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In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design, 2nd edition

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The following story is from Section 5.1 of my new Discovery Institute Press book “In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design, 2nd edition.” For a more scientific version of this story, see my 2013 BIO-Complexity article, “Entropy and Evolution,” which is now Chapter 4. The new Chapter 1 is an article published by Human Events in December 2013.

In the current debate between Darwinism and intelligent design, the strongest argument made by Darwinists is this: in every other field of science, naturalism has been spectacularly successful, why should evolutionary biology be so different? Even most scientists who doubt the Darwinist explanation for evolution are confident that science will eventually come up with a more plausible explanation. That’s the way science works, if one theory fails, we look for another one; why should evolution be so different? Many people believe that intelligent design advocates just don’t understand how science works, and are motivated entirely by religious beliefs.

Well, perhaps the following discussion will help critics of intelligent design to understand why evolution is different.

Moore before first tornado
Moore before first tornado

Here is a set of pictures of a neighborhood in Moore, Oklahoma. The first was taken before the May 20, 2013 tornado hit, and the second was taken right after the tornado.

Moore after first tornado
Moore after first tornado

Fortunately, another tornado hit Moore a few days later, and turned all this rubble back into houses and cars, as seen in the third picture below.

Moore before first tornado
Moore after second tornado

If I asked you why you don’t believe my story about the second tornado, you might say this tornado seems to violate the more general statements of the second law of thermodynamics, such as “In an isolated system, the direction of spontaneous change is from order to disorder.” To this I could reply, Moore is not an isolated system, tornados receive their energy from the sun, so the decrease in entropy in Moore caused by the second tornado is easily compensated by increases outside this open system. Or I might argue that it is too hard to quantify the decrease in entropy caused by the second tornado, or I could say I simply don’t accept the more general statements of the second law, the second law of thermodynamics should only be applied to thermodynamics.

Nevertheless, suppose I further said, I have a scientific theory that explains how certain rare types of tornados, under just the right conditions, really can turn rubble into houses and cars. You doubt my theory? You haven’t even heard it yet!

Now I have three more pictures for you, and two more stories. The first picture shows a certain Earth-like planet in a certain solar system, as it looked about 4 billion years ago. The second shows a large city at the same location about 10,000 years ago. At its prime, this city had tall buildings full of intelligent beings, computers, TV sets and cell phones inside. It had libraries full of science texts and novels, and jet airplanes taking off and landing at its airport.

Planet soon after it formed
Earth-like planet soon after it formed
Planet at height of its civilization
Planet at height of its civilization

Scientists explain how civilization developed on this once-barren planet as follows: about 4 billion years ago a collection of atoms formed by pure chance that was able to duplicate itself, and these complex collections of atoms were able to preserve their complex structures and pass them along to their descendants, generation after generation. Over a long period of time, the accumulation of genetic accidents resulted in more and more elaborate collections of atoms, and eventually something called “intelligence” allowed some of these collections of atoms to design buildings and computers and TV sets, and write encyclopedias and science texts.

Sadly, a few years after the second picture was taken, this planet was hit by a massive solar flare from its sun, and all the intelligent beings died, their bodies decayed, and their cells decomposed into simple organic and inorganic compounds. Most of the buildings collapsed immediately into rubble, those that didn’t, crumbled eventually. Most of the computers and TV sets inside were smashed into scrap metal, even those that weren’t, gradually turned into piles of rust. Most of the books in the libraries burned up, the rest rotted over time, and you can see see the final result many years later in the third picture below.

Planet today
Planet today

Now it is the first story that is much more difficult to believe. The development of civilization on this planet, and the tornado that turned rubble into houses and cars, each seems to violate the more general statements of the second law, in a spectacular way. Various reasons why the development of civilization does not violate the second law have been given, but all of them can equally well be used to argue that the second tornado did not violate it either. That is, all except one: there is a theory as to how civilizations can develop on barren planets which is widely-accepted in the scientific world, while there is no widely-believed theory as to how tornados could turn rubble into houses and cars.

Well, maybe science will eventually come up with a plausible naturalistic explanation for evolution. But my question to those who treat evolution as just another scientific problem is this: do you really still believe that anyone who doubts that science can explain the development of life and of human intelligence in terms of a few unintelligent forces of physics alone simply does not understand how science works? Can you now at least understand why some of us feel that evolution is a fundamentally different and much more difficult problem than others solved by science, and requires a fundamentally different type of explanation?

