By now, everyone should have heard Ben Carson’s litany of stupidity. He’s a card-carrying member of Idiot America, and this statement is a testimonial to his lack of understanding of quite basic science concepts.
“I find the big bang, really quite fascinating. I mean, here you have all these highfalutin scientists and they’re saying it was this gigantic explosion and everything came into perfect order. Now these are the same scientists that go around touting the second law of thermodynamics, which is entropy, which says that things move toward a state of disorganization. So now you’re gonna have this big explosion and everything becomes perfectly organized and when you ask them about it they say, ‘Well we can explain this, based on probability theory because if there’s enough big explosions, over a long period of time, billions and billions of years, one of them will be the perfect explosion,” continued Carson. “So I say what you’re telling me is if I blow a hurricane through a junkyard enough times over billions and billions of years, eventually after one of those hurricanes there will be a 747 fully loaded and ready to fly. Carson added that he believed the big bang was “even more ridiculous” because there is order to the universe. “Well, I mean, it’s even more ridiculous than that ’cause our solar system, not to mention the universe outside of that, is extraordinarily well organized, to the point where we can predict 70 years away when a comet is coming,” he said. “Now that type of organization to just come out of an explosion? I mean, you want to talk about fairy tales,that is amazing.” Later, Carson said he personally believed Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was encouraged by the devil.
Oh-my-dog, this is like the rawest, most primitive kind of creationism — it’s primordial Gish. It’s the pseudoscience of Whitcomb and Morris, from the 1960s. Carson would have wowed the rubes at the Scopes trial.
The universe does not violate the laws of thermodynamics: everything since the Big Bang represents an increase in entropy. There has not been a series of explosions, each one trying to create a functioning arrangement of matter and energy. Matter and energy interact in predictable ways, and can produce local increases in order at the expense of a net loss of order in the environment, and that is not a violation of thermodynamics — in fact, biology is dependent on thermodynamics.
And the “tornado in a junkyard assembling a 747” argument takes me back — I remember hearing it as a student of developmental biology, and wondering how the creationist thought he got here. He was a single cell, once, that sucked in thousands of grams of chemical energy and spewed out thousands of grams of CO2 and nitrogen and water, replicated itself at a rapid pace, and assembled itself in a whirl of complex activity into a battery of specialized subunits that allowed it to walk and talk, all without a guiding hand. Once you see that, it’s hard to muster much enthusiasm for denying the effectiveness of thermodynamics, or its applicability to other natural processes like evolution.
But I’ve been seeing Carson’s stupid quote all over the place, and it’s always accompanied by some expression of incredulity that a brain surgeon could be so ignorant. Stop that.
I worked my way through college as an assistant in a neurosurgery training program (among other things). I was helping medical students who wanted to specialize in being a brain doctor every day, and not a one impressed me at all with their intelligence.
There were, of course, many things that they were very good at, often much better than I was. It takes a lot of discipline and practice to be a good surgeon. They were good at memorizing procedures. They had to be decisive — a lot of bad things can happen when you’re slicing into a brain, and you better be fast and responsive and deal with crises appropriately. They have to have strong and steady hands (although their dexterity is often over-rated. When I was doing single-cell work, it put the skill of those guys going into masses of tissue with spatulas in perspective). It’s not work that just anyone can do, but you can say exactly the same thing about plumbing or carpentry or teaching. Yet somehow, surgeons have this bizarrely exalted reputation…probably because their job involves directly saving lives.
But saving lives does not require much knowledge of science — no one sees an emergency situation and then starts making hypotheses and testing them with experiments, you know, or reviewing the current literature. You want a guy who’s memorized the book and has good muscle memory and is quick. In fact, there’s no problem with being as dumb as a sack of horse poop and being a good neurosurgeon, as is amply demonstrated by people like Ben Carson and Michael Egnor. Being a neurosurgeon doesn’t preclude being knowledgeable, but clearly we have to overcome this bias of using an MD degree as a proxy for intelligence.
Fortunately, Ben Carson is working hard to demolish that preconception.
Carson is not a scientist. He is a (retired) body mechanic.
Ben certainly doesn’t understand anything about physics – entropy is a quantity – similar to energy – that is useful to calculate to see if a process is reversible or not.
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There are two blunders here – first, a closed thermodynamic system (where entropy cannot decrease) is NOT a biological system; and the sun is a HUGE part of the thermodynamic system of earth. Entropy is increasing on the sun as it loses energy to space and earth, so entropy can decrease locally here. Turn off the sun and see how long life lasts on earth – it is a vital component.
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But further, where does he get the idea that earth is the well-organized thing his god created? Yes, we can predict HALLEY’s comet 76 years in advance, but that is the ONLY one we can predict. Irony of ironies.
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I think this goes to show that one should not get their physics, or geology or biology from their minister, any more than they should get their religion from their science teacher.
PZ,
As an atheist neurologist, I really take issue with title of your opening thread. Gee, why don’t I start a thread with “You don’t have to be smart to be a developmental biologist”. If you came to the ER with an acute headache and ophthalmoplegia and via quick deductive reasoning diagnosed a posterior communicating artery aneurysm that could kill you, well clearly that requires no intelligence at all. I find your title of the thread incredibly ignorant.
Ben Carson is a creationist asshole. Harvard Law graduate Ted Cruz is also a creationist asshole. But none of that has to do with their intelligence in their respective fields.
One of my atheist civil rights heroes was WEB Dubois. But he was an asshole for praising Joseph Stalin and lauded the Soviet totalitarian dictatorship. Based on this and your logic, it doesn’t really take any brains to be a civil rights activist, does it? Hm?
