Intelligent Evolution?

[six7s]

Ignoring their relevance to the analogy for the moment:

Are there differences... Between artificial selection and natural selection?

What is 'unnatural' about artificial selection?

The analogy requires intelligence, evolution doesn't

What is - in the context of this thread - your definition of 'intelligence'?

One that I think fits this thread (including your rather obscure references to 'evolutionary algorithms') is:

'intelligence:the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience'

OK... yes, yes, evolution isn't a sentient force... so it can't consciously 'comprehend' or 'understand'... but it does give rise to organisms that are better suited to profiting from the environment - so evolution is 'clever'

Anyhow... my question is 'What is your definition of 'intelligence'?', with a supplementary question: why do you keep going on about it?

The point is not how an unrealistic model of how technological development can be constrained to almost fit into an analogy of evolution, the point is that technological development can produce products that evolution can not

Says who?

Those who can't (or refuse to) accept that they have a need to twist reality to fit their world-view?

Intelligent agencies can produce artifacts that evolution can't

I see you're still clinging to your (purposefully?) misleading 'absolutes' like can't and impossible

Try 'intelligent agencies have produced artifacts that evolution so far hasn't' and you'll see that your 'points' are irrelevant

When someone wrote "shampoo, rinse, repeat" on shampoo bottles... people started assuming you were supposed to wash your hair twice and shampoo sales doubled...

When someone wrote "swallow, brainwash, disseminate" on woo books... people started assuming you were supposed to believe any nonsense couched in bull-science... and IDiots et al have reproduced exponentially...

Jimbob, until you get your head out of your butt and understand what "self replication" means, it's like talking to a wall. <snip/>To those who actually know, you sound garbled and confused and all over the place

And to those who don't know a great deal about evolution - or biology in general - you sound garbled and confused and all over the place

GM organisms are the result of processes that are identical to evolution, despite the fact that they show characteristics that couldn't have evolved?

The sooner you let go of your absolutes, the sooner you'll realise that your talking out of your arse

Evolution is more than just information change over time

OK, o great one, enlighten me; what else - in the context of this thread - is evolution?

If Goddidit by incrementally altering the Design of organisms in a manner completely analogous to technological development, then by your reasoning that would be evolution.

Ummm... no... that would be analogous to technological development

Asserting that "information evolves" doesn't alter the fact that the selection process is dissimilar to natural selection. Because it is artificial selection.

So what?
A=A
B=B
Therefore A != B

So you don't think that, for example, humans set out to create machines that fly whereas flight just happened to birds and bats makes the processes of technological development and biological evolution different in a way that effects you analogy? Why not?

Why not? Maybe because planes are, by definition, 'better' when they fit their niche in a way that makes them more suited to being reproduced

 

[cyborg]

If Goddidit by incrementally altering the Design of organisms in a manner completely analogous to technological development, then by your reasoning that would be evolution.

I see some people are still having a real hard time knowing how to deal with the same words in different domains.

 

[mijopaalmc]

I see some people are still having a real hard time knowing how to deal with the same words in different domains.

That actually would be your fault. You, articulett, and Southwind17 are equivocating when you use the word "evolution". When you "evolution" with respect to living organisms, you use it in the sense in which it commonly understood in biology whereas, when you use it with respect to technologies, you use it in its most general sense as "change over time". You are the ones that are trying to apply definitions and usage specific to one domain of knowledge to another domain of knowledge where there are fundamental differences in the definition and usage.

 

[cyborg]

When you "evolution" with respect to living organisms, you use it in the sense in which it commonly understood in biology whereas, when you use it with respect to technologies, you use it in its most general sense as "change over time".

Mijo: it applies to both and in both ways.

It's not my fault at all: I have tried hard to point this out. I have in fact been more specific in both cases about what I precisely mean. But will I be heard? Nooooooooooooo. Let's just worry about what the nebulous evil "ID crowd" can use to prop up their own poor understanding of words, logic and meaning.

