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JerryB
Skeptic Friend
279 Posts |
 Posted - 01/03/2011 : 10:44:52 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Let's try this whole "math" thing from a different direction, Jerry: at what value of S is "mutational meltdown" ensured?
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You cannot establish a value of S for mutational meltdown because S simply measures deleterious mutations entropically in the genome. It does not measure the severity of them. And every organism has at least a slightly different genome. Couldn't work. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 01/03/2011 : 11:08:21 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by JerryB
Again, we can beat this dead horse as long as you want to, I simply did not. And you repeating it over and over will not make it so. |
Your repeated denials won't make it false, either.| I used their figures which were an average of 1.6 deleterious mutations over a period of about 6 million years. In no way could that be considered a spot sample and I can assure you that anyone other than you reading in here will be able to see this. |
But in your calculation, you only included one generation's worth of deleterious mutations. That's a spot measurement.| He was much smarter than me? Did you give us both an IQ test? And I know what he was saying. |
Then why didn't you quote it along with the other stuff?| Again, you keep missing the point. The point is that he used Boltzmann's constant to calculate entropy in the human body... |
But Schrödinger is very clear that the result is in units of calories per degree Centigrade.No, Schr¨dinger was specifically calculating the thermodynamic entropy generated by the cells themselves, and not any sort of "genetic entropy." You did nothing like what he did.| When I do it, you claim it is incorrect math... |
That's because the only thing similar between what you're doing and what Schrödinger did was using Boltzmann's formula. You and he put different numbers in and got different results. His numbers are justifiable. Yours are not, and in fact your whole argument based on that paper is self-refuting.| No, I think you need to learn logic. When you state that I did not calculate the beneficial mutations, you imply that I calculated the deleterious ones. |
Really: learn English. The above is just crazy talk. If stating that you have not performed some action implies that you have performed some other action, then my saying that you haven't calculated beneficial mutations must imply that you ride a bike to work. You're making no sense at all with this protest of yours."My concern, however, is not with mutation as a cause of evolution, but rather as a factor in current and future human welfare. Since most mutations, if they have any effect at all, are harmful, the overall impact of the mutation process must be deleterious. And it is this deleterious effect that I want to discuss."
http://www.pnas.org/content/94/16/8380.long |
So James Crow said that in a completely independent lecture on mutations, and you take that to mean that beneficial mutations are "so rare" as to be irrelevant to the question of your alleged "genetic entropy?" What did James Crow mean by "most?" 51% is "most."| Now can I get a reference to the vice versa? |
I don't even know what this refers to.| The very nature of an organism should tell you that SLOT doesn't tell us anything about it genome, since living creatures (and their genomes) are open systems. |
What the heck does that mean? You think that Schrodinger did his work on entropy in the human body in some isolated chamber on Mars or something? |
No, he quite plainly states that metabolic functions give a cell more energy than it turns into entropy. From a thermodynamic viewpoint, cells are open systems, exchanging both matter and energy with their environment. There's no reason to think that entropy can only rise in such a system.
