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Intelligent Evolution?

mijopaalmc said:
Actually, I do understand that complex systems can arise without intelligent agency. However, complex systems don't always arise in the aforementioned way. Technological development is an example of a process where intelligent agency is often involved. That is the flaw in the analogy in the OP: there is no analog for intelligent agency of technological development in biological evolution, because biological evolution lacks intelligent agency.
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What I find frustrating is how you can continue to say that you understand it while managing to prove in the same breath that you don't.
 
I know you Americans never leave your country so I will allow your ignorance of how little money it requires to hire a woman's services in certain parts of the world for dollars pass.
 
ambnp said:
Given the right conditions and all other elements in the right order, eventualy intelligence WILL arise. It's happened at least once. Right here on Earth.
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But once intelligence evolves, it can effect the processing of information within a system in fundamental ways that I have already discussed at great length. The effect that intelligence has on how the information is processed makes systems that involve intelligence fundamentally different from those that don't.

I understand that the supporters of the analogy want to say that "all that matters to the analogy is that the survival, transformation and transmission of this information, because that's the point of the analogy". However, that's like saying that all that matters when comparing a square to a triangle is that both are convex polygons and that a square is really a four-sided triangle and a triangle a three-sided square.
 
cyborg said:
I know you Americans never leave your country so I will allow your ignorance of how little money it requires to hire a woman's services in certain parts of the world for dollars pass.
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(pandemonium breaks out in the West Wing)


Vice-President Cheney- No no no, cyborg misunderstood what I told President Bush to say. $10 for cyborg, maybe... it was like $4 or $5 for everybody else.

Secretary of Defense Gates- Any cyborg worth his thalamic stimulants would have noted the eastern Caribbean ISP on the President's post. Get me Rick Deckard!

Secretary of State Rice- The average age of entry into prostitution is 13 years old, gentlemen. Why are we even talking about such a thing here?
 
mijopaalmc said:
But once intelligence evolves, it can effect the processing of information within a system in fundamental ways that I have already discussed at great length. The effect that intelligence has on how the information is processed makes systems that involve intelligence fundamentally different from those that don't.

I understand that the supporters of the analogy want to say that "all that matters to the analogy is that the survival, transformation and transmission of this information, because that's the point of the analogy". However, that's like saying that all that matters when comparing a square to a triangle is that both are convex polygons and that a square is really a four-sided triangle and a triangle a three-sided square.
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Yes, the emergence of intelligence might affect the processing of information in fundamentally different ways, but those fundamental differences, in the final analysis, simply translate into efficiency. They don't result in outputs that we wouldn't otherwise see, given time.

In many contexts both a triangle and square being convex polygons is all that matters. I think we're all agreed that analogies never compare exactly, by definition. The degree of mapping comes down to exactly what it is that's being compared.
 
Exactly.

If you were a factory that made triangular blocks and you were going to be making square blocks you'd say something like-- all the pieces are the same... we just adjust this perimeter and move they whatchmacallit over 2 spaces.

The "pattern"-- "template"-- "model" is the same from the perspective of the information. Information that is best at getting itself copied is the driving force behind the evolution of everything...
 
cyborg said:
I know you Americans never leave your country so I will allow your ignorance of how little money it requires to hire a woman's services in certain parts of the world for dollars pass.
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10 dollars in Bangkok will get you a women for a week. You have to feed her as well though. ;)
 
It is more like saying. "One doesn't need intelligence for complexity to arise, this is just like engineering if you ignored the fact that it does need intelligence"
 
Southwind17 said:
What is? This makes absolutely no sense to me.
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You know his complaint by now, don't you?

It's like saying
Birds fly and build nests, without intelligence, in just the way humans build
747s and condos, without intelligence.

It's just that oversimplification of your anology that he's choking on.
He's choking just where your average joe IDer would (not that he's an IDer himself).
I hope we've moved beyond this in this thred, or there will still be a choking hazzard for those who try to swallow the chess pawns rather than use them to advance the game.
 
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Southwind17 said:
What is? This makes absolutely no sense to me.
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It's a jimbob loop. He cannot get it. Ask Cyborg... he's just a hair past mijo on the "I'm not a creationist--I'm an expert at evolution, but I can't explain it coherently" garble as spoken by Master Behe.

If you understand someone's point less as they talk more-- consider a woo infection from a woo that doesn't know they are afflicted.
 