You are the ones that are trying to apply definitions and usage specific to one domain of knowledge to another domain of knowledge where there are fundamental differences in the definition and usage.

You however do not know where these differences lie - you are far too worried about words and not worried enough about meaning.

 

[articulett]

Top down... as from the general to the more specific? Like reasoning deductively?

Couple posts back you were arguing the "analogy" as a deduction.

No... I was arguing the analogy as a fact.

Figuring out how thing came to be by tracing the information backwards is very useful in understanding evolution... Because matter doesn't come to be organized into systems or designs or organisms from the top down... All design is from the bottom up. That's why we didn't don't have next years technology yet... that is why there was no internet worth mentioning 20 years ago. Molecular genetics is a literal map of what pieces of DNA were the keys to evolutionary junctions. We look at the design for the current organism and figure out how different bits and pieces of it came together and when. The highly conserved stuff like hox genes are in so many life forms-- they helped evolution of complex organisms really take off... they are responsible for a fly having a front, back, sides, heads, and tail end the same as they are for us. They spread widely because those organisms that had them turned out to be the best replicators. Just like flying machines that worked... became the prototype "mutation" that was widely copied... this design evolved in the environment over time based on increasing cost/benefit of the resulting products. All information must compete to survive and be replicated... hence there is no choice but for better replicators and more refined and efficient designs to come about. Why will computers never be the behemoths with slow processors of times past?

With the internet... there is nowhere to go but forward... and then things can branch off and begin their own evolution....

But... you seem to be one of those posters that is having a conversation with himself that no-one is really following. I'm not sure anyone except you is understanding your point or your questions.

 

[articulett]

Though sometimes things can get simplified by deleting data...

Yes... like cleaning off a hard drive that is making your computer run slow...

Genomes of smarter animals tend to be very pruned compared to lots of plants and "lower life forms"-- a lot of the junk DNA has been deleted... which is important, because even the code takes up space...and smaller cells means you can pack more efficient information in denser ways.


The eyes devolve for creatures whom lie under ground or in caves-- they are a liability... so when the genome mutates, the eyes don't hook up and the brain area hooked up to the eyes processes for other senses--giving those organisms (and their DNA) a survival advantage. It's all about cost benefit to the information being replicated...
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/selfish06/selfish06_indexx.html

Just to illustrate what we're talking about — genome size bears very little relation to the complexity of an organism; two creatures like a puffer fish and a zebra fish have very different size genomes, even though they look very similar.

From this end of the telescope, human beings look like they have quite a big genome, but if you turn the telescope around and look from another direction, the human genome looks rather a small one, compared with that of grasshoppers, which is at least three times as large, or deep-sea shrimps, which have ten times as much DNA as us.

Salamanders get even bigger, and the king of the genomes in the animal kingdom at least, is the marbled lung fish. Some people say amoebae have larger genomes at 500 gigabases, but they're almost certainly polyploid, as are lilies, which also have very big genomes. This is a perfectly ordinary diploid genome in the marbled lungfish, and it has as much digital information in it as about ten British Museum reading rooms.

...
Just in passing, it does seem that big genomes go with small brains. This is particularly true in amphibia, where — in frogs and salamanders, the larger the genome the smaller the brain. A frog has about five gigabytes and a comparably large brain; a salamander has about 30 gigabytes and a smaller brain, and a mudpuppy has an 85- gigabase — sorry, I keep saying byte, I mean base — gigabase genome, and has an extremely small brain. Human beings luckily have larger brains than frogs. There are two reasons for this: the bigger your genome the slower you are at duplicating yourselves, so the harder it is to grow a big brain by multiplying cells. And also it's harder to fit the same number of neurons in your head if neuron bodies are bigger.

--Matt Ridley

 

[articulett]

Try 'intelligent agencies have produced artifacts that evolution so far hasn't' and you'll see that your 'points' are irrelevant


When someone wrote "swallow, brainwash, disseminate" on woo books... people started assuming you were supposed to believe any nonsense couched in bull-science... and IDiots et al have reproduced exponentially...


