cypress

So you're claiming that local entropy cannot decrease? Perhaps you'd best study the laws of thermodynamics again.

If a local process goes through a cycle, for each cycle, conditions return to the previous state. My understanding is that biological processes involve cycles. I am more concerned about your ability to apply the entropy law. You know perfectly well I am not making that claim here but you can't resist yet another attempt to discredit even while violating site rules with the logical fallacy of putting words in my mouth.

Plants growing is not a complete cycle. Yes, if you grow plants and let them decay that would be a different story but that is not what I asked. If chemistry is too complicated for you, how about if we simplify? Does the local entropy of the inside of a refrigerator decrease when the refrigerator is turned on? This is basic thermodynamics.

Growth involves additional mass and higher net entropy, correct? Your claim was that grass growing is an example of a net reduction in entropy. I have questioned that statement and you have been unable to demonstrate how it is true.

Really? Can you give an example where replacing random data with repeating data does not decrease the information entropy? Preferably using either formulas or a computer program that measures entropy of strings. Or think it through logically: are there more possible states or less if the data is restricted to repetition?

Deterministic processes do not change probability and do not change entropy. Deterministic processes have the ability to replace random data with regularly repeating data and is an example of what you asked. Entropy change is a function of the processes involved.

Good, then the increase of information is not a problem.

You are changing my words again. Random processes import small amounts of information and only in proportion to the probabilistic resources available. For example a random function that imports on average 10^-30 bits of information per cycle with a cycle time of 15 years cannot be expected to form new function requiring 1000 bits of new information in any reasonable time.

Except that it is indeed a function, and it works. You arbitrarily chose to call its function something it is not, and it is unsurprising that you find it to be non functional. This is no more than a circular argument -- you ask for new function, and then judge the new function as if it were the original function and act surprised that it isn't. You said you wanted a new function but are instead looking for improvements to the original function. So by new function perhaps you mean nothing more than improving existing function?

When one asks for new function, it is not unreasonable that the new function actually involve a functional system as opposed to breaking an existing functional system and then allowing body's trash compost system to dispose of the broken component. It is not functional and it is not new. It is a striking example of adaptation through component damage. I am not being arbitrary in insisting that a function be functional in the common sense of the word. It is a testament to the weakness of your argument that, despite the diversity observed in the biological world, involving countless trillions of exquisitely functional systems, your examples of evolutionary adaptation involve damage to one of these fabulously functional systems, to the point of death for those unlucky enough to inherit two broken genes, as a mechanism to stave off a scourge that evolutionary process are unable to defeat through development of new functional processes despite the long years this parasite has been ravaging the human population.

Also, the above is an example where your assumption of a reductionist intelligent designer fails you. As you point out, when looked at as a whole the mutation provides superior function (the organism lives) via a different method (aka new function, a "scorched earth" defense against malaria). Note however that evolution is not reductionist, the organism as a whole functions better in the environment and this is what is selected for. And not just that, but the original genes are kept too, so that when considered as a whole at the population or species level it is even better, just another tool in the adaptability toolkit, that will be automatically reduced or increased as needed (on average). Your reductionist intelligent designer is not as intelligent as evolution, in the quest for perfect components he fails to see that they must work as a whole and in various environments!

I have repeatedly acknowledge the capability of evolutionary processes to allow for adaptation of existing suites of function by damage of redundant and semi-redundant functions in order to defeat biological and chemic threats. It is a fabulous example of adaptive advantage, but there is no evidence that this process is a step or two in a longer stepwise evolutionary pathway to novel form and function. Your example is yet another case of moving the goal post and answering a question different from what was asked of you.

Let me make my argument more clear when I said Inteligent processes I meant those processes which account for the already existing functional forms and not a design process which account for the newly created novel forms. I said those Intelligent processes which account for the already existing forms must be outside of science.

I don't see how this is a problem. Advocates of design predict that one day soon, human genetic engineers will design and construct novel life forms from scratch. If and when this prediction is confirmed, design will account for pre-existing function as well as novel form and function.

I also want a clear picture of what the Intelligent Design idea claim to explain. Does it claim to account for how the functional life forms arosed with the diversity we see today or Is it just a new field of science which deals with how genetic engineers generate novel new functional forms?

Design advocates claim that life and biological processes were designed including any and all processes that allow for, enabled, or caused diversification. Design advocates say life appears designed because it was designed, and alien seeding of life on earth is but one mechanism by which it can be explained.

Do you wish to change your answer then? Or to explain what it is you meant if you think I misunderstood you? Is a mapping from design information to the physical world, the same as the information needed to design something, or is it not?

No change of answer is required. You seem to have missed the context and purpose for the answer I gave to Cap'n question.

I did the experiment in my head, and it worked as I said. You are free to try to find fault with it, or to experimentally test it with a real world experiment. I guarantee you, most of the random strands of DNA will end up as multiple (nearly exact) copies of the bacterium's DNA. Which has less information entropy than random DNA. Tell me, are you incredibly stupid or lying? Do you seriously expect me to believe you don't know what would happen in the above example?

I seriously believe that you prefer to change the question to something you can answer and then answer it instead. It is clear that you are not able to provide serious answers to the questions posed, and it indicates that the points I make are valid.

Your goalposts are a strawman. Quit pretending that anyone but you believes evolution breaks the laws of thermodynamics. Do you or do you not agree that the local entropy of living creatures may decrease given an energy input?

