Belz...
Fiend God
Gosh, some people really can't understand analogies. At all.
Articulett said:
Love that bit!
Intelligent Evolution?
- Thread starter Southwind17
- Start date
Gosh, some people really can't understand analogies. At all.
Love that bit!
Belz...
Fiend God
What are you saying Belz?
Humans have taken jet engines and put them on boats. That was purpousful recombination of information, unlike evolution.
Would you agree that the model is closer to Lamarckian evolution than Darwinian evolution?
Do you accept that there is a difference between Lamarckian and Darwinian evolution?
Humans have taken jet engines and put them on boats. That was purpousful recombination of information, unlike evolution.
Would you agree that the model is closer to Lamarckian evolution than Darwinian evolution?
Do you accept that there is a difference between Lamarckian and Darwinian evolution?
Belz...
Fiend God
I'm saying that Paul AGAIN uses the human POV as the core of the analogy. That's NOT how the analogy is built, but it's not like you folks get that.
And yet the results are the same.
In that Lamarckian evolution doesn't exist, no.
And at any rate, I'm not sure Lamackian evolution would have any actual "purpose".
Nothing but differences. Of course, from an information standpoint, there isn't much.
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Belz... said:
Of course Lamarckian evolution does not describe biological evolution but, forgetting analogy and talking about technical development in general, what is the essential differnce between:
"The first ladder wasn't long enough to reach the highest brannches, so a longer one was built"
"the proto-giraffe's neck wasn't long enough to reach the highest branches, so its descendents' necks grew longer"
Belz...
Fiend God
I'm trying to remember at least one of your posts with ANY information, but I can't seem to be able to.
Information: a message received and understood.
Just ignore the "understanding agent" behind the curtain.
Information doesn't need to be understood.
From which standpoint ?
My point is that the increase in the ladder's length is not at all like darwinian evolution, ans there is no random mutation nor natural selection. If you wish to make a point about memetic evolution, then the ladder's lenght would be part of that memetic information and fits closer to a Lamarckian treatment than a Darwinian one.
I personally am unconvinced about the utility of a memetic theory. I can see it is an interesting metaphor, and is an another way to describe certain aspects of cultural development, but haven't really seen anything that really convinces me.
Artists have other artists as influences, but does describing the artistic process as memetic provide any more understanding than that?
The idea about memes and ideology and the idea of the "burn the heretics meme" is somewhere where it seems to have most descriptive power.
As you have highlighted with your question "from which standpoint", this is why IDers would quite like Lamarck, as the standpoint could be the "guiding intelligence".
The giraffe stretches its neck and so it's offspring grow longer necks. The organism directs the evolutionary direction of its offspring by altering its physical characteristics slightly and its offspring altering them further in the same direction. I would argue that Lamarckian evolution does have "goals". "The giraffe stretched its neck so its offspring have longer necks"
The populations of hypothetical organisms subjected to Lamarckian evolution would be different to those subjected to the real, darwinian evolution. The born offspring of a proto-giraffe are at least as likely to to have shorter necks than their parents as to have ;longer (probably very slightly more likely due to regression to the mean). The population of reproducing proto-giraffes would be more likely to have longer necks than their parents.
With Lamarckian evolution, the born offspring of a proto giraffe is more likely (certain?) to have a longer neck than its parents.
The end result might be the same but the path taken would be different and any hypothetical fossil evidence would be different.
Back to the ladder:
I am picking fruit, and I find that I can't reach the highest branches. There are many different and valid solutions, but I decide to use a ladder - after all, I am already using one. here could be many discussions about how I come to be using a ladder to pick fruit, and why I am picking fruit, but that is my immediate aim. It doesn't take much thought to realise that a longer ladder would reach higher, so I decide to make one, and lo, it works. There was no random variation, I didn't try altering the rung-pitch, nor shortening the total length.
My immediate goal was a tool that enabled me to that reach the higher branches and the requirement was realised with a longer ladder.
Do you consider it misleading to say that there was intent behind the process of creating the longer ladder design?
In social animals (especially primates) There are inherited characteristics that are acquired too. Social status for example. The offspring of an alpha female is more likely to survive and to thrive, thus becomming higher status because of the status of the parent. Wealth and status is also often inherited in humans, and until recently the rich had more reproducing offspring than the poor.
I personally am unconvinced about the utility of a memetic theory. I can see it is an interesting metaphor, and is an another way to describe certain aspects of cultural development, but haven't really seen anything that really convinces me.