And to those who don't know a great deal about evolution - or biology in general - you sound garbled and confused and all over the place

I loved this response. Yay... I'm not just talking to a wall!

By the way-- our genomes are FULL of artifacts. Genomes seem to have developed a lot of ways of recombining and tweaking their information... ERVS are artifacts, in fact. What humans evolved to do with information is what genomes have evolved to do with information... it's just taken a lot more time... it's takes a long time to produce a good information replicator capable of introducing artifacts the way evolution has. Biomimicry is the future... We can learn from the information that has been honing itself in assorted environments over the eons to achieve similar results in much less time. (Especially those who are good at analogizing and applying information across domains.) We can tweak our information with a map provided by eons of accumulated evolving data and systems.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Mijo: it applies to both and in both ways.

No, it doesn't. "Evolution" has a very specific meaning in reference to the Theory of Evolution, which is more restricted than "[a] gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form", "any process of formation or growth; development", "a process of change in a certain direction", or "a process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state".

It's not my fault at all: I have tried hard to point this out. I have in fact been more specific in both cases about what I precisely mean. But will I be heard? Nooooooooooooo. Let's just worry about what the nebulous evil "ID crowd" can use to prop up their own poor understanding of words, logic and meaning.

The point is that the analogy in the OP was specifically directed intelligent design proponents, and it doesn't describe evolution by natural selection in a way that is a different than the way that intelligent design proponents describe intelligent design. It merely swaps "the environment" for "an intelligence".

You however do not know where these differences lie - you are far too worried about words and not worried enough about meaning.

Actually, I am concerned about the meanings of words, most specifically the fact that one word can multiple meanings that are not necessarily interchangeable. After all, you wouldn't that fact that "impulse" can describe the influence of a particular felling or mental state to explain that "impulse" is a change in momentum in physics. Or would you?

 

[cyborg]

No, it doesn't.

No.

The point is that the analogy in the OP was specifically directed intelligent design proponents

I do not care.

I. DO. NOT. CARE.

I. DO. NOT. CARE.

I. DO. NOT. CARE.

I do not know how I can make it any more clear since I have pointed this out several times before.

After all, you wouldn't that fact that "impulse" can describe the influence of a particular felling or mental state to explain that "impulse" is a change in momentum in physics. Or would you?

You do not understand abstractions. At all.

 

[six7s]

I loved this response. Yay... I'm not just talking to a wall!

You'd get even more responses if you cleared out your PM inbox



In the interim, check your email inbox

 

[six7s]

Actually, I am concerned about the meanings of words, most specifically the fact that one word can multiple meanings that are not necessarily interchangeable.

I can only assume you have an irony deficiency bordering on fatal

For one who professes a concern for words, you don't half make an absolute dogs dinner of your rants...

"most specifically the fact that one word can multiple meanings "

So... you think that some words (e.g. 'have') can be omitted from a sentence and yet still convey ONE meaning?

The point is that the analogy in the OP was specifically directed intelligent design proponents

Do you mean:

• The point is that the analogy in the OP was specifically directed AT intelligent design proponents

or

• The point is that the analogy in the OP was specifically directed AGAINST intelligent design proponents

I have to ask because it seems that although you are accostomed to sitting on the fence and hurling red herrings, it is - as ever - less than obvious who and/or what you're aiming to obfuscate

 

[articulett]

You'd get even more responses if you cleared out your PM inbox



In the interim, check your email inbox

Egads... a snafu in the spread of information! I will use this hint to intentionally tweak my pm inbox so that the information can flow freely!

 

[jimbob]

The analogy requires intelligence, evolution doesn't

What is - in the context of this thread - your definition of 'intelligence'?

One that I think fits this thread (including your rather obscure references to 'evolutionary algorithms') is:

'intelligence:the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience'

OK... yes, yes, evolution isn't a sentient force... so it can't consciously 'comprehend' or 'understand'... but it does give rise to organisms that are better suited to profiting from the environment - so evolution is 'clever'

I am not talking about the results here, I am talking about the prerequisites for the processes to work.