I suspect that even local entropy of living organisms increase over time. Thermodynamic cycles have no net entropy change when they go full circle. Living organisms operate on biological cycles that individually have no net entropy change for each cycle (not including inputs and outputs). Biological processes include irreversible inefficiencies and thus net entropy should increase. Wen inputs and outputs are included net entropy clearly increases. But this is a different question than considering the posited process of evolution. The issue with evolutionary processes is they are not cyclical processes that come full circle. The posit is that evolution drives fundamental, significant and permanent change. These posited processes of large change is the issue. Wholesale functional biological change requires new functional biological information. Where did the information order come from is the question.

OK then, I shall ask the questions:

1) Can local entropy decrease given energy inputs, or can it not? If not, how do you explain plants growing?

In a complete cycle, local entropy is unchanged. It would seem that growth would not involve a decrease in entropy, how could it, with mass increasing discrete probability states must increase, correct?

2) Can information entropy decrease given energy inputs, or can it not? If not, how do you explain the information entropy decrease when a bacterium grown in a sample containing random DNA digests the DNA and reassembles it into copies of its own DNA?

Copies do not represent any net change in probabilities of discrete states. It would seem that information entropy is not decreased with offspring.

3) Can information be created by living organisms, or can it not? If not, then how do you explain the effects of occasional mutation of a bacterium using your measure of information, I = - log(P) rather than made-up nonsense?

I have repeatedly said that random processes import small quantities of information in proportion to the probabilistic resource employed.

4) Can new function be created by mutation or can it not? If not, how do you explain the new functionality of the hemoglobin gene due to the change of one nucleotide from an A to a U, which has the new function of forming insoluble fibers but without alluding to some sort of non-existent intentionality? Or using the definition I used, that increases the fitness of the person in question within the context of malaria? Or show that this mutation can't happen?

Building on the previous answer, this is an example of modified and degraded previous function due to substitution and replacement with a small amount of imported information by random mutation. The degraded function causes the protein structures to partially collapse into a glob of dysfunctional muck that has no function, thus functional information is degraded. The presence of malaria contributes to this collapse and the spleen destroys and removes these infected and broken dysfunctional blood cells. This is an excellent example of the adaptive limits of evolution. There is no evolutionary path forward, it's a dead end.

Cypress, in past posts we had a disagreement over entropy considerations and the length of a peptide or protein that could spontaneously polymerize in a prebiotic solution of amino acids. The following is an example of a short peptide (8 residues, linear) spontaneously (in thermodynamic terms) dimerizing with it's self complement sequence. Though this in itself is unremarkable, and chemically predictable, the fact that the peptide dimer went on to conglomerate into a macroscopic structure is somewhat noteworthy.

How was the 16 residue peptide formed?

The self assembly into a macroscopic structure was controlled by the specific amino acid sequence's tendency to form [math] \beta [/math]-sheets. However, the remarkable aspect is that the macrostructure was not degraded by the addition of 1% SDS (sodium dodecyl sulphate, common denaturing surfractant) @90 C for 4h. Nor was it degraded by pH 1.5, 3.0, 7.0, or 11. Finally it couldn't be beaten by 8M urea (yes 8 molar!) or even 7M guanidine hydrochloride (arguably the most aggressive denaturing agent). To be fair I'll add that it was quite susceptible to physical degradation.

What similarity if any does this example of regularly repeating 8 and 16 residue units have to the assembly process of biologically active polymers?

Point being that information is often selected for by nature because the chemical holders of this information display chemical properties that inherently favor the survival of the information.

Natural processes seem to select patterns based on deterministic binding tendency of regular structures, only a limited number of regular structures will form based on specific sub components. Biologically active polymers have irregular sequences and form based on transcription from a blueprint contained on a high entropy carrier. The configurations are driven by formal information. Change the information and the configuration is changed. Any configuration will form. Any sequence will form based on the blueprint. However, very few of these sequences form biologically active proteins.

This oligopeptide macrostructure is chemically tough by anyone's measure. I don't know of many amide linkages that can take pH 1.5 and pH 11. No, this doesn't conclusively prove the chemical development of life from non-life but it does show how specific chemical coincidences of properties can add up to an increased stability of information.

I don't think it does. Deterministic processes don't increase information, they can't because no alternative configurations are possible and so no alternatives are eliminated.

That amino acid sequence has a very good chance of being preserved in a primordial pool. I think it is not a far stretch to imagine this spontaneously formed protein pore getting randomly trapped inside a lipid micelle of sufficient size to form an even more stable pre-life information carrier . This becomes more and more apparent as the modern advent of inclusion chemistry is realized.

 

S Zhang et al.

 

The full version of the article is available free...click on the "full text PDF" link in the right hand column.

 

The reason I am so convinced of the spontaneous evolution of life is that the deeper and deeper we delve into possible chemical mechanisms for the origin of life the more we find that there seem to be an infinite number of chemical routes to the formation of increasingly stable soluble macrostructures through mild conditions.

All investigations of chemic processes reveal nothing but the chemical laws we already know. the challenge to explain biological processes as an outgrowth of chemistry is equivalent to explaining the derivation of biological information. On this point, chemical discovery has been helpless. Until one can explain the source of this information order the progress seems to be superficial window dressing.

