Chance is not a creative force.

Discussion in 'Science' started by bricklayer, Nov 12, 2019.

  1. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Tough ask, given that evolution is a foundation of all modern bilogy!

    It's not likely that this important and broadly used tool is just going to be ignored.
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2019
  2. ChemEngineer

    ChemEngineer Banned

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    bricklayer is a good friend of mine. Ask him yourself if he objects to my messages.
    IF he says he does, I will not write another word. But your chances are not good.
    No, you're NOT "reading (my) post correctly."
    Read all six points I made again.

    I am trying to point out the insuperable statistics to the archaic notion which is over 150 years old.
    It's time to put it to rest. It's time for its backers to stop being condescending and pretentious about it.
    It's time to stop comparing it to "gravity" and to stop claiming "flat earth" as some sort of justification
    for the useless tautology that is as meaningless as its only "equations," e.g. "A>B>C>D."
    Or in Richard Dawkins' words, "A1>A2 and B1>B2."

    Please learn how to write plurals without apostrophes, would you?
    Researcher becomes researchers.
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2019
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  3. yguy

    yguy Well-Known Member

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    So how does log 4 = .6 figure into it?
     
  4. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    No hidden agenda. I think that I stated my thesis quite clearly.
    Chance is not a creative force.
     
  5. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    You have it backwards. When a theory is not disproven and continues to be a foundation of a whole branch of science (biology) one should demand truly exceptional evidence to dump it - especially when there is NO alternative theory.

    It's hilarious to see you claim a long history of serious contribution as a negative!!
     
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  6. yguy

    yguy Well-Known Member

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    I'm on the opposite side of this from Meta for sure, and I don't think that's clear at all.
    Had it been directed at me, I doubt I'd have found it insulting enough to bother rolling my eyes.

    Anyway, you're setting yourself up for a rule 8 warning going public with this; and were I you, I might risk 20 points stopping a virtual bullet for someone else, but not a marshmallow.
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2019
  7. An Taibhse

    An Taibhse Well-Known Member

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    That DNA passed to successive generations of offspring has high potential for mutation is an inherent product of the reproduction process. It is something readily aparent on a fundamentally intuitive level as well as a known fact of genetic study.
    On the fundamentally intuitive level, it is seen in the physical variation among individuals in any population where no two individuals are identical to their parents, or other siblings such as even among twins sharing the same DNA of their original fertilized egg. So, on an intuitive level simply observing variation in any population results in differences between individuals, differences that can be manifested in a huge number of ways, from the obvious physical characteristics (adult height, skin color, strength potential, etc) to those less obvious such (resistance to disease, differences in neural system, etc.). Depending on a huge range of environmental and other related factors, differences between offspring have the potential to offer a competitive advantage that can be passed to successive generation of offspring. All populations, particularly large ones, inherently have changes in their collective DNA that can result in differences in the survival potential of individuals to pass along their genetic patterns. With humans and the DNA sequence variation that exists at any one time, coupled with the mating parring potential, even at an intuitive level, it would be easy to be overwhelmed by the potential numbers in differences in not only the combinations of genetic unions, but with any copy variation introduced by DNA edit error/sequence matches when DNA is assembled in the product of that union. Those, inevitable differences, frequently result in offspring having different competitive advantages, again even applying among identical twins. DNA copy errors provide the foundation for variation in a species and that provides a vector for natural selection to further increase that variation.
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2019
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  8. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    and your assertion has been shown to be incorrect.
     
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  9. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The life cycle of a good idea goes like this. At first, it is easily dismissed. Then, it is violently opposed. Eventually, it is accepted as having been self-evident all along. So, even if you make your point, they'll never give you credit. They're not saying anything other than what they've heard. Now, they've heard something else that they will not soon forget. If it's a seed, it will grow. If it's a stone, it won't. And let's never forget that the people we write to are not the only ones reading what we write. You may never know who you get through to or who we may turn off from the truth by some unnecessary remark added. I imagine that every poster is my father just trying to trip me up and lose my temper. I don't like disappointing Dad.
     
  10. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Biology includes a highly detailed understanding of evolution down to the chemistry level. Scientists can watch the accidents that result in differentiation.

    Your ideas on chance are seen to be absolutely wrong by decades of serious study in what is happening at that level.

    I don't know who it is that you think is going to decide that such a fundamental of all modern biology is that monumentally wrong.

    It's certainly not going to come from science. It isn't going to come from agriculture. It isn't going to come from medicine. It isnt going to come from history as we see the evolution of ancient cereals to those of today, etc.

    Evolution isn't just an "idea". It is a foundation of all modern biology.
     
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  11. Robert Urbanek

    Robert Urbanek Active Member

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    Discussion of evolution has been plagued from the very beginning because the word "selection" automatically leads some people to believe that someone is doing the selecting.
     
  12. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Chance is not a creative force. Nothing gets more functionally complex by chance. Life did not come from non-life by chance. Complicated life did not come from simple life by chance. Something cannot come from nothing, and chance is not a creative force.

    Quite frankly, I am unable to imagine an idea more ridiculous than the idea that all of this happened by chance.
     
    Last edited: Dec 12, 2019
  13. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Our solar system became more complex as it started as a pretty much homogeneous cloud of hydrogen and some other stuff and moved toward being what we see today, with highly differentiated celestial bodies - moons, planets, asteroids, our sun, etc. Once again, complexity increased. Chance was a factor - but, certainly not the only factor.

    It's been pointed out to you NUMEROUS times that chance is NOT the only important factor in organizing this universe, including as a whole and as is seen in advancement of life, in a way that is dramatically more complex than it was when it started out.
     
