Intelligent Evolution?

[articulett]

We are born into already evolving informations... languages have evolved, math has evolved, scientific knowledge has evolved, technology has evolved... we evolved to make use of information, recombine it, tweak it, replicate it because humans who did so preferentially survived. We are vehicles for the information to evolve through and be culled by... but the information will live on in the future just as genomes do and specialize, diversify, and become obsolete...

As far as the information goes, it doesn't matter what is intended. Genomes don't care how a spider designs her web...but the most successful webbuilders pass preferentially pass on their web building genes, and it's this ratcheting over time that is responsible for increasingly complex and diverse web designs. It doesn't matter what an animal intends when it does whatever it needs to do to pass on it's genes...those whose "intentions" preferentially get passed on will be in the next generation.

What humans feel they are doing and their goals and intentions and intelligence are not relevant to the information that gets passed on unless it helps the information get passed on... How much humans are aware of what role they play in the evolution of widgets when they invent new widgets is irrelevant... no human can plan the far off future... we can only assimilate the information from the past and make predictions about the future from that... our planning ahead doesn't start from scratch... we take the information we have already and tweak it or recombine and sometimes we have "winning combinations" or "good ideas" that others replicate as we evolved to do.

Intent is a human way of describing why we initiate the actions we do... but is it so different then whatever makes a spider build a web?

 

[Paulhoff]

How come this so-called intelligent designer put one part of the toilet in the middle of the playground and the other part right next to it, or is that the sense of humor this so-called designer is supposed to have.

Paul

 

[Apathia]

The slap down argument against Intelligent Design:

ID proponents claim examples in nature of "Irreducible Complexity" nature, natural features that seem to have been the result of the planned deliberation of some conscious entity.

However, there are items all around us that display such complexity but are manifestly not the result of goal directed behavior on the part of some intelligent agent. I speak of automobiles and computers.

It may appear to shallow observation that inteligent agents are manufacturing these, but these agents are a fiction. the reality going on underneath the facade is an unconscious selection of ideas that pop up in random association. Those that fit other components in the information environment are retained. Others are forgotten. Then an equally complex environment of social and market forces selects what tools are useful.
The fit survive. (I see a ad campaign for Apple, or Microsoft!)

Because we can so easily abstract out these already abstract fictions of the deliberate engineering of human tools, and dismiss the fiction of conscious goal driven engineers themselves, there's no need to cook them up, or one up in special, for the complexities of the natural world.

But you know some people can't handle this. They are too attached to the notion that their "intelligence," "intent," and "consciouness" are real and actually play apart in human tool making.
But just as a spider mindlessly manufactures its web, we mindlessly manufacture our Dells.

And anyway, any of our tech tools could have come about by random trial and error in an unintelligent selective environment.

So take that, Behe. You're just a "headpiece full of straw!"

 

[chippy]

So take that, Behe. You're just a "headpiece full of straw!"

Who are you talking to?

 

[Apathia]

Who are you talking to?

Some people in this thread. Speaking to the choir.

 

[Apathia]

"Dad, A guy spoke at school assembly today. He said that nature shows evidence of an Intelligent Designer, like God, because of all the complex kinds of animals in it."

"Jerry, let me show you something. See my wristwatch? It's not a Rolex, but it's pretty well made. That's because of market forces. The more attractive and quality watches are the ones that stay on the market. There's no intelligent designer dictating how a watch should look. It's just a matter of what survives in the market. Timepieces have evolved over time based on a selection process within human community and information sharing. No mad scientist, intelliegent designer directed this process. Trial and error, trail and sucess in the community of timepiece users took a simple machine to the complex artifice you see here. The same is true in nature. There's no evidence of this "Intelligent Designer."

 

[Belz...]

Nice, Apathia.

 

[mijopaalmc]

This flies in the face of the purpose of the analogy

Funny I thought "purpose", like "design", "intelligence", and "intent", doesn't exists.

 

[Southwind17]

Funny I thought "purpose", like "design", "intelligence", and "intent", doesn't exists.

You've expressed many thoughts that have been shown to be misguided and unfounded!