Comments
FIASCO - lol. I love it! Mung
Box: But the designer and the design – the mental blueprint of a computer – is out of reach for the 2nd law. That's assuming something that has hardly been demonstrated, and would violate everything that is known about thermodynamics. But let's assume there is an immaterial mind. This mind at some point get instantiated in the brain. It turns out that the brain is an energy hog. It takes a lot of calories to turn all those neurons on and off. Then it takes more calories to transmit those signals to muscles, and still more calories to make those muscles move. And that's just to put pen to paper to draw the plan. Then it takes even more calories to wield the hammer and saw. Box: And at the very moment that organization is inputted – when parts are formed and arranged in a specified and functional order far from equilibrium (micro and macro)- “something” takes place in our material world that is opposite to the intentions of the 2nd law. There's nothing in the 2nd law of thermodynamics about "intention". Nothing you do, no matter how clever you think you are, violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. niwrad: The 2nd law doesn’t prohibit at all that an organization source (the above intelligence) injects organization into a system. That is false. "Injecting organization" means moving things around. And that takes thermodynamic work. CJYman: not everything that is conceivable is consistent with 2LOT. Of course. CJYman: if you came on this forum and told us that computers self organize for the same reasons that tornadoes self-order, based on even a cursory understanding of statistical thermodynamics someone would have to disappoint you and explain that even though 2LOT doesn’t absolutely forbid such an occurrence it does tell us that ‘explanation’ practically violates everything that we learn from a statistical understanding of 2LOT. Either the occurrence is consistent with the 2nd law of thermodynamics or it is not. Lumber doesn't assemble into houses during a tornado for reasons other than the 2nd law of thermodynamics. CJYman: If the hypothesis of the mere transfer of energy causing a computer to self-organize does not violate 2LOT, is there any conceivable hypothesis according to you that would not be consistent with and thus violate 2LOT? Something not consistent with the 2nd law of thermodynamics would be a perpetual motion machine. CJYman: Furthermore, from where do you get the statement that 2LOT does not concern itself with macrostates? Thermodynamics clearly concerns macrostates, or it would have no relevance to engineering. A heat engine is the canonical example. We did state it unclearly. The explanation from 'probability' concerns microstates. We can treat multiple either macroobjects or macropartitions in terms of microstates, but when you do, you will find that the combinatorics of the microstates overwhelm the combinatorics of the macroobjects. For instance, if we look at how heat can be distributed between just two macroobjects, you will count a huge number of available microstates. While we may divide a system into any number of macropartitions, it is still the available microstates that determines entropy. Box: something extraordinary happens at the moment that information is injected into a system "Injecting information" requires energy. Zachriel
HeKS: What if your statement were rephrased something like this?: When parts are formed and arranged in a specified and functional order far from equilibrium (micro and macro)- “something” takes place in our material world that is opposite to what would be expected under the 2nd law were it not for the presence of some relevant mechanism, device or agent capable of using energy to make the particular macrostate a probable outcome.
First off, I'm fine with your well-phrased addition. Thank you. However my interest (problem) lies elsewhere. What I meant to say (#57) is that something extraordinary happens at the moment that information is injected into a system - at the moment an idea is materialized. Extraordinary in the sense of being opposite to what would be expected under the 2nd law. IOW not everything is subject to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. There is a process of formation going which is not under the dominion of the 2nd law - like the code of DNA is not under the dominion of chemistry. The moment of creation; when two worlds meet. Now my struggle is with the tension between "consistent with the 2nd law" and "not under the dominion of the 2nd law". Can both be true at the same time? Box
Zachriel, it appears you still do not get the point. Yes, everything that has indeed occurred is truly consistent with 2LOT. But not everything that is conceivable is consistent with 2LOT. Are you seriously still not aware that the argument is about requirements -- properly defined compensation -- for the generation of certain systems to keep the process in line with 2LOT? You even refer to the fact that a manufacturing process is required for the generation of 'patterns' we refer to as computers. However if you came on this forum and told us that computers self organize for the same reasons that tornadoes self-order, based on even a cursory understanding of statistical thermodynamics someone would have to disappoint you and explain that even though 2LOT doesn't absolutely forbid such an occurrence it does tell us that 'explanation' practically violates everything that we learn from a statistical understanding of 2LOT. Thus, your hypothesis practically violates 2LOT. Agreed or not? If the hypothesis of the mere transfer of energy causing a computer to self-organize does not violate 2LOT, is there any conceivable hypothesis according to you that would not be consistent with and thus violate 2LOT? Furthermore, from where do you get the statement that 2LOT does not concern itself with macrostates? Is that your final statement on the issue or would you care to clarify? Are you aware of the definition of entropy as "the measure of the mutiplicity of a given macropartition." Are you aware that a macropartition can be viewed, for purposes of calcualation, as a "macrostate of a combined system of two interacting" model solids. (www.physics.rutgers.edu/~gersh/351/Lecture 5.ppt, pg.2) CJYman
But the designer and the design – the mental blueprint of a computer – is out of reach for the 2nd law. The origin of any specified and functional system stems from a realm beyond the grasp of the 2nd law.
That's a philosophical viewpoint, but the nature of the mind is an open scientific question. The mind may be entirely within the material realm. To deny that (scientific) possibility is to commit the same type of error as materialism's rejection of supernatural causation. rhampton7
@Box #57
when parts are formed and arranged in a specified and functional order far from equilibrium (micro and macro)- “something” takes place in our material world that is opposite to the intentions of the 2nd law.
I get the sense that's what's causing the biggest problem here is the way the idea is being expressed rather than the idea itself. What if your statement were rephrased something like this?: When parts are formed and arranged in a specified and functional order far from equilibrium (micro and macro)- “something” takes place in our material world that is opposite to what would be expected under the 2nd law were it not for the presence of some relevant mechanism, device or agent capable of using energy to make the particular macrostate a probable outcome. I'm no expert on the subject, but I think this is what you mean to say. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. HeKS
Zach #54: But that doesn’t mean the manufacturing of a computer is “unbound” by the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Every step of the manufacturing process is consistent with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Whether producing the individual components, which may involve chemical changes to materials, or assembling the components, every step of the manufacturing process is consistent with the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
True. But the designer and the design - the mental blueprint of a computer – is out of reach for the 2nd law. The origin of any specified and functional system stems from a realm beyond the grasp of the 2nd law. And at the very moment that organization is inputted - when parts are formed and arranged in a specified and functional order far from equilibrium (micro and macro)- "something" takes place in our material world that is opposite to the intentions of the 2nd law.
Niwrad: The 2nd law doesn’t prohibit at all that an organization source (the above intelligence) injects organization into a system. Exactly like gravity doesn’t prohibit the force of your arm lifts an object from the ground.
Box
Z: every step of the manufacturing process is consistent with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Just to be clear, this means you can't look at something and determine whether it is designed by considering whether it is consistent with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Everything is consistent with the 2nd law of thermodynamics; computers, comedians, candles, Jovian moons, chihuahuas, children, chopsticks. Everything. Zachriel
Diogenes, you are kidding. KF kairosfocus
Box: (…) of all the possible arrangements atoms could take (microstates), only a negligent percentage constitute a functional computer (macrostate). But that doesn't mean the manufacturing of a computer is "unbound" by the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Whether producing the individual components, which may involve chemical changes to materials, or assembling the components, every step of the manufacturing process is consistent with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Zachriel
Piotr, As long as natural forces (such as tornados) turn a spaceship, or a TV set, or a computer into piles of rubble but not vice-versa my general understanding of the 2nd law won't change. Zach,
Box: Computers don’t “self-organize” from scrap metal because of the fact that of all the possible arrangements atoms could take, only a negligent percentage constitute a functional computer.
Zach: Okay. But that’s not the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which concerns microstates not macrostates.
