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"A Mathematician's View of Evolution"

DeviousB said:
Like I said, very likely apocryphal.
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Probably apocryphal as you say. There already exist 'automatic tank detectors', using Fourier optics methods (optical convolution and correlation). I don't know how accurate they can be, but we had to do some very simple laboratory experiments for a Statistical Optics course and we got quite good results. An advanced setup should work quite well.
 
More on actual evolved computer programs

gnome said:
Oh, damn...! I want to replicate that!!!! That's fascinating.
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Certainly is!

Thinking about this overnight, I think the article was around 6 years ago in Discover magazine, and probably was mentioned on the cover. Would probably take only an hour or two in a library searching through the back issues.

One terrific feature of the evolved chip that worked but nobody knew why was that there was a sub-circuit on it that was not connected to the main part of the circuit, which was "irreducable." If any part of the subcircuit was disabled, the rest of the chip stopped working. Yet there was no direct connection between the sub-circuit and the main circuit. (no doubt some kind of leakage). Isn't evolution amazing? Like in life, it "discovers" principles of operation rather than engineering them deliberately. If it works, it works, and it never matters why.

I've been googling for the article in my spare time and report it here if I find it.
 
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T'ai Chi said:
Anyone check out the article? There is also a follow-up to it.
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Of course I read it. It made me laugh out loud a couple of times in my quiet house, so my cats are a bit upset with you.

I know a good many mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists who, like me, are appalled that Darwin's explanation for the development of life is so widely accepted in the life sciences. Few of them ever speak out or write on this issue, however--perhaps because they feel the question is simply out of their domain.
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As a mathemetician, Dr. Sewall has an understandably limited grasp of social-cognitive heuristics. He should, unless he is the unusual mathematician with no understanding of bayesian analysis, be a bit leery of drawing conclusions from his personal experience with "a good many" of his acquaintances. Are there any opinion polls amongst these fields? Of course, the popularity of the notion is not a measure of its truth, but since Sewall tries to bolster his writing with an argument from authority, he ought to check whether the "mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists" he knows are typical or aberrant. Certainly, if pages like this exist, doubting natural selection is not a necessary consequence of mathematical knowledge.

Perhaps those who feel that the question is out of their domain are correct. Sewall, later, says:
Although we may not be familiar with the complex biochemical systems discussed in this book, I believe mathematicians are well qualified to appreciate the general ideas involved.
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Perhaps, perhaps not. Certainly such an understanding could be demonstrated; we need not simply take his assertion as fact. Any given mathematician may understand the ideas well, adequately, poorly, or not at all. And it is entirely possible that a given mathematician will be blinkered by prior belief.

But it was a fun read--great examples of quote mining, and overall a wonderful example of domain-specific expertise and the dangers of wandering outside of one's area.

Did you have any thoughts of your own about it?
 
It is interesting.

Maybe you could get your comments/rants published in that magazine as a rebuttal?
 
T'ai Chi said:
It is interesting.
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I disagree. It is not interesting. It is amusing, perhaps, but lacks the degree of content required to hold one's interest. Well... on second thought, "interesting" is determined by both "it" and the reader. Perhaps it could be considered "interesting" by someone who is invested in intelligent design.

It would be a bit like a soccer match between teams of 8-year-olds. Not interesting for a soccer fan, but interesting for parents.
Maybe you could get your comments/rants published in that magazine as a rebuttal?
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Maybe I could. Do you know if they actually listen to criticism? Or do things get published because they agree with ID? The article itself suggests that things are not published because of quality.

Have you tried to get any of your writing published there? I think you might have a shot. Good luck, if you try; let us know.
 
T'ai Chi said:
It is interesting.
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Interesting is an opinion. What one person finds interesting, others do not. I don't find an article on ID where the author makes multiple errors (as pointed out already my others in this thread) particularly interesting.

T'ai Chi said:
Maybe you could get your comments/rants published in that magazine as a rebuttal?
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Nice job of poisoning the wellWP.

Now, what I found to be interesting was this article called How Anti-Evolutionists Abuse Mathematics (sorry, PDF only). It specifically references the article in the OP. It should be right up your alley TC, as it makes extension use of probability.

