Does Common Descent Follow Logically From Darwin's Four Postulates?

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by Eugene Shubert, May 10, 2017.

  1. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    6

    Yah

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  3. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    How does that even matter?
     
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  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Your toy models of evolutionary processes don't work. They conflict with research and observation. Change, or discard.
     
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  7. Eugene Shubert Valued Senior Member

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    Would you buy a pig in a poke?
     
  8. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    What's a poke?
     
  9. Eugene Shubert Valued Senior Member

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  10. Eugene Shubert Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, there are many silly laws, such as don't travel faster than light because it confuses passengers. Interestingly however, according to your presuppositions, as you interpret them, the prominent physicist George Gamow should have been imprisoned for denying the second law of thermodynamics in chapter 9 of MR TOMPKINS IN WONDERLAND.

    And that reminds me of a hilarious prophecy about me by Douglas Adams:

    “It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a smartass.”
     
  11. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    I thought it was god who was supposed to return from the dead

    Not a smartass

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  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    So the laws of thermodynamics are "silly" but your maximally-magical Eugene molecule is real.

    Perhaps try a fantasy board instead of a science board next time?
     
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    People playing silly games can do so in a page or two - 16 is too many. I'm sorry about my contribution, and I promise never to feed this troll again.
     
  14. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    I call the game Ping Pong and your tolerance of 2 pages is well over my tolerance level of 3 Pings

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  15. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    What about DNA? There is more than one kind, and yet we only see one kind in all life forms on Earth, evidence of a common ancestor that happened on one form accidentally and passed it on.
     
  16. Eugene Shubert Valued Senior Member

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    More precisely, the second law of thermodynamics is very much like the speed limit on freeways, which was devised, in part, with optimal safety in mind. Some cars move faster than the posted limit and some cars move slower. On the average however, the majority of cars obey the central limit theorem. One thing is certain though, the central limit theorem has no power over nonconformists.
     
  17. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    It would be interesting to see you try to apply your "nonconformism" to, say, designing a power plant. You could begin the process all cocky, proud of your refusal to bow to the religion of thermodynamics. You could claim that with your genius and out of the box thinking, you could avoid the traps of the efficiency limits imposed by thermodyamics. It would then be fun to watch reality hit you - very hard - in the face. And you'd be left standing there wondering what the hell just happened, while real engineers and scientists fix your lousy design.
     
  18. Eugene Shubert Valued Senior Member

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    Unanswerable.
     
  19. Eugene Shubert Valued Senior Member

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    It's not unreal. It's just fantastically improbable.
     
  20. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Have your MMEM

    undergone any scrutiny and testing like say

    Law of Thermodynamics?

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  21. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Very wise in my view.

    But one thing has come up that intrigues me, apropos some of the things that are attributed to Gamow. This is the idea, which I have encountered in several places, in (usually) school-level descriptions of the kinetic theory of matter, that there is no reason - in principle at least - why all the molecules in an object should not suddenly move in the same direction at once, causing the object to leap into the air or something. According to these descriptions, it is just a matter of the infinitesimal probability of this that causes us not to see it ever happening in real life.

    I have always thought this was utter ballocks, because, as molecules exchange momentum during their random collisions and momentum is conserved, there is no way whatsoever for such an event to take place. If the total net momentum of all the component parts is zero at the start it must be still zero at any time thereafter.

    I wonder if this is among our poster's numerous misapprehensions. But not having Gamow's book am unable to see for myself what he actually said about all this.
     
  22. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    I agree, what a waste of time.
     
  23. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Every life form is unique, and anyway it's a trick question because the answer is always one. Because that's how speciation works.
     

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