Jeremy Stangroom

@SIN_Notung @toxicpath because natural selection is non - random and drift is.

@skepteaser @toxicpath It's pseudo-random though, surely. Not actually random. It's governed by physical laws.

@SIN_Notung @toxicpath We don't need to invoke non - physical laws to account for pure chance, do we? http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIIDGeneticdrift.shtml …

@skepteaser @toxicpath Or imagine dice. If I throw them in *exactly* the same way from the same starting point I'll get the same result, no?

@skepteaser @toxicpath We say it's 'random' because it's *as if* it's random to us, but actually it's physically deterministic.

@SIN_Notung @toxicpath I am not sure if we can compare random sampling errors to a throw of dice but I could be wrong.

@SIN_Notung @toxicpath Suppose an error in gene transcription were introduced by radioactivity. You might consider the sequence of events

@SIN_Notung @toxicpath as deterministic. However radioactive decay is completely stochastic at the atomic level.