"A Mathematician's View of Evolution"

[pgwenthold]

Any system which is free of external influences becomes more disordered with time.

The above statement has to do with a closed system. This is also the statement that the creationists use "against" evolution. Of course, they leave out the bolded part.

Yes, all true. But you are making the mistake of saying that this is the second law of thermodynamics. What others are saying is that, no this is not all there is too it. They are correct.

What you are listing here is a _consquence_ of the second law of thermodynamics. But it is not a complete statement.

The 2nd law applies to everything. Open systems, closed systems, and ecosystems. The requirement that entropy increases in a closed system is indeed a consequence of the 2nd law, but that is an incomplete statement of it.

Consider something like this: It is not possible to create a process in which the sole result is the input of heat and it's complete conversion to work.

That is a general statement of the 2nd law, and it says nothing about closed systems. However, from this statement, I can show very quickly that entropy must increase in a closed system. I can also show the restrictions on an open system.

The second law applies to everything. It is not correct to say that the second law only applies to a closed system, not even qualified.

It is the statement that "Entropy of the system always increases" that only applies to closed systems. However, that is not a statement of the second law, it is a consequence of it.

 

[Yllanes]

See: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/

Also the Bogdanov affair:

http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/archives/000017.html

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bogdanoff/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair

http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/cgi-bin/...cludeBlogs=1&Template=musings&search=bogdanov

The first link is the earliest and shortest, the second the most comprehensive.

Simply put, two French brothers managed to slip several papers filled with nonsense into peer reviewed journals. Some of them where obscure, but they also published in, for example, Classical and Quantum Gravity, a very respected journal.

This created a lot of controversy, as you can see if you follow the last link. Some people used this to criticise physics: has it become so abstruse that we can't distinguish proper research from nonsense? Actually, being reasonable, it was simply a case of sloppy refereeing. This free work scientist have to do is tiresome and sometimes one may restrict himself to correcting typos, instead of taking the time to understand everything in the paper. This would be bad if it were generalised, but we are talking about an isolated case. What is important is that the papers did not fool the community. In fact, no one had read them until the controversy broke out (they didn't submit them to the electronic preprint servers, which is what people in this field actually read). The affair did serve to make some editors take refereeing more seriously. The board of Classical and Quantum Gravity even issued a note saying that 'in retrospect, the paper did not meet the required standards' (you can see it on my first link). Frank Wilczeck (Nobel laureate and editor of Annals of Physics, one of the affected journals) has said he is 'trying to get much tighter control, just because of things like this'.

So some wrong papers may slip once in a while, even in the most technical of journals (with more reason in minor journals). This does not mean the scientific community is behind them.

 

[T'ai Chi]

We haven't just claimed the article is rubbish. We've demonstrated why it's rubbish.

You have not demonstrated that.

You have stated your strong belief for that, however.

 

[joobz]

You have not demonstrated that.

You have stated your strong belief for that, however.

wrong

 

[KingMerv00]

Tai,

I've don't think you've ever just come out and said it so I will ask directly.

Do you or do you not believe that biological macroevolution happened on the planet Earth?

 

[Foster Zygote]

Tai,

I've don't think you've ever just come out and said it so I will ask directly.

Do you or do you not believe that biological macroevolution happened on the planet Earth?

I'll give you two dollars if he gives you a clear answer.

Steven

 

[Ziggurat]

You have not demonstrated that.

You have stated your strong belief for that, however.

I'm sorry, but you're simply clueless. The article has been shown, quite trivially, to have an obvious and fatal flaw in its interpretation of thermodynamics. Therefore, nothing the article concludes can be relied upon in any way, shape, or form. That you are either too stupid or to obstinate to understand this, or even address the criticisms of the article in any way, shape, or form, is not my problem.

Oh, and you haven't answered the question about whether or not you believe in macroevolution. Stop dodging the question and give us an answer.

 

[thaiboxerken]

It is the statement that "Entropy of the system always increases" that only applies to closed systems. However, that is not a statement of the second law, it is a consequence of it.

I gotcha, and I understand. I guess my point is that the relevant conclusion of the 2nd law, the one often used by creationists, is the part of the 2nd law that is misrepresented and abused.. the part that only applies to a closed system.

 

[thaiboxerken]

You have not demonstrated that.

You have stated your strong belief for that, however.

It's been shown by several different posters in several different ways. You're simply foolish enough not to understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics, even when it's explained to you.

 

[T'ai Chi]

wrong

No, a belief was in fact stated.

Don't be ashamed of believing.. it is quite natural, a gift of evolution.

 

[thaiboxerken]

It's not a belief, Tai Chi. It is a fact that the mathematician's argument has been refuted soundly.

 

[joobz]

I'm sorry, I feel like this thread has run its course.

1.) Tai will not answer the question posed to him directly.

2.) Tai Ignores our repeated lessons into thermodynamics which clearly prove positive that the ID arguement is bunk.

