Re: Evolution is NOT random

Glen M. Sizemore wrote:

"dkomo" <dkomo871@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:g0nk4b$1p7q$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

r norman wrote:

On Thu, 15 May 2008 17:37:25 -0400 (EDT), dkomo <dkomo871@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:



r norman wrote:


On Tue, 13 May 2008 14:23:39 -0400 (EDT), dkomo <dkomo871@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:




So why do people keep discussing it as though it were? Evolution is a
deterministic process taking place in a deterministic world. The only
"randomness" about it is in our own minds due to our inability to
completely understand, track and predict what is going on. This
randomness is epistemological and relative, and is not a real feature
of
nature.

Why do I say this? The only truly random processes in nature are
quantum processes and, as far I know, this quantum randomness plays no
role in genetic mutations. Mutations are chemical and thermodynamic
phenomena taking place in the macroscopic classical world above the
quantum realm.

So evolution plays out as part of the Newtonian clockwork universe and
statements like these: "If evolution was rerun a trillion times we
would
get a trillion different results" and similar ideas from Stephen Gould
are utter bull***.

To rerun the "tape of life" you first have to rewind it. The rewind is
completely deterministic because the laws of physics are
time-reversible. Now when you play the tape forward you get exactly
the
same results as before. Replay it a trillion times and you get the
same
result each time.

I think Gould's replaying of the tape of life is a fantasy like the
fantasy we create when we ponder what would have happened if Nazi
Germany had won WWII or if the South had won the American Civil War.
In
the real world, evolution of life on earth could have taken only a
single path, which is the path that it actually did take. Neither an
Intelligent Designer nor true randomness played any part.


This displays a rather complete naivety about how the real world
works. Brownian motion meets whatever criterion of randomness you
might choose, as does Johnson (nyguist or thermal) noise in a
resistor, neither of which need involve quantum indeterminacy. You
can't replay the way bunched pick-up sticks fall. There are ample
examples of randomness in living systems and evolutionary systems.


You've listed examples of epistemological randomness. These are
probabilistic theories of physical phenomena, but they are probabilistic
simply because we can't analytically handle these phenomena easily any
other way. So we use statistics.

My question has to do with whether evolution is at its core truly random
beyond our statistically based and incomplete theories about it.

Let's forget about the idea of "replay". I used that word because Gould
initially brought it up -- "replaying the tape of life". Consider the
following thought experiment. Imagine we have a trillion absolutely
identical worlds. In each world we focus in on a bunch of pick-up
sticks standing on end. The trillion bunches are absolutely identical.
At exactly the same instant across all trillion worlds, the pick-up
sticks are allowed to fall as they will.

Now, answer the following question. After the pick-up sticks have come
to rest in a pile, will the trillion piles be identical? Why or why not?

The way you answer this question will allow us to determine whether
you're the one who's naive and doesn't know how the world works, LOL.

Getting back to evolution, now let's imagine a trillion absolutely
identical universes each containing an earth teeming with life at some
point many millions of years ago. After millions of years of evolution

from that exact point in time, will those earths contain identical life


organisms or not? *That's* what my original post was trying to get at.



People discuss it as random because it meets all our criteria for
random.


I have no problem with epistemological randomness and the theories based
on it, as long as people don't confuse those theories with the actual
world of nature.



You are arguing for a Laplacian demon with full knowledge of the
position and momentum of all particles in a Newtonian deterministic
universe. In your thread of the same subject line in talk.origins I
describe a series of reasons why the universe is not deterministic in
this sense. Yes, it ultimately is based on either quantum randomness
in how the wave function is interpreted or else it is based on
uncertainty where a particle does not really _have_ a simultaneous
position and momentum, not merely that we can't measure it. In a
conceptual framework, even were the universe a Newtonian mechanism, I
argue that no finite system can have the knowledge of all the
particles to compute the system. So the universe may be deterministic
to some conceptual infinite power, to a god, but not to any
conceivable science.


The universe itself is that finite(?) system. The universe has all the
knowledge it needs to compute the next state of its existence for the
next Planck time after the given present state.


Humans do, indeed, make calculations and computations, and then they respond
in various ways to the products of these activities. The notion, however,
that the Universe makes computations and subsequently responds to the
products of those "activities" strikes me as utter nonsense.



A computer goes: input->process->output. It's an information
transducer. It changes the information in the input to information
going out according to some algorithm.

Now take two molecules colliding. The information input are the two
trajectories in phase space of the molecules. The output information
are two different trajectories in phase space after the collision. The
process algorithm is classical mechanics. This simple collision has
"processed" and "transformed" information like a tiny computer.

Now enlarge the picture to the whole universe.


--dkomo@xxxxxxxx


.