    Last edited: Dec 12, 2019
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  14. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'm not buying that. No way. Doesn't work that way. Not happening. Didn't happen that way. Chance is not a creative force.
     
  15. Meta777

    Meta777 Moderator Staff Member

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    Yeah, probably not. And biology isn't even the only field its used in. Far from it.
    As for the concept of chance more broadly, its usage is even more prevalent...

    So you're not trying to disprove Darwinian Evolution?
    You're not attempting to show that God created life?

    If its true that all you're trying to explain is that chance cannot create anything,
    then what exactly do you want us to do with that information assuming you could prove it?
    Earlier in your other thread, I agreed that 'true 100% nondeterministic chance' may or may not actually even exist,
    but chance as a concept, as a human abstraction, certainly does, and it has its place in human society.
    As others in the thread have mentioned, it is a very useful tool used across many different fields.

    -Meta
     
  16. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It's not so much that ideas are really ever proved to me as it is that all of the other ideas that I have considered have been disproved. Whatever remains is what I'm left to believe. Then, that's tested, and so on, and so on.

    I don't equate our inability to know with unknown or unknowable. After all, we don't know almost everything, and we don't know anything necessarily. My thesis in my OP is quite clear. Chance is not a creative force no matter how much of it you have. Indeed, I hold that to be axiomatic. There may well be theorems that extend from that axiom, but those are not what I am defending in this thread.
     
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2019
  17. Meta777

    Meta777 Moderator Staff Member

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    I asked this earlier, but can you explain why exactly an Eyeless Huntsman is eyeless
    even though its ancestors and all known living relatives have eyes???

    And do you agree that a chance mutation within a DNA sequence is a possibility???

    -Meta
     
  18. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Mutations are, by definition, by chance. And no, they cannot accumulate into functional complexity. Nothing becomes more functionally complex by chance, no matter how much chance you have.
     
  19. Meta777

    Meta777 Moderator Staff Member

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    So again, what would you want us to do with that information if you could prove it?
    Also, what is your opinion on the usefulness to humans of chance as an abstraction tool?

    -Meta
     
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  20. Meta777

    Meta777 Moderator Staff Member

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    So.......... why is an Eyeless Huntsman eyeless?
    And what is your position on the possibility of a DNA mutation?
    Are you saying DNA mutation isn't possible???

    -Meta
     
  21. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    As I wrote above, nothing is really ever so much "proved" to me as it is that all of the other ideas that I have considered have been disproved. After all, proof is an inference. Whereas, truth is an implication; it is necessarily what it is. Inferences, not so much. No one can force another to infer, not by the force of logic or the logic of force.

    As to what to do with what is known. (Understanding is knowing what to do with what is known.) I do it like this. I approach certainty through the exclusion process wherein doubt is removed by testing new and old ideas.

    Chance is what humanity calls the void where the knowledge of their own subjectivity would be. The idea of chance could perhaps be a recreational abstraction; but to be a "tool" (which implies usefulness), it fails to have any crossover usefulness into reality.

    To be technical, chance is an ignorance. It is what we call the void where the knowledge of our own subjectivity would be.
    We are, to a quantum level, subject to constant change. We are defined by our changes. We are a complex of intellectual, emotional, willful and corporeal processes. A process is a prescribed sequence of changes. If we stop changing is any of the above very narrowly defined ways, we are considered in that way dead. Anything subject to change is subject. It is not-necessary; it is contingent in its being.

    The most interesting implication of our subjectivity, indeed the subjectivity of all matter and therefore space/time, is the fact that, if contingent being exists, necessary being must exist. I find that interesting if not altogether useful.
     
  22. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The eyeless spider represents a loss not a gain. I do believe in extinction by degrees. Natural selection plays a part in extinction by degrees. Extinction by degrees accounts for the differences within the different kinds of animals. Mutations happen, but they add nothing to functional complexity. By definition, mutations happen by chance in that they have no capacity for intent. Nothing increases in functional complexity by chance no matter how much chance you have.

    Chance cannot even produce simple increases in complexity with simple structures. Increasing the complexity inherent within a structure decreases the likelihood (which is already zero) that the structure could increase in functional complexity by chance.
     
  23. Meta777

    Meta777 Moderator Staff Member

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    I understand that you feel you can't prove any of what you're saying,
    but then, why even argue it all? Just for fun?... By happenstance (heheh),
    I'd concur that debates like these can be entertaining at times. Though imo,
    its always preferable if they're rooted in some desire to seek some sort of utility.

    I agree that tool implies usefulness. And I would say that chance as an abstraction certainly qualifies.
    In that post from before, I brought up the concepts of fault tolerance and risk management.
    Both of these ideas are centered around the concept of chance. If you're saying chance is useless,
    are you then also suggesting that the practices of assessing fault tolerance and risk management are useless as well???

    Without those concepts, I highly doubt we would have ever made it to the moon.
    In fact, a vast many applications involving safety, including all of commercial air travel,
    would be up a creek without those concepts. Not to mention that software of all kinds would have never been. And the idea that a machine could ever do something even remotely akin to something such as "learning" would surly be little more than a fairy-tale.

    If one considers any of those applications as beneficial or useful, then one must eventually come to admit that the ideas behind the processes that lead to them must have some beneficial uses as well.

    -Meta
     
  24. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    On the contrary, something MUST come from nothing. What else CAN it come from?

    Even if you say it came from "God" that still just begs the question: Where did GOD come from?

    At one point or another, something HAD to come from nothing, or it cannot be here, Existence does not exist and then it does. There is no other way
     
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2019
  25. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    NOBODY believes that chance does that.

    Evolution is NOT limited to chance - far from it.
     
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2019

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