*By the way on a lighter note, look at this guys circular dichromism spec. That must have been some clean stuff! He's got nice correlation where [math] \beta [/math]-sheets usually look nasty from random stacking interactions. Not relevant to the debate, but scientifically noteworthy.

Yes, nice.

So answer me this: If you are willing to accept (and even argue for) that a process can decrease information entropy, then why can you not accept a process can decrease inforamtion entropy?

I argue that no physical only processes can reduce net entropy when inputs and outputs are considered. I have been clear about this. You're changing the question, moving the goal post.

This shows how, through slight changes to protines, you can end up with a system that becomes irriducably complex. I think this sort of answers your 4 step process: that it doesn't have to occur to get such jumps.

The posited changes are tens, hundreds and even thousands of steps apart, and there are no signs that the intermediate steps even exist. This is like saying one can walk across the Pacific Ocean without falling in the water because after all Hawaii is a stepping stone along the way. The video explains almost nothing. It is but another false analogy.

To put it one way, I can't jump 100m high in a single jump. But I can step up a single step, and many such steps can allow me to reach 100m high. But once I am up there, if I stand on a blacony, it could appear that I just jumped up 100m (which one could then point out is imposible).

Only if the steps to the balcony actually exist. Your descriptions are of the ground and of the balcony but never the steps. But I keep asking for the steps. Where are the steps? Where is even one actual case of a four step evolutionary progression.

I don't find anything new or revealing in the balance of your arguments.

And if that's not what you meant, why bring it up?

It was not what was meant. It was a simple illustration and answer to the question asked of me. Nothing more. Your poor attempt to extend it, is a logical fallacy.

Here's an experiment you can do: make an agar plate which includes random DNA sequences and food (ie, energy). Put a bacterium on it. After a while, the information entropy of the sequences of DNA will decrease. What have you to say about that?

I look forward to your formal proof.

Nevertheless, all are examples of new and improved function, also of new information. All you are doing is arbitrarily deciding one is function and one is not, that one is worse and the other better, without any valid reason and against any sense. The function of the organism is to survive and reproduce in an environment, and these traits are clearly an improvement in function by that objective measure in a given environment.

How is it that you are a better arbiter of what is new and what is an adaptation of an existing function than I? Improved and reduced function both involve adaptations of an existing function and involves modification of an existing plan. New form and function involves a new plan independent of any existing plan for existing function. This is so obvious I am surprised you seem to repeatedly deny it.

Genetic Load is an objective concept that addresses this question.

Well, if that is true then it is a good thing life is not a random process. If you like I can demonstrate life reducing entropy on a macro system over a long progression of steps. Try looking at your lawn, for example.

When inputs and outputs are considered entropy is increased. You are changing the question, moving the goal post.

I don't think you can quite show this as a 3D graph -- there are multiple dimensions of functionality. You'd need millions of dimensions or more, one for each possible function. Your graph cannot account for the possibility of changing from one functionality to one of the millions or more possible. In fact, I'm fairly certain there's billions of dimensions of functionality relating to disease alone (due to the way some diseases exploit a specific protein structure, randomly changing that structure functions in preventing that disease).

Can you show that the actual fitness landscape includes traversable pathways from one organism to another? If you can't you are speculating. For my part , the images served to illustrate the issue.

Yeah, all I did is demonstrate that information can increase and information entropy can decrease, which I think were kind of important to your argument. For an example of using energy to decrease information entropy in DNA, a bacterium on an agar plate with random DNA. For an example of increasing information in DNA, a bacterium on an agar plate and you count the total information of the DNA before and after.

It is not much of an accomplishment when you must move the goal post in order to make your demonstration work. You are so clever to drop consideration of inputs and outputs. Logical fallacies, I am told are a violation of site rules.

Reputation involves opinion. I said I found your post and analysis to be poor quality, that is not the same as incorrect. I'm done here.

Use personal message if you want to speak about this more.

I found your representation of the topic and your analysis to be of poor quality. I was not rating the video.

You're taking for granted the institutions of the developed world that work against people in the developing world, such as a social security card, border-control, or the capitalist market system for distributing building materials. I'm looking at it from a simple perspective of someone who goes out in search of resources to improve their daily life. If they are content living in a shanty town, they might just be searching around for building materials to improve their makeshift structure, or a shovel to dig a better ditch for drainage. It's really up to them how far they want to go to improve their situation. Think of it like settling into a campground and having to build up a sustainable life from there. Then the question is what kinds of barriers you run into. Of course these barriers are deep-seated for the people they benefit - otherwise they wouldn't be effective barriers!

Ok I don't think I have any major issue with this paragraph.

When you say "the more fundamental issue is low productivity and low opportunity in the parent country," it reeks of nationalist assumptions that everyone in the world is responsible to a national "country" which is in turn responsible to them and only them. People forget that the nationalist model of regional solidarity is a relative cultural institution, not a fact of nature. Why shouldn't people be able to freely roam the Earth in search of resources? If people want to police those resources against exploitation, that is fine but why do humans have to be kept in national regions and prevented from seeking better opportunities elsewhere?

