You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how random mutation and natural selection work together. I implore you to look into the Library of Babel project, which aims to contain every possible combination of letters and spaces. This means every known book, sentence, and possible written paragraph exists somewhere in this library. The randomly generated combinations are essentially random mutations. Now let's imagine you were selecting for only the combinations that made words, thus removing the gibberish. Each word generated would have been generated through random chance, and natural selection (the filter you refer to) removed stuff that isn't a word. It would be much easier to generate a sensible sentence through this process. You also brought up the gambler's fallacy, to this we can liken evolution to Yatzee. Rolling 5 dice with the same number is low, and if you were to keep rolling all 5 dice hoping the next roll would give you the desired result you'd be a fool. But let's say you roll 5 dice, then remove every dice that is not a 6. This is random mutation (the roll) and natural selection (removing dice). It would be very easy using this process to get to 5 dice that all have a 6. You could even go further, if you continued this process for years and years you'd end up with thousands of dice that say 6, a completely impossible result if you were rolling all those dice all at once every time hoping they somehow all land on 6. Thus each new element added (the next dice or letter in the library of babel) is produced through random chance, while the previous working result is retained (the previous 6s you kept or the previous words) and natural selection refines the random result by removing anything that is not viable (any dice not a 6 or letter that would be gibberish). Through these processes together complex changes can arise through purely random processes.
Nothing in your comment (and thank you for it!) changes anything about The Natural Selection Paradox (Statement 10 and variations at www.naturalselectionparadox.com). You are describing exactly what we explain! The bottom line is that regardless of any selecting happening in any of your examples, every event before selecting is random. All selecting does is remove some randomness and leave other randomness to produce more randomness. So the chain of descent from first life to current life is random, select out some random, make more random, select out some random, make more random, etc. ... all the way down! You are correct that this process of cumulative randomness would produce "complex" changes; when applied to the first working genetic code it would produce useless, albiet complex, gibberish!
Here is the best way to settle our disagreement. If you are willing, please reply with your agreement or disagreement with each of the ten statements in this post. Example: "Statement 1, agree." If you disagree with any statement, explain precisely (and concisely) why. Then we can focus on the point of disagreement. Thank you!
I guess I'm more confused because I don't understand why you think it's a paradox, or that it disproves evolution. You're essentially saying evolution works as described but are somehow creating a conspiracy theory by saying thus evolution doesn't work. These random changes cumulate over literally billions of years to generate the massive changes between animals we see today. Theres also something to be said about how much random mutation alone impacts evolution, there are some rapid changes that cause massive jumps in a relatively short period of time. One example of this is the symbiotic event that gave cells chloroplasts and mitochondria, these structures evolved separately as essentially bacteria and it was a major change when they were absorbed into other cells and became symbiotic. These changes have been conserved for every animal or plant respectively since then. Furthermore it's not just the fossil record or genetics that prove evolution, the age of the Earth (required for the time span evolution works on) has been agreed upon by a vast majority of scientists in multiple different fields in every country. Ask geologists, anthropologists, chemists, physicists, astrologists, biologists ect how old the Earth is and each of their disciplines point to a very similar answer. Darwin only proposed the basic framework of evolution, remember he had no idea what genetics or even microbes were. And yet, since then most scientists studying all manner of disciplines, anatomy, biochemistry, genetics, ecology, evolutionary biology, paleontology, microbiology ect all agree that evolution has the best possible explanation for the numerous observable ways we see animals adapt and change over time. Just think, if genetics came around and we determined that actually DNA doesn't make any sense as being explained by evolution, then it would throw a massive hole in the whole ordeal, but time and time again and with better technology and ways of measuring we see that evolution is the best explanation we have. All it would take is one fossil or animal who's age or genetic code or biology didn't make sense as coming from random continuous mutation from a previous form and evolution would be done for, but we have never once found an example of this. Your postulates are just a logic puzzle to try to use rhetoric to "prove" something that has been shown to be true thousands of times over.
Why do I think it's a paradox? That is the point of this post. Read it; that's why. You might disagree, but that is why I think it's a paradox. You can also watch this video, which I know is long, but spells out my thinking completely: https://youtu.be/PBmz7F8yHyo
As for the rest of your comment, I will skip to the last sentence and simply state that I'm not trying to "prove" anything. I have made my point, and I'm open to reasons why I'm wrong.