there is an obvious relation between the two: (...) of all the possible arrangements atoms could take (microstates), only a negligent percentage constitute a functional computer (macrostate). Box
Box: My general understanding of the statistical 2nd law is that it turns systems into rubble and not the other way around – No. It's an analogy using macroscopic objects. Box: So the 2nd law prohibits the coming into existence of systems and organization from ‘rubble’. Again, no. A snowflake comes from the 'rubble' of amorphous liquid water. Box: Computers don’t “self-organize” from scrap metal because of the fact that of all the possible arrangements atoms could take, only a negligent percentage constitute a functional computer. Okay. But that's not the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which concerns microstates not macrostates. Box: Okay, but there are in fact systems and organized things. How is this possible given the 2nd law? Because the 2nd law of thermodynamics doesn't preclude organization. And because the 2nd law of thermodynamics doesn't apply to macroscopic arrangements. Box: This organizing principle must be – per logic – unbound by the 2nd law. Anything which organizes is bound by the 2nd law of thermodynamics. You can't arrange things without doing work. Zachriel
Box, The words "organisation", "rubble", "order" or "disorder" do not occur in any formulation of SLOT. The word "system" does, but it has the usual physical meaning of "any set of interacting components". Entropy does not equal "disorder". It's CLOT, not SLOT, which prohibits the emergence of "organisation" from "rubble". I wonder how many times it must be repeated to have an effect. Piotr
Diogenes: It should be a simple yes or no answer: is SLOT violated or not?
The short answer is "NO". My general understanding of the statistical 2nd law is that it turns systems into rubble and not the other way around - snowstorms aside. So the 2nd law prohibits the coming into existence of systems and organization from 'rubble'. Computers don't "self-organize" from scrap metal because of the fact that of all the possible arrangements atoms could take, only a negligent percentage constitute a functional computer. Okay, but there are in fact systems and organized things. How is this possible given the 2nd law? There must be an organizing principle that steers things in the opposite direction as intended by the 2nd law. This organizing principle must be - per logic - unbound by the 2nd law. IOW the 2nd law has no dominion over it. How do I prove this? The mere existence of organization proves it / implies its existence. Box
KF, you have once again threadjacked by blathering your arglebargle about FIASCO, a quantity you won't define and can't compute, thus we have no idea if or how it relates to entropy, which we can define, measure and compute. I interpret your words as meaning that evolution of increased complexity does NOT violate SLOT, because you invoke the compensation argument: local decreases in entropy are compensated by "waste heat" radiated out of the system. If this is true, please tell Granville Sewell he is wrong and that compensation is a valid argument. Also tell "physicist" Rob Sheldon, Box, etc. that they are wrong and that life and evolution do not violate SLOT. I understand you add a major caveat to the conclusion that evolution died not violate SLOT: the claim (common among creationists) that local decreases in entropy are ONLY possible in the presence of some kind of machinery which itself must be made by iintelligence. Have I got that right? If I have got that right, won't you admit this caveat, which I call CLOT (the Creationist Law of Thermodynamics) is not the same as SLOT? And that CLOT comes only from the creationist literature and appears nowhere in the scientific literature? SLOT is well-defined mathematically and depends ONLY on entropy, heat and temperature, and on NOTHING else. While CLOT cannot be defined mathematically because "machinery" and "intelligence" are undefined. CLOT is usually supported by thought experiments: "I imagine a man assembling a fishing reel, the reel has lower entropy, therefore all decreases in entropy require a man-like intelligent being." Many thought scenarios are thus imagined, but none involve measurements of heat or energy, unlike with SLOT. The thought scenarios are then alleged to prove CLOT because no other scenarios can be imagined. Then the creationist asserts that the photosynthetic apparatus in plants is a machine analogous to a fishing reel, thus if living things produce lower entropy, an "intelligence" must ultimately be responsible anyway. Have I got that right? Will you admit CLOT is not the same as SLOT, which has NO undefined terms? Will you admit that CLOT involves undefined terms that are not present at all in SLOT? Will you admit CLOT originated in the creationist literature, not the scientific literature? And will you please tell Granville Sewell he is wrong about compensation, and your fellow IDers like Rob Sheldon that they are wrong about life violating SLOT? Diogenes
Folks, I notice my name came up. First, hit an Abu Cardinal spinning reel with a hammer 100 times so it breaks up, and you will likely place its parts into a condition where they are out of spec relative to relevant function as a fishing reel. I shudder to think what would happen to the bale arm, gear housing and gears . . . which are precision components. The atoms are still there, just out of spec for components . . . inadvertently showing the relevance of functional specificity and complex organisation. Second if broken up reel parts are in a bag (let's for argument assume they were not distorted or broken -- a better case would be disassembled parts), there is no tightly specified configuration. Shaking up the parts may indeed explore the clumped at random configs, but the result will be as is predictable by common sense . . . utterly implausible to achieve relevant FSCO/I based configuration. The lack of specificity about configuration of the parts would lead to this aspect having no FSCO/I. This would be correct. Lack of function also points in the same direction for this aspect. Of course the parts -- assuming not damaged -- will individually be functionally specific and will typically be quite complex. Easily beyond 1,000 bits of functionaly specific complexity in many cases. That would make these parts identifiably designed per FSCO/I. Again, correctly. The attempted caricature collapses because the objectors seem not to have troubled to understand what they objected to, including the per aspect causal factor explanatory filter. And, lack of respect for a fine bit of Swedish workmanship is showing, too. I would have a hard time trusting someone who would even contemplate taking a hammer to such a reel with anything valuable. Sort of like being careless with pointing a gun. As to links with 2LOT. I have repeatedly highlighted that this law for over 100 years has been tightly and inextricably tied to underlying statistics at micro level. Those statistics show why even 1,000 bits of FSCO/I will be utterly unlikely to be found via blind, needle in haystack search on the gamut of atomic and temporal resources in the observed cosmos. But, intelligently directed configuration can readily create such . . . consider comments as text strings, in this thread. Where of course required energy converters and effectors to carry out the constructive work will exhaust degraded, waste energy (and often, materials), leading to genuine, relevant compensation as e.g. waste heat is exhausted at ambient temperature. So, RELEVANT compensation is consistent with 2LOT. What is spectacularly not so, is the notion of diffusion etc spontaneously doing work, with no energy flow transactions that create an energy-entropy audit trail and some vague compensation claimed elsewhere. One wonders if such have seriously thought through the energy flows picture. KF kairosfocus
My, my, Diogenes, your panties sure seem totally twisted. Why are you so upset? You're sure you're right. Us IDiots are wrong. Seems like the invective is unwarranted. Why so Serious?? :) AnimatedDust
So I'll repeat: it really looks like you IDologues contradict yourselves about whether you do, or don't, believe that SLOT is violated. Diogenes
It should be a simple yes or no answer: is SLOT violated or not? It seems Box is trying to have his cake and eat it too: saying or implying that humans and gods can violate SLOT, but also that they're not really violating SLOT because it doesn't apply to them. One wonders, then, how could one prove that SLOT doesn't apply to humans or gods, by what evidence could you prove that, unless you could point to evidence of a violation? From his comment that he linked to as "clarifying" things:
Thank you for this clear answer. So intelligence steers things in the opposite direction as intended by the 2nd law.
OK, sounds like Box is saying "intelligence" (= humans or gods) violate SLOT.
This brings us to the question if this constitutes a “violation” of the 2nd law.
Again, it's a simple yes or no question. Yes or no? Either SLOT is violated or it's not.
Niwrad: I wouldn’t say properly that 2nd law is “violated”. The 2nd law doesn’t prohibit at all that an organization source (the above intelligence) injects organization into a system. Exactly like gravity doesn’t prohibit the force of your arm lifts an object from the ground.
OK, Niwrad is saying this, but how can you prove that "intelligence" "injects" "organization" into a system unless you detect a violation of SLOT? What's your evidence for this claim? Can an animal "intelligence" "inject" "organization", whatever these words mean? Can an amoeba? Can a bacteria? A virus? How do we test these claims, besides detecting violations of SLOT? Back to Box:
In line with your explanation (see quote in #38) one could say that the 2nd law “orders” things to go to the right, but that ‘organizing intelligence’ refuses to obey and steers things to the left. Looking at it like this seems to imply that the 2nd law is indeed violated.
Again, Box appears to say SLOT is violated; thus he disagrees with Niwrad.
On the other hand as you [Niwrad] point out “the 2nd doesn’t prohibit at all that an organization source (the above intelligence) injects organization into a system”.
Great, how could you prove this claim experimentally, besides detecting a violation of SLOT?
