Discussion thread for Bob and Johnny's One on One

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ThePhy

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Really? In light of this quote from Dr. Styer: I would have figured you could forgive me the layman's transfer of terms... you know what I meant.

Since I cannot see the numbers, just let me know if this is true: Styer measures the amount of entropy required for evolution and it turns out the sun is more than adequate to provide this increase. Does that pretty much sum it up?
One of the problems with some of these conversations is that imprecise use of terms leads to incorrect understandings. This is particularly true with concepts that are more abstract, like entropy.

With that proviso, let me address your evolution – energy question.

How much energy has to be available for evolution to occur?

Simple case – envision a really simple, yet alive, and reproducing, single-celled organism. Now if some mild DNA change occurs, that organism can exist in environments where it could not have before – more tolerant of the destructive effects of sunlight, or able to metabolize some new nutrient, or a limited amount of new mobility, or whatever. Evolution.

How much energy is required for that? Well, if I light a match and hold the flame directly under my palm, I am very quickly and painfully aware that the energy in that modest flame is sufficient to destroy, and even vaporize, literally hundreds of my skin and nerve cells every second. If that match flame has enough energy to totally rip cells by the hundreds apart (breaking literally millions of atomic bonds in each cell), then do you think that might be enough energy to rearrange a couple of atomic bonds in a single strand of DNA in that single-celled creature?

Now remember that in big animals (like me) evolution is initially just the change in a single germ cell that will mature to become another “me”. So for me to have kids that are evolutionarily different from me involves not much more energy than the change in that single celled creature.

Yeah, the sun is ‘nuff. The simple availability of energy is not the issue.

(But this is apart from entropy. You asked about the “amount of entropy required”. Entropy is not a quantity that you store on a shelf, like energy. No object has 10 “units” of entropy.)
 

Yorzhik

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One of the problems with some of these conversations is that imprecise use of terms leads to incorrect understandings. This is particularly true with concepts that are more abstract, like entropy.

With that proviso, let me address your evolution – energy question.

How much energy has to be available for evolution to occur?

Simple case – envision a really simple, yet alive, and reproducing, single-celled organism. Now if some mild DNA change occurs, that organism can exist in environments where it could not have before – more tolerant of the destructive effects of sunlight, or able to metabolize some new nutrient, or a limited amount of new mobility, or whatever. Evolution.

How much energy is required for that? Well, if I light a match and hold the flame directly under my palm, I am very quickly and painfully aware that the energy in that modest flame is sufficient to destroy, and even vaporize, literally hundreds of my skin and nerve cells every second. If that match flame has enough energy to totally rip cells by the hundreds apart (breaking literally millions of atomic bonds in each cell), then do you think that might be enough energy to rearrange a couple of atomic bonds in a single strand of DNA in that single-celled creature?

Now remember that in big animals (like me) evolution is initially just the change in a single germ cell that will mature to become another “me”. So for me to have kids that are evolutionarily different from me involves not much more energy than the change in that single celled creature.

Yeah, the sun is ‘nuff. The simple availability of energy is not the issue.

(But this is apart from entropy. You asked about the “amount of entropy required”. Entropy is not a quantity that you store on a shelf, like energy. No object has 10 “units” of entropy.)
OK. I'm curious how we know entropy is "increased" or "decreased" if there is no measure?

When we talk about "Entropy and Evolution" what measurements are we talking about? Since math is involved, are there units associated with the numbers derived?

Please note: I've never denied the sun had enough energy to drive evolution. I've denied that the energy can be utilized for the OOL, and further, that the available energy can be utilized to change one body type to another.

PS, you didn't answer this question: Can I repeat this as what the second law says in any future discussion we have?
Dan Styer said:
The second law says that "heat flow is from high temperature to low temperature"
 

Jukia

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OK. I'm curious how we know entropy is "increased" or "decreased" if there is no measure?

When we talk about "Entropy and Evolution" what measurements are we talking about? Since math is involved, are there units associated with the numbers derived?

Please note: I've never denied the sun had enough energy to drive evolution. I've denied that the energy can be utilized for the OOL, and further, that the available energy can be utilized to change one body type to another.
PS, you didn't answer this question: Can I repeat this as what the second law says in any future discussion we have?