I really loathe that “look at my folksy wisdumb!” shit.
Well to be fair here, it does take significantly more training (and practice and then more training) to become a specialist surgeon than those others you name. But yes, it’s the same old thing we see everywhere: expertise, even brilliance in a field does not imply any amount of skill in another. Brain surgeons and rocket scientists can step of the pedestal, kthx.
ragdish @ 3:
I don’t. At least in the States, people put doctors on high pedestal, especially those involved in neurology. I’m not an MD, but I am a neurology patient, with two neurologists I see on a regular basis. I get to see others on a regular basis as well, and I have one particular story about a consult with this one neurosurgeon…it ain’t pretty. That doc was a blazing beacon of god-fueled stupid, and the stupid extended right into the surgery he wanted to perform. We didn’t do business.
I know it’s hard to see someone smack down your profession, but you should have a bit more pissiness directed at Carson and those like him, who hardly give your profession a good name.
I could not agree with you more. When I was a Navy Corpsman I interacted with many surgeons and physicians. Because I was enlisted and they were of the officer class we did not socialize, but I saw enough of them at work and from the sidelines to develop a rather jaundiced view of many of them (But not all. Those who had seen the results of combat on the human body tended to be more humble and down to earth.) They often held the most asinine political, religious and social views. And because they were both officers AND MDs they could be infuriating bores and bigots. Think MASH without the comedy. Ben Carson’s views are true to type. When one is at the apex of the medical profession with literally scores of underlings jumping at your every word, it’s easy to slip into a kind of casual arrogance. “I think this” therefore it must be true. A man like him would be a very unfortunate choice to be President. Despite his low key manner, he strikes me as the type who would disdain taking advice from anyone he felt was beneath him.
#3: If I came to the ER with those symptoms, and then proceeded to tell the doctors how to treat me and belittled their expertise and told them that their training was all wrong, I’d be the dumbass who’d be mocked as an idiot.
Carson has some narrow, specific training in doing one very difficult job. That does not give him a free pass to allow him to pretend to be an authority on evolutionary biology and physics. That he thinks his ability to diagnose and deal with a posterior communicating artery aneurysm makes him qualified to dismiss every other fucking discipline of science is what makes him a stupid man. And clearly, a stupid man can be a competent neurosurgeon. QED.
That’s not what he brought up. He’s apparently worried about the low entropy “initial” condition (assuming that’s the sort of thing we’ve got with the BB), which is an awfully fancy thing for a clueless bullshit artist to worry about. People really don’t understand why entropy was so low or how we might attempt to explain it. That’s a serious issue in cosmology, not that the details matter here.
But being ignorant about anything (you, me, them, anybody) is the only thing creationists need for their entire schtick. There clearly is lots of that.
You may not have to be smart, but I would think something as risky as neurosurgery requires a fair amount of ego–it’s where the decisiveness mentioned in the OP comes into play–or any type surgery for that matter. That being said, I’d imagine running for president requires considerably more ego than a surgeon, though not necessarily as much as the towering Trump standard demands.
And if Ben wants to talk about then he should take a look at his own website. Directly below this pro-life talking point: (I’m guessing he doesn’t know, or simply doesn’t care, about the percentage of its detainees who were believed to be innocent by the federal government, which is well in the majority.)
Agreed, PZ. Then why not change the title of your thread to “A sad example of a dumbass know-it-all and a mockery to his profession”. Rather your title smears the entire profession.
@ 10 HolyPinkUnicorn
That’s because “protect innocent life” is a conservative dog whistle for “punish sluts for having nonreproductive sex.” They don’t actually give a damn about someone’s life.
I’m not sure it does that, but it’s not a very interesting claim to make.
You don’t have to be smart — that is, you don’t have to be a polymath who does “know it all” (really, all of it?), as PZ seems to mean instead of merely being smart — to be a person working in any sort of profession. It would probably help, but entire professions don’t in fact require that of people.
I had to explain to a resident MD why we couldn’t give a dehydrated patient with hypernatremia and hyperglycemia sterile water as an iv fluid. The first thing I said was “sterile water isn’t available as an IV fluid”. He asked why and I explained hypertonic and hypotonic solutions. Ten minutes later I just suggested he call the attending doc. My point is that someone can go graduate as a MD and still be clueless.
I’m fine with your arguments about neurosurgeons. But I feel people will agree with them because of Ben Carson, which I think is wrong. A couple creationists shouldn’t be enough to tar an entire discipline. I don’t think biochemists are stupid, but having grown up with Behe I have felt (internally) less respect for them. But it’s just probability that some are going to be creationists (hell, Kurt Wise was a paleontologist), I don’t think a few bad (or stupid) apples should tar an entire discipline.
But it doesn’t smear the entire profession. It says you don’t *have* to be smart. Nothing saying that all MDs are unintelligent. I have had idiot doctors, plenty of them. Had one insist I had carpal tunnel, despite the pain being along the *back* of my hand from elbow to tip of middle finger. I suggested a pinched c7 nerve from an old neck injury and he insisted that it couldn’t be that. I, in turn, insisted on neck rads (instead of sticking needles in my muscles and conducting electricity through them… eeeeek) and behold! I have severe arthritis in my neck from a fall when I was 9 (concussion, knocked fillings out of my teeth, jaw permanently misaligned). This guy wanted me to go through a surgery that wouldn’t have helped. Simple massages relaxed the muscles which relaxed the nerve.
