Intelligent Evolution?

[Belz...]

I don't accept that point.

Of course you don't. Otherwise you'd have to admit that the analogy works.

Even in a memetic analysis, intelligence would be the environment where ideas evolve, not the tool.

Who ever said anything about ideas ? I said "information".

 

[jimbob]

Belz, are you claiming that information evolves according to darwinian evolution, or some other mechanism?

Do you think there is a fundamental difference between Lamarckian and Darwinian evolution?

 

[jimbob]

Originally Posted by mijopaalmc
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.

If you are discussing the origin of species with a proponent of "Intelligent Design" i.e. someone who claims that this needed a (supernatural) intelligent agency, then any analogy likening actual evolution to a process that requires an intelligent agency is not going to help. Unlike mijo they won't say the analogy is bad, they will say it is good. Indeed many use this very analogy.

I have changed my mind, I now agree with articulett that mijo is a creationist, it was obvious all along:

Mijo: "The analogy is bad, because unlike evolution it describes a process with intelligent agents"

Other creationists: "The analogy is good, because unlike the theories of the worshipers of the church of scientism, it shows how the process of "evolution" does depend on intelligent agencies"

As you can see, their positions are identical to a highly trained* ear.
​

For an analogy to work, showing how something can arise without intlligence, the process describing it must not require intelligent agencies.
ETA
*more highly trained than my ear.

 

[jimbob]

OK mijo. Give us an example of a completely different analogy that demonstrates your point, i.e. an analogy that you feel only achieves as much as you consider the OP analogy does.

The Hydraulic analogy is useful in describing what electrical components do. if not how they work.
Current is analogous to mass flow and voltage to pressure.

The analogy can be extended:

Electic current needs to flow through the conductors (pipes) a resistor is analogous to a constriction, raising the pressure (voltage), an inductor to a turbine, or waterwheel with inertia , and a capacitor to a membrane across the pipe.

The resistor is easy to see. An inductor resists changes in current, so initially, it will resist the first current flowing past it, but when it is spinning freely will cease to resist. If something tried to suddenly stop the current, the water wheel (or turbine blades) would be still spining due to their inertia, and would act to keep the current flowing in the same direction. There will be a build up in pressure (voltage) due to the change in flow rate (current).

A capacitor would stop DC current, but the membrane would allow pulses of energy or waves to travel through.

A diode is a analogous to a valve, whilst a transistor is analogous to a tap.
​

This analogy is far from perfect, it is hard to equate the frequency response of the capacitor from this, for example, but I would argue that this analogy is still useful.

 

[lightcreatedlife@hom]

I think that technology, along with all the other benefits of civilization, are just extensions of biological evolution. Here's why:

Imagine a race of titans who are so much further advanced than we are, on the evolutionary scale, that we would be like bacteria to them. What would they see when they look down on the Earth over a period of several hundred years? They will see what would be in their eyes a mindless ratcheting up of complexity in the infrastructure of the puny humans. A new device being invented would be seen as a random occurance, especially given that it often occurs simultaneously in multiple parts of the world. Incremental improvements of the design would be seen as an inevitable consequence of the humans having a communal self-interest in making things easier on themselves. They, like any other organisms on the planet, simply follow their own evolutionary urges. The only difference is that they happen to have a brain sufficiently developed to allow them to improve their environment in a diverse number of ways.

And titans to them, would see them that way. Doesn't it stand to reason that the why and how behind what life does, be tied, and even resemble the process that it is a part of? Like the similiarity between the planetary structure and the atomic structure for starters. I mean, the atomic structure was the only working model, and the four forces determine how things forms.

 

[lightcreatedlife@hom]

Who ever said anything about ideas ? I said "information".

The atomic structure is information based too, right? If so, wouldn't it stand to reason that life is?

 

[Apathia]

like the similiarity between the planetary structure and the atomic structure for starters. I mean, the atomic structure was the only working model, and the four forces determine how things forms.

