Have humans created/invented something perfect?
Posted on: April 11, 2011 - 9:06am
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Have humans created/invented something perfect?
In the debates I had (not here at rrs) this issue has been presented quite a few times: one of the argument of theists was that men never created and are incapable of creating perfection, so, in some way, "atheists are wrong". I know that past events don't strictly define what could happen in the future, but the question remains.
Probably it should be divided in two parts:
1) How to define "creation" (as in "something from nothing" or in "creative")
2) What could be perfect (I mean, logic comes from people, it's abstract and without meaning and perfect, right?)
Thoughts?
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lol I remember that video.
Have you seen the NSFW version of that?
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/330027
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A few thoughts re the OP:
What has 'God' supposed to have created that is 'perfect'?
Obviously humans would not be a good example of his skills.
It was once believed that everything beyond the Moon was 'perfect', but that is not tenable any more.
WE may not have the ability to create matter/energy, but we can certainly create structures, mechanisms, patterns, artworks, and so on which did not exist before we created them.
Even in the Bible, God does not create something from nothing.
It doesn't say the Earth did not exist in the beginning, just that it was without 'form', IOW it hadn't been shaped, or 'formed'.
And he doesn't create Adam and Eve from nothing either - Adam is formed from dirt, and Eve from one of Adam's ribs.
So in the strict sense, God is no more 'creative' than we are, and there is no evidence of anything 'perfect' that he has created.
So there is no argument here.
But you all knew that...
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
lol that's terrible
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
I didn't conjure up a theory.
If you have a techincal rebuttal on how a triode tube is inherently non linear, in and of itself, please feel free to enlighten us.
No, they're much just cheaper to produce, much smaller, more rugged, and don't generate as much heat.
In reality.
You know, where we test our claims, scientifically.
Bob Spence is correct that bipolar transistors and JFETs are also incredibly capable linear signal devices. I should have said tubes are 'among' the most linear signal devices.
Not that my statement is incorrect, it's just arguable. It depends on what the application is, and who's arguing.
I doubt you understand my statement, and conflate 'signal devices', with 'circuit topologies'.
As a 'signal device', tubes are among the most linear devices.
The topologies that implement tubes, can be horrifyingly non linear. But that's due to the topology of the circuit, not the devices in, and of themselves.
A SET (single ended triode) amplifier with DC voltage appearing at the primary of the output transformer, and a poor implementation of negative feedback can produce in excess of 3% THD at the output, which is a pathetic non linearity, but will be praised as euphonic by audiophiles who listen to classical music, due to the soft clipping and high levels of even order harmonic distortion.
While an OTL (output tranformerless) amp can heat a house in the dead of winter, with the doors and windows open, while smoking any SET, or P/P topologies, in linearity.
Class D amps, ICE power amps, have been around for years, but that's not salient to transistors being more linear than tubes.
The last leap in circuits that really was an eye opener, was the Class T, that was a variation on the Class D circuit.
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
and yes, the answer would be, obviously humans.
yes, but the argument here would be "only creatively: there's no real creation for everything comes from something".
yes yes, I know. I remember I've read also the folklore that leaded to those verses.
Anyway I was also asking for experiences: I think that this creation argument should have emerged here before, right?
Please, I was joking. Simply I was alluding to the fact that there are some people that are very touchy about transistor vs valve.
I can accept that. Tubes are designed to be linear and there is more of a half-century of experience in making them. No problem.
yes, actually I was referring to that. my bad.
I would still argue that creating a new structure is true 'creativity'. Ironically, insisting that real 'creation' means creating matter is a very materialistic view of things, and as I said even God doesn't (can't? ) do that.
He can't have created himself, logically. The standard response there is that he always existed. Still means he didn't create anything, in the 'something from nothing' sense. Christians are ultimately more 'materialistic' than I am - they can't even leave the 'soul' as an abstract, metaphorical, idea describing or referring to those qualities and attributes that make us more than simple mechanisms, they have to insist they are 'real', made of some etheric 'stuff'.
Heh, got to be careful about the 'robotic' analogy, the damn things are acquiring more of our attributes all the time.
There are religions which explicitly have their God creating something from nothing, AFAIK, I just don't see it in the Bible.
