Intelligent Evolution?

[mijopaalmc]

Mijo goes out of his way to keep from understanding something relatively simple...
And he says he's not an "intelligent design" proponent? He sure has all the obtuseness of one. I see no difference between him and Behe and Kleinman except that he keeps his "intelligent designer" more hidden to try and sound "sciency" while promoting his ignorance.

This is just a really strange assessment of my arguments given that the supporters of the analogy rely heavily on equivocation.

 

[jimbob]

Articulett,

1) Would you say that there are elements of Lamarckian evolution in technological evolution?

2) Would you say these elements are absent in biological evolution?

If so, then I would agree with you, and we are just having a semantic discussion, about what to call evolution (unless explicitally stated otherwise, I only call Darwinian evolution "evolution").

 

[mijopaalmc]

six7s-

If the blueprint is the information in technological development, the individual is the thing whose construction the blueprint describes. In other words, the individual is, for example, the car you drive or the computer that you use.

 

[six7s]

This is just a really strange assessment of my arguments given that the supporters of the analogy rely heavily on equivocation.

Maybe 'strange' on planet mijo

But here on forums.randi.org, it seems very much 'normal' - simply because it is accurate

Like it or not mijo, you are seen as an obfuscator par excellence

Although you might have something worthwhile to add, you haven't done so yet

 

[six7s]

six7s-

If the blueprint is the information in technological development, the individual is the thing whose construction the blueprint describes. In other words, the individual is, for example, the car you drive or the computer that you use.

I can see why you're confused

 

[mijopaalmc]

Maybe 'strange' on planet mijo

But here on forums.randi.org, it seems very much 'normal' - simply because it is accurate

Like it or not mijo, you are seen as an obfuscator par excellence

Although you might have something worthwhile to add, you haven't done so yet

I say it's strange because the people who accuse me of obfuscating in other thread are themselves obfuscating in this thread.

 

[mijopaalmc]

I can see why you're confused

Please do explain.

 

[Paulhoff]

And if we didn't exist we wouldn't have evolved language, math, science, technology, the internet... it's all part of the same process... information that is good at getting itself copied. If creationists understood this, they wouldn't be creationists. Once you understand how simplicity and algorithms that exponentially increase "complexity" evolve-- you realize no top down design is ever necessary... all "designers" are just recombining and tweaking information that has been assimilated so far... A single human doesn't design a bridge any more than a single person designs the internet...

And the way religious people argue... (not that this is readily fixable) is that things are too complex to come about "randomly"-- But it's not random... it's very much like the evolution of the internet or a city or airplanes... the organisms that exist are responsible for sending the information into the future so that it can be a part of evolving systems.

In evolution a change may or may not happen, and that change may or may not be an improvement and way more often then not it is not an improvement, the changes have no goad behind them.

Paul

 

[fishkr]

Or the Invisible Hand of free market Capitalism. LOL.

Oh, the The Hand is real -there's just no Head attached to it, and no sign of a heartbeat.

 

[Apathia]

Bush asks:

Does information have a skull?

Belz answers:

Wow, Bush. I assume you're trolling, because nobody could possibly not understand what was meant by "perspective" in this context.

W,

Of course Information has skulls. Lot's of them facilitating its evolution.
Lot's of numbskulls too!

Perspective is important here, but watch your step.
One can't see the forest for the trees. Another can't see the trees for the forest.
Both might step on a snake.

"No, it's a piece of rope."

"No, you're wrong. it's a snake. it bit me!"

"Don't be silly! A rope doesn't have fangs."

 

[Apathia]

Oh, the The Hand is real -there's just no Head attached to it, and no sign of a heartbeat.

Hey, the "Headless Watchmaker!"
Post #1857

Blind Watchmaker:

Sir William Paley fishes out his pocket watch and shows it to the irreverent youth, saying, "Suppose I found this in an open field, I'd conclude it was an atifact of intelligent intent and construction. So you should conclude that your complex body was the work of an intelligent designer."