IOW the 2nd law has no dominion over intelligence.
"Dominion"!? How could you prove these claims, besides detecting a violation of SLOT caused by humans or gods? OK, now I get the logic. It's the logic of a tax protester who says, without any evidence: I'm obeying the law, but the law doesn't apply to me. But what's your proof that the law doesn't apply to you?
Looking at it like this implies that, since intelligence is not bound by the 2nd law, it also cannot violate it.
How can you prove experimentally that "intelligence is not boutnd by the 2nd law", besides detecting violations of SLOT? This is exactly the logic of the tax protester, e.g. creationist Kent Hovind, who's in federal prison. He said that he didn't break any tax laws-- it was just that tax laws don't apply to him, because everything he owns really belongs to God. Creationist Ken Ham tried a similar trick. Ham told the gov't of Kentucky that he would obey all no-discrimination regulations because he wanted tax rebates. BUT what he DIDN'T tell them was that he'd decided no-discrimination laws don't apply to Christians. So, he couldn't really break the regulations because, as he didn't inform them, the regulations don't apply to him. Gotcha. Standard "Creationist On the Witness Stand" level of honesty. And you wonder why judges always rule against creationists in the schools. This level of honesty worked out real well for federal prisoner Hovind. Diogenes
"My question for KF is whether both have the same FSCO/I?" Doesn't it depend whether the post-hoc specification is for a pre-assembled reel, or a diy craftman's reel? :) REC
Piotr: Here is a similar exercise: Take a heavy hammer, hit an Abu Garcia® Cardinal® fishing reel a few times, until it breaks into about 100 loose parts and pieces. Place them in a shoe-box and shake well. What’s the difference between the entropy of the reel and of the broken fragments in the box? My question for KF is whether both have the same FSCO/I? velikovskys
That was my point. I know, but someone had to say it. Those who refused to answer either are ignorant of the point you're making, or wish it wasn't true. REC
Well, if the fishing reel is an analogy for a molecular machine, following shaking it could spontaneously self-assemble. Not only that, but the entropy of the assembly and its surroundings will be more favorable than the the entropy of the disordered parts and their surroundings.
That was my point. Functional and structural analogies between nano- and macro-"machines" have practically nothing to to do with entropy and the 2LOT. Piotr
"Take a heavy hammer, hit an Abu Garcia® Cardinal® fishing reel a few times, until it breaks into about 100 loose parts and pieces. Place them in a shoe-box and shake well." Well, if the fishing reel is an analogy for a molecular machine, following shaking it could spontaneously self-assemble. Not only that, but the entropy of the assembly and its surroundings will be more favorable than the the entropy of the disordered parts and their surroundings. Things just aren't like houses and cars and tornado at the microscopic level. We don't see neighborhoods spontaneously self assemble following disruption. REC
Box: From University Physics by Young and Freedman As they call information about individual coins a "microscopic state", it's clearly an analogy.
A description of the microscopic state of the system includes information about each individual coin...
Zachriel
// on micro- and macrostates and how this relates to Sewell's claim that tornado's are not able to turn rubble into cars and houses //
CS3: From University Physics by Young and Freedman (one of the most widely used calculus-based general physics textbooks), in a section entitled “Microscopic Interpretation of Entropy” in the chapter “The Second Law of Thermodynamics”:
Entropy is a measure of the disorder of the system as a whole. To see how to calculate entropy microscopically, we first have to introduce the idea of macroscopic and microscopic states. Suppose you toss N identical coins on the floor, and half of them show heads and half show tails. This is a description of the large-scale or macroscopic state of the system of N coins. A description of the microscopic state of the system includes information about each individual coin: Coin 1 was heads, coin 2 was tails, coin 3 was tails, and so on. There can be many microscopic states that correspond to the same macroscopic description. For instance, with N=4 coins there are six possible states in which half are heads and half are tails. The number of microscopic states grows rapidly with increasing N; for N=100 there are 2^100 = 1.27×10^30 microscopic states, of which 1.01×10^29 are half heads and half tails. The least probable outcomes of the coin toss are the states that are either all heads or all tails. It is certainly possible that you could throw 100 heads in a row, but don’t bet on it: the possibility of doing this is only 1 in 1.27×10^30. The most probable outcome of tossing N coins is that half are heads and half are tails. The reason is that this macroscopic state has the greatest number of corresponding microscopic states. To make the connection to the concept of entropy, note that N coins that are all heads constitutes a completely ordered macroscopic state: the description “all heads” completely specifies the state of each one of the N coins. The same is true if the coins are all tails. But the macroscopic description “half heads, half tails” by itself tells you very little about the state (heads or tails) of each individual coin. We say that the system is disordered because we know so little about its microscopic state. Compared to the state “all heads” or “all tails”, the state “half heads, half tails” has a much greater number of possible microstates, much greater disorder, and hence much greater entropy (which is a quantitative measure of disorder). Now instead of N coins, consider a mole of an ideal gas containing Avogadro’s number of molecules. The macroscopic state of this gas is given by its pressure p, volume V, and temperature T; a description of the microscopic state involves stating the position and velocity for each molecule in the gas. At a given pressure, volume, and temperature the gas may be in any one of an astronomically large number of microscopic states, depending on the positions and velocities of its 6.02×10^23 molecules. If the gas undergoes a free expansion into a greater volume, the range of possible positions increases, as does the number of possible microscopic states. The system becomes more disordered, and the entropy increases. We can draw the following general conclusion: For any system the most probable macroscopic state is the one with the greatest number of corresponding microscopic states, which is also the macroscopic state with the greatest disorder and the greatest entropy.
Sewell’s statement follows directly from this: in an isolated system, the reason natural forces (such as tornados) “may turn a spaceship, or a TV set, or a computer into a pile of rubble but not vice-versa is also probability: of all the possible arrangements atoms could take, only a very small percentage could fly to the moon and back, or receive pictures and sound from the other side of the Earth, or add, subtract, multiply and divide real numbers with high accuracy.”
Box
Z: liquid water {at 0°C} Zachriel
Box: However you also state that a tornado turning rubble into houses “doesn’t violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics whatsoever.” That's right, because the 2nd law of thermodynamics concerns microstates Box: IOW you are in denial about the essentially statistical-probabilistic nature of the second law – in effect wasting everybody’s time. As we just stated the 2nd law of thermodynamics in terms of the probability of available microstates, that's obviously not the case. Box: I fail to see the point of your question about cards and warming moles of water. There are 8*10^67 available arrangements of the macrostates of playing cards. A mole of liquid water has 10^(2*10^24) available microstates. Statistical entropy dwarfs human conceptions of 'order'. Any change in available microstates due to shuffling a deck of cards is due to the slight breaking of the molecular bonds in the paper when they are bent, not the minuscule number of macrostates Zachriel
Here is a similar exercise: Take a heavy hammer, hit an Abu Garcia® Cardinal® fishing reel a few times, until it breaks into about 100 loose parts and pieces. Place them in a shoe-box and shake well. What's the difference between the entropy of the reel and of the broken fragments in the box? Piotr
Zach: To answer your truncated question, a tornado turning rubble into houses is not in accord with probability. There are far more available macrostates of the constituents of rubble that are not houses, than would constitute houses.
However you also state that a tornado turning rubble into houses "doesn’t violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics whatsoever." IOW you are in denial about the essentially statistical-probabilistic nature of the second law - in effect wasting everybody's time. I fail to see the point of your question about cards and warming moles of water. Box
Box: can you argue that the change from rubble into cars and houses is in accord with probability? That wasn't your question, which was "a tornado that turns rubble into cars and houses seems to violate the more general statements of the second law of thermodynamics, such as 'In an isolated system, the direction of spontaneous change is from order to disorder.'" No, it does not seem to violate "the more general statements of the second law of thermodynamics". It doesn't violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics whatsoever. Box: can you argue that the change from rubble into cars and houses is in accord with probability? To answer your truncated question, a tornado turning rubble into houses is not in accord with probability. There are far more available macrostates of the constituents of rubble that are not houses, than would constitute houses. Now, try to answer our question. You might try to calculate the number of states. Let’s use a simple example, a deck of playing cards. Shuffle the cards. How many possible macrostates do the cards represent? Now calculate the difference in available microstates when warming a mole of liquid water by 1 C°. If you don't know, that's fine. We'll provide the answer. Zachriel
