Mr Skeptic Posted December 20, 2010 Posted December 20, 2010 The answer depends on how one defines "a system" and that is why a "yes or no" answer would be misleading. Traditionally the system includes inputs and outputs, as you have implied, and thus the answer is as I have now given it twice. This is now the third time: Entropy change of a system is zero or greater when physical processes only are in play for the situations you describe when all parts of the system and inputs and outputs are included . No, I don't want you broadening the question to include things I haven't, neither in time nor in space. A system means nothing more than a part of the universe that I'm talking about, and everything else is the environment. I ask whether entropy can decrease in a system and again you answer that entropy will in increase in the universe. I'm not asking about the universe, I'm asking about the system. Please read and learn what a system is: http://en.wikipedia....Physical_system But I'll try to be extremely clear. Suppose you have a system defined as such: a volume of air of 1 cubic meter, enclosed by the walls of a refrigerator, which is not turned on, all at room temperature and in equilibrium with the environment. You turn the refrigerator on. Does the entropy of the system (1 cubic meter of air) decrease within the next 30 minutes, or does it not? Please refrain from trying to include in your answer anything other than what I have specified, 1 cubic meter of air within 30 minutes of turning on the refrigerator. Equal or greater. Plant growth is largely a deterministic process carefully managed and controlled by process that follow prescriptive instruction sets. OK then, my proof: Take a plant, lets say with a mass m. Burn the plant in a heat engine and check how much work you get out of it; this will be proportional to the mass. Now suppose the plant were to grow to a mass of 2m. Burning the same plant would yield twice the work (assuming consistent composition). Thus after plant growth there is more available energy for doing work, proving that entropy has decreased. If you don't know what entropy is, you can read up on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy Personally, I find it surprising that you would think that an isolated container containing plants and materials needed for plants to grow would result in plants growing despite lack of sunlight rather than decaying (ie entropy increasing in an isolated system as required by the laws of thermodynamics). The change in entropy is zero for deterministic processes. Absolute entropy remains at its previous value. I m not confused, but you seem to be. Reread my previous statement. Reread my statement. It seems that you continually attempt to change what I am saying. Entropy law defines the direction of flow for system events that are guided by physical processes. Random processes will drive ordered systems to the state of highest probability over time. A single macro event driven by a random process involving large numbers of discrete micro events will result in a net entropy change of zero or greater. A deterministic process has only one outcome and a probability of 1 so no change in entropy occurs. Here again I speak of change in entropy while you wish to imply I speak of absolute entropy values. I asked you for the formula you said you used, could you provide that? And if a random process increases entropy (changes a state to one of higher probability) but a deterministic process changes the state back to the original without decreasing entropy, that doesn't seem to add up. Hence why I suspected that you confused change in entropy and total entropy, and why I asked for your formula to verify whether that is the case. Random process can import information, I have stipulated this months ago and repeated that in the previous post. You have added nothing to this understanding. I do not see where information was created. It's "created" if you consider the system in isolation, its "imported" if you consider the system with the surroundings and consider random interactions to be information. It makes no difference to my arguments, since either way information in a system (eg DNA) can increase, and we can agree on that. If it is "extremely likely to have happened" then the precursors will have happened millions of times over in experimental biology over the past 50 years. . Probability theory and entropy considerations on the other hand inform us that it does not happen by the posited processes. Other processes must be involved. What is extremely likely to have happened anywhere on earth in 4 billion years does not necessarily translate to extremely likely to have happened while a human is looking. When one sees a fallen tree in a forest one develops a hypothesis for how it may have gotten that way and then sets up a repeatable experiment to test the hypothesis. When the experiments confirm the hypothesis, one declares with a high degree of confidence that they understand how fallen trees become so. It is similar with evolution, you observe a limited subset of what happens to some of the millions of species over billions of years, and infer the rest. The difference is that trees fall in a few seconds rather than billions of years, which makes it easier to observe. But with a knowledge of gravity it is not even necessary to observe trees falling (I hadn't seen a tree fall for the first decade or so of my life, and I still understood how they fell), to know exactly why they fall. Using gravity and physics models one could simulate a tree falling and show similar effects to those observed in the fallen tree, and deduce that the tree must have fallen even without seeing any actual trees fall. Of course it matters. why? We are debating How it happened not that it happened. Once again you commit a logical fallacy. Are there different rules for staff members on this site? I thought we were debating whether it is likely for evolution to have happened? It is relevant because the debate centers around the process, not the fact of its existence. Since the researchers directed the mutations, and since design directed mutations are specifically excluded from your posit, one cannot conclude that random mutation and natural selection is able to accomplish what this experiment accomplished. It is apples and oranges to make this claim, and yet another logical fallacy. All this shows is you have a complete lack of understanding of statistics. The researchers need only show that the difference is slight and logic demands that it must have happened via evolution or even just random mutation. But you don't know how the changes occurred in nature..... I see. Of course I know. It happened via mutation. Keep in mind the protein in question occurs in eukaryotes and has homologues in bacteria as well. There's plenty of opportunity for mutation of two specific amino acids (it is the function we are talking about not some specific rat in some scientist's lab, just in case you're wondering). If that's too hard for you, it turns out that the very same protein can be changed to/from a protein acting on ATP instead of GTP: As a step towards understanding evolution and function of class III cyclases, enzymes displaying significant guanylyl cyclase activity having evolved from an adenylate cyclase ancestor were isolated. A single amino-acid residue change (GDTVN to GDTIN), in the region of the fourth alpha-helix of the catalytic core, altered the nucleotide specificity of the enzyme. This corresponds to a pocket situated in a region of the protein that is invoved in accomodation of the heterocyclic base. Keep in mind our discussion about not seeing a tree fall but still being able to tell that it must have fallen.
