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From: RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: 2nd law clarifications
Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2025 09:56:16 -0600
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On 1/3/2025 6:24 AM, MarkE wrote:
> On 3/01/2025 5:13 am, Ernest Major wrote:
>> On 02/01/2025 06:53, MarkE wrote:
>>> Are these statements correct? Could they be better expressed?
>>>
>>>
>>> Local entropy can decrease in an open system with an input of free 
>>> energy.
>>>
>>> Free energy alone is not sufficient to maintain or further decrease 
>>> low local entropy: an energy capture and transformation mechanism is 
>>> also needed.
>>>
>>> Extant life *maintains* low local entropy through its organisation 
>>> and processes.
>>>
>>> Evolving life *decreases* low local entropy through the ratcheting 
>>> mechanism natural selection acting on random mutations in instances 
>>> where that evolution increases functional complexity and organisation.
>>>
>>> There is no other known mechanism apart from natural selection that 
>>> does this. For example, neutral drift alone increases entropy.
>>>
>>
>> It is difficult to operationalise the concept of irreducible 
>> complexity, as that necessitates a principled definition of system, 
>> part and function. But if you pass over that point, there are at least 
>> three classes of paths (exaption, scaffolding, coevolution) whereby 
>> irreducibly complex systems can evolve. I suspect that the last is the 
>> most frequent, and that it can be driven by drift as well as by 
>> selection. If you are equating an increase in functional complexity 
>> and organisation with a decrease in entropy, then this would negate a 
>> claim that neutral drift always increases entropy.
>>
> 
> What I would say more confidently is, "For example, neutral drift alone 
> increases disorder."
> 
> More precisely, if a population fixes neutral and near-neutral mutations 
> over time through drift, with no selection acting, the net effect over 
> time will be devolution, i.e. a loss of information and functional 
> complexity. The end state will be extinction.
> 
> Does this necessarily mean entropy will increase? It would seem so.
> 

It would be non neutral drift that would likely be associated with 
increased disorder.  Even if something is selected against it can still 
be fixed in a small population by factors not directly affecting the 
trait under selection.  90% of a population might be wiped out by some 
disease and the survivors may just, by chance, have a high frequency of 
some deleterious allele that might get fixed by random chance.

Neutral drift is just neutral changes, it shouldn't result in any 
increase in disorder because those changes are selected against.  Look 
at the coelacanth it has been adapted to a specific environment for 
hundreds of millions of years, and has changed very little, and yet 
genetic drift in their DNA sequence and physical features invisible to 
the environment have changed, but the outward physical appearance has 
not degenerated.  Drift has occurred even as the morphology has been 
maintained.  The skull may make nearly identical fossil impressions, but 
when you look at the skull you observe that all the bones that make up 
the skull have very different sizes and shapes, but still make the same 
overall skull shape.  This is neutral drift.

Drift can result in loss of gene functions that are no longer needed in 
certain environments.  The eyes in cave fish are an example, and even 
that isn't neutral drift because the loss of eye function has selective 
advantage because of the energy consumption of tissue that is no longer 
needed.  Pigmentation loss in caves may be a better example, but 
watching the nature shows and observing all the deep sea fish that 
retain their eyes and bright colorations make me think twice about it.

Ron Okimoto