Told another doctor that I have paradoxical reactions to the valium family of drugs, so he said he’d sedate me with versed instead of valium. ….
So, you don’t *have* to be smart. It helps though, and most are, but it’s clearly not required.
The first time I heard the Second Law of Thermodynamics argument, I knew there was a deeper flaw in their thinking than just the whole “it applies to closed systems, which the human body and the ecosystem are not” thing I usually hear brought up in response. It took me a while, but while reading up on “Maxwell’s Demon” I realized that in their formation of the second law, Maxwell’s Demon is understood not as a potential problem with the hypothesis, as it was originally intended. To the theist, Maxwell’s Demon is the escape clause that proves that there’s a god. When information theory showed that Maxwell’s Demon cannot exist, it also shows that anything justified by it cannot exist, including some people’s idea of a god. So they really really should be running away from that argument.
As to the tornado in a junkyard being unable to assemble a 747, the proper response (which I’ve not had the opportunity to try yet, admittedly) is to get them to commit to it fully, that any one who makes a claim anything like that is full of it and obviously not to be trusted. Once they do, point out that there’s a big speech in the 38th through 41st chapter of the Book of Job where the creation of the entire universe is claimed credit by a whirlwind.
Speaking of medicine-related stupidity, P. Z., did you know Hovind was selling Amygdalin/Laetrile ?
#11: Are you seriously arguing that you have to be smart to be an MD? That Carson is an MD, therefore he is smart? That’s the circular argument I hate.
#14: WHAT? I am horrified. That’s basic bio 101 knowledge, and I know: I’m teaching cell bio to sophomores, and Monday, the lecture is all about osmosis and membranes.
wcorvi @2:
The entropy of the sun (if that’s what you mean) is decreasing according to ΔS=-ΔE/T, where ΔE is radiated energy. But of course the entropy of sun plus its environment is increasing.
Listen, is essentially equivalent to “Not all MDs are smart.” (Carson, for example).
The former does NOT imply all MDs are not smart; just that smart is not a prerequisite for MD status.
If the lede was your inference, chill.
Being an EE, it is common, yet inoffensive, to hear, .
OTOH, saying is indeed offensive, as it smears the entire profession of EEs.
Distinguishing those two phrases is the important bit.
favog:
Well, physical arguments can show that what any physical “demon” is doing increases entropy just as much or more in “the environment” (perhaps simply its brain) than it decreases in the subsystem it is manipulating, if it has some reliable way of doing that physically. That’s not a purely logical point that would apply to anything that could be non-physical, like a god. (Maybe you want to ask whether those could exist. There being such things is not obviously contradictory, so you at least don’t get that for free.) If something like a god can be non-physical, unlike Maxwell’s demon, then this doesn’t show such things can’t logically exist. You’re just describing what happens to ordinary, real-world physical states. Which is certainly not nothing, but it isn’t quite doing the same work as what you’re claiming for it here.
In fact, most people don’t think gods are like that. They think they’re not physical, nor any part of the world at all. You might not assume interacting with the world has any effect on them (often gods are also assumed to be unchangeable, and they may have no “environment” of their own to speak of which might change instead). But if there is any effect, it would not necessarily be, simply as a matter of logic, observable in the physical world. So, if a god felt like it and had the power to do so, there doesn’t seem to be any particular reason why it couldn’t violate the second law.
Carson is what my father would call an “educated idiot.” He’s got the training and education, the credentials, and the experience in a particular field, but he doesn’t realize he isn’t an authority on other subjects, like cosmology and physics, or reproductive rights and women’s health needs, or a host of other subjects. Basically, he fails to understand that, like all of us, he is ignorant and his highfalutin education hasn’t taught him when to shut up. In any case, he’s not speaking as an intelligent and educated person at all, but rather as a reactionary politician and religious ideologue either of which puts him squarely in the idiot corner.
Fair Witness @ #18 — What? He doesn’t have a prayer?
Three thoughts:
1) Becoming a surgeon requires lots of dedication and hard work. So does becoming an MBA. Ninety hour weeks at Morgan Stanley are not for the lazy. As for the intelligence required? Well, enough to make decisions and engage in puffery at cocktail parties.
2) The Pauls, pere et fils, have already amply demonstrated that a medical degree can lead straight to idiocy.
3) I saw a study some time back, perhaps even linked to here at Pharyngula, showing the swing in voting patterns over a 50 year period among those with scientific training. In the results, something like 98 percent of biologists, 97 percent of astronomers, 95 percent of physicists, and 90 percent of chemists all voted Democrat now. Because they were smart, for one thing, and because the other side was relentlessly undermining science. Back in the 1950s, Republicans wanted America to be the best and brightest, now all they want is wage slaves with a gun and a Bible. But among MDs, it ran more like 60/40 Democrat, which the study attributed to arrogance and income and people always kissing their asses and treating them as infallible gods. And then engineers were actually tilted a bit toward the GOP, because they were glorified tinkers whose mindset was that all you need to do is twist the wrench a little this way, tweak that electrode or tensile strength parameter, et voila, they know how to put all our negroes to efficient fieldwork and beat the bejesus out of those ululating jihadists, not to mention show those dames just who has the brainpower in the household or workplace. If your field of “science” is one that rewards arrogance, Dunning-Kroger syndrome, and agile opposable thumbs, then it doesn’t speak much at all to your intelligence.
Speaking of the widespread stupidity of religious idiots: Mormon church issues call for calm as ‘blood moon’ sparks apocalypse fears.
