The Second Law of Thermodynamics

Originally posted by scottishinnz
Imaginary Science, methinks!

So do you comb your hair before you go to sleep?

Originally posted by dj2becker
So do you comb your hair before you go to sleep?

What is your strange obsession with people combing their hair?

And the answer is no, by the way, I don't have enough to comb.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Firstly evolution itself is not a close system so on its own is not subject to the second law. (and therefore cannot be said to violate it).
Secondly, you are wrong about your interpretation of the second law and simply lying about empirical observation.

You say things tend towards 'simplicity' and 'disorganization'. But these are two conflicting term ...[text shortened]... nce life began.

I notice you are still shying away from your claim about abiogenesis.

Firstly evolution itself is not a close system so on its own is not subject to the second law. (and therefore cannot be said to violate it).

According to Scotty the universe is a closed system and evolution presumably occured within the universe.

Secondly, you are wrong about your interpretation of the second law and simply lying about empirical observation.

Oh yeah? So do you comb your hair before you go to sleep? Do you paint your house now and again? Do you ever tidy up your desk at work?

You say things tend towards 'simplicity' and 'disorganization'. But these are two conflicting terms. A disorganized system is more complex than a well ordered one.

So you would say that a random disorganised collection of the letters of the alphabet are more complex than all the well ordered witings of Shakespeare?

Things do not 'tend towards randomness'. Things simply are random. They cannot get more or less random. Probability theory and that inherent randomness results in the Second Law.

Is the spelling of your name random?

The Theory of Evolution does not say anything about what has happened 'since the universe began' but only about what has happened here on earth since life began.


So you reject chemical evolution?

I notice you are still shying away from your claim about abiogenesis.

When did I do that? I'm still getting there. I'm not half done with you yet.

Originally posted by scottishinnz
What is your strange obsession with people combing their hair?

And the answer is no, by the way, I don't have enough to comb.

So tell me why does a relatively sane person with enough hair not bother to comb their hair before they go to sleep?

Originally posted by dj2becker
[b]Firstly evolution itself is not a close system so on its own is not subject to the second law. (and therefore cannot be said to violate it).

According to Scotty the universe is a closed system and evolution presumably occured within the universe.

Secondly, you are wrong about your interpretation of the second law and simply lying about emp ...[text shortened]... s.

When did I do that? I'm still getting there. I'm not half done with you yet.[/b]

What a prize idiot you are.

The universe IS a closed system. However, evolution only happens in localised regions, such as our planet, and the localised decrease in entropy is powered by a huge increase in entropy generated as the sun slowly burns itself out. Kind of like the way a fridge keeps your beer cool, yet relies on a power plant generating lots of heat to give enough electricity.

The very fact that we can comb our hair or paint our houses is a net decrease in entropy for the house, but comes at the expense of the muscular contractions of our muscles. That requires energy, which comes from the digestion of our food. Our food and our bodies suffer an increase in entropy so that our house wall can have a decrease in entropy. None of this violates the 2nd law, because the net entropy of the entire system (us, our food, and the wall) goes up.

Originally posted by dj2becker
So tell me why does a relatively sane person with enough hair not bother to comb their hair before they go to sleep?

Personal choice. So what?


[edit; of course, the real question is "why would a relatively sane person comb their hair before they go to sleep, when it's only going to get messed up anyway?"]

Originally posted by scottishinnz
Personal choice. So what?

I know I'm going to comb my hair before I go to sleep tonight just so we can say he is 100% wrong. I'd say I'm at least relativly sane (my roommate literally used to hear voices though).

Originally posted by dj2becker
[b]Firstly evolution itself is not a close system so on its own is not subject to the second law. (and therefore cannot be said to violate it).

According to Scotty the universe is a closed system and evolution presumably occured within the universe.

Secondly, you are wrong about your interpretation of the second law and simply lying about emp ...[text shortened]... s.

When did I do that? I'm still getting there. I'm not half done with you yet.[/b]

Oh, and "random", "chaos" and "arbitrary" have different meanings. You should look them up, before you continue, otherwise, you'll only confuse people.

Originally posted by dj2becker


So you reject chemical evolution?