If you look at your definition of intelligence, you will see that evoloutionary processes do not require intelligence. Evolution does not require intelligence. Technological deveolpment does. Intelligence is needed in choosing the specifications.

Anyhow... my question is 'What is your definition of 'intelligence'?', with a supplementary question: why do you keep going on about it?

Your definition is fine, however you are talking about the results of evolution not the process.

The point is not how an unrealistic model of how technological development can be constrained to almost fit into an analogy of evolution, the point is that technological development can produce products that evolution can not

Says who?

Those who can't (or refuse to) accept that they have a need to twist reality to fit their world-view?

In Southwinds stories, the goal was to make something that sold. That is an arbitary goal, an equally arbitary goal could have been to make a good heater, or lighting circuit, and the direction woould have gone in a different direction.

Intelligent agencies can produce artifacts that evolution can't

I see you're still clinging to your (purposefully?) misleading 'absolutes' like can't and impossible

Try 'intelligent agencies have produced artifacts that evolution so far hasn't' and you'll see that your 'points' are irrelevant

Do the sums.

How long is the GFP nucleotide sequence?
I make that about 700 letters.

In base 4 that is 4⁷⁰⁰ possible combinations.

How many generations of mice at 5 generations/year and say 10 billion mice would be needed for this same sequence as the jellyfish protein to have a 50% chance of occuring?

There is no practical chance.

ETA, even if there are 2.5 billion possible sites on the mouse genome and each is independent of each other.

Evolution is more than just information change over time

OK, o great one, enlighten me; what else - in the context of this thread - is evolution?

Biological evolution, or analogous processes.

 

[mijopaalmc]

I can only assume you have an irony deficiency bordering on fatal

For one who professes a concern for words, you don't half make an absolute dogs dinner of your rants...

"most specifically the fact that one word can multiple meanings "

So... you think that some words (e.g. 'have') can be omitted from a sentence and yet still convey ONE meaning?



Do you mean:

• The point is that the analogy in the OP was specifically directed AT intelligent design proponents

or

• The point is that the analogy in the OP was specifically directed AGAINST intelligent design proponents

I have to ask because it seems that although you are accostomed to sitting on the fence and hurling red herrings, it is - as ever - less than obvious who and/or what you're aiming to obfuscate

Well, I see that since you have no substantive arguments, you have resorted to criticizing me for not proofreading my posts. Both your corrections were right. The second one works well for both "directed at" and "directed against" although I did originally mean "directed at".

By the way, mentioning that the original intent of analogy in the OP was to explain evolution by natural selection to intelligent design proponents and thereby counter intelligent design is not a red herring, as that was Southwind17's expressly stated intent:

I’d like to offer a thought countering Intelligent Design (ID) theory.

The point that jimbob, ImaginalDisc, quixotecoyote, and I have made clearly and repeatedly is that obscuring the differences between technological development and biological evolution is an especially bad way of "countering" intelligent design because its proponents already perceive technological development to be guided by an intelligence. They will therefore analogize the engineer in technological development to the "Intelligent Designer" in intelligent design. Furthermore, technological development possesses a whole host of characteristics that biological evolution does not and that are perceived by the majority of people (not just intelligent design proponents) to arise directly from the involvement of an intelligent agent. Such a perception is not necessarily correct because the majority of people hold it, but it is something you have to consider when trying to explain an unfamiliar concept by an analogy to a familiar one.

ETA: If you are going to criticize me for poor proofreading you night also want to consider reading your own posts as you misspelled "accustomed".

 

[articulett]

I can only assume you have an irony deficiency bordering on fatal

For one who professes a concern for words, you don't half make an absolute dogs dinner of your rants...

"most specifically the fact that one word can multiple meanings "

So... you think that some words (e.g. 'have') can be omitted from a sentence and yet still convey ONE meaning?