Of course, the same applies to the DNA within a cell. Since it exchanges both matter and energy with the molecules around it, it must be an open system and so there's no reason to think that any "genetic entropy" must only go up.| Go back and read Shannon again: entropy is information. Randomness is maximal information and maximal entropy. |
I have to read the entire paper because you refuse to quote from it? |
Why should I quote from it at all if you understand it so well?What an effort, having to read a paper. Sheesh!| Boltzmann stated that information is the opposite of information... |
Little typo there.| ...and it is Boltzmann entropy, not Shannon entropy we are discussing. |
Where does Boltzmann say that information is the opposite of entropy?| Besides, LOL.....You BADLY misunderstand Shannon if you think he meant that entropy IS information. So the more the information organizes so does the entropy which is disorganization? He would have been laughed out of science |
In Shannon's Information Theory, entropy is not "disorganization." You can't claim it is, because Shannon defines very clearly what he means by "entropy." Shannon entropy is measured in bits per symbol (or bits per unit time, the two are often inter-convertible), and the inverse of entropy is what Shannon called redundancy. Sources that offer no information (like a two-headed coin, or a DC analog signal) send zero bits per symbol (an entropy of zero, or infinite redundancy), while sources that vary (send information) have non-zero, positive entropy (a fair coin flip has a Shannon entropy of 1.0 bps, decimal digits have an entropy of a little less than 3.5 bps, the English alphabet has an entropy of 4.7 bps, a 32-character teletype has an entropy of 5.0 bps, modern fax machines have entropies larger than 6 bps, etc.). Shannon gives many examples in the paper you linked to, it's impossible to read it and fail to conclude that Shannon entropy is a measure of information content, since Shannon said so himself.| Well, since I have introduced the Eyre-Walker/Keightely study that shows deleterious mutations increasing so dramatically in the genome since man supposedly split from monkey to the point that evolutionary biologists are wondering why we are not extinct, it couldn't have happened that way. |
Evolutionary biologists aren't wondering why we're not extinct, because they have an answer: sex. James Crow said so himself in the paper you're so fond of quoting.| Question Du jure: How did it happen? |
Evolution.| Then why does not the film in the back of the box show this? It clearly shows that the particles act as solids when being observed and as waves when not. That's what the experiment is all about. |
The film in the back of the box does show this. It shows that the wave function doesn't collapse until it hits the film when there aren't any detectors preventing photon self-interference placed in their path.| You've done nothing more than add the adjective "conscious" or "intelligent" to the word "observer," in the footsteps of Tipler. |
Nonsense again. And again you are attributing science to me that Tipler produced. |
Then Tipler's done nothing more than add the adjective. But you're the one defending the addition here in our forums. If you don't like defending what you've chosen to believe, nobody is forcing you to keep posting.| Tipler mathematically constructs a single pocket of increasingly higher level organization evolving to the ultimate "Omega Point" which he implies to be a god of quantum mechanics that acts as an intelligent observer from the future backward to the past. |
How does "intelligent" come out of the math? Is there some sort of algebra of consciousness?| It would have to be intelligent in order to know what to observe/not observe to collapse the wave-function. |
That's just ridiculous. Wave functions collapse as particles interact with other particles. There's no need for intelligence.| Else, the bed you sleep in could be waves and when you turn on the light switch only solids might come out. |
More crazy-talk. The particles that make up the bed are more-or-less constantly interacting with each other.| And I see you failed to define "unconscious" or "non-intelligent" observer. The fact is there is no such thing. How could a dumb rock "watch" something else happen? <:0) |
Once again, you are inappropriately anthropomorphizing. That's what the whole "conscious observer" argument is based on: the stupid common-sense argument that things have to be "intelligent" to observe. Traffic cameras must be pretty smart, then.| But how could an observer of something not be exhibiting intelligence? |
How does light know to not go through my sofa, and instead leave a shadow on the floor? Your claim is that something has to "watch" the photons to make sure their wave functions collapse. You haven't defended this assertion at all.| There is no other possibility other than in your mind. Please explain this so that others can understand it. How can non-intelligent entities observe something else in any meaningful way? |
Once again, you are trying to impart meaning where it is irrelevant.| All that needs to happen is for something else, like a dead elk, to fall on one end of the tree, lifting whatever (lighter) thing might be on the other. |
OK, I won't laugh......but it is pure hell holding it in. What would be on the other end and the purpose for lifting it? Isn't a lever supposed to be a device designed to do work? |
You're moving the goalposts again: nobody said anything about any machine serving a purpose. Some machines don't have a "purpose."| So here is the scenario. We lave a large rock in the woods. A dead tree falls across it. An elk comes along, jumps way up in the air, has a heart attack in mid-jump, falls on the raised lever and lifts maybe a dead raccoon into the air and this is how ICSs are formed without intelligence? |
No. Pay attention. You said that machines require designers. We weren't talking about ICS at that point. Perhaps in your mind all machines are ICS, but that's demonstrably false since is a wedge is known to physicists as a simple machine, and wedges only need have one part.