Zach,
Zach: You can argue that the rubble from a tornado is due to the probability of possible macrostates.
Unresponsive. The question is: can you argue that the change from rubble into cars and houses is in accord with probability? Of course you cannot - that is to say, if one accepts the statistical nature of the second law, one cannot. Box
Box: a tornado that turns rubble into cars and houses seems to violate the more general statements of the second law of thermodynamics, such as “In an isolated system, the direction of spontaneous change is from order to disorder.” It's false. Again, The 2nd law of thermodynamics is based on the probability of possible microstates, including thermal vibrations. You can argue that the rubble from a tornado is due to the probability of possible macrostates. But, even though both are based on the probability of states, they are *not* the same thing. You might try to calculate the number of states. Let's use a simple example, a deck of cards. Shuffle the cards. How many possible macrostates do the cards represent? Now calculate the difference in available microstates when warming a mole of liquid water by 1 C°. Zachriel
Zach, can you acknowledge that the following is a true statement:
a tornado that turns rubble into cars and houses seems to violate the more general statements of the second law of thermodynamics, such as "In an isolated system, the direction of spontaneous change is from order to disorder.”
Box
Box: Granville Sewell argues that a tornado turning rubble into houses and cars would constitute a violation of the 2nd law. Well, he's wrong. The 2nd law of thermodynamics is based on the probability of possible microstates. You can argue that the rubble from a tornado is due to the probability of possible macrostates. But, even though both are based on the probability of states, they are *not* the same thing. Zachriel
Diogenes, it really isn't all that complicated. First Granville Sewell argues that a tornado turning rubble into houses and cars would constitute a violation of the 2nd law. IOW it cannot be done, the 2nd law prohibits such an event. Next he argues that - given materialism - the development of a civilization on a barren planet must be considered a similar violation of the second law. At this point a sizable group of objectors start screaming over and over that the 2nd law cannot be violated. Over the years they keep repeating it:
THE 2ND LAW CANNOT BE VIOLATED!!
What they do not realize is that it is not a counterargument at all to the argument offered by Sewell. It is exactly why tornado's don't turn rubble into cars and houses and why civilizations aren't developed on barren planets given materialism. // - About my own position wrt "violation", which is of course totally irrelevant to Granville Sewell's position, I refer to this post. Box
Lemme get this straight. Granville Sewell, copying generation after generation of creationists, says that evolution violates SLOT. Sewell says: violation violation violation violation violation VIOLATION VIOLATION. Many other creationists before him said the same thing. Uncommon Descent commenters say: violation violation violation violation violation VIOLATION VIOLATION. For example, not mentioned above were the recent comments by "Box" at KF's thread, which KF closed in a panic:
I gather that the second law – as a statistical law – cannot be overcome under materialism. However there is a spiritual realm which organizes matter – thereby overcoming the 2nd law. I hold that this is just what we see around us; as Granville Sewell and others pointed out many times. Your insistence that the second law cannot be overcome is simply founded in your assumption of materialism.
Box says, to paraphrase: only an atheist would say SLOT wasn't violated! No IDologue disagreed with Box when he wrote this, though some evolutionists did. Again: Uncommon Descent commenters say violation violation violation violation violation VIOLATION VIOLATION. Here's another example: "physicist" Rob Sheldon, so often cited as an authority at UD, saying life violates 2LOT:
This is simply “Maximum Entropy Production Principle” or MEPP theory that was developed in the 80?s and 90?s. It appears–though of course I haven’t got the peer-reviewed paper to check–that this MIT assistant prof needs tenure...the American approach to universities... produces the best self-promotion. The problem, as physicists will only tell you behind a closed and locked door, is that life violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. If you throw some water and amino acids and sugar on the stove and simmer it for a few days, you might get great soup, but you surely will not get a single ounce of help writing your next research grant... But put in one bacterium, and that great soup turns into an acidic, cloudy mess. It no longer is in its maximum entropy state, but highly organized... It so totally violates the 2nd law, how do physicists explain it?
Uh, excuse me Sheldon, physicists DO NOT SAY THAT LIFE VIOLATES 2LOT, not "behind a closed and locked door" nor anywhere else; and they do not explain life violating 2LOT because they know it doesn't. Nor does evolution. But Eric Anderson scolds us:
Myth #1: [IDcreationists] believe that, in the history of life on Earth, there has actually been a violation of the 2nd Law. Those who entertain this myth tend to heap copious amounts of ridicule on [IDcreationists], noting how incredibly foolish the skeptics are to think the 2nd Law could be violated... it arises from a complete misunderstanding of the skeptics’ argument. Don’t fall prey to this myth. Don’t claim that abiogenesis skeptics think the 2nd Law has been violated.
Oh. So sorry! Here when UDites said violation violation, citing Sewell as their authority, I interpreted it to mean violation. How rude of me! I was "leading others astray by insinuating as much." Now, literally two posts after Eric Anderson scolded us for ever saying that IDcreationists think that 2LOT is violated, we have Granville Sewell writing:
The development of civilization on this planet, and the tornado that turned rubble into houses and cars, each seems to violate the more general statements of the second law, in a spectacular way. Various reasons why the development of civilization does not violate the second law have been given, but all of them can equally well be used to argue that the second tornado did not violate it either.
Where is Barry Arrington when you need him to start banning people for violating the Law of Non-Contradiction? If Arrington were consistent in his habit of banning people for disagreeing with the LNC, you would all be out on your ass. Oops! Keith S points out the contradiction! Not allowed to do that. So HeKS tries to rewrite Sewell and put words in his mouth:
And yet the entire backdrop of Granville’s ENV article clearly shows that the statement you’ve bolded should be understand like this: try to imagine a more spectacular violation than what has happened on our planet [if it happened purely as the result of unguided natural forces as the materialists believe]
Note the ridiculous grammar-- HeKS wants Sewell to write in subjunctive tense, "if it were that way", but too bad for HeKS, Sewell wrote in past perfect, "what has happened on our planet", leading to HeKS' grammatically twisted bastard sentence. Oh no, if you think Sewell said that, you don't understand anything he's writing. Sewell said "violation" over and over, and he says you can only have a decrease in entropy if "something comes in from outside", meaning God's finger from another universe. But Sewell clearly said, and believes, violation, as do countless other creationists. Now an UDite shows up to rebut Keith S:
Keith, what part of what HeKS wrote do you not understand?
That's exactly the problem. The problem is that we DO understand what HeKS wrote so we know he's full of it. The problem with us is that we DO understand what IDcreationists are writing, and it's so $%^&ing horrifying I wanna go to Tijuana and get a motel room lobotomy to wipe from my brain my understanding of what you creationists write. Note that the person who wrote the above comment was, of all people, Box, whom I just quoted above saying that SLOT was violated. Now Box has forgotten what he just believed and, stupidly aping HeKS, he now thinks he thinks that SLOT is not violated, and no doubt he also thinks that no one ever, ever thought the thing he just wrote at UD a couple days ago. Diogenes
Jim Smith @4 -
Using the same logic by which one infers the existence of an unknown mass altering the orbits of objects in space based on known characteristics of gravity, it is logical to infer an unknown intelligence responsible for the origin and evolution of life based on the known characteristics of intelligence
Ah, useful. When Uranus' orbit was found to be perturbed, the predictions were used to find Neptune. So will ID take the same path and use a similar logic to discover this unknown intelligence? Bob O'H
keiths:
Why are so many IDers shocked to find second law crackpots in their midst? It’s not exactly a secret.
We're not surprised in the least. The regular influx of new ID deniers (crackpots), and the continual presence of long time ID deniers (crackpots such as yourself) constantly remind us of the crackpots in our midst. Perhaps we could all see the true meaning of your posts once they are passed through a 2LOT filter. But I'm guessing you wouldn't even know where to begin. keiths, just another in a long line of 2LOT crackpots. Mung
It's an excellent article. Granville Sewell keeps things as simple as possible, but the intellectual featherweights from the "skeptical" zone still succeed in misunderstanding. Box
I don't believe for a minute that Granville Sewell posted this 2013 article. He wouldn't want to embarrass himself again. May be some one at UD posted it. Me_Think
And yet the entire backdrop of Granville's ENV article clearly shows that the statement you've bolded should be understand like this:
try to imagine a more spectacular violation than what has happened on our planet [if it happened purely as the result of unguided natural forces as the materialists believe]
Oddly enough Keith, most people write with the expectation that they will be read in good faith and with the expectation that a punchy final sentence will be read in the context of the entire article that preceded it rather than as an isolated sentence hanging out in space free of any context at all. HeKS