Every time I read him in quotes I remember why I have in on ignore. I can't believe he's professes a concern for words. This is a guy who played all sorts of semantic games-- just so he could conclude that evolution is "random". That's the real strawman of Intelligent Design. Everyone else, including Darwin, knows that the "random" is the easy part of evolution--it's the SELECTION over TIME that makes the complexity and seeming design. It's information that is good and getting replicated in the environment it find itself in that drives evolution. He just never ever gets this... and so everything he says on the subject is like Behe creationist blather-- it's this weird sort of obfuscation that doesn't really say anything--it just infers that you are wrong (as is Dawkins... they always hate Dawkins and anything to do with him) while he is winning some point in some game that only they seem to be playing. It's so... annoying and impenetrable...and "smarmy". And, at any time they could let down their shield of ignorance and actually learn something from the vast number of intelligent people who post on this forum and are eager to share what they know. But there is never any curiosity or clarification--just the arrogant assumption that they know everything to know on the subject.

It's a pleasure to see you sharing my pain. The annoyance has faded to amusement.

 

[articulett]

Jimbob--you and your creationist luminscent red herring. It's like you are always thinking backwards... you just don't understand selection... learn how and why bioluminesce evolved and what are the genetic analogs in non bioluminescent animals... the environment, selects, remember. How in the world would the environments select for a mouse to glow... albino mice don't survive in the wild because they are too visible to predators... in fact, being an albino sucks unless your oddity makes humans especially willing to help you survive and reproduce. Your lack of understanding is glaring in your idiotic questions and they are so very much like the irrelevant nothingness of Behe. And I'm supposed to believe that you are not an "intelligent design" proponent? I assure you, whether you are or not... they have definitely blighted your thinking.

Here...get a clue... and quit pretending that you are making a valid point... How long would it take for humans to evolve actual wings? That's the sort of nonsense question your asking! It doesn't mean anything or prove anything. It just makes you sound like Kleinman, Behe, and Dembski. You are embarrassing yourself.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/bioluminescence4.htm
http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=55589
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070919073007.htm
http://www.lifesci.ucsb.edu/~biolum/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,308466,00.html
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cg...0.1086/521964&erFrom=7191747453800700264Guest
http://www.bio.davidson.edu/Courses/anphys/1999/Cody/definition.htm

Genes for "glowing" only evolve in organisms where for them iit is a "golden mutation"--that is... it gives that mutation a chance to get replicated exponentially because it allows glowing organisms to preferentially survive and reproduce over their nonglowing peers passing on their glow-making genes.

So how long will it take humans to evolve the butterfly mutation that kept it free from the parasite???? Huh??? That's a question on par with your example! Your numbers are like Dembski's math and Kleinman's math. Completely irrelevant and revealing more about you than you might want to reveall--namely your stupidity...but also some dishonesty? Smarmy and purposeful creationist leanings?

Once again, I've wasted my time trying to educate someone who pretends to have an interest in the topic but thinks he already knows all there is to know.
If you care about this stuff--quit presuming you know about it and trying to teach it--actually go learn the stuff you are trying to pass off as knowledge.

 

[articulett]

And Jim, what about my recipe example, where an error leads to something so delicious it becomes a big hit getting others to by it and make it and replicate it and tweak it? Or these: Here’s a list of people who made discoveries, came up with inventions and did other things by taking advantage of a lucky break:

• Christopher Columbus set out to find a westward route to India — and instead stumbled onto a continent that became a bonanza for Spain.

• Charles Goodyear’s name is now part of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. He was working for years on how to vulcanize (or strengthen) rubber without much success until he accidentally dropped a bit of rubber with some sulfur onto a hot stove.

• James Wright, an engineer at General Electric, was trying to come up with a silicone substitute for rubber in 1943. Instead, he invented Silly Putty. Silicone rubber also went on to be used for gaskets and silicone gel breast implants.

http://www.courier-journal.com/foryourinfo/120103/120103.html

This is much more akin to the "golden mutation" that conferred butterfly resistance to parasites... randomness... followed by selection choosing that particular bit of randomness for the environment because it has something which gives it a replication advantage. The information or mutation or error ITSELF gets ITSELF copied.