Please define body type.
 

Flipper

New member
Dr. Styer:

Bob Enyart has a different argument in his discussion with Johnny. And it includes elements of information theory. I feel that an additional argument can be made against evolution from the standpoint of thermo-entropy.

Yeah, except that it's just you who thinks that on this thread.

Hurricanes, Yorzhik.
 

ThePhy

New member
I am not a One-on-One contestant, but since Enyart has referred to my arguments in support of his position, I would like to respond. My initial reaction is to wonder how Enyart managed to misconstrue what I said, but Dan Styer’s recent posts show he is also of the opinion that Enyart is misconstruing his position as well.

Recently Stripe spoke of energy turning into information, and I simply commented that was outside of the scope of Styer’s paper. Enyart quotes that exchange as evidence there is confusion about the issue of entropy and evolution. He’s right, but that confusion was not on my part, nor on Styers.

I have no idea on what basis Enyart then says I “wrongly conflated” the two types of entropy. From my first post in this thread I have maintained, along with Johnny (and Styer himself just confirmed this) that Styer’s article was about Thermodynamic entropy, and no other form of entropy.

Then Enyart claimed that I “indicated that there are no known unintelligent means by which energy can be turned into information other than the means addressed by Styer.” Wow! I don’t where that came from. I don’t know what it means to turn energy into information. Is that like turning modern dance into the color red?

In Enyart’s zeal to show that the creationist community is addressing the confusion of thinking that information entropy and heat entropy are fundamentally related, he mentions a recent article in the Sept/Oct 2008 Creation Matters, written by the creationist Timothy Stout. I absolutely concur that such clarification is to be commended. But the real irony is that in this debate Enyart himself recently said in the 1-on-1 (and Styer picked up on this):
Entropy has to do with the move from order to disorder in any organized system, whether it is organized by energy states, ergonomics (arrangement of utensils in your kitchen, etc), aesthetic values, information content, etc.
Thermodynamic entropy in fact has nothing to do with most of the things in this list. Enyart reaffirmed this misunderstanding in his “Real Science Friday” BEL radio show with Fred Williams just a couple days ago. Here is the dialogue, starting at 10:37 into the program:

========================= =

Bob: And this is an informal debate. It’s two weeks. And it has to do with evolution, and entropy. And entropy is the idea that things tend to break down. That’s a very layman’s way of saying it.

Fred: Exactly, deteriorate over time. You leave your room to, you know, to your son, and a week later, it’s a mess.

Bob: Yeah, your kids clean their room, and what happens? You have a nice garden. Even your driveway. If you leave a drive… or a parking lot of a shopping center that gets abandoned, and if it’s not maintained, and you look at it 15 years later, it could look almost like a park. It’s like, what’s going on out there, it’s a parking lot. So things tend to break down, and even stars burn out and die.

Fred: That’s right. And you make a good point though on this debate, Bob.

Bob: Well, it’s fun because it started with a American Journal of Physics article that was just published, November 2008 by Dan Styer. And he claimed, after doing a few calculations that there’s no problem for evolution from entropy. There’s no problem. The fact that things break down, and here creatures are evolving from molecules up to man. No problem, the fact that everything tends to break down, that’s not a problem for evolution, where it’s supposed to go the opposite direction. Well I point out that these guys are guilty of confusing thermodynamics, heat, and energy, with information. They’re mixing the two. And when you talk about entropy, and that things tend to break down, you’ve got to separate heat from information, because they’re different.

======================== =

Notice that Enyart points to rooms getting messy and parking lots deteriorating as illustrative of entropy. Then he turns right around and mocks the claim that evolution thinks it can go in the opposite direction. He even quotes from part of Stout’s paper (published in a religiously motivated journal) saying the same thing, that the trend must be towards disorder.