Besides, a lever composed of a tree branch teetering on a rock is still a lever even if nothing ever uses it as a lever. Machines which go unused are still machines. Machines aren't defined as things which are "designed to do work" except in your own fevered imagination.| Darwin would certainly be applauding you right now for that creative thinking. :) |
You thought it up, not I.| No, they will function just fine. You're trying to conflate function with meaning, but that won't fly here. |
No, I am using the dictionary definition of function. |
Then quote a dictionary definition of "function" which includes a requirement that for something to function that function must mean something to someone.| If the hammer happens to be laying on a piece of paper, then it functions as a paperweight just fine without any intelligent input. |
Please read what I write. A hammer sitting on a paper does not function as a hammer at all because it isn't hammering anything, now is it? Sheeze......are you ever grasping. |
Pay attention: nobody cares if it functions as a hammer, it still has some sort of function.| Not at all. There's no need for anything to "assign" a "bridge" function to a tree across a gorge: ants walking across it (using it as a bridge) won't understand anything about its "bridgy-ness." They don't care if it's a bridge or not, but they'll use it as one. That's the problem with conflating function and meaning: unintelligent processes don't care one whit about meaning, but they'll function just fine. |
I don't know how to break this to you, but ants exhibit intelligence too. All organisms do. |
So you're saying that when ants see a tree across a gorge, they say to themselves, "look, a bridge!" That's ludicrous.
Of course, if you impute intelligence to everything (like you and Tipler do to the whole universe), then it's impossible for you to say that anything is not intelligent. There can be no "design detection" when every last atom in the universe is designed.| I know how sweaters are designed, from watching them being knitted, so when presented with a random sweater, I can say, "I know how that was made." No science there, no "design detection," just observation and deduction. |
And I know how ICSs are designed because I'm familiar with the way design engineers do it. So when I see an ICS in a biological system, just like you, my first inclination is to believe it too was designed by intelligence. |
So you're saying that if something looks designed, then it was designed. And you call that "science?" |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
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podcat
Skeptic Friend
435 Posts |
Posted - 01/03/2011 : 11:12:47 [Permalink]
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| Actually, intelligent design is pseudoscience...that is, false science. |
“In a modern...society, everybody has the absolute right to believe whatever they damn well please, but they don't have the same right to be taken seriously”.
-Barry Williams, co-founder, Australian Skeptics |
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JerryB
Skeptic Friend
279 Posts |
Posted - 01/03/2011 : 11:29:23 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by podcat
Actually, intelligent design is pseudoscience...that is, false science.
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So, you really think that all of the science I have presented on here, from the Shannon paper, the Eyre-Walker study, math from Schrodinger and Feynmann--Quotes from Bohr, Born, Tipler and Heisenberg--experiments from Wheeler to different Universities is pseudoscience?
You must because that science is the basis of ID. |
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podcat
Skeptic Friend
435 Posts |
Posted - 01/03/2011 : 11:44:35 [Permalink]
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You're just throwing out random scientists and scientific studies without showing how that proves that certain things were created by a natural or supernatural being. That claim is not testable.
http://ncse.com/rncse/21/1-2/big-tent-camels-nose |
“In a modern...society, everybody has the absolute right to believe whatever they damn well please, but they don't have the same right to be taken seriously”.
-Barry Williams, co-founder, Australian Skeptics |
| Edited by - podcat on 01/03/2011 11:55:49 |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
 Posted - 01/03/2011 : 11:46:44 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by JerryB
Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse
Originally posted by JerryB
That should have been "loose" information--typo. And that means that in systems that are not fixed, EXAMPLE OF LOOSE: randomly mutating genes in genomes--that information will degrade over time. But you really need a paper to support this? Sure:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf
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The Bell System Technical Journal was an in-house journal for Bell Labs. |
OK.......and.........?? |
Getting published in an in-house journal does not equal academic peer-review.
Even getting published in Nature does not equal scientific consensus.
I'm not a Nature subscriber, so I don't have access to the article by Tipler, nor any comments he might have gotten about it. I can't even verify that the article has been refereed, which is a requirement for the article to truly be considered peer-reviewed. Merely being published in an esteemed journal doesn't automatically mean it's a scientific paper. Just because Isaac Asimov had a short-novel published in Playboy doesn't make it porn...
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
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podcat
Skeptic Friend
435 Posts |
Posted - 01/03/2011 : 11:58:59 [Permalink]
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Also, writing about peer review does not equal academic peer-review.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_J._Tipler#The_Omega_Point |
“In a modern...society, everybody has the absolute right to believe whatever they damn well please, but they don't have the same right to be taken seriously”.