The Theory of Evolution is not chemical evolution, they ARE NOT THE SAME THING.

Evolutionary Algorithms in Computer Science are not part of the Theory of Evolution either, but they use the word evolution (and a lot of the same terminology even, much more than people talking about chemical evolution do), and you would think by your definition that they violate the second law (we create them, so clearly the second law does not hold for evolutionary algorithms).

How is this possible by your definition of the 2nd law.

AND

For darwin's sake read a definition of the theory of evolution, which has been posted multiple times in this thread. JUST READ WHAT WE SAY.

Originally posted by dj2becker
So tell me why does a relatively sane person with enough hair not bother to comb their hair before they go to sleep?

I'm jumping in late on this and may have missed some finer point, but why would anyone bother combing their hair before going to bed?
It's only going to get messed up again while you sleep!

Originally posted by amannion
I'm jumping in late on this and may have missed some finer point, but why would anyone bother combing their hair before going to bed?
It's only going to get messed up again while you sleep!

He is trying to imply that that is a result of the second law of thermodynamics, rather than the result of rubbing your head on the pillow in your sleep. Not that it matters either way.

Originally posted by dj2becker
According to Scotty the universe is a closed system and evolution presumably occured within the universe.

And your point is?
Are you possibly claiming that all subsets of a closed system is a closed system? Or do you just not understand what is meant by a closed system?

Oh yeah? So do you comb your hair before you go to sleep? Do you paint your house now and again? Do you ever tidy up your desk at work?
Please don't just stop at questions and try to explain what you are saying. You keep talking about combing hair but wont explain why.
Are you possibly saying that some things become disordered over time (like combed hair while you are asleep).
I do not disagree with that. But that was not your claim at all.
You claimed that by empirical observation things tend towards disorder. Since you didn't just say some things it is implicit that you meant all things. Now if such a claim is true then you are able to observe that all things tend towards disorder. You did not specify over what time period. Now if this tendency of all things to move towards disorder is observable in say a day then we would expect that over a period of 10 years, it would be striking and dramatic. Look around you. Does everything you see look dramatically more disordered than it was 10 years ago? What happened? Why isn't your observation working?
You appear to be claiming that hair 'tends towards being uncombed' and yet right now my hair is combed despite it having at least 34 years to 'tend towards disorder'.
So did you really mean something else?
Please explain as your original statement is clearly false.

So you would say that a random disorganised collection of the letters of the alphabet are more complex than all the well ordered writings of Shakespeare?
Yes. I can prove it too. If you try to run a compression program on the two examples you will find that the writings of Shakespeare achieves a much greater compression ratio showing that it is less complex.

So you reject chemical evolution?
No. But what does that have to do with the Theory of Evolution?

Originally posted by UmbrageOfSnow
The Theory of Evolution is not chemical evolution, they ARE NOT THE SAME THING.

AND

For darwin's sake read a definition of the theory of evolution, which has been posted multiple times in this thread. JUST READ WHAT WE SAY.

Maybe we could clarify the difference between chemical / cosmological / molecular / other kinds of evolution and the kind covered by Darwin's theory by using the full title of the theory:

The Theory Of Evolution BY NATURAL SELECTION.

Darwin's theory covers chemical evolution in the same way that Eistein's relativity theory covers quantum mechanics. I.e. not at all.

--- Penguin.

Originally posted by dj2becker
Go figure.

http://www.nwu.ac.za/

Ah, the old Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education.
You know, I once met a geologist who was also a creationist? His answer to the fossil record? "Floods." Belief has the ability to override all logic. It also comes with a great set of blinkers.

Originally posted by scottishinnz
What a prize idiot you are.

The universe IS a closed system. However, evolution only happens in localised regions, such as our planet, and the localised decrease in entropy is powered by a huge increase in entropy generated as the sun slowly burns itself out. Kind of like the way a fridge keeps your beer cool, yet relies on a power plant generating ...[text shortened]... the 2nd law, because the net entropy of the entire system (us, our food, and the wall) goes up.

A localised decrease in enthropy still requires a complex intelligent mechanism.

Take the chloroplast for example.