Re: Recent rhetoric

Bill Payne (bpayne15@juno.com)
Tue, 6 Apr 1999 20:18:04 -0600

On Mon, 5 Apr 1999 20:56:06 -0700 Pim van Meurs <entheta@eskimo.com>
writes:

>>As I see it, with a purely naturalistic process, you have no means of
preserving
>>"progress" (in the sense of increasing complexity).

>Why not ?

Because whatever chance creates, chance destroys. Try getting Howard's
perfume back into the bottle by chance.

>Bill: If we assume that the human brain is more complex than an
expanding cloud
>of hydrogen gas, then what we see is a very real and substantial
increase
>in complexity, not an artifact (IMHO).
>
>But is that assumption correct ?

Maybe not; have you ever had a conversation with hydrogen? :-)

And even if it is, what relevance
>does it have ? Nature can create complexity as it does all the time.

I know, and, as you know, it's the information content which counts.

>Outside to what ? An outside force can still give a vector but as
>Kevin and others have shown a random walk process with a lower limit
>will give the appearance of increase in complexity.

There you go. Your "lower limit" is an outside force preventing chance
from destroying what chance created.

Bill
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