Paulhoff
You can't expect perfection.
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Intelligent Evolution?
- Thread starter Southwind17
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So I take it then that this whole Science hype isn't really necessary to technological inovation. Spiders build webs and birds build nests without "doing science."
What we call "Scientific" knowledge and theory is not indicative of or a result of so-called "intelligence," but is the result of a trail and error selection process that saves what works and is acceptble in the wider environment of ideas. Randomness and peer selection.
OK, humans have journals, but spiders don't. But evolution rolls on, journals, science, intelligence notwithstanding.
Computers we not invented, they evolved.
(Well, it wasn't the computers that evolved. It was the information.)
articulett
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Evolution is a fuction, it has no goals.
Paul
Exactly. The evolution of video technology has no goals... it's a function.
But information doesn't think.
If the information that made a computer design evolved in a process akin to biological evolution, then changes to the design of a computer would have been random, some beneficial, some bad, and the beneficial design features would reproduce. There would be no analysis of the system with people saying that faster gates were needed, and they could be achieved by shrinking feature size, oxide thickness and voltages. There would be no analysis of bottlenecks and people trying to fix bottlenecks in the processors. The source of the variation would be completely different to that which actually happened. The "selection" would also be different. There would be no analysis of failures, and attempts to fix these failures.
In answer to an earlier question of Apathia's:
Sometimes (Often?) in history, technology has led science: the cannon before Newton's laws of motion for example, but arguably the two defining inventions of the twentieth century, the atom bomb and the transistor, were both invented as a result of directed research and engineering effort applied to apply principles from the two defining physical theories of the twentieth century, relitivity and quantum mechanics.
In both these cases, science initially led engineering.
This in completely unlike any process of biological evolution, although maybe one could argue that it does have some similarities with lamarkian evolution.
There are different sinatures omne would expect from evolved systems compared to intelligently developed systems. Only evolutionary approaches can produce "very complex" working systems.
Evolutionary systems can't reuse information from different "ancestors", whilst technological systems can. Pneumatic tyres didn't need to evolve separately for cars and aircraft. The eye needed to evolve separately in moluscs and vertebrates, and sometimes extra eyes have evolved from scratch in individual species. A designed system would tend to reuse what had been designed.
articulett
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Information evolves better information processors...
Human generated information utilizes humans, journals, science, etc. to get more copies of itself into the future--mostly by being of use to humans or at least making humans think as much.
Yes, Computers have evolved in the ways dogs have evolved--based on the evolution of the information that builds computers and dogs respectively. The information that gets copied, tweaked, recombined, and built upon the most is the "winner" in regards to what evolves.
Scientific information evolves... languages evolve... cities evolve... market economies evolve... it's the same basic underlying process... the stuff that sticks around to be built upon sticks around for a "reason". But that reason may have very little to do with the purported goals of the parties involved.
It's really basic game theory...evolution is always running a cost benefit analysis in real time essentially. I know it sounds like a counter intuitive way of looking at things... But if you can make the connection then you not only understand evolution better, but just emergent properties in general... You trace backwards to find out "why" or "how"-- you don't look for a top down designer. There is none. That would be like like looking for the person who is "in charge" of the internet.
mijopaalmc
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This is a really poor description because, over the short-term, we can see evidence of top-down design in technology.
IIRC, game theory requires actors making choices.
Congratulations; we now have bottom-up, dare I mention 'intelligent', design.
ID is, in the purest sense, a "top down" model of biological devolpement.
May I point out that in the context of the OP, many of the last posts may be getting a bit mired down in terms. Hate to be the one to bring it up.
Take the word "goal" for example. Evolution has no goal. Evolution is a process in the midst of the process of itself. The word "goal" implies "intention" which does not exist in this context, since to have a goal implies a conscious anticipation of an outcome. Evolution is a blind mechanistic process without a mind to imagine any kind of outcome, and therefore cannot be said to have a goal.
Don't you accept that even if you use the idea of memetics, a Lamarkian approach is a better model than the neo-Darwininan model that describes biological evolution?
