THE END OF EVOLUTION?

The article suggests the human evolution has come to an end because human populations are no longer genetically isolated and because technology reduces the impact of natural selection.Given this I have to ask you to explain what you mean and what you are asking:

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The second law of thermodynamics in action. Convergence.
My question is; does evolution comply? And to what end?.

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What does the article have to do with the Second Law of Thermodynamics ? What "Convergence" are you talking about. What is it that evolution "might or might not "comply" with ? And why does the question of purpose arise at all

Would you like to explain how your sand actually relates to evolution ?

Although thermodynamics is part of the OP there seems to be no sensible relationship between it and the actual contents of the two articles.So far as I can see the first article speculates that human evolution has ended now, at the present day. It seems to be largely based on a fairly extreme view within evolutionary theory, that all important evolutionary change takes place during speciation events.The second article reports on a historical study indicating that human evolution has been relatively fast over the last few milennia. The article is not very clear about the periods involved and I would strongly recommend looking for a better source than a popular press article. It would be fair to say that the second article seriously undermines the assumption underlying the first, but that seems to be the only significant conflict that can be found in the material presented so far.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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PaulK, I'm making the connection.

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No, you're not. Asserting that there is a connection is not enough.

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Evolution is based on information. Thermodynamics extends to information as Shannon pointed out. To advance the TOE we need a mathematical expression

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Even if this were true (and it is not - information theory has no equivalent of the 2LoT)) it does not draw any connection between the two papers and the 2LoT.

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Maybe I've lost the thread of the discussion and am misinterpreting what you're trying to say, but information theory and 2LOT have much in common. The tendency of noise to interfere with communication is not that much different conceptually from the distribution of energy tending to even out over time.

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Information Theory includes a concept called entropy (because of a mathematical similarity to one measure of thermodynamic entropy). However that entropy is essentially a measure of information in the message.Also, the concept of noise interfering with the message has some relevance to evolution but it must be remembered that it treats all mutations (except "silent" mutations, perhaps) as noise, making no distinction between beneficial and detrimental. It certainly isn't what Lucy's argument needs.

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Cavediver, what can I say? Um..You're a dick head. You claim to be a physicist...but I realized how stupid you were when you claimed, with authority in a previous thread, that mass increases with velocity.

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So Cavediver is as stupid as Albert Einstein ?

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I'm trying to apply the 2nd law to the human genome.

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So when do you intend to start doing that ? I don't see any mention of the chemistry anywhere in your post.

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Yeh PaulK, that's me doing that, that's what this thread is about.

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So where's the connection ? Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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If you agree that entropy can be applied to the human genome we can move on.

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If you mean thermodynamic entropy then of course it can. But you are going to have to get deeply into the chemistry to get anywhere with it.

To deal only with the point addressed to me:

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2. The connection is obvious, laws apply.

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In other words you are evading the issue with a vague "answer" because you don't know of any connection between the papers and the 2LoT.For your information, the reason that you don't know of any is that there isn't one.

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Why is it that a person like me with so little applied understanding of the sciences can argue against the belief of so many scientists?

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Because you have so little understanding of the sciences. You don't know that what you are saying is hopelessly wrong.

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All the laws of thermodynamics are easily understood, that's because they make sense and can be seen to work.

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But you DON'T understand the 2LoT.

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One study says that the human genome has become homogeneous.

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Presumably you mean the short segment of a magazine article you referred to in the OP - which was NOT a study, just some theoretical musings. Which DOESN'T state that the genome has become homogenous. [quote] The second study or assertation by the grand pubahs is that evolution is 100 times faster than in the past.You don't know what the "second" study (the ONLY study) says because you haven't read it. Only a rather confused press report. So far as I can tell it actually says that human evolution has been unusually rapid over the last 10,000 years.

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Theoretical musings is what the theory of evolution is all about, isn't it?

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Absolutely not. There is a huge amount of genuine research. The fact that you can only be bothered to read magazine and newspaper articles doesn't mean that is all that there is.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.