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Intelligent Evolution?

Where was plumjam's logic faulty in that statement? He even, for your delectation allowed that technology evolved.

I say it developed.
 
Okay boys... us grown ups will continue talking about how similar the two are--especially now with digital data transfer and you guys can get blustery and presume that someone somewhere thinks you are clear.
 
You can change one... but you can't select for or against any ingredients until you actually make the product.
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And remember jimbob and ID - you also have to make metaphysical products. Formulating an 'intelligent' design did not pop up from nowhere. A design has to be 'made' be it on paper or in the head. The success of that intelligence can only be assessed against how well the design worked in reality. Just think about all the designs for fantastical machines that are made that cannot work. Does it really matter how intelligent the designer of an over unity device's construct is if the universe will not allow its construction? Intelligence is clearly a mix of an a priori piece of hardware and the a posteriori environmental programming of it. We simply can't produce designs out of whole cloth unless we have all the relevant prior information. Just how much of that do you think is there from birth?

If you do, therefore, remove the assumption that the a priori is a necessary contingent to design something you are left with the a posteriori - and can only possibly 'evolve'. This is a powerful blow to the contingent necessity of a designer for any design - and hence an argument against the need for any designer god. A priori emerges from the a posteriori.

Remember: if you remove design as an explanation for a computer you might well need to explain how a man evolved to create it. If you invoke a 'god' as an explanation well... you better show the god. A god may well explain all things but that doesn't mean it exists. And if it doesn't the explanation is useless.
 
jimbob said:
Where was plumjam's logic faulty in that statement?
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An argument for 'intelligent design' is one you would agree with. You and he just disagree on what can intelligently design.

He says there's a god out there that can and has. You do not.

He is invoking an unobservable entity. You are not.

He is therefore unnecessarily replicating entities. You are not.

I say it developed.
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You and he both think words have meaning on their own. Change labels does not change meaning jimbob - just labels.
 
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articulett said:
Okay boys... us grown ups will continue talking about how similar the two are--especially now with digital data transfer and you guys can get blustery and presume that someone somewhere thinks you are clear.
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Am I not "clear?" Can you understand my posts? Did you perhaps mean "right?"

Could you be more clear?
 
cyborg said:
And remember jimbob and ID - you also have to make metaphysical products. Formulating an 'intelligent' design did not pop up from nowhere. A design has to be 'made' be it on paper or in the head. The success of that intelligence can only be assessed against how well the design worked in reality. Just think about all the designs for fantastical machines that are made that cannot work. Does it really matter how intelligent the designer of an over unity device's construct is if the universe will not allow its construction? Intelligence is clearly a mix of an a priori piece of hardware and the a posteriori environmental programming of it. We simply can't produce designs out of whole cloth unless we have all the relevant prior information. Just how much of that do you think is there from birth?

If you do, therefore, remove the assumption that the a priori is a necessary contingent to design something you are left with the a posteriori - and can only possibly 'evolve'. This is a powerful blow to the contingent necessity of a designer for any design - and hence an argument against the need for any designer god. A priori emerges from the a posteriori.

Remember: if you remove design as an explanation for a computer you might well need to explain how a man evolved to create it. If you invoke a 'god' as an explanation well... you better show the god. A god may well explain all things but that doesn't mean it exists. And if it doesn't the explanation is useless.
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Strawman. I am not claiming that there is no such thing as design. As I have repeated, and reiterated, and restated, over and over, while designers Evolved, design is not analogous to Evolution.
 
As I have repeated, and reiterated, and restated, over and over, while designers Evolved, design is not analogous to Evolution.
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Yes. I know you like to restate certain things - like "x" is not "y".

Now: tell me what the difference between carbon in a cat and carbon in a car is.
 
cyborg said:
Yes. I know you like to restate certain things - like "x" is not "y".

Now: tell me what the difference between carbon in a cat and carbon in a car is.
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Uh....the chemical properties and electronic structure. Alkanes in fossil fuels react in totally different ways than the carbohydrates, lipids and amino acids do in biological systems. Yes each carbon atom contains twelve protons (the abstract principle I believe you are trying to get at), but it is the distribution of electron density around the nuclei that determine the chemical properties of the molecules that contain them.
 
Uh....the chemical properties and electronic structure.
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And how are these different: ATOM level?

Alkanes in fossil fuels react in totally different ways than the carbohydrates, lipids and amino acids do in biological systems.
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Molecule, not atom level.

Yes each carbon atom contains twelve protons (the abstract principle I believe you are trying to get at), but it is the distribution of electron density around the nuclei that determine the chemical properties of the molecules that contain them.
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We cannot talk about these properties at the atom level. Do you accept this?
 
The Carbon14 ratio. But what is the point of this question?

Thi important fact is how it is arranged.

