Intelligent Evolution?

[President Bush]

I'm excited to be on the forefront of some developing knowledge.

Neither the observing intelligence nor the emotion felt as a result of the observation exist according to the analogy.

 

[Apathia]

Yes. I am a teacher. And Southwind's analogy does work and helps students understand what evolution is. Southwind seemed to want more explanation as to "intent" and "intelligence" and how they are part of the system. They are not necessary for the analogy at all. But on a deeper level they can be understood via the analogy. You can understand that they are products of evolution with a human centered meaning. Like "free will", they are not the concrete attributes people seem to imagine they are.

I just like understanding this. I'm excited to be on the forefront of some developing knowledge... and eager to share it with people who might be interested. But even at it's most basic level--the analogy works for many, many people.

When it works, run it for all it's worth.
I agree about the insubstantiality of intent and intelligence.
Juat as there are no fixed species, there is no fixed Platonic identity or soul.
Change/evolution is the essence. It's, as I said, quite Zen.

 

[President Bush]

Change/evolution is the essence. It's, as I said, quite Zen.

The Zen religion asserts, as do other schools in Mahayana Buddhism, that all sentient beings possess a Buddha-nature, or pure immortal part, which lie hidden in the depths of their minds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen

 

[Apathia]

Alas Wikipedia! It just doesn't get to the chief Mahayama perspectives of Emptiness and Suchness.
The Essence of it is that there is no objective, metaphysical essence to cling to.
But that's outside the scope of this thread.
Metaphysically speaking, the watchmaker is headless or mindless. But no one here (or in Zen) is denying our subjective experience of selfhood. It's just not the critical piece in Southwind's analogy.

But a reaction of your sort to his analogy is an occasion in which I (If I didn't know it was already in your knowledege) would start with the blind watchmaker frame before lopping off maker's head.

Book Recomendation:
Suzuki's The Zen Doctrine of No Mind

 

[President Bush]

Alas Wikipedia! It just doesn't get to the chief Mahayama perspectives of Emptiness and Suchness.
The Essence of it is that there is no objective, metaphysical essence to cling to.
But that's outside the scope of this thread.
Metaphysically speaking, the watchmaker is headless or mindless. But no one here (or in Zen) is denying our subjective experience of selfhood. It's just not the critical piece in Southwind's analogy.

But a reaction of your sort to his analogy is an occasion in which I (If I didn't know it was already in your knowledege) would start with the blind watchmaker frame before lopping off maker's head.

Book Recomendation:
Suzuki's The Zen Doctrine of No Mind

I'm not interested in granting any ontological status to a subjective experience of selfhood, much less argue for a god.

As for your defending the analogy from a somewhat religious perspective... I just found that fun considering what it is the analogy seems to be designed to convey.

 

[Apathia]

As for your defending the analogy from a somewhat religious perspective... I just found that fun considering what it is the analogy seems to be designed to convey.

I own to the fun!

 

[Southwind17]

You have correctly noted that natural selection will not help you tie a tie... this morning.

I have? Gee, you must be capable of reading between the lines between the lines. The purpose of this little anecdote is simply to highlight the meaning of intent and forethought. It has absolutely nothing to do with natural or artificial selection!

On the subject of ties... I believe that the analogy, in factoring out intelligence, factors out a very significant way in which adapted complexity (here on earth) evolves: culture.

Or am I mistaken and is the ability to adapt through learning from the experience of fellow critters accounted for in the analogy?

You're mistaken.

 

[Southwind17]

I'm at the end of an all-nighter, so forgive me for not getting to the rest of your post right now.

I am not talking about principle, I am not disagreeing with you that in principle you can eventually match normal technological design process with random tech design processes. What I am saying is that they are very different processes. The AA is worlds different than what goes on in the vast majority of engineering departments and trying to speak as if it was the norm (as the general 'evolution is like tech design' attempts to do) is just silly.

In fact, now that I think about it, it works better backwards. You're better off explaining your unusual design process through an analogy to evolution.

I think you're forgetting the whole purpose of the OP analogy. It was simply to demonstrate that intelligence and/or design (one and the same?!) are not necessarily accountable for seemingly irreducible complexity that we see in human endeavours. It matters not that the process is not identical to natural evolution. In fact, thinking about it, it matters not whether the process is completely different from natural evolution. The whole ID argument hinges on intelligence/design being a precursor to seemingly irreducibly complex organisms. If it can be shown that even a completely different technological process can lead to seemingly irreducible complexity then how does the ID 'logic' then stand up?

 

[jimbob]

Slight re-derail
But the following is just a restatement that imperfect self-replication is all that is needed for evolution:

Or as Richard Dawkins said in an interview for Mark Ridley's "Evolution" textbook:

"Natural selection will operate wherever there is heredity, variation and
competition. I suspect that the conditions for natural selection to work are
very minimal indeed: namely, the existence of the phenomenon of heredity."

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/video_gallery/RD_What_are_the_conditions_for.asp

"Heredity" only makes sense when talking about self-replication.

 

[cyborg]

So what word can I use to relate the feature of my modern Intel CPU with that of the Intel CPUs of twenty years ago - or can I not talk about that since these devices never "self-replicated"?

 

[jimbob]

Development?

 

[cyborg]

How does the concept of development allow me to relate features?

Saying A developed from B does not tell me anything about the properties of A and B that are related.

