My older step-cousin just got sentenced

[GuidoHunter]

Originally Posted by KgZ

Okay, i'll take it a step further.

Existence is about being able to survive to reproduce.

Survival, reproduction, and life itself only exist because living things degrade gradients much better than nonliving things.

Originally Posted by _.Spitfire._

Your line of logic is that since some things are directly governed by laws of this universe, it indirectly guides everything ever in this universe and while that is technically true, it is pedantry at its finest.

And yours is so ignorant of the importance of the Second Law that you make wild generalizations about it and do things like compare it to gravity.

Originally Posted by FoJaR

the second law does no such thing

Perhaps your understanding of nonequilibrium thermodynamics is better than mine. Please explain.

Sigh. This is just starting to get fun and I have to get into a truck for six hours. =(

--Guido

[FoJaR]

thinking that the rules of heat flow determine which organisms survive LOL

[ilikexd]

Originally Posted by GuidoHunter

Evolution as a process is largely the selection part. It's predicated on the random mutations (which itself is a product of evolution), but the process as a whole is most certainly not random.

Mutations are a product of evolution?

Also, as the process of evolution consists of mutations, which are random, how is it that the process itself is not random, then?

I'm not sure that I understand what you wrote.

[FoJaR]

Originally Posted by GuidoHunter

Survival, reproduction, and life itself only exist because living things degrade gradients much better than nonliving things.

--Guido

correlation is not causation

[Nullifidian]

Originally Posted by GuidoHunter

And yours is so ignorant of the importance of the Second Law that you make wild generalizations about it and do things like compare it to gravity.

I don't compare the second law to the law of gravity, but following your logic, gravity has also been a "guiding force" for everything that currently exists because it has (directly or indirectly) influenced events that resulted in events that resulted in events that resulted in events etc. etc. that eventually lead to the construction of language. It's extremely farfetched and pedantic and this is just a discussion of semantics at this point.

[RB_Spirit]

[Inserts long wall of give-a-fucks here]
Jk, but you guys are getting so deep i can't even keep up,
WowzZz

[FoJaR]

Originally Posted by GuidoHunter

Perhaps your understanding of nonequilibrium thermodynamics is better than mine. Please explain.

--Guido

heat cannot flow from a cold body to a warmer one without some external force performing work.

so yeah this has nothing to do with evolution.

[devonin]

Originally Posted by GuidoHunter

To the extent that a force of nature can, yes, and it does.

So...not at all then.

[Izzy]

Originally Posted by FoJaR

heat cannot flow from a cold body to a warmer one without some external force performing work.

I thought the heat/energy itself was doing the work.

[Coolboyrulez0]

Guido is a good troll, I must admit.

[FoJaR]

Originally Posted by Izzy

I thought the heat/energy itself was doing the work.

all the second law is talking about is heat transfer.

i think a lot of the problem here is a misunderstanding of entropy

[ilikexd]

i was going to justify pedophilia... but it got derailed into an evolution discussion!

[GuidoHunter]

Originally Posted by FoJaR

heat cannot flow from a cold body to a warmer one without some external force performing work.

so yeah this has nothing to do with evolution.

Okay, so your argument is that you don't understand this field of study, like, at all. Duly noted.

Originally Posted by ilikexd

Mutations are a product of evolution?

I was actually referring to gene-swapping when I wrote that (as an important part of sexual reproduction it was a process that was selected as favorable), but now I realize that's not what I really intended to convey. I'd have to take some good time to rework what I meant, which I don't really have right now, so feel free to ignore that point.

Originally Posted by _.Spitfire.+

I don't compare the second law to the law of gravity, but following your logic, gravity has also been a "guiding force" for everything that currently exists

Perhaps not, but you seem to think of the Second Law as just another physical rule of nature, like gravity, when, in fact, it is the single most important guiding force of the universe, from which all other rules (gravity included) descend.

--Guido

[GuidoHunter]

Originally Posted by FoJaR

all the second law is talking about is heat transfer.

i think a lot of the problem here is a misunderstanding of entropy

Again, adorable. Why do you keep thinking this discussion is about equilibrium thermo?

--Guido

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by GuidoHunter

Forgive me for not precisely discerning your point since all you've done is made a ridiculous claim and supported it with "because I said so lol".

You've agreed that evolution has direction but suggest that it somehow loses that direction when you reduce the scale? It's a mechanism that selects for more efficient gradient-reducing organisms by way of generational reproduction, so when you say it's undirected (and thus not responsible) for male-female attraction, of course I take issue.

--Guido

Troll detected

[FoJaR]

what you're arguing is determinism.

[FoJaR]

also your argument neglects quantum mechanics.

[FoJaR]

and for these reasons it is wrong.

[Reincarnate]

Clearly we are also forgetting to take into account the effects of semi hard determinism and electroweak symmetry breaking, which tend to be involved in various physical processes, therefore pedophilia

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by Izzy

Aren't the potentially evolutionary changes to DNA brought upon by random mutations? The end result of which random mutations survive is brought upon by non random environmental factors.

Seems like 1 part of it is random and the other is not.

That's right.

Mutations are effectively random, but evolution itself is non-random. That being said, it does NOT mean that evolution has some "goal" in mind -- this is an appeal to something called the "teleological argument."