Artists have other artists as influences, but does describing the artistic process as memetic provide any more understanding than that?
The idea about memes and ideology and the idea of the "burn the heretics meme" is somewhere where it seems to have most descriptive power.
As you have highlighted with your question "from which standpoint", this is why IDers would quite like Lamarck, as the standpoint could be the "guiding intelligence".
The giraffe stretches its neck and so it's offspring grow longer necks. The organism directs the evolutionary direction of its offspring by altering its physical characteristics slightly and its offspring altering them further in the same direction. I would argue that Lamarckian evolution does have "goals". "The giraffe stretched its neck so its offspring have longer necks"
The populations of hypothetical organisms subjected to Lamarckian evolution would be different to those subjected to the real, darwinian evolution. The born offspring of a proto-giraffe are at least as likely to to have shorter necks than their parents as to have ;longer (probably very slightly more likely due to regression to the mean). The population of reproducing proto-giraffes would be more likely to have longer necks than their parents.
With Lamarckian evolution, the born offspring of a proto giraffe is more likely (certain?) to have a longer neck than its parents.
The end result might be the same but the path taken would be different and any hypothetical fossil evidence would be different.
Back to the ladder:
I am picking fruit, and I find that I can't reach the highest branches. There are many different and valid solutions, but I decide to use a ladder - after all, I am already using one. here could be many discussions about how I come to be using a ladder to pick fruit, and why I am picking fruit, but that is my immediate aim. It doesn't take much thought to realise that a longer ladder would reach higher, so I decide to make one, and lo, it works. There was no random variation, I didn't try altering the rung-pitch, nor shortening the total length.
My immediate goal was a tool that enabled me to that reach the higher branches and the requirement was realised with a longer ladder.
Do you consider it misleading to say that there was intent behind the process of creating the longer ladder design?
In social animals (especially primates) There are inherited characteristics that are acquired too. Social status for example. The offspring of an alpha female is more likely to survive and to thrive, thus becomming higher status because of the status of the parent. Wealth and status is also often inherited in humans, and until recently the rich had more reproducing offspring than the poor.
At first glance, that's one of the silliest comments I've ever seen. On second glance, too.
Although I'm sure we can argue about what "understood" means.
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cyborg
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You're missing important steps - as ever.
This reminds me of today's article at The Daily WTF of the person contacted by his brother-in-law about wanting to program "a game like Halo".
His first foray into programming was to open notepad and enter:
"Morph the screen into something cool"
The "program" failed to work.
Does it really take "not that much thought" to make such an inference?
articulett
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You guys keep getting stuck on how the information gets altered (mutated, tweaked, recombined, replicated, etc)... rather than getting the basic understand that the fact that it is "made better" accounts for it's survival...and continual evolution. Information (whether in DNA or in directions for ladder building) doesn't care how it gets passed on... the FACT that it is passed on (preferentially selected) allows it to be part of evolving systems.
Information (whether in DNA or human ideas) does not care HOW it gets passed on... but if it does get passed on, it becomes a part of evolving systems... if it doesn't it can't. This ensures that information is always evolving "forwards". A giraffes neck will appear to grow over generations until the cost benefit ratio to having long necks and reproductive success is maximized. In essence... so will the average size of ladders. With giraffes this might look like the giraffes knew to grow longer necks, but what is actually happening is that the longer necked giraffes preferentially survive and pass on their genes. It will also look like ladder makers knew in advance that a ladder needs to be tall enough to allow most people to access their roofs and short enough to carry home from the hardware store in their car and light enough to lend to a neighbor but sturdy enough not to be implicated in lawsuits... etc. But that is information that evolved by testing the product in the environment over time... just like the information regarding giraffe neck length. No one designed the prototype ladder... it has evolved via information systems evolving... just like giraffes. It appears designed because it fits it's environment so damn well... just like giraffes... but it only does so because of the information that preferentially survived and was passed on.
Belz and Cyborg and Southwind and others have been very patient in trying to help you guys understand this. But you keep getting side tracked on the notion that humans are involved so it's a totally different thing. And you are rude to those who try to give you a clue, because you are so sure that you are saying something that makes sense.