Religion IS folklore, codified.
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Hadn't heard of the term 'class T' amplifier, but from a quick Google it appears to combine switch mode with something like the higher-order loops used in Cherry's 'nested differential feedback'.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I did. Your description the first two times really did not say all that much about what you had in mind.
Well, you did not specify class A solid state before. With that much of a boost, how do you not clip like mad?
Again, I am not really following here. Do you mean to have essentially a diagonal line for the eq settings? Fine if that is the sound that you are going for but without a sample, to listen to, I am going to have to think that it sounds like you are going to come out so bright as to be nothing but tin.
Also, if I read your earlier version correctly, you are putting your high power signal into a limiter. I really don't get that. Entirely apart from the risk to the equipment, which should not be minimized, the limiter is most relevant to the gain of the whole signal chain. It should be much earlier in the chain, no later than after the preamp (did you ever mention a preamp?).
Not really. They have their uses. As keyboard or hi-fi amps, they are probably fine For guitar amps, well, not so much. I only mentioned them because you seem to have a thing about linearity.
I suppose that you could try to build a decent mosfet guitar amp. Many have tried but as far as I am aware, none have ever seriously claimed to have done well for the attempt.
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simply: the first the first is, in my experience, the most loud. the second is sort of a mess, feels like the cab is over his capacity. As I tried to explain, it's an ugly and confused tone, but in spite of it I've heard it being used. The most similar sound I can compare it with is from the konks, for example "29 fingers", but the most appropriate song now is eluding my searching capabilities. Obviously the amount of distorion changes the result a lot.
Yeah, and that's the point! Ever heard buckethead - 20th century boy? But that amount comprehend the distortion from the fx and the gain from the amplifier, it's all inclusive. If your are preoccupied that with so much amplification you heard too much noise or the work of the fingers, well, you are right (altough these problems can be treated).
yes
No, really, the sound is not so bright nor have the sound coming out of a tin because:
1)there's no need for much distortion, just a little saturation
2)I said to lower the highs on the guitar and set the switch of the pickups to the most muffled the guitar has
I've had problems with this configuration when I doubled the eq to +50dB/20KHz: in that case yes the sound is thin because the harmonics don't really decade in amplitude over frequency, but with only 20/30dB the result is good. If eventually there are too much highs you can cut them at the end of chain.
And if you don't trust your ears you can always examine a spectrogram on your computer or on an oscilloscope.
Last, if you want a sample, well this sounds like satriani in "always with me, always with you", warm and expressive.
noo! I'm not telling you to shoot like 100W into a limiter! Just to turn up the drive/input gain, and just if you like so. It could be useful because the level of the signal might not be appropriate, or because you want to adjust how much pressure you want to use on the strings (distorting more -> less pressure).
mosfets:
Crikey, sure they have, if not they would not have been invented. I just made a little joke because some people (like douglas self) don't understand why one should use mosfets for audio amplifiers - to me it seems a common theme, transistors vs mosfet.
Related to that:
No I don't, but people that study electronics or design circuits do.
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True, but it depends on the church/confession/cult of said monotheism. Jehova's witnesses are very pragmatic, while catholics are philosophical to the max.
Unfortunately again it depends on what current. Evidently if translators of the genesis chosen the word "create" instead of "separated" it's because they believe so or because they want to elevate that god, separating him from preexisting myths. How can you argue with someone that claim that his translation is right because he is guided from god? Anyway that's not the entire point of a belief, so there's space for confutation.
Well one of the preferred (by me) definition of religion is: a collection of knowledge and rituals that connect the individual to a supernatural reality.
and do you know class xd?
Found some descriptions of "class xd". Meh.
I prefer my design, where i went to some trouble to regulate the minimum current through either transistor in the push-pull output stage so that the maximum inherent output impedance is relatively small compared to the intended minimum load impedance.
This makes the crossover non-linearity, at any voltage swing, before application of the negative feedback, fairly modest.
Then with the nested differentiating feedback loops applying massive NFB over the nominal audio range with a reasonable margin (I think I aimed at something like 40-50kHz), the measured distortion is negligible at any signal level.
