Intelligent Evolution?

[Belz...]

If use and utility are required at some point by some thing, and data is needed, the data does need to be understood.

By what ? You just said a computer doesn't understand the program it runs. You're contradicting yourself, unless you're saying that some form of divine beign exists and understand all this impersonal data.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Does information get passed on and improved ? Yes. Well, gee, THAT was the analogy.

You are still missing that the kind and method of the information passing are what differ between the two processes and therefore render the analogy invalid.

 

[jimbob]

Finally.

Now shut up about analogies and give evidence for ET failing to explain life as it is, how it is.

Otherwise you're urinating in in a small segment of velocity-enhanced troposphere.

Fishkr:

Darwinian Evolution explains biology. It is the most simple and elegant theory I know about, in retrospect it is also blindingly obvious, I can't remember who(maybe Huxley) said "How stupid of me not to have thought of that". It also manages to show how complex life can evolve with no direction in the initial variation and no "goal", unlike Lamarckian evolution.

Darwinian evolution follows from imperfect self-replication, at the moment this only includes life, but it would also occur in any other system with imperfect self-replication.

I am arguing that the analogy in particular is an example of an evolutionary algorithm, of which there are real examples that show the power of the evolutionary approach (random mutation and goal-driven selection). These are fine to demonstrate the power of the evolutinary approach, but because there is no self-replication, they do not demonstrate evolution as it happens in biolgical organisms.

The difference is that with self-replication there is naturally selection for the best replicator, this is natural selection. Without self-replication, the selection criteria have to be defined, so there is an explicit or an implicit "goal", which is lacking in biological evolution. The giraffe doesn't have a long neck in order to eat the highest leaves, itr has a long neck because proto-giraffes with longer necks reproduced, whilst those with shorter necks didn't. Do you see the subtle difference?

I am arguing that every evolutionary algorithm in engineering requires a goal or set of specification criteria to work, this goal is not needed in biological evolution. There are ID websites, which claim that biological evolution is like technical development (indeed they like using the word evolutionin the context of technology to muddy the waters), and point out the need for a goal in technical development, so they say that biological evolution is akin to the intelligently guided process of technical "evolution" and not akin to Darwinian evoluton.

Now we could try to pretend that they are wrong and there is no intelligence involved or intent needed in engineering, but it won't convince many people, and will be misleading, or we could poiointout that biological evolution is unlike technical "development" in important ways.

I would prefer to show real examples of evolutionary algorithms that have been used to develop systems, some of which are not amenable to conventional design techniques, and say "these needed a goal, but if something reproduces itself imperfectly, there is selection for those variants that do reproduce. The full power of this algorithm is then optimising towards reproduction. Reproduction is the only 'goal' in biological evolution."

 

[cyborg]

The difference is that with self-replication there is naturally selection for the best replicator, this is natural selection. Without self-replication, the selection criteria have to be defined, so there is an explicit or an implicit "goal", which is lacking in biological evolution. The giraffe doesn't have a long neck in order to eat the highest leaves, itr has a long neck because proto-giraffes with longer necks reproduced, whilst those with shorter necks didn't. Do you see the subtle difference?

Uh, jimbob - the implicit goal of the proto-giraffe is to have longer necks.

Not because they are trying to achieve that goal but because when that implicit goal is achieved the proto-giraffe is more successful.

But then none of the abstract entities in a genetic algorithm are "trying" to achieve the goal either - even though it could be quite precisely defined.

I am arguing that every evolutionary algorithm in engineering requires a goal or set of specification criteria to work, this goal is not needed in biological evolution.

You can claim what you like jimbob but it's just wrong - I don't need to specify a "goal", I can just define a world. I know because I've written those sorts of artificial life simulations before.

I didn't have to specify my "predator/prey" simulation to have a goal of "equilibrium," "extinction" or "dominance" for those consequences to arise.

Why you don't seem to get this is beyond me. It's ****ing simple.

There are ID websites,

Yes there are jimbob.

Now we could try to pretend that they are wrong and there is no intelligence involved or intent needed in engineering, but it won't convince many people,

Too ****ing bad.

 

[fishkr]

You seem to be in the wrong thread then, fishkr. This thread is specifically about an analogy that likens technological development to biological evolution, as jimbob said, [.

The OP was was specifically about using the analogy to discredit Intelligent Design. Read the first line.

Having gone round and round with you on the subject of the analogy, and seeing no life there, I'm trying to cut to the chase and discredit I.D. with simple logic, to acually get something done.