But everything you say reveals that you just don't get it--you sound like buffoons. How much more evidence do you need to show that the analogy works. The top people in the field use similar analogies. I even posted a link where people in the aviation industry talk about the evolution of aircraft. Those who don't understand are not people anyone would go to to have evolution explained to them. They obfuscate rather than clarify. It's sad--because you guys could learn something, but you don't want to learn--you want to be right. But the only thing you are right about, in this case, is that you are right that the analogy makes no sense to you. But that is due to ignorance and hubris on your part--it's nothing to do with the analogy and the time and effort people have taken to try and give you a clue.
Your conviction that you are "right" about something is getting in the way of you learning something valuable. Your hubris has caged your mind in it's ignorance.
Information (whether in DNA or human ideas) does not care HOW it gets passed on... but if it does get passed on, it becomes a part of evolving systems... if it doesn't it can't. This ensures that information is always evolving "forwards". A giraffes neck will appear to grow over generations until the cost benefit ratio to having long necks and reproductive success is maximized. In essence... so will the average size of ladders. With giraffes this might look like the giraffes knew to grow longer necks, but what is actually happening is that the longer necked giraffes preferentially survive and pass on their genes. It will also look like ladder makers knew in advance that a ladder needs to be tall enough to allow most people to access their roofs and short enough to carry home from the hardware store in their car and light enough to lend to a neighbor but sturdy enough not to be implicated in lawsuits... etc. But that is information that evolved by testing the product in the environment over time... just like the information regarding giraffe neck length. No one designed the prototype ladder... it has evolved via information systems evolving... just like giraffes. It appears designed because it fits it's environment so damn well... just like giraffes... but it only does so because of the information that preferentially survived and was passed on.
Belz and Cyborg and Southwind and others have been very patient in trying to help you guys understand this. But you keep getting side tracked on the notion that humans are involved so it's a totally different thing. And you are rude to those who try to give you a clue, because you are so sure that you are saying something that makes sense.
But everything you say reveals that you just don't get it--you sound like buffoons. How much more evidence do you need to show that the analogy works. The top people in the field use similar analogies. I even posted a link where people in the aviation industry talk about the evolution of aircraft. Those who don't understand are not people anyone would go to to have evolution explained to them. They obfuscate rather than clarify. It's sad--because you guys could learn something, but you don't want to learn--you want to be right. But the only thing you are right about, in this case, is that you are right that the analogy makes no sense to you. But that is due to ignorance and hubris on your part--it's nothing to do with the analogy and the time and effort people have taken to try and give you a clue.
Your conviction that you are "right" about something is getting in the way of you learning something valuable. Your hubris has caged your mind in it's ignorance.
Cyborg, sometimes, the problem suggests the solution without any need for random mutation of ideas. The nature of the problem "directs" the problem solving route.
What steps am I missing out.
Maybe I should have said I wanted a longer ladder, so I decided to use longer poles to make the ladder. (There are other solutions, but that is an obvious one)
I want a car to carry an extra person, so I do not remove any seating area, but add an extra seat, and enlarge the car design to fit.
ETA:
I accept that unlike "classical" Lamarckian theory, you could still have selection of ideas, but unlike bioological evolution, or Darwinian theory, the variation is sometimes (often) directed in the same direction.
If a design parameters are calculated, then the variation in that parameter is not akin to random variation. "We will need a steel cable at least 5-cm in diameter to hold such a weight with a 50% safety margin." Where is the random variation in arriving at that number?
What steps am I missing out.
Maybe I should have said I wanted a longer ladder, so I decided to use longer poles to make the ladder. (There are other solutions, but that is an obvious one)
I want a car to carry an extra person, so I do not remove any seating area, but add an extra seat, and enlarge the car design to fit.
ETA:
I accept that unlike "classical" Lamarckian theory, you could still have selection of ideas, but unlike bioological evolution, or Darwinian theory, the variation is sometimes (often) directed in the same direction.
If a design parameters are calculated, then the variation in that parameter is not akin to random variation. "We will need a steel cable at least 5-cm in diameter to hold such a weight with a 50% safety margin." Where is the random variation in arriving at that number?
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cyborg
deus ex machina
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That is what memory is for.
Hmm... the "nature" of the "problem" directs the "problem solving route".
Sounds fishily like some sort of "natural selection" of solutions could be involved.
You can't just say, "make me a ladder that will solve my problems" - you haven't constructed a working domain to manipulate the problem within.
And you came to understand the "nature" of the "problem" and hence the "problem solving route" how exactly?
What's so "obvious" about a solution?
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At first glance, that's one of the silliest comments I've ever seen. On second glance, too.