-Barry Williams, co-founder, Australian Skeptics |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 01/03/2011 : 12:18:50 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by JerryB
What then, does this mean from evolutionary biologists (and I can name you at least three well known ones who have said this):
"Eyre-Walker and Keightley have made the analysis feasible by concentrating on protein-coding regions. They measured the amino-acid changes in 46 proteins in the human ancestral line after its divergence from the chimpanzee."
http://www.colband.com.br/ativ/nete/biot/textos/geral/007.htm
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Why don't you e-mail them and ask?
Neither I nor Dave are mind-readers. We can only interpret their words in an evolutionary context, and our interpretation is that they meant ancestral line of Homo Sapiens, as it diverged from the ancestral line of Pan Bonobo (or possibly some other Pan species), both ancestral lines originating from a common ancestor 6mya.
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 01/03/2011 : 12:18:57 [Permalink]
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JerryB:
What then, does this mean from evolutionary biologists (and I can name you at least three well known ones who have said this):
"Eyre-Walker and Keightley have made the analysis feasible by concentrating on protein-coding regions. They measured the amino-acid changes in 46 proteins in the human ancestral line after its divergence from the chimpanzee." |
What he is talking about is evolutionary lines of decent. When he says that "the human ancestral line after its divergence from chimpanzee" he is talking about the ancestral line that became chimpanzee as well. Not that it was literally a modern chimpanzee when the split occurred. I'm sure he assumed when he said that that no one (who understands the basics) would take that to mean that chimpanzees existed 5 million years ago anymore than humans did. What existed were lineages that lead to these modern species.
Now, just ask and I will find you a boatload of sources that discuss the divergence of both humans and chimpanzees from a common ancestor that was neither human nor chimpanzee. My guess is it won't help because you have found something that you think supports your view about divergence, even though what you conclude was not the authors intent. I've noticed your tendency to fight for bogus ideas once you have stated them. Just like the 101 debate, which once again you took too literally.
The idea that you are trying to support just shows how little you know about human and ape evolution. And really, about evolution in general.
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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JerryB
Skeptic Friend
279 Posts |
Posted - 01/03/2011 : 12:33:14 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
JerryB:
What then, does this mean from evolutionary biologists (and I can name you at least three well known ones who have said this):
"Eyre-Walker and Keightley have made the analysis feasible by concentrating on protein-coding regions. They measured the amino-acid changes in 46 proteins in the human ancestral line after its divergence from the chimpanzee." |
What he is talking about is evolutionary lines of decent. When he says that "the human ancestral line after its divergence from chimpanzee" he is talking about the ancestral line that became chimpanzee as well. Not that it was literally a modern chimpanzee when the split occurred. I'm sure he assumed when he said that that no one (who understands the basics) would take that to mean that chimpanzees existed 5 million years ago anymore than humans did. What existed were lineages that lead to these modern species.
Now, just ask and I will find you a boatload of sources that discuss the divergence of both humans and chimpanzees from a common ancestor that was neither human nor chimpanzee. My guess is it won't help because you have found something that you think supports your view about divergence, even though what you conclude was not the authors intent. I've noticed your tendency to fight for bogus ideas once you have stated them. Just like the 101 debate, which once again you took too literally.
The idea that you are trying to support just shows how little you know about human and ape evolution. And really, about evolution in general.
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No, that's not true. You don't know me, I will openly admit when I am wrong and will readily change my view when presented information or science that contradicts my belief system. That's how I got where I am at today in that area.
You are right, I was misinterpreting that in the papers. Case closed. |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 01/03/2011 : 13:11:04 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by JerryB
You are right, I was misinterpreting that in the papers. Case closed.
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You're missing the point.
With a basic understanding of evolution and common ancestry, you wouldn't have done such a rookie mistake.
