OK, I admit it—I am not sure what you’re getting into. (Between reading this post, and writing this comment I did not open any web site nor discuss this with anyone, for the record).
Lightbulb—I’m not a physicist. I got a degree in math, and studied some high school physics. But certainly “electricity!” is not a semantic stop-sign for me—it surely tells me some things to expect. I expect that if I take out the bulb, and stick my finger in there, I will suffer a shock (and perhaps die, though AC takes quite a bit to kill you—and I expect it’s AC unless I see a convertor, though again, nothing I would try to check with my life at stake). I expect that if I slowly took the bulb out, at some point between being in and being out, it would dim (because insulation of the air is linear, but high—and so I would expect this mid-point to be fairly small). I expect that if I took a fuse, and connected it instead of the light-bulb, it would burn out—and that after burning out, my meter would stop running (unless I’m running other appliances). If you did any of these experiments, and the result is not as I expected, I would be surprised, and look for how you cheated (did you flip a second switch when I wasn’t looking or something?). If I can’t find how you cheated, I will be confused, and say “either it runs on not-electricity, which I do not understand, or my understanding of electricity is imperfect”.
I clicked on on the “evolutionary theory” and didn’t find any direct predictions you’re asking about, so I will invent one—“if I show you a rabbit, and ask you why it’s here, and you say ‘evolution’, what would it lead you to expect?” Well, any number of things. I expect that if I put a large number of rabbits in a significantly different environment than the one they inhabit, many of them will die [because evolution is not predictive, and any gene not useful in the natural environment will suffer deterioration]. I expect that any complex adaptation I find in the rabbit (for example, any “clever” way it evades foxes) will be largely similar for other rabbits [because rabbits reproduce sexually, and so on]. If I see any of those things not happening, I will assume I am wrong about some detail (perhaps what I thought was “clever” behavior can be accomplished by a simple mutation, based on another complex adaptation? perhaps the rabbits inhabited the other environment in recent enough times so they had the opportunity to adapt?) or that you tricked me (you designed that rabbit with extra fun genes from scratch, and now you’re enjoying confusing me, and I’ll update my probabilities that you’re lying to me).
And if I see the elephant in the room, and you tell me science, I’ll say (a) get it out of my freakin’ living room, please and (b) fascinating, do you know of any reasonable laymen intro to the “Greenelephantology” science? Nothing too technical, but I’d like to understand the basics...if it’s too new for a book, is there a nice article in some pop-sci magazine?
OK, I admit it—I am not sure what you’re getting into. (Between reading this post, and writing this comment I did not open any web site nor discuss this with anyone, for the record).
Lightbulb—I’m not a physicist. I got a degree in math, and studied some high school physics. But certainly “electricity!” is not a semantic stop-sign for me—it surely tells me some things to expect. I expect that if I take out the bulb, and stick my finger in there, I will suffer a shock (and perhaps die, though AC takes quite a bit to kill you—and I expect it’s AC unless I see a convertor, though again, nothing I would try to check with my life at stake). I expect that if I slowly took the bulb out, at some point between being in and being out, it would dim (because insulation of the air is linear, but high—and so I would expect this mid-point to be fairly small). I expect that if I took a fuse, and connected it instead of the light-bulb, it would burn out—and that after burning out, my meter would stop running (unless I’m running other appliances). If you did any of these experiments, and the result is not as I expected, I would be surprised, and look for how you cheated (did you flip a second switch when I wasn’t looking or something?). If I can’t find how you cheated, I will be confused, and say “either it runs on not-electricity, which I do not understand, or my understanding of electricity is imperfect”.
I clicked on on the “evolutionary theory” and didn’t find any direct predictions you’re asking about, so I will invent one—“if I show you a rabbit, and ask you why it’s here, and you say ‘evolution’, what would it lead you to expect?” Well, any number of things. I expect that if I put a large number of rabbits in a significantly different environment than the one they inhabit, many of them will die [because evolution is not predictive, and any gene not useful in the natural environment will suffer deterioration]. I expect that any complex adaptation I find in the rabbit (for example, any “clever” way it evades foxes) will be largely similar for other rabbits [because rabbits reproduce sexually, and so on]. If I see any of those things not happening, I will assume I am wrong about some detail (perhaps what I thought was “clever” behavior can be accomplished by a simple mutation, based on another complex adaptation? perhaps the rabbits inhabited the other environment in recent enough times so they had the opportunity to adapt?) or that you tricked me (you designed that rabbit with extra fun genes from scratch, and now you’re enjoying confusing me, and I’ll update my probabilities that you’re lying to me).
And if I see the elephant in the room, and you tell me science, I’ll say (a) get it out of my freakin’ living room, please and (b) fascinating, do you know of any reasonable laymen intro to the “Greenelephantology” science? Nothing too technical, but I’d like to understand the basics...if it’s too new for a book, is there a nice article in some pop-sci magazine?