I’ve had an annoying experience with an orthopedic surgeon when getting a steroid injection for my severely arthritic knee. He was an arrogant ass. I think that’s an occupational hazard for surgeons (and some scientists, like Dawkins). They’ve worked hard to become maestros in one narrow field, and the people who work with them grant them a great deal of respect and attention. This turns their heads, and they start thinking that their expertise in one field transfers to whatever else they are interested in.
This is why universal education in critical thinking is so important!
Perhaps it amounts to the same thing, but I would “add” liberal arts education in the broadest sense. The process of educating people in medicine is very much focused on a single thing. This is what you will do for a living. This is what you will know, in order to make money in this way.
I can’t say I know what medical school (and pre-med) is really like, but I don’t get a sense that anywhere along the way it’s normal to emphasize a well-rounded education. Of course you may still care about people. You can have lots of other things in your life that matter to you. There might be half-hearted attempts at giving students other outlets and a broader perspective on life, but it certainly doesn’t seem like exaggeration to say the system doesn’t typically educate you formally and systematically, about anything that’s not more or less directly relevant to medicine. It’s understandable that there’s so much a doctor already has to learn only about medicine or very specific subfields in medicine. But that is still a trade-off that is being made, for better or worse.
The same sorts of things might be said about engineers (and computer scientists?), since there also seems to be something problematic happening there. To me, it seems like an obvious difference is that a scientist, or someone in another academic field, has to at least be somewhat aware of the theoretic or philosophical underpinnings of their work, as well as the history and so forth, in order to be considered reasonably “educated” about it. It is not just about producing some end result which is good enough for practical purposes, never mind how we got there, how we know that, what it means to know stuff like that, whether we should do this, whether there are other possibilities, what else is going on that this field isn’t capable of handling, etc. A lot of that is simply taken for granted, in more “practically-oriented” fields. You just do it, and as long as it works, asking real questions about that or anything else is simply not the name of the game. That’s somebody else’s job. That somebody else might be a researcher in medicine (who isn’t thinking like a surgeon) or a physicist (not like an engineer). I doubt it explains everything about such difference, but it seems like a decent start.
they’re saying it was this gigantic explosion and everything came into perfect order.
But “let there be light” is uh…. wait. How’s that more believable? Because it was documented in an ancient book?
Yes.
– Explosions are unbelievable, because they can happen in an unbelievable sci-fi action movie.
– Stuff that happens in an ancient book is not happening in an unbelievable sci-fi action movie.
– Therefore, ancient books are more believable.
– Specifically, this ancient book.
— Therefore, you should apologize to Jesus, for all of the sinful things you’ve done even if they’re not actually bad. Then, recite the pledge of allegiance.
Ben Carson exemplifies the erasure of the line between the Republican Party and religious right. That line was always tenuous, but now it is completely erased. Not even pro forma acknowledgement is given to the line.
The Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit is being held in Washington D.C. this weekend. This is the tenth year in a row that rightwing politicians have entertained rightwing religious doofuses in the capitol of the U.S.
Mike Huckabee spoke at the summit. He thinks the U.S. will soon cease to exist, that it will be decimated by equal marriage rights. Ted Cruz thinks President Obama is “a communist” and that the prayers of Values Voter Summit attendees caused John Boehner to resign. Donald Trump took his bible to the podium with him and tried, again, to bluster his way into the hearts of religious right-wingers.
Other speakers: Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, Ben Carson, Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham, and Sarah Palin. (Jeb Bush did not show up.)
A lot rightwing radio and TV personalities did show up at the Values Voter Summit.
Mark Levin told the audience that secularism has been established as the religion of the U.S., and that the Supreme Court has imposed secular sharia on the nation.
Matt Staver, dunderheaded lawyer for Kim Davis, gave out the Cost of Discipleship Award … to Kim Davis.
Tony Perkins said that christians in public office must “resist the edicts of unelected and virtually unaccountable rulers who issue unjust edicts that conflict with the truth of God.”
Jim Bakker told the audience that ISIS terrorists have infiltrated every church in the U.S., with the goal of destroying the christian religion.
Several doofuses mentioned the threat of a nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack, a conspiracy theory that may ring a bell because Senator Ron Johnson (über rightwinger from Wisconsin) derided Ernest Moniz for not being knowledgeable about EMP attacks emanating from Iran. The questions from Johnson were part of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee circus in mid-July.
Rick Wiles said that he didn’t know anyone who had voted for President Obama, therefore Obama stole the election with the help of ACORN (an organization that has not existed since 2010).
Rick Santorum told the attendees at the Values Voter Summit that the USA will not be a great nation, and will not receive God’s blessing as long as gay marriage is allowed, and as long as abortion remains legal.
There’s more, but you get the idea. Whacko religion meets whacko politics and both drain into the same swamp.
Carson and Engor are prime examples of what happens when you fail to recognize who is expert, and who is not. I’m sure both of them would call in a nephrologist if one of their patients appeared to have kidney problems. They would take their cars to mechanics, legal problems to lawyers, and tax questions to accountants. But, instead of going to the experts (scientists) as to how the world works, they go to a book of mythology/fiction and pretend it has scientific answers.
They let their religion get in the way of listening to the experts on evolution and cosmology. Not very smart on their part. It’s like taking your car to a junk yard for repair.
Another prime example of the intersection of politics and whacko religious beliefs:
“God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big-bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.” —Representative (and M.D.) Paul Broun of Georgia.
Another example of rightwing politics melding with rightwing religion:
https://www.au.org/media/press-releases/stop-promoting-christianity-in-workplace-americans-united-tells-kansas
Kobach has also been involved in several schemes to disenfranchise African-American voters.
