally after probably several years you'll manage to write the program to calc the first 100 primes. But look at all your failures. There are hundreds of thousands of itereations scattered all over your HD. Failed programs everywhere!!!!!

That's Evolution.... plain and simple..... For every creature, virus, plant and bacteria you see on the planet today there are hundreds of millions of failed "programs" out there. Bearing in mind that even the simplest creatures are many times more complex than your program it took a while for a successful model to be created - and the success took place at a single cell level. That's the point at which you became more proficient. From there, with the base model created and the remainder being simply "rewrites" of old code, (modifications to the cell structure in order to allow it to carry out diverse functions), the process accelerated - just like your programming.

So you see..... we aren't an error at all. You can't be an error if there wasn't a plan to begin with, which, IMO, there wasn't. While I respect everyone's right to their own personal belief I have come to believe that the ultimate arrogance of humanity _is_ it's belief in a supreme being. I believe this because by believing in a supreme being we are effectively saying "we are so good and so smart that since we can't explain X, Y and Z it _must_ have come from a supreme being". I believe that to be flawed logic. A mere thousand years or less ago a total eclipse of the sun had virgins being hacked to death on high altars to appease their Supreme Being..... We don't do that now because we understand the concept. Same same with lightening - it was a sign of the Supreme Being's wrath - we don't think that now because we understand the concept.

Well - guess what - we are in a similar situation now. The questions are much more complex, like how did the universe begin?, but they are there all the same and they are the kind of question that humans can't answer so we apply the supreme being concept and all is well. But there are answers out there - just like there were for eclipses and lightening - we just have to admit that we are a little too dumb to understand yet - but to always be aware that we will, (should we manage to ensure our survival), understand the answers one day.

Well.... that's my 2 cents worth anyhoo...... :)

-DaRK- RaiDeR-: some interesting points you bring up there... Here's my point of view...

Quote:

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Originally posted by -DaRK- RaiDeR-
Your eyes..., how can a two little “balls” have a perfect system that allowed us to see long distances?

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Perfect? Not at all ;)

Quote:

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we still have a blind spot in each eye: our optic nerve is on a spot where light may fall in. Since this 'weakness' is no direct threat for our survival, nature doesn't intervene. If we would have lived in an environment where this blind spot was a direct threat to our safety, nature would've eliminated that 'weakness'.

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Tiger Shark,

W... O... W... !!! Do you want to write a book with me? hehe!!! :D

I really appreaciate your answer and there's so much truth in what you say.

But... hehe... just one thing... programers has their own ways to test and correct errors after trying a thousand times... but what is tha way nature can correct errors... it can't think. I hope you understand my point.

Thanks.

Bye.

DKRR

But let's examine how a programmer corrects his error......

start code
-----------------------------------------
10 rem code to do nothing really
20 dim a as string
30 a = 2
40 for n = 1 to 50
50 print n * a
60 next n
70 run
-----------------------------------------
end code

Oops..... I made a mistake..... I can't multiply a string by an integer.... The program abends.... So I edit the program........

start code
-----------------------------------------
10 rem code to do nothing really
20 dim a as integer
30 a = 2
40 for n = 1 to 50
50 print n * a
60 next n
70 run
-----------------------------------------
end code

Ha..... it works..... But where is the first iteration...... In the big bit bucket in the sky.... it's gone....no longer exists..... it was edited out of existence......

Just like all the iterations of unsuccessful changes that took place in evolution..... They are all up in the big organism bucket in the sky...... :)

Remember that in my example I said that the programmer has no knowledge of Basic and no manuals, (this was before Google evolved....... :D ). So the programmer would be working on the basis of trial and error to start with. Thus his first attempt may simply be:

start code
-------------------------------------
a
-------------------------------------
end code

this would clearly fail and his second attempt would be "aa" and so on. It would only be when he has determined enough of the rules would he then be able to hone his ability to make corrective actions intuitively....... That is where my analagy falls down...... But I hope my point was made.

Negative and Tiger Shark,

Then you both are welcome to write a book with me, hehe!!! :D

Very good thread that one of you Negative. I like the way you both think guys, even more in this matter that hasn't an asnwer yet (and we don't know if it will have one) because even scientists can say a word about it.

Thanks for your time,

DKRR

if you wanna know about Fate, you can find it in Physics (I can tell you if you REALLY want to but it'll take a load of time to explain)
everything is part of a cascading Cosmic pattern....we have a purpose and everything we do can be worked out with math's... (er...well, in theory)

The question now is, with the complex social structure we have now, it no longer works along the lines of "Hump only the ones that look like they can take care of ma kids", so, has evolution stoped, or is it still there? if so, where?

Damn.....

BTW: Neg, where da hell are you?! I just noticed it said you'r in Zanzibar.....er...I'm a bit stupid, but where is that? lol

- Noia

I've thought about the universe being just one big program. There must be huge databases out there with causes and effects in the past, present, maybe future? All the interactions between all the individual programs that have been created work. It's as if we're programs inside a program, and there are programs inside of us. The universe has got to be the ultimate OS.

But that leads to the question... who is the programmer? I don't think we can call it Mother Nature like Tiger Shark did in his really good post. So then what? Or who?

Well, in my opinion DR, you're right. It's no coinsidence. In my perspective, we are for sure well adapted to our enviornment. Practically every thing in our body plays a role in its well being; a perfect system. Food comes in, nutritants come in, waste leaves. We can communicate by producing soundwaves with our throats, and other beings can translate them to words in their minds instantaneously by hearing the waves's vibrations in their ear, with an eardrum. Our brains, so carefully and flawlessly designed that we can gain so much knowledge, we can work to perfect defects in other people's brains.

Who chose us to be the superior beings on this earth? We are, undisputedly. No rabbit, no fox, no dinosaur, no whale or elephant, or crocodile, or primate, has ever matched our intellegence. You don't walk outside and see rabbits performing brain surgery on another rabbit so a tumor can be removed, or elephants building tight-security institutes for the mentally challenged. But we do. I share the same questions and thoughts as you, DR. That's when I think I know God put us here. He chose for us to be superior, and that's why he gave us the knowledge that no other form of life on this planet posesses.


Regards,
Silentstalker

There are many programmers, and many things to learn from... Of course, we still have little clue who the "Ultimate" programmer is, etc., but we are also programmers of our "program", though I'd rather call our body a system... If we're a system, then the person who started everything must also be an engineer or something...

We can learn to program our mind in simple ways, such as a routine called focus_eyes_on(OBJECT*); where we either relax or use our muscles in our eyes to focus on an object. Learning is a way that we program our selves, and some people are able to optimize their programs better than others. Not everyone has the exact same hardware, and some people's systems allow them to have more optimized programs to perform things, such as thinking, talking, etc.

Other organisms might not have systems that are flexible enough to perform all of those functions the same way we do, so we probably won't see hamsters making a motor to drive their running wheel so they have less work to do. They have to work harder to survive than we do, so they have specialized functions focused on surviving. We are having an easier time surviving now than before, so we can broaden easier. We aren't required to optimize on any one thing such as killing bears, so we can generalize and program ourselves for other things. Our hardware has also changed, such as less muscle, or less hair than people who were alive during the ice age.

But the question still remains - how are we so flexible and who programmed everything around us and everything else so it can interact well?

-Tim_axe