I don't predict there is order, there is order. We make useful predictions on it all the time, like the weather. When I drop a stone in any puddle in this world I get a circular ripple effect (pattern) that is repeatable anytime anywhere there is a puddle. If I were to suddenly start getting a square ripple or any old different shape at any old intervals any old time. That would be chaos where previously we had order. That's the work of an axiom/ rule. That's how I am treating chaos and order in a broad sense for now. Ok, in terms of the article I linked, the glaring error was not taking the Sun into account? Fair enough I'll try to re visit that observation if possible. In my post though I was talking and thinking in terms of the Universe being the closed system, not the earth. Even if I was thinking of the Earth, it would still be pretty hard for me to ignore the Sun. But I take on board the observation. If we place evolution and natural selection in the context of The universe rather than it's local system, do these claimed conflicts with Thermodynamics take on any other significance - I have no idea. Fair enough, I appreciate that heads up on the article. By information I guess maybe you mean something like you or me: we're 'new information' (or a 'new pattern') as far as the universe is concerned. No problem with that. The universe is a generator of new patterns/ new information in that sense. But how does it do it in a closed system. My post was delving more into the aspects of how in a closed system with set rules that don't change you get randomness (or what appears to be). And whether that randomness is truly random. What do we really mean when we say something is "random". How random is random? That kind of thing. You mentioned QM, fair enough. I'm aware at the quantum level a lot more randomness and down right craziness is observed. I suppose you could look at this level of organization as chaotic too, but we know at other levels of observation there is order. The universe applies rules (behaves in certain ways) at this level too. That is order, the axioms in the universe are what bring what we recognise as order, or make things what they are and how they are, how they behave. Like you and me are full of information, that couldn't have just appeared from thin air, based on nothing at all. It came to be through a process of applying fixed rules over and over to 'stuff', continuously changing it to new forms. By new information, I really meant "rules" as in axioms in my post - my bad. The Universe is all about generating new 'stuff' by repeating the same rules. The article was just something I found quickly with google as a point of reference for discussion around the topic of randomness as it relates.. to whatever it is we were talking about. Oh yeah natural selection being a random thing. The human race being a happy accident, you and me being "happy accidents". Perhaps there just are not any "accidents" at all really. It's all precisely inevitable. Now of course, and I never said we did - we don't need to posit a supernatural God or what have you that planned it just so. I realize you are arguing against popular narratives and the like, so that's fine. I am not really discussing what was said prior in favour of a traditional kind of Abrahamic God at all. What tends to happen is that the Universe uses a process of applying a rule/axiom to a bunch of 'stuff' and coming up with new stuff. The 'magic' is where this same axiom is applied again to this new stuff, and we get another bunch of what can be radically different 'new stuff' (patterns/'information') we really had no way of knowing or predicting before hand. For us 1+1=2. We expect that when we apply the same rule repeatedly we should get the same result, but this isn't how the Universe works. I may not be explaining very well and over simplistically, but I can come back to it with more if that doesn't make sense.. Cool, what is this "drift" and how does it happen.. I am genuinely interested. cheers
Reproducibility does not imply determinism. You may be able to predict the weather in the short term, but that ability fails when you ask a question like "What will the weather be like in 200 years?" That's the big one, but there are a multitude. It is an intelligent design/creationist website, not a scientific one. No they do not. Life and evolution will cease when the sun burns through its fuel. I get the sense that you don't have a firm understanding of what entropy, natural selection and evolution are... How are we a new pattern or new information and a rock is not? Do you understand what a thermodynamically closed and open system are? Actually, there's a good case to be made that even the laws of physics came about from the unfolding of the universe itself. I recommend Lawrence Krauss' "A Universe from Nothing," come that he has several good youtube lectures. It's not a comfortable notion, but the universe has made no commitment to being comforting. No, natural selection is not random, by definition it is dependent upon the genes on which selection is acting. What you are referring to is that it is not forward acting, it can only act on the genes that already exist. We know this because cats do not give birth to amphibi-cats when their local environment floods, they give birth to kittens with a variation in their swimming ability, those that are bad swimmers die and the succeeding generation is, if only slightly, better adapted to swimming. This variation is generated by mutation, a demonstrably random process with respect to fitness, and recombination, again random with respect to fitness. This offers no meaningful hypothesis about the universe. Whether everything proceeds deterministically but looks like it doesn't, or if it really doesn't, isn't important. What we can see is that stuff happens and it does not appear to follow any plan. Honestly, I don't think you really have a concrete idea of what you're talking about or the concepts involved. Genetic drift is the process by which alleles change within a population without respect to fitness. It plays an incredibly important role in the evolution of anything except dizzyingly large populations. One of the most important consequences of genetic drift is that, all things being equal, populations will drift to fixation of one allele or the other. In the case of small populations this can mean that even beneficial mutations are swamped out.