This and the entire thread reminds me of how dependent we are on analogies in everyday thinking. We want to have models in our sensually based imginations. The analogy between electricity and fluids Jimbob gives above illustrates how even our language about electrical phenomenon contains tactile terms. It is very natural for the lay person who doesn't have the language of abstract mathematics to cling to the sensual analogs and try to extrapolate from them.

20th Century Physics and the disconcerting challenge to make do without the sensual analogs. They were no help in understanding the behavior of atoms and subatomic particles. Quantum behavior remains outside our common sense. At best we can just map the territory with probability equations.

We can get muddled with analogies, but we can hardly communicate ideas without them. One consequence is that different parties will take the same analog and run in different directions.

"Evolution is like the Intelligent Design of automobiles."

"No, you're wrong. The Intelligent Design of automobiles is like Evolution."

Biological Evolution is a simple process we can explicate in a few minutes time without use of analogies but examples.

"Intelligence?" That may be too complicated for us to explicate. Roger Penrose claims it can't be reduced to an algorithm. The notion of it is so subjective that it's just infested with analogies. It's easier to try to keep it out of the recipe.

I say use the analogy for what its worth, but be careful that your listener isn't missing the actual process for a simplistic picture.
For example: No the atom isn't a miniture solar system. That model used to be good for Elementary School Science, but the process is far subtler than that.

 

[Southwind17]

My point has been that reproduction is a defining feature of life, and it is because of this self-replication that evolution occurs: Imperfect self-replication is necessary (and probably sufficient) for evolution to ocur.

I think you're saying that reproduction is unique to life, and , therefore, absent from technological development. However, I'm not sure why you use "reproduction" and "self-replication" interchangeably jimbob. Can you please clairify what you mean.

So my point that it won't work stands then.

No. Biological evolutionary time on planet Earth can, for the purpose of this discussion, can be considered to have been over eternity by comparison to technological development, with an infinite "showroon" (environment). I simply took an extreme case to prove a point. Stop just short of the extreme case (indeed well short) and the argument still holds up.

It won't work because without introducing a culling of the unsuccessfull variants, you require an infinite showroom. Even with an infinite showroom, and infinite time, only a small fraction of the "variants" would be saleable, most would not be.

Ford Motor Company doesn't have an infinite showroom so how come they continue to exhibit continually successful cars? It's because they "know" when to move one model out in exchange for another. How do they "know"? Because the market informs them. It's not an arbitrary decision. They "know" how long it should take for a new car to sell (reproduce). If a new car doesn't sell (reproduce) in approximately the requisite time that shows that it has weaknesses. It can be considered to have "died" prematurely or survived but without finding a mate.

Oh, and please don't foget to respond to Post #2574, which is fairly fundamental to this debate, and people understanding your views better.

 

[Southwind17]

The Hydraulic analogy is useful in describing what electrical components do. if not how they work.

So, in response to my inviting mijo to give an example of a comaparable analogy that essentially, in his opinion, sucks, you provide a widely-accepted analogy that continues to be used in the classroom. What do you seek to prove by this? The only thing it seems to show is that, in your opinion, the OP analogy is sound.

 

[jimbob]

So, in response to my inviting mijo to give an example of a comaparable analogy that essentially, in his opinion, sucks, you provide a widely-accepted analogy that continues to be used in the classroom. What do you seek to prove by this? The only thing it seems to show is that, in your opinion, the OP analogy is sound.

No, saying that there are analogies that have some utility does not mean that the OP is one of them.

A general point: models are only useful if the limitations are clearly stated, i.e. if it is understood where the analogy breaks down.

How about:

"Biological evolution is a bit like that subset of technical development that utilises evolutionary approaches, if you ignore the fact that in engineering, these approaches direct the development to meeting intelligently assigned requirements.

If you ignore the need for an intelligent agency, you can thus show that you don't need an intelligent agency"

​

I agree with the first paragraph, but it is trivial, the second paragraph is wrong.