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 01/03/2011 : 14:16:22 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by JerryB
That paper has been peer reviewed for over 50 years, never challenged to my knowledge and is known as one of the greatest papers ever contributed to science in my opinion, and you think there isn't a consensus that it walks? |
No, that paper is fine. But it's not evidence of what you claimed was a "theory of ID." Shannon's Information Theory is not a "theory of ID."| And what do you expect to find in papers that contribute to intelligent design. Do you expect them to start in the abstract: Ok, here is an ID paper on..........? |
I'd expect to find a refutation of modern evolutionary theory.| That is again a simple misunderstanding of ID. As I have said repeatedly on here, we study biology, physics, chemistry etc. just as anyone else does and we use the same papers. There is no such thing as an "ID paper" and there never will be because ID is just a different paradigm in the larger body of science. |
Well, there are thousands of evolution papers, published every year.| So, would I expect Shannon to use the term "Loose" information? No, but it has to be either fixed where it cannot degrade or loose where it can. |
But that's not what Shannon was talking about.| That's just common sense. |
Again, your article depends on common sense being wrong sometimes. I don't know why you think you can depend on it when it suits you.| So, can information degrade? Yes, then it is loose information. Then does it degrade unless energy is added into the system to stabilize it? Yes, that's what the paper is about. If you don't have signal boosters, or repeater stations (when it comes to cell phones), you are going to end up with little information and a lot of noise. |
That's not at all what Shannon's paper was about. To deal with noise, he introduces redundant information (like error-correction codes) which lower the entropy.| That paper fully supports my introduction of the theory. |
It does nothing of the sort, since you've got Shannon's entropy exactly backwards.| So does the Eyre-Walker/Keightly paper I introduced. |
Hardly, since you deny their premise.| Common descent is one. Find a Devonian Bunny, and common descent, as a scientific theory, will have to be serious revised, if not altogether trashed. |
OK, I'll give you that one. You are right. |
There are lots more, too.| So we can calculate the "disorder" by counting deleterious mutations and considering them as discreet, uniformly distributed events as compared to the genome size as a whole? How do we get from just a raw count to "disorder?" Doesn't their position matter, or is the GGGGGBBBBBGGGGG (with G for Good and B for Bad) genome exactly as equally disordered as the BGBGGBGGGBGGGGB genome (both 15 units long with five "bad" units)? |
It is when they no longer code for protein that is beneficial or neutral to the organism that the genome disorders. No need to make it any more complicated than that. |
So you are saying that the location of the "bad" genes don't matter to your entropy calculation. A mutation leading to cystic fibrosis is exactly as "disordering" as a mutation leading to brittle nails?| So quacks are symbols of an ordered genome? |
Yes, because I don't know any Chimp quacks, either. |
In my mind, quacks are definition symptoms of chaos. But that's hardly the point.| Which leaves out all of the neutral information, then. |
I suppose, but so what since neutral mutations don't do anything by their very definition. |
But "doing something" and "information" aren't strictly synonyms. A bunch of random nucleotides (high information content per Shannon) that do nothing can start doing something if they undergo mutation and selection, which could make their entropy rise or fall. Functional genes don't depend on being on one side or another of a line dividing high-entropy genes from low-entropy genes, unless you insist upon a bizarre definition of "entropy."| But their science is fine, it's your interpretation of it that I have problems with. |
Then reinterpret it and tell me how I am wrong. |
That's what I've been doing.| You certainly have not successfully accomplished this as of yet. You can't just tell me I am wrong over and over and not show me how. That is meaningless to anyone. |
I have been showing you why you're wrong, and you evaded the discussion by claiming that I'm criticizing the scientists. You've avoided engaging with most of my criticisms.| And thank you for complimenting me on being the first to extrapolate that particular study into thermodynamics. I know you didn't mean that as a compliment, but that is exactly what you said. |
Consider it a compliment for being a nutball.| I used the same formula as Schrodinger, one of the greatest physicists that ever lived. Yet you think I'm insulting him? No, you are insulting him because when you accuse me of being wrong you also accuse him of being wrong. |
Schrödinger never did anything with the formula. He said that entropy is proportional to the log of the disorder, D, in a cell (including the disorder due to heat, and due to different molecules being mixed together - he didn't include genetic mutations in his examples), and talks about how cells avoid entropic death. He never once put a number in for D. He never once actually calculated the entropy of any cell (but if he had, he would have insisted - as he does in the book - that the units on the entropy are calories per °ree;C, and that those units are important to understanding what he's saying).| Well, I challenge you to find a single scientist or paper from a university science dept that agrees with you. |
