Does Randomness Really Exist?

[beaglelady]

There is no double standard. I already know about science and scientists.

[Bob_Kurland (Robert J. Kurland, Ph.D.)]

Patrick, I want to thank you again for steering me onto a fascinating topic, quantum information theory. I’m still going through Christopher Timpson’s thesis, learning about quantum teleportation and the von Neumann entropy.
I’m going to make a preliminary statement about your claim (and that of the authors of the paper) that the wave-particle duality and the uncertainty principle are one and the same thing. From what I’ve been reading so far, I think I will find out that quantum information theory is useful in interpreting quantum mechanics, but it could not be a foundational theory of quantum mechanics. If you talk about the wave-particle duality, then that expresses a choice of basis for the state function: position for a particle, momentum for a wave. There are other pairs of conjugate dynamical variables to which an uncertainty principle applies, as derived from commutation relations of operators for canonical variables; these commutation relations stem in turn from anti-commutation relations in classical dynamics. So the uncertainty principle will also apply to the following conjugate pairs of variables: energy and time, different components of angular momenta, etc. I don’t see where the physics comes into quantum information theory or how it leads to a classical limit, as does conventional quantum mechanics. But perhaps maybe this will be evident as I read more.

[Bob_Kurland (Robert J. Kurland, Ph.D.)]

Beagle Lady, you already know about science and scientists? Gee, I’ve done physics, chemistry and medical physics from 1951 to 1995 and a lot of reading thereafter, and I can’t say I already know about science and scientists. I’m still learning. But I guess some of us have it, and others (me) don’t.

[Patrick]

Bob,
Take a look at the Coles paper, it really is a breakthrough mathematically and an alternative way to look at quantum mechanics in general. From the math you can see that it works for all the other pairs of conjugate dynamical variables to which an uncertainty principle applies.

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

Actually, my concern is not to get people who are more traditional to become so; rather, my concern is to get people to identify more clearly where they agree and disagree with traditional views. In my ideal world, no one would be censored (or denied a job) for being a liberal, a conservative, a reactionary, a radical, etc.; but everyone’s views would be out on the table for discussion; the only unacceptable intellectual position would be rehearsed ambiguity.

I think @beaglelady 's request is quite reasonable.

I can’t even IMAGINE an ANONYMOUS poster challenging my views, my ethics and even my religion - - while refusing to identify his own background.

Eddie, maybe you are really a rabbi? Because you GOT CHUTZPAH!

George

[Patrick]

Eddie,
I think it takes more courage to “come out” as an atheist than it does to unveil the cloak of anonymity as a Christian.

[BradKramer]

OK, so we’ve descended into playground taunts again. Just remember, if you want authors to actually interact with you, your posts need to be focused and relevant to the topic at hand.

[Relates (Roger A. Sawtelle)]

@gbrooks9

George, cosmic rays are a part of the environment, so they are not left WAYYY OUTTTTT THERE in ecological Natural Selection. .

[beaglelady]

I don’t mind if people remain anonymous. After all, I’m anonymous. It’s just that when somebody posts the same thing month after month, for years on end, attacking the faith of Biologos leaders and participants alike, it would be enlightening to see who the inquisitor is.

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Relates

George, cosmic rays are a part of the environment, so they are not left WAYYY OUTTTTT THERE in ecological Natural Selection. .

Roger… I certainly didn’t mean “way out there” in terms of unbelievable… I mean way out there … as part of the furthest reaches of the environment that can come right into the earthly realm … and change the tiniest of molecules…

George

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

So I sympathize with your frustration. Nonetheless, I must decline to meet your request. Best wishes.

You are, by anyone’s definition, an “Anonymous Detractor” … not exactly your best foot forward. Maybe you could earn some credibility by spending less time on the negatives of BioLogos ?

George

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

Well, just in the past day or two, I’ve said that BioLogos has improved in not being so obsessively anti-ID in its focus as it was a few years ago. I attribute that in part to Deb Haarsma, and in part to some of the new personnel who don’t seem as wrapped up in old battles as the old regime (Collins, Falk, Giberson) was. And several times in the past I’ve noted how much the moderation at BioLogos has improved since the old days, with the team of Jim and Brad and now Christy trying to apply the same rules to all, instead of holding YECs and IDers to a much higher dialogical standard than TEs and atheists.

