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Posted by The Natural Philosopher on 12/21/07 16:57
Steve wrote:
> "The Natural Philosopher" <a@b.c> wrote in message
> news:1198243301.21036.0@proxy00.news.clara.net...
>> Steve wrote:
>>> "Sanders Kaufman" <bucky@kaufman.net> wrote in message
>>> news:7rAaj.71221$RX.70203@newssvr11.news.prodigy.net...
>>>> "Erwin Moller"
>>>> <Since_humans_read_this_I_am_spammed_too_much@spamyourself.com> wrote in
>>>> message news:476a41e7$0$85783$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
>>>>
>>>>> Yes, that is the problem if you want to defens the statement that
>>>>> complexity can only be created by something more complex.
>>>>> It is an endless loop.
>>>> Such is the infinite nature of the universe.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> All things tend toward entropy.
>>>> Entropy tends toward chaos.
>>>> Chaos tends toward all things.
>>> chaos is a relative and ficticious term. there certainly is randomness in
>>> the universe, however there is NO chaos. chaos is associated with the
>>> break-down of laws being enforced on things. the laws of physics are
>>> constant. they only change based on our understanding of those laws. in
>>> that, there can be no chaos.
>>>
>> Semantics.
>
> not very.
>
>> Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics. The mathematics of discontinuous
>> functions. Of which it seems the universe is at least partly accurately
>> modelled by.
>
> yes, and chaos theory simply doesn't allow for the possibility of man being
> able to know all the input variables.
Which is of course reasonable, since its been calculated that you need a
computer as large as the Universe to hold all the data..
> in fact, sits blindly aside it. it is
> like saying the laws of geometry change for a game of billiards simply
> because we've added a billion balls to the table.
Not really. no.
Its more like saying the laws of planar geometry change when the
billiard table is cracked in half with a 6" gap in the middle
Or rather that they cease to apply;-)
Chaos theory simply states that under certain conditions, random
fluctuations in the microcosmos can utterly change the course of events
in the macrocosmos.
Its the breeze that lets the bullet wander 5mm to the left so it misses
a major artery..turning a very imprecise fluctuation into a life or
death event..
It's Schroedingers cat..
Its the incomputability of even some quite simple natural laws..
> i go back to your
> 'universe in a large computer' analogy. if that computer exists or could be
> created, we could very well make ourselves omniscient beings. not because we
> would know all from a present perspective, but we would be able to predict
> all based on such laws...perfect predictability. we simply have to know the
> laws accurately and then define every variable. once in motion,
> predictions - of even things like thought and behavior - could conceivably
> be pefectly predictable.
>
The point is. its been shown to be impossible to construct such a
computer. Even if the Universe WAS totally deterministic, what emerges
is the idea that the computer IS the universe, as it were.. you see its
NOT just the fact of identifying the actual laws, assuming these are
deterministic - and current quantum theory is not at the level its at
right now - its stochastic..but also of measuring every aspect of the
universe WITHOUT ALTERING IT IN A WAY WE COULDN'T PREDICT to establish a
starting point for our computer simulation, and then storing that data,
and then running it faster tan time itself, to get ahead of the game to
get an answer THAT WOULD NOT AS A RESULT OF OBTAINING IT CHANGE THE FUTURE..
At every single point in this chain of thought, we are deeply mired.
Quantum physics is not at the micro level, deterministic. Schrodingers
cat may be alive or dead, and we cannot predict which. Measuring the
universe changes it. Simulating it changes it. the storage needed
exceeds the available computational storage of the universe, and of
course we would find it hard to model the computer itself in the model
of the whole universe..
And that is before you get to Godels incompleteness theorem..
> i have never been a fan of the chaos theory. and again, randomness and chaos
> are not semantically different in definition and meaning, they are
> completely describing two very different and distinct things. one abides by
> law and the other disregards it.
>
Nothing disregards immutable laws..how could it? Chaos theory merely
states that small and very hard, or impossible to predict micro eventrs
*can* have massive impact in the macrocosm. Its possible to say that
that is in fact what the big bang was in any case.
>>> as for entropy, it tends toward the dispertion of energy...nothing more.
>>> the only relationship is that it occurs at a greater frequency the more
>>> ordered, or complex, a thing is. as for *trying* to related that to
>>> chaos, good luck! even in entropy, the path of dispertion is *always* the
>>> quickest route...meaning, my heated house will lose heat unevenly if i
>>> open a window. so, even entropy itself follows the order inherent in
>>> physics. again, in complete absense of chaos.
>> Chaos as he d=efines it is infinitely dis-ordered. Nothing in the laws of
>> nature precludes that.
>
> actually, yes. the law of maximum entropy negates the possibility of
> infinite disorder. again though, chaos is realted to UNPREDICTABILITY, not
> with disorder strictly.
>
Thats not true at all.
If infinite disorder has a meaning at all, its possible.
Chaos theory - as opposed to chaos in the poetic sense, is NOT related
to unpredictability at all. Discontinous functions are not
unpredictable, just very sensitive to small changes, and very hard to
compute accurately around the discontinuity.
Tan(theta) is a simple example.As theta tends to 90 degrees it tends to
infinity..as theta passes 90 degrees it becomes minus infinity. A very
large change for a very simple function to display over an infinitesimal
variation in its input. This is not about the fact that tan(x) is not
defined, or is not in obedience to laws. Its about the fact that very
small input changes result in massive output changes, and the difficulty
of measuring very small things. And the perturbability of very small
things by (random?) quantum events..