Keith, #15 and #17 provide further indication to what was already obvious: HeKS is perfectly right. Box
Now my question for you: What part of the bolded sentences in #15 and #17 don't you understand? keith s
Box, I understand what HeKS wrote. He hasn't rebutted my claim. Granville believes that the second law was violated here on Earth, just as you do. keith s
Keith, what part of what HeKS wrote do you not understand? Box
And then there's this:
So, how does the spontaneous rearrangement of matter on a rocky, barren, planet into human brains and spaceships and jet airplanes and nuclear power plants and libraries full of science texts and novels, and super computers running partial differential equation solving software, represent a less obvious or less spectacular violation of the second law -- or at least of the fundamental natural principle behind this law -- than tornados turning rubble into houses and cars? Here is a thought experiment for you: try to imagine a more spectacular violation than what has happened on our planet. [Emphasis added]
keith s
LOL. Why are so many IDers shocked to find second law crackpots in their midst? It's not exactly a secret. keith s
From Granville Sewell's response to Sal Cordova:
So let me ask you, Scordova: if you saw a video of a tornado running backward, turning rubble into houses and cars, would you consider that violated the second law? Obviously it would not violate the early formulations you quote, but most physics textbooks agree that a tornado running backward, if it really happened, would violate the second law, in its more general form. And if that would violate the second law, why does the rearrangement of atoms into brains, computers, nuclear power plants and libraries not violate it? This recent post on ENV pursues this point further, and addresses several of Scordova’s arguments.
Sal's explains why Creationists and ID Proponents should NOT use the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics argument rhampton7
Keith, It seems pretty obvious on any honest reading what Granville is saying, and it's not contrary to Eric's Myth #1. He is not saying that he thinks the rise of life and civilization on Earth is a violation of the 2nd Law. He's saying that the spontaneous arising of life and civilization in his story would seem to be a violation of the generalized 2nd law if it came about apart from intelligent guidance and purely as the result of natural forces in the same way that the unguided natural forces of a tornado turning rubble into houses and cars would seem to be a violation of the generalized law. However, Granville doesn't think that tornadoes have actually turned rubble into cars and houses, nor does he think that purely natural unguided forces are actually responsible for life arising, so he doesn't think that the generalized 2nd law has actually been violated. Furthermore, in the section you quoted where he says:
The development of civilization on this planet...
"This Planet" != "Earth" Rather... "This Planet" == "Fictional Earth-like Planet" His statement is not particularly difficult to understand if you actually read it. HeKS
This thread makes the great point with the pictures of the tornado town. AMEN. In fact biology is more complicated in its essence then bricks and driveways. Order from disorder is very unlikely in any minor way but in the explanation for life and universe its a unworthy claim to get order from disorder. Put a fork in it. This is done. Its evolution that is the target for intellectual accuracy in science. Robert Byers
Mapou, It's plain as day. Granville thinks that the development of civilization on earth violates the second law:
The development of civilization on this planet, and the tornado that turned rubble into houses and cars, each seems to violate the more general statements of the second law, in a spectacular way. Various reasons why the development of civilization does not violate the second law have been given, but all of them can equally well be used to argue that the second tornado did not violate it either.
He clearly believes that both the rise of civilization and the house-constructing tornado are violations of the second law. keith s
Of important note: Quantum Entanglement/Information simply refuses to be reduced to a materialistic explanation:
Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php
Thus, Dr. Sewell is found to be correct in his contention:
“If an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is closed, it is still extremely improbable when the system is open, unless something is entering which makes it not extremely improbable.”
Of supplemental note: the maximum source for entropy (randomness) in the universe is now known to be black holes,,,
Entropy of the Universe – Hugh Ross – May 2010 Excerpt: Egan and Lineweaver found that supermassive black holes are the largest contributor to the observable universe’s entropy. They showed that these supermassive black holes contribute about 30 times more entropy than what the previous research teams estimated. http://www.reasons.org/entropy-universe “Einstein’s equation predicts that, as the astronaut reaches the singularity (of the black-hole), the tidal forces grow infinitely strong, and their chaotic oscillations become infinitely rapid. The astronaut dies and the atoms which his body is made become infinitely and chaotically distorted and mixed-and then, at the moment when everything becomes infinite (the tidal strengths, the oscillation frequencies, the distortions, and the mixing), spacetime ceases to exist.” Kip S. Thorne – “Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy” pg. 476
Needless to say, the implications of this ‘eternity of death and destruction’ should be fairly disturbing for those of us who are of the ‘spiritually minded’ persuasion! In light of this dilemma, it is interesting to point out a subtle nuance on the Shroud of Turin. Namely that Gravity/Entropy was overcome in the resurrection event of Christ:
A Quantum Hologram of Christ’s Resurrection? by Chuck Missler Excerpt: “You can read the science of the Shroud, such as total lack of gravity, lack of entropy (without gravitational collapse), no time, no space—it conforms to no known law of physics.” The phenomenon of the image brings us to a true event horizon, a moment when all of the laws of physics change drastically. Dame Piczek created a one-fourth size sculpture of the man in the Shroud. When viewed from the side, it appears as if the man is suspended in mid air (see graphic, below), indicating that the image defies previously accepted science. The phenomenon of the image brings us to a true event horizon, a moment when all of the laws of physics change drastically. http://www.khouse.org/articles/2008/847 THE EVENT HORIZON (Space-Time Singularity) OF THE SHROUD OF TURIN. – Isabel Piczek – Particle Physicist Excerpt: We have stated before that the images on the Shroud firmly indicate the total absence of Gravity. Yet they also firmly indicate the presence of the Event Horizon. These two seemingly contradict each other and they necessitate the past presence of something more powerful than Gravity that had the capacity to solve the above paradox. http://shroud3d.com/findings/isabel-piczek-image-formation Turin shroud – (Particle Physicist explains event horizon) – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHVUGK6UFK8 Particle Radiation from the Body – July 2012 – M. Antonacci, A. C. Lind Excerpt: The Shroud’s frontal and dorsal body images are encoded with the same amount of intensity, independent of any pressure or weight from the body. The bottom part of the cloth (containing the dorsal image) would have born all the weight of the man’s supine body, yet the dorsal image is not encoded with a greater amount of intensity than the frontal image. Radiation coming from the body would not only explain this feature, but also the left/right and light/dark reversals found on the cloth’s frontal and dorsal body images. https://docs.google.com/document/d/19tGkwrdg6cu5mH-RmlKxHv5KPMOL49qEU8MLGL6ojHU/edit
Verses and Music:
John 8:23-24 But he continued, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins. Evanescence – The Other Side (Music-Lyric Video) http://www.vevo.com/watch/evanescence/the-other-side-lyric-video/USWV41200024?source=instantsearch
bornagain77
And although the effects of entropy are readily apparent on our material bodies as we grow older, it is also readily apparent that the trillion-billion proteins of the human body is being constrained from the effects of entropy by something that is ‘unnatural’. Talbott puts the question as to why the human body does not immediately disintergrate into thermodynamic equilibrium like this: “What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?”
The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings – Stephen L. Talbott Excerpt: Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary. ,,, the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? Despite the countless processes going on in the cell, and despite the fact that each process might be expected to “go its own way” according to the myriad factors impinging on it from all directions, the actual result is quite different. Rather than becoming progressively disordered in their mutual relations (as indeed happens after death, when the whole dissolves into separate fragments), the processes hold together in a larger unity. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-unbearable-wholeness-of-beings “What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?” – picture http://cdn-4.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/harvardd-2.jpg Rabbit decomposition time-lapse (higher resolution) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6sFP_7Vezg
I hold, as Andy C. McIntosh, professor of thermodynamics and combustion theory at the University of Leeds, holds, that it is non-material information that is what is constraining the cell (and the human body) to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium and is what is the ‘power holding off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer’. To back that claim up, we now have empirical evidence that information "is entering which makes it not extremely improbable” (Sewell) for the human body to be out of thermodynamic equilibrium: With the finding of quantum entanglement in every DNA and protein moleculae, now every time a DNA molecule is constructed, or a protein is folded, an appeal must be made to a non-local, beyond space and time, cause so as to coherently explain the non-local quantum entanglement within the DNA and protein molecules.
