Intelligent Evolution?

[Southwind17]

Don't tell me... you're gloating cos you finished yours in less than a month...

Tip: on the side of the box where it says '3 to 5 years'... that's the age group of the intended market... not a time frame for completion

Know any contemporary jokes too?!

 

[jimbob]

OK, if it's not an obsession, let go of it

What about the odds of 'some mice evolving a new gene sequence that gives rise to a superficially similar (yet genetically different) appearance as observed in jellyfish (i.e. they glow)'

Absolutely impossible?

That is not the point, I have previously said that under the correct conditions, there could be sufficient evolutionary pressure for a fluroescent mouse to evolve.

However such a mouse would have a different sequence to the jellyfish GFP sequence.

Jellyfish are observed to have this gene sequence, many mice have been observed to lack this sequence. Many vertebrates lack this gene sequence, so that means that this GFP sequence was not inherited by vertebrates from the last common ancestor of jellyfish and vertebrates.

As many mice, in common with other rodents lack this GFP sequence, observation would suggest that this sequence arose within a subset of the mouse population. The sequence was not present in the last common ancestor of all mice.

Now, doing the sums, we find vanishingly small odds (almost literally homeopathic) of the same 700+letter sequence arising independantly in both mice and jelyfish.

It is thus a reasonable statement that the particular GFP sequence did not arise independantly in both mice and jellyfish.

Lateral gene transfer does occur in nature, especially in bacteria, but given the different environments that mice and jellyfish inhabit, one would expect to see evidence in intermediate organisms if this transfer was natural.

The most likely conclusion is that this sequence was placed in the GFP mouse by an intelligent agency.
​

GMOs show gene sequences that wouldn't* have evolved in non GMOs of the same species. Intelligence can produce signatures that evolution can't. This is because the processes are fundamentally different.

*(I would argue couldn't)

Yes

You come across as spineless because of the way you, despite a fairly well-developed vocabulary AND the time to use it, lack the fortitude to clearly define your stance and, instead, you go with the wishy-washy flow of obfuscating nonsense

For example:

In response to:

Your wishy-washy reply is:

​

You sad git

This sort of reply is the hallmark of a spineless fraud, someone who demonstrates a lacks of integrity by using the 'read the backlog' cop-out instead of simply addressing the issue - something you could have done in less than 50 words

And then afterwards I explain my reasoning again, this has been a substantial proportion of the thread. In case you didn't realise that wes what I was answering in the section below, starting with the question whether you agreed that evolution requires selection and variation.

Do you agree that evolution requires "selection" and "mutation"?

Please refrain from trying to lure me into swallowing one of your obfuscations with one of your red herrings as bait.

As evolution is not a sentient being or force, it requires nothing, it simply happens.

However, as I'm here, I may as well answer your question, with a 'qualified yes': I think so... i.e. I don't know

You "don't know" that evolution requires both selection and mutation?

Even if you hedge your bets and say that you think so?

And you call my discussion "spineless"?

Without self-replication, a copy could be made of a "design" even if the physical structure...

Seriously, forget whatever you think you know about 'self-replication'. It has been pointed out all too often that you don't know what it is, so, for you to drone on about it from a self-appointed position of authority is farcical

Where is the error in my reasoning? I am not claiming any authority, merely

As you seem to disagree with this, please give me a convincing example

Your request does not parse correctly. I won't bother trying to decipher it until you can and have demonstrated that you yourself know what you're talking about

Ok maybe I wasn't as clear as I could have been there.

Without self-replication, an external set of selection criteria need to be applied, these can not be instigated, except as a result of intelligent action, nor could they be implimented, except as a result of intelligent action.

As you seem to disagree with this [above statement], please give me a convincing counterexample; i.e. an example where a set of selection ctriteria are applied without intelligent instigation in an evolutionary system that lacks self-replication.

====================



I assume you don't know what rhetoric is
Google: Definitions of rhetoric on the Web

Your argument seemed to imply that arguing for technological development requiring intelligence is a creationist stance someow. I want to know what this reasoning is.

Of course if one is arguing that the processes of technological development and evolution are analogous, and that one required intelligence, then that would be arguing that the other also required intelligence.

I am arguing that the two processes are fundamentally different and they differ in the lack of need for intelligence in evolution and the lack of need for self-replicaton in technological development.