I think you have answered your own question when you speak of policing natural resources, and by extension, a particular society's notion of property rights. Nationalism comes into play because there is a traditional practical limit on the resources and capability available to police large areas. A second explanation for nationalism is that societies only function to the extent that the individuals honor societal customs and norms. Large groups of immigrants generally do not integrate into society but instead establish sub-cultures. When the total size of sub-cultures approaches a critical limit, society as a whole tends to fail. Therefore successful cultures limit immigration to ensure that sub-cultures don't form.

When Europeans were in search of more land and resources, they roamed the Earth and harvested what they could. Why should non-Europeans be denied the same privilege?

What was done is done. I don't think that is a particularly good model going forward.

No one is claiming that evolution allows systems to break free of physical laws (including entropy) except for you. thus this arugment by you is an obvious strawman.

 

In fact, we have repeatedly shown that evolution fits with all physical laws (inlcuding entropy).

The claim that evolution accounts for all observed diversity and proceeds by physical processes alone without ever having been provided any active guidance by any intelligent agent but instead generates information order is effectively a claim that evolutionary processes are not constrained by the laws of entropy.

You have not factually established that this grand claim that known evolutionary processes account for all observed diversity. It is little more than a prior commitment you hold.

As I have explained (in this thread and in others) that entropy does not need a Source of low entropy to create a local decrease in entropy. It can do so with a sink of high entropy.

I previously addressed this. Novel form and function requires new order. Please provide a specific known biological example of new function due to removal of non-functional noise in DNA sequences.

There are chemicals we use to kill bacteria (Antibiotics), some of which have never before existed in nature. When these chemicals were introduced, bacteria had no defense against them and they were extremely effective. However, bacteria now have developed resistance to these chemicals.

Previously addressed. They do so by damaging or otherwise modify specific components that these antibiotics exploit. When the function is damaged the chemical is no longer effective since that avenue is no longer available.

In other words, evolution is a ratchet for information. It doesn't need to start off with more functional information, as random processes when applied to a ratchet type system will drive the system in a particular direction (in the case of living systems: towards low information entropy in the context of increasing reproduction sucess rates).

Addressed by reference to the fitness functions. What evidence do you have that the fitness function in play for random genetic error and selection is smooth and continuous?

Perhaps it would be most productive at this point to just look at the historical evidence rather than for you to try to figure it out theoretically. Either fossil evidence or bacterial evolution experiments if you prefer digital DNA evidence. After all, the very best theoretical arguments just simply can't override what has been observed.

Are you now acknowledging that the answer to the question, "what evidence exists to confirm that mutation and selection can break free of the barriers imposed by physical laws including entropy and the barriers imposed by information theory that constrains physical only processes from access to active information?" is that here is no evidence? Is this why you prefer to move the goal post?

The reason why this is a shift of topic is because the historical evidence tells us what we already know, namely that life is diverse, but it does not tell us anything about the processes by which that diversity occurred. Fossil, and DNA evidence simply inform us that life forms are different in some ways and similar in others.

Bacteria evolution experiments demonstrate the ability to adapt, damage and destroy existing function to defeat changing environmental threats (antibiotic and pesticide resistance are examples as is sickle cell trait) . They also demonstrate limited adaptations of existing functions to leverage a niche in environmental conditions (nylase and other single and double step enzyme and enzyme expression modifications are examples), but there are no indications of the posited stepwise evolutionary pathways greater than 3 steps that would eventually lead to novel functional prescriptive information gains required for new form and function.

energy acting on a living system. Energy is the source for increasing the information contained in DNA. Do you doubt this? If you like I can design an experiment so you can verify it for yourself.

Even random processes of mutations bring a source of information to alter the information content of DNA. While energy may well be the medium which transmits or imports information, as discussed, entropy considerations render random processes incapable on their own of increasing the order of a macro system over a long progression of discrete steps. Natural selection is posited to provide a mechanism to discern and differentiate between noise that degrades order, and stepwise alterations that could increase order. Within the range of discrete differences that represent functional alternative configurations, as defined by the applicable fitness function, in the vicinity of a pre-existing functional configuration, experimentation confirms that genetic error and selection can account for limited adaptation of existing function. However, in order to derive new form and function, significant cumulative change and new functional information is required. For this, the fitness function must contain continuous, smooth pathways from one functional system to another whereby the pathway is not breached by fitness gaps wider than the step distance, otherwise the pathway is cut off.

Here is an example of a landscape that includes smooth passable pathways:

Here is one that does not:

Molecular biology experimentation, as described above, tends to indicate that the fitness landscape mutation and selection are operating on is more similar to the one with impassable pathways. In either of these situations, a successful search requires information about search space so as to match the steps and process with the landscape. Natural selection and mutation seems to be designed (and likely contains active information) to find localized shifting maxima's in response to changing environmental conditions, but does not appear to be designed to migrate from one local maxima to another for situations where stepwise pathways between local maxima are breached.

You will have explained nothing new by setting up some uninteresting experiment whereby information is transmitted by energy and imported into DNA. The current context of this thread is the nature of the information available to natural selection and random gene mutation to navigate the fitness landscape and thereby increase the quantity and order of the functional prescriptive information contained in DNA by physical processes alone without violating entropy laws.

Well, I thought that before the industrial revolution, temperatures were relatively stable. Then when levels of atmospheric CO2 increased, temperatures started to rise, faster than ever before.

Perhaps you are being misled yourself then. So you agree that the current temperature relative to temperatures in the 1600-1800's is not and issue since historically the temperatures have been much higher in the not too distance past, certainly since humans have been on earth.