Edtharan Posted December 20, 2010 Posted December 20, 2010 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. Again, you keep making the same mistakes. Replicating systems have exponential growth. Let us assume that each of these bits of information provide a selective advantage (if they didn't they wouldn't be inforamtion in your eyes, and as you have called them information then they must confer some advantage). Using a generation time of 15 years, how long will it take to get 1000 bits of information? Starting with a population of 1000 and doubling every 15 years: Generation 1: 2,000 Generation 2: 4,000 Generation 3: 8,000 Generation 4: 16,000 Generation 5: 32,000 Generation 5: 64,000 Generation 7: 128,000 Generation 8: 256,000 Generation 9: 512,000 Generation 10: 1,024,000 Generation 11: 2,048,000 Generation 12: 4,096,000 Generation 13: 8,192,000 Generation 14: 16,384,000 Generation 15: 32,768,000 Generation 16: 65,536,000 Generation 17: 131,072,000 Generation 18: 262,144,000 Generation 19: 524,288,000 Generation 20: 1,048,576,000 Generation 21: 2,097,152,000 Generation 22: 4,194,304,000 Generation 23: 8,388,608,000 Generation 24: 16,777,216,000 Generation 25: 33,554,432,000 Generation 26: 67,108,864,000 Generation 27: 134,217,728,000 Generation 28: 268,435,456,000 Generation 29: 536,870,912,000 Generation 30: 1,073,741,824,000 So after 30 generation, or 450 years, the population has grown to over 1 million million (1012). After 60 more generations (90 generations in total), we end up with: 1,237,940,039,285,380,274,899,124,224,000 with is you 1030 value. So, every 1350 years you would expect at least one "bit" of information to be added through random chance alone. So, using this as a base line, to get your 1000 bits, it would take 1000 of these 1350 years, or 1,350,000 years. As the Earth has been around for far long than this it is trivial that such increases are feasable, and in reasonable amounts of time too. 10-30 generations for a single change is an extremely low mutation rate. Each generation of humans have severl mutations in their genes (not just recombined genes between parents, but actual mutations that neither partent had). So your estimation was clearly an attempt to ridicule how random processes can build up over time. But, as you forgot to take into account the fact that reproducing systems have exponential population growth, and that with large populations such random events with a low probability actually end up as an almost certainty, your attempt at ridicule fails because of some very fundamental errors. It is in fact, not ridiculous that you could get thouse 1000 specific mutations in a reasonable time.
Mr Skeptic Posted December 20, 2010 Posted December 20, 2010 Edtharan, populations follow more like the logistic growth, not exponential. As you said, there's really no excuse for the number he suggested. But let's leave all the cheating to the other side, OK? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function
cypress Posted December 21, 2010 Posted December 21, 2010 No, I don't want you broadening the question to include things I haven't, neither in time nor in space. A system means nothing more than a part of the universe that I'm talking about, and everything else is the environment. I ask whether entropy can decrease in a system and again you answer that entropy will in increase in the universe. I'm not asking about the universe, I'm asking about the system. Please read and learn what a system is: http://en.wikipedia....Physical_system But I'll try to be extremely clear. Suppose you have a system defined as such: a volume of air of 1 cubic meter, enclosed by the walls of a refrigerator, which is not turned on, all at room temperature and in equilibrium with the environment. You turn the refrigerator on. Does the entropy of the system (1 cubic meter of air) decrease within the next 30 minutes, or does it not? Please refrain from trying to include in your answer anything other than what I have specified, 1 cubic meter of air within 30 minutes of turning on the refrigerator. I am trying to keep the scope of the questions in context and consistent with the topic. Questions that address straw man arguments don't add any understanding or clarity. All physical processes conform to the observed physical laws including those based on probability such as entropy. Entropy considerations define the direction of heat transfer, and molecular and information ordering on a macro scale over a large number of discrete events. The direction is invariably such that net entropy is zero or greater for closed systems and for open systems when inputs and outputs are included so long as these systems involve physical processes. Chemic and biological processes that are known, observed, and understood all conform to these physical laws at the macro level. Two posited processes that are not well understood are abiogenesis (life from non life by chemic processes alone) and evolution (the derivation of all observed biological diversity by known evolutionary processes alone) both of these processes as currently described by the respective theories lack causal adequacy because neither theory accounts for a source of low entropy molecular and information order that would be required by entropy considerations to drive previously disorganized systems lacking the molecular and information order to a state of higher organization. Existing biological systems do not have this problem because they do contain sufficient organization within them to account for observed biological processes and even allow for modest limited adaptation, but do not contain sufficient molecular and information order for observed evolutionary processes to generate new form and function. The refrigerator example is a good opportunity to demonstrate these realities. A refrigerator is a heat pump that uses external potential and kinetic energy to transfer heat from the cool inside of the box to the warmer outside. Entropy considerations prevent direct transfer of heat from low to high since heat must flow in a way that causes entropy to remain constant or rise, and thus heat must flow from high to equal or lower temperature components. The heat pump delivers cold refrigerant to the ice box heat exchanger to allow for heat flow out of the ice box and into the refrigerant stream. The kinetic work energy is imparted on the refrigerant to raise the pressure and temperature of the refrigerant to a