Intelligent Evolution?

[mijopaalmc]

Behe proclaims his acceptance of common descent and microevolution, implicitly he is arguing that an intelligence was needed to direct evolution. How is that different from claiming that a process that was directed by many intelligent agents is evolution, or even a good analogy for evolution?

It's different if you deny that the fact that humans are themselves intelligent (i.e., capable of planning for the long-term, capable of correcting their mistakes, capable of throwing out an entire design and starting over from scratch) is relevant to the amalogy.

 

[six7s]

Jimbob, I can only imagine that you and I have significantly different interpretations of the analogy in the OP

These process conditions are information

I'd say "These process conditions are informative"

... but they did not arise due to any process analogous to mutation, nor was this information "selected" in any way analogous to evolution or even evolutionary algorithms

For me, analysis, design and testing is an iterative process that (hopefully) informs me (by either affirming or negating my assumptions) at every step; so, for me, it is analogous to selection/evolution

BTW: I like analogies and metaphors where they are useful and not a hindrance

Good for you

The analogy in the OP only attempts to explain what even ID proponents accept, and even proclaim

Why do you not simply forget about it?

Seriously... why?

 

[jimbob]

Design and testing are iteritive processes, but they are not analogous to evolution:

Here is a good link on experimental design. (a great use of US tax dollars).

The optimal parameters are information that is extracted from the experiments.

 

[jimbob]

It's different if you deny that the fact that humans are themselves intelligent (i.e., capable of planning for the long-term, capable of correcting their mistakes, capable of throwing out an entire design and starting over from scratch) is relevant to the amalogy.

Do you mean being so strongly against Intelligent Design that the 74 is not a result of intelligent design, for example?

 

[six7s]

Design and testing are iteritive processes, but they are not analogous to evolution:

... for you... yes... you have actually made that particular point already

The optimal parameters are information

Seems that you and I don't share a common language: although all of those words are part of my day-to-day vocabulary, I would never mix them up like that

 

[mijopaalmc]

Do you mean being so strongly against Intelligent Design that the 74 is not a result of intelligent design, for example?

Essentially, yes. I'm not an expert on the history of aeronautics, but it seems that there are certain things in the design of an airplane that are specifically designed for the airplane and didn't appear in a form similar to that in which they appeared in the airplane. This essentially means that they were created de novo in a way that simply did not occur in evolution by natural selection. Even homologs in biology arise from a common ancestor through genes duplication an divergent evolution.

 

[karmicserenade]

Haha, aliens are helping us lol..why else has technology suddenly moved forward at such an alarming rate??? lol...seriously though, I think we are moving soo fast with technology, but are really not utilizing the bounties mother earth has given us...we are too concerned with the now to prepare for what the future holds...by that I mean we are pumping out all of these gadgets using a poor source of power which pollutes and destroys our environment...the production of oil, plastics, and fibre glass for example all pollute terribly. I live in chemical valley and thus I see the worst of it...moving here has woken me up to the horrors of refineries.

 

[articulett]

Haha, aliens are helping us lol..why else has technology suddenly moved forward at such an alarming rate??? lol...seriously though, I think we are moving soo fast with technology, but are really not utilizing the bounties mother earth has given us...we are too concerned with the now to prepare for what the future holds...by that I mean we are pumping out all of these gadgets using a poor source of power which pollutes and destroys our environment...the production of oil, plastics, and fibre glass for example all pollute terribly. I live in chemical valley and thus I see the worst of it...moving here has woken me up to the horrors of refineries.

Yes... but hopefully we'll look to nature for solutions: http://www.biomimicry.net/

We will be counting on the scientifically literate of the future to help us out of this exponentially growing problem we have created.

