Intelligent Evolution?

Wasn't the original purpose of the analogy "combatting Intelligent Design (ID) theory"? How does comapring biological evolution to technological development, a process that involves an intelligent agent, combat ID?
 
Belz... said:
There's that "process", again. A year and a half, and not much new from you, Light.
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Evolution is a process, and it had to produce intelligent life. As for something new, it is going to take time, these books are hard with very few pictures. I have "Dreams of a Final Theory" "The Spirit Molecule" and "Longing For The Harmonies." The Authors of the last book seem to think that in the beginning there was just "electric charges and energy," though I figure I am going to have to read them twice to get half their meaning.
 
mijopaalmc said:
I suggest you review the fallacy of false (or weak) analogy. The presence (or absence) of intelligence fundamentally effects the relation between the two analogs to the extent that it invalidates any analogy that doesn't that property of the analogs.
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mijopaalmc said:
Wasn't the original purpose of the analogy "combatting Intelligent Design (ID) theory"? How does comapring biological evolution to technological development, a process that involves an intelligent agent, combat ID?
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Mijo, an analogy only fails if it doesn't work on the levels it claims to. Southwind's analogy works because intelligence merely becomes a tool for information to get transmitted.

But it seems obvious that you are completely incapable of understanding why it works and how, even when so many people have spent so much time trying to explain it, so I'm going to stop wasting my time with you.
 
Belz... said:
Mijo, an analogy only fails if it doesn't work on the levels it claims to. Southwind's analogy works because intelligence merely becomes a tool for information to get transmitted.

But it seems obvious that you are completely incapable of understanding why it works and how, even when so many people have spent so much time trying to explain it, so I'm going to stop wasting my time with you.
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The quoted phrase in the first post is from the OP; therefore I think it is pretty safe to say that its original purpose. The analogy fails becasue it describes biological evlution in the exact same way that intelligent design propenent describe intelligent design.

What is so hard to understand about that?
 
six7s said:
However, this discussion is NOT about you, it is about an analogy; an analogy that you steadfastly fail to comprehend, despite repeated attempts from those who do understand it to explain it in terms simple enough to be understood by anyone willing and able to think in analogous terms
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Why is lack of agreement always interpreted as lack of understanding?
 
mijopaalmc said:
The analogy fails becasue it describes biological evlution in the exact same way that intelligent design propenent describe intelligent design.

What is so hard to understand about that?
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Apart from the usual typos incurred by your ability to type faster than you think, nothing is hard to understand about that:

  • your ideas about evolution, intelligence and reality were wrong before you started littering this thread

  • your ideas about evolution, intelligence and reality are wrong now

  • your ideas about evolution, intelligence and reality will remain wrong as long as you keep pretending you know what you're talking about
 
six7s said:
It's not

Stop projecting and consider why you think that it is
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I'm not projecting. However, I do understand the analogy in the OP, but I don't think it is valid, which you just said means that I don't understand it.
 
mijopaalmc said:
Wasn't the original purpose of the analogy "combatting Intelligent Design (ID) theory"? How does comapring biological evolution to technological development, a process that involves an intelligent agent, combat ID?
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That's how I took it and ran with my own version of the argument in posts 1903 and 1906 where my "slap down" of Intelligent Design was that no intelligent agents of the sort we popularly assume, actually exist.

But my slap down was just a breeze from a hair dryer, because the intelligent behavior of goal direction, foresight, and reasoning from causes is more than mere smoke and mirrors. It's the reason humans are such advanced tool makers. Sure, it's all in essence a natural selection, but there's a reason we have the vocabulary about human intelligence.

My next lame version was to grant that intelligent behavior of a more involved sort takes place in human tool making, but that this is an unnecessary detail to my argument. The argument being that intelligent action needn't be called forth. It's a different level of discription that can be ignored in the essential accounting of the process that exhibits just the selecting. All is just selecting.

But the devil is in the details: the details I'm trying to compartmentalize out of the picture. My argument is still trying to say there are no intelligent agents involved. I say, well there are intelligent agents, but they are on a different level of discription, so we musn't take them into account here. I'm hoping to misdirect the ID guy from my denial.