Let's do this to simplify and focus the issues: To see exactly where we agree and disagree, for each of the 10 statements made in this post please let me know which ones for which you agree or disagree. Example, state "Statement 1, agree"; "Statement 2 disagree," etc. After I get your response for all 10 statements, I will focus on the statement(s) you disagree with, one at at time. So in your next comment, please tell me which statement(s) you agree are true, and which you disagree are true.
I'm simply not going to do that because I don't believe a set of postulates is a good representation of how natural selection works. You are trying to describe a natural phenomenon through a series of logic puzzles. Simple statements of law can sometimes help refine our understanding of the natural world but is a fundamentally flawed process because language often falls short on describing material processes. You can even take your mention of the second law of thermodynamics, the law states that closed systems will tend towards increased chaos and people who take that sentence as gospel (forgive the pun) will then say well thats proof there is a divine creator, if all systems go towards chaos someone had to create the initial ordered state to begin with! But that's not what this law is saying, this law isn't saying order cannot arise from chaos. Take the stars, after the big bang you could say that was the most chaotic state the universe could be in, pure uniform bits. But through random changes in the density of these bits and the energy imputed into the system by the force of the big bang itself these were able to coalesce into stars. This is a temporary ordered structure arising from chaos through random processes. And at the end of the stars life, it too explodes and the overall system of the universe gradually will return to uniform chaos. Take also the change in flow from laminar to turbulent flow. As the water changes whirlpools will spontaneously form along the border that mixes the water further towards turbulence (the chaos state). These whirlpools are small regions of spontaneous order that arise from the increased chaos of the system that work towards increasing overall entropy. So to are biological systems temporary ordered states that arise from chaos through randomness. If you just took the second law of thermodynamics in it's sentence as a commandment you would be missing the understanding. That's what I think your problem is, your postulates are trying to make commandment out of an observable natural phenomenon. I'm not going to say which specific statements I agree or disagree with because it's a pointless activity that does not lead to understanding. Refining the wording wont lead to understanding. This endeavor is in a way a temporary ordering of words that only serves to increase confusion.
I believe logic and reasoning around postulates is one of the best ways to discuss a proposition. I've made 10 propositional statements that, if true, render your chosen creation narrative a lie. If you cannot tell me why any of my statements are wrong I will continue to believe them to be true. Your choice! And you are the one that admitted to confusion. But have it your way. Bye!
test
Test successful!
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how random mutation and natural selection work together. I implore you to look into the Library of Babel project, which aims to contain every possible combination of letters and spaces. This means every known book, sentence, and possible written paragraph exists somewhere in this library. The randomly generated combinations are essentially random mutations. Now let's imagine you were selecting for only the combinations that made words, thus removing the gibberish. Each word generated would have been generated through random chance, and natural selection (the filter you refer to) removed stuff that isn't a word. It would be much easier to generate a sensible sentence through this process. You also brought up the gambler's fallacy, to this we can liken evolution to Yatzee. Rolling 5 dice with the same number is low, and if you were to keep rolling all 5 dice hoping the next roll would give you the desired result you'd be a fool. But let's say you roll 5 dice, then remove every dice that is not a 6. This is random mutation (the roll) and natural selection (removing dice). It would be very easy using this process to get to 5 dice that all have a 6. You could even go further, if you continued this process for years and years you'd end up with thousands of dice that say 6, a completely impossible result if you were rolling all those dice all at once every time hoping they somehow all land on 6. Thus each new element added (the next dice or letter in the library of babel) is produced through random chance, while the previous working result is retained (the previous 6s you kept or the previous words) and natural selection refines the random result by removing anything that is not viable (any dice not a 6 or letter that would be gibberish). Through these processes together complex changes can arise through purely random processes.
Nothing in your comment (and thank you for it!) changes anything about The Natural Selection Paradox (Statement 10 and variations at www.naturalselectionparadox.com). You are describing exactly what we explain! The bottom line is that regardless of any selecting happening in any of your examples, every event before selecting is random. All selecting does is remove some randomness and leave other randomness to produce more randomness. So the chain of descent from first life to current life is random, select out some random, make more random, select out some random, make more random, etc. ... all the way down! You are correct that this process of cumulative randomness would produce "complex" changes; when applied to the first working genetic code it would produce useless, albiet complex, gibberish!
Here is the best way to settle our disagreement. If you are willing, please reply with your agreement or disagreement with each of the ten statements in this post. Example: "Statement 1, agree." If you disagree with any statement, explain precisely (and concisely) why. Then we can focus on the point of disagreement. Thank you!
