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 bullshit.

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.

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 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 bullshit.

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.


--dkomo at (no spam) cris.com

On Tue, 13 May 2008 14:23:39 -0400 (EDT), dkomo <dkomo871 at (no spam) comcast.net
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 bullshit.

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.

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

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.

In article <g0cmbb$1o1... at (no spam) darwin.ediacara.org>,

 dkomo <dkomo... at (no spam) comcast.net> wrote:
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.

Which of two simultaneous sperm cells to reach an ovum will fertilize
it, is certainly an event on a small enough scale so that quantum
randomness could occasionally play a role.

In article <g0cmbb$1o1o$1 at (no spam) darwin.ediacara.org>,
dkomo <dkomo871 at (no spam) comcast.net> wrote:

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.

Which of two simultaneous sperm cells to reach an ovum will fertilize
it, is certainly an event on a small enough scale so that quantum
randomness could occasionally play a role.

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 bullshit.

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.

So why do people keep discussing it as though it were?
I think the statement that I keep hearing is:

dkomo,
I'm afraid that I disagree with many of
your assertions in this post and, of
course, your conclusions. If the
foundation of thermodynamics is credible,
and I think it is, then the arrow of time
is not reversible. As far as we
know that arrow has never been reversed
and can never be reversed. I also
think that you set up a straw man by
limiting the notion of randomness to
quantum phenomena. The way the term
"random" has been used historically did
not imply effects without causation. It
merely implies that there is no
meaningful connection, or opportunity for
information transfer, between the
source of causation and the effected
system.

This definition of "random"
allows randomness to impinge on system
dynamics in important ways. For
example, the Brownian motion of particles
energizes steam engines. The
motions of those particles is not without
causes to the extent that they are
interacting, yet those motions are entirely
random with regard to the
structure and function of the steam engine.
In my view, it would be as
silly to ignore the role of randomness in
evolution as it would be to ignore
the role of randomness in the functioning of
a steam engine.

Guy

r norman wrote:
On Tue, 13 May 2008 14:23:39 -0400 (EDT), dkomo <dkomo871 at (no spam) comcast.net
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 bullshit.

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.

On Wed, 14 May 2008 13:44:55 -0400 (EDT), Virgil <Virgil at (no spam) gmale.com
wrote:

In article <g0cmbb$1o1o$1 at (no spam) darwin.ediacara.org>,
dkomo <dkomo871 at (no spam) comcast.net> wrote:

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.

Which of two simultaneous sperm cells to reach an ovum will fertilize
it, is certainly an event on a small enough scale so that quantum
randomness could occasionally play a role.

Brownian motion is sufficient to explain the randomness, quantum
phenomena need not be invoked. Anyone who believes the "classical"
world of physics is deterministic does not understand the chaotic
nature of the system combined with the finiteness of our observational
and computational ability. Even if the philosophers say the classical
system is deterministic, there is no way we can use that to predict
the future so the world is for all realistic purposes as good as
random.

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?

Guy A Hoelzer <hoel... at (no spam) unr.edu> wrote



dkomo,
The same use of randomness
is made within valid theories of physics,
i.e. randomness must at all times remain
contextual to something which is defined
NON random within the one, same theory.
That is why the qualification is made that the variation is random

1) Neo Darwinian random evolution remains
mathematically correct but entirely non
falsifiable allowing models to become
hopelessly confused with the theory they
were derived from via the process of
simplification and over simplification.
Down's syndrome is a mutation that lowers both the fertility and