Thank you for at least trying to give me an idea. Alas, you failed - probably because you don't actually know either

I had to choose what to paste from that course, it looks like undergraduate material, so is fairly simple,
Here is the initial part of the module text:

Von Neumann thought of his logical model of self-reproduction as an answer to the observation that, unlike machines, biological organisms have an ability to self-replicate while increasing their complexity without limit. Mechanical artefacts are instead produced via more complicated factories (as opposed to self- production) and can only degenerate in their complexity. He was searching for a complexity threshold beyond which systems may self-reproduce (no outside control) while possibly increasing their complexity.

And the part that I posted before, snipped for brevity.

Perhaps the most important consequence of the requirement of memory-based descriptions in Von Neumann's self-reproduction scheme is its opening the possibility for open-ended emergent evolution....Von Neumann [1966, page 86] further proposed that non-trivial self-reproduction should include this "ability to undergo inheritable mutations as well as the ability to make another organism like the original", to distinguish it from "naive" self-reproduction like growing crystals.

In other words, above a certain threshold of complexity of [imperfectly] self-replicating systems, open ended evolution can occur where more complex systems can evolve from simpler systems.​

That is the essence of evolution.

However, this aim is - needlessly and annoyingly - complicated by the mere presence of people like you and mijo: purveyors of bull-science, which is much more detrimental to learning than unabashed woo simply because, like con-artists, you use half-truths and jargon-fuelled bull-science to pretend that you not only know what you're talking about but also something much worse, that your nonsense is true

No, what I am saying is uncontentious, and has made it into undergraduate courses. It is simple:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3045830#post3045830

Design can overhaul, evolution cannot.

Design can plan for long-term development, evolution cannot.

Design can lift elements from one type of thing and apply them to another, evolution cannot.

Design can retain the plans of a form indefinately, evolution cannot.

Living things are produced by autonumous reproduction, machines are not.

Living things have heritable traits, machines do not.

Living things mutate, and those mutations are passed on. Machines neither mutate, nor pass on mutations.

Aaahhh! You can 'reason' an excuse to to be absolutist

So, if the odds of something occuring is vanishingly small in the lifetime of the universe, within the whole of the visible universe, I would say that it can't happen.

You would say it can.

Back to the famous "monkeys typing hamlet" discussion

Ignoring punctuation, spacing, and capitalization, a monkey typing letters uniformly at random has one chance in 26 of correctly typing the first letter of Hamlet. It has one chance in 676 (26 times 26) of typing the first two letters. Because the probability shrinks exponentially, at 20 letters it already has only one chance in 26²⁰=19,928,148,895,209,409,152,340,197,376, roughly equivalent to the probability of buying 4 lottery tickets consecutively and winning the jackpot each time. In the case of the entire text of Hamlet, the probabilities are so vanishingly small they can barely be conceived in human terms. Say the text of Hamlet contains 130,000 letters (it is actually more, even stripped of punctuation), then there is a probability of one in 3.4×10¹⁸³⁹⁴⁶ to get the text right at the first trial. The average number of letters that needs to be typed until the text appears is also 3.4×10¹⁸³⁹⁴⁶.

For comparison purposes, there are only about 10⁷⁹ atoms in the observable universe and only 4.3 x 10¹⁷ seconds have elapsed since the Big Bang. Even if the observable universe were filled with monkeys typing for all time, their total probability to produce a single instance of Hamlet would still be less than one chance in 10¹⁸³⁸⁰⁰. As Kittel and Kroemer put it, "The probability of Hamlet is therefore zero in any operational sense of an event…", and the statement that the monkeys must eventually succeed "gives a misleading conclusion about very, very large numbers."

The 700 letter sequence is 10¹⁸³⁴⁷⁶ times more likely at only 1 in 6.435x10³²⁴ for one mutation per second per atom in the visible universe since the big bang.

Events with these probabilities can't happen. (Within the lifetime of the known universe).

 

[cyborg]

What might William Shakespeare write than an infinite number of monkeys couldn't?

The real question is: why don't you think William Shakespeare's writings are the results of a large number of monkeys?

Even in a universe as large as this... I may never get another chance to say: "thanks" for answering my question, cyborg.

Of course Shakespeare's monkeys may well have typed the response earlier: you just aren't interpreting the data correctly.