Now if I could show in clear detail how the selection system in human tool making does not involve goal directed behavior, reasoning from causes, and imagination, then I could frame my slap down aright.

So I confess my version of Southwind's approach to be pantywaist and lame.
And I wish others more success framing it in a way that would actually leave ID speechless.
 
Apathia said:
Now if I could show in clear detail how the selection system in human tool making does not involve goal directed behavior, reasoning from causes, and imagination, then I could frame my slap down aright.
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Does the evolution of spider web building involve goal directed behavior, reasoning from causes, and imagination...? I think you can extrapolate those things right out of the equation and the analogy is complete. Information that is good at getting itself copied (via whatever mechanisms--human or not-- intentional or not) is information that becomes part of evolving systems.

Think of humans (and spiders) as ways that information gets itself copied into the future to become a part of evolving information systems. Successful information begets its own copying... humans copy designs that they find useful or efficient or attractive-- if you are are "information" coding for a design, you are more likely to become part of an involving system if humans want to copy you. Todays technological wonders evolve from yesterdays wonders... not unlike todays species evolving from species of eons past... based on incremental amassing and tweaking of information.

Today's aircraft designs have a common ancestor in the design of the first successful "flying machine"... and there are multiple "species" that have evolved based on how various designs have been modified and tested in the environment they found themselves in.

Todays zebra, horses, and donkeys have a common ancestor in an equine of long ago and these variant species have evolved based on how various equine designs (genomes) have been modified and tested in the environment THEY found themselves in.
 
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articulett said:
Does the evolution of spider web building involve goal directed behavior, reasoning from causes, and imagination...? I think you can extrapolate those things right out of the equation and the analogy is complete. Information that is good at getting itself copied (via whatever mechanisms--human or not-- intentional or not) is information that becomes part of evolving systems.

Think of humans (and spiders) as ways that information gets itself copied into the future to become a part of evolving information systems. Successful information begets its own copying... humans copy designs that they find useful or efficient or attractive-- if you are are "information" coding for a design, you are more likely to become part of an involving system if humans want to copy you. Todays technological wonders evolve from yesterdays wonders... not unlike todays species evolving from species of eons past... based on incremental amassing and tweaking of information.

Today's aircraft designs have a common ancestor in the design of the first successful "flying machine"... and there are multiple "species" that have evolved based on how various designs have been modified and tested in the environment they found themselves in.

Todays zebra, horses, and donkeys have a common ancestor in an equine of long ago and these variant species have evolved based on how various equine designs (genomes) have been modified and tested in the environment THEY found themselves in.
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Yeah. I know. I just need a more convincing explication of the human process that accounts for this persistant illusion of thinking and imagination. For the average Jane its hard to realize that our actions are mindless and irrational.
We like to think that our mental activity is real and has some place in the invention and creation of things. The myth of human intelligence is so entrenched that even we skeptics think this endevor called Science is some specially important thing in human tool making behavior. Spiders spin their webs just fine without scientific knowledge or understanding.

There's a natural selection of thoughts and ideas in the brain. Somehow we get the impression that this is, at least in part, rational and discursive.
It's a tough meme to uproot.
 
Apathia said:
Yeah. I know. I just need a more convincing explication of the human process that accounts for this persistant illusion of thinking and imagination. For the average Jane its hard to realize that our actions are mindless and irrational.
We like to think that our mental activity is real and has some place in the invention and creation of things. The myth of human intelligence is so entrenched that even we skeptics think this endevor called Science is some specially important thing in human tool making behavior. Spiders spin their webs just fine without scientific knowledge or understanding.

There's a natural selection of thoughts and ideas in the brain. Somehow we get the impression that this is, at least in part, rational and discursive.
It's a tough meme to uproot.
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I wouldn't say our actions are mindless or irrational... but they aren't "free floating" either... our brains are formed by our genes and programmed by our environment... all the stuff we do and label intent and intelligence are those things to us... but they are not important to the analogy. Information can get itself copied by making us think we're intelligent or clever for copying it. We may, in fact be clever for copying it... in the case of religion, we may be copying it out of fear or because we think we're pleasing an invisible man or whatever. Information doesn't care... but the fact that we do care, makes some information more likely to get copied over others... just like spiders with certain web building proclivities are more likely to survive and pass on whatever genes go into their web building proclivities--

Yes humans have all these special qualities or differences or more evolved ways of assimilating information-- but if you want to understand how complex things come to be... the way to understand is to trace the information path... ask yourself why was this information preferentially selected over others....