Another advantage of NDFL is that once past the max design frequency, the loop gain around the output stage falls of at multiples of 6dB per octave, so getting down to unity again at a frequency considerably lower than a conventional FB amp. This avoids the need for worrying too much about extra phase-shifts at higher frequencies which could compromise stability and clean transient response.
I had designed a minimum-current control circuit that was even more precise, using opto-isolators to transfer a signal representing the current in either output transistor to the circuit controlling the base-to-base voltage, which in turn controls the minimum current through the output transistors through the transition region from one transistor to the other. But It hardly seemed worth the trouble.
Icing the cake with the precision soft-clipping, and its as close to 'perfection' as I care.
To be honest, both the soft-clipping and minimum-current control are more necessary with the NDFL circuit because it doesn't behave well when the open-loop gain falls below a minimum value, due to either saturation (clipping) or too low a current when transitioning from one transistor to the other (crossover distortion). It also required a more precisely defined capacitive feedback in the driver stage. Earlier stages are all high quality, high slew-rate Op-amps, so their frequency characteristics are easily defined. The precision-clipping circuit also is op-amp based.
But when implemented, the overall performance is fantastic, IMHO. The visible crossover-didtortion in the output of the THD measuring instrument only just poked its head above the noise level at around 10-20kHz, at any level.
The nastiest incident I had with the amp was when connected to a pair of wide-range electrostatic speakers, because their input impedance dropped below 2-ohms at the top end, where the NDFL was still active, well below the target value of about 6 ohms. Oscillation and destruction of output transistors.
Added an LC circuit to minimize the exposure of the amp to such problems at HF.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I think of creative along the lines of functionality. A primitive uses a type of bruch to clean the floor, The idea of "broom" is a precursor to the combination of the parts. His back is hurting from cleaning& bending. He notices a stick. He sees the advantage of the stick attached to the brush and boom a broom is born. I only had a year and half of Hebrew. But I remember Genesis is better translated "At the time god fashioned the heavens and the earth it was formless and void. This seems to imply that the stuff that god fashioned /created from was already existing. So some religions like the Baha'i believe in the eterenal existence of the heavens and the earth along with god because they say that if there is no creation then he is no creator. God would be something else.
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
bobspence: well the outcome is positive, but it is a sort of brute force approach. How much could an amplifier like that cost more than a "normal" one?
tgbaker: yes, at this point I would clearly say: nothing "exists in a vacuum".
This brings in my mind another question I always had: modern hebrew and greek are not ancient hebrew and greek, right? Those culture are mostly lost, seems. So what is being used to understand what they was trying to say (in the bible)? And by the way I suppose also that their language was not homogeneus in all their ethnic groups, I mean, even the quran, written about 1500 years ago (so decidedly more recent than the bible), has words apparently translated randomly (like the infamous 72 virgins). I hope, in conclusion, that the sense of these words is not being evinced from the sacred texts themselves.
Humans ARE NOT PERFECT.
My husband had a stroke last October. He had double by pass open heart surgery in March. He blew his knee out early April - still not healed up from the by pass. If my husband was perfect, he would be the one fixing meals and I would be the one laying around making artistic groaning noises.
Anyone over the age of 40 or so who says humans are perfect is on serious drugs or totally delusional.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Maybe the "serious drugs" are rare around here, but for the delusional part there's plenty of evidence, so you should know the "answer" to our illnesses.
Just watched a great documentary by Stephen Hawking on the origins of the Universe.
He made the point that 'perfection' doesn't really exist, and it is precisely due to imperfections, ie departures from any perfectly regular distribution of matter in the Universe that allowed the complex structure we see to develop, including life itself.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Well, I just watched Pretty in pink, and I think that religion is sustained also by these films where producers insert a lot of "hope" and "perfect/eternal love". It's a lethal combination.
TGBaker: About the translation, I just wanted to give to you and to everyone interested an advice: in case you didn't know, there's a software called BibleWorks which is a biblical exegesis program with a dvd full of bibles and hebrew grammar. You can obtain it "gratuitized" it on internet.
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
http://www.ccel.org/olb/
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
What? That bodies get old and ill and quit functioning? Do you think that is because of limitations in DNA replication or god/s/dess "plan" or Eve eating an apple 6000 years ago or what?