I would be interested in hearing your opinions on it, as I am not a statistician.

As professional mathematicians, we all have an interest in
protecting the integrity of our subject. We have an obligation to be aware of how mathematics is being used in the public square. When we see pseudomathematics, we should not be afraid to identify it.
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Grimoire said:
Now, what I found to be interesting was this article called How Anti-Evolutionists Abuse Mathematics (sorry, PDF only). It specifically references the article in the OP. It should be right up your alley TC, as it makes extension use of probability.
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Wow. Only halfway through the article thus far, but it is already far, far more interesting than the Sewall article.

Thanks for the link!
 
Summary of original article and the follow-up:

2+2 = 4

Thus, my god exists.


WOW
 
T'ai Chi said:
It is interesting.
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What I find interesting is that it seems consistent with the study* Shermer cites in How We Believe that find that the "scientists" most likely to believe in God are mathematicians. My own hypothesis about that is that they are used to doing their work in an imaginary realm which very seldom (if ever) depends upon empirical data. (Note: The study only shows that they are the most likely to believe in God, not that mathematician=believer in God.)

So I'm not really surprised to find this in a mathematical journal.

*Larson, E.J., and L. Witham. 1997. "Scientists Are Still Keeping the Faith," Nature, 386:435.
 
GrnMtSkeptic said:
that the "scientists" most likely to believe in God are mathematicians. My own hypothesis about that is that they are used to doing their work in an imaginary realm which very seldom (if ever) depends upon empirical data.
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within mathematics you can prove things, clearly determine that some true things are true,and demonstrate that many false things are false. i expect many people find it a surrogate for religion, as science. maths comes closer to delivering, at least truth exists there.

in science, we struggle merely to describe.

while the questions posed in mathematics may depend on empirical data (the things we think of asking/axioms we think of proposing) i think we can argue that maths itself does not depend on empirical data at all. no?
 
Mercutio said:
It would be a bit like a soccer match between teams of 8-year-olds. Not interesting for a soccer fan, but interesting for parents.
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It's interesting (sorry) that I often think of ID proponents, like T'ai, as being a bunch of young children playing soccer. No one plays positions, they all just mob the ball. Then the ball flies out of the mob and they follow it to its new location en mass.
 
lenny said:
while the questions posed in mathematics may depend on empirical data (the things we think of asking/axioms we think of proposing) i think we can argue that maths itself does not depend on empirical data at all. no?
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I would agree. However, I've heard that often modern proof are so complex that they often entail use of computers, and not knowing more about that, how the computers are used, and if any of those might count as "empirical data", (and in honor of the end of the 2006 political campaign here in the U.S. and the start of the 2008 campaign) I decided to include some "weasel words".
 
brodski said:
the same old fallacies, misstatements and outright lies.

this is my favorite


This interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics, if accurate, would not only make evolution impossible, it would make all life impossible, the full grown plant is more complex than the seed.
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Hmmm. Pausing for thought. I could say that a seed is like a script to a play. Then one would compare the script to the actual play. Isn't the script about as complex? All knowledge of the plant must be in the seed. It's just in a smaller package that can be transported easier, that's all.
 
This interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics, if accurate, would not only make evolution impossible, it would make all life impossible,
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no need to complicate matters with life:it would rule out hurricanes and probalby thunderstorms...
Iamme said:
the full grown plant is more complex than the seed.
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Then one would compare the script to the actual play. Isn't the script about as complex?
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arguably not at all. each "the play" is hugely more than the script. my high school version of macbeth somewhat less complex than a RSC production, but in terms of "complexity" they are close in ways that a 10 megabyte pdf file of the script does not approach.
 
Iamme said:
Hmmm. Pausing for thought. I could say that a seed is like a script to a play. Then one would compare the script to the actual play. Isn't the script about as complex? All knowledge of the plant must be in the seed. It's just in a smaller package that can be transported easier, that's all.
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No the script is merely how the cells that the plant has need to develop, it would be silly to say that is all the 'knowledge' that the plant needs, it is the information that each cell needs, so I guess by extension it might work.

But it would be kind of like saying a single computer in a netwrok has all the knowledge the network needs.
 
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