 

[fishkr]

Fishkr,

Just for clarity sake, when you say ET (Evolutionary Theory), you are including both the biological evolution and technological evolution, aren't you?
The position of Southwind17 is that to all intents and purposes they are the same story.

.

I think I'm using ET strictly for bio, as in Darwin. There have been so many posts now I may be experiencing the intellectual equivalent of "genetic drift". I think I've been using "tech evo" or something like that for the other analog.

By "same story I assume you don't mean the "same thing"?

My position is that niether are really "top down" processes. What really fascinates me is that there seems to be this basic human tendency to see "top down" when it isn't the best, or most complete description of reality.

 

[fishkr]

You seem to be in the wrong thread then, fishkr. This thread is specifically about an analogy that likens technological development to biological evolution, as jimbob said, [.

The OP was was specifically about using the analogy to discredit Intelligent Design. Read the first line.

Having gone round and round with you on the subject of the analogy, and seeing no life there, I'm trying to cut to the chase and discredit I.D. with simple logic, to acually get something done.

 

[cyborg]

What really fascinates me is that there seems to be this basic human tendency to see "top down" when it isn't the best, or most complete description of reality.

Our sense of self is at the top. It hardly surprises me at all.

 

[Herzblut]

Uh, jimbob - the implicit goal of the proto-giraffe is to have longer necks.

Not because they are trying to achieve that goal but because when that implicit goal is achieved the proto-giraffe is more successful.

Why not the proto-zebra?

 

[Herzblut]

You can claim what you like jimbob but it's just wrong - I don't need to specify a "goal", I can just define a world. I know because I've written those sorts of artificial life simulations before.

A life simulation is life itself, your definition of the world is the world?

 

[cyborg]

Why not the proto-zebra?

Why not indeed? Giraffes and Zebras share a common ancestor after all.

A life simulation is life itself, your definition of the world is the world?

Translate into English please?

 

[Apathia]

I think I'm using ET strictly for bio, as in Darwin. There have been so many posts now I may be experiencing the intellectual equivalent of "genetic drift". I think I've been using "tech evo" or something like that for the other analog.

By "same story I assume you don't mean the "same thing"?

My position is that niether are really "top down" processes. What really fascinates me is that there seems to be this basic human tendency to see "top down" when it isn't the best, or most complete description of reality.

Yeah, I meant "same thing" to all practical purposes.

I agree that though there's a "top down" aspect of discription in the way we relate to each other and our enviornment, when you break open the box of human sentience, you find the workings are all bottom up.

The top down is a kind of psychological shorthand integral to the concept of the ego acting on and manipulating its environment. It's a fiction with no substance in reality but comes in the same package as the evolutionary devlopments that allow humans to be more clever at manipulating their habitats than other animals on the planet.

The "emptiness of ego" is a subtle understanding most of us won't get just because it seems so natural to us that our actions are centered in a top down ego. Only conventionally speaking are we individual selves.

Christains take this functional illusion to be metaphysically real, ie the "soul."
Then giving metaphysical substance to the intelligent ego, they go on to concieve a cosmic metaphysical intelligence behind so-called "Intellgent Design. Of course, conventionally speaking, there is intelligence and design in human activity, but there's no metaphysical top down ego of the sort they want to find in nature at large.

Nature exhibits no intervention of an intellgent soul, and human activity doesn't either, but most of us (unless we've been cracked over the head by a few good Zen koans) are too close to the illusion of our selfhood to see it's empty.

A lot of the muddle in this thread would be avoided by not confusing the metaphysical with the conventional. Doing so is what A.N. Whitehead called, "The fallacy of misplaced concreteness."
Playing with Buddhism again: Buddhism agknowleges the experiential ego, but finds no metaphysical reality to it. It's like a rainbow. When you know what a rainbow really is, you know it's not really there.

 

[mijopaalmc]

The OP was was specifically about using the analogy to discredit Intelligent Design. Read the first line.

I know what the analogy in the OP is about; I read the first line. My point is that the analogy doesn't go what it claims to do because it fails to acknowledge that technological development is an intelligently directed process, unlike biological evolution.

Having gone round and round with you on the subject of the analogy, and seeing no life there, I'm trying to cut to the chase and discredit I.D. with simple logic, to acually get something done.

But the thread is about the usefulness of the analogy in "combating Intelligently Design (ID) theory". While I agree with your assessment of intelligent design, they are simply not relevant to the discussion at hand.

 

[Herzblut]

Why not indeed? Giraffes and Zebras share a common ancestor after all.

Right, why not indeed? Can you explain? And don't we all share a common ancester after all?