The young man answers, "Too late you old ghost. We now understand how very complex organisms can evolve via Natural Selection without the intent, plans and purposes of intelligent designers.


Headless Watchmaker:

The shade of Paley replies, "Are you saying, young whippersnaper, that an artifact of such obvious design for function as is my watch culd be molded by nature? Can't you see the hand of itelligence in its creation? And there, your own body is so much more a testiment of intellient design.

The rambunctious youth answers, "You are too old, Father William.
Not only is my body the result of a blind, non-directed Natural Selection, but so is that artifact you keep waving at me. I see no "intelligence" in its creation. From the start no one ever planed for the existence of time pieces.
They are the result of information directed, not by prior intent or sentience, but by social interactions and market forces.
The trouble with your "Intelligent Design" is that there is no such intelligence as your asume, nor "Intelliegent" entities."

[ID proponents claim that it's possible to distinguish between something puposefully constructed and someting resulting from natural processes. Then, what appears to be the result of purpose is held up as evidence of intelligent intervention. The goal of the Headless Watchmaker anaology is to deconstruct intelligence, so that they can no longer play the ID card.
So far this deconstruction has been rather tame. Does anyone have a wrecking ball?]

 

[articulett]

In evolution a change may or may not happen, and that change may or may not be an improvement and way more often then not it is not an improvement, the changes have no goad behind them.

Paul

And how is that different than the process which gives you the computer you are typing on today and the computers of tomorrow? What were these goals and intents and who had them and when... trace the story from the first computer to todays computers and show how it's different from from wolf that is the common ancestor of all dogs and todays dogs from an information perspective. (Wolf ancestral genome to all dogs alive today versus blueprint for the first computer versus the blueprint of all computers around to day. Why did some traits (or "specs") survive and become more important, widespread and "honed" while other disappeared?)

When someone makes a design and it's not an improvement or someone else makes a better design, what happens to the old information? How is that different than what happens to the genomes of animal genomes that aren't up to par? Why do you think the "qwerty" keyboard is in such widespread use? Is that an intelligent design? Or is it an artifact that evolved along with successful products the way junk DNA or less than optimal traits are carried along in successful genomes?

Evolution is about the information that survives and is replicated preferentially. The stuff that doesn't work or the stuff that could be better but never existed are just not part of the equation. I'm sure the computers of tomorrow will be better than today from our collective perspective... but none of us know what those changes will be...though we can use past tendencies to predict... the same as we do in evolution.
The computers we purchase and use today play a role in the design of computers in the future.

The millions of failed or maladaptive information means nothing compared to the occasional success. We only see the successes.

 

[Paulhoff]

And how is that different than the process which gives you the computer you are typing on today.

Because the computer didn't come from a computer, it came from many different sources (ideas) and many had nothing to do with computers.

Paul

 

[articulett]

Because the computer didn't come from a computer, it came from many different sources (ideas) and many had nothing to do with computers.

Paul

Don't confuse the information for what it is coding for. You didn't come from a clone of yourself either. Information that has been evolving for eons made sperm and egg that mingled their DNA which began the division of the egg cell resulting in you. It's the information that evolves... not the thing in codes for. All species die the same species they are born... only the information lives on. When your computer dies... the design still lives on and is replicated and tweaked accordingly. Just as when you die, if you've procreated... some of your DNA lives on... and some of your ideas may live on and be built upon.

As long as the information regarding the design (whether creature or computer) has a means of getting replicated (making more creatures or computers)... the information can evolve via the interaction of the stuff it codes for (creatures or computers) and how they perform in the environment.

If you cannot understand this, then you cannot understand it. All the arguments from those who don't get it, don't change the fact that it's a very useful analogy for those who do. In fact, it helps a lot of people get it... as evidenced by the people on this thread who have said so... and the students I teach.