I think often with words you need to look a bit deeper than the surface. Before I posted that link to definitions for spiritual, I was just going to post a kind of what it means to me thing. Maybe this is it. David touched on something that was part of what I was thinking about to write. It is an emotion or feeling or experience. It's quite easy to dismiss emotion as having no connection to anything that "really matters" or The Universe. Well, I don't know about any "greater significance" per se, but I think I go along with the idea that emotion has connection or basis in/with The Universe, even quite an intriguing one and interesting one. For some possibly an unexpected one. I wouldn't mind expanding a little on that if possible as I find it quite interesting. But I am getting ahead of myself. I think if you look a little below the surface it's like principles. This was mentioned in one of the definitions - likening to principles. The word "diffuse" was also mentioned by a poster - I liked that, it's very true in a sense. Religion even more so perhaps. But why? So to back track a little, I'll use another analogy we're all familiar with - martial arts techniques. So many of them, but what makes groupings of techniques effective is a core handful of principles. At this point I'll bring in another analogy to help explain my experience and understanding of what is described by spirituality. Love, talk about love to 100 people, ask for their experiences, thoughts, meaning of etc. and you are likely get a diffuse set of experiences. Including those that have never "been in love". We can find though, still a certain commonality in feeling, how we feel about something or not. Feelings are never like a tap that can stay on at a certain pressure for a set time, they ebb and flow, arrive and leave, sometimes re visit. True - our inner worlds are all highly subjective in one sense, but at the same time we can and do find common grounds. People madly in love will be feeling similar emotions - if not basically the same. Happiness for me, is not that different to what happiness feels like to you. We may get happy at different things, but that feeling - we can appreciate and identify what one another are feeling when feeling happy. We should be able to have that much in common. Sorry if this is all a bit scatter gun but I'm just going with it.. just talking here.. So going back to spiritual - where is the common feeling, what is the common feeling, experience or emotion that can arise from what appears diffuse? That's all spirituality really is, in my opinion. From my experience; Practices like forms of meditation (tai chi included), what I think can open the door, plus reading about Tao, Brahman, Pantheism. These things brought change for me, not only how I viewed the world but probably more importantly how I felt about it. My place in it, my relationship with it, the people in it. I felt more connected to "the universe" and to everything in it. Much can appear separate, or feel separated. Now I really think this core feeling of being part of "something bigger" is the same core feeling across all spirituality and religion. I don't think that a Muslim is feeling something different to a Christian, Pantheist same with a feeling for the Tao and Brahman or 'the absolute'. It's the same human feeling or emotion at the heart of it all. Yea, you could say it was just much needed therapy in my case! Ha. I'll leave it there.
I agree with that. But that just makes it all the more nonsensical that such feelings are used as evidence for one particular god or even branch of one particular religion. I once debated with some evangelicals in the street that were adamant that the wonder of the universe was evidence for yahweh (the name of the christian god). When really if you take that as evidence of a deity (I don't) it in no way specifies which one.
Ok. But if I had enough computing and modelling power and enough information maybe I could. Maybe it would be possible. This is probably not practical to even consider actually doing. Who knows what the future holds, but theoretically do you think it could be possible with enough information (about everything that could possibly be involved) and enough computation power? The closer you got, you would update getting more accurate. But sure predicting further into the future might leave you with possible scenarios and as you get more data, as the time precedes you final picture would get more accurate. The time factor is a big deal I suppose as so much could happen that is hard to predict. Ok, thanks. My bad. Sorry did I pretend to you that I did. Am I not allowed to think about them, mention them in your presence. call your frickin' lawyer man. Some dude on the internet doesn't know what he's talking about! Get over yourself with that attitude. I'm not here to teach preach, just share in discussion, to take part in, and learn more if possible. You know in my spare time. Like you think I have time to go take a science degree. I'm too busy counting my millions and loving my family, cheers No fine, I did not suggest a rock is not new information when it is formed. I was just trying to get on the same page. So me, you and the newly formed rock. Shall we start the party now? No I have no clue, I'm playing this by ear, as usual. Ok cool. But for them to unfold, surely there had to be a mechanism by which they did so. Did they unfold randomly with nothing to follow at all. But yes, totally this is just the sort of thing that is interesting. The something from nothing trick - Don't you just LOVE magic!!! Ok, thanks that's the sort of answer I was fishing for. What I wanted to hear, for better or worse. . So it seems it follows some sort of rule that informs it to adapt to it's environment. Something like that ? What I really want to understand out of this line of enquiry is that random process - I bolded the bits above. If it's not too much trouble, please help me understand it. Not important? I was basically putting forward the idea that the Universe may be determined - that's the hypothesis. If it were or where not, Wouldn't it be meaningful to know? Probably yes. You say we see stuff happens and it does not appear to follow any plan. But surely determinism means there's at least some kind of plan. The key word being appear. Is there things we don't know or can't see that could be part of a deterministic Universe. I think there's some plan or planning (like a bunch of rules/axioms born with/as part of the universe) to The Universe and how it unfolds - it's not really that startling or crazy of a thing to think . I'm just sort of being curious as to how far that might or might not extend. I read a really good book once, you know what it's like. Poor memory more than anything - it's not like I had to take a test after.