So you're challenging me to email or phone a scientist and ask him/her to agree with me that you're wrong? Why would any scientist spend time on your nonsense? I mean, there are lots of scientists who wrote highly critical reviews of Tipler's nonsense (Stenger's, for example), but you, Jerry, are no Frank Tipler.| But if he was right, and he most surely was, then so am I. |
Schrödinger was absolutely correct that living cells are open systems which are essentially generators of "negative entropy" (or "ordering"). Since you deny Schrödinger's main point, and you claim he's right, you must be wrong.| Why do you waste both our time by dabbling so much in irrelevance? When did you see me multiply anything by 1? |
When you used the per-generation value.| Everything you wrote in that paragraph is meaningless. |
Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's meaningless.| I KNOW 1.6 deleterious mutations occurred and that is what I used. |
1.6 mutations per generation, so therefore you must have calculated the value for only a single generation. Had you used the value 3.2, I would have known you were running the calculation on two generations.| And I KNOW that it won't be for everyone, that is an average per generation. It is a trend. SLOT is a tendency. Can we get off this now and move on? |
You just want to get away from having to defend your choice of using two numbers that you basically pulled out of the air.| From a biological viewpoint, that's just a word salad which means "poof." |
Then so is Darwinism, you can't have it both ways. |
Why is Darwinism, which insists on only natural processes, "poof?"| Yes, poofing things into existence requires intelligence, I agree with you there. |
Good, I'm glad to see that we agree the Cambrian Explosion was a Darwinian *POOF* or are you now stating that this was design at work? |
I've seen no evidence that anything unnatural happened during the Cambrian Explosion.| That's a possibility, but it certainly doesn't seem to be their meaning the way they word it. I had always thought that man and chimp shared a common ancestor in the body of thought. But the way the three scientists word their writings leads me to believe they are assuming speciation in the form of man from chimp. I could be wrong on this. |
You're very wrong on this. Those three scientists were writing for other scientists in their field, and not for evolution deniers like yourself.| Of course, since you're insisting that man couldn't possibly have evolved from an ape-like ancestor, you're insisting that Eyer-Walker and Keightley's methodology was intractably flawed, and so their results cannot be used as a premise for any strictly logical process (like the Boltzmann formula) since garbage in means garbage out. By insisting that gradualism is false, you insist that 1.6 deleterious mutations per generation is a nonsense number, Jerry. So, you've shot your argument in its foot. |
Not in the least bit. Because you also have to assume the above in the vein of logic you are using to bring that argument, and when you do I have won this argument and the discussion is over. |
My argument is that your argument's conclusion is that the numbers you fed into your calculation are garbage, thus invalidating your calculation and your argument. I assume nothing in making that argument. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 01/03/2011 : 14:18:27 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by JerryB
You cannot establish a value of S for mutational meltdown because S simply measures deleterious mutations entropically in the genome. It does not measure the severity of them. And every organism has at least a slightly different genome. Couldn't work. |
So then calculating S can have no bearing on whether or not humans will ever enter mutational meltdown. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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JerryB
Skeptic Friend
279 Posts |
Posted - 01/03/2011 : 14:23:39 [Permalink]
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Dave, we have reached an impasse on many of these points and your dismissive one liners are coming off as did too/did not. So, for the convenience of both of us and the readers, I will only address your points in further posts where you are trying to advance an argument.
| But Schrödinger is very clear that the result is in units of calories per degree Centigrade. |
Who cares? Have you had a chemistry course in your life? It doesn't matter if the constant is expressed in joules/kelvin or calories/centigrade. As long as the math is consistent in those values throughout the calculations you are going to get the same result.
1 calorie = 4.18400 joules,
Convert Celsius to Kelvin here:
http://www.metric-conversions.org/temperature/celsius-to-kelvin.htm
| That's because the only thing similar between what you're doing and what Schrödinger did was using Boltzmann's formula. You and he put different numbers in and got different results. His numbers are justifiable. Yours are not, and in fact your whole argument based on that paper is self-refuting. |
Well it better be self-refuting because you are simply lost in the discussion. But how can you miss point after point after point and continue to come back with these most irrelevant arguments?
My whole point is that we both used Boltzmann's constant. Now you are saying that the only thing we did in common was to us the B constant. YES> Now you get get it......that was the point.
