The reason why Tic-Tac-Toe is uninteresting is not because it is solved, but because the solution is something that a human being can easily memorise and play.

Chess is not like that. No complete solution has been found yet; but most importantly, chances are that a hypothetical solution would be far too complicated for a human being to memorise in full. Human players, when playing against other human players, will always have to rely on heuristics and inspired intuition. And that's what makes the game interesting, even though a computer could easily wipe the floor with most humans.

I am a pretty bad player, really; but personally, I find that the theory of openings is one of the most interesting aspects of chess. It's cool and complicated and full of subtleties. And I *like* being able to improve my play by poring over theoretical analyses.

What if a computer can easily beat me? Any chessmaster can do just the same, but that does not mean that I cannot have fun playing against people at my level.

Yeah, computers are better at chess than humans. And cars are better at marathons than humans.

If the development of automobiles did not take away the interest of running, what reason is there to assume that the development of chess programs will eventually take away the interest of chess playing?

So, by your reckoning, Classical Rome was the leading country in medical and philosophical research until the 1700s, at least?

The Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica were not written in English, you know...

Does not follow.

Isolated animal (and human!) island population tend to stabilize at a sustainable level and stay so for a long period of time - there have been some well-known exceptions, of course, but most such situations do *not* end in Malthusian disasters.

I see no reason why the same could not happen to Earth as a whole, once we have filled it to capacity (and we are not that close, actually, especially if one considers the range of possible habitats that technology is opening us - what's the population density of the Gobi Desert, at the moment?)

At the moment, the scientific community does not know how biological life originated. There are a number of competing hypotheses, but evidence is not conclusive for any of them.

But this has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution, natural selection or speciation, which have been repeatedly observed in laboratory and explain neatly the relevant evidence.

Young earth creationism, or any other theory which denies natural selection, evolution or speciation, is very much debunked; however, other forms of creationism are not so.

For example, consider the typical Catholic position of "God created the universe, and both biological life and intelligent life are part of His plan. But the creation myth in the Genesis is an allegory, and the immediate causes of speciation are better investigated through the scientific method".

I see nothing wrong with this statement (I agree with it, actually, but that's neither here nor there), except that it is unfalsifiable and has nothing whatsoever to do with science: it's a theological position, not a scientific one, and hence it is better kept in theological courses and journals: discussing it in a biology course would make about as much sense as discussing polymerase in Theology 101.

I went to the MIT with the building plans for my awesome, magnet-based perpetual motion machine, and all I asked for in exchange was a tenure position and a nomination for the Nobel prize (it works like the Emmy Awards, right?).

But they just laughed, told me some mathematical mumbo-jumbo about "conservation of energy" and "Noether's Theorem" and suggested to stop bothering people unless I know what I am talking about.

That's discrimination too. I am suing!