 

[drkitten]

How does the concept of development allow me to relate features?

Saying A developed from B does not tell me anything about the properties of A and B that are related.

So state that feature-of-A developed from feature-of-B, which is both more useful and more accurate.

 

[jimbob]

There are now enough impressive real examples of evoultionary approaches* to engineering without having to rely on a hypothetical example.

These show how imperfect copying and a set of selection criteria can produce systems that couldn't be designed from the top-down. It also shows how successive iterations get more optimised towards the design requirements.

I think it is then easy to point out that if something is making imperfect copies of itself, then it follows that, whatever else, there will be selection for "better" self-replication, and thus optimisation towards "better" self-replication. There are many examples where this optimisation "strategy" is harmful to the individual organism, if not its genes, and sometimes where it is ultimately harmful to its own genes : Great example by Dr Adequate below:

[swiki]Selfish Genes[/swiki]

Have a look at that last example. Yes, it's a bit technical, but it is an explanation of how natural selection can wipe out a species. I swear that's the freakiest thing in population genetics.

*ETA:

I also think it is important to keep highlighting that they are evolutionary techniques but are not evolution, because they were developed for a particular "intelligently desiignated" goal, especially as that "lovely" site "creationsafaris" likes to pretend that scientists are equating the two:

http://creationsafaris.com/crev200709.htm#20070910b

Can Humans Use Evolution? 09/10/2007
Evolution is being used. A press release from University of Wisconsin-Madison was titled, “Using evolution, UW team creates a template for many new therapeutic agents.” How does one use evolution? It continued, “By guiding an enzyme down a new evolutionary pathway, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers has created a new form of an enzyme capable of producing a range of potential new therapeutic agents with anticancer and antibiotic properties.”
We must keep up the heat on evolutionists till they become too embarrassed to say such things. You cannot “use” evolution. The moment you use it, you are doing intelligent design. Evolution has no purpose, no aim, no guidance no goal, and no reward – not even survival. Extinction happens and is just as dispassionate as survival in Darwin’s universe. If you think survival is somehow good, that’s your soul speaking.
The moment a human does the selecting, guiding or rewarding, evolution stops and intelligent design begins. Evolution, as used by Darwin, is not just change.

It continued, “By guiding an enzyme down a new evolutionary pathway, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers has created a new form of an enzyme capable of producing a range of potential new therapeutic agents with anticancer and antibiotic properties.”
We must keep up the heat on evolutionists till they become too embarrassed to say such things. You cannot “use” evolution. The moment you use it, you are doing intelligent design.

This is quoting a press-release, which possibly had been edited for "pith" but which did end up carelessly worded. However we should avoid giving IDers any ammunition.

There are enough facts for them to misrepresent without us helping them.

 

[cyborg]

Intel Chip A developed from Intel Chip B.

ISA of Intel Chip A developed from ISA of Intel Chip B.

What is more useful about this statement without being able to say anything about what an ISA is?

 

[cyborg]

This is quoting a press-release, which possibly had been edited for "pith" but which did end up carelessly worded. However we should avoid giving IDers any ammunition.

There are enough facts for them to misrepresent without us helping them.

That both you and the IDers miss the entire point is not my problem.

 

[articulett]

I think you're forgetting the whole purpose of the OP analogy. It was simply to demonstrate that intelligence and/or design (one and the same?!) are not necessarily accountable for seemingly irreducible complexity that we see in human endeavours. It matters not that the process is not identical to natural evolution. In fact, thinking about it, it matters not whether the process is completely different from natural evolution. The whole ID argument hinges on intelligence/design being a precursor to seemingly irreducibly complex organisms. If it can be shown that even a completely different technological process can lead to seemingly irreducible complexity then how does the ID 'logic' then stand up?

Exactly. ID uses god because it's all so complex that it couldn't have come about by chance.

And it did not. Natural Selection is a very powerful mechanism... it takes time... and it's a much more satisfying explanation that can be used to explain so much. When you have such a strong explanation, it's easy to employ Occam's razor and get rid of superflious things like magic sky fairies.

 

[jimbob]

So we should provide IDers with ammunition, whilst still being wrong?

ETA:

This is in response to Cyborg's above post

 

[jimbob]

Articulett:

Am I right in thinking that you arguing that "top-down" design does not happen?

I am arguing that it does, but that evolution is "bottom-up" and not "design".

I would also say that evolutionary approaches (including evolution itself) are the only way of increasing complexity in systems beyond the analytical capabilities of any top-down designer.

 

[cyborg]

So we should provide IDers with ammunition, whilst still being wrong?

They play language games. That is the only ammunition they have. Worrying about one's use of human language when it will be abused no matter how you construct it is a fool's errand which you demonstrate succinctly in your example.

I have, unsuccessfully, tried to explain to you the language fallacy you are engaging in with regards to the notion of self-replication - it is a useful marker for particular categories of systems but it is not a fundamental construct of any of them.

When you look at a whole cell you see a "self" reproducing. When you look at its components you see a community of components rearranging matter - no self to be found.

The only difference between the systems you see as "self" and "non-self" reproducing is that of physical proximity.

We say Xerox is not part of the photocopier but if we place Xerox within the photocopier - with all other things being equal and if you will allow for the Doctor Who space-time dynamics involved - do we now have a system able to enact things that it previously could not?