And we both used it to show statistical mechanics, him using atoms, me using genes.
| So James Crow said that in a completely independent lecture on mutations, and you take that to mean that beneficial mutations are "so rare" as to be irrelevant to the question of your alleged "genetic entropy?" What did James Crow mean by "most?" 51% is "most." |
51% is all it takes to show a trend toward degradation. If only 51% is all he meant, then that is enough to show an entropic increase. Read the part I posted that is important: "the overall impact of the mutation process must be deleterious" Right. Thanks, James, that's all I needed to prove my point. The genome hasn't ordered in 6 million years and there is NO evidence to show it did before that. Darwinism is a fairytale for grownups.
| I don't even know what this refers to. |
I know the feeling. Our posts are getting laborious. If we are wondering what we are talking about, I know the readers are. I'm going to attempt to get rid of some of the baggage.
You asked for a reference to show that mutations were mostly deleterious. Actually, you asked for one to back up my opinion that beneficial mutations would have been such a small minority as to not affect the study, however, since I clearly clarified by inserting (IMHO) that would not need a reference.
I provided you the Crow reference. But I previously asked you to provide me a reference that beneficial mutations could have been prevalent and you did not.
| No, he quite plainly states that metabolic functions give a cell more energy than it turns into entropy. From a thermodynamic viewpoint, cells are open systems, exchanging both matter and energy with their environment. There's no reason to think that entropy can only rise in such a system. |
Nor would I, or did I ever state such a silly thing. Entropy can rise or fall in an open system. You have to calculate it to know what it's doing. I did. It's rising in the genome.
Now Eyre-Walker is having to spend his time explaining away what his study showed"
"Mutational meltdown is the process by which as harmful mutations accumulate in a population, those harmful mutations, because they reduce things like fertility, can actually lead to a reduction in the population size. As soon as the population size has reduced, that actually increases the rate at which harmful mutations accumulate in the population. And of course as more accumulate the population size becomes depressed, that leads to the faster accumulation of harmful mutations and you can reach a critical point where those two processes basically snowball, you have positive feedback and eventually the population just becomes extinct.
Whether we are likely to go through that mutational meltdown I very much doubt it. It’s much more likely that what will happen is that we accumulate mutations through improved living conditions, modern medicine, and then if those sort of props are removed then we may find ourselves in a rather sorry state. But it’s always very important to remember that this is only true of the developed world. The developing world natural selection is much much more potent, selection is not relaxed anything like to the same extent as it is in the developed world."
Regardless of our difference in opinions, you will enjoy the read:
http://www.open2.net/healtheducation/body_mind/two_evolution2.html
| In Shannon's Information Theory, entropy is not "disorganization." You can't claim it is, because Shannon defines very clearly what he means by "entropy." Shannon entropy is measured in bits per symbol (or bits per unit time, the two are often inter-convertible), and the inverse of entropy is what Shannon called redundancy. Sources that offer no information (like a two-headed coin, or a DC analog signal) send zero bits per symbol (an entropy of zero, or infinite redundancy), while sources that vary (send information) have non-zero, positive entropy (a fair coin flip has a Shannon entropy of 1.0 bps, decimal digits have an entropy of a little less than 3.5 bps, the English alphabet has an entropy of 4.7 bps, a 32-character teletype has an entropy of 5.0 bps, modern fax machines have entropies larger than 6 bps, etc.). Shannon gives many examples in the paper you linked to, it's impossible to read it and fail to conclude that Shannon entropy is a measure of information content, since Shannon said so himself. |
I only posted that paper to show you that loose information will degrade over time. You asked for a reference, I gave you one.
Now here you go talking about bits per unit time, coin flips, entropy of the alphabet, teletype machines and absolutely nothing relative to what we are actually discussing: Botzmann entropy (or Feynman if you don't want joules/kelvin. doesn't matter to me).
Can you please stay on topic?
| Evolutionary biologists aren't wondering why we're not extinct, because they have an answer: sex. James Crow said so himself in the paper you're so fond of quoting. |
OK, true.
