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Randomness in Evolution: Valid and Invalid Usage

You could use an evolutionary algorithm to choose what the requirements are,
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I could use many, many things: is it necessary that they are all of intelligent design?

I have answered your question several times,
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No you have not - you've answered the question you want to answer.

now are you going to answer mine about how the phrase "a selective advantage of 1:1000" is not part of a probabilistic treatment of natural selection?
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No I am not because it is a probabilsitic treatment of natural selection.

The emphasis is on "treatment". The emphasis is on knowing the difference between a model and the thing it is modelling. You seem to insist you can know the difference or that it is even meaningful.
 
Wowbagger said:
If we accept evolution as a chaotic system, like the weather, I am willing to agree that the word "random", when defined appropriately in the context of chaotic systems, is another valid usage of the word.

Trying to read through Jimbob's posts, he may or may not have described everything effectively. But, does anyone generally disagree with the above statement?
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Chaotic systems are systems that can often appear random, but are actually deterministic. Or in other words, they are only as random as their inputs. In fact many chaotic are incredibly orderly. For example:
http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-151

In example (d) Wolfram demonstrates a shift map, which demonstrates chaotic behavior despite being a very simple operation. So it is wrong to say chaotic systems are random, it might be reasonable to say chaotic systems appear random. This means that what the "evolution is random" argument comes down to(if evolution is chaotic) is whether the initial conditions are random.

Also a definition from upenn physics
http://www.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/mathphys/subsection3_2_5.html
We state that systems are chaotic if they:
1. are deterministic through description by mathematical rules.
2. have mathematical descriptions which are nonlinear in some way.

The evolution is random people generally like to note that biological/ecological systems are complex, perform a bait and switch over to evolution is chaotic. If they don't stop there with the chaos = random, they'll say "of course the initial conditions were random because quantum interactions are probabilistic". Of course this is the probability to random bait and switch, but even if we buy that probabilistic systems are random, this doesn't mean that the system is necessarily sensitive to quantum randomness. Quantum fluctuations cancel out on macroscopic levels, leading to the orderly laws that scientists thought were the whole story for many years. In other words, The tendency to magnify disorder in an input can only do so up to the resolution of the input and there is absolutely no reason to think the resolution will be that high.

Of course I don't even think there is strong evidence that evolution is chaotic. If we look at the evidence and listen to the experts, it seems the story is the process and path of evolution is orderly and regular, but that it has a long history and has been subject to a lot of external pressures. This makes for complex results.
 
yeah... but Mijo and jimbob are pretending they are being "more accurate"-- not taking verbal shortcuts to best sum up a phenomena.
 
articulett said:
yeah... but Mijo and jimbob are pretending they are being "more accurate"-- not taking verbal shortcuts to best sum up a phenomena.
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But you haven't actually provided any evidence that the reasons you say that evolution is non-random actually arise from an underlying non-random. Instead, you have equivocated as to your usage of "determine" and "determined" in such a way that every process described by a well-defined set of rules becomes non-random.
 
@Mijo
I'm confused as to why you think the burden of proof would fall upon the people claiming that evolution is non-random. Articulett has really hammered home the fact that the scientific community of evolutionary biologists considers evolution non-random.

Beyond that ,all the science that evolution is dependent upon involves laws that are uniform, predictable, and regular. Even on the smallest level biological systems are incredibly reliable. Individual cells survive for 10s or 100s of years without malfunction. Viruses, much smaller than cells, reliably invade cells and modify their behavior predictably.

These points alone should establish a burden for you to provide evidence and/or a well-reasoned and clear argument as to why we shouldn't accept the opinions of the authorities on the subject; authorities who happen to be much better educated on and much more familiar with this topic than any of us. You'll have to show us why we should disregard the intuition that the reliability of biological systems makes them appear mechanistic;rule-abiding;non-random.

Beyond that, insisting that evolution is random, despite the weight of evidence, is tantamount to Hume's argument against induction; that the 1001st duck could always be black. A belief that chafes against the fundamental underpinnings of logic.

If you want to make a point that persuades then you'll have to show how evolution and its results are random and not merely complex.

I outlined one such argument, that I would find persuasive, in my previous post. If you can prove that evolution is a chaotic process that takes a random input, I would be persuaded.
 
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Mijo:
To extend on my point about random processes and chaos,

We've seen an example of a non-chaotic process that is dependent upon random inputs; the smoke detector. A system with microscopic components that have random behavior that is significant to the behavior of the system as a whole, but which does not have random macroscopic behavior.

Why not explain how evolution is somehow different than the smoke detector? That would be more persuasive than insisting that the smoke detector is random.
 
zosima-

I have already explained that evolution and the smoke detector are identical situations. A random process leads to orderly behavior over long periods of time. This however does not mean that radioactive decay is not a random process. Similarly, just because the aggregate processes of evolution such as mutation and natural selection have the orderly results we observe in evolution does not mean that mutation or natural selection are not themselves as individual processes are not random.
 
Seatbelts saving lives in accidents is random because you can't predict before hand whether a seat belt will save your life or harm it or do neither.

