Intelligent Evolution?

[President Bush]

I guess this proves mijo doesn't read carefully. ARTICULETT HAS YOU ON IGNORE MIJO!!! Or maybe mijo simply cannot grasp the sophisticated concept of the 'ignore' feature!

Abstraction? Sometimes satire writes itself.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Which differences, mijo, are you claiming have been 'abstracted away'? Please pay due cognisance to the Sam & Ollie story, the ladder analogy and the lift cables analogy (my versions) in formulating your response, or will your list of similarities and differences that I'm hoping to see highlight this for us!

What you done with the parable of Sam and Ollie and the parable of the ladder maker and fruit picker is show that when you remove intelligence from development you end up with something that very closely approximate evolution. This demonstrates in itself that there are sufficient grounds for a distinction between the processes and that intelligence is the necessary condition for making that distinctions.

 

[mijopaalmc]

I guess this proves mijo doesn't read carefully. ARTICULETT HAS YOU ON IGNORE MIJO!!!

I know that.

That doesn't mean that I can't respond to her blatant misrepresentations of my arguments.

In general, someone having you on ignore doesn't make them less wrong nor does it prevent you from pushing the discussion forward by responding to them. In the past, people have responded to my responses to people who have had me on ignore.

 

[Southwind17]

You just don't get it do you?

Picking a single point of correspondence does not make a good analogy. You need several. Wine is made by the alcoholic fermentation of grape juice using eukaryotic yeasts whereas yogurt is made by the lactic acid fermentation of milk by prokaryotic bacteria. In other words, the two processes are the same only in so far as they are fermentation processes. Therefore, saying that they are essentially the same is extremely misleading to anyone who hopes to learn anything more about the processes than that they are fermentation processes.

Similarly, the differences between biological evolution and technological development have been discussed at great length and dismissed because the supposed abstraction on which the "analogy" is based occur at a "higher level" than the differences. However, the "analogy" does not actually convey any more information other than that the processes are essentially the same in so far as information changes and reproduces with the information that reproduces most efficiently persisting. This is a problem because it neither explains, even in the broadest detail, each process actually work in the real world not does it "counter Intelligent Design (ID) theory", because, as jimbob has shown, intelligent design proponents liken intelligent design to technological development at a level lower than the one at which the analogy functions.

Post your lists of similarities and differences mijo, as requested above. Let's see who gets what eh!

Oh, and whilst you're at it, please don't forget about these pertinent requests/questions posed earlier, that you seem to have conveniently avoided responding to:

Would you care to offer up some examples of technological evolution whereby an indifferent variation to a design (mutation) persists, only to prove advantageous later, AND, that necessarily invalidates the analogy because the analogy necessarily relies on such concept for its validity. Please.

I agree that humans can take evolutionary approaches to problems.

Could you please expand on this mijo so that we can be sure exactly what you're acknowledging here, at to what degree(s). Are you proposing an alternative to technological development as a good analogy for biological evolution?

The fact that goal direction and systematic (rather than random) changes can be incorporated into technological development makes it different in its essence from biological evolution which cannot incorporate goal direction and systematic changes can be incorporated.

Yes, it does make it different, I agree, but that of itself doesn't invalidate the analogy. It's been explained ad nauseum that analogies, by definition, are different from what they set out to describe. What would happen, though, if the goal direction and systematic changes to which you refer above were replaced with randomness and retention of improvements?

 

[amb]

Er Belz, The unit of evolution is the gene, if the gene is passed on, how is it a "failure"?

If a gene fails to reproduce, then it is a reproductive failure.

That it fails to reproduce is considered a failure. But bad genes still get passed on as witnessed by cancer, diabetes, mongoloid, downs syndrome, ect.


And a million other maladies.
Any hope of defeating these diseases that are passed on to generation after generation lays on the recent mapping of the human genome.
So it will be human information that will eventually defeat these ''bad genes''.

 

[Southwind17]

What you done with the parable of Sam and Ollie and the parable of the ladder maker and fruit picker is show that when you remove intelligence from development you end up with something that very closely approximate evolution. This demonstrates in itself that there are sufficient grounds for a distinction between the processes and that intelligence is the necessary condition for making that distinctions.

Excellent. So, what you're saying mijo is that 'intelligence', and 'intelligence' ALONE, constitutes the ONLY key difference between the processes of technological development and biological evolution. Hardly comparable with the wine/yoghurt comparison, don't you think!

So, all we need to do now mijo is convice you that 'intelligence' can be logically removed (not abstracted away, but logically removed) from technological development, and you'll accept that the OP analogy is sound. Is that correct, or are you going to renege on or obfuscate your post above?