high temperature so that the heat energy plus the kinetic energy now transformed into heat energy will flow to warm area outside the ice box. Finally the condensed refrigerant is passed across an expansion valve where the pressure and remaining heat does work in the evaporator by expanding in volume greatly such that the refrigerant becomes very cold. The net effect for heat pump systems is that heat from the cool area plus input energy is expelled to the higher temperature area such that net entropy is increased. To address Skeptic's question directly, treating the contents of the box as an open system as he requested, the entropy of the contents drop while an equal or greater measure of entropy is transfered out of the icebox into the refrigerant through the evaporative heat exchanger. Thus the net entropy including the inputs and outputs of the open system Skeptic described is zero or greater depending on the efficiency of the heat exchange process. OK then, my proof: Take a plant, lets say with a mass m. Burn the plant in a heat engine and check how much work you get out of it; this will be proportional to the mass. Now suppose the plant were to grow to a mass of 2m. Burning the same plant would yield twice the work (assuming consistent composition). Thus after plant growth there is more available energy for doing work, proving that entropy has decreased. If you don't know what entropy is, you can read up on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy No, skeptic you are wrong. Since there is twice the mass, thermal entropy of the plant prior to burning will have doubled as a result of the growth. Check the entropy tables and you will see that it is as I say for all matter, not undergoing a phase change, and at the same temperature and pressure. The net change including inputs and outputs will be positive as well. Biological growth, indeed all physical processes involve a net zero or increase in entropy. There can be no net drop in entropy for any macro level physical process. Personally, I find it surprising that you would think that an isolated container containing plants and materials needed for plants to grow would result in plants growing despite lack of sunlight rather than decaying (ie entropy increasing in an isolated system as required by the laws of thermodynamics). Straw man. I have not made this claim. You know perfectly well we were both speaking of a lawn actively growing. Your pattern of logical fallacies continue to add up. I will return to address your other errors later.
Mr Skeptic Posted December 21, 2010 Posted December 21, 2010 I am trying to keep the scope of the questions in context and consistent with the topic. Questions that address straw man arguments don't add any understanding or clarity. All physical processes conform to the observed physical laws including those based on probability such as entropy. Entropy considerations define the direction of heat transfer, and molecular and information ordering on a macro scale over a large number of discrete events. The direction is invariably such that net entropy is zero or greater for closed systems and for open systems when inputs and outputs are included so long as these systems involve physical processes. Chemic and biological processes that are known, observed, and understood all conform to these physical laws at the macro level. Two posited processes that are not well understood are abiogenesis (life from non life by chemic processes alone) and evolution (the derivation of all observed biological diversity by known evolutionary processes alone) both of these processes as currently described by the respective theories lack causal adequacy because neither theory accounts for a source of low entropy molecular and information order that would be required by entropy considerations to drive previously disorganized systems lacking the molecular and information order to a state of higher organization. Existing biological systems do not have this problem because they do contain sufficient organization within them to account for observed biological processes and even allow for modest limited adaptation, but do not contain sufficient molecular and information order for observed evolutionary processes to generate new form and function. The refrigerator example is a good opportunity to demonstrate these realities. A refrigerator is a heat pump that uses external potential and kinetic energy to transfer heat from the cool inside of the box to the warmer outside. Entropy considerations prevent direct transfer of heat from low to high since heat must flow in a way that causes entropy to remain constant or rise, and thus heat must flow from high to equal or lower temperature components. The heat pump delivers cold refrigerant to the ice box heat exchanger to allow for heat flow out of the ice box and into the refrigerant stream. The kinetic work energy is imparted on the refrigerant to raise the pressure and temperature of the refrigerant to a high temperature so that the heat energy plus the kinetic energy now transformed into heat energy will flow to warm area outside the ice box. Finally the condensed refrigerant is passed across an expansion valve where the pressure and remaining heat does work in the evaporator by expanding in volume greatly such that the refrigerant becomes very cold. The net effect for heat pump systems is that heat from the cool area plus input energy is expelled to the higher temperature area such that net entropy is increased. To address Skeptic's question directly, treating the contents of the box as an open system as he requested, the entropy of the contents drop while an equal or greater measure of entropy is transfered out of the icebox into the refrigerant through the evaporative heat exchanger. Thus the net entropy including the inputs and outputs of the open system Skeptic described is zero or greater depending on the efficiency of the heat exchange process. Well, that's rather a long and vague answer to a yes or no question. But it seems to me that you answered that yes, the entropy of the system I asked about dropped, and then further pointed out that this is still consistent with the second law of thermodynamics. Good, I think? Did I misunderstand you or did you agree that the entropy of a system can drop (at the expense of greater entropy outside the system, of course)? Oh, and what happened to the part about please not analyzing irrelevant things? Your answer