The environment picks the information that will stick around to be built upon in the future... this is true whether the information is coded in a duck or is the blueprint for an item of technology.

Even a single celled organism is not technically copying itself... it is copying its DNA which contains the directions for utilizing matter to make a separate copy of the cell from whence it sprang. Those who don't understand the analogy are misunderstanding what is meant by "self replication".

We are just talking about information that is able to get itself preferentially copied for whatever reasons and by whatever means. Just as viruses hijack cells to get copies of themselves made... some ideas hijack human brains to get themselves propagated (religion, for one.)

 

[Paulhoff]

If you cannot understand this, then you cannot understand it. All the arguments from those who don't get it, don't change the fact that it's a very useful analogy for those who do. In fact, it helps a lot of people get it... as evidenced by the people on this thread who have said so... and the students I teach.

It is not a very good analogy, and I do get it, that why I know it isn't a good one.

Paul



No analogy is needed, evolution is simple already.

 

[articulett]

It is not a very good analogy, and I do get it, that why I know it isn't a good one.

Paul



No analogy is needed, evolution is simple already.

Well you don't seem to understand that things that look designed, look that way because they preferentially survived... just as the preferred versions of technology survive... even though they may not be the "best"... (qwerty keyboard... VHS... etc.) The only thing information needs to be the "best at" is getting itself copied "into the future".

 

[articulett]

Paulhoff-- do you understand the following:

http://blog.case.edu/singham/2007/06/19/evolution1_the_power_of_natural_selection

A wonderful example that illustrates this point is given by biologist Steve Jones, as recounted in his book Almost Like a Whale: The Origin of Species Updated (1999) (Chapter IV, Natural Selection). (Thanks to Heidi Cool for alerting me to the podcast of a talk by Jones which is where I first heard this story.)

I once worked for a year or so, for what seemed good reasons at the time, as a fitter's mate in a soap factory on the Wirral Peninsula, Liverpool's Left Bank. It was a formative episode, and was also, by chance, my first exposure to the theory of evolution.
To make soap powder, a liquid is blown through a nozzle. As it streams out, the pressure drops and a cloud of particles forms. These fall into a tank and after some clandestine coloration and perfumery are packaged and sold. In my day, thirty years ago, the spray came through a simple pipe that narrowed from one end to the other. It did its job quite well, but had problems with changes in the size of the grains, liquid spilling through or − worst of all − blockages in the tube.
Those problems have been solved. The success is in the nozzle. What used to be a simple pipe has become an intricate duct, longer than before, with many constrictions and chambers. The liquid follows a complex path before it sprays from the hole. Each type of powder has its own nozzle design, which does the job with great efficiency.
What caused such progress? Soap companies hire plenty of scientists, who have long studied what happens when a liquid sprays out to become a powder. The problem is too hard to allow even the finest engineers to do what enjoy the most, to explore the question with mathematics and design the best solution. Because that failed, they tried another approach. It was the key to evolution, design without a designer: the preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of those injurious. It was, in other words, natural selection.
The engineers used the idea that moulds life itself: descent with modification. Take a nozzle that works quite well and make copies, each changed at random. Test them for how well they make powder. Then, impose a struggle for existence by insisting that not all can survive. Many of the altered devices are no better (or worse) than the parental form. They are discarded, but the few able to do a superior job are allowed to reproduce and are copied − but again not perfectly. As generations pass there emerges, as if by magic, a new and efficient pipe of complex and unexpected shape.

Natural selection is a machine that makes almost impossible things.
​

In other words, by mindlessly applying an algorithm based on the principle of natural selection, they were able to come up with a complex design for a superior spray nozzle that was inconceivable to the scientists trying to design one using engineering and science principles.

Believers in a god-like designer might argue that what natural selection did here was outperform mere mortal designers and that god, being a perfect designer, would be able to come up with a better design. But that argument doesn't work that well, either, as I will discuss in the next posting in this series.

