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To: SirLinksalot

If anyone here cannot be bothered to read all that then I will sum up the spirit of the article for you in an analogy.

It is like someone trying to argue that the Law of Gravity proves aircraft cannot fly because gravity says objects fall towards the ground.

The person making the argument is well aware that science's response to this is that aircraft can fly because there are other forces that outweigh gravity, not that gravity contradicts flight.

But rather than accepting this sensible reasoning, the person instead writes a long article trying to obfuscate the issue and turn the above response into some strawman they can attack. The result is an article titled:

"CAN ANYTHING FALL UPWARDS THEN?"

With the jaw dropping argument of:
"So that means a computer can fly can it?"

and interspersed with off topic arguments such as the improbability of jet propulsion, and why planes wouldn't be strong enough to fly, etc - off topic arguments that have absolutely no bearing on the subject of whether the law of gravity disproves flight. And that is supposed to be the point of the article.


10 posted on 10/19/2006 5:13:59 PM PDT by bobdsmith
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To: bobdsmith
If anyone here cannot be bothered to read all that then I will sum up the spirit of the article for you in an analogy.

Good summary. The poor boy's brain's made of mush.

31 posted on 10/20/2006 6:42:19 AM PDT by ahayes (On the internet no one can hear you scream.)
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To: bobdsmith
Your analogy doesn't work, actually -- primarily because you seem to have seriously missed the point Sewell is making.

The Second Law says (among other things) that within a given system, entropy increases globally, even if it might increase at particular locations within the system. In a simple example of heat transfer, one side of you can be warmed by a fire (more order, local decrease in entropy), even as the net entropy of the room is increasing. His basic question is, in the case of so-called self-ordering systems, where does the "order" come from globally, such that it can increase, locally?

That's a pretty good question.

Having laid out his point, we can now turn to your analogy. Sewell actually addresses your analogy head-on, in his comment that "order may walk in through the door." As it applies to the airplane/gravity problem, we'd apply that idea in the obvious way: the airplane would always fall down, unless some other force "walked through the door" to hold it up.

There are problems with Sewell's discussion. Your analogy, however, fails to address them.

33 posted on 10/20/2006 2:49:26 PM PDT by r9etb
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