Its like balancing a ruler on its edge. It may stay up..just. It has a
narrow platform of stability. But once something moves it, its going to
fall that way till its flat. Whether it falls on the nuclear war button
and sets of WWIII or on the Presidents coffee cup is extremely hard to
predict.
As engineers and constructors of reliable predictable machinery, we
steer well clear of such systems. Nature however does not. An exploding
supernova in a distant galaxy a billion year ago might JUST nudge a
comet into the path of the earth, and destroy life on
earth..completely..for a long time.
>> finally, not ALL things tend toward entropy...just energy. lest you think
>>> that the evolution of life forms began as infinitely complex and have
>>> entropied to human form now. that would put you in agreement with the
>>> op...that everything complex was begat by something more complex. that is
>>> just NOT something seen in nature.
>> Well it depends on how you look at it.
>
> thats what logically follows for me when i reflect on it. how do you see it?
>
>> The Big Bang was a singularity that introduced extreme order into total
>> formlessness.
>
> sorry, the moment *before* the big bang
There *was* no moment before the Big Bang ;-)
Thats what it created. Time. Space. Energy. Matter. Natural laws. If you
take the view that the Universe is completely deterministic, everything
that was ever going to happen, happened then..the rest is just watching
it unfold exactly as it was always going to, and there is nothing you
can do about it. "Slaughterhouse 5" stuff. There's a word for that. The
future was *implicit* in the particular broken symmetry of the big bang
> was as ordered as the resultantant
> universe could ever achieve after the big bang. the singularity event was
> the point at which entropy in our universe began. to take your sentence
> literally would mean the big bang produced order...instead of entropy acting
> on the existence of order.
I am not a great fan of entropy. It all depends on what you mean by
order. Is a strill pond infinitely ordered, or disordered? Entropy is a
thermodynamic things, and there's lots of stuff that could and maybe
does break entropy. Maxwell's Demon is one nice sort of thought.
>
>> Ultimately its pretty much the same as the God explanation, although the
>> timescales are different, and the big bang is not generally supposed to be
>> the conscious act of a supernatural entity. Nor does it dictate that we
>> bow down and worship it, nor that our lives or deaths will be an any
>> measurably significant way affected, if we do.
>
> right, however it's important for us to discuss because we can be damned
> sure some idiot with no background in science will start saying that god
> staves of entropy somehow because the second law of thermodynamics says
> so...having no clue at all what that law says, who said it, and why it
> doesn't apply to whether or not complex beings and systems can arise in the
> light of entropy.
Sure. But it behooves us to be better at understanding our science, than
most fundies are at understanding their religion. Replacing one leap of
faith by another, and parroting 'laws of nature' as if they were FACTS
will not suffice.
Science explains many things in far more detail and far more elegantly
and in a way that allows us to predict the future with far better
accuracy than God bases stuff.
God based stuff is far more comforting, far simpler for imnmature minds
to grasp, and is essentially a complete, if pragmatically pretty useless
explanation.
However in the final analysis neither can be held to be true, or based
on *fact*. The virtue of science is not that its *true*, but that it
*works*. The great logical flaw in religion is that it doesn't predict
ANYTHING, other than an unprovable and unfalsifiable assertion that life
continues after death.
*******random thought
{
God is like socialism - what the yanks call liberalism - in that if you
vote for it, it promises to tell you how to behave and how to run your
life, and then it will look after you for ever. And when it doesn't its
full of excuses why not.
Its the greatest irony that the Republican party is in fact kept in
power by devout god botherers, when in fact what it is supposed to be
about, is the complete opposite.
Still one doesn't expect sense in America.
}
******end random thought**********
>
>> As far as creation myths go, its pretty neutral really. And the huge
>> unanswered questions that it leaves, are at least honest ones. It does not
>> attempt to paper over *all* the cracks with a big grinning monstrosity
>> 'Full of Eastern Promise'. (I wonder who among ye recognizes *that*
>> particular ad line)
>
> nothing one can't google. :)
>
> i'm not neutral about creation myth. i'm certainly not going to leave it as
> goddidit. i don't need to know immediately, 100% accurately. i'll wait for
> intelligent, provable theories that are reviewed by an objective board of
> peers.
>
>
There are no provable theories. That is the first and most basic flaw in
most '"rational materialists'" assumptions. There are only theories that
do something and work, and theories that don't. Science evolves
precisely BECAUSE ,in the final analysis, its carefully enough thought
out to understand that no theory is a final theory, and there may always
be a better one.
Religion is static, hidebound and ossified, precisely because it DOES
think it has the FINAL solution, no matter how useless and illogical, to
everything.
For the sort of populist semitic type religions it goes like this.
"God made it, its all god's plan, shut up and let god get on with it,.
and don't ask questions, oh, and by the way, we are gods chosen people
so that's us telling YOU, what to dol, right, and if a spear in the guts
is not enough, it will be hellfire and eternal damanation, which is MUCH
WORSE, OK?"
"Whereas if you come along and play happy-clappies with us at the gospel
meeting (or solemn obeisance in the mosque), you get a pat on the head,
a personal fortune cookie from God, and we promise not to rape your
sister OK?"
Plus of course the ultimate chance for 15 minutes of fame on CNN as the
nice quiet guy who blew up a shopping mall and 50 people.
I mean..really. Is it THAT hard to understand whats going on here?
This isn't about God. This is about power politics.
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