This answer to the question of how man and chimp spring from a common ancestor doesn't cut it. I assume you mean evolution via random mutation? Well, I have posted innumerable times references that show the genome degrading, so it WASN'T that type of evolution. Give me a step by step scenario, please.
| The film in the back of the box does show this. It shows that the wave function doesn't collapse until it hits the film when there aren't any detectors preventing photon self-interference placed in their path. |
What? No it doesn't, reference please. The only way to know it collapsed or not is via the film. It collapse or doesn't when it goes through the slits. You are lost. Just post a reference and we can go from there.
| Then Tipler's done nothing more than add the adjective. But you're the one defending the addition here in our forums. If you don't like defending what you've chosen to believe, nobody is forcing you to keep posting. |
Oh, I don't mind defending anything I have contributed here. I simply don't like it when disingenuous posters make it up as they go. Tipler added NOTHING. That was the way his original publication read. You claim he added it later....reference, please.
| More crazy-talk. The particles that make up the bed are more-or-less constantly interacting with each other. |
OK, and.........what? What does that have to do with anything?
| Once again, you are inappropriately anthropomorphizing. That's what the whole "conscious observer" argument is based on: the stupid common-sense argument that things have to be "intelligent" to observe. Traffic cameras must be pretty smart, then. |
It is not the traffic cameras that observe anything. They are simple recorders of events which are later observed by humans.
| How does light know to not go through my sofa, and instead leave a shadow on the floor? Your claim is that something has to "watch" the photons to make sure their wave functions collapse. You haven't defended this assertion at all. |
Well, duh.....the sofa either absorbs or reflects the light depending on it's color and the rest of the light goes on the floor. That's what causes your shadow. This is 3rd grade science, but it has you stumped?
And, here you go again, attributing the results of the double slit experiments to me. Thanks! But I cannot accept the credit for those. Please re-read those and you will find that it takes a conscious observer to collapse the wave function.
| Once again, you are trying to impart meaning where it is irrelevant. |
No, I'm not going to let you blow that off with a one-liner. Please define an unconscious observer. If you cannot, you have simply lost this part of the debate.
| You're moving the goalposts again: nobody said anything about any machine serving a purpose. Some machines don't have a "purpose." |
What machines do not have a purpose? And you are the one discussing machines, I was talking about the ICS.
| No. Pay attention. You said that machines require designers. |
No, you pay attention. I stated that ICSs require designers.
| We weren't talking about ICS at that point. Perhaps in your mind all machines are ICS, but that's demonstrably false since is a wedge is known to physicists as a simple machine, and wedges only need have one part. |
Wow, maybe this discussion is stressing you too much. You are not aware of the fact that we were discussing ICSs defined as a system of well matched parts wherein if one part is removed the system can no longer function?
And a wedge is not a machine, it is a tool.
| Besides, a lever composed of a tree branch teetering on a rock is still a lever even if nothing ever uses it as a lever. |
No it isn't except in your mid, it is a tree sitting on a rock.
| Pay attention: nobody cares if it functions as a hammer, it still has some sort of function. |
I care if it functions as a hammer because I stipulated that in my analogy. Go re-read it. I could care less that you can wipe your butt with it.
So you're saying that when ants see a tree across a gorge, they say to themselves, "look, a bridge!" That's ludicrous.
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No last time I checked, ants can't talk. But they certainly exhibit intelligence and they will always find the best and shortest way to the cupboard.
| Of course, if you impute intelligence to everything (like you and Tipler do to the whole universe), then it's impossible for you to say that anything is not intelligent. There can be no "design detection" when every last atom in the universe is designed. |
Well, you'll have to ask Tipler for his opinion on that. As for me, I don't see intelligence in everything, I see it only when it is there. Ever heard the adage dumber than a box of rocks? No intelligence there, I'm afraid.
And every atom in the universe is NOT designed.
So you're saying that if something looks designed, then it was designed. And you call that "science?"
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No, that's what you said about your sweater. |
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JerryB
Skeptic Friend
279 Posts |
Posted - 01/03/2011 : 14:33:00 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by JerryB
You cannot establish a value of S for mutational meltdown because S simply measures deleterious mutations entropically in the genome. It does not measure the severity of them. And every organism has at least a slightly different genome. Couldn't work. |
So then calculating S can have no bearing on whether or not humans will ever enter mutational meltdown.
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To my knowledge, no studies have been done in that area. Just like you, I don't know, but doesn't look like that would work to me. Of course, I could be wrong. |
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Intelligent Design is Stupid