The issue isn't the magnitude of temperature rise, it's the rate of temperature rise. 1 degree Celsius per 150 years is very quick in comparison to natural rates. I mean the graph you're show works on the scale of millions of years, while mine works on the scale of decades. In short, I don't believe this sort of rapid temperature rise has really ever occurred before.

If it can be shown that even the rate of rise is not significant, then do you agree we are back to the null hypothesis that natural factors alter global temperatures over time? The long term average temperature is estimated at 17 and the estimated typical variance is 7 degrees C. By that standard, our current temperature is now below the average at about 14 degrees C.

Here is a graph constructed from the instrumental record, the black line and the various results of numerous different studies using proxies, the other colours. So, yes the sudden temperature rise looks rather sudden.

This wiki graphic is a good example of how one can "trick" the data to make a trend seem more significant by making apples to oranges comparisons. The long term proxies graphed are tree ring proxies, selected because on the whole (averaged over the globe) they tend to de-emphasize the medieval warming and little ice age particularly with respect to any rapid changes. Then when the tree data fails to track the current instrument temperature, the black line substituted to carry on the trend, the tree data is not displayed so as to not tip off the viewer that the data series are apples and oranges. If we are interested in comparing the rate of change in temperature for the current trend to historical rates of change, let's be sure we are comparing the same data type.

Here is a consistent ice core proxy that also includes the present time up to 1999. Note that temperature rates of change have been comparable over many thousands of years. The current temperature rise does not stand out, though CO2 concentration does.

Here is the corresponding article.

I'm saying that if it's just noise, and there is no underlying trend either way, it's not really evidence of anything. However, if it later becomes part of an underlying trend, I will not discount it as noise. Instead I'll consider it as noise+underlying trend. The real evidence is in the underlying trend.

Indeed. Can you identify the underling trend when one does not use data that is Cherry picked for that reason?

There's a difference between "primary cause" and "supplying information for the design".

They supply information for the design as well.

"we mapped the structure of the antenna into a 14-element byte encoded representation scheme. Each element contained two floating point values, a length and a spacing value. Each floating point value was encoded as three bytes, yielding a resolution of (1/2)^24 for each value. The first pair of values encoded the reflector unit, the second pair of values encoded the driven element, and the remaining 12 pairs encoded the directors. Wire radius values were constrained to 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 mm. Mutation was applied to individual bytes, and one point crossover was used."

I thought I said that the NFL theorems don't apply to natural selection as it occurs in the wild. Since you agree that the paper I cited agrees with Dembski and Marks, you'll also have to agree that Dembski and Marks' work can't apply to a fitness function that can change independently of time.

What you said was this: "Furthermore, I will note yet again that the NFL restrictions do not apply here." At the time you and I were both discussing the evolutionary algorithms referenced in Marks and Dembski's papers so I hope you can see why we might have a different understanding.

Dembski and Marks' primary point is that evolutionary algorithms are poor simulations or analogs for the natural process of evolution. If you are correct that NFL does not apply to natural evolution but also agree that NFL does apply to evolutionary algorithms then it would seem that Dembski and Marks' claim is supported either way.

Please see D. Wolpert and W. G. Macready, "No free lunch theorems for optimization," IEEE Trans. Evolutionary Computation, Vol.1, No.1, pp. 67-82, 1997, as cited by Demsbki. Specifically, page 68, which states that the work is limited to a "cost function" or "objective function" to be optimized (also known as a "fitness function" in our application) that is either static or time-dependent. Functions that vary depending on the current location in the search space are not included.

I requested a formal mathematical proof that NFL theorem does not and cannot apply to the case described by Dembski and Marks. Their peer reviewed and published article seems to indicate that it does apply. You have once again provided the same informal response of which I previously objected.

cite [sayht]

1. to quote (a passage, book, author, etc.), esp. as an authority: He cited the Constitution in his defense.

The use of evolutionary programming techniques to automate the design of antennas has recently garnered much attention. Considerable research has been focused on determining whether evolutionary techniques can be used to automatically design and optimize antennas so that they outperform those designed by expert antenna designers, and even whether evolutionary techniques can be used to design antennas in cases where humans are simply unable to.

They make it clear that humans are the primary cause of these antenna.

By specific, I meant "list the actual peer-reviewed papers that support this particular conclusion, rather than a list of hodgepodge book chapters, conference proceedings and actual papers that cover a variety of topics, many of which don't cover the exact statement I asked you to cite."

My statement regarding references was not to a specific conclusion. It was to the general arguments as a whole regarding the inability of genetic algorithms based solely on physical systems with no design or designer involved to self generate prescriptive information. This was the general argument being made in this portion of the thread. I provided this list of supportive references.

I dont really understand what the posters above are saying but as I see it:

 

there is no doubt that, given an infinite world and an infinite number of generations, anything is possible.

This physically impossible is still impossible no matter how may random attempts are made to overcome it.

bacteria exist in incredible numbers and can reproduce every 20 minutes.

But even after billions of years the most advanced organism on earth was little more than a bag of chemicals.

Bacteria is far, far, far, far more than a bag of chemicals.

But accoring to you, information entropy has to increase, so over the genrations as no new information is being brought into living systems so each generation must have a lower information content. This is even if evolution did not exist!