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
TGBaker: I've never had a lot of questions regarding the NT, because like you pointed out it's well understood. Still, I'm led to believe that more recent OT version are different from what was present about 2000 years ago, and it's not only a matter of translation...
I gave a look to the Sword Project and to the Online Bible, and they seem great, but for me the problem is I don't have internet
cj: I would say that a christian theist's answer would be that we were created perfect and the evil came. Or similar.
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
Hasn't someone in the early 20th century theorized that matter could be created from energy? Couldn't this be a semi-solution (to the topic)?
Energy is matter, why wouldn't it be possible to reverse it to some degree?
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
You're confusing me (maybe because you're confused yourself?). Isn't it what I said? I said that energy could be converted into matter, so there is the possibility to create in almost the true meaning of the word.
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
I guess I'm saying that should be a common sense thing now with what we know and understand. How is this relevant to making something perfect?
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
You can burn coal to produce energy but we have not the capability to catch the energy and reform it back into coal. I doubt anyone has suggested such a thing is actually possible nor would be for some time. I suspect the sun will burn this planet up before we begin come up with this ability.
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
No - the current understanding is that matter is a form of energy, or you could say that you convert matter particles to energy and back, but the total matter-energy must be conserved, so nothing is being 'created' from 'nothing'.
This equivalence is expressed in Einstein's famous equation.
Such conversions either way occur regularly in machines like the Large Hadron Collider.
EDIT: There is a sense in which energy can come from nothing, and it is what is postulated to have happened in the Big Bang.
The 'ordinary' energy associated with electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces can be balanced out by gravitational potential energy, which goes negative, or into an energy 'debt', as the universe expands from the singularity, so the total matter-energy balance of the Universe as a whole is effectively zero, thus not violating the Conservation of Matter-energy.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with creating 'perfection', which is just a metaphysical idea in this context, and therefore not relevant to anything.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
On 'logic', it is our formalization of what seem to be the most basic assumptions we need to make about reality in order to construct systematic arguments, namely that there are identifiably distinct aspects of reality - The Law of Identity - and, that something cannot be identified as simultaneously part of entity A and not part of A - the Law of Non-Contradiction.
Labelling it 'perfect' is unnecessary and unjustifiable. Its just the most viable basic set of starting assumptions we have been able to conceive of. We don't need 'perfection', just something adequate to the task at hand.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
OK luca,
It occurs to me that we may not have had the same ideas in mind. Perhaps that was the point that we missed on.
When you connect a few effects together, it is normal to go right to left.
Speaker<final amp stage<limiter<equalizer<preamp<instrument.
The thing is that when you write text, the flow is going to be left to right. So from what I saw, there is pretty much no way for you to set up that chain without letting the magic smoke leak out. Either that or you have components that can take the abuse (which are not what you can buy at the standard LMS).
=
Luca,
there is no way the whole matter and energy content of our Universe came from a quantum fluctuation.
That triggered the process, but did not provide the matter and energy.
A couple of links that may help get your head around the idea.
http://www.curtismenning.com/ZeroEnergyCalc.htm
http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury/31_02/nothing.html
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Good, sounds like a god named "quantum fluctuation" anyway.
I'm still all about the box in a box in a box theory.
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
Maybe it's that I don't discuss about this often, or maybe it's that I'm left handed, by I don't find it very logical. Anyway obviously I always meant it in from left to right. But really I didn't use that description.
No I assure you I have common stuff, like behringer pedals. I tried a boss synth pedal we bought to a friend, a multieffect (505), a wah (don't remeber what), I tried hartke, peavy, ampeg, orange, farfisa, and one or two mixers, like a phonic mm1705, always normal things. Just once I had in my hands a customized pro amplifier, but nothing more.
Also I don't know what a LMS is, I think a hardware store? ironmonger?
Whatever it is, quantum subspace, quantum matrix, quantum field, quantum foam, quantum barbie dolls... You know what I mean. I couldn't find the document so I improvised with what I was remembering. And even then there are multiple theories, so...
The first link is nothing new, altough always interesting, and the second is related.
Oh come on, you can accept some incertainty, it's the frontier of science. And by the way there are equations, it's not a supernatural thing, hoodoo magic.