Articulett, are you saying that technical development is more like Darwinian evolution than Lamarckian evolution?

I hope that you do understand the difference between the two theories.
 
Evolutionary algorithms demonstrate the power of an evolutionary approach, and there are plenty of real examples.

Of course all these real examples from engineering need selection criteria. Saying this at the beginning, and pointing out that self-replication implies selection for self-replication deflates any argument along the lines of: "...But the examples you gave had goals set by a 'Designer', isn't this what IDers are saying?"
 
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/010719080551.htm

"Theoretically, any possible algorithm can evolve," said Ofria, the creator of the Avida system. "In fact, in each experiment, the population proceeds along a new evolutionary pathway."

Oh... Mijo and Jimbob... not to beat a dead horse but scientists say "evolution is NOT random" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080118134531.htm

Perhaps you would understand the analogy better and be taken more seriously if you could read and digest these two articles. If not... it's time for you to realize that you are in over your head. You imagine yourself to have understanding and expertise on a topic that no one else agrees you have expertise on. Moreover, you ought to acknowledge that many, apparently find the analogy useful although you cannot imagine how.
 
jimbob said:
Articulett, are you saying that technical development is more like Darwinian evolution than Lamarckian evolution?

I hope that you do understand the difference between the two theories.
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When the phenotype is the genotype there is no difference - I explained this before.
 
"Theoretically, any possible algorithm can evolve," said Ofria, the creator of the Avida system. "In fact, in each experiment, the population proceeds along a new evolutionary pathway."
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Threre is an optimum combination of mutation rate and relpication rate. If the mutation rate changes, then so deos the optimum replicatgion rate. What else is your point?

articulett said:
Oh... Mijo and Jimbob... not to beat a dead horse but scientists say "evolution is NOT random" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080118134531.htm
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Yes, the changes are due to natural selecton:

When the researchers measured changes in 40 defined characteristics of the nematodes’ sexual organs (including cell division patterns and the formation of specific cells), they found that most were uniform in direction, with the main mechanism for the development favoring a natural selection of successful traits, the researchers said.
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"most were uniform in direction". Exactly what you would expect if most selection pressures in related organisms were similar.

The actual adaptions can be different:

Fast-Reproducing Microbes Provide a Window on Natural Selection

Dr. Bennett was particularly curious about how organisms adapt to different temperatures. He wondered if adapting to low temperatures meant organisms would fare worse at higher ones, a long-standing question. Working with Dr. Lenski, Dr. Bennett allowed 24 lines of E. coli to adapt to a relatively chilly 68 degrees for 2,000 generations. They then measured how quickly these cold-adapted microbes reproduced at a simmering 104 degrees.

Two-thirds of the lines did worse at high temperatures than their ancestors, experiencing the expected trade-off. “If you’re a betting person, that’s the way you’d better bet,” Dr. Bennett said. But the pattern was not universal. The bacteria that reproduced fastest in the cold did not do the worst job of breeding in the heat. A third of the cold-adapted lines did as well or better in the heat than the ancestor. Dr. Bennett and Dr. Lenski published their latest findings last month in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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But the pattern was not universal. The bacteria that reproduced fastest in the cold did not do the worst job of breeding in the heat. A third of the cold-adapted lines did as well or better in the heat than the ancestor.
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The uniform selection pressure selected for strains that were low-temeperature-tollerant, and most of the time these wore less tollerant of high temperatures, but some strains were also (by chance) better at higher temperatures.

Why is that not probabilistic?
 
cyborg said:
When the phenotype is the genotype there is no difference - I explained this before.
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I have jimbob on ignore. I know the difference. It's irrelevent. What is relevent is Darwins theory-- that which is selected. I think it's mijo's and jimbobs desire to call this random that makes them totally ignorant.

Information doesn't care how or why it's copied--only that it's copied, tweaked, recombined.... not that it really "cares" about anything.... it's just that the information that is best at getting copied evolves! Just like the tape that is the stickiest sticks. Who cares what humans think or how they came up with the stickiest tape we have now.

It's the process we are talking about! Jimbob and Mijo never understood the process and they convinced themselves they did--so, of course, they can't understand the analogy. The can't remove their egotistical selves from the model. It's as though they cannot perceive that the world is a sphere no matter how much explaining you do, because to them it is flat and that is that. You try and tell them it's due to their perspective, but they don't understand what that means even-- because to them there IS no other perspective but theirs.
 
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