Intelligent Evolution?

[mijopaalmc]

cyborg-

You're still missing the point. The "details" of biological evolution are what distinguish it from technological development. Mistakes are corrected; mutations are weeded out. If your analogy requires a level of abstraction such that it obscures the differences between the two analogs, then it is not a very good analogy. Remember analogies are only meant to emphasize the similarities between the two analogs based of the trait(s) analogized and not based other traits of the analogs.

 

[cyborg]

The "details" of biological evolution are what distinguish it from technological development.

Uhh, I said this. No one is paying attention to what I say.

If your analogy requires a level of abstraction such that it obscures the differences between the two analogs, then it is not a very good analogy.

That statement - it is... it is just too ironic.

Abstractions obscure the differences between two analogs. This is what they do. They discard information about the differences in order to unify them.

You really don't understand what abstractions are if this is your complaint about them.

I could equally complain that because cats are not dogs you obscure the differences in their development when you use evolution to explain them both.

BUT THAT WAS THE OBJECTIVE OF THE EXERCISE!

Remember analogies are only meant to emphasize the similarities between the two analogs based of the trait(s) analogized and not based other traits of the analogs.

Eh? I am completely confused as to what you are trying to express - do you or don't you get the point then when you analogise/abstract YOU WILL lose specifics?

 

[Unalienable]

I studied evolutionary computing in college (back in the stone ages, when our home computers had no more than 64K), and I learned that it comes in two flavors: the practical, and the metaphorical.

The practical evolutionary computing is really just a subset of numerical methods; it's a way to get a "pretty good answer" to a wildly complicated problem, for which there is no known way to get the exact answer. One problem I studied was speaker placement in complex rooms, for example you want to put some speakers in an old opera house built in 1920 that was never very good for acoustics anyhow. The computer goes through a trial and error process and finds a way to place the speakers that almost entirely eliminate "dead spots" in any of the seats. This is useful, but it's really sort of a numerical trick. It's a poor metaphor for actual biological evolution.

The metaphorical application is more fun, because it's a way to simulate evolution on a very small scale and actually watch the contest of life and death on your computer screen. This is the stuff that the biologists love. One such application is to take some real sorting algorithms, designed by humans, and make them evolve into more efficient sorting algorithms. The computer acts like a clever programmer, improving the efficiency of the algorithms by making tiny changes.

The Holy Grail of evolutionary computing is macroevolution: not just tweaking an algorithm for speed, but to turn one algorithm into a completely different one that serves the same function. For example, the computer will refine a bubble-sort until it can't possible be made to go any faster, but it won't leap to a totally different technique, like a radix-sort. That's way too big of a change to expect to achieve using evolutionary computing, at least with our current computing resources.

I'm sure everybody here has heard all the old yarns that people have used to criticize evolution, such as "there is no way animals could evolve wings, since the intermediate stage would have useless wings, and that would be a handicap that natural selection would eliminate." In the microcosm of evolutionary computing, that old yarn seems to be quite real. Any bubble-sort that strays too far from the original method would be nonfunctional and thereby killed off before it gives the new method a chance.

I have to stress that none of the output of these "metaphorical" systems have any practical value: the tiny modifications they introduce are things that good human programmers would spot in a minute, so really all you've done is created a very expensive, slow, and unreliable programmer that can only tackle a single specialized problem. But as the old saying goes: it's not how well the dancing bear dances, but that it dances at all.

 

[articulett]

Evolution and design have radically different implications for the form and function of things, which stem from the exceedingly differend processes involved. That they both produce complex forms is merely a coincidence. They're profoundly different, and using one as an analogy for the other is misguided, at best.

Wrong... they both produce complexity because what works and sticks around is added to and built upon... like the internet. It evolves in complexity similar to genomes over time... it's all just coded information. All blueprints are coded info too. So are recipes. So are languages.
They all evolve.

 

[articulett]

Your abstractions are misleading. Sure, you can talk about evolution in terms of mechanics, but it's misleading and you would be better off discussing it in terms of biology. This is true just as I can talk about comets in terms of communication, but it's misleading and I would be better off discussing it in terms of astrophysics.

As a teacher of the subject, I am telling you that the analogies are very helpful for most people... particularly young people who understand computer code. In many ways DNA is like a computer code that says make the organisms that are best at copying me. That's the algorithm...the traits that develop, develop because they were the traits of the best copiers. Technology evolves based on what came before. The internet evolves... complexity evolves all the time so long as information or product is produced and pruned as the environment (or market) allows.