Equal or less information and information order if there is not an external source.

But, we don't see this, so either there is some supernatural entity adding in information, and if this is the case we should be able to identify the exact point in which such an entity add the information as we would see an imediate jump in information as it is added. But again, we have no seen such an uncaused jump.

Random mutations may import information in proportion to the resources brought to bear, so small changes in total information quantity is accounted by these random processes. However random processes degrade order, so these processes cannot account for net increased order. Natural selection can select discrete events that substantively alter existing function in a way that offers net reproductive advantage in the current environment but observed evidence indicates that new form and function require large numbers of coordinated, coherent, integrated changes and one does not observe pathways of selectable discrete events leading to these combinations. There is not even one example of a 4 or greater step selectable evolutionary pathway.

Clearly diversity occurred, so there must be other process involved, ones that do allow for import of new functional information, ones that are capable of deriving coherent integrated systems.

One example of a sudden jump is the novel gene T-urf13 plus associated expression and regulatory controls, and assembly components that derive and construct a specific protein that joins with several copies of itself to form a transmembrane channel in the inner membrane of mitochonria in several varieties of corn. This protein seems to have shown up suddenly very recently over a period less than 40 years and includes far too many discrete differences to be accounted for by the traditional known evolutionary processes.

We don't observe, in real time, novel form and function that would confirm increases in functional information quantity and order so past instances of diversification must have occurred through a process other than those posited by evolutionary theory.

Also, you have made an unsupported assumption here: "Information's known source is information."

No this is an observed fact. Wherever functional prescriptive information is found, and the source can be objectively traced back, the source is a mind that used stored information as an input to the information in question.

You have not provided any evidence that this is the case, only attempted to show that process can't provide information (but life is a process so if you believe your claim here, then you also have to accept that processes can increase information which is actually in support of our argument).

Biological systems contain information, but we don't currently and objectively, deductively know of any physical only biological process capable generating novel functional information.

But as I ahve shown, processes can create information and reduce information entropy, but at the cost of increasing entropy in the global system.

No, sorry, you have not, at least not without involving teleological design. Your examples move the goal post.

remember the thing about entropy is not that you need a source of low entropy, but that you need a sink of high entropy. So according to this, it is perfectly possible for a system not to have a source of low entropy if it has a sink of high enrtopy. Information can be created without a source of low information entropy because there can be a sink of high information entropy that it can dump into.

Ok, but this example requires an isolated source of low entropy to begin with, otherwise one can dump all the disorder one wants and all you are left with is a small total quantity of disorder.

In another thread you stated that you accdepted that random processes can increase information, so this statement here is directly counter to what you have argued before.

Random processes import small quantities of information commensurate with the resources. Increase information of a sub-system? perhaps. Formally create it from non-information? I doubt it. Perhaps you can show that it is unambiguously true that a physical only random process can and does generate novel formal information. I would be interested in an actual case.

The only processes that go on are ones involed in evolution, namly the copying if the data sets with variation, selection of the low entropy data set and using the low entropy data sets as the starting point for generating new data sets with variations. THere is no need for a source of low inforamtion entropy because there is a vary large sink of high entropy.

The variations are no more ordered and more often less ordered and less functional than the source sets. Most selectable adaptations involve damage to functional components and loss of order. New order is still a requirement for new form and function.

cypress, I think that you misunderstood me. The direct warming effect of CO2 is one of the few primary forcings that we can put a definitive number to. This direct effect is currently at .63⁰ and it must be there. Therefore any explanation that explains all warming without CO2 must be wrong.

 

However that is only the starting point. From there we add TSI (a reasonably well known figure), aerosols (not as well known), clouds (not known at all. After those we add in the feedbacks.

I think we are more aligned than you indicate. After considering these other effects and addressing the possibility of negative feedbacks the net effect of CO2 could very well be near zero or even negative. while I agree the direct effects must be there the net effects may well not. Since my analysis is of the net effects, I see us as aligned.

I've said in a few places that the Climate "equation" would look very similar to the Drake equation with many of the variables being codependent. Unlike the Drake equation, we know that the answer has to equal .72⁰ or close to it and we know some of the variables. So to explain all warming by natural means necessarily results in the CO2 forcing being zeroed (which is an unreal situation) or massive changes in all other factors, especially feedbacks.

Well treating the factors as additive and thus independent when they are likely not independent seems like a bit of an issue, but I am just now forming my thoughts on your other post and may comment later, otherwise I generally agree with your argument but your argument does not result in a conclusion that net CO2 effect must necessarily be significant and positive. I suspect you would agree.

Frankly I think that we have severely underestimated the negative feedbacks of the climate system. The climate system is dominated by negative feedbacks, not positive ones. The proof of this is that after more than 4 billion years the planet has neither warmed to unlivable levels or dropped to a snowball which would have been the case if positive feedbacks ever dominated the system.

Completely agree, we are almost certainly aligned and the issue may well that I did not articulate my points with enough clarity.

However, evolution starts off with a premise of a living cell, with its cellular processes such that there is an evolutionary algorithm (mutation and selection).

The debate in this portion of the thread is wether or not mutation and selection is an adequate evolutionary algorithm for the purpose of driving all observed biological diversity. I argue it is not and have provided many lines of evidence to support this argument. I have stipulated that it does produce limited adaptation of existing function to allow for some flexibility in fluctuating environments, but what evidence exists to confirm that mutation and selection can break free of the barriers imposed by physical laws including entropy and the barriers imposed by information theory that constrains physical only processes from access to active information?