Gene mutation is random. You've probably got thousands of gene mutations sitting in your gonads as we speak. Some of the mutations are bad, some are neutral and some are good (with regards to your ecological niche). For example and elephant may have a mutation that makes it's offspring 2% smaller than average. This could be a bad mutation in some circumstances because it would make those offspring less able to fight for mates. Less mates = less offspring. In other circumstances that exact same mutation could be beneficial. Smaller offspring need less food and mature quicker so when food is scarce they do better than larger offspring. This is what happened to elephants on Malta (as I understand it). As the sea level's rose malta was cut off and the elephants stranded there competed for food and being smaller, and maturing quicker as a result, became a good thing. So dwarf elephants evolved. You can't predict the mutations that "feed" natural selection. But the results that those mutations "create" are not acted upon in a random way.
Likely not. The problem is that very small errors in your initial input can result in very large errors given enough time. If a butterfly flaps its wings in China and all that. You would probably need a computer as complex as the universe itself and if you're going to go that far you might as well just build a new universe with blackjack. Maybe someone already did. If you need clarification, happy to help. I'm just wondering what you mean by a pattern and information. It sounds like you think there's a difference, I'm just trying to suss out what it is. Ah, ok. Closed systems can exchange heat or work with their surroundings, but not matter. Isolated systems neither heat, nor matter. Open systems can exchange both energy and matter. The reason that this is offered as a refutation of evolution is really not a good one - within a closed system entropy is unable to decrease, but that doesn't really specify the manner in which you increase entropy. So for example, if I have a vacuum sealed flask with a battery and a light, the chemical energy from the battery will react, powering the light. Entropy increases, but for a brief, shining moment there is light. And then it's gone. Forever. No mas. Kind of like life in the Universe, eventually it'll just all be heat death. Why? I mean, honestly, could go either way. I'm not aware of any information pointing in one direction or the other. No more so than water takes the shape of the vessel it's in. Mutations occur for several reasons, but they do not occur to assist an organism in adapting to its environment. Sometimes they're beneficial, sometimes they're neutral, often times they're harmful. This always occurs through an interaction with the environment. Recombination is basically what happens when you mash up two sets of DNA, as in sex. It can lead to novel combinations of traits, sometimes quite beneficial, but again, it's random with respect to the environment. It's only after selection acts on you that you realize you got a bum deal. If there's some plan, but it proceeds exactly as if there's no plan, then it doesn't really matter. It's an unfalsifiable proposition: imagine if someone tells you there's an undetectable dragon in the room. While that might be true, it really doesn't matter and some of us have vacuuming to do thank you very much.
was waiting for someone to mention genetic drift to demonstrate randomness and how we can misinterpret randomness for selection. its pretty crucial for understanding the effects of stats on real living systems
I appreciate the discussion, I think there's perhaps more to follow. But I want to cut this short for now and just focus on this for a moment to try and ascertain your thoughts and possible beliefs. Sorry if this is too much questioning, but here goes. Do you think/ believe there are axioms or rules that are part of the universe ? And if so would these constitute "a plan" or "planning" of some kind or other. Your saying it's an unfalsifiable position, would that be all or in part - if you accept embedded axioms or rules in the Universe. By saying it's unfalsifiable it suggests you don't accept such things. That such things "give birth" so to speak to new patterns/information. Yea I mean it as the same thing for the moment and up to now. I used both terms before as if I might mean different things - but I have come to see that I really don't for what I'm talking about. Yea, I can see how we have had some confusion with my use of terms. But yes I am using them synonymously rather that to mean something slightly different to each other. If and when I do use one in a different way I'll note it.