Think of human bartering and the first monetary type of exchange... clams or gold etc. Now think of how currency has evolved... it's often JUST electronic data... nothing anyone even touches... it's information... it's an information system that evolved due to the environment of humans... DNA is an information system that makes life forms and sets them free in an environment to compete and live and reproduce and die and then hone the DNA from the successors via the future. Technology such as airplanes are machines designed to help humans travel across distances in relatively short amounts of time. Their design evolves based on the technology available, the cost, the money making potential, the regulations, and so forth. It's the information that evolves-- just like the body of knowledge we call science... the blueprint, the design, the output, the possibilities-- based on environmental inputs through time.

Most people intuit can intuit this analogy even if some people here can't-- I see it all the time. Most are like Southwind. Cyborg is very crisp and clear and on target. Animals do not evolve in their lifetime just as your car doesn't turn into another car. But the the successful animals of today have a chance of having their genomes in the successful species that comes next. And the successful cars of today will spawn similar designs and technology and inputs in future models.

What is the internet? It's a massive compendium of human information that evolves, isn't it? How does it do so? Is anyone planning this internet thing? Is anyone in charge?

If you can understand how the evolution of technology or the internet is similar to the evolution of life on this planet, you have unlocked a very important and useful understanding that can be applied to many things--including cosmology. In fact, Neil Tyson Degrasse mentions this very thing. And it's very useful knowledge that is some of the most amazing information humans have figured out. Don't assume that because you don't get it... or a few physicists on this forum don't get it, that it's not very useful for people in general. I think it's sad if you don't get it... but I have not seen creationists abuse this argument--what they tend to do is to make evolution sound impossible-- I think the analogy shows just how possible it is to humans who can't wrap their mind around a million years. The last 20 years in technology--especially computers allows for a great analogy of exponential growth of information storage, copying, and retrieval-- DNA has done the same over billions of years.

You have provided nothing that works for undoing creationist thinking with your pedantry--not that anything will...especially in creationist men over 40 (I've never seen one capable of understanding)--but in young plastic minds who think evolution is "too complex" to understand thanks to jumble mouthed men like Behe and those such as the pedants here who think they understand the best way to explain the process-- this analogy works very very well. I am sure Cyborg and Southwind could take a bunch of budding creationists and really get them to change their thinking. I suspect those who are up in arms about the analogy would have little or no measure of success, because they really don't understand evolution as well as they think they do. Think of the big picture--the generalities--the similarities--the model.

Your focus on the differences reminds me of the creationist hyperfocus on "randomness". You miss the forest for the trees. But maybe you just "cant" get it just like a hard core creationists can't "understand" how it could look designed but not be (or rather be "designed" from the bottom up by natural selection--like technology)

 

[articulett]

Macroevolution is really just microevolution over many years... it's rarely a generation where animals become different species... a zebra and donkey can still produce offspring... so can a lion and tiger... but not a lion and cougar-- after awhile your offspring become less fit, less reproductively successful, more infertile, and eventually sterile before speciating entirely. And yet, anyone can tell a lion and tiger are related and a lion and cougar are related... if you go back far enough--all life is.

You can't really say the exact point when a horse and buggy became a car can you? And if so, could it still be drawn by horses? Why or why not? And once the mode of transportation evolved a motor, then the horses became obsolete, right? But the motor was like an insertion-- or a fusion-- and it didn't spring up from scratch either...

And how did we get from that car to all the species of vehicles we have today? Is a motorcycle a kind of hybrid between a bike and a car?

Nothing complex springs into being without being based on some design (or genome) that has evolved through time. Not even with seeming intelligence (humans) at it's helm.

 

[articulett]

No; they are not.



*Ugh.* Nobody gets it.

Most people get it. Those who don't, probably can't. It's the same as on the other thread. Brains get less plastic with age--especially when there is the certainty that one is right. The clearer you are... the less they will seem to comprehend-- but I think you're awesome. And I think known experts in evolution such as Steven Jones (nozzle) and Dawkins would agree.

That which exists in the future is built upon that which survives the present to be built upon.

 

[articulett]

Would the mamalian eye have been designed?

Even an incompetent designer would put the blood supply behind the light-sensitive cells.

The results of evolution and design often differ

it WAS designed from the bottom up just like everything else that evolves... cells responding to light were put tested in organisms and those that survived and reproduced the best passed on whatever heredity stuff in their genes that might have influenced their sight in the process-- a little better sight can be a lot better of an advantage... repeat experience ad nauseum... eyes evolve.

Camera's are human inventions based on eyes. Say, they've evolved too haven't they? Pinhole camera's a digital camera's are pretty far apart. So far, both can fill a niche. New environmental inputs (natural or not...such as the introduction of an alien species) drive the evolutionary algorithms all the time. And they evolve the technology we have available to us today into the technology we have available to us tomorrow.