I guess I'm more confused because I don't understand why you think it's a paradox, or that it disproves evolution. You're essentially saying evolution works as described but are somehow creating a conspiracy theory by saying thus evolution doesn't work. These random changes cumulate over literally billions of years to generate the massive changes between animals we see today. Theres also something to be said about how much random mutation alone impacts evolution, there are some rapid changes that cause massive jumps in a relatively short period of time. One example of this is the symbiotic event that gave cells chloroplasts and mitochondria, these structures evolved separately as essentially bacteria and it was a major change when they were absorbed into other cells and became symbiotic. These changes have been conserved for every animal or plant respectively since then. Furthermore it's not just the fossil record or genetics that prove evolution, the age of the Earth (required for the time span evolution works on) has been agreed upon by a vast majority of scientists in multiple different fields in every country. Ask geologists, anthropologists, chemists, physicists, astrologists, biologists ect how old the Earth is and each of their disciplines point to a very similar answer. Darwin only proposed the basic framework of evolution, remember he had no idea what genetics or even microbes were. And yet, since then most scientists studying all manner of disciplines, anatomy, biochemistry, genetics, ecology, evolutionary biology, paleontology, microbiology ect all agree that evolution has the best possible explanation for the numerous observable ways we see animals adapt and change over time. Just think, if genetics came around and we determined that actually DNA doesn't make any sense as being explained by evolution, then it would throw a massive hole in the whole ordeal, but time and time again and with better technology and ways of measuring we see that evolution is the best explanation we have. All it would take is one fossil or animal who's age or genetic code or biology didn't make sense as coming from random continuous mutation from a previous form and evolution would be done for, but we have never once found an example of this. Your postulates are just a logic puzzle to try to use rhetoric to "prove" something that has been shown to be true thousands of times over.
Why do I think it's a paradox? That is the point of this post. Read it; that's why. You might disagree, but that is why I think it's a paradox. You can also watch this video, which I know is long, but spells out my thinking completely: https://youtu.be/PBmz7F8yHyo
As for the rest of your comment, I will skip to the last sentence and simply state that I'm not trying to "prove" anything. I have made my point, and I'm open to reasons why I'm wrong.
Let's do this to simplify and focus the issues: To see exactly where we agree and disagree, for each of the 10 statements made in this post please let me know which ones for which you agree or disagree. Example, state "Statement 1, agree"; "Statement 2 disagree," etc. After I get your response for all 10 statements, I will focus on the statement(s) you disagree with, one at at time. So in your next comment, please tell me which statement(s) you agree are true, and which you disagree are true.
Thank you!
I'm simply not going to do that because I don't believe a set of postulates is a good representation of how natural selection works. You are trying to describe a natural phenomenon through a series of logic puzzles. Simple statements of law can sometimes help refine our understanding of the natural world but is a fundamentally flawed process because language often falls short on describing material processes. You can even take your mention of the second law of thermodynamics, the law states that closed systems will tend towards increased chaos and people who take that sentence as gospel (forgive the pun) will then say well thats proof there is a divine creator, if all systems go towards chaos someone had to create the initial ordered state to begin with! But that's not what this law is saying, this law isn't saying order cannot arise from chaos. Take the stars, after the big bang you could say that was the most chaotic state the universe could be in, pure uniform bits. But through random changes in the density of these bits and the energy imputed into the system by the force of the big bang itself these were able to coalesce into stars. This is a temporary ordered structure arising from chaos through random processes. And at the end of the stars life, it too explodes and the overall system of the universe gradually will return to uniform chaos. Take also the change in flow from laminar to turbulent flow. As the water changes whirlpools will spontaneously form along the border that mixes the water further towards turbulence (the chaos state). These whirlpools are small regions of spontaneous order that arise from the increased chaos of the system that work towards increasing overall entropy. So to are biological systems temporary ordered states that arise from chaos through randomness. If you just took the second law of thermodynamics in it's sentence as a commandment you would be missing the understanding. That's what I think your problem is, your postulates are trying to make commandment out of an observable natural phenomenon. I'm not going to say which specific statements I agree or disagree with because it's a pointless activity that does not lead to understanding. Refining the wording wont lead to understanding. This endeavor is in a way a temporary ordering of words that only serves to increase confusion.
I believe logic and reasoning around postulates is one of the best ways to discuss a proposition. I've made 10 propositional statements that, if true, render your chosen creation narrative a lie. If you cannot tell me why any of my statements are wrong I will continue to believe them to be true. Your choice! And you are the one that admitted to confusion. But have it your way. Bye!