Now these are some of the top biologists in the world... and the analogy they are using is similar to Southwind's... and a lot of people seem to find it very useful. Technology is developed in ways that are very analogous to "natural selection"... Southwind's analogy, like the nozzle example, helps people get a better understanding of both. Bottom up design is the very opposite of an "intelligent designer". See Dennett's crane vs. skyhook: http://www.geocities.com/athens/1401/bookrv12.html

 

[fishkr]

Fishkr,

What is your objection to using the word "development" to describe technological change?

It can also describe a process of iterative change and will not get confused with biological evolution.

."

My objection is based on the fact that the words don't mean the same things, and therefore it seems like a mistake to use them interchangeably.

IMHO the compression of language is a bad thing. It may not be overtly obvious, and my point may seem abstract, but think about musical recordings: A live performance will always have more information than an analog recording, an analog recording will have more information than a digital one, and an MP3 digital recording will have even less.

In almost any context you can name, "develop" invokes one entity/thing doing something to another entity/thing. It is therefore laden with a "top down" implication. The word evolution actually has the opposite bias. It implies or invokes self-propagating phenomenon, or at least is neutral.

For example, one might say, "The man developed a tract of land and built a shopping mall". You would never use "evolved" the same way. Unless you very cynical, or reaching for extreme irony.

Therefore, by suggesting the words are interchangeable, or by using them interchangeably, you would be compressing the language and losing meaning(information). As in music, "compression" is fine if you want convenience, but it's no substitute for the real thing, or the next best thing, or the next to the next . . .

And also within the context of this thread, using a word that has a "top down" bias for tech evolution may fly in the face of meme theory, which more or less says, "Ideas have a life of their own" . . . definitely a bottom-up concept.

 

[Paulhoff]

Paulhoff-- do you understand the following:

http://blog.case.edu/singham/2007/06/19/evolution1_the_power_of_natural_selection

Now these are some of the top biologists in the world... and the analogy they are using is similar to Southwind's... and a lot of people seem to find it very useful. Technology is developed in ways that are very analogous to "natural selection"... Southwind's analogy, like the nozzle example, helps people get a better understanding of both. Bottom up design is the very opposite of an "intelligent designer". See Dennett's crane vs. skyhook: http://www.geocities.com/athens/1401/bookrv12.html

I didn't know that animals (mainly higher level ones) pick and choose parts from other animals for future design.

Paul

 

[articulett]

I didn't know that animals (mainly higher level ones) pick and choose parts from other animals for future design.

Paul

Nobody said they did. But genes that aided in ancestral survival stick around as junk DNA in the genomes of future critters. Also, different critters (bats and birds) come up with the same solution to problems (getting away from predators...) There is also adaptation, where something that evolved for one purpose, ends up being used for another. We evolved ears to hear... they also happen to be good for holding eyeglasses on. And lets not forget symbiotes and ecosystems that evolve together.

The OP was addressed towards the creationists misperception regarding the tornado in a junkyard making a 747. It is correct to say that evolution is more like the evolution of aircraft over time... Those who don't understand this analogy seem, either not to really understand natural selection, and/or they seem unable to explain it better than Southwind's analogy. Why is the 747 analogy wrong? Why isn't Southwind's much better? That is what you guys would have to address to be taken seriously by anyone other than yourselves on this topic. To most of us, it just seems that you think you understand evolution, but you can't even explain the basics very well, much less address the analogy.

Also, it would help to give concrete examples of these major differences you imagine instead of hypotheticals with words like "goals", "intelligence", and "intent" poorly defined. You guys seem to be doing mental gymnastics in order to find important differences while never cluing into the fact that at it's essence-- it's the same thing. Remember, analogies allow you to make connections to aid understanding... they do not need to be exact. If all the experts in the field find analogies like this useful and the only ones who don't seem to get it are the slow people and known "intelligent design" proponents, then you might want to find out if you are the one who is missing something that the majority seems to understand.