 

[articulett]

... for you... yes... you have actually made that particular point already



Seems that you and I don't share a common language: although all of those words are part of my day-to-day vocabulary, I would never mix them up like that

I just have to share the irony... Jimbob talks as if human information analogs don't "mutate", even though his summary or understanding of the information conveyed on this thread is clearly mutated. He is feeding the idea back in a mutated way proving that human notions replicate imperfectly even has he is blinded to such events. Like most mutations, this one is detrimental and is unlikely to be passed on and honed... it's useless... except to confuse further. While information said in a way that clarifies will be utilized and honed. It's the airplane design that coded for an airplane that never got of the ground.

Of course, garbled explanations that sound sort of sciency are the only evolving strategy that ID has... their aim is to get people to overly focus on the "seeming design" and pretend that scientists think it came about "randomly". All those who suck at the analogy, seem to overly focus on the randomness-- but like Jimbob's mutant summary of what we've said-- randomness happens all the time in the replication of INFORMATION... most is useless, of course... But it's the exponential growth of the stuff with sticking power that can evolve into "miracles".

It's the retention, replication, and mutation of selected information that drives evolution. They just can't "get" that.

This is true whether it's Evolutionary explanations from Darwin to Dawkins or the evolution of todays big cats from prehistoric saber tooth tigers or the first airplane to todays models. It looks like the products are evolving or morphing if you take snapshots over time-- but only the information that produces the "product" is evolving.

I always wonder if such obtuseness is on purpose... or it's just some weird loop of attention blindness running through their head or what? In any case, I'm glad I have someone I can share the irony with. Southwind put up an analogy, that many others can use, refine and hone. But they can only spew out mutated useless copies that aren't picked up by anyone...except maybe those who want to confuse rather than clarify.

 

[articulett]

Hee-hee.... Mijo said some things are specifically "designed" for the airplane... ah yes... like the trunk is specifically designed for the elephant, eh? And the stop sign is specifically designed for the city... and the brain is specifically designed to make humans special... and the the duckbill platypus is specifically designed to look like an intermediate life form. The human heart is designed specifically for humans. And the bacteria in our guts is specifically designed to help us digest food...and niche fillers are designed to fill niches.

Incredible. They cannot separate the information from what it creates.

Humans, like the god they created just "poof" things into existence in their heads. Now why do you suppose these irreducibly complex airplane parts weren't poofed into existance ages ago... after all... all the atoms were there to make them... what changed.... ? What made this hypothetical part exist and stick at this time?-- Could it be-- INFORMATION-- evolving over time based on an environment that selected for it???

Nah... it's special and magic because humans were involved and had a thought before mutating a current iteration or recombining several evolving information sources. And humans helped it stick. And just like the god they made up, they are certain that makes things magical and different somehow than other complexities that come about via selection by less conscious or caring environments and processes.

Even though they can't communicate how. Or why the difference (in their head) invalidates an analogy many find amazingly apt and rather the opposite of the "poof" analogy used by creationists AND those who see human input as "special".

 

[mijopaalmc]

Hee-hee.... Mijo said some things are specifically "designed" for the airplane... ah yes... like the trunk is specifically designed for the elephant, eh?

I'm sorry but could you point to the antecedent of and wing of the Wright Flier that is actually similar in form to either another flying machine or a wing found in the biological world?

 

[articulett]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/11/011102074019.htm

The 1901 glider was an important step in the Wrights' development of the Flyer, not because it was successful, but because it wasn't.


"The 1901 glider was extremely difficult to control and it didn't demonstrate flight-handling characteristics consistent with theories used by the Wright brothers,"

(trial and error--here's a mutation that didn't work)

And more prototypes: including a brochures stating "the design evolves" and "The Wrights' curiosity led them to study the work of many brilliant pioneers. The 1899 kite both borrows and departs from their aeronautical ancestors."
(a beneficial mutation... but no flight yet!!!)

http://www.wrightexperience.com/edu/1899/index.htm
http://www.wrightexperience.com/edu/1901/index.htm
http://www.wrightexperience.com/edu/1901/origins/WBstory.htm
http://www.wrightexperience.com/edu/1901/origins/ED.htm (the evolution of an idea-specifically made for educators!-- you too can educate yourself.)


http://www.hesston.edu/Academic/FACULTY/NELSONK/PhysicsResearch/WingDesign/research.htm

When designing the first airplane, the Wright brothers spent lots of time observing birds for inspiration and modern scientists are again beginning to base much of their research in airplane wing design on the shapes of bird's wings. Birds have an amazing amount of maneuverability when flying and even the most common bird can put a man made fighter jet to shame in its mobility and flexibility.