If you can't see the similarities, it is your loss. Most people can. Really.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

Wrong... they both produce complexity because what works and sticks around is added to and built upon... like the internet. It evolves in complexity similar to genomes over time... it's all just coded information. All blueprints are coded info too. So are recipes. So are languages.
They all evolve.

You are making the egregious error of assuming that evolution necessarily leads to increased complexity. There are innumerable perfectly successful species of bacteria, which together out number and out mass anything complex enough to have pretentions of superiority. Higher orders of functionality are a goal of design, but an accident of evolution.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

it WAS designed

Full stop. No, it wasn't. There was never any designer; ergo, there was no design.

This entire paragraph has a false start.

Camera's are human inventions based on eyes. Say, they've evolved

Full stop. They "changed over time," which is the incorrect usage of evolution in a discussion about Evolution where the OP is intended to discuss teaching evolution to a person in the future.

 

[Paulhoff]

I see nothing in life that was of a Intelligent design.

Paul



Not a darn thing.

 

[quixotecoyote]

Your focus on the differences reminds me of the creationist hyperfocus on "randomness". You miss the forest for the trees. But maybe you just "cant" get it just like a hard core creationists can't "understand" how it could look designed but not be (or rather be "designed" from the bottom up by natural selection--like technology)

You mistake disagreement for misunderstanding. Of course I understand what your analogy is trying to say, but you are reducing evolution to "Change over time". ANY change over time. That's not how evolution works in biology. You'll certainly get people to wrap their minds around evolution with your analogy. Unfortunately you're also including many unrelated and erroneous factors as well.

 

[jimbob]

ImaginalDisc,

Just to clarify on one of Cyborg's repeated assertions.

I am not arguing that evolution cannot happen to non-biological systems, it just cannot happen to any system without imperfect self-replication. It has to happen in any system with imperfect self-replication.

Evolutionary algorithms are directed towards particular goals, so are not evolution.

Am I correct that this is also what you are saying?

 

[jimbob]

Articulett,

How do your analogies of evolution and design, help in answering these people:

Further, I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it. I greatly respect the work of my colleagues who study the development and behavior of organisms within an evolutionary framework, and I think that evolutinoary biologists have contributed enormously to our understanding of the world. Although Darwin's mechanism--natural selection working on variation--might explain many things, however, I do not believe it explains molecular life

Perry Marshall's Intelligent Evolution Quick Guide

Uncommon Descent

I therefore offer the following proposal if ID gets outlawed from our public schools: retitle it Intelligent Evolution (IE). The evolution here would be reconceived not as blind evolution but as technological evolution. Nor would it be committed to Darwin’s idea of descent with modification. But, hey, it would still be evolution, and evolution can be taught in schools. In fact, I think I’ll title my next book Intelligent Evolution: The Mindful Deviation of Evolutionary Pathways. Perhaps this book has already been written.

Intelligent Evolution: A response to Daniel C. Dennett by Sachin Gupta (geocities so maad)[/QUOTE]

In his op-ed piece, "Show Me the Science" published in the New York Times on August 28th 2005, Daniel C. Dennett makes a crisp attack on the proponents and motives of the intelligent design movement. However, he ignores the fact that some versions of the intelligent design theory do not challenge evolution or its mechanism of natural selection but actually adopt them. These versions of the intelligent design theory only challenge the 'randomness' of the mutations that occasionally prove beneficial and are therefore propagated. To help sort out this debate, let us review some definitions.

Playing into their hands seems an odd way of trying to attack their arguments.

Even the IDers accept the bits that you are constantly trying to explain. That part is obviously not the difficult part.

Whatever you say, poor "design" features, arising from structures acquiring different properties over time and altering their form are signatures of evolutionary processes.

The separation of "design" and "evolution" is the important factor.

The camera and the eye:

it WAS designed from the bottom up just like everything else that evolves... cells responding to light were put tested in organisms and those that survived and reproduced the best passed on whatever heredity stuff in their genes that might have influenced their sight in the process-- a little better sight can be a lot better of an advantage... repeat experience ad nauseum... eyes evolve.

Camera's are human inventions based on eyes. Say, they've evolved too haven't they? Pinhole camera's a digital camera's are pretty far apart. So far, both can fill a niche. New environmental inputs (natural or not...such as the introduction of an alien species) drive the evolutionary algorithms all the time. And they evolve the technology we have available to us today into the technology we have available to us tomorrow.

If you can't see the similarities, it is your loss. Most people can. Really.

I can seee a few superficial similarities, but so can all the IDers that I have quoted.

The differences are more important.