Lovely … keep the positive thoughts coming !

George

[AMWolfe (Andrew M. Wolfe)]

So if the comments so far haven’t been focused or relevant… does that mean they’ve been pretty random? #bringinitbackontopic

[benkirk (Benjamin Kirk)]

@Eddie

The mathematics of this was challenged by very competent mathematical scientists from MIT and Los Alamos at the Wistar Conference in 1966,[/quote]
Hello Eddie, do you mean Ulam?

Some Elementary Attempts at Numerical Modeling of Problems Concerning Rates of Evolutionary Processes Stanislaw Ulam and R. Schrandt (LA-4573-MS, December 1970):

In this report, we shall present an abbreviated account of calculations performed by us in the mid 1960’s. These calculations were preliminary and intended merely as the zeroth approximation to the problem concerning rates of evolution-a process which we have here severely stylized and enormously oversimplified. A mention of the results of such calculations in progress at that time was made at a meeting in 1966 at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia by one of us. The discussion there, as reported in the proceedings of the meeting, was rather frequently misunderstood and the impression might have been left that the results somehow make it extremely improbable that the standard version of the survival-of-the-fittest mechanism leads to much too slow a progress. What was really intended was indications from our computations-simple minded as they were-that a process involving only mitosis, in absence of sexual reproduction, would be indeed much too slow. However, and most biologists realize it anyway, the Darwinian mechanism together with mixing of genes accelerate enormously the rate of acquiring new “favorable” characteristics and leave the possibility of sufficiency of the orthodox ideas quite open. Numerous requests addressed to us for the elucidations and details of the numerical setup made us decide to give this account of our computations.

[quote] and there have been many further criticisms along this line since then, coming both from ID proponents and from non-aligned, non-religious scientists who simply have doubts about the sufficiency of the mechanism.

Which mechanism? You started out with whether mutations provide sufficient grist; are you still referring to that mechanism or some other mechanism?

@Eddie

It does no good to say that God uses natural selection. Natural selection cannot call forth mutations suitable to any end.

Why can’t God call forth mutations suitable to any end?

[benkirk (Benjamin Kirk)]

[quote=“Eddie, post:59, topic:4174”]
There were critics at the Wistar Conference other than Ulam. I don’t understand Ulam’s comment.[/quote]
I do.

If all that he meant at the time of the conference was that mitosis alone could not possibly account for evolution – then he had so little understanding of neo-Darwinism that he shouldn’t have even been at the conference.

I don’t have to read more to know that he included the generation of variation by mutation. What he is saying is that he didn’t include the generation of variation by sexual reproduction and recombination, two huge sources that I don’t see you considering either. Have you ever acknowledged the roles of sexual reproduction and recombination, or do all of your comments pretend that only mutation generates variation?

The conference was specifically about the neo-Darwinian model, so a criticism of evolution based on a notion that no neo-Darwinian held would have been idiotic, and a waste of everyone’s time. Indeed, if the objections to neo-Darwinism which led to the conference had been as amateurish as that – based on a less than high school understanding of the theory – the biologists there would never have consented to the conference in the first place.

Are you saying that you touted these 50-year-old proceedings as significant without knowing whether they were significant?

The standard neo-Darwinian mechanism I was referring to was “random mutations filtered by natural selection.” Most biologists believed that was sufficient to account for evolution up to about the 1960s.

I don’t see how this can possibly be true. If it were, work would have stopped, yet we now know that evolutionary biology is much more mechanistically rich than that.

The question I have for you is why don’t you seem to be able to admit that? Why are you apparently obsessed with offering a falsely simplistic, shallow portrayal of evolutionary theory? As the most blatant example, how much genetic variation is provided by recombination? Have you EVER even mentioned recombination as an evolutionary mechanism? Nothing you’ve written here suggests such an understanding.

[quote]Yes, God can call forth mutations if he wants to. Now, find me a BioLogos executive or columnist who will say…
[/quote]Who are you that I should “find” you anything of the sort?

Why would I want to be so incredibly rude to Biologos people? Because a commenter using a pseudonym demands that certain people state something so utterly obvious to anyone who both understands evolutionary biology and adheres to any Abrahamic religion?