I don't know if this is a thought worth taking seriously or not, but I'll throw it in the ring and see what comes back. Is that randomness a built in part of the wider plan used for "selection"? I'm using quotation marks as not to be misinterpreted that something or someone other than "the plan" itself is doing the selecting. It's like thinking of it as a computer program in a way. We could program a certain amount of randomness in what and how things happen. But it's just part of the program if you like. Sorry to be dragging this away from Earthly evolution to pie in the sky philosophy, but there you go..
Cloudz, whether the universe is deterministic or stochastic is basically what you're getting at. Remember that you can't have determinism and free will, unless you invoke an entity with the power to change the laws of that universe at will, essentially giving any desired event a probability of 1. Determinism and quantum mechanics can, as far as I understand it, only co-exist if you want to believe that a new universe is created whenever a quantum wave function collapses. It would still appear to be stochastic to us though. Going back to the weather, just because we can predict it a bit, that doesn't necessarily mean that we could predict it entirely, given sufficient technology. In stochastic, or chaotic, systems, you can only predict ranges of probabilities, not clear outcomes. The further into time you go, the greater the range of possible outcomes from initial conditions (ie. the weather at the present moment). Just because you can make predictions, and there are limited "rules" - which are made from the simple behaviour of fundamental particles and the universal constants - that does not necessarily mean that the universe is deterministic. I don't claim to have a firm grasp of thermodynamics, but I think that it is easy to misinterpret words like "disorder" in terms of entropy. I have more disorder in the systems that make up me than a corpse does, or even a rock, but I also hold more information. As that article I linked to said, living creatures do not spring order out of disorder in a miraculous fashion, we constantly input energy into our systems in a battle against entropy. How many pounds of food and litres of water does it take to make a human? And we still succumb to entropy in a very short period of time.
I totally understand what youve been getting at It's a deist idea that the universe may have been set into motion and therefore everything that occurs follows a set course. if i am reading you correctly: The idea you put forward is that things are not random but possibly set on a path millions of years ago during the start of this universe. the number of minor influences (e.g. molecules floating in one direction or particles spinning in one direction set on a course by a series of event from the beginning of the universe) are so great yet cumulatively influential that it make this set path look "random" to those of us observing and studying a system in isolation (evolution) honestly this is a question for the physicists. im pretty sure this is the argument regarding quantum theory and why there is only one observable universe in which we exist - i think the hypothesis is that the probabilities collapse into the most statistically likely course.
Humans are not wired up to deal with fuzzy probabilities. We cannot perceive them, so find it difficult to acknowledge their existence. We perceive and measure time by way of entropy and the effects of probability. The processes that lead there are invisible to us. I think it's natural for us, once an outcome has happened, to think of that outcome as inevitable. Before you flip a coin you feel the outcome is uncertain, but once you see the outcome, it feels inevitable.
Forgot about this bit... To quote someone I knew who was big into Yoga and Tai Chi, when describing the Kundalini awakening: "It's just drugs." This is where the beauty of it comes, for me; just because all our most treasured feelings are nothing more, or less, than chemicals rushing around the skulls of bald apes, we can still bring our own meaning to them and that does not diminish their value at all. For me, the fact that we acknowledge the objective lack of meaning, and that meaning is only ever subjective and can have no inherent value, but still we choose to invest meaning in things makes it more beautiful than a "that's the way it is, these are the things that have value... just because" religious position.
Yep. Ethics aside you can pump someone full of cortisol and watch their emotional state change. Flush it out of their system and add some serotonin and watch them change yet again. Trying to ascribe some larger universal value to experience of emotion is like trying to do the same with the program for solitaire on your computer. It plays a function in your system but that's all. Things change drastically when you have a basic understanding of neuropsychology. For example as you said humans don't deal well with fuzzy probabilities. We have evolved to see patterns because it is a useful skill. Seasonal changes, similarities in plant and animal morphology, and more, were and are all useful for us as hominids/sapiens. Unfortunately this also leads to us seeing patterns where none exist.
Apophenia! The thing for me is, the fact that we have these chemicals rushing around us, and we're even here to experience that, is more beautiful than any thought of a daddy in the sky with a plan for us.
Emotion is just your body prioritising certain behaviours. There's nothing spiritual about chemicals / feelings.