So, Foster you get to keep your two dollars. And I get to go home eat and thereby increase the entropy of the universe.

 

[Foster Zygote]

So, Foster you get to keep your two dollars.

Man, I was about to raise it to a million.

And I get to go home eat and thereby increase the entropy of the universe.

You really should flush.

Steve

 

[KingMerv00]

Tai,

I don't think you've ever just come out and said it so I will ask directly.

Do you or do you not believe that biological macroevolution happened on the planet Earth?

 

[gnome]

Try some red and blink tags, I think it's starting to work

 

[Mr. Scott]

Why do [I]you[/I] think it's interesting, T'ai Chi?

Here is an interesting article that appeared in a 2000 issue of The Mathematical Intelligencer.

Why do you think it's interesting, T'ai Chi?

(his own medicine)

 

[Mr. Scott]

Suppose an engineer attempts to design a structural analysis computer program, writing it in a machine language that is totally unknown to him. He simply types out random characters at his keyboard, and periodically runs tests on the program to recognize and select out chance improvements when they occur. The improvements are permanently incorporated into the program while the other changes are discarded. If our engineer continues this process of random changes and testing for a long enough time, could he eventually develop a sophisticated structural analysis program?

I happen to know about some studies where computer programs indeed evolved and tended to support the evolution hypothesis and embarassed and shut up creationists reviewing them. Unfortunately I can't cite sources because I hadn't been in the habit of saving the publications that reported these.

One of my favorites was an experiment that evolved programming of analogue signal processing chips. IIRC the task for the chips was to recognize a particular waveform. Wave form in, true or false signal out. The study started the chips with random programs and occasionally a random mutation was inserted in a program. The chips that worked best in any generation had their programs multiplied in the next generation, and the programs that worked the worst were deleted. After many generations, they ended up with compact programs that worked better, faster, and more efficiently than the ones created intelligently by engineers. On top of that, one of the most efficient programs was undecipherable by engineers. They couldn't figure out how it worked; yet it did.

Take that, Behe.

Wish I could remember which issue of Discover magazine this was in. Probably in the last 15 years, I think the experiment was run in Great Britain. If enough monkeys googled all at once and discard the searches that didn't work, we should be able to nail it and violate the second law of thermodynamics.

 

[The Don]

Those that claim the article is rubbish should be the ones doing that. Wouldn't you agree?

I'm sorry, I thought you were

.... wondering how it got published in a reputable journal if it is as bad as some claim around here..

I was just suggesting a way of stopping you having to wonder.

 

[gnome]

One of my favorites was an experiment that evolved programming of analogue signal processing chips. IIRC the task for the chips was to recognize a particular waveform. Wave form in, true or false signal out. The study started the chips with random programs and occasionally a random mutation was inserted in a program. The chips that worked best in any generation had their programs multiplied in the next generation, and the programs that worked the worst were deleted. After many generations, they ended up with compact programs that worked better, faster, and more efficiently than the ones created intelligently by engineers. On top of that, one of the most efficient programs was undecipherable by engineers. They couldn't figure out how it worked; yet it did.

Take that, Behe.

Wish I could remember which issue of Discover magazine this was in. Probably in the last 15 years, I think the experiment was run in Great Britain. If enough monkeys googled all at once and discard the searches that didn't work, we should be able to nail it and violate the second law of thermodynamics.

Oh, damn...! I want to replicate that!!!! That's fascinating.

 

[DeviousB]

Oh, damn...! I want to replicate that!!!! That's fascinating.

But not always as useful.

For example, the oft-told (very likely apocryphal) tale of the military experiment to train a neural net to detect tanks. The net was presented with two sets of pictures of scenery, one containing tanks in various degrees of concealment, one with no tanks. Sure enough, soon the net was quite adept at picking out pictures with tanks in them. Success, a bona fide automatic tank detector! Flush with success they went and took a second set of photos and... nothing. Nada. No output with an accuracy better than chance.

Soon it was time for the post-mortum, with various military big-wigs sat around pining for the days of drumhead courts and firing squads. Still, the boffins had found an explanation.

With typical military efficiency, the task of collecting the sample photos had been conducted in two phases. Phase one: take one tank, one tank crew, one camera and one PFC; park tank in various places; have PFC photograph tank. Phase two: take one camera and one PFC; go to various places; have PFC photograph place. Simple.

So simple in fact, that phase one was completed by the end of the first day, and phase two was completed by the end of the second (despite the rain). Yes, pity about the rain. And it was such a nice day yesterday, too. Still, this is a man's army and a little bit of water is not going to hold us up!

Yup, the tank-positive photos had all been taken in one set of weather conditions, the tank-negative in another; and a multi-million dollar, cutting-edge, military research project had produced a state-of-the-art detector to tell you if the sun was shining.



Like I said, very likely apocryphal.