 

[Southwind17]

I know that.

That doesn't mean that I can't respond to her blatant misrepresentations of my arguments.

No, it doesn't, but you refer to her in the second person mijo, which makes you appear even more stupid.

 

[quixotecoyote]

Excellent. So, what you're saying mijo is that 'intelligence', and 'intelligence' ALONE, constitutes the ONLY key difference between the processes of technological development and biological evolution. Hardly comparable with the wine/yoghurt comparison, don't you think!

So, all we need to do now mijo is convice you that 'intelligence' can be logically removed (not abstracted away, but logically removed) from technological development, and you'll accept that the OP analogy is sound. Is that correct, or are you going to renege on or obfuscate your post above?

Can be, but isn't*, making an analogy to actual technological development rather than hypothetical technological development misleading.



*With non-representative exceptions.

eta:

Pretend technological development is completely unlike how it usually works ........ See how similar to evolution it is?

 

[mijopaalmc]

Pretend technological development is completely unlike how it usually works ........ See how similar to evolution it is?

This is basically the reason that I haven't responded to the posts that Southwind17 claims I am avoiding: he has basically tortured the notion of technological development until it bears very little resemblance to what occurs in reality and then claims that since it can be done, the analogy in the OP is valid. He doesn't realize that, asking what would happen to technological development "if the goal direction and systematic changes to which you refer above were replaced with randomness and retention of improvements" in biological evolution is like asking what would happen if the grape juice and alcoholic fermentation by eykayotic yeasts in wine making were replaced by the milk and lactic acid fermentation by prokaryotic bacteria. Obviously, development would become evolution, but only because the essential characteristics of development (i.e., goal direction and systematic changes) had been replaced with the essential characteristics of evolution (i.e., randomness and retention of improvements). Similarly, wine making would become yogurt making, but only because the essential characteristics of wine making (i.e., grape juice and alcoholic fermentation by eykayotic yeasts) had been replaced with the essential characteristics of yogurt making (i.e., milk and lactic acid fermentation by prokaryotic bacteria).

You can paint a blue house red but then it is a red house.

 

[Southwind17]

Can be, but isn't*, making an analogy to actual technological development rather than hypothetical technological development misleading.

*With non-representative exceptions.

eta:

Pretend technological development is completely unlike how it usually works ........ See how similar to evolution it is?

This is basically the reason that I haven't responded to the posts that Southwind17 claims I am avoiding: he has basically tortured the notion of technological development until it bears very little resemblance to what occurs in reality and then claims that since it can be done, the analogy in the OP is valid. He doesn't realize that, asking what would happen to technological development "if the goal direction and systematic changes to which you refer above were replaced with randomness and retention of improvements" in biological evolution is like asking what would happen if the grape juice and alcoholic fermentation by eykayotic yeasts in wine making were replaced by the milk and lactic acid fermentation by prokaryotic bacteria. Obviously, development would become evolution, but only because the essential characteristics of development (i.e., goal direction and systematic changes) had been replaced with the essential characteristics of evolution (i.e., randomness and retention of improvements). Similarly, wine making would become yogurt making, but only because the essential characteristics of wine making (i.e., grape juice and alcoholic fermentation by eykayotic yeasts) had been replaced with the essential characteristics of yogurt making (i.e., milk and lactic acid fermentation by prokaryotic bacteria).

You can paint a blue house red but then it is a red house.

Oh, c'mon guys, give me a break. You're not trying to have us all believe that the hypothetical extensions of the OP analogy as valid similies for biological evolution are too far removed from the OP analogy to invalidate it, are you? Hell, we can run the extended analogy and examples by the IDiots on the basis that we can actually and physically emulate them in practice to prove their validity, and have the IDiots on the first train home tomorrow. Just go find some disgruntled fruit pickers and start making ladders for them without consulting!

I'll tell you what I think. I don't think you two and others like you really know what you believe! You simply twist and contort your watery argument away from any insinuation that you mistakenly think might curry favour from IDiots; insinuations which, if properly understood, actually counter the ID argument.

So, mijo, stop misconstruing this latest response of yours as a convenient get out from addressing other recent pertinent issues presented to you for consideration. Behave like a grown-up and respond accordingly, or admit your failed argument's run its course and you have nothing else to offer!

Oh, and the analogy, being an analogy, was never a blue house; well, certainly not the shade of blue you might have in mind. Don't forget, though, that a blue and red house look exactly the same from the inside!

 

[Belz...]

