Science Thread (now with 100% less religion)
The old science thread seems to have gotten locked, not sure what the rules are but I thought we could try again.
Prett
Just to throw this out there, genetic drift (contains random chance) and mutations (contains random chance) are two of the main drivers of evolution, but evolution can occur without either of these, technically speaking. Evolution can be as simple as the ones that survive more often reproduce more often, resulting in more and more of the ones that survive more often (in layman's terms), aka natural selection. Reality is usually more complicated than that, though, and random chance does play a key role in most evolutionary systems.
Just to throw this out there, genetic drift (contains random chance) and mutations (contains random chance) are two of the main drivers of evolution, but evolution can occur without either of these, technically speaking. Evolution can be as simple as the ones that survive more often reproduce more often, resulting in more and more of the ones that survive more often (in layman'
Random chance within a possibly deterministic system sure - that's key. Randomness itself adds nothing at all. It's just irrelevant - necessarily so.
Random chance within a possibly deterministic system sure - that's key. Randomness itself adds nothing at all. It's just irrelevant - necessarily so.
Not sure the point of this. Evolution with no randomness behaves completely differently than evolution with randomness. For instance, random genetic mutations increase the diversity of emergent species widely, making it one of the key elements of evolution in our particular system.
That would be very interesting
In what way do you think evolution proves the universe isn't determinstic?
Is your contention now that randomness doesn't exist at all, or is there a different point to this straw man?
? Not been the contention and still isn 't
The only point to that bit of what i said is that whether the universe is determistic or not is irrelevent to evolution. It doesn't matter. it's a canard
I'm far from convinced that the bolded is correct, or that the bolded is the biggest problem with the analogy. If we searched for veins of silver on a billion duplicate earths, we would never find any natually occurring silver in the ground that looked like a mint condition silver dollar. And that isn't just because of statistical improbability.It's because the natural proces
That’s my point. The stuff we are talking about is so unlikely a billion trials is actually not that different from 1.
To make it even simpler, if you drop an ice cube in water and wait you eventually get a cup with more water. This happens every time. If you start with a cup of slightly more water, you never observe it separating into ice and less water. As far as we understand physics and math this reverse melting process is possible and in fact must occur if you wait long enough. However, 15 billion years is not big enough for this event to have happened once. In fact if every atom in the universe was a glass of water and you waited for a billion times the age of the universe it’s still not enough trials.
That’s my point. The stuff we are talking about is so unlikely a billion trials is actually not that different from 1. To make it even simpler, if you drop an ice cube in water and wait you eventually get a cup with more water. This happens every time. If you start with a cup of slightly more water, you never observe it separating into ice and less water. As far as we under
Sure, but I don't see how Poincare recurrence theorem implies that we would ever see wind and water create a natural formation that was identical to Mr. Rushmore on this planet, even if we had an infinite number of trials. That's my point. I'm not at all convinced that we have to resort to infinite monkey theorem math in order to prove that the Mt. Rushmore analogy is a bad one.
The PRT says that we would eventually see Mt Rushmore. It also tells us the time it takes is orders of magnitude more than the age of the universe. The analogy is bad because no similar math shows simple replicating molecules to complex life via natural selection is unlikely to happen in just a few billion years.
The PRT says that we would eventually see Mt Rushmore. It also tells us the time it takes is orders of magnitude more than the age of the universe. The analogy is bad because no similar math shows simple replicating molecules to complex life via natural selection is unlikely to happen in just a few billion years.
What you are saying would make sense to be if we were talking about the exact position of gas particles in a sealed container. It doesn't make sense to me if we are talking about something that was created by humans. In other words, if all intelligent life suddenly vanished from earth permanently, are you saying that PRT suggests that, given enough time, we would eventually see an exact replica of the Golden Gate Bridge.
That doesn't make sense to me, but admittedly I am not a theoretical physicist or mathematician.
As far as I understand it PRT applies to any closed system, which (assuming finite space) the universe as a whole would be covered under (with some potential caveats related to our incomplete understanding of gravity that might mean it's not applicable at all) but the timeframes involved are so astronomical that it is essentially meaningless as a tool for analysing anything in the real world. We're talking age of the universe to the power of the number of atoms in the universe type numbers. I think for this conversation it's among the worst possible ways you could make the point that Mt Rushmore appearing as a result of randomness is infinitesimally likely but it's (probably) technically accurate.
? Not been the contention and still isn 't
The only point to that bit of what i said is that whether the universe is determistic or not is irrelevent to evolution. It doesn't matter. it's a canard
Oh, ok. If that's your point I think I agree with it? It's a weird question. It seems very difficult to determine if the universe is 100% deterministic.
Yes that was the point. It's bit weird but it comes up a lot including in this thread where for example the randomness of QM came up. Fortunately we can pretty easily see that it doesn't matter whether ot not the universe is deterministic.
Yes that was the point. It's bit weird but it comes up a lot including in this thread where for example the randomness of QM came up. Fortunately we can pretty easily see that it doesn't matter whether ot not the universe is deterministic.
I think it's pretty clear that there is no way now, or potentially conceivably in the future, to capitalize on the knowledge of it being deterministic. Who knows about the distant future, of course, but anything like that seems so impossible that that almost must be true, practically speaking.
Never is a long time, though.
Sorry I didn't mean to include trolleys or D2 in the 'we'
What you are saying would make sense to be if we were talking about the exact position of gas particles in a sealed container. It doesn't make sense to me if we are talking about something that was created by humans. In other words, if all intelligent life suddenly vanished from earth permanently, are you saying that PRT suggests that, ]b\given enough time, we would eventuall
The question is why would that be impossible? There aren't too many laws in physics and the golden gate bridge doesn't violate the conservation of energy, angular momentum, lepton number etc. So under our current understanding of physics it eventually has to happen. Of course it's very possible our understanding of physics is incomplete and before you expect to see the golden gate bridge matter or the vacuum itself would decay. Of course on these time scales maybe you expect to see wholesale violations of the things we consider laws of physics in the first place.
As far as I understand it PRT applies to any closed system, which (assuming finite space) the universe as a whole would be covered under (with some potential caveats related to our incomplete understanding of gravity that might mean it's not applicable at all) but the timeframes involved are so astronomical that it is essentially meaningless as a tool for analysing anything in
I think it's the only correct way to discuss the difference between Mt Rushmore and self replicating molecules with natural selection.
I think it's the only correct way to discuss the difference between Mt Rushmore and self replicating molecules with natural selection.
Doesn't PRT basically state that given enough time / space there will be an exact replica of the Earth, the solar system, the Milky Way, etc. etc. somewhere or at some time? Or infinite replicas, if the universe is infinite? Or am I misunderstanding it?
Sure. If the universe is infinite in time and space and that something is possible that's all you need. Very possible the universe doesn't actually work like that though.
I think it's the only correct way to discuss the difference between Mt Rushmore and self replicating molecules with natural selection.
Rococo's explanation was entirely sufficient. PRT is an interesting theoretical quirk of closed systems that is at best unnecessary and at worst not even applicable for analysing something like this.
Constraining the conditions to just this Earth, an open system to which PRT can not be applied, is more than enough to determine that the probability of these things occurring differs by many orders of magnitude and is therefore sufficient to point out how terrible an analogy it was.