would have been much clearer if you had ignored the parts not relevant to the question as requested. No, skeptic you are wrong. Since there is twice the mass, thermal entropy of the plant prior to burning will have doubled as a result of the growth. Check the entropy tables and you will see that it is as I say for all matter, not undergoing a phase change, and at the same temperature and pressure. The net change including inputs and outputs will be positive as well. Biological growth, indeed all physical processes involve a net zero or increase in entropy. There can be no net drop in entropy for any macro level physical process. Hm, I think I miscommunicated that one. I'm counting the entropy of the plants plus the components for growth, you seem to be counting only the plant. I'd agree that more material has more entropy than less, but I was trying to say that plant material has lower entropy than plant components. Straw man. I have not made this claim. You know perfectly well we were both speaking of a lawn actively growing. Your pattern of logical fallacies continue to add up. I will return to address your other errors later. We misunderstood each other. I thought you were saying that the entropy of the plant material was lower than that of the plant components, which would be equivalent but not word-for-word to the claim that plant materials would increase in an isolated system (ie plants growing in the dark), so I gave that example to show that such an idea is untenable. But it seems we were just looking at different systems.
cypress Posted December 21, 2010 Posted December 21, 2010 Well, that's rather a long and vague answer to a yes or no question. But it seems to me that you answered that yes, the entropy of the system I asked about dropped, and then further pointed out that this is still consistent with the second law of thermodynamics. Good, I think? Did I misunderstand you or did you agree that the entropy of a system can drop (at the expense of greater entropy outside the system, of course)? Oh, and what happened to the part about please not analyzing irrelevant things? Your answer would have been much clearer if you had ignored the parts not relevant to the question as requested. It would have been misleading and Begging the Question to answer the way you were pushing for the question to be answered, thus the explanation. For open systems including the heat pump example and the lawn, one must include inputs and outputs in order to come to an accurate and representative answer. Including heat transfer from the contents of the refrigerator, net entropy is greater or equal to zero as it must be for all open or closed systems when physical processes are involved. -1
Mr Skeptic Posted December 21, 2010 Posted December 21, 2010 No, changing the question means you are failing to answer the question. I asked only about a very limited system, and you are trying to talk about the universe. It is intellectually dishonest. While the second law of thermodynamics applies to any isolated system, that does not mean you can extend it to other systems that are not isolated (as my question shows), and increasing the system to include the universe is not the same as talking about the system. If you have some issue with the question, point out the issue you have with the question (eg "have you stopped beating your wife?" has a built-in assumption). If you have some suspicion that I'll misuse the answer, I can assure you I don't intend to. But if not please stop changing the question. 1
cypress Posted December 22, 2010 Posted December 22, 2010 (edited) It is intellectually dishonest to fail to include inputs and outputs when speaking of open systems, because it leads to misleading conclusions. All of my training was done this way. Inputs and outputs are always included. We will simply have to disagree on methods if you continue to insist otherwise. I asked you for the formula you said you used, could you provide that? The change in entropy is dS = ∑dPilogPi , For deterministic processes Pi = 1 and dS=0 And if a random process increases entropy (changes a state to one of higher probability) but a deterministic process changes the state back to the original without decreasing entropy, that doesn't seem to add up. Hence why I suspected that you confused change in entropy and total entropy, and why I asked for your formula to verify whether that is the case. Your hypothetical example can't happen, it is a form of a perpetual motion machine and there can be no real examples of this situation. A deterministic process has only one outcome possible and therefore cannot change the sum of entropy for the i discrete microstates. If the probability of the occurrence of particular configuration of a discrete microstate is a particular value and that configuration occurs but then that occurrence is acted on by a deterministic process and changed to another configuration, the probability of both configurations must be equal. It's "created" if you consider the system in isolation, its "imported" if you consider the system with the surroundings and consider random interactions to be information. It makes no difference to my arguments, since either way information in a system (eg DNA) can increase, and we can agree on that. It is improper to treat the system in isolation since the DNA molecule is not isolated. It is an open system with many other systems acting on it, and thus inputs and outputs must be included. Failure to include them results in incorrect results just as failure to include inputs and outputs caused you to come to incorrect results with the heat pump and the lawn examples. What is extremely likely to have happened anywhere on earth in 4 billion years does not necessarily translate to extremely likely to have happened while a human is looking. Experimental biology can tell us what and how things actually happen. Speculating about what might have happened over the last 4 billion years will never tell us anything about how it happened or even how likely it was to have happened a particular way. It will remain nothing but speculation. It's "created" if you consider the system in isolation, its "imported" if you consider the system with the surroundings and consider random interactions to be information. It makes no difference to my arguments, since either way information in a system (eg DNA) can increase, and we can agree on that. It is improper to treat the system in isolation since