The information in the cell must be considered functional, prescriptive, and whatever other attributes you want such that it produces a living cell. Therefore, even if you could show that these things are necessary to have, evolution already has them.

Mutation and selection can work with existing information and even reconfigure it to produce variations of existing function so long as information order is not permitted to degrade by any significant amount. New functional information and new order is required for new form and function. What is the source of new functional information in evolutionary processes?

That your arguments are limited to the creation of the processes that evolution presupposes leads me to believe that you have given up arguing evolution and instead are arguing against abiogenesis only. But perhaps I missed something.

Indeed you have if you can't see it in the descriptions I have provided. If you will review my posts and let me know what it is that you can't see regarding the necessity of new functional information and new order to produce the new form and function posited by evolutionary theory when it is described as accounting for all observed diversity and that diversity is described as a progression from a single living organism branching out to the ones observed today. To accept your argument one must argue that the first life form contained as much or more functional information and order as that represented by

all life forms that have ever existed. Is this your claim?

Your words Cypress: In the US, lack of a social security card is indication of lack of citizenship or work permit and is another form of discriminating between those with privileges and those without.

 

Not trying to be factious or derogatory guy, only questioning. But why would you consider the lack of a SSC or work permit to be indicative of discrimination? Do you live in the United States? And if so; are you familiar with our laws and customs?

yes I do and yes I am. Discriminating (setting some apart from others, and treating them differently) can be and is and should be legal in some circumstances so I did not mean to imply I don't approve of it or that I think it should be made illegal discrimination. Thank you for allowing me to improve on my explanation.

Man, we don't even allow beavers to dam up streams and rivers because of their destructive process. Your idea seems to be, if a person is here; regardless of how or why, they should be an equal! Could you give me a (short} dissertation as to why the rules should be bent or changed to accommodate some, and not for the majority? A legal immigrant in this country will have a SSC. You can bet on it!

Again sorry for giving the wrong impression. I do not have the idea that all that are here should be equal. I don't have a good argument for why the rules should be bent or changed. I attempted to indicate that I think the problem lies with the parent country.

So cypress, you agree then that you can find no flaws in evolution, and instead wish to focus on abiogenesis?

No. These observations and the apparent constraints imposed by physical laws apply to both.

I say this because the things you are saying here (even if true) don't seem to apply to evolution but only to abiogenesis.

They apply to changes in ordered systems generally and across the board. Abiogenesis and evolution (as an explanation for all observed biological change and diversity) both posit large changes in molecular and information order. Molecular order is a physical configuration in spacial dimensions involving both spacial and bonding affinity. Functional information is a formal configuration whereby the formal information is stored as discrete sequences of characters by molecular patterns independent of the physical chemical constraints of traditional chemic processes by virtue of the high entropy chemic backbone carrier. this stored information is retrieved, transcribed and processed to manage and control biological processes.

It appears as if 2010 is going to be the warmest year since temperature records began 130 years ago. NASA, NOAA and the British Metrology office seem to be predicting this according to this recent article/blog post in the New York Times. http://green.blogs.n...=nytimesscience

 

At this current point in time, it looks as if it's becoming increasingly obvious that anthropogenic climate change is occurring.

It is misleading to describe the recent 20 years as if it stands out as a climate record. Relative to the previous few hundred years it is high, but relative to the history of the earth it is not unusual. Historical temperature proxies indicate that the climate has been up to 8 degrees centigrade warmer than today and about 4 degrees cooler during the period mammals are known to have existed on this earth.

Natural causes have the ability to warm the earth dramatically more than the trend over the past 200 years. This is the null hypothesis. How can it be obvious that something other than the null hypothesis is occurring? How has the null hypothesis been ruled out?

Now I'm confused. Ok let's say there is a container with oxygen (Pa=100mmHg) and carbon dioxide (p=20mmHg) . Now total pressure is 120 mmHg. So if I remove carbon dioxide, the total pressure in the chamber becomes 100 mmHg. Is that right?

Yes, it is right but the context is a little off. Try to remember that although the value of the partial pressure will give you the final pressure of the container when all other kinds of molecules are removed, this is not the actual meaning of partial pressure. Partial pressure is a proxy measurement of mole fraction and/or volume fraction in a gas mixture. The reason that partial pressure equals final pressure when all other gasses are removed is because at that point volume and mole fraction equal 1 so Ptotal = pO₂.

Keep this always in mind ---> Partial pressure is most often not intended to measure a pressure or give you the physical property of the pressure that a gas exerts on the walls of a container. It is an indirect measure of the mole fraction of a substance in a mixture of gas in a actualized or real situation.

One special case of partial pressure is the (partial) pressure exerted by the vapor of a pure substance at a particular temperature in equilibrium with its liquid. Since it is pure, again the partial pressure equals the total pressure so you can empirically determine the partial pressure of a substance. This definition is useful to provide a basis for the indirect measure of mole fractions when gasses are mixed. The relationship between mole fractions and pressure at a particular temperature is an artifact of the Ideal gas law which is an artifact of mass and energy balance considerations, an outgrowth of the first law of thermodynamics and enthalpy. Total energy in a system is the energy it takes to create the substance which is the internal energy and is a direct function of its temperature plus the energy it takes to displace the environment to make room for the substance, which is pressure times volume, P*V. So if the molecules don't interact (and change internal energy in these interactions), then P*V is proportional to the quantity of the substance (n in moles) times its temperature. PV=nRT. Liquids and solids interact heavily so PV=nRT does not work for liquids and solids at all, but it does work for gasses pretty well. Ok I hope this diversion helps.