You could say that "good books" are preferentially copied... that doesn't mean that humans aren't required and that human talents aren't required--but if some books are in wide use and spawned more books then you can find out more by tracing the the process backwards... whereas god answers are always "poof" or "it was meant to be"-- it's top down... but most complex things are bottom up... like the internet. It would be the wrong question to ask "how is it so miraculous that I can talk to anyone in the world whenever I want and get the lyrics to any song or any recipe-- it's designed so perfectly for me... Who is responsible for this wonder?" You wouldn't understand anything about the internet if you asked the question that way and focused on "intelligence" and "intent". The same is true for biological evolution. You can extrapolate that part out and understand what evolution is much better. You can understand great complexity without any top-down designer at all... If you can think of it form the point of view of "information" that is competing to get itself copied into the future....
 
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articulett said:
Yes humans have all these special qualities or differences or more evolved ways of assimilating information-- but if you want to understand how complex things come to be... the way to understand is to trace the information path... ask yourself why was this information preferentially selected over others....
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That's a good way to put it. I was struggling for just how to get that across and you nailed it.

That deals with it in an upfront way. Rather than argue over the role and nature of human intellect, agknowledge human tool making has its own peculiarities, but push on to the processes behind the development of scientific and technological information. The best argument against ID isn't to argue with it but to present a clear exposition of the way things evolve.
 
Apathia said:
That's a good way to put it. I was struggling for just how to get that across and you nailed it.

That deals with it in an upfront way. Rather than argue over the role and nature of human intellect, agknowledge human tool making has its own peculiarities, but push on to the processes behind the development of scientific and technological information. The best argument against ID isn't to argue with it but to present a clear exposition of the way things evolve.
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I think though that the problem is that, regardless of whether "intellect", "intelligence", or "intent" can be said to exist, biological evolution and technological evolution has such different phenomenologies from a information standpoint that any analogy between them would have to contain a long list of caveats for its applications.
 
mijopaalmc said:
Wasn't the original purpose of the analogy "combatting Intelligent Design (ID) theory"? How does comapring biological evolution to technological development, a process that involves an intelligent agent, combat ID?
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Forget your analogies Mijo, they don't help you here. If ET is a good workable theory about how life became such as it is, and thus the idea of a second party "designer" is extraneous, then that alone is enough to dismiss your arguement.

First you have to show how that ET cannot account for life as it now.
 
fishkr said:
Forget your analogies Mijo, they don't help you here. If ET is a good workable theory about how life became such as it is, and thus the idea of a second party "designer" is extraneous, then that alone is enough to dismiss your arguement.

First you have to show how that ET cannot account for life as it now.
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What makes you think that I am arguing that the Theory of Evolution can't account for life as it exists today?

My point in asking those questions was that it is very common for people to equate the human engineer in technological development with the Intelligent Designer in Intelligent Design. Therefore, it is unwise to try to teach evolution by analogizing biological evolution with technological development.
 
mijopaalmc said:
What makes you think that I am arguing that the Theory of Evolution can't account for life as it exists today?

.
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So we are done. If Et serves as a fuctional theory of how life is how is how it is then ID is an albatross. Agreed?
 
Apathia said:
That's a good way to put it. I was struggling for just how to get that across and you nailed it.

That deals with it in an upfront way. Rather than argue over the role and nature of human intellect, agknowledge human tool making has its own peculiarities, but push on to the processes behind the development of scientific and technological information. The best argument against ID isn't to argue with it but to present a clear exposition of the way things evolve.
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ID always argues that things are too complex and amazing to just happen "randomly".

It isn't random... it's the same process for technological design-- information that is good at getting itself copied drive the process. The designer and intent isn't as important as the stuff that "sticks" around to be built upon. If you wanted to understand the evolution of airplanes for example, intelligence and intent aren't as important as the steps that produced products of the next generation.... the stuff that "worked"-- And the same is true for understanding the evolution of equine-- Both are about information being honed through time via environmental selection and replication of the "best".
 
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