Where do you get this? In another few billion years, the sun's energy output will decrease to the point where it will start to affect life processes on Earth. Not before. Up to that point, there is waaaay more energy released by the sun than can be used up under current conditions.
I agree that we are not in any immediate danger of the sun running out of enough energy to sustain us. This is to say, everything is affected by 2LoT, including the very source where we obtain our energy.
The influx of energy into an open system would not decrease entropy. Actually, the added heat energy would increase the rate at which things deteriorate.
Okay - now explain how this works. There are probably any number of physicists and physics buffs on this board who would be fascinated to hear your revolutionary overthrow of thermodynamics.
All I'm pointing out is that there is a fine balance in nature; so finely tuned in fact that its miraculous to me how people can essentially say that it was one coincidence after another. Too little heat will not sustain organisms on earth, too much will scortch them. If you have a home out in the middle of Death Valley, the beating sun wears it down at a much quicker rate than someone living in a much more temperate enviornment. There is nothing revolutionary about it. What's revolutionary is the apparent conclusion that many have come to, that somehow, the introduction of energy will completely negate deterioration. That obviously isn't the case, because too much energy will also speed up these processes. And when left to themselves, all things degrade with time, even in spite of a constant influx of energy. Does the energy slow the process down in manageable amounts? Of course it does. That would be silly to say otherwise. But this does not overcome the fact that the general flow is still from more ordered to more disordered.
No, actually. This is incorrect. Life is a thermodynamically dissipative process. As long as there's sufficient energy gradient, thermodynamics actually mandates an increase in order (i.e., complexity). Historical, evolutionary, and environmental constraints are what act occasionally to reverse this trend.
I've read up on Schroeder, Shannon, Bohr, Kauffman and all the others theory on it. Here is what I don't understand: In one instance, evolutionary biologists say that life isn't really increasing in complexity, just changing in a non-specific motion, but in the next instant, they can't get around the fact that if transspecific evolution exists, that everything is increasing in complexity. And then in one instance we have people say that 2LoT doesn't and can't occur in open systems. It is this unclear representation of its own theory that piques my interest. Because of the principles summarized by the Second Law, an actual and functional state of complexity still has the tendency to break down and not to exhibit this creative power necessary to compel an amoeba to a man.
As far as the non-equilibrium dissipation, it sounds alot like the 4th law, or at least, a spin-off of the proposed 4th law of Thermodynamics which is thus far, theoretical. In an attempt to account for the inevitable and sudden formation of autocatalytic sets of molecules, a hypothesis had to be formulated. The basic premise is that there is a law which directs the diversity and complexity in the universe in an ever-increasing display, so long as plently of sustained energy is introduced. But this can't be the case because it runs counter to the 2nd law, which is so exhaustively confirmed by physics that it should be used as a screening device for any proposed theory.
Do you not see how utterly ludicrous this sounds?
Okay, my wording of certain actions concerning mechanisms in the future will leave no doubt as to what I'm speaking about.
I strongly suggest you move on to another topic in this thread where you at least understand the argument of the guy you're quoting to support your point.
I understand his premise just fine. Its yours that I'm a little hazy, only because it seems like to me that you are factoring in organisms that no longer bear any relevance to the equation. The equation represents the overall population of whatever organism. And the only reason why they are of no consequence is because they have ceased to exist.
Hence the trait is maintained at a low level, whereas the disease is removed both by selection and drift. Get it?
I could agree with that, but if people with homozygous traits mate, then shouldn't that start the increase by selection and drift?
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