Fortunately, these presentations require no thought or imagination, much less the use of evidence and a mastery of investigative methods.
The Gish Gallop is scripted.
I was at a neurosciences presentation by a neurosurgeon yesterday, in which he thanked Ben Carson for destroying the stereotype that all neurosurgeons were smart, and taking the pressure off them. The audience laughed VERY heartily.
What makes it worse is that Carson’s resume includes the distinction of being the first surgeon to successfully separate twins conjoined at the head. Presumably as a result, he needs another surgeon to perform the operation to separate his conjoined head and rectum.
a few years ago there was talk about the conflict going on in the GOP with regards to which part of the party would come out ahead even talk about the possibility of the party splitting. Well there seems little doubt which part of the party is in ascendancy it is the radical ignorant religious and the astroturf tea party components. The old line “main-street conservatives” do not seem to have the ear of the GOP voters.
Is it any wonder that we get highly trained professionals that are so ignorant and superstitious these numberless examples indicate? We have emphasized for years education to get a job and not to get the informed citizenry that is needed for democracy that universities are seen in practice more as a white-collar trade school than a place to seek wisdom and understanding of the world.
uncle frogy
Well, none of them have anything coherent to say. So, why not say it in the loudest and the most idiotically belligerent way that you can? Some people seem to like that. It’s not for everybody, but not doing a fucking thing (which is essentially all they stand for) doesn’t seem like it would be very enticing to pretty much anybody. Sure, they’re still a bunch of fuckers with worthless pseudo-policies, but putting on a good show is enough of a consolation prize for some voters.
PZ@19: “#14: WHAT? I am horrified. That’s basic bio 101 knowledge.”
In my case, it’s the knowledge of someone who never even took Bio 101 (no biology course since sophomore year of high school, 1962–1963; no college level science courses at all, somewhat to my present regret, though after many years of teaching calculus I finally ‘got’ Newtonian mechanics, mostly). Really, a modest amount of general reading on sciency stuff ought to be enough for that particular (and particularly relevant for the MD in question) bit of knowledge.
ragdish wrote:
I don’t really see a problem with that either. You don’t have to be smart to perform well in the vast majority of occupations. It’s certainly often an asset in any job that is more complex than repetitive grunt work, regardless of if that job is something prestigious like neurosurgery, or something more mundane like auto mechanic.
Cross-posted from the Moments of Political Madness thread.
Carly Fiorina failed the test of being reasonable and of understanding basic science just as badly as did Ben Carson.
http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9342761/carly-fiorina-debate
#11 No, it does not smear the entire profession. Read it again.
The Smartest Person on Earth could be a MD, or maybe 99% of MDs are 50% smarter than the average (totally made-up numbers), even if true, does not contradict PZ headline. You dont have to be smart to be a plumber, or surgeon, or carpenter, but there are plenty of smart people in each category.
Also, there are different definitions of “smart” or “intelligent”. To me, terms like that signify something different than being really good at some specific thing, be it surgery or plumbing. To me, (and this might be my flawed definition) being intelligent means being capable of seeing PAST your particular field or job and seeing the bigger picture, and being capable of quickly grasping difficult concepts, irrespective of the field. IE a biologist who cannot grasp the first thing about Einsteinian Relativity , might still be an excellent biologist, but not by my definition very bright.
Smart people know they don’t know much.
Carson’s an ignoramus.
@CR, 22:
I’m not saying that the god wouldn’t be able to violate the Second Law. Just like Maxwell’s Demon would not have the ability to violate the Second Law — Maxwell was saying it would negate the Second Law entirely, and would not need to violate something thing that didn’t actually exist in the first place. As a corollary, the Second Law negates Maxwell’s Demon. Or anything else that supposedly exists without a physical manifestation. I know that some people think that information qualifies as something that exists without a physical manifestation, but I’m telling you this over the internet, which is a big computer network, and modern computer science is pretty much founded on that not being true. And yes, I realize where this goes. It’s accepted as a truism that science cannot disprove the existence of god. I on the other hand, say “been there, done that, got the t-shirt”.
In Australia (and Britain IIRC), surgeons are called ‘Mister’ whereas all other medical specialists (and GP’s) are called ‘Doctor’. Surgeons carry the ‘Mister’ as a badge of honour, separating them from mere ‘Doctors’. The reason is historical. In order to be called ‘Doctor’, you had to have studied at a university and qualified as a physician. However, since ‘surgery’ of the time didn’t really require an understanding of how the body functioned, and was simply ‘carpentry with humans’, a ‘barber-surgeon’ did an apprenticeship much like any other trade, and hence never qualified for the title of ‘Doctor’. This goes a long way to explaining the apparent disconnect between ‘surgeons’ and the rest of the scientific community.
favog:
But it doesn’t actually do that. Have you considered the chances that this corollary of yours is derived from something false, perhaps a misunderstanding about the second law or its domain of applicability?
That’s why I tried to emphasize the second law is a physical law about physical processes. You claimed information theory showed something or other, but real-world physics is where we get our empirical evidence about thermodynamics and its laws. It’s confusing at best to involve information theory when we’re talking about the physical meaning of entropy and the second law. You can explain perfectly well what’s going on, without mentioning concepts like “information.” It’s certainly not what Maxwell was talking about, considering that information theory didn’t exist at the time. Anyway, yes, of course many people do have wild ideas like that about information. That’s another good reason not to go there, since it will likely provoke that kind of misunderstanding. And those people don’t need encouragement.