Until this thread, I thought it was obvious that self-replication is needed for natural-selection. Now I realise that it isn't so obvious, but the requirement is still there:

In Darwinian evolution, the direction of evolution is determined by the selection pressures. A self-replicating system wll thus be selected for reproductive success, i.e. the with self-replicating systems there is selection for self-replication; this selection is inherent in a self-replicating system. This inherent selection is natural selection.

If a system does not self replicat, but is developing with an evolutionary approach, then something else has to perform the copying, and you need a selective pressure. This means that the copier has to copy only that which is selected. Without self-replication there has to be external selection, and this will be as the result of an intelligent agency.

Maybe you decide variants which survive for a certain length of time are selected, then you are selecting for variants that survive for this length of time. Maybe you decide on variants that survive until they acquire a certain amount of resources, then you are half-way to self-replication.

I really don't see the point in showing other poor analogies, which would only show that there are other analogies that are poor. (Suppose I failed because the OP was the worst possible analogy, don't worry I'm sure it isn't; would the failure to supply one equally bad mean the OP was OK?)

Anyway if you insist:

Humphrey Litleton in ISIHAC is the master - explaination of the rules of "one song to the rules of another":

The teams are going to sing for us now, in the game called One Song To The Tune Of Another, and even as those words left my lips, I could sense the teams thinking: What in blue blazes is that all about? Well, fret not, as it's all relatively simple if given a proper explanation.

If you think about it, a milk bottle is almost exactly like a song. It's wide at the base, but tapers to a small diameter opening at the top which is sealed with a foil cap to prevent spillage. But that's not what makes it like a song. No, because the bottle contains milk which is exactly like the words. The milk, or words, may be poured from the bottle, or song, and then the bottle can be returned to the milkman to be refilled with different milk, or words. Just like singing one song to the tune of another. But, I hear the teams collectively gasp under their breath, what about garden birds? Yes, there is the danger as your milk sits on the doorstep, that the foil cap might have holes pecked in it, allowing the ingress of contaminent, and rendering the milk unpalatable. Sadly, things are liable to go sour, thanks to an unwelcome little tit. At the piano, Colin Sell...

Maybe a more realistic attempt:
"A child's mind is like an oak tree, if it is supplied with enough sunshine and watered from the sping of knowledge it will grow broad and healthy, producing acorns of wisdom which will then help to grow into a forest of human fulfillment".

Or the one that apathia provided earlier:

The atom is like a solar system, with the nuceus replacing the sun, and electrons replacing the planets.

This is a very common metaphor, and replaced the earlier "plum-pudding model" of the atom, which failed, when it was found that alpha particles tended to go straight through gold-foil without hitting anything solid.

This analogy has two good features:

Firstly it shows how the atom is mosly empty*, with the vast majority of the mass in the nucelus.

Secondly, it helped lead to the deveolpment of quantum mechanics:
Hidden as it is a derail...

If an electron is orbiting the nucleus, then it is creating a changing electromagnetic field, so is converting its orbital energy into EM radiation. The orbit would decay, and you would get back to the plum-pudding model.

It turned out that the orbits that didn't decay were those with orbital circumferences that were a integer number of the electron's de Broglie wavelength. This was eventually explained by quantum mechanics

However you can see some of the problems with the analogy, and there are more too.

ETA
*sort of

 

[jimbob]

Originally Posted by jimbob
My point has been that reproduction is a defining feature of life, and it is because of this self-replication that evolution occurs: Imperfect self-replication is necessary (and probably sufficient) for evolution to ocur.

I think you're saying that reproduction is unique to life, and , therefore, absent from technological development. However, I'm not sure why you use "reproduction" and "self-replication" interchangeably jimbob. Can you please clairify what you mean.

No, self-replication is nescessary but not sufficient for life. A virus is not usually considered to be alive, but viruses self-replicate and evolve.


I am using "reproduction" simply because that is more common in biology than self-replication, but when biologists talk about reproduction they are talking about self-reporduction i.e. self-replication

Originally Posted by jimbob
So my point that it won't work stands then.