Although I'm sure we can argue about what "understood" means.
Seems odd.
"Information" or an abstraction of the design of a luminous sundial - or whatever technology is being discussed - doesn't just represent the design of that luminous sundial... it is that luminous sundial design... undesigned and not understood by anybody.
Belz seems to be making an argument for some sort of absent-minded idealism. IMO.
W,
You know I give the Analogy a mixed review, but the thing I like about it is the "bottom up" perspective on intelligent activity.
Let's take for a rough example a chess playing computer. It falls under the older catagory of "Artificial Intelligence," and we can properly say it's game playing behavior exhibits a goal and strategy. As an agent in the game with a purpose to be achieved (though it doesn't have the complexity of self-consciousness), it acts on its enviornment in a "top down" fashion. However, this behavior emerges from the unitelligent substratum of switches and relays.
Late Mahayana Buddhist Philosophy, upon which Zen Buddhism is based, presented a new kind of Idealism from the traditional Top Down, Absolute, Mind of the Hindu tradition. "Mind" in the Zen tradition isn't a metaphysically existing entity but the network of notes of perception that from the bottom up orchestrate the apparence of activity from a center. But the center is empty, no more than something like a strange attractor.
When Zen speaks the conventional usage of the term "mind," (the top down metaphysical, idealistic agent) it teaches "No-Mind," and in the Renzai School hauls out some nasty conundroms called "koans" to help the student get over her attachment to the egocentric, fictious, mental entity. It doesn't deny we have an experience of being self-conscious. It just denies that Ms. Top Down has any objective substance.
So it is a kind of "Mind Absent Idealism."
This is way simplistic statement of Mahayana Thought that went into great detail on how the concept of Mind arises.
Obviously in the case of human sentiance, this is a more involved process than animal intelligence. Human tool making takes on more a character of top down design than animal nest building, but there is no top. Just a pyramid with a point that goes to nothing. The substratum process continues to be absent of mind.
Of course you can continue to use conventional language and tools of thought and speak of human intelligence in contrast to most animal intelligence. But you do so with a wiser perspective.
articulett
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I think the analogy is very good, because it directly addresses the errors in the tornado in a junkyard straw man... those who don't get the analogy do not even seem to realize why the tornado-making-a-747 is a strawman and so they have no means of correcting it or recognizing why Southwind's analogy is far more accurate. The top people in the field however use analogies like southwinds all the time. Here's mathematician, John Allen Paulos on the subject which I'm sure the self appointed experts will ignore.
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/paulos05/paulos05_index.html
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Rather, my intention here is to develop some loose analogies between these biological issues and related economic ones and to show that these analogies point to a surprising crossing of political lines. Let me begin by asking how it is that modern free market economies are as complex as they are, boasting amazingly elaborate production, distribution and communication systems? Go into almost any drug store and you can find your favourite candy bar. And what's true at the personal level is true at the industrial level. Somehow there are enough ball bearings and computer chips in just the right places in factories all over the country. The physical infrastructure and communication networks are also marvels of integrated complexity. Fuel supplies are, by and large, where they're needed. Email reaches you in Miami as well as in Milwaukee, not to mention Barcelona and Bangkok.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The natural question, discussed first by Adam Smith and later by Friedrich Hayek and Karl Popper among others, is who designed this marvel of complexity? Which commissar decreed the number of packets of dental floss for each retail outlet? The answer, of course, is that no economic god designed this system. It emerged and grew by itself. No one argues that all the components of the candy bar distribution system must have been put into place at once, or else there would be no Snickers at the corner store.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] So far, so good. What is more than a bit odd, however, is that some of the most ardent opponents of Darwinian evolution ó for example, many fundamentalist Christians ó are among the most ardent supporters of the free market. They accept the market's complexity without qualm, yet insist the complexity of biological phenomena requires a designer.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] They would reject the idea that there is or should be central planning in the economy. They would point out that simple economic exchanges which are beneficial to people become entrenched and then gradually modified as they become part of larger systems of exchange, while those that are not beneficial die out. Yet some of these same people refuse to believe natural selection and "blind processes" can lead to biological order arising spontaneously.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Of course, many other sources have been quoted. I think those who don't understand the analogy and who would like to understand it need to ask themselves why the tornado making a 747 is a wrong analogy for evolution. Certainly, Southwind's analogy is much more akin to the way evolution actually works as many of the experts quoted in this thread have shown. Those who have the biggest problem with the analogy tend to be the people who want to sum up evolution as random in the same way creationists do. Moreover, they seem to misunderstand how creationists argue and are unaware of how very much they sound muddled like them. I am quite convinced that those that don't understand the analogy do not understand natural selection as well as they imagine themselves to. Natural selection is highly nonrandom... these analogies show what exactly is meant by that. The fact that Jimbob and Mijo and Walter Wayne are all people who have trouble understanding how natural selection is nonrandom and just happen to be the self appointed experts who can't understand this analogy is telling. I also note that some of the bozos on this thread are known apologists for religion--which I suspect is at the root of their arrogance and ignorance.