Now what if I had a thousand monkeys trying to make sense of the writings of a thousand monkeys...?

And what if the sense those monkeys were developing about the writings started to drive future texts...?

And what if those monkeys developed an over-inflated sense of achievement...?

I do believe I said earlier that it is very important to know where your randomness is being used lest your probabilities lead to nonsenses.

 

[cyborg]

Oh BTW can I presume that no-one has any objection to my abstract outlining of evolutionary processes so that I may continue the argument with precision?

 

[President Bush]

The real question is: why don't you think William Shakespeare's writings are the results of a large number of monkeys?

The historical record.

I do believe I said earlier that it is very important to know where your randomness is being used lest your probabilities lead to nonsenses.

Uh huh.

 

[cyborg]

The historical record.

No attempt even at a bit of lateral thinking?

Here's a little pointer: consider the whole message consider the thread context then re-evaluate your interpretation of that sentence.

Uh huh.

Well, if you like the argument you made as is then you should be aware that it is the same one made by those who insist your existence is not "the product of randomness."

 

[President Bush]

No attempt even at a bit of lateral thinking?

Here's a little pointer: consider the whole message consider the thread context then re-evaluate your interpretation of that sentence.

Uhhh... yeah: evolution reference. Stick to math, cyborg. Your composition skills seem weak.

Well, if you like the argument you made as is then you should be aware that it is the same one made by those who insist your existence is not "the product of randomness."

Which argument? Anyhow, I DFC about stupid creationshit theory.

I think the "analogy" might fit in well here.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

 

[cyborg]

Uhhh... yeah: evolution reference. Stick to math, cyborg. Your composition skills seem weak.

You aren't addressing the maths.

And what is with bolding names all the time?

Which argument?

Well namely the "functionally zero" argument.

ANY specific sequence constructed simply by randomly constructing sequences will have a limiting probability of zero as the length of the sequence approaches infinity. This in and of itself is really a very uninteresting fact.

The point is that Hamlet is NOT just some arbitrary sequence of characters - it is supposed to convey meaning.

The fact that it is supposed to convey meaning gives the text properties that other arbitrary sequences do not possess - but only when in combination with interpreters to extract that meaning.

If you don't insist on the primacy of English to convey that meaning then there suddenly becomes a hell of a lot more ways for "Hamlet" to appear out of the mists...

Anyhow, I DFC about stupid creationshit theory.

Then why not come back to addressing the non-stupid concept of evolution?

 

[articulett]

Bush... human beings are evolved monkeys... that evolved languages and symbols like the alphabet and technology like the printing press... all of these are codes--ways of conveying meaning which evolved from these monkeys who evolved intelligence (because those who couldn't, didn't survive along this lineage to pass on their genes nor emerging memes)... all of these traits were traits that had ways of getting themselves copied... and thus EVOLVE. One of those evolved monkeys WAS Shakespeare. Therefore, evolution can and does eventually produce Shakespeare from monkeys.... It's just not in the random way that you simpletons are so attracted to. It's through natural selection-- the the things the simpletons never really seem to get. Everyone understands the random aspects. The daft and indoctrinated have trouble with the simple but profound elegance of natural selection and how complexity and design emerge from the process. It HAS to. There is no other way.

So what if humans think their intent or intelligence are miraculous, --from the point of view of the information (genes, memes, etc.)-- humans evolved to process, assimilate, recombine, and replicate it so it could live when they don't-- just as DNA lives long beyond it's replicators. Humans are part of the replicators and the environment that hone the information that is already there-- they are not the creators of the information... none of us invented the alphabet, or language, or technology we use... but we all participate in it's evolution... that's all any human is doing. The information lives beyond it's replicators and various humans tweak it along the way over time. Information evolved to get copied and to live beyond it's replicators to get copied and tweaked and honed again.

And evolution eventually brought us humans who manipulate genetic information and made a bioluminescent mouse. It wasn't forseeable... and it didn't happen in the bizarre manner you seem to think evolution happens in-- it happened through natural selection incrementally honing and recombining information over time from the time between the last common ancestor of mouse and human...

Information can't care as to whether it will be replicated... but information that has something about itself that gets itself replicated drives evolution... even if assorted people think it's because of their own cleverness which they spontaneous generated themselves. Information doesn't care if it gets passed on via the ego massage of humans... or because it cures illnesses... or because it codes for a sex drive not subject to reason ...or because it promises eternal rewards to its replicators.