Suppose you are on a team-building exercise and you have to build a bridge with some available materials. The first attempt is too short, so you try the obvious solution of lashing some poles together, or using longer poles. The design has changed, but not in any way akin to random mutation. The problem helped direct the change.
If you want to describe that as the "evolution" of the bridge design, isn't it closer to Lamark than neo-Darwinian evolution?
Wikipedia
wikipedia said:
I would prefer to reserve the term "evolution" for biological evolution and any processes that could be described with neo-darwinian models os evolution, and leave the rest as something else. Saying that there are different "types" of evolution, is misleading, as only (neo-)Darwininan evolution is used in biology.
This analogy of product design/ID/ET is a more complex one than you may imagine. It is my profession, so I'll take the liberty of suggesting that even within the process of creating a product for commercial sale and use, it is not really a top down, designer driven process. There is a principle which I often remind myself of:
You can't push a rope.
Ultimately the market decides which products succeed and thrive over time, just like nature.
I like to think of my ego, as a designer, as the "selfish gene", trying to reproduce it'self through a product, and the Consumer as Natural Selection, deciding which product ideas will be passed on.
The entire discussion is very interesting, and incredibly complicated because no one can really identify a precise dividing line between the memetic and the genetic.
In my work, I could probably offer an opinion about which elements of products I've created will be passed on to future generations of the same type of products created or being created by other designers, and which will be forgotten. I've been doing it a long time so i can already see the long term changes in certain (very arcane) fields. Truly, the Market becomes the selector, and over time the Designer becomes less and less important.
I cut myself off, but my point was that even in the tech world, the "top down" model may be an illusion.
Memetic evolution, of which technology can be thought to be part of, and thought of as Lamarckian by some because of the lack of a physical mechanism (DNA) may be more structured than is obvious.
Memetic evolution, of which technology can be thought to be part of, and thought of as Lamarckian by some because of the lack of a physical mechanism (DNA) may be more structured than is obvious.
Memetic evolution is thought be Lamarckian (sp? I thought there was a c in there) because there is no physical mechanism known to pass on memes.
Why? Evolution just means iterative change over time. Why restrict the term to biology? Or to Darwin? Lots of things evolve. It's a nice word. (unless you're a bible thumping baptist)
Bear in mind that neither Lamarck (sp?) nor Darwin new about DNA. The "traits" in the Wiki def. show different kinds of change which require discrete explanations, some Lamarkian, some Darwinian, some just individual adaptive behavior.
amb
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The spider posseses survival information or instincts like the rest of the animal kingdom. Only enough intelligence to enable it to survive and produce offspring. Only man's information, or intelligence, far surpasses his needs and can therefore send a space ship to the far reaches of our galaxy to gather further information. But his survival does not depend on the spaceship sending information back to him. It's knowledge he seeks. [ more information]
Belz...
Fiend God
Y... you ... you mean you didn't understand that either ?
Okay. I give up. If you can't understand why you were wrong, here, there's no point.
Belz...
Fiend God
The ones that made it did, tape is not a living thing, you should know that.
Paul
Yeah, that is exactly what she said.
Dammit, people. READ the posts.
Belz...
Fiend God
That's another way of seeing it, yes. Again, the analogy succeeds, not that Mijo or the others will agree with me.
President Bush
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Why? Evolution just means iterative change over time. Why restrict the term to biology? Or to Darwin? Lots of things evolve. It's a nice word. (unless you're a bible thumping baptist)
I would argue differently:
You are correct about a dictionary definition of evolution, but I would say that Evolution (capatilised as in the "Theory of Evolution"). describes biological processes or ones that are analogous).
Lamarckian Evolutin is not the same.
Lamarck:
"The giraffe evolved a long neck in order to eat the highest shoots..."
Reality:
"The giraffe's neck evolved because the proto-giraffes with longer necks were more likely to reproduce."
Lamarck is goal driven. It is easlily turned into ID, as all you need is for God to set the goal.
I think it is better to keep the difference clear.