the DNA molecule is not isolated. It is an open system with many other systems acting on it, and thus inputs and outputs must be included. Failure to include them results in incorrect results just as failure to include inputs and outputs caused you to come to incorrect results with the heat pump and the lawn examples. What is extremely likely to have happened anywhere on earth in 4 billion years does not necessarily translate to extremely likely to have happened while a human is looking. Experimental biology can tell us what and how things actually happen. Speculating about what might have happened over the last 4 billion years will never tell us anything about how it happened or even how likely it was to have happened a particular way. It will remain nothing but speculation. It is similar with evolution, you observe a limited subset of what happens to some of the millions of species over billions of years, and infer the rest. But inference can never tell us how it happened. Let's be honest. We don't know and can't know how diversity occurred until we experimentally confirm a process that is causally adequate and validated to derived the posited changes. Genetic engineers are getting very close to confirming design is a causally adequate process. Evolutionary biologists have made almost no progress in demonstrating the capability of the modern synthesis to generate new form and function. why? Answered in the comment immediately following my statement in the post of interest. I thought we were debating whether it is likely for evolution to have happened? I am not debating that change occurred, I am debating how it occurred. Edited December 22, 2010 by cypress 1
Mr Skeptic Posted December 22, 2010 Posted December 22, 2010 It is intellectually dishonest to fail to include inputs and outputs when speaking of open systems, because it leads to misleading conclusions. All of my training was done this way. Inputs and outputs are always included. We will simply have to disagree on methods if you continue to insist otherwise. I am not failing to consider the inputs and outputs (incidentally, it's a closed system, not open, and not isolated -- look it up), which is why I'm talking about a closed system rather than an isolated system, but it just so happens that the entropy of the environment is irrelevant to the question. What is intellecually dishonest is to change the question when answering. But if you like, I'll restate the question to include all the inputs and outputs, so we're both happy: Suppose you have a system defined as such: a volume of air of 1 cubic meter, enclosed by the walls of a refrigerator, which is not turned on, all at room temperature and in equilibrium with the environment. You turn the refrigerator on. Describe the changes that occur in entropy after the refrigerator is turned on in 1) the system, ie the 1 cubic meter of air, and 2) the environment (ie, everything else). Assume anything you like in addition as necessary to make the problem well-defined. There, now you can consider the inputs and outputs to your heart's content, and still answer the question. The change in entropy is dS = ∑dPilogPi , For deterministic processes Pi = 1 and dS=0 OK, that matches but has less information than the definition here: (well other than the minus sign) More specifically, entropy is a logarithmic measure of the density of states: The info this includes is that the constant of integration is zero. (Incidentally, your concept of entropy as you described violates the third law of thermodynamics, unless deterministic processes result in perfect crystals only.) But the mistake you made is specifically in confusing dPilogPi with PilogPi. For example, I said the original DNA was randomly generated, so Pi = 1/4. After passing through a deterministic process, the Pi is 1, as you said. Therefore the change in entropy is S = ∑[(1/4)log(1/4) - 1 log 1) = ∑(1/4)log(1/4), clearly a decrease in entropy. It is improper to treat the system in isolation since the DNA molecule is not isolated. It is an open system with many other systems acting on it, and thus inputs and outputs must be included. Failure to include them results in incorrect results just as failure to include inputs and outputs caused you to come to incorrect results with the heat pump and the lawn examples. The failure is yours, in being unable to distinguish between the system and the environment, and the consequent failure to distinguish the inputs and outputs of the system as opposed to those of the environment. Experimental biology can tell us what and how things actually happen. Speculating about what might have happened over the last 4 billion years will never tell us anything about how it happened or even how likely it was to have happened a particular way. It will remain nothing but speculation.... But inference can never tell us how it happened. Let's be honest. We don't know and can't know how diversity occurred until we experimentally confirm a process that is causally adequate and validated to derived the posited changes. Genetic engineers are getting very close to confirming design is a causally adequate process. Evolutionary biologists have made almost no progress in demonstrating the capability of the modern synthesis to generate new form and function. ... I am not debating that change occurred, I am debating how it occurred. If you know of a way to be certain, then go make yourself famous and publish that. Otherwise, what do you think is the most likely explanation for a change in two specific amino acids? But inference can never tell us how it happened. Let's be honest. We don't know and can't know how diversity occurred until we experimentally confirm a process that is causally adequate and validated to derived the posited changes. Genetic engineers are getting very close to confirming design is a causally adequate process. Evolutionary biologists have made almost no progress in demonstrating the capability of the modern synthesis to generate new form and function. Let's not be intellectually dishonest -- no amount of genetic engineering will ever show that intelligent design is a causally adequate process to explain life on earth. The only thing that would, would be to show that the odds of there being an intelligent designer are higher than the odds of it being done by known natural processes. But no amount of showing how smart people are will provide any evidence of pre-life-on-earth intelligences.
