h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The Earth started out as (mostly) a molten blob - life evolved after it had cooled enough to form a relatively stable outer surface. It's still cooling - there's no reaction keeping the core mokten; it's just fairly well insulated by the crust and losing heat slowly. (relative to the lifespan of a species...)

We have overturned the process of natural selection with the welfare state and equal rights. The less fit, mentally and physically are artificially supported and tend to have more children, whereas at the other end of the social scale they are too busy earning money and position to raise more than one or two offspring.

No, its still running in every species. In us, however, we have messed it up and so (from the point of view of the entire ecosystem) doomed ourselves. We are the least evolved species on the planet so we are the one most suceptible.

It's interesting to note that most of our scientific and technological 'advancements' have developed from the desire to kill each other efficiently...
PLT, Mick.

I know

Sorry Peet, but you're following Lord Kelvin's line of reasoning about the cooling of the earth, which would result in a maximum age for the earth of some millions of years.
In fact, the decay of long-lived radioactive elements in the earth's core - uranium, potassium, (and thorium, I think) provides the heat source which has kept the inside of the earth hot for billions of years.

Regarding the references to witch trials, etc. I massively recommend that anyone interested buy Carl Sagan's 'A Demon-Huanted World', which I read on holiday last week - a truly inspiring and educational book that's worth ten times the cost.

by the way

MATHS RULES

Anyway, mathematicicans are immune to burning at the stake. This is one of the few ways to test for a real mathematician. It's something to do with the fact that fire, like most things, is essentially composed of numbers, and the numbers which constantly radiate from us mathematicicans cancel out the flames, therefore making us immune.

Dunc !8 ' )

You don't *need* to burn mathematicians at the stake - quite a few of the ones I've known are (however brilliant) sufficiently worldly-unwise that they are capable of having a good go at finishing themselves off without any outside assistance.
I suppose the one who (until I stopped him) was attempting to remove the heavily pressurised radiator cap of his overheated car engine with bare hands and his face a few inches away would only have ended up in the local burns unit.
No-one managed to stop a (ex-)caving mathematician friend who 'went looking for the next pitch' before the arrival of the guy with the rope to descend it. Consequently, he took a 40 foot plunge onto bedrock, and fortunately only ended up with a badly broken leg, rather than a wooden overcoat.

Would an Undertaker who specialised in those cases qualify as a Mathemortician?

(Sorry...)

*laughs*
Blimey (don't worry, i'm not the sort of person who uses that word regularly) this is a long and Highly intellectual conversation that has attracted loads of people. They probably all saw the 'science is crap' sign and rushed in to agree.

Just to prolong the conversation even more...

Of course Maths rule. There might of course be several mathematicians lacking in practical and people skills, and obviosly this can be dangerous, but then there are loads and loads of people with almost no math skills at all which can be dangerous in other ways. I once went on vacation to Paris with a friend who spent about six hours looking around for the best exchange rates - and then couldn't tell from the receipt whether he recieved the right amount of francs based on that rate or not. He also thinks spreading his lottery numbers out "evenly" is somehow more random, and therefore thinks he'll be more likely to win when he does that.

I strongly suspect that any given group of mathematicians will exhibit a kind of "half-life" - those which don't fall foul of caving accidents or radiator caps and the like, will inevitably meet their demise in one of a variety of nasty or violent ways. Many mathemetiacians will spontaneously combust, or suffer the tragic consequences of bizarre computing accidents. Others may be hit by meteorites, falling pianos, sucked into quantum black-holes, nibbled to death by okapis, ruthlessly attacked by renegade visigoths (that have suddenly appeared through a rift in the space-time linoleum), or suffer agonising attacks of Necrotizing Fasciitis (sp?) or gangrene or a sudden viral lobotomy. Some may even undergo total-existence-failure.
Sometimes particluar classes of mathemeticians will fall victim to fates related to their own disciplines (in an almost ironic manner) - Statisticians can find that all their component molecules suddenly suffer from an overdose of improbablity, scattering their bodies accross multiple dimensions. Or topologists can find themselves locked in a tangled web of mobius-strips and klein-bottles. Even geometrists can suddenly find themselves going off at a tangent.

I'm just glad that I narrowly escaped from such a career - (due to an irrational fear of the square root of 2).

wohooo!
Lets set up a maths association on H2G2, a haven from people who don't know what differentiation is

Dunc !8 ' )

1.4142135623730950488016887242097.....
Scared yet?
by the way was that a joke about an IRRATIONAL fear of root 2?

Going back to your main point, if you've got to go, you might as well go in style. Being hit by a metiorite is much more interesting than being hit by a truck. Besides, it gives your grandchildren something to talk about to their children: "daddy, how did great-grandad die.."

The esteemed mr Douglas Adams once theorised that if anybody ever found out what the universe was for, it would be replaced by something even more complex and confusing

It may therefore interest you to know that so far, many mathematicians have already discovered the reasons for their own existence, an then promptly ceased to have ever existed.

I am now rambling so I shall close.

Duncan !8 ' )

After reading a book introduction me to Chaos Mathematics I have come to a startling conclusion.... Damn it's difficult. I'm going back to reading my magic roundabout books

Please do. I want in

...set up the h2g2 Maths Association, I mean. I may not be great at answering the right posts, but I can solve differential equations like you wouldn't believe

I don't believe you

My point exactly

Dare we say that we have evolved past the need for natural selection? As we care for our blind and our elderly, as potentially incompatible gene pools mate, is it possible that we no longer need evolution? Gene therapy is becoming more and more comprehensive as we cure more and more diseases, and find new cures just around the corner. Perhaps we can, after all, say "Thank you for bringing us about, Natural Selection, but we can take it from here."

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