 

[mijopaalmc]

How come this so-called intelligent designer put one part of the toilet in the middle of the playground and the other part right next to it, or is that the sense of humor this so-called designer is supposed to have.

Paul

Paulhoff-

No-one is arguing that there is such a thing as a supernatural intelligent designer who designed every living thing on Earth. The supporters of the analogy, however, are ignoring the fact that humans are intelligent and the process of technological development is more like what intelligent design proponents say the process of intelligent design is (albeit with an imperfect designer) than what evolutionary biologists have discerned the process of biological evolution to be.

 

[mijopaalmc]

You've expressed many thoughts that have been shown to be misguided and unfounded!

Show me how this thought is misguided.

cyborg has repeatedly argued that intelligence doesn't exist and has not been criticized by you or articulett.

 

[cyborg]

You haven't understood my argument.

 

[mijopaalmc]

You haven't understood my argument.

Then what is your argument?

Why don't you explain yourself if you think I misinterpreted you?

 

[cyborg]

Because you seem woefully inadequate to deal with the concept that different "truths" can apply to the same thing depending on how you model them.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Because you seem woefully inadequate to deal with the concept that different "truths" can apply to the same thing depending on how you model them.

And you obviously don't understand my argument either, though you are a master at misrepresentation.

 

[cyborg]

If you argument is "Intelligence exists," then either point to the atom of intelligence or accept that this statement is simplistic reasoning - the exact sort used by people who say, "God exists".

 

[jimbob]

Your lack of understanding boggles the mind. You've been reading this thread how long, now ? Your question has been answered umpteen times.

You mean like this:

They're culled off by virtue of the fact they haven't sold. It doesn't matter how long you give them to sell. Once you've decided they've been 'culled off' you disregard them. It's the ones that survive that matter. Evolution doesn't arise through failures, you should know that by now! Where the 'culled' ones remain or end up is completely irrelevant.

Note the intelligent intervention:

Once you've decided they've been 'culled off' you disregard them.

Or the further development of this argument:

Of course it does. All that's needed for replication is a trigger; a trigger, that is, that's pulled only when the entity in question has proven its survival in its environment, thereby validating its features and characteristics. As I've written many times now, increasing complexity only arises from replication, i.e. through variants that are beneficial, and hence survive, to be built upon and added to. Biological evolution has an essentially defined timescale between each cycle of reproduction for any one species, so why not the analogy? Your problem, I think, is determining what that cycle should be in the absence of intelligence to 'decide'. Well, if the entity survives, i.e. it's sold, well that's self-evident. The signal, and sale proceeds, are sent back to the factory with the instruction to produce another one. The question is: how long does one wait for the signal? Well it doesn't really matter. Imagine the automaton, instead of producing one entity each time, produces 1,000, or 10,000, or more, just like any particular natural species. It can then afford to wait indefinitely, if necessary, because the vast majority which are superior compared to the competition will reveal themselves very quicky, and the automaton can proceed to replicate those only. If one particular variant takes considerably longer to reveal its success, then for all intents and purposes it can be considered to have failed, as it will probably get usurped by those that reveal
themselves immediately anyhow.

Originally Posted by jimbob
Your analogy imposes an arbitary, fixed lifetime, which is not what happens in biological evolution

No it doesn't. As explained above, the automaton can wait indefinitely for the success signal to arrive, but that does, of course, require multiple copies to be made such that at least some will sell. As I wrote before, though, that's no different from the natural world.

The question is: how long does one wait for the signal? Well it doesn't really matter. Imagine the automaton, instead of producing one entity each time, produces 1,000, or 10,000, or more, just like any particular natural species. It can then afford to wait indefinitely, if necessary, because the vast majority which are superior compared to the competition will reveal themselves very quicky, and the automaton can proceed to replicate those only.

It can't afford to wait indefinitely, as then it would stagnate.

Biological evolution has an essentially defined timescale between each cycle of reproduction for any one species, so why not the analogy? Your problem, I think, is determining what that cycle should be in the absence of intelligence to 'decide'.

The point being that there is no intelligence needed to determine the lifespan of an organism, whilst the analogy does need that. If the lifespan is infinite, the system stagnates. If it is fixed, firstly it is arbitary, and secondly it will only be optimised for particular "turnover" combinations, There is no room for high-value, low-turnover systems to "coevolve" with "low-value, high-turnover" systems in the analogy.