In a cat it is arranged in many complex polymenrs, in a car it is part of the steel alloy.
 
cyborg said:
The results of the evolutionary algorithms are often more efficient (lower silicon cost etc) but they are far harder to analyse, because there was no analysis used to create the circuit design. It is easy for a trained eye to spot the differences between a human-design and one using an evolutionary algorithm.
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I believe I've already said this.
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This is saying that evolutionary algorithms can produce solutions that are unlike those that humans can design. Are you agreeing with this?

Conversely, design iterations can produce histories of changes that evolutionary algorithms alone wouldn't have produced, indeed given the odds, couldn't have produced.

For evolution as opposed to evolutionary methods, imperfect self-replication is needed.

If there is no imperfect self-replication, then the only selection that can happen is a variation of artificial selection, and evolution is not happening. Although there is a good (but crucially limited) analogue.
 
But talking about the atom level is uninteresting in this discussion, why not talk about the fundamental particles, and see how useful that is when discussing ecosystems, which are important in discussing evolution.
 
jimbob said:
This is saying that evolutionary algorithms can produce solutions that are unlike those that humans can design. Are you agreeing with this?
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Yes. I'm simply saying there's no fundamental difference to what is going on.

Conversely, design iterations can produce histories of changes that evolutionary algorithms alone wouldn't have produced, indeed given the odds, couldn't have produced.
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With an infinite amount of trials no odds can be overcome - unless you bind those outcomes to the rules of a universe that is.

For evolution as opposed to evolutionary methods, imperfect self-replication is needed.
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Wrong level of abstraction still.

If there is no imperfect self-replication,
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Self-replication does not exist at the level of abstraction I am talking about jimbob. Please try to understand this.
 
jimbob said:
But talking about the atom level is uninteresting in this discussion,
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And it will continue to be until you are willing to progress to the inter-atom level and accept that you cannot talk about inter-atom things at the atom level.
 
cyborg said:
And how are these different: ATOM level?



Molecule, not atom level.



We cannot talk about these properties at the atom level. Do you accept this?
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You're missing the point: the basis of biochemistry, and for that matter chemistry in general, is that chemical properties are derived from atomic arrangements and electronic configurations. Looking at the carbon in steel and the carbon in glucose and saying the are the same because they have the same number of protons won't help you explain why the carbon in steel is extremely difficult to oxidize to carbon dioxide relative to the biological oxidation in the tricarboxylic acid cycle. Similarly, saying that technological development and biological evolution are analogs simply because they are both examples of "change over time" won't help you explain why the intelligent design is not a viable alternative to the Theory of Evolution because such analogy does not address the differences in the how and why of the changes.
 
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cyborg said:
And it will continue to be until you are willing to progress to the inter-atom level and accept that you cannot talk about inter-atom things at the atom level.
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Why is it so hard for you to understand that the basis of chemistry and biochemistry is inter-atom interactions?

Thus, the differences in the spatial arrangements of atoms and their connections with one another are just as important as the identity of the individual atoms.
 
Self replication is not necessary--viruses and insertions replicate, but they do not "self replicate"-- the information only needs to be copied-- whether by word of mouth or by placing the design in products or animals and selecting the best in the environment to go on.

It's the "code"-- the INFORMATION that is copied-- that evolves. The information codes for how the atoms come together... DNA works at the level of the atoms to build stuff...are you guys familiar with nanotechnology? Name something complex that did not evolve in some manner? You see distinctinctions that aren't really there-- you miss the continuum and the big picture.

Once again-- SELF replication is not necessary--just the copying of information. When we build roads it's based on what we've learned from building roads before. And it's not about one thing changing into another--because individuals don't evolve over their own life time-- it's the INFORMATION that makes them that evolves by testing the individual in the environment and seeing how well it copies the information it contains. That's it. That is, in essence, what is going on when humans use technology, drive on roads, fly in cars, communicate with language, talk on the internet-- they are taking the information into the future to be built upon via how well it "succeeds" in creating other things that succeed.
 
You're missing the point: the basis of biochemistry, and for that matter chemistry in general, is that chemical properties are derived from atomic arrangements and electronic configurations.
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At the atom level how do you know these things?

Looking at the carbon in steel and the carbon in glucose and saying the are the same because they have the same number of protons won't help you explain why the carbon in steel is extremely difficult to oxidize to carbon dioxide relative to the biological oxidation in the tricarboxylic acid cycle.
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No it won't - because you cannot talk about these things at the atom level.

Similarly, saying that technological development and biological evolution are analogs simply because they are both examples of "change over time" won't help you explain why the intelligent design is not a viable alternative to the Theory of Evolution because such analogy does not address the differences in the how and why of the changes.
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No it won't - because you cannot talk about these things at the atom level.
 
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