Moontanman Posted December 22, 2010 Posted December 22, 2010 Cypress are you saying that the design for all modern organisms was already in the first organisms or are you saying that some design elements are added as time goes on by some outside source of design resulting in the complexity we se today and the gradual rise of that complexity over the last 3.8 billion years or so?
cypress Posted December 23, 2010 Posted December 23, 2010 I am not failing to consider the inputs and outputs (incidentally, it's a closed system, not open, and not isolated -- look it up), which is why I'm talking about a closed system rather than an isolated system, but it just so happens that the entropy of the environment is irrelevant to the question. What is intellecually dishonest is to change the question when answering. But if you like, I'll restate the question to include all the inputs and outputs, so we're both happy: Suppose you have a system defined as such: a volume of air of 1 cubic meter, enclosed by the walls of a refrigerator, which is not turned on, all at room temperature and in equilibrium with the environment. You turn the refrigerator on. Describe the changes that occur in entropy after the refrigerator is turned on in 1) the system, ie the 1 cubic meter of air, and 2) the environment (ie, everything else). Assume anything you like in addition as necessary to make the problem well-defined. There, now you can consider the inputs and outputs to your heart's content, and still answer the question. A fixed volume of air in a refrigerator is not a closed system, it is open because as the temperature changes, density increases so mass is moving into the system. In addition there is circulation in the refrigerator. My answer stands that including inputs and outputs, entropy rises slightly for the contents and the associated heat flux. While entropy of a non-reacting substance drops as temperature drops, it can only experience a reduction in entropy due to communication with other systems. Isolated, closed systems do not spontaneously drop in entropy. There must be a source for this increased order. Neither abiogenesis nor evolutionary theory (as an explanation for all observed diversity) offer a source for molecular and information entropy. The info this includes is that the constant of integration is zero. (Incidentally, your concept of entropy as you described violates the third law of thermodynamics, unless deterministic processes result in perfect crystals only.) But the mistake you made is specifically in confusing dPilogPi with PilogPi. For example, I said the original DNA was randomly generated, so Pi = 1/4. After passing through a deterministic process, the Pi is 1, as you said. Therefore the change in entropy is S = ∑[(1/4)log(1/4) - 1 log 1) = ∑(1/4)log(1/4), clearly a decrease in entropy. Your hypothetical case cannot happen. It is like the backyard engineer pedaling a perpetual motion machine. If there exists a deterministic process that changes from one occurrence of discrete states to another, those two occurrences of discrete states must have equal probabilities. It is possible that a random process does change from one occurrence to the other, but the probabilities must be unchanged. Let's not be intellectually dishonest -- no amount of genetic engineering will ever show that intelligent design is a causally adequate process to explain life on earth. The only thing that would, would be to show that the odds of there being an intelligent designer are higher than the odds of it being done by known natural processes. But no amount of showing how smart people are will provide any evidence of pre-life-on-earth intelligences. Design by engineers would demonstrate that design is a causally adequate mechanism, whether you accept the implications or not. Cypress are you saying that the design for all modern organisms was already in the first organisms or are you saying that some design elements are added as time goes on by some outside source of design resulting in the complexity we se today and the gradual rise of that complexity over the last 3.8 billion years or so? I am not saying either. There is insufficient information to know how diversity occurred. I do know that the modern synthesis fails to offer a causally adequate process, other processes must have been involved.
