Remix clone Hacker News

> Rupert Sheldrake speaks of this when he says that the genetic code's protein construction genes do not and can not account for the resulting organism's shape.

> That interrelationship is similar to the "memory" that creatures such as salmon have, which is intrinsic to their entire being, not just their physical body, which is only half of our being's totality.

This is all pseudoscience and borderline religious thinking. Rupert Sheldrake and others pushing this line of thinking are not grounded in reality or science.

I’m surprised this is the most upvoted sub comment at the time I’m responding. Is pseudoscience like this really becoming so pervasive that comments like this pass as good information?

▲

MrMcCall 4 days ago | parent [-]

Well, when your science explains where the 5/6ths of the missing matter in the universe is, or where the "dark energy" is, I'm all ears.

Also, you can try to explain how individual proteins arrange themselves into bilaterally symmetrical, organ-infused organisms of astounding complexity, using only protein recipes.

I know you can't explain it, but that doesn't mean you won't try.

There is the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. For many, entire branches of the unknown are unknowable because they refuse to expand their criteria for how they evaluate the facts. Sherlock Holmes' father had a quote to the effect about once you have eliminated the possible, all that's left is the impossible (bad paraphrase, I know).

▲

Aloisius 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

That’s beyond bad paraphrasing - that's the polar opposite of the original.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

	▲	MrMcCall 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks for that. I stand corrected. But my comment was geared towards those who believe that what I am suggesting is impossible, so to them, the only possibilities left are what they consider impossible. My favorite quote from Holmes is the slightly modified one in Jeremy Brett's version of "The Naval Treaty": "What a lovely thing a rose is. There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion. It can be buit up as an exact science by the reason. The highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. It is only goodness which gives excellence, and so I say again, we have much to hope from the flowers." [The entire high-def Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes tv show series can be found on YouTube.]

▲

Aurornis 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Also, you can try to explain how individual proteins arrange themselves into bilaterally symmetrical, organ-infused organisms of astounding complexity, using only protein recipes.

The problem is that you’re conflating “I don’t understand it” with “it must be magic”

A hallmark of charlatans and pseudoscience pushers has been to find something they can claim is the boundary of scientific knowledge (often incorrectly) and then assert that everything past that line therefore is magic.

It’s a tale as old as time. Yet every time we make new discoveries they just move the line a little further and claim the magic must be over there now.

Another classic move is to make extraordinary assertions (magical hidden forces) but then when anyone objects they try to push the burden of proving the opposite on to the other person. That’s something you’re doing throughout this thread perhaps with realizing how irrational it all is.