I guessed I should have known that you would completely miss the point, Belz. The point was that, by the scheme with which the analogy in the OP is created, one can take any common property that two objects have and declare them analogs no matter how many differences there actually are between the two processes. In other words, analogy based on one common property gives that false impression that the two supposed analog more similar than they really are.

Every analogy works on certain levels and not on others. As said before, it ceases to be an analogy if it works on all of them.

 

[Belz...]

Er Belz, The unit of evolution is the gene, if the gene is passed on, how is it a "failure"?

If a gene fails to reproduce, then it is a reproductive failure.

True. My mistake.

 

[Belz...]

I rarely laugh out loud... but this made me nearly wet myself.

[damn, that's hot!]

Er... hey, Articulett! Er... how're things ?

 

[Belz...]

You just don't get it do you?

Picking a single point of correspondence does not make a good analogy. You need several.

But you don't get to be the one who decides which points should be included. So far you insist that the intelligent agent is an important distinction, for no apparent reason.

 

[Belz...]

That it fails to reproduce is considered a failure. But bad genes still get passed on as witnessed by cancer, diabetes, mongoloid, downs syndrome, ect.


And a million other maladies.

Indeed. In fact, a tumour could grow indefinitely, given the proper conditions. So what's a 'failure', in a sense, is a success for something else.

 

[jimbob]

That it fails to reproduce is considered a failure. But bad genes still get passed on as witnessed by cancer, diabetes, mongoloid, downs syndrome, ect.

Evolution isn't "nice", the cancer genes prosper at the expense of their parent organism, and so eventually doom their own geneline because of killing the host.

Interestingly there are at least two cancer genelines that have survived the death of their host(s), Canine transmissible venereal tumor and a similar disease of Tasmanian Devils

Similarly one could argue that there is a selective advantage for the BSE prion protein, as it converts healthy prion protein to the leathal type.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Oh, c'mon guys, give me a break. You're not trying to have us all believe that the hypothetical extensions of the OP analogy as valid similies for biological evolution are too far removed from the OP analogy to invalidate it, are you? Hell, we can run the extended analogy and examples by the IDiots on the basis that we can actually and physically emulate them in practice to prove their validity, and have the IDiots on the first train home tomorrow. Just go find some disgruntled fruit pickers and start making ladders for them without consulting!

The problem is that if one's business is making ladders for people, one would not make ladders without first consulting the people on what they needed from a ladder. Similarly, while real engineers may not start with all the answers to the questions the want to address, they are not completely ignorant of how to make things work as Ollie was with his little electronics kit. As I have said before, all these examples prove is that by removing the essential elements of development and replacing them with the essential elements of evolution you can transform development into evolution, a trivial result in itself.

I'll tell you what I think. I don't think you two and others like you really know what you believe! You simply twist and contort your watery argument away from any insinuation that you mistakenly think might curry favour from IDiots; insinuations which, if properly understood, actually counter the ID argument.

How cute and condescending. Since we don't agree with your highly contrived analogy, we must not actually believe what we are saying.

So, mijo, stop misconstruing this latest response of yours as a convenient get out from addressing other recent pertinent issues presented to you for consideration. Behave like a grown-up and respond accordingly, or admit your failed argument's run its course and you have nothing else to offer!

I have answered your question; you just (not surprisingly) didn't like the answers. Again, your examples transform development into evolution by removing the essential elements of development and replacing them with the essential elements of evolution.

Oh, and the analogy, being an analogy, was never a blue house; well, certainly not the shade of blue you might have in mind. Don't forget, though, that a blue and red house look exactly the same from the inside!

But you'll never be successful in the real estate business if you refuse to acknowledge that a Tudor-style house is different from a Victorian-style house because they are both houses. People will also not take you seriously if you insist that they are the same because you can transfer the essential design elements from one to the other.

 

[jimbob]

IQuote:

Self-replicating organisms evolve and the optimisation is towards self-replication, everyhing else is incidental.

It seems to me that, as far as optimal replication goes, the pinnacle of evolution was achieved millions of years ago with viruses.

Human replication, for example, is far from optimal. It's pretty damn hazardous actually.

However all our ancestors did manage to reproduce, which is the only "test". The optimisation is towards "variants" that manage to produce at least one breeding offspring per parent.

Quote:
you define what the final result will do

AND IF I DO NOT DEFINE WHAT THE FINAL RESULT WILL DO?

Without the variants "breeding", nothing. If the selection is completely haphazard, then there will be no selection pressure.

Quote:
How were the simulated organisms selected to reproduce? There had to be some form of selection, as random variation without selection produces dross.