Mr Skeptic Posted December 23, 2010 Posted December 23, 2010 A fixed volume of air in a refrigerator is not a closed system, it is open because as the temperature changes, density increases so mass is moving into the system. In addition there is circulation in the refrigerator. My answer stands that including inputs and outputs, entropy rises slightly for the contents and the associated heat flux. So the contents of a refrigerator rise in entropy when it is turned on, you're saying? While entropy of a non-reacting substance drops as temperature drops, it can only experience a reduction in entropy due to communication with other systems. Isolated, closed systems do not spontaneously drop in entropy. There must be a source for this increased order. Neither abiogenesis nor evolutionary theory (as an explanation for all observed diversity) offer a source for molecular and information entropy. See, this is more intellectual dishonesty. The bolded sentences do not match -- evolution is not talking about closed isolated systems. Your hypothetical case cannot happen. It is like the backyard engineer pedaling a perpetual motion machine. If there exists a deterministic process that changes from one occurrence of discrete states to another, those two occurrences of discrete states must have equal probabilities. It is possible that a random process does change from one occurrence to the other, but the probabilities must be unchanged. So are you saying that DNA cannot be randomly generated, or that once DNA is randomly generated it can't be rearranged in a specific pattern? In case it wasn't clear, I was saying there were two processes, one making random DNA (necessarily implicit in saying the DNA was random) and then the bacteria growing and turning it into nearly deterministic copies. Design by engineers would demonstrate that design is a causally adequate mechanism, whether you accept the implications or not. Oh, if that is your standards than random chance is definitely a causally adequate mechanism to explain life on earth. After all, random chance can change any pattern to any other, its just unlikely (just like some designer existing before life on earth). And I notice also here your double standards; with evolution it has to be directly seen when it happened, with design some human doing it somehow is adequate cause to explain even things before there were humans. I am not saying either. There is insufficient information to know how diversity occurred. I do know that the modern synthesis fails to offer a causally adequate process, other processes must have been involved. (See, another example -- processes we know existed are causally inadequate, processes that there is no evidence for (an intelligent designer) are causally adequate.)
cypress Posted December 23, 2010 Posted December 23, 2010 See, this is more intellectual dishonesty. The bolded sentences do not match -- evolution is not talking about closed isolated systems. The reference to closed systems was due to your attempt to suggest that your refrigerator was a closed system. Open systems still must adhere to probability theory and entropy laws, though one must consider and include the change in mass and all other relevant fluxes. When all inputs and outputs are included and only physical processes are involved, these systems cannot experience a net increase in order either. What I said about abiogenesis and evolutionary processes (with respect to accounting for all observed diversity) and the failure of the positet theories to account for the source of molecular and information order is correct. You have been attempting to demonstrate that conventional and well understood systems including a heat pump and growth of plants undergo a drop in entropy (though only when relevant fluxes are conveniently ignored) despite the unscientific and incorrect treatment due to ignoring these heat, energy and mass fluxes. If you are suggesting that the modern synthesis is simply ignoring an incoming fux of low entropy molecular order and information please point us to that source and describe in real terms precisely how these sources act to generate functional prescriptive information in biological and chemic systems. So are you saying that DNA cannot be randomly generated, or that once DNA is randomly generated it can't be rearranged in a specific pattern? In case it wasn't clear, I was saying there were two processes, one making random DNA (necessarily implicit in saying the DNA was random) and then the bacteria growing and turning it into nearly deterministic copies. Your example was imagination. It was as fictional as a perpetual motion machine. If you could offer an actualized case we can talk through it. DNA contains low entropy functional prescriptive information superimposed on a high entropy backbone chemic structure. This low entropy signal requires a source of order to form, it would be a violation of entropy law to spontaneously organize by a random process without a pre-existing source of order. existing life has a source of order in the parent organisms. But where did the original order originate, and what is the source of new and additional order for new form and function posited by evolutionary theory in the context of accounting for all observed diversity? (See, another example -- processes we know existed are causally inadequate, processes that there is no evidence for (an intelligent designer) are causally adequate.) Design is known to be capable of organizing information into highly ordered patterns. It very much is an adequate explanation for the presence of functional prescriptive information. If you are saying that you personally reject the possibility that life on earth was designed and will continue to reject it despite the fact that design appears to be an adequate mechanism until you personally shake hands with the actual designer, I can't help you with that hang-up.
