My older step-cousin just got sentenced

[FoJaR]

Re: My older step-cousin just got sentenced

evolution is about being able to survive to reproduce, and has nothing to do with thermodynamics.

[devonin]

Re: My older step-cousin just got sentenced

The problem is that suggesting evolution has a direction carries the implication that it also has motive force, and/or is making choices and decisions towards a specific end.

You can suggest the eventual heat death of the universe, and even suggest that Evolution as a process -tends to lead- towards a particular end, but I think their disagreement is actually just semantic.

Evolution having a "direction" implies that it is not random.

[choof]

Re: My older step-cousin just got sentenced

Evolution very clearly has a direction. As a product of, and great contributor to, the goals of the Second Law, it pushes toward greater entropy generation. On a more local scale, that's the degradation of the solar gradient.

--Guido

now just slow down there bucko

[Nullifidian]

Re: My older step-cousin just got sentenced

I don't see how you can read so much into that. Pedantry much? It is responsible for male/female attraction (that's not at all what's implied with "undirected"), but it does so without a purpose or direct guidance. The mutation side of evolution is random, the selection side of evolution is due to environment. There's no agenda to create more efficient organisms for any given environment, but because of the circumstances of this universe, the more efficient species for a given environment survive. Evolution itself is undirected, the circumstances of this universe are what indirectly "direct" the results (if you can even call it "direct" in that scope).

[GuidoHunter]

Re: My older step-cousin just got sentenced

evolution is about being able to survive to reproduce, and has nothing to do with thermodynamics.

This right here? This is just adorable.

The problem is that suggesting evolution has a direction carries the implication that it also has motive force, and/or is making choices and decisions towards a specific end.

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

You can suggest the eventual heat death of the universe, and even suggest that Evolution as a process -tends to lead- towards a particular end, but I think their disagreement is actually just semantic.

I wouldn't say that evolution "tends to lead" toward this end; I'd say that it DOES lead toward that end by making life TEND TO lead that way.

Evolution having a "direction" implies that it is not random.

It isn't! Izzy had it right when he said that the mutations were random but the selection was not. 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.

--Guido

[choof]

Re: My older step-cousin just got sentenced

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.

--Guido

[GuidoHunter]

Re: My older step-cousin just got sentenced

There's no agenda to create more efficient organisms for any given environment, but because of the circumstances of this universe, the more efficient species for a given environment survive. Evolution itself is undirected, the circumstances of this universe are what indirectly "direct" the results (if you can even call it "direct" in that scope).

"Because of the circumstances of this universe". Those circumstances being the fact that the universe is governed by the Second Law which selects for more efficient gradient-reducing organisms!

--Guido

[Nullifidian]

Re: My older step-cousin just got sentenced

It's about as guided as the law of gravity guided the construction of language. 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.

[FoJaR]

Re: My older step-cousin just got sentenced

This right here? This is just adorable.
--Guido

yeah man i'm always super cute.

[FoJaR]

Re: My older step-cousin just got sentenced

"Because of the circumstances of this universe". Those circumstances being the fact that the universe is governed by the Second Law which selects for more efficient gradient-reducing organisms!

--Guido

the second law does no such thing

[GuidoHunter]

Re: My older step-cousin just got sentenced

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.

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.

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]

Re: My older step-cousin just got sentenced

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

[ilikexd]

Re: My older step-cousin just got sentenced

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]

Re: My older step-cousin just got sentenced

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

--Guido

correlation is not causation

[Nullifidian]

Re: My older step-cousin just got sentenced

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.