all things go from concentrated to dilute.

The energy of the sun is dispersing through the solar system, it clumps up briefly on our little rock, just as leaves flowing down a stream might, but both the energy on our planet, and the leaves snagged on that jut of rock in the stream will both slide off and dissipate.

I haven't read the book, but it sounds to me that what he's saying is not that all things must go from simple to complex, but that if there IS anything complex, it arose from simplicity. And that really does seem to be the case.

Hi Johnson,
Maybe you are correct and I would have to check, but it seemed like he was making a universal principle of it. I'll check it in his book.
I also don't agree with Interbane that Dawkin's "weasel "simulation is truly Darwinian as it had a preset target and was set up informationally to achieve that target. Evolution has no target or goal unless Dawkins wants to agree that it's not an unguided goal less process.
If you go with the standard model of cosmology,Johnson, where you have a starting point of infinite density and infinite just about everything,would you say this was a simple beginning?

Flann wrote:I also don't agree with Interbane that Dawkin's "weasel "simulation is truly Darwinian as it had a preset target and was set up informationally to achieve that target. Evolution has no target or goal unless Dawkins wants to agree that it's not an unguided goal less process.

The simulation used the evolutionary algorithm. It was Darwinian. Formulating a preset target is the only way to simulate the environmental niches that species fill. In nature, the preset target is the niche. How would you suggest the environmental niches be simulated?

If we ever had a simulation powerful enough to process the evolution of a short necked animal in the giraffidae family, the simulation would not generate tall necked giraffes without tall trees. It must be set up, informationally if you will, to favor the outcome of tall giraffes.

Another way to think of it is to consider a blind man throwing darts at a wall. You tape a small target on the wall to simulate a niche. The blind man throws 1,000 darts. Simulating the selective process that occurs in nature, you remove all darts that haven't hit the target. All that is left are the darts that have hit the target. Evolution hits the target niches, and does so blindly, unguided.

Maybe you are correct and I would have to check, but it seemed like he was making a universal principle of it. I'll check it in his book.

It's plain that many things go from complex to simple. But those complex things start off as their more simple building blocks. Let me know what you find in the book regarding him claiming that this is a universal principle, or how it was worded. I could see it as a principle with narrow conceptual scope, but not universal.

If you go with the standard model of cosmology,Johnson, where you have a starting point of infinite density and infinite just about everything,would you say this was a simple beginning?

No theory of physics should produce infinities.

I am reading Marcelo's ideas about infinities:

When mathematics find a singularity they explore its neighborhood to see if there is a way out.

"Infinity" is not measurable - ever.
Nor can it ever be reconciled scientifically. That is why mathematics, from what I understand, needs to revamp its analysis. "Infinite density" is not a simple solution to anything. It is a conceptual fabrication.
It can not exist experientially.

"Infinity" is a place holder for mathematics that essentially means nothing. It is NOT an explanation of any sort a human being can wrap his mind around.

That was a good question, Flann.

"Infinity" is a place holder for mathematics that essentially means nothing. It is NOT an explanation of any sort a human being can wrap his mind around.

Just to play devil's advocate; what if there was in fact a singularity with infinite density? We wouldn't be able to wrap our heads around the real thing nor the mathematical term. But that doesn't mean we don't use the term to describe the real thing. The term would be meaningful.

Not that I buy the idea of infinite density. What of infinite time? Or infinite space? Infinite intelligence?

Interbane wrote:Just to play devil's advocate;

You may be typecasting yourself Interbane,with your atheistic apologetics.I'm joking there. Correction,I should say agnostic.

