Guy Hoelzer  wrote or quoted:
> in article cl65ss$b41$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org, Tim Tyler at tim{at}tt1lock.org
> wrote on 10/20/04 10:05 AM:
> >> in article cks1r6$feq$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org, Tim Tyler at
tim{at}tt1lock.org

> >>> If a biologically-based entropic maximand is proposed, I therefore
> >>> think that it can't simply stress short term measurements
of entropy
> >>> increase - instead, it must consider long-term effects.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> >>> This is directly analogous to the situation with maximising genetic
> >>> descendants:
> >>> 
> >>> Genes should be expected to maximise the number of their long-term
> >>> descendants - rather than the number of their immediate offspring.
> >> 
> >> And this is something that, IMHO, they do.  Do you agree? [...]
> > 
> > Yes.
> > 
> > Caveat 1: they might find local (not global) maxima;
> > 
> > Caveat 2: they might fail to ascend these maxima - due to mutation load;
> > 
> > Note 1: maximising the number of long-term descendants is often rather
> > a lot like maximising the number of their immediate offspring - especially
> > in one common case - where there's no parental care.

[...]

> Clearly, NS is a process that reaches over long time spans relative to our
> generation time.  I think you implied that thermodynamics does not do this,
> so that this was a feature that distinguishes NS from thermodynamics. [...]

What I was trying to say was the exact opposite of that.

When I talked about thermodynamics - and then said:

``This is directly analogous to the situation with maximising genetic
  descendants''

I was trying to say that the desirability of adopting a long term 
perspective was something that genetics and thermodynamics /shared/.
-- 
__________
 |im |yler  http://timtyler.org/  tim{at}tt1lock.org  Remove lock to reply.
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