No. Biological evolutionary time on planet Earth can, for the purpose of this discussion, can be considered to have been over eternity by comparison to technological development, with an infinite "showroon" (environment). I simply took an extreme case to prove a point. Stop just short of the extreme case (indeed well short) and the argument still holds up.

This is one of the weaknesses of the analogy, evolution doesn't need infinite iterations, many evolutionary algorithms work with low-hundreds of generations and limited populations.

Originally Posted by jimbob
It won't work because without introducing a culling of the unsuccessfull variants, you require an infinite showroom. Even with an infinite showroom, and infinite time, only a small fraction of the "variants" would be saleable, most would not be.

Ford Motor Company doesn't have an infinite showroom so how come they continue to exhibit continually successful cars? It's because they "know" when to move one model out in exchange for another. How do they "know"? Because the market informs them. It's not an arbitrary decision. They "know" how long it should take for a new car to sell (reproduce). If a new car doesn't sell (reproduce) in approximately the requisite time that shows that it has weaknesses. It can be considered to have "died" prematurely or survived but without finding a mate.

So without an infinite showroom, there is intalligent analysis and deselection of those that haven't sold.

How is that different to my assertion that, without an infinite showroom, you also need a culling process, and selection criteria that are the result of an intelligent agency?

Where do yu disagree that if you tried to implement the analogy in practice (i.e. in a finite system) it would only work if you removed those variants that were not selling, which would require some definition of an unacceptably long time to sell. This definition is arbitary, and the result of an intelligent agency.

Furthermore, in your analogy, all of the variants that have sold, have been selected by a customer, or an intelligent agent. This is not the same as death due to natural cuases, which culls most organisms before they reproduce. In fact the intelligent selection in this analogy is almost a negative image of the process of natural selection.

Factory analogy:
Active selection by customers of thos variants they like, and culling of those that are left

Natural selection:
Selective attrition by environmental factors, including cheetahs, and active reproduction by the minority of orgainsms that manage to do so.
​

Outside the bible and other fairy tales, floods don't select which organisms that survive; they kill those unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and with the wrong combination of traits.

Oh, and please don't foget to respond to Post #2574, which is fairly fundamental to this debate, and people understanding your views better.

The cheetah is just another environmental factor that causes attrition in the prey population, what it fails to kill will not inevitably breed; in the car analogy, the customer selects what will inevitably be copied.

saleability might be a collection of traits, but that is what you are selecting for in the car analogy, a collection of traits, and the evolutionary approach was defined towards the goal of saleablilty.

ny "intelligence" that drives a consumer in rejecting one product for another based on that products weaker traits, i.e. features and characteristics that reduce its saleability, is absolutely no different from any "intelligence" that drives a cheetah, for example, in choosing one prey over another based on that prey's traits, i.e. natural capabilities (perceived ease with which it can be caught) that reduces its survivability. I really don't understand why you're struggling to see this too, jimbob.

It is a negative image of natural selection.

A customer rejecting a variant does not stop another one from selecting it, so such a variant could still sell and reproduce. A cheetah killing a variant stops it reproducing. A customer choosing a variant instigates the copying, a cheetah not killing its prey doesn't instigate reproduction in that prey.

One process can prevent reproduction but not instigate it (the cheetah), whilst the other (the customer) can instigate thr analog of reproduction, but not prevent it.

Do you see the important difference?

 

[Apathia]

From the Wiki on the Hydralic analogy:

If taken too far, the water analogy can create misconceptions. For it to be useful, we must remain aware of the regions where electricity and water behave very differently.

It has utility and a possibility of syudent misunderstanding, as any analogy.
And as any analogy, it does not explicate the process (or the how) and musn't be confused for the process.

I see a utillity in Southwind's analogy that's a tad more philosophical (for me) than technical. Jimbob rightly points out that it's human agents who do the copying and provide the selection pressures for evolving works of technology.
The way of seeing implicit in the analogy is that humans and their tecnological culture are a seamless process. One goes back to spiders and their webs. True we could nuke ourselves back to the Neolithic (or Medieval as in A Canticle for Leibowitz), but it's who we are and integral to our evolution that we'd start making tools again.