There is no randomness (and it seems I have to remind you YET AGAIN of the irrelevance of randomness). There is no variation. The simulation is not an evolutionary one. It merely counters your assertion that:

No, you keep asserting that there is no randomness; there is strong evidence that quantum events, like radioactive decay are truly random, these can cause mutations, so at least some mutations are random, even if most might be merely pseudorandom. If the nonlinear feedbacks within atmopspheric dynamics can multiply the effects of quantum events to a stage where they affect weather, then at a certain level, (six weeks?) weather would also be random, and in a way that affects natural selction, meaning that a probabilistic treatment of natural selection isn't just the best we can do with limited information, but actually a refelction of reality.

Quote:
you define what the final result will do

Since I did not specify any goal whatsoever. What is so hard to understand here?

At this stage I would be asking how the simulation worked as you seem to be saying that there is no selection criteria.

However, in the next set of paragraphs you explain:

Another model I used had some very rough attempts at defining something that could have evolutionary traits. As before you either get extinction, dominance or equilibrium. Not a hell of a lot of difference really other than that there is a wider variation of types floating about in the tank rather than just two hard-coded ones. The basic mechanism was to trade-off abilities for extra energy requirements and then have them randomly appear in the populations to see which would take hold.

In neither case did I ever have to specifically select a damn thing - the simulation runs and the consequences occur. Organisms either survive or they do not.

So you are selecting on "survivability".

The hardest thing is making a rich enough world model that is computationally feasible - but then I don't have a parallel computer on the scale of the Earth so I had to make do with consumer PCs.

Quote:
In what way did these simulated organisms not imperfectly self-replicate within the simulated environment?

Well, from your perspective since the abstract entities I created are in fact only representations formulated by switching logic gates there was no self or replication to speak of.

Did the surviving code "reproduce". If so then it is self-replicating according to my definition.

From your post I can envision two approaches:

Firstly, the approach which I think you are describing:

"organisms" are simulated, and left "to fend for themselves" for an assigned time, or until a trigger. The simulated orgnaisms need to acquire resources to survive, and may acquire them from other organisms. After a certain time, those organisms that are still surviving are copied, but with (pseudorandom?) alterations. This next generation is left in the same fashion and the process repeaded many times.

If that is the case, you are selecting for organisms that survive and using "artificial selection" to "breed" them.​

The other approach is very slightly different:
The initial population of organisms are left in the simulated environment. These organisms make copies of them selves, based on some internal triggers (initially set, maybe to a length of time?) but which are subject to "mutation" just like any other parameter describing the organism. The orginisms still ned resources, and can still obtain them from other organisms. Obviously only surviving organisms will breed, but some could have become "sterile" and would never breed, so they would remain, as resource sinks/reservoirs, untill an appropriately adapted "predator" evolves to utilise them.

In this case the selection would not be for surving for any length of time, but for reproducing, which would include "surviving long enough to reproduce". It is quite possible that a "parent" organism could evolve to sacrifice some if its resources to boost the reproductive success of its offspring.

That would be an accurate model of the process of evolution, maybe actual evolution.

Do either of those describe your simulations?

 

[mijopaalmc]

Every analogy works on certain levels and not on others. As said before, it ceases to be an analogy if it works on all of them.

Most analogies, though, have more that one point of correspondence, because almost every pair of objects has one point of correspondence (e.g., raven and writing desks both have quills); therefore having one point of correspondence doesn't necessarily make a good analogy.

 

[jimbob]

Southwind, my point with the ladder is not that an evolutionary algorithm couldn't get the same result as design (it could), but that the actual process of intelligently devoping the solution to such a trivial problem is not akin to Darwinian evolution at all. It was really answering fishkr's points rather than yours.

Instead of selecting the best examples of random solutions and "breeding" from them, certain solutions are "obvious" and the initial solutions would be developed in the direction of the obviousl solution. Like Lamarck there is "directed change", and no need for selection.

The Newton-Raphson Method of successive approximation is another example I can think of here. Supposing you are trying to find where a funcion is zero, f(x)=0. You have a value at an inital x-value, and know the gradient, so draw a tangent along this line until this line is zero. You then calculate the value of f(x) at this point and repeat untill you get an adequately accurate result.

The process is iterative, but each successive x-value is chosen by drawing tangents to lines and reading their intercepts with the zer-line. There is no "variation" in the choice of subsequent x-values with such a process, beyond the accuracy of the calculation. Of course this falls down for nonlinear systems....

Am I correct in saying your view is that "intelligence" is merely a shortcut?