Mr Skeptic Posted December 25, 2010 Posted December 25, 2010 The reference to closed systems was due to your attempt to suggest that your refrigerator was a closed system. Open systems still must adhere to probability theory and entropy laws, though one must consider and include the change in mass and all other relevant fluxes. When all inputs and outputs are included and only physical processes are involved, these systems cannot experience a net increase in order either. What I said about abiogenesis and evolutionary processes (with respect to accounting for all observed diversity) and the failure of the positet theories to account for the source of molecular and information order is correct. You have been attempting to demonstrate that conventional and well understood systems including a heat pump and growth of plants undergo a drop in entropy (though only when relevant fluxes are conveniently ignored) despite the unscientific and incorrect treatment due to ignoring these heat, energy and mass fluxes. If you are suggesting that the modern synthesis is simply ignoring an incoming fux of low entropy molecular order and information please point us to that source and describe in real terms precisely how these sources act to generate functional prescriptive information in biological and chemic systems. In case it was not clear I meant my examples as closed systems (such that energy can be transferred but not material). But it is you and not me that wishes to ignore relevant fluxes, which you try to ignore by re-defining the system so that the inputs and outputs are eliminated as part of the internals of your larger system. I'm specifically asking that they be accounted for, by treating the system and its surroundings separately but you keep insisting that somehow ignoring the inputs and outputs makes your analysis superior. Nevertheless, it does seem you finally got around to answering. Just to verify though: "The entropy of a system can be decreased by using energy to increase entropy elsewhere by an even greater extent" Do we agree that the above sentence is correct? Your example was imagination. It was as fictional as a perpetual motion machine. If you could offer an actualized case we can talk through it. DNA contains low entropy functional prescriptive information superimposed on a high entropy backbone chemic structure. This low entropy signal requires a source of order to form, it would be a violation of entropy law to spontaneously organize by a random process without a pre-existing source of order. existing life has a source of order in the parent organisms. But where did the original order originate, and what is the source of new and additional order for new form and function posited by evolutionary theory in the context of accounting for all observed diversity? What is imaginary, random DNA or bacteria growing? Design is known to be capable of organizing information into highly ordered patterns. It very much is an adequate explanation for the presence of functional prescriptive information. If you are saying that you personally reject the possibility that life on earth was designed and will continue to reject it despite the fact that design appears to be an adequate mechanism until you personally shake hands with the actual designer, I can't help you with that hang-up. But we weren't talking about adequate explanations, we were talking about causally adequate explanations. Without a designer, design is not causally adequate.
cypress Posted December 25, 2010 Posted December 25, 2010 In case it was not clear I meant my examples as closed systems (such that energy can be transferred but not material). But it is you and not me that wishes to ignore relevant fluxes, which you try to ignore by re-defining the system so that the inputs and outputs are eliminated as part of the internals of your larger system. I'm specifically asking that they be accounted for, by treating the system and its surroundings separately but you keep insisting that somehow ignoring the inputs and outputs makes your analysis superior. In the case of the refrigerator, you argue we should ignore export of thermal heat flux responsible for the resulting reduction in permutations of discrete thermal energy states and thus the export of thermal disorder by this energy flux from the contents of the refrigerator. You ignore this output by careful definition of the system but then you err by illogically and falsely implying that the heat flux across the narrowly defined boundary is part of the universe and not part of your now ill-defined system. Nevertheless, it does seem you finally got around to answering. Just to verify though:"The entropy of a system can be decreased by using energy to increase entropy elsewhere by an even greater extent" Do we agree that the above sentence is correct? No it is still not correct. "The entropy of a sub-system can be decreased by causing certain processes to act on the system through fluxes across the boundary that directly reduce the probability of the sub-system configuration of discrete states but at the cost of increasing the probability of the configuration of discrete states of the source or sink of these fluxes so that net entropy is equal or greater." What is imaginary, random DNA or bacteria growing? Your example was imaginary. But we weren't talking about adequate explanations, we were talking about causally adequate explanations. Without a designer, design is not causally adequate. Design is a process that exists today and is casually adequate to explain functional prescriptive information. We don't have clear unambiguous evidence that design existed 4 billion years ago on earth but we have some evidence from the design characteristics also present in the universe that design existed during the beginning of the universe billions of years earlier. Contrasting with the alternate theory, we have evidence that evolutionary processes exist today but it cannot be demonstrated they account for observed diversity. The theory posits processes that are not casually adequate. We don't have clear unambiguous evidence that these processes existed prior to and at the beginning of life on earth nor throughout the initial history of life, though some hold to an unsupported presumption that for part of this time they did. So design is casually adequate to explain functional prescriptive information, and there is evidence design existed prior to life on earth, therefore it is reasonable to presume it exists continuously from the beginning.
Frank Burton Posted December 25, 2010 Posted December 25, 2010 You just copying and pasting this of this chap here: http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/8493-evidence-of-human-common-ancestry/ Who himself has copied it off a website. None of this is directly observable. It's theoretical pseudoscience trying to prove that all of mankind evolved off an ape ancestor. If you believe in this you gotta be some kind of nutcase. Hi Cabininthewoods, I'm actually the discoverer of LINES-1 retroposons, back in the 80's. And I was one of the actual people who discovered what these biology textbooks now cite -- that humans, chimps, and all other examined species' genomes have indeed inherited defective copies of selfish, intracellular DNA elements, by inheriting them from a shared ancestor (for humans and chimps, that shared ancestor was about 500,000 granddads ago.) So, Cabin, if you want to deny that an old earth, evolution and/or common ancestry took place, to be fact-compatible you need to presume that God simply made our genes "pre-aged" -- like pre-washed jeans. I have no problem with people believing God made the earth only 6,000 years ago, as long as He made it 4.5 billion years old. Regards, Frank H. Burton, Ph.D.
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