Are we the Borg?
(I thought I'd ask that before "President Bush" does.)
Could we become the Borg?
That's a real possibility, though I think it more likey we will get into genetic alterations rather than add-ons.
The point being driven at by Southwind's analogy is that nature is self-transformable and that this is especially seen in the way that the human species is able to transform itself.


(Disclaimer: I may be putting words in Southwind's mouth or co-opting the analogy for my own purposes.)

 

[Henners]

The atomic structure is information based too, right? If so, wouldn't it stand to reason that life is?

If I tip up a square box and roll marbles into the corner, they form neat rows and columns.

It is a self-organising system.

Doesn't it therefore "stand to reason" that life is?

 

[lightcreatedlife@hom]

If I tip up a square box and roll marbles into the corner, they form neat rows and columns.

It is a self-organising system.

I am having problems with that "self organising" thing. Four forces (life making five) are behind the the how, what, and why. Things happened/happen because of them. The four of them together create the conditions for things to world about each other at both the mini and macro level.

Doesn't it therefore "stand to reason" that life is?

Life is part of the process, what it does would have to fit the "direction/purpose" of that process. I am wondering whether or not the compound forming characteristics of carbon has any influence on how life behaviors.

 

[fishkr]

Indeed




And I am likely to remain (relatively) quiet when the discussion is considering the concept of 'intelligence' - a semantic can-of-worms if ever there was one




Ring any bells?

Yes.

 

[amb]

There is only one way intelligent evolution could have arisen, and that invokes a super-intelligence, namely God. Since we have no evidence that's the case, and have evidence to the contrary, in fact if understanding of evolution by natural processes is looked at, there is no god necessary at all. Once DNA started to evolve, the world's the limit and more. Intelligence didn't suddenly appear. It took billions of years of evolution from a simple nervous system to what it is today, a stupendous complex organ that is ''mind'' or conciousness itself.

 

[mijopaalmc]

There is only one way intelligent evolution could have arisen, and that invokes a super-intelligence, namely God. Since we have no evidence that's the case, and have evidence to the contrary, in fact if understanding of evolution by natural processes is looked at, there is no god necessary at all. Once DNA started to evolve, the world's the limit and more. Intelligence didn't suddenly appear. It took billions of years of evolution from a simple nervous system to what it is today, a stupendous complex organ that is ''mind'' or conciousness itself.

Look, no-one is saying that intelligence didn't evolve or that it was "magicked" into being by some supernatural being. What we we are saying is that intelligence, once it did evolve, has ways of processing information that cause systems that involve it to differ fundamentally form systems that don't. Therefore, it is misleading to say that the involvement of intelligence is irrelevant when comparing two systems that differ in that aspect.

 

[hammegk]

There is only one way intelligent evolution could have arisen, and that invokes a super-intelligence, namely God.

Or one could consider bottom-up rather than top-down.

In our macro world ants do nicely with distributed intelligence.

 

[jimbob]

lightcreatedlife@hom,

Am I correct in recalling that you do/did (?) think that the goal of evolution was intelligence?

 

[Belz...]

Belz, are you claiming that information evolves according to darwinian evolution, or some other mechanism?

Do you think there is a fundamental difference between Lamarckian and Darwinian evolution?

As far as the analogy goes or in general ? Didn't I answer this already ?

If you are discussing the origin of species with a proponent of "Intelligent Design" i.e. someone who claims that this needed a (supernatural) intelligent agency, then any analogy likening actual evolution to a process that requires an intelligent agency is not going to help.

I agree. ID proponents aren't very smart, after all. It's no wonder they wouldn't get it.

Unlike mijo they won't say the analogy is bad, they will say it is good. Indeed many use this very analogy.

Again, that's because, like you, they wouldn't understand the analogy or whatit stands for. Of course, also like you, they'd claim to understand it.

Mijo: "The analogy is bad, because unlike evolution it describes a process with intelligent agents"

No, it doesn't. It describes a process with intelligent tools. But then, you know this already.