Quantum Information/Entanglement In DNA – short video https://vimeo.com/92405752 Quantum entanglement holds together life’s blueprint – 2010 Excerpt: When the researchers analysed the DNA without its helical structure, they found that the electron clouds were not entangled. But when they incorporated DNA’s helical structure into the model, they saw that the electron clouds of each base pair became entangled with those of its neighbours. “If you didn’t have entanglement, then DNA would have a simple flat structure, and you would never get the twist that seems to be important to the functioning of DNA,” says team member Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford. http://neshealthblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/quantum-entanglement-holds-together-lifes-blueprint/ The DNA Mystery: Scientists Stumped By “Telepathic” Abilities – Sept, 2009 Scientists are reporting evidence that contrary to our current beliefs about what is possible, intact double-stranded DNA has the “amazing” ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. Somehow they are able to identify one another, and the tiny bits of genetic material tend to congregate with similar DNA. The recognition of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science. There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible. per daily galaxy
Of particular note, proteins are not finding there final folded form by a random, i.e. thermodynamic, process, but are finding their final folded form by a 'quantum computation/entanglement' process:
The Humpty-Dumpty Effect: A Revolutionary Paper with Far-Reaching Implications - Paul Nelson - October 23, 2012 Excerpt: Anyone who has studied the protein folding problem will have met the famous Levinthal paradox, formulated in 1969 by the molecular biologist Cyrus Levinthal. Put simply, the Levinthal paradox states that when one calculates the number of possible topological (rotational) configurations for the amino acids in even a small (say, 100 residue) unfolded protein, random search could never find the final folded conformation of that same protein during the lifetime of the physical universe. Therefore, concluded Levinthal, given that proteins obviously do fold, they are doing so, not by random search, but by following favored pathways. The challenge of the protein folding problem is to learn what those pathways are. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/a_revolutionary065521.html Confronting Science’s Logical Limits – John L. Casti – 1996 Excerpt: It has been estimated that a supercomputer applying plausible rules for protein folding would need 10^127 years to find the final folded form for even a very short sequence consisting of just 100 amino acids. (The universe is 13.7 x 10^9 years old). In fact, in 1993 Aviezri S. Fraenkel of the University of Pennsylvania showed that the mathematical formulation of the protein-folding problem is computationally “hard” in the same way that the traveling-salesman problem is hard. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Confronting_Sciences_Logical_Limits.pdf
Yet it is exactly this type of ‘traveling salesman problem’ that quantum computers excel at:
Speed Test of Quantum Versus Conventional Computing: Quantum Computer Wins - May 8, 2013 Excerpt: quantum computing is, "in some cases, really, really fast." McGeoch says the calculations the D-Wave excels at involve a specific combinatorial optimization problem, comparable in difficulty to the more famous "travelling salesperson" problem that's been a foundation of theoretical computing for decades.,,, "This type of computer is not intended for surfing the internet, but it does solve this narrow but important type of problem really, really fast," McGeoch says. "There are degrees of what it can do. If you want it to solve the exact problem it's built to solve, at the problem sizes I tested, it's thousands of times faster than anything I'm aware of. If you want it to solve more general problems of that size, I would say it competes -- it does as well as some of the best things I've looked at. At this point it's merely above average but shows a promising scaling trajectory." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130508122828.htm
And it is now empirically confirmed that proteins are finding their final form by a quantum process:
Physicists Discover Quantum Law of Protein Folding – February 22, 2011 Quantum mechanics finally explains why protein folding depends on temperature in such a strange way. Excerpt: First, a little background on protein folding. Proteins are long chains of amino acids that become biologically active only when they fold into specific, highly complex shapes. The puzzle is how proteins do this so quickly when they have so many possible configurations to choose from. To put this in perspective, a relatively small protein of only 100 amino acids can take some 10^100 different configurations. If it tried these shapes at the rate of 100 billion a second, it would take longer than the age of the universe to find the correct one. Just how these molecules do the job in nanoseconds, nobody knows.,,, Their astonishing result is that this quantum transition model fits the folding curves of 15 different proteins and even explains the difference in folding and unfolding rates of the same proteins. That’s a significant breakthrough. Luo and Lo’s equations amount to the first universal laws of protein folding. That’s the equivalent in biology to something like the thermodynamic laws in physics. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/423087/physicists-discover-quantum-law-of-protein/
bornagain77
Andy C. McIntosh, professor of thermodynamics and combustion theory at the University of Leeds, holds that non-material information is what is constraining the cell to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium. Moreover, Dr. McIntosh holds that regarding information as independent of energy and matter ‘resolves the thermodynamic issues and invokes the correct paradigm for understanding the vital area of thermodynamic/organisational interactions’.
Information and Thermodynamics in Living Systems – Andy C. McIntosh – 2013 Excerpt: ,,, information is in fact non-material and that the coded information systems (such as, but not restricted to the coding of DNA in all living systems) is not defined at all by the biochemistry or physics of the molecules used to store the data. Rather than matter and energy defining the information sitting on the polymers of life, this approach posits that the reverse is in fact the case. Information has its definition outside the matter and energy on which it sits, and furthermore constrains it to operate in a highly non-equilibrium thermodynamic environment. This proposal resolves the thermodynamic issues and invokes the correct paradigm for understanding the vital area of thermodynamic/organisational interactions, which despite the efforts from alternative paradigms has not given a satisfactory explanation of the way information in systems operates.,,, http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789814508728_0008
Here is a recent video by Dr. Giem, that gets the main points of Dr. McIntosh’s paper over very well for the lay person:
Biological Information – Information and Thermodynamics in Living Systems 11-22-2014 by Paul Giem (A. McIntosh) – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR_r6mFdwQM
Dr. McIntosh’s contention that ‘non-material information’ must be constraining life to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium is now backedd up empirically. Classical Information in the cell has now been physically measured and is shown to correlate to the thermodynamics of the cell:
Maxwell’s demon demonstration (knowledge of a particle’s position) turns information into energy – November 2010 Excerpt: Scientists in Japan are the first to have succeeded in converting information into free energy in an experiment that verifies the “Maxwell demon” thought experiment devised in 1867.,,, In Maxwell’s thought experiment the demon creates a temperature difference simply from information about the gas molecule temperatures and without transferring any energy directly to them.,,, Until now, demonstrating the conversion of information to energy has been elusive, but University of Tokyo physicist Masaki Sano and colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating it in a nano-scale experiment. In a paper published in Nature Physics they describe how they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a “spiral-staircase-like” potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-maxwell-demon-energy.html Demonic device converts information to energy – 2010 Excerpt: “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,” says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. “This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale,” says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=demonic-device-converts-inform
As should be needless to say, the physical demonstration that ‘information has a thermodynamic content’ is extremely bad news for neo-Darwinism, (and naturalistic OOL scenarios for that matter), since Neo-Darwinism holds that information is not physically real but is merely 'emergent' from a material basis. Here are two related quotes:
“Gain in entropy always means loss of information, and nothing more.” Gilbert Newton Lewis – preeminent Chemist of the first half of last century “Bertalanffy (1968) called the relation between irreversible thermodynamics and information theory one of the most fundamental unsolved problems in biology.” Charles J. Smith – Biosystems, Vol.1, p259.
Also of interest, when measuring the information content of a ‘simple cell’ from the themodynamic perspective, the ‘information problem’ explodes into gargantuan porportions:
“a one-celled bacterium, e. coli, is estimated to contain the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Expressed in information in science jargon, this would be the same as 10^12 bits of information. In comparison, the total writings from classical Greek Civilization is only 10^9 bits, and the largest libraries in the world – The British Museum, Oxford Bodleian Library, New York Public Library, Harvard Widenier Library, and the Moscow Lenin Library – have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.” – R. C. Wysong ‘The information content of a simple cell has been estimated as around 10^12 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica.” Carl Sagan, “Life” in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894
For calculations, of the information content of a 'simple cell' from the thermodynamic perspective, please see the following site:
Biophysics – Information theory. Relation between information and entropy: – Setlow-Pollard, Ed. Addison Wesley Excerpt: Linschitz gave the figure 9.3 x 10^12 cal/deg or 9.3 x 10^12 x 4.2 joules/deg for the entropy of a bacterial cell. Using the relation H = S/(k In 2), we find that the information content is 4 x 10^12 bits. Morowitz’ deduction from the work of Bayne-Jones and Rhees gives the lower value of 5.6 x 10^11 bits, which is still in the neighborhood of 10^12 bits. Thus two quite different approaches give rather concordant figures. https://docs.google.com/document/d/18hO1bteXTPOqQtd2H12PI5wFFoTjwg8uBAU5N0nEQIE/edit
Having one hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica worth of information sitting out of thermodynamic equilibrium would certainly strongly suggest "something is entering (the open system) which makes it not extremely improbable" (Sewell). Also of interest, it is apparent that the human body trounces the ‘simple cell’ in terms of being out of Thermodynamic Equilibrium. The human body consist of something close to one trillion-billion protein molecules:
HOW BIOLOGISTS LOST SIGHT OF THE MEANING OF LIFE — AND ARE NOW STARING IT IN THE FACE – Stephen L. Talbott – May 2012 Excerpt: “If you think air traffic controllers have a tough job guiding planes into major airports or across a crowded continental airspace, consider the challenge facing a human cell trying to position its proteins”. A given cell, he notes, may make more than 10,000 different proteins, and typically contains more than a billion protein molecules at any one time. “Somehow a cell must get all its proteins to their correct destinations — and equally important, keep these molecules out of the wrong places”.,,, The question is indeed, then, “How does the organism meaningfully dispose of all its molecules, getting them to the right places and into the right interactions?” The same sort of question can be asked of cells, for example in the growing embryo, where literal streams of cells are flowing to their appointed places, differentiating themselves into different types as they go, and adjusting themselves to all sorts of unpredictable perturbations — even to the degree of responding appropriately when a lab technician excises a clump of them from one location in a young embryo and puts them in another, where they may proceed to adapt themselves in an entirely different and proper way to the new environment. It is hard to quibble with the immediate impression that form (which is more idea-like than thing-like) is primary, and the material particulars subsidiary. Two systems biologists, one from the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Germany and one from Harvard Medical School, frame one part of the problem this way: “The human body is formed by trillions of individual cells. These cells work together with remarkable precision, first forming an adult organism out of a single fertilized egg, and then keeping the organism alive and functional for decades. To achieve this precision, one would assume that each individual cell reacts in a reliable, reproducible way to a given input, faithfully executing the required task. However, a growing number of studies investigating cellular processes on the level of single cells revealed large heterogeneity even among genetically identical cells of the same cell type. (Loewer and Lahav 2011)”,,, And then we hear that all this meaningful activity is, somehow, meaningless or a product of meaninglessness. This, I believe, is the real issue troubling the majority of the American populace when they are asked about their belief in evolution. They see one thing and then are told, more or less directly, that they are really seeing its denial. Yet no one has ever explained to them how you get meaning from meaninglessness — a difficult enough task once you realize that we cannot articulate any knowledge of the world at all except in the language of meaning.,,, http://www.netfuture.org/2012/May1012_184.html#2
And although the effects of entropy on the human body are readily apparent as we grow older,,,
Entropy Explains Aging, Genetic Determinism Explains Longevity, and Undefined Terminology Explains Misunderstanding Both – 2007 Excerpt: There is a huge body of knowledge supporting the belief that age changes are characterized by increasing entropy, which results in the random loss of molecular fidelity, and accumulates to slowly overwhelm maintenance systems [1–4].,,, http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0030220 Here’s a interesting talk by Dr. John Sanford. Starting at the 17 minute mark going to the 22 minute mark. He relates how slightly detrimental mutations, that accumulate each time a cell divides, are the primary reason why our physical/material bodies grow old and die. John Sanford on (Genetic Entropy) – Down, Not Up – 2-4-2012 (at Loma Linda University) – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=PHsu94HQrL0#t=1040s Notes from John Sanford’s preceding video: *3 new mutations every time a cell divides in your body * Average cell of 15 year old has up to 6000 mutations *Average cell of 60 year old has 40,000 mutations Reproductive cells are ‘designed’ so that, early on in development, they are ‘set aside’ and thus they do not accumulate mutations as the rest of the cells of our bodies do. Regardless of this protective barrier against the accumulation of slightly detrimental mutations still we find that,,, *60-175 mutations are passed on to each new generation. This following video brings the point personally home to us about the effects of genetic entropy on our material bodies as we grow older: Aging Process – 85 years in 40 seconds – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A91Fwf_sMhk
bornagain77
keith s @7, Man, go fly a kite or mow the lawn or something. You're boring. Mapou
Mapou, I quoted him directly. What do you think he was saying, and why? keith s
keith s @5, Granville is not saying what you are pretending that he said. Why the deceptive debating techniques? It's a sign of weakness and fear. Mapou
Granville Sewell:
The development of civilization on this planet, and the tornado that turned rubble into houses and cars, each seems to violate the more general statements of the second law, in a spectacular way.
Eric Anderson:
Myth #1: Abiogenesis skeptics believe that, in the history of life on Earth, there has actually been a violation of the 2nd Law. Those who entertain this myth tend to heap copious amounts of ridicule on abiogenesis skeptics, noting how incredibly foolish the skeptics are to think the 2nd Law could be violated. After all, everyone knows this is not possible, so clearly the skeptics have no idea what they are talking about and can be ignored. This might sound good on the surface, but it arises from a complete misunderstanding of the skeptics’ argument. Don’t fall prey to this myth. Don’t claim that abiogenesis skeptics think the 2nd Law has been violated. Don’t lead others astray by insinuating as much.
I guess Granville is a mythical creature, huh, Eric? keith s
Arguments based on thermodynamics are just probabilistic generalizations of chemical and physical laws. The tornado analogy is a good way to counter the open system argument. But they are both just so stories. To really explain anything about the origin of life you have to look at specific chemical models. At the moment there is no plausible explanation for the chemical origin or evolution of life. The numbers don't add up. An unknown intelligence is a much better explanation. Using the same logic by which one infers the existence of an unknown mass altering the orbits of objects in space based on known characteristics of gravity, it is logical to infer an unknown intelligence responsible for the origin and evolution of life based on the known characteristics of intelligence (ie. the ability to generate codes and cybernetic systems). Jim Smith
Granville Sewell: Can you now at least understand why some of us feel that evolution is a fundamentally different and much more difficult problem than others solved by science, and requires a fundamentally different type of explanation? Evolution is a fundamentally different type of explanation. That's why Darwin is considered a scientist of the first order. Zachriel
Granville:
If I asked you why you don’t believe my story about the second tornado, you might say this tornado seems to violate the more general statements of the second law of thermodynamics, such as “In an isolated system, the direction of spontaneous change is from order to disorder.”
I certainly wouldn't say that, because it's wrong. As we've been telling you for years, Granville, entropy and disorder are not the same thing. Here's some remedial reading for you: Disorder—A Cracked Crutch for Supporting Entropy Discussions ETA: An excerpt:
Entropy is not disorder. Entropy is not a measure of disorder or chaos. Entropy is not a driving force. Energy’s diffusion, dissipation, or dispersion in a final state compared to an initial state is the driving force in chemistry. Entropy is the index of that dispersal within a system and between the system and its surroundings.
keith s
Granville Sewell:
In the current debate between Darwinism and intelligent design, the strongest argument made by Darwinists is this: in every other field of science, naturalism has been spectacularly successful, why should evolutionary biology be so different?
No, the strongest argument is that modern evolutionary theory fits the evidence far, far better than intelligent design.
Many people believe that intelligent design advocates just don’t understand how science works...
Many of them don't. Have you been reading UD lately? keith s

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