Well, with all due respect to the creationists Stout and Bob, the physicist Frank Lambert (who Yorzhik likes), some 9 years before Stout’s article was published, addressed the issue in a journal that is focused solely on the scientific merits of the arguments. This is what he said there:
The thermodynamic entropy change from human-defined order to disorder in the giant Egyptian stones themselves, in the clothing and books in a room or papers on a desk, and in the millions of cards in the world's casinos is precisely the same: ZERO. (my bold and caps) ... There is no more widespread error in chemistry and physics texts than the identification of a thermodynamic entropy increase with a change in the pattern of a group of macro objects.
Lambert goes on to say that whatever information change may be in such rearrangements, it is not a change in thermodynamic entropy. If Bob wants to speak to messy rooms, then he is obligated to make it very clear that any associated mention of entropy is not speaking of the Second Law. Nowhere does Styer confuse the two, but in two places now Bob, and his cohort Fred Williams, have been guilty of confusing the two, the very thing that Styer (and I and Johnny) stand accused of.
 

ThePhy

New member
OK. I'm curious how we know entropy is "increased" or "decreased" if there is no measure?
Look at the defining equations, available for free on wiki.
When we talk about "Entropy and Evolution" what measurements are we talking about? Since math is involved, are there units associated with the numbers derived?
Again, do a dimensional analysis of the equations.
Please note: I've never denied the sun had enough energy to drive evolution. I've denied that the energy can be utilized for the OOL, and further, that the available energy can be utilized to change one body type to another.
OOL?
PS, you didn't answer this question: Can I repeat this as what the second law says in any future discussion we have?
Feel free. Do you understand when that is an appropriate answer to a question about heat flow?
 

Johnny

New member
Stripe said:
It would seem (If Professor Styer, Johnny, Pastor Enyart are willing) that the current one-on-one would benefit from a replacement for one of the participants.
Indeed. It makes no sense for me to argue over what someone else meant when that someone else is right here among us.

(but it appears I was right ;) )
 

Flipper

New member
Fred: Exactly, deteriorate over time. You leave your room to, you know, to your son, and a week later, it’s a mess.

Bob: Yeah, your kids clean their room, and what happens? You have a nice garden. Even your driveway. If you leave a drive… or a parking lot of a shopping center that gets abandoned, and if it’s not maintained, and you look at it 15 years later, it could look almost like a park. It’s like, what’s going on out there, it’s a parking lot. So things tend to break down, and even stars burn out and die.

Yeah, my first thought when I read this was "does ice have higher or lower entropy than water in the Bob Enyart universe?"
 

Dan Styer

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Summary of "Entropy and Evolution"

Summary of "Entropy and Evolution"

Styer measures the amount of entropy required for evolution and it turns out the sun is more than adequate to provide this increase. Does that pretty much sum it up?

That is an excellent summary. The only thing I would change is that I estimate the amount of entropy required for evolution rather than measure it. However I believe it's an overestimate, and the amount of entropy available through the sun (namely through the sun heating the earth, plus the earth heating the microwave background), is about a trillion times my overestimate. So even if my estimate is a thousand times too low (which I seriously doubt) it's still true that evolution doesn't violate the second law of thermodynamics.
 

Stripe

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Then Enyart claimed that I “indicated that there are no known unintelligent means by which energy can be turned into information other than the means addressed by Styer.” Wow! I don’t where that came from. I don’t know what it means to turn energy into information. Is that like turning modern dance into the color red?

Yes. Energy turning into information is like dance turning into a colour.

Thermodynamic entropy in fact has nothing to do with most of the things in this list.

Pastor Enyart was not speaking about thermodynamic entropy only.

Lambert goes on to say that whatever information change may be in such rearrangements, it is not a change in thermodynamic entropy. If Bob wants to speak to messy rooms, then he is obligated to make it very clear that any associated mention of entropy is not speaking of the Second Law. Nowhere does Styer confuse the two, but in two places now Bob, and his cohort Fred Williams, have been guilty of confusing the two, the very thing that Styer (and I and Johnny) stand accused of.

If Professor Styer does not address information entropy then his paper does not answer the updated and correct challenge to evolution from entropy. Would he be willing to respond to the new challenge?

I accept the nomination.

:rotfl:

Indeed. It makes no sense for me to argue over what someone else meant when that someone else is right here among us. (but it appears I was right ;) )

Professor Styer agrees with your assessment that he never meant to speak about information entropy in his paper.