Don't confuse this liquid equilibrium situation with the general cases where you don't have liquid substances, but instead are just given partial pressures (really what you are given is mole fractions). Because most often the mole fractions are the items of interest in dealing with gas mixtures.

Ok but inside the lung there is oxygen and carbon dioxide. If I breathe fast and remove carbon dioxide, the partial pressure of oxygen increases? Why is that? When carbon dioxide is rapidly removed, does more oxygen from atmosphere enter the lung. Is that the reason. Please answer both questions. Thanks

Yes the partial pressure of Oxygen does increase because the partial pressure is a measure of mole fraction and in the case you describe, a dynamic state of heavy breathing, is not in equilibrium with the blood (a source of CO2) or the atmosphere (a source of O2) so when CO2 is reduced, and total pressure in the lung stays the same or nearly the same, then the mole (and volume) fractions of the other substances must go up and thus the partial pressures of the other substances (including Oxygen) will go up.

Edit to add clarity:

The situation with the lung is different from the previous situation because the container is not closed so that when CO2 is reduced, additional molecules of the other substances come into the lung to replace the reduced CO2, maintaining the total pressure at near atmospheric pressure.

Yes, unlikely to the point where you wouldn't see it happen even if the universe ended several times over. Still not impossible, technically, just very very unlikely, and more unlikely the more particles involved. You do realize that statistical models allow you to calculate probabilities of things even if they haven't been observed, right?

Mathematical models often do not model reality, sometimes due to simplifications, other times because the model is incomplete or flat out wrong. Just because one can devise an incomplete mathematical model that indicates a finite probability for a specific random event does not mean that it is a correct model that can be actualized. It may be a poor approximation of reality that works for most situations but fails to model reality in the extreme. How would you show that your probability model is real in these extreme cases?

In the case of modeling probability of finding all the gas molecules on one side of a container and none on the other by Brownian motion alone, a model based purely on entropy and thus the probability of all discrete energy states would imply a very small probability. A model that considers physical configurations and so also includes the spacial and volume considerations including all kinetic and potential energy transfers would almost certainly eliminate the possibility of this occurrence. When one drops the size and molecule density to the nano scale, then physical constraints are removed and the FT theorem does apply.

Thus, although statistical models output very small but finite probabilities, it is not clear that these statistical models accurately model reality. The one in this case cannot because it is necessarily incomplete.

One reason why FT does not apply to macro systems is because it does not include spacial considerations / physical constraints that do not apply at the nano scale where FT does apply. It is incomplete.

Cap'n Refmmat moved the goal post by referring to a situation that does not apply to the situation nor to the context of the thread.

If we're relating this to evolution, then we can limit our size to something like a chromosome or smaller, and natural selection can select some of the intermediate steps (if they affect fitness), and the organisms have an input for lowering thermodynamic and information entropy.

For a single discrete event perhaps, just as FT applies to discrete events in a macro system. But evolution depends on a continuous chain of these discrete events and the entire sequence is posited to include untold numbers of ineffective discrete events occurring during the process. It is wishful thinking to treat evolutionary steps as isolated discrete events as opposed to the combinatorial events that bimolecular research confirms are required for novel form and function.

In your example, the society enforces and perpetuates poverty by through class discrimination. The barriers in your example are put there by the society as a whole. This is often but not always the case. Lack of resources like building materials are almost never the issue, the barriers are more often deeper seated. In the US, lack of a social security card is indication of lack of citizenship or work permit and is another form of discriminating between those with privileges and those without, but the more fundamental issue is low productivity and low opportunity in the parent country.

Adding to timo's ideal gas law explanation, since P=nRT/V, if you have n moles of oxygen and m moles of CO2 the ratio of partial pressures would be the ratio of molecules or the ratio of the total volume each gas occupies. So partial pressures are a convenient way of describing molecular concentration or alternatively the volume fraction of the gas phase.

You are correct that if you remove the CO2, the net pressure in the container would drop to equal what was the partial pressure of the Oxygen in the mixture. Returning to my previous description, if the partial pressure of Oxygen is Po, CO2 is Pc, and the total is Pt then the volume fraction of O is Po/Pt. when Po = Pt, as it would be if you removed the CO2, the volume fraction is 1 and you confirm the container is 100% Oxygen.

poverty is the result of low productivity. The solution is to remove the barriers and allow impoverished people to be productive.

The second law is a law of physical chemistry and it applies to Edtharan's example. There is a law against the occurrence Edtharan described since his configuration as described applied at a macro level over an extended series of discrete events. Relocating all the gas molecules to one side of the box Edtharan describes would require many billions of discrete macro events, not the situation described by FT. This thread is about processes that are posited to have been made up of long series of discrete macro events thought to have occurred over an extended period of time. This is the context. To change the context to a handful of discrete nano events is the logical fallacy of moving the goal post. Your argument depends on this logical fallacy