I did my sorry penance and looked back over Carrier's arguments about simplicity.He infers from Darwinian evolution that something similar must apply to his multiverse. He also maintains that all things are built from simple to complex,so he's pretty much saying what Johnson thought he was.
There are naturalistic presuppositions here I think.I gave the analogy of the designer of a submarine and it's plans and construction.
We know human intelligence can create complex things from simple.Carrier is saying complexity cannot just emerge from nothing but if God did exist, I don't really see why not.
That life has in fact emerged and evolved from simple to complex seems to be an article of faith for neo-Darwinists.The Cambrian explosion doesn't fit with this model of slow gradual change and there are plenty of problems with the theory.Evolution does take place, but the theory seems a huge extrapolation from what change can be verified, which is not a great deal,I think.
These wars wage on in cyberspace.I had a look at a Jerry Coyne talk,hosted by Richard Dawkins where Coyne reassured Darwinists that they were right beyond a shadow of doubt. He also trotted out the usual Dawkins examples and arguments of bad design, which have been ably refuted many times.
I also found a news item on a physics site about research going on into the idea of in many cases evolution going from complex to simple from early times. Of course the response will be,they started simple,became complex then simpler again.

http://www.phys.org/news/2012-09-evolut ... mplex.html

If you go with the standard model of cosmology,Johnson, where you have a starting point of infinite density and infinite just about everything,would you say this was a simple beginning?

Yes.

Simple as in there is only one kind of thing present and no complexity to speak of.
As opposed to now with about a hundred chemical elements, plus sub atomic particles, forces, space, and dark matter and dark energy, whatever those last bits are... all doing different things in different ways.


It is also not a given that this is the starting point. It is only that we are unable to make reliable predictions about what comes before this point in time and space. There may have been something before hand, but the particulars of that thing are beyond our current grasp as they've been squeezed through an apparent singularity.

I don't think i would put a pin in it and declare there was an infinity there. It goes that "everything in the universe" was there, but if the universe isn't infinite, then there wouldn't be an infinity in the singularity, which was not point-like, but instead only very very small.

Hmmm. You may be right Johnson. Are these infinities or not? I don't know. That kind of language has been used to describe it.
Ant is reading Marcelo on these things and I'm guessing he won't be letting you off lightly here.

Put it this way for the devil in the house..,
In the quantum realm, the observer ( consciousness) determines either the position or momentum of what is to be measured.
an electron really does not exist without the availability of consciousness to interpret it.

Prior to the rise of Man the universe was "mindless" - just a dumb universe.

In a mindless universe and its quantum foundations nothing exists because there are no conscious beings cognizant of what existence actually means.
The concept of existence itself actually presupposes a mind capable of higher reasoning.

If we are the only intelligence (whatever that actually means) then nothing existed before our arrival.
(note: Robert Tulip once stated here on BT that the only intelligent things are brains - paraphrased)

Why in heavens name we are capable of deciphering an intelligibility to a "mindless cosmos" that actually did not exist prior to human consciousness is beyond me.
If we did NOT believe the universe was intelligible, science would stop dead in its tracks.

There is no reason and no guarantee given by Nature that says all complexity has simple beginnings.
That's simply another arrogant presumption.


The algorithm dun it

Ant:

In the quantum realm, the observer ( consciousness) determines either the position or momentum of what is to be measured.
an electron really does not exist without the availability of consciousness to interpret it.

This is absolutely not the case.

There need not be an observer. Consciousness has absolutely nothing to do with a quantum state collapse. The quantum state just has to interact with another quantum state and become entangled.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZacggH9wB7Y

7:48 Sean Carroll speaks on this topic.

The observer does not determine anything about the particle's position or momentum. Instead in order to really pin point the position you have to interact with it strongly thus sending it off to who knows where with a strong reaction, or you can get a good idea of the momentum by interacting very lightly so that you don't actually pin point it at any time, but get instead a sort of average of it's location which is uncertain, but a much better trajectory of the momentum.

Uncertainty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1yb1adU2vI

Heisenberg's Microscope 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgoA_jmGIcA

Heisenberg's Microscope 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKR0ADUhjNE

In other words, it is all completely physical and mechanical.
Quantum Mechanics. Not quantum magics.