Well if you’re happy with slogans, I guess that’s enough for you. Does the t-shirt describe all of the work you did to demonstrate that? Because I’m not seeing it.
In any case, whether science generally could disprove the existence of a god is not relevant to whether or not the second law applies to non-physical entities. It’s a law of physics, so there’s no reason to believe non-physical things (if they exist) must also respect it like physical things do (if they exist). Does the second law tell us anything about the number seventeen, the concept of a unicorn, the law of non-contradiction, etc.? What sort of physical objects are those things, if that’s the idea? What does it mean to say they have an entropy which tends to increase in certain well-defined physical situations? And what about other physical laws? Does the conservation of energy apply as well, to things that aren’t energetic? How exactly is this supposed to work?
You don’t need to be an idiot to misunderstand thermodynamics. Roger Sperry, Nobel-winning biologist, thought that cellular metabolism violated the 2nd Law. And he was at Caltech, surrounded by physicists on all sides. Go figure.
#20 Rob: “The entropy of the sun (if that’s what you mean) is decreasing according to ΔS=-ΔE/T, where ΔE is radiated energy.”
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But Rob, ΔE is negative, the sun is losing energy. The sun’s entropy is increasing. Yes, I meant of, in, on; is that important?
@16 and completely OT
The needles were actually kind of fascinating for me… I had tests in my arm and neck and I got to watch the muscles jump in my arm. Neat!
wcorvi @48: I defined ΔE as the radiated energy, which is positive. So yes, the sun is losing energy. And if the sun is losing energy at constant temperature, its entropy is decreasing. And actually, that’s a bit naive, because radiating objects, if they can be approximated by black bodies (as the sun can be) are losing entropy at a slightly faster rate; (4/3) times the energy flux divided by the temperature.
spamamander @ 49:
*runs away in horror* noooooo! Needles are terrible things if they are aimed at me!
“Have you considered the chances that this corollary of yours is derived from something false, perhaps a misunderstanding about the second law or its domain of applicability?”
Yes, of course I have. From what I can tell, they’re low, but I’m at least a Bayesian sympathizer, so I’d never say they’re zero.
“That’s why I tried to emphasize the second law is a physical law about physical processes. You claimed information theory showed something or other, but real-world physics is where we get our empirical evidence about thermodynamics and its laws. It’s confusing at best to involve information theory when we’re talking about the physical meaning of entropy and the second law. You can explain perfectly well what’s going on, without mentioning concepts like “information.””
This is crucial. One thing you apparently aren’t aware of about information theory is that it turns out thermodynamics is a specific case of information theory. To say you shouldn’t involve information theory in discussions of thermodynamics is like saying you shouldn’t involve mathematics when balancing your checkbook, because math is confusing.
“ It’s certainly not what Maxwell was talking about, considering that information theory didn’t exist at the time.”
Yes and no,. Maxwell was pointing out a possible hitch with the Second Law. After his death, information theory solved the problem. If information theory had existed at the time, Maxwell wouldn’t have needed to raise the issue. So he kind of was talking about it, it’s just that nobody could address it yet.
“Does the t-shirt describe all of the work you did to demonstrate that? Because I’m not seeing it.”
I’m not saying I did all that work. I give that credit to Claude Shannon and his associates at Bell Labs.
“In any case, whether science generally could disprove the existence of a god is not relevant to whether or not the second law applies to non-physical entities. It’s a law of physics, so there’s no reason to believe non-physical things (if they exist) must also respect it like physical things do (if they exist).”
Information theory proved that Maxwell’s Demon would have to absorb the entropy instead of it being reversed. Entropy is an attribute of physical things, so the Demon would have to be physical, and at that point it’s not Maxwell’s Demon anymore. You can’t have it both ways, and to exempt a non-physical thing (if they exist) from physics while giving it physical attributes, like entropy or information, it an attempt to do just that.
“Does the second law tell us anything about the number seventeen, the concept of a unicorn, the law of non-contradiction, etc.? What sort of physical objects are those things, if that’s the idea? What does it mean to say they have an entropy which tends to increase in certain well-defined physical situations? And what about other physical laws? Does the conservation of energy apply as well, to things that aren’t energetic? How exactly is this supposed to work?”
The second law tells us precisely nothing about the number seventeen, that’s the point. It would be another case of assigning physical properties to the nonphysical and trying to have it both ways. That’s why it doesn’t work. And neither does a nonphysical, spiritual being who holds and processes information. If memory serves me, I’ve seen you over on the Atheist Experience boards so I’m sure you’ve heard the question that they ask over there, “Have you ever seen a mind without a brain?”. Well, my answer is “No, and you won’t, either; because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics forbids it”.
favog @ 52:
Your posts would be comprehensible if you used quotes. To quote someone, please use:
<blockquote>Paste Text Here</blockquote>
You don’t have to be smart to be a PhD, either.
The concept of information having entropy, also called Shannon entropy, revolves around the concept of entropy as disorder.
This isn’t the same as the entropy from physical processes seen in classical thermodynamics, where disorder was one analogy used to conceptualize entropy, which is a hard idea to grasp.
Creationists sometimes like to confuse the issue by pretending the two types of entropy are the same. They aren’t.
Ben Carson added to his litany of stupid comments. He would consider religion as probable cause for searches.
Link
If by many he meant out all the immigrants ,legal or not, more than 3 (many) were hardened criminals, I could agree but so what.
uncle frogy
Carson doesn’t want to be President. He’s smarter than that. He panders to the rubes who are,and will continue to be for some time after the 2016 election is over, his meal ticket.