Pastor Enyart still has a case to make that the paper refers to information in a way that is not properly distinguished.

Regardless of who is correct I do think a discussion on the merits of evolution against the notion of entropy (all kinds) would be a lot more interesting.

But that discussion would be much easier if one side or the other would concede their position with regards to the nature of Professor Styer's paper.
 

Dan Styer

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Entropy and disorder

Entropy and disorder

A common misconception -- which appears several times on this thread -- is that entropy is some measure of disorder, that "smooth" or homogeneous things have high entropy, while "everything in its place" arrangements have low entropy.

The falseness of the "entropy as disorder" supposition is seen from this example. (To follow the argument, you must know that when something cools, it always decreases in entropy, and when something warms up it always increases in entropy. For Bob's benefit, let me say that in this and all other cases, when I say "entropy" I mean "thermodynamic entropy".) Get a cup of water and put it in your freezer. It starts out smooth. Then a few ice crystals form. More and more of the liquid water turns to ice. Eventually it becomes uniform ice. So the water goes from homogeneous to inhomogeneous to homogeneous again, yet at every step it has been decreasing in entropy.

Now take the cup out of your freezer and smash the ice into a thousand fragments. Put them in a bowl on your kitchen counter. They will melt into smooth, homogeneous liquid water. The smooth liquid water certainly appears more orderly that the chaotic jumble of ice shards, but the liquid water has more entropy.

There are many more examples showing that entropy is not disorder. I wrote a paper called "Insight into Entropy" about this topic, and the chemist Frank Lambert has been particularly active in battling this misconception. I heartily recommend his web site

http://www.entropysite.com
 

Stripe

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A common misconception -- which appears several times on this thread -- is that entropy is some measure of disorder, that "smooth" or homogeneous things have high entropy, while "everything in its place" arrangements have low entropy.

The falseness of the "entropy as disorder" supposition is seen from this example. (To follow the argument, you must know that when something cools, it always decreases in entropy, and when something warms up it always increases in entropy. For Bob's benefit, let me say that in this and all other cases, when I say "entropy" I mean "thermodynamic entropy".) Get a cup of water and put it in your freezer. It starts out smooth. Then a few ice crystals form. More and more of the liquid water turns to ice. Eventually it becomes uniform ice. So the water goes from homogeneous to inhomogeneous to homogeneous again, yet at every step it has been decreasing in entropy.

Now take the cup out of your freezer and smash the ice into a thousand fragments. Put them in a bowl on your kitchen counter. They will melt into smooth, homogeneous liquid water. The smooth liquid water certainly appears more orderly that the chaotic jumble of ice shards, but the liquid water has more entropy.

There are many more examples showing that entropy is not disorder. I wrote a paper called "Insight into Entropy" about this topic, and the chemist Frank Lambert has been particularly active in battling this misconception. I heartily recommend his web site

http://www.entropysite.com

Professor. This discussion is about distinguishing between different types of entropy. We should all be certainly aware by now that there are specific traits that only pertain to thermodynamics. However the idea of disorder is a useful description when it comes to speaking of entropy as a general observation. Perhaps disorder is not the best or only description that might be used to describe the overall idea of entropy, but I do not see how it might be unsuitable.
 

Dan Styer

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Thermodynamic entropy vs. information entropy

Thermodynamic entropy vs. information entropy

Bob Enyart criticizes my paper "Entropy and evolution" because when I use the term "entropy" I don't distinguish between thermodynamic entropy and information entropy.

If this is indeed a defect, then Bob is guilty of it himself. I have looked at his four essays posted December 5 through 8. He uses the term "entropy" 97 times, and 46 of those times he doesn't distinguish between thermodynamic entropy and information entropy.
 

Stripe

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Bob Enyart criticizes my paper "Entropy and evolution" because when I use the term "entropy" I don't distinguish between thermodynamic entropy and information entropy.

If this is indeed a defect, then Bob is guilty of it himself. I have looked at his four essays posted December 5 through 8. He uses the term "entropy" 97 times, and 46 of those times he doesn't distinguish between thermodynamic entropy and information entropy.

That's probably because he is speaking of entropy in general.
 
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