 

[Southwind17]

You're missing the point, and actually helping argue my case here. The prototype to which you refer (which was, undoubtedly, based largely upon previous aircraft, as we've previously established) was only one of many (very many!)that could have been produced. Each alternative prototype could be considered a mutation of the common 'ancestor' (or parts thereof). The particular prototype that you refer to failed and became 'extinct'. For every prototype that could have been produced and failed, a prototype could have been produced and succeeded, and gone on to 'breed' (at least one of those prototypes would, by chance, happen to have had extra plywood strengthening at the point of the break!). As I've previously pointed out, it is simply more time and cost effective to make prototypes that fail and are addressed at the point of failure than to make every conceivable prototype and retain those that just happen to work ( a la natural selection).

The point was that this failure provided the information to correct the fault. With an evolutionary approach the only information you would have is that some failed and some didn't.

Evolved systems often look completely different from designed systems. No halfway competent designer would design the mamalian eye as it has evolved. "Lets require a blind spot, and lets obscure the light-sensitive cells with blood vessels"

I can't believe you've posted the quote above AND THEN written what you have! You've CLEARLY missed my point YET AGAIN, the very point made in the quote!

Yes, the failure to which you refer did provide the information to correct the fault, BUT THAT WASN'T THE ONLY WAY THAT IT COULD HAVE BEEN 'CORRECTED'! ALTERNATIVE PROTOTYPES WOULD HAVE ENSURED THAT THE FAULT NEVER EVEN OCCURRED (at least not in the prototypes that would have gone on to survive)!!!

With an evolutionary approach the only information you would have is that some failed and some didn't.

And this is EXACTLY THE SAME as building multiple prototypes then observing which fail and which don't; exactly as I've described in the quote that YOU'VE POSTED above!!! PLEASE RE-READ IT CAREFULLY.

Evolved systems often look completely different from designed systems.

I don't think you really mean 'systems', rather 'organisms/machines', or similar, i.e. the outputs. The evolutionary system and mechanical design process (some, at least) look very different, 'LOOK' being the operative word, as right from the OP I've been referring to the CASUAL OBSERVER. I'm sure, from what I've read here, that the biology and mechanics that occur at the micro level 'behind the scenes' are completely different, BUT THE ITERATIVE PROCESS AND RESULTANT COMPLEXITY CAN BE VERY COMPARABLE.

No halfway competent designer would design the mamalian eye as it has evolved. "Lets require a blind spot, and lets obscure the light-sensitive cells with blood vessels"

Agreed, but that's because we're dealing with different technologies. If all a 'competent designer' had to play with were the organic materials and systems that define the mamalian eye, plus all the related and interacting body parts and functions, what do you think he might come up with, a video camcorder?! Now that IS a completely flawed analogy!

 

[Southwind17]

I did a google search on "intelligent evolution"

It is a prase that IDers seem to like.

Your point?

 

[Southwind17]

The above posts show why I don't like deliberate design iterations to be confused with evolution.

Forget about 'deliberate design iterations', think about multiple prototypes instead. As I've posited previously, deliberate design is simply a way of speeding up the evolutionary process. Multiple prototypes would also get there, if allowed.

 

[Southwind17]

Except when the processes are actually different, which is the case when referring to technological development and biological evolution.

Do you disagree with my logic in Post #223?

 

[Southwind17]

Evolution and design have radically different implications for the form and function of things, which stem from the exceedingly differend processes involved. That they both produce complex forms is merely a coincidence. They're profoundly different, and using one as an analogy for the other is misguided, at best.

Oh change the record please ID and posit a compelling explanation.

 

[Southwind17]

I have read and considered each point you have made. What frustrates you, I venture to guess, is that I do not agree with any of them.

Design can overhaul, evolution cannot.

'Can', but doesn't have to.

Design can plan for long-term development, evolution cannot.

'Can', but doesn't have to.

Design can lift elements from one type of thing and apply them to another, evolution cannot.

'Can', but doesn't have to.

Design can retain the plans of a form indefinately, evolution cannot.

'Can', but doesn't have to.

Living things are produced by autonumous reproduction, machines are not.

Could be, but wouldn't be commercially viable.

Living things have heritable traits, machines do not.

Essentially, many do (read back).

Living things mutate, and those mutations are passed on. Machines neither mutate, nor pass on mutations.

Essentially, many do (read back).

I could go on for some time.

Be my guest; so could I!

Unfortunately living things and the proccess of Evolution are not at all absract. Living things are not patterns and ideas scribbled onto blueprints and patterns to be fabricated by intelligent actors with an understanding of the intended results; living things are breathing, eating, killing entities continuously reproducing themselves and giving rise to new forms entirely without any abstraction. The Theory of Evolution is a description of the origin and properties of the very visceral living things in the natural world and it is, to date, the most compelling, most accurate, and most parsimonious explanation for these diverse and contradictory organisms.

Irrelevant to the analogy.

As machines lack all the elements Evolution seeks to explain, I fail to see any reason for using machines an analogy to teach it.

'Fail' being the operative word.