At least he’s not cutting peoples’ brains for a living anymore. Give him that.
It’d generally be the ER doctor who would diagnose the aneurysm and call the neurosurgeon with the diagnosis. Or, at least, with the clinical diagnosis. The neurosurgeon would probably be the one who did the angiogram that would prove the diagnosis and treat it. This would take a great deal of skill and specialized training. What it would not take is a lot of general knowledge about physics or even biology. Just find the right landmarks and do the right things with them.
OTOH, what would you do if you were told your patient, who has been on subq heparin for 3 days, now has a platelet count of 120 (baseline 250), a PF4 positive (OD 0.5) with a pending SRA, and a history of a posterior wall MI? That’s a question requiring a completely different skill set and educational background to answer (one that the average neurosurgeon simply does not have–it’s something a hematologist would know, not a neurosurgeon), and it’s not even outside of the realm of medicine. Why should we expect a neurosurgeon to know anything special about thermodynamics if she or he doesn’t even have time to learn all of medicine?
@14: Gulp! You don’t even necessarily want to give that patient hypotonic fluid–too rapid correction of hypernatremia can be extremely dangerous. Gradual adjustment of sodium is what is needed. I hope this was a first year resident–in July?
cr @46: I didn’t have time to address this properly before, but better late than never.
No you can’t, because since Boltzmann it’s been clear that entropy is about information – namely, the information we don’t have about a macrostate.
In the first equation at the link, W is the number of (in this case equally probable) microstates relevant to the macrostate, and ln W is proportional to the number of bits required to specify a particular microstate. This is directly analogous to what happens in information theory. If a variable can have any of n values with equal probability, the Shannon entropy is log₂ n, which is the number of bits needed to specify a particular value.
That’s one way of talking about it, not the only one. The world certainly doesn’t fundamentally consist of macrostates, nor does it care about what information we do or don’t have.
What is it supposed to literally mean? How can I understand it and use it?
When an ice cube melts into a puddle, is that because you do or don’t have information about a macrostate (enough to, for example, distinguish the exact microstate from a slightly different microstate)? I’m almost certain you wouldn’t want to say that. What would be coherent way to factually describe what’s actually going on in the world when the entropy of the ice/puddle increases, without introducing you or your knowledge or what your interests are? If there is no coherent way to do that, how did you come to that conclusion and what’s supposed to convince me of it?
That’s the intention behind me saying you don’t need to talk about it in terms of information. We might have a repeat (I’m a little worried) of our measurement-problem discussions, but please try to see that the concern here is about what’s literally and objectively true of reality. Not what makes for a good analogy, not what’s good enough to do the job, not what’s useful, not how you fit yourself into the picture when you don’t belong….
Reality: what is it actually like? Is entropy not a feature of it? Ice cubes tend to melt: how could “our information” be relevant to anything like that? Equations aren’t going to tell me something new here, because I very much doubt we disagree about any of that — it’s more about what looks like a reasonable and realistic physical interpretation. Are we a little closer to being on the same page now?
cr @62:
You said entropy can be explained “perfectly well” without the concept of information. In fact the Boltzmann formula gives us deeper insight into what entropy means. If you don’t care for the word “information”, you can use “randomness” instead of “lack of information”, but it amounts to the same thing.
The question we’re considering here would be “why does the entropy increase when ice melts?”. The answer in terms of microstates is clear; in crystalline form, the water molecules lose translational and rotational degrees of freedom. In other words, they have far fewer available microstates.
Oh fuck! No worries there. :-)
Yes, and what’s literally and objectively true is that in varying conditions, the number of microstates accessible to a system varies, and this is what underlies our classical concept of entropy. It really is a profound insight.
There are many situations in which you don’t have to refer to this concept, but a full discussion of entropy should always include it.
I don’t see randomness or information somewhere in the following, which of course I don’t consider a problem since I’m not claiming it needs to be jammed in there somehow to be adequate:
Do you get what I mean?
Okay, maybe we can agree on that, if by “a full discussion” you mean all of the possible ways it can be applied, across the board. I’m not implying information theoretic entropy isn’t “real” entropy or somehow not valid or something else. It’s just not the only useful concept of it or an essential part of all of them.
Which microstate is the ice cube (or the water) in? We don’t know. We lack that information. It could be in any one of, say, N microstates (we’ll assume they’re equally probable). How much data is required to specify any one of these microstates? If we label the microstates from 1 to N, we would need log₂ N bits to specify one. This is a quantification of what we don’t know; of the uncertainty (the randomness) of the underlying reality. And it is proportional to the entropy.
It’s not being “jammed in” anywhere! This picture of entropy arises naturally from a consideration of what is going on at atomic scales*. Maxwell started the ball rolling when he considered describing systems via probability distributions.
It is the underlying explanation.
*This is not QM. Just small particles bashing around classically.
We sure do lack that. But it makes no difference what we do or don’t know, to explain why entropy is increasing in that system.
Why is it unlikely to happen the other way around? As unlikely as it is, it would if it was a very specific sort of microstate. Lacking information on our part isn’t what is responsible for that. So this isn’t explaining why the world works the way it does.
I have no problem with any of that. You’re somehow missing the point that the universe doesn’t use “data” to “specify” to itself what it “knows.” It just does what it does.
It certainly explains a lot. But it doesn’t look at all like it’s explaining what I’m talking about.