... The Wright brothers' first flier didn't have ailerons or flaps. Instead the Wright brothers used a design which more closely resembles a bird's flight controls. To turn, the pilot would shift in a harness which would twist or warp one of the wings, turning the craft (Wilson). However, as airplanes evolved most engineers began viewing a wing's flexibility as a weakness. For example, when the F-18 was first being designed researchers discovered that excessive twist in NASA's AAW f-18. the original wing design reduced the ability of the ailerons to roll the jet at the required rate. So engineers added more supports to stiffen the wings and added control surfaces on the tail to assist in turning

Biomimicry. Iterations with the stuff that works sticking around to be built upon!!!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/08/050824080722.htm

(and the evolution of the design continues based on biomimicry.)

And I found it in an instant. But will it make a dent? Of course not; no evidence is enough for a person of faith--even the evidence specifically asked for. (Like the peer reviewed article saying evolution is "not random".) Gee, let me predict: I expect that you'll pretend this isn't exactly what you asked for, make excuses, deny, and obfuscate... anything and everything to pretend that you know what the heck you are talking about-- and to hide the fact that you are a dishonest creationists pretending to be trying to have a dialogue.

Honest people admit when they are mistaken... but you go around bad mouthing people who go out of their way to share the facts.

Pwnage, you buffoon.

 

[mijopaalmc]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/08/050824080722.htm

(and the evolution of the design continues based on biomimicry.)

And I found it in an instant. But will it make a dent? No evidence is enough for a person of faith.

I'm sorry but a bird is not a plane. Moreover, the structure of an airplane wing, even in the Wright Flier, is drastically different than that of either a bird or a bat.

It is also interesting that you completely missed the fact that the very first sentence in the material you quoted was:

The 1901 glider was an important step in the Wrights' development of the Flyer, not because it was successful, but because it wasn't.

In evolution, there is no learning from failures. They are only removed from the population, not changed because they are disadvantageous.

ETA: You didn't actually provide an example of an antecedent of the wing in the Wright Flier that was similar in form to it. The point here is that fixed wings are fundamentally different in structure than movable wing and are an innovation of the human mind.

 

[articulett]

Yes, butthead-- THAT is exactly what you asked for-- and you do learn from failures in nature.... they don't get their information passed on because they don't work-- just like the glider. And there were many iterations before the successful flyer... and the Wright Brothers specifically used previous designs, gliders, and birds in their 5 years of trial and error as they slowly amassed beneficial tweaks to the information over time via how the product of such tweaks performed in the environment.

It's the same as genomic tweaks either dying out or giving an organism a chance to have it's information stick around to be built upon. It's the same-- you are just too much of a dishonest creationist hubris filled pedant to admit resounding defeat across the board yet again.

And fixed wings are found in nature--gliding evolved before flapping and in multiple creatures... even some plants. Just like Behe-- no matter how you show that something isn't irreducibly complex, the more he pretends not to hear. Whenever an evolutionist points out to a fossil gap that is filled, the creationist points out that ther are now two gaps--one on either side. No amount of evidence is enough for a dishonest creationist to ever cede, is it? Just admit the truth-- there is no amount of evidence that will satisfy you just like there is no amount of evidence that will sway you from your notion that it makes sense to sum up evolution as "random".

I'm enjoying handing you your ass, btw.