The lifecycle is an evolved feature, elephants and mayflies had a common ancestor, but their lifespans evolved to be vastly different.

All living organisms reproduce and all living organisms will die.

Your analogy misses both these vital features of life and ecosystems.

Where the analogy could be useful is in pointing out that humans design iteratively because human designers are not omniscient, and do make mistakes. Why an intelligent (omniscient) designer would use an iterative process and make still mistakes is a question that this analogy can usefully ask.

 

[jimbob]

In arguing the general case about engineering, instead of the particular, automotan parable:

Firstly,

Why is a hypothetical story better at describing evolution that real examples of evolutionary approaches to engineering, where the selection is intelligently defined, but the variation is real, and both the problem and the solution are real?

Here is an example from NASA

NASA 'EVOLUTIONARY' SOFTWARE AUTOMATICALLY DESIGNS ANTENNA

NASA artificial intelligence (AI) software - working on a network of personal computers - has designed a satellite antenna scheduled to orbit Earth in 2005.

"The AI software examined millions of potential antenna designs before settling on a final one," said project lead Jason Lohn, a scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, located in California's Silicon Valley. "Through a process patterned after Darwin's 'survival of the fittest,' the strongest designs survive and the less capable do not."

The software started with random antenna designs and through the evolutionary process, refined them. The computer system took about 10 hours to complete the initial antenna design process. "We told the computer program what performance the antenna should have, and the computer simulated evolution, keeping the best antenna designs that approached what we asked for. Eventually, it zeroed in on something that met the desired specifications for the mission," Lohn said.

Secondly,

In engineering, where non-evolutionary approaches are used, what is helpful about pretending that the type of variation is the same as in mutation?

It might be akin to Lamarkian evolution, but nature works with Darwinian evolution. Why confuse the two?

Thirdly,

Many people have a naive understanding of what engineering involves, and it might include trial and error, and attempting to fix parts of designs that fail, and this is acutally closer to how engineering is than the analogy. This is not how evolution works, where changes happen, and if they confer a benefit, there will be a selective pressure in favour of these changes.

Fourthly,

Remember that IDers like the flip-side of the analogy, and claim that evolution is equivalent to technical development by intelligent agents, as opposed to the analogy which is claiming that neither technical development nor evolution require intelligence.

Technical development by evolutionary approaches requires a small amout of intellignece (or intent), but it is still required.

 

[cyborg]

selection is intelligently defined/quote]

An irrelevance.

In engineering, where non-evolutionary approaches are used, what is helpful about pretending that the type of variation is the same as in mutation?

Unification.

Many people have a naive understanding of what engineering involves,

Yes they do.

and attempting to fix parts of designs that fail

And this attempt occurs how?

This is not how evolution works, where changes happen, and if they confer a benefit, there will be a selective pressure in favour of these changes.

How exactly do you think engineering practices come to be?

Remember that IDers like the flip-side of the analogy,

Well duh.

and claim that evolution is equivalent to technical development by intelligent agents, as opposed to the analogy which is claiming that neither technical development nor evolution require intelligence.

*Sigh* We've been over this before. It's called Occam's Razor - those positing extra entities still need to demonstrate them.

Strangely enough those who think an intelligence agent is responsible for all of reality are going to either deny evolution or say it's all designed in anyway.

So, as ever, this gets us nowhere except you claiming there is "ammo" for the IDers here.

Technical development by evolutionary approaches requires a small amout of intellignece (or intent), but it is still required.

Intelligence of the gaps.

 

[mijopaalmc]

If you argument is "Intelligence exists," then either point to the atom of intelligence or accept that this statement is simplistic reasoning - the exact sort used by people who say, "God exists".

Do you practice thinking fallaciously?

The above post is a textbook example of a false dichotomy: either a "atom of intelligence" exists or intelligence itself does not exist. This completely misses the point that intelligence, like wetness, color, and friction, is an emergent property of large systems. In other words, it makes no sense to talk about "atoms of intelligence" since intelligence itself emerges from the interactions of many particles in a system.