[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]However, there is enough good information available on this thread for anyone who would like to think their way out of the miasma and muddlement of the self appointed experts.
[/FONT]
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/paulos05/paulos05_index.html
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Rather, my intention here is to develop some loose analogies between these biological issues and related economic ones and to show that these analogies point to a surprising crossing of political lines. Let me begin by asking how it is that modern free market economies are as complex as they are, boasting amazingly elaborate production, distribution and communication systems? Go into almost any drug store and you can find your favourite candy bar. And what's true at the personal level is true at the industrial level. Somehow there are enough ball bearings and computer chips in just the right places in factories all over the country. The physical infrastructure and communication networks are also marvels of integrated complexity. Fuel supplies are, by and large, where they're needed. Email reaches you in Miami as well as in Milwaukee, not to mention Barcelona and Bangkok.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The natural question, discussed first by Adam Smith and later by Friedrich Hayek and Karl Popper among others, is who designed this marvel of complexity? Which commissar decreed the number of packets of dental floss for each retail outlet? The answer, of course, is that no economic god designed this system. It emerged and grew by itself. No one argues that all the components of the candy bar distribution system must have been put into place at once, or else there would be no Snickers at the corner store.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] So far, so good. What is more than a bit odd, however, is that some of the most ardent opponents of Darwinian evolution ó for example, many fundamentalist Christians ó are among the most ardent supporters of the free market. They accept the market's complexity without qualm, yet insist the complexity of biological phenomena requires a designer.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] They would reject the idea that there is or should be central planning in the economy. They would point out that simple economic exchanges which are beneficial to people become entrenched and then gradually modified as they become part of larger systems of exchange, while those that are not beneficial die out. Yet some of these same people refuse to believe natural selection and "blind processes" can lead to biological order arising spontaneously.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Of course, many other sources have been quoted. I think those who don't understand the analogy and who would like to understand it need to ask themselves why the tornado making a 747 is a wrong analogy for evolution. Certainly, Southwind's analogy is much more akin to the way evolution actually works as many of the experts quoted in this thread have shown. Those who have the biggest problem with the analogy tend to be the people who want to sum up evolution as random in the same way creationists do. Moreover, they seem to misunderstand how creationists argue and are unaware of how very much they sound muddled like them. I am quite convinced that those that don't understand the analogy do not understand natural selection as well as they imagine themselves to. Natural selection is highly nonrandom... these analogies show what exactly is meant by that. The fact that Jimbob and Mijo and Walter Wayne are all people who have trouble understanding how natural selection is nonrandom and just happen to be the self appointed experts who can't understand this analogy is telling. I also note that some of the bozos on this thread are known apologists for religion--which I suspect is at the root of their arrogance and ignorance.
[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]However, there is enough good information available on this thread for anyone who would like to think their way out of the miasma and muddlement of the self appointed experts.
[/FONT]
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If it requires a simple calculatrion.
We are making a MOSFET with an on-resistance of one miliOhm. If the requirement was for a half-miliOhm device, the active area would need to double. The new design uses a lot of features of the old design so could be said to develop from it, but there was no analogue of random variation of the design to reach this value. A very simple calculation was all that was needed to calculate the active area needed. There was also no form of selection of the solutions.
Where is either random variation or natural selection needed to solve the following problem?
10x=10, find x
A single cable can support a 500N weight
How many cables would you need to support a 900N weight?
How many would you need if you wanted to be safe from any single cable snapping? (Assuming that they can all be anchored adequately).
I would say that the nature of the problem often suggests some types of solutions, and if that is the case then Darwinian evolution is a poor model of this. Whether Lamarckian evolution is a useful or indeed even accurate model is another matter.
However, I would say that it is less misleading than Darwinian evolution in this type of example of technical problem-solving.