Timeline for Chance of objects going against greater entropy?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 28, 2020 at 13:09 | comment | added | Our | @FrédéricGrosshans Oh, I see. Thanks for the clarification because I see a lot of people who do not understand the difference, and it is an important thing to understand before trying to do Science. | |
| Mar 28, 2020 at 9:04 | comment | added | Frédéric Grosshans | @onurcanbektas: of course, in my comment above, by “physics has been wrong" I meant "our modelling of physics has been wrong" | |
| Mar 28, 2020 at 7:21 | comment | added | Our | @FrédéricGrosshans Physics cannot be wrong because, in terms of theoretical physics, all we do is just modelling experimentally observed phenomenon. For example, Physics never claims that there is something called "energy" in nature; it is just a model, a way of thinking, a way for us to do calculations which predicts real phenomenon. | |
| Jul 23, 2019 at 7:23 | comment | added | pete | But it's still important to distinguish from zero even in practicality. Because this means if one were to construct a box which never deteriorates and put stuff inside it, EVENTUALLY anything is possible. And the alien which was born from that goop doesn't care how many graham's # or whatever years it took to reach that state, right? | |
| Oct 6, 2013 at 19:02 | comment | added | Andre Holzner | compare (the inverse of) $10^{-10^{23}}$ or $10^{-10^{19}}$ to the estimated number of atoms in the observable universe (estimated to be $10^{80}$) and you'll realize it is really small... | |
| Jun 6, 2013 at 12:53 | comment | added | joseph f. johnson | us.net/life and tbiomed.com/content/6/1/27 are offering the million dollar prize, but they are falling into the same statistical fallacy you are. No one, as far as I know, has any idea of how to estimate the number of different independent types of "entropically forbidden macroscopic events", in your case, or "evolution of life", in their case. | |
| Jun 6, 2013 at 12:48 | comment | added | joseph f. johnson | Yes, several orders of magnitude. But as far as I know, no one has done better than that. No halfway decent calculation has ever been done, and a million-dollar prize hangs on it. Several orders of magnitude: does getting it up to $10^{-10^{19}}$ really help? | |
| Jun 5, 2013 at 20:31 | comment | added | David Z | No, that doesn't apply to what I'm saying here because even the combined probability of any sort of entropically forbidden macroscopic event happening is incredibly small. It's not unreasonable to assume the probability of having carbon-based life evolve is orders of orders of magnitude larger than that of walking through a wall or walking on water. | |
| Jun 5, 2013 at 15:48 | comment | added | joseph f. johnson | There are two statistics fallacies in this answer: you have to add over all the different folks and walls, not just one. You then have to add over all the different independent types of rare events: not just walking through a wall, but also walking on water, also having carbon-based life evolve, also etc... this fallacy also comes up in arguments directed against the theory of Natural Selection. So at least please remove the ranting part, which is really otiose. | |
| Nov 16, 2010 at 13:53 | comment | added | Frédéric Grosshans | I just want to add that such a small probability is much smaller than the probability that we get the model wrong, by any measure you can reasonably assume. In other words, if someone tries to seriously compute the probability of seeing what @wrongusername calls an "exotic macrostate", this probability would be dominated by the small possibility that physics has been totally wrong over the last two centuries. | |
| Nov 11, 2010 at 23:00 | vote | accept | wrongusername | ||
| Nov 11, 2010 at 6:07 | history | answered | David Z | CC BY-SA 2.5 |