"wash, rinse, repeat".

(and on the flip side--AIDS--it evolved with humans as replicators who were just going about doing what humans do--hunting bushmeat, getting bit by apes, and sowing wild oats...but the virus was "clever" because it didn't make one disease... it just weakened the immune system...so humans were slow to figure it out and copied a lot before succumbing Yes, AIDS rode along "Human intent"--not such fabulous evolution from our point of view--but from the point of view of the information in the virus--that was a "golden mutation"--a brilliant strategy. And humans and their "intelligence" and "intent" and evolving technology are, so far, no match for this blind evolutionary algorithm. So what's the big difference again??)

 

[six7s]

Well, I see that since you have no substantive arguments, you have resorted to criticizing me for not proofreading my posts. Both your corrections were right

Of course they were right. I can and do read. If you bothered to, you would have noticed that I have clearly stated that my knowledge of evolution and biology is v limited

That does NOT mean I am oblivious to your bull-science

Involvement in this thread is NOT limited to those posting 'substantive arguments'. If it did, you wouldn't post anything. But, as you are free to persist in your perverse and blatant obfuscation, I am free to debunk your obviously nonsensical woo

ETA: If you are going to criticize me for poor proofreading you night also want to consider reading your own posts as you misspelled "accustomed".

Compare and Contrast:

• even you can recognise a missspeled wird
• how many understand your 'message'?

 

[jimbob]

ImaginalDisc, for example, likes Dawkins, indeed cherishes his books, he also understands evolution.

Articluett

What don't I understand about natural selection?

The information is the "payload" of the organism whicih is the "delivery vehicle".

Mutation acts on the information, which affects the form of the organism.

Selection acts on the organism, which does include the information.

If the organism is stopped from reproducing, then the information is an evolutionary failure.

The beauty is that by selecting the organism, one is selecting the information it carries. Whthout self-replication that can't happen, there has to be an arbitary selection process, and that has to involve an intelligent agency somewhere.

This is conventional evolutionary theory, since it was explicitally stated by one of the greatest mathematicians of the C20th.


Selection acts on the vehicle, mutation on the information payload. With self-replication the selection automatically acts also on the payload. With imperfect copying mutation occurs, With imperfect self-replication, both co-occur and evolution follows.

Both Southwind and Six7s both have trumpeted their lack of understanding and knowledge; the trouble is that the OP is a superficially attractive analogy, but with pitfalls.

If I understand Southwind's posts correctly, (s)he is arguing that the OP is a metaphor, unlike you, who seem to be arguing for equivalence.

There is nothing wrong in seeing the work of intelligence in systems that were designed using intelligence. Admitting the different signatures allows us to contrast what would be expected in evolved systems compared to ones that had been intelligently designed:

Vestigal organs, simple design inelagancies, in systems that would, if designed need designers well able to fix such inelagancies, lack of design reuse, e.g. if a new set of eyes was beneficial, then it might have evolved from scratch, rather than using the original design. No mammals with jellyfish gene sequences, for starters.

Of course an omniscient designer could have done all these, but why? And what designed the Designer?

 

[six7s]

Jimbob--you and your creationist luminscent red herring. It's like you are always thinking backwards... you just don't understand selection... learn how and why bioluminesce evolved and what are the genetic analogs in non bioluminescent animals... the environment, selects, remember. How in the world would the environments select for a mouse to glow...

And he has the cheek to suggest that I should "do the sums" in order to see that his absolutism is justified from a 'practical' perspective

Ha!

OK... do the sums... and consider a (perhaps improbable but not impossible) scenario where, over the course of 42 gazillion years, the surface of some parts of the planet starts to glow...

Sure... glowing mammals with a global population in the zillions, that reach sexual maturity in six weeks and gestate in three could NEVER evolve to select for such an 'impractical' advantage like camouflage in a glowing environment

OK... I've swallowed more than enough glowing red-herrings for now... jimbob will have to select some new bait