How we describe systems is what this is about (as it always is!). We describe a gas in a box by parameters like temperature, pressure, volume and so forth. But we know that the gas consists of particles bashing around inside the box. The macrostate we observe (specified by values of T, P, V etc) corresponds to a vast number of possible ways the particles could be arranged (positions, velocities). And it turns out that the macroscopic property we call entropy is related to the number of these microstates by the statistical relationship
S = k·ln W
where k is Boltzmann’s constant and W is the number of microstates. If there is a change in the system such that the number of accessible microstates increases, the entropy increases. What do you think is missing, or unsatisfactory, about that?
Who said it did? We build models to describe what we observe. Some of those models include probability distributions, which “fuzz over” the microscopic details. So they don’t include all the details of what the universe is doing, and for our purposes, that’s just fine. But that is information that we are not using (and couldn’t if we wanted to, usually), and it turns out that the amount of that information, in this case, can be quantified and related to the macroscopic entropy.
What are you talking about?
And when you don’t know things about it, you should of course describe and quantify that about yourself too. But they’re not the very same thing.
Nothing at all.
My question has been this: what do you think is missing or unsatisfactory about it? It doesn’t look like it has the secret ingredient you said it needs.
If you were going to say the exact same thing as above, no more and no less, where do you think you could substitute “information” (or “randomness”) for one or more of the terms in these statements?
About what?
What the hell are you talking about? Who said anything about secret ingredients?
Read the paragraph before the last blockquote in #67! We don’t know which microstate the system is in at any given time. We don’t have that information. It can be in any of W microstates with equal probability, i.e. randomly. This is why it’s called statistical mechanics. I already went through this in #65, but you seem intent on not reading.
The distribution doesn’t need to be equal probabilities for all of them in all cases, but yes.
This isn’t answering my question. Could you just do what I asked and put “information” in that quote, where you think it belongs?
I know we don’t have that information, and I know you can quantify it and relate it to entropy just as you’ve described. That’s a great thing to be able to do.
It’s still not explaining the change from one microstate to another. We see certain macrostates behaving certain ways. There is a distribution of microstates that can be identified with any given macrostate.
The fact that it qualifies as a probability distribution is maybe what’s misleading you. The fact that we’re using statistics doesn’t mean we must be describing something about uncertainty (or “randomness”). There’s a probability distribution of possible states, in the sense that you could distribute items in a room, or they’re probabilities in the sense that some actual events occur with some actual frequency. They could be here or could be there, but they are somewhere in the room. This sort of event could happen a lot or not a lot, and the total number of ways it could be adds up to 100% of the ways, so probabilities work for that purpose since they have the same mathematical structure — we’re not mentioning uncertainty anywhere whatsoever when we do that, since that’s a very different use and meaning of probability which shouldn’t be conflated with all the rest.
You can give a description of the room, how it changes as items move from one state to the next. You don’t know exactly where the items are initially or at the end, but you know enough about overall macroscopic differences about those, to distinguish between various macrostates the room can be in. You can tell when the items are all piled up in one corner, or when they’re scattered throughout the room uniformly.
You want to know, if the room started in this sort of state, whether it’s likely to end up some other way later on, or what the most likely outcome will be. Maybe it’s already in equilibrium, so the macroscopic features will be the same. Quantifying your knowledge in the ways your talking about is just a mathematical tool to help you do this work — it isn’t explaining why the actual items in the actual room tend to end up in some kinds of arrangements instead of others. The items don’t care what you know, nor do they know anything.
Instead, that is explained by the fact that only a very tiny number of microstates correspond to what we call a low-entropy macrostate, whereas a huge number of microstates correspond to a high-entropy macrostate. They need to be a very particular way to be counted as low-entropy, not so particular to be high-entropy. Our uncertainty about it doesn’t explain their actual behavior, or why they go from low to high. Why do they go from being distributed all in one corner (or whatever) to being uniformly distributed (or closer to it)?
If you’re explaining (or merely describing) entropy or the second law, that is the sort of thing you need to do. It’s not because you don’t know something or because you can’t tell the difference between one thing and another. Like I was talking about when this whole thing started, that’s what you need to be able to do, to explain and understand Maxwell’s thought experiment about his demon (and why that’s no problem for the second law). Other applications and extensions of it, and its relationship to information, are certainly important but not the underlying physical description or explanation.
Oh FFS, just add this sentence, which is repeating what I’ve already written;
“And ln W is proportional to the amount of information required to specify a particular microstate.”
—————————————————————————————————-
Particles move! They collide, with each other and walls, etc. So their positions and momenta (which specify the microstate) are changing all the time.
Because, as I wrote earlier, in #67
Particles initially constrained to a corner now have access to a much larger set of microstates.
Feel free to provide the real underlying physical description at your leisure.
I’m done repeating myself. You’re just blowing smoke.
Oh FFS, just add this sentence, which is repeating what I’ve already written;
“And ln W is proportional to the amount of information required to specify a particular microstate”.
Particles move! They collide, with each other and walls. Their positions and velocities (which specify the microstate) are changing all the time.
LOL
No shit, Sherlock. In the case of gas in a box, we have no idea what the initial conditions (positions and velocities) are, but we know for damn sure that they are constantly changing, sampling a huge number of microstates. The important point is that it doesn’t matter from a macroscopic point of view. We assume that at any moment, all microstates have equal probability.
As I wrote in #63:
Particles initially constrained to a corner will have access to a much larger set of microstates when the constraint is lifted. If, as we assume, all accessible microstates are equally probable at equilibrium, that means entropy increases.
I’m done repeating myself. You’re just blowing smoke.