 

[articulett]

Say, Dinosaurs beat the Wright Brothers by over a million years... there's an evolutionary antecedent... Divergent evolution... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051018071921.htm

"It is intriguing to contemplate that perhaps avian flight, like aircraft evolution, went through a biplane stage before the monoplane was introduced, said Chatterjee. "It seems likely that Microraptor invented the biplane 125 million years before the Wright 1903 Flyer."

The discovery of Microraptor and other small, exquisitely preserved feathered dinosaurs from China also helps to settle a century-old controversy over whether avian flight began in trees (trees-down theory) or on the ground (ground-up theory). These fossils show various transitional stages -- from wingless, tree-dwelling theropod dinosaurs to fully winged, active flyers, Chatterjee said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/jan/23/dinosaurs.internationalnews

More pawnage.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Say, Dinosaurs beat the Wright Brothers by over a million years... there's an evolutionary antecedent... Divergent evolution... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051018071921.htm

"It is intriguing to contemplate that perhaps avian flight, like aircraft evolution, went through a biplane stage before the monoplane was introduced, said Chatterjee. "It seems likely that Microraptor invented the biplane 125 million years before the Wright 1903 Flyer."

The discovery of Microraptor and other small, exquisitely preserved feathered dinosaurs from China also helps to settle a century-old controversy over whether avian flight began in trees (trees-down theory) or on the ground (ground-up theory). These fossils show various transitional stages -- from wingless, tree-dwelling theropod dinosaurs to fully winged, active flyers, Chatterjee said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/jan/23/dinosaurs.internationalnews

More pawnage.

These are examples of fixed wing flight, which is unique to human-made objects.

 

[articulett]

I provided an antecedent to the antecedent of the wright flyer which evolved!

Ha! Moreover, I instantly found multiple scientific sources using the very same analogy Southwind used-- even with the term "evolution" in reference to technological design.
The more you spin, the worse you look and the more I laugh.

 

[articulett]

More pawnage because it's such fun:

The first true airman in history was Otto Lilienthal, a German engineer and inventor. He was the first person to repeatedly demonstrate that controlled glider flight was possible. At the age of 14 he attempted to use da Vinci's ornithopter design but eventually determined that flight could not be achieved merely by a flapping of wings. His close study of birds, however, published in 1889 as The Flight of Birds as a Basis of Aviation, contributed many insights as to how they actually fly. He determined, for example, that a bird achieves thrust not simply from the flapping of wings but from the propeller-like action of its so-called primary feathers. He calculated the size a wing must be to sustain the weight of an object - such as a human object. The intent was not to imitate the wings of a bird but to clearly understand and adapt their functionality. In this he was more successful than anyone who had come before.

http://www.fi.edu/wright/again/wing...s.com/Book/History/instructor/gliders-01.html

No evidence is enough for you-- but I am wildly impressed with how easy it is to, not only address your canards-- but to prove even more succinctly how apt the analogy is--
Look at the history of tweaking of information that went into the first successful flight-- lots and lots of inputs and absolutely based on models in nature... they kept trying to copy the information that worked the best... until they got something that took off... and then the information continued to evolve.

 

[articulett]

And here it is all simple for the kiddies-- put out by NASA

http://www.ueet.nasa.gov/StudentSite/historyofflight.html

And more for the kiddies-- how the study of birds lead to the fixed wing design:
http://wings.avkids.com/Book/Wright/history1_18991.html

And here is the evolution of flight in dinosaurs then birds... amazingly enough, it follows a very similar path to the evolution of aircraft designs!!!

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1780066

 

[mijopaalmc]

I provided an antecedent to the antecedent of the wright flyer which evolved!

Ha! Moreover, I instantly found multiple scientific sources using the very same analogy Southwind used-- even with the term "evolution" in reference to technological design.
The more you spin, the worse you look and the more I laugh.

Wow, you're really skilled at missing the point. The structure of biplane and monoplane wing is fundamentally different than any animal wing and there for cannot be said to have evolved from it.