EDIT: This is a serious question. I simply don't have an answer. Why is it, of all species, the giraffe (and its predecessor) which has developed such a long neck?

Translate into English please?

Which word don't you understand?

 

[Herzblut]

I know what the analogy in the OP is about; I read the first line. My point is that the analogy doesn't go what it claims to do because it fails to acknowledge that technological development is an intelligently directed process, unlike biological evolution.

I agree the analogy doesn't go far. The "products" of biological evolution replicate themselves and development is driven by external selection of certain random errors in the construction plan. Technical products don't produce themselves. Their lifecycle is determined by production, logistics and retail branches of the industrie and finally by the consumer. The producer has production and development clearly separated into different processes. Technical development does not happen by accidental errors in the production cycle.

The analogy is awfully misleading as you described. And it gives the utterly wrong impression of a directed evolution geared to higher complexity.

 

[fishkr]

I am arguing that every evolutionary algorithm in engineering requires a goal or set of specification criteria to work, this goal is not needed in biological evolution. There are ID websites, which claim that biological evolution is like technical development (indeed they like using the word evolutionin the context of technology to muddy the waters), and point out the need for a goal in technical development, so they say that biological evolution is akin to the intelligently guided process of technical "evolution" and not akin to Darwinian evoluton.

."

Musings:

I'm thinking that what may be at the core of this argument, at least on the Tech side, is one of "dimension gap". When speaking about Darwin we understand the time scale involved, the context. We understand that it is a long process. When thinking about technology we tend to fixate on the results, or if not, ignore most of the context.

When thinking about technology people tend to think of individuals as agents of change. Thomas Edison. Wilbur and Frank Loyd Wright . . . . . . our natural tendency to reduce complexity to a soundbyte leads us to look for heroes, and the heroes themselves are often motivated to help propagate this idea. Tech Evo and Design are likey to be opaque to any outsider. Why should it be otherwise? It's good marketing to condense a cumbersome process into one that fits the human need for ego gratification.

We can't do this for Giraffes. No credit is given for the invention of the long neck, because the phenomenon, viewed properly, is a process. There is no long necked giraffe hero. 4 dimensional giraffe reality is a continuum of animals with different necks. And technology is exactly the same.

But not. It is not self-replicating. Or. . .

The first thing an inventor or engineer or designer does when presented with a problem to solve, (amateurs are are exempted from this stricture, and this is why we cringe when people find out that you make "new" stuff for a living and they want to show you the shiny new wheel they've just re-invented) is to look back in time. Look back into the tech genome. It's called "prior art".

What you see when you look there usually shocks the **** out of you. Didn't some Old Testament dude have something to say about novelty? Well it's true. The first patent I filed in the mid 80's was for a product idea that I thought had no existing market category when I began the process, and ended up including a reference to prior art almost 100 years old.

Another anectodote to ponder: As any R&D guy or inventor will tell you, and speak of as a "given", and the occurance of related litigation would be regarded as support of its veracity, is that, "If you're thinking about an idea somebody else is thinking about the same thing". What they fail to mention is that it's often "somebody else" in each county of each state of each nation in the increasingly globalized universe. No complaints. As the bar is raised, the field gets bigger. But still it gives one pause.

Back to the self-replicating issue: Without putting a Lamarckian label on anything, who's to say we won't see a Darwinesque leap into an identifiable memetic solution to the replication of ideas and therefore Tech Evolution? In which case such a process might be as "bottom up" as Darwin?

Seriously, if you think back to Lamarck's day, he was observing iterative change but had no means to understand the mechanism. Darwins genius was to grasp the cause/effect BEFORE he had any knowledge of DNA. Now we understand that powerful aspects of culture and environmet can be observed to evolve, but we can't exactly identify the mechanism. doesn't this sound familiar?

 

[articulett]

From the point of view of information (not the thing it codes for), it's the same. Information that is good at getting itself replicated drives evolution. This is true whether the information is in genes or recipes or directions or blueprints etc.

 

[fishkr]

when you break open the box of human sentience, you find the workings are all bottom up.

.

Perfectly spoken.

 

[Herzblut]

From the point of view of information (not the thing it codes for), it's the same. Information that is good at getting itself replicated drives evolution. This is true whether the information is in genes or recipes or directions or blueprints etc.

Right. In so far, biological evolution is analog to the history of cooking recipes.

 

[fishkr]

Nature exhibits no intervention of an intellgent soul, and human activity doesn't either, but most of us (unless we've been cracked over the head by a few good Zen koans) are too close to the illusion of our selfhood to see it's empty.

.

Six pounds of flax.