Seatbelts saving lives in accidents is random, because accidents are random and accidental.

I can speak in creationist doublespeak too.

(Having random components does not a random process make.)
 
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mijopaalmc said:
zosima-

I have already explained that evolution and the smoke detector are identical situations. A random process leads to orderly behavior over long periods of time. This however does not mean that radioactive decay is not a random process. Similarly, just because the aggregate processes of evolution such as mutation and natural selection have the orderly results we observe in evolution does not mean that mutation or natural selection are not themselves as individual processes are not random.
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Okay, I suppose you could continue to insist the smoke detector is random and persuade no one. Thats cool too. Have fun with that. :D
 
zosima said:
Okay, I suppose you could continue to insist the smoke detector is random and persuade no one. Thats cool too. Have fun with that. :D
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But I am not saying that the operation of an ionization smoke detector is random; I am saying that the operation of an ionization smoke detector is orderly and based on random events. Similarly, evolution itself is orderly but natural selection and mutation are random.

Non-random simply implies that evolution is a deterministic process, a phenomenon which has never been observed.
 
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mijopaalmc said:
Yeah...it doesn't sound like she (or perhaps anyone who is arguing that evolution is nonrandom) thinks that random processes can have orderly results.
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From wikitionary:
Statistical Randomness:
"the property of a numeric sequence of containing no recognizable patterns or regularities; exemplified in the results of an ideal die roll."

Or as I mentioned many posts ago: uncorrelated and uniformly distributed.

A smoke detector is a non-random system that takes a random input(or inputs more accurately). For all intents and purposes it is deterministic.

As there are recognizable patterns and regularities, it is clear that evolution, even individual selections in evolution are non-random. The more interesting argument that some people have been having with Jimbob, is whether evolution is deterministic or not. Which I think has fair arguments on both sides.

The mistake you seem to be making, over and over and over, again, is to assume that because you think evolution is not-deterministic that this implies that evolution is random.

This is a common mistake made in introductory logic classes.
If X->~Y this does not mean that ~X->Y
Above: Let X mean deterministic and Y mean random.

If a system is deterministic it is not random, but if a system is not deterministic it is not necessarily random.

(more commonly this fallacy is stated X->Y does not imply that ~X->~Y)
 
zosima said:
From wikitionary:
Statistical Randomness:
"the property of a numeric sequence of containing no recognizable patterns or regularities; exemplified in the results of an ideal die roll."
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You may have noticed that I ask what a random process is. A process may produce a numeric sequence, but it is not the same thing as a numeric sequence.
 
There really aren't such things as random processes... stochastic processes which contain random inputs are sometimes called "random processes"-- but it's not the process itself that is random. The fact that something is a "process" means that it has direction... If you call something random just because parts are random... then every process is a random process-- child birth, film developing, puberty, reproduction, making lasagna, getting a diploma, seatbelt studies, the mechanisms of fire alarm activation--

Random process is about as useful as a "variable process" or an "upside-down process" or a "magical process"- it doesn't really mean anything, and when it comes to reproduction and exponential growth of the best reproducers, it is completely uninformative and only used by creationists.

Sure, randomness can lead to order... but the order in evolution and the appearance of design, doesn't come from randomness (as stated repeatedly by actual experts and those who teach the subject)-- that's more like spiral galaxies and spheres-- the order in evolution comes from natural selection. And nobody but a creationist obfuscates understanding of natural selection by needing to call it "random". It's muddled and laughable. It makes you sound like a creationist. It had no meaning and confuses more than it clarifies.

But of course, you are sure you know more than the experts... just like Behe. And all this explaining will fail to penetrate.

I shake my head at the folly.
 
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Earthborn said:
You may have noticed that I ask what a random process is. A process may produce a numeric sequence, but it is not the same thing as a numeric sequence.
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I tend to agree with Articulett, I don't think the idea of a random process is particularly meaningful. If you see a reason to distinguish between a random process and a statistically random sequence feel free to illuminate me.

In addition to what Articulett has already said, some things that make me thing the distinction is not meaningful are:

#1 we are talking about evolution, a theory that is characterized by statistical knowledge accumulated by biologists and ecologists. Since the theory derives from statistical knowledge, I think the statistical definition is appropriate.

#2 Theorems in computer science and mathematics indicate that the distinction between a process and a sequence of numbers is unnecessary. For example, see Godel Numbering, all ideas that are expressible in mathematical symbols are encoded as a sequence of numbers. So we might say that a random process is a random sequence of Godel Number's(or Number) over a basis that characterizes the features of a system we care about.

So why do think that such a distinction is meaningful and what exactly is the nature of that distinction?
 
A process can have some random* components, but that does NOT make the whole process, itself, random.
(*however you define the word)


Mutations may or may not be random (depending on how you define the word), but assuming they are random, for a moment: That still says nothing about selection, which would still be non-random.

(A theoretical process, in which every step is completely random, could be called a random process, though at that point the word "process" would hardly make sense.)
 
Since so many people are so sure that I don't understand probability theory, I would like them to explain exactly where I am misunderstanding it particularly with respect to the relationship between predictability and randomness.
 
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