 

[articulett]

Bush,

Human brains are information management systems: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/serpentine07/Pagel.html
that are and evolved from high fidelity replicators:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/serpentine07/Dawkins.html
and this basic algorithm accounts for using energy to decrease entropy to make increasingly "complex" and "organized" things --from armadillos to airplanes.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/serpentine07/Tooby.html

If you cannot understand this, then you do not have the intelligence necessary to participate in this conversation nor do you understand the analogy enough to make a determination as to whether it is useful for the general public and for those who CAN grasp the above.

If you don't understand how the analogy illuminates natural selection, (which creationists obfuscate at every turn)-- then you, yourself, do not understand natural selection as well as you imagine you do and your opinion on how to convey it to others is worthless.

All tangents about oil cans and bioluminescence and intelligence and intent and Shakespeare and deductions and semantics and "microprocesses" and "difference" and "what creationist think"... all of that is froufrou --tangential obfuscations that keep you from understanding natural selection AND how the analogy is a useful way of conveying what evolution is and why the tornado/747 is not representational of the concept at all.

Accept the fact that maybe its you that is missing something--and maybe, just maybe, you can learn what you are missing. Otherwise, you are destined to spin in your own head playing the imaginary game that you are winning but no-one else is playing-- like Behe and all the woo that come to preach here. And the rest of us just shake our head thinking, "it's so sad but true... the incompetent ones cannot fix their incompetence because they are the last to understand that they are the incompetent ones."

Suppose, you really didn't understand something about natural selection-- wouldn't you want to find out about it--rather than assume you already know everything there is to know about it. How do you imagine you'd find it out if you can't see what the experts are saying and the many intelligent people on this thread patiently explaining the concept to you over and over again? Do you imagine that you are making more sense than Mijo? Than Behe? Because you aren't. It's the same ol' nothingness.

Go with the expert links if you want a clue. Otherwise prepare to be mocked like the mockable pedants you sound like.

 

[jimbob]

Yes... just as the design of an airplane is carried in the actual airplane... and the blueprint of a house is carried in the house... and the recipe is coded in the actual product it produces via the recipe. It's the same.

Information coded for in human brains need humans for copying... Information in viruses need bacterial cells for copying... information in sperm need eggs for copying... information in VHS need VHS machines to copy... or digital... digital data need computers to copy it... "wash rinse repeat" gets itself copied... but it's by a machine... until you understand this... you are playing checkers with chess masters and will be mocked accordingly.

A self-replicating system consists of the "payoload" and the "vehicle", which is the means of making more copies of the information. The payload consists of information to copy both the information and the vehicle, which is the means of copying. What natural selection does is stop some replicators from replicating.

A house might contain its archetectural drawings in a safe inside it, as could an aircraft, but there would need to be an external agency to actually perform the copying.

If you don't have self-replication, then an external agency performs the copying. The copying has to be instigated by something. If the copying doesn't have to be instigated by anything external, then, by definition you have self-replication.

If the copying has to be instigated by an external agency, then selection is a result of this external agency. The selection can itself be dumb, but somewhere along the line an intelligent agency will have to impliment the initial selection criteria.

<derail>
The minimum threshold of complexity for self-replicating systems seems quite low, which would imply that the chances of a correct chemical combination occuring are high enough for life to occur in many situations. </derail>

ETA:

I would like to expand on my statement that evolution has nothing to do with intelligence.
Except in as far as intelligence is a trait that might affect the chances of reproduction (both positively and negatively).

derail2

It is easy to seee the benefits of intelligence, but if food is limited, a big energy-hungry brain could easily be disadvantageous. For a similar reason, dwarf species are a common feature on isolated islands. As are flightless birds.

 

[six7s]

I have previously said

Tip: it is folly to assume that everyone has read, let alone understood and memorised, everything you have written

That is not the point, I have previously said that under the correct conditions, there could be sufficient evolutionary pressure for a fluroescent mouse to evolve

Jolly good

So...

P(fluoroMouse) > 0;
therefore
absolutist claim of "never" = wrong​

You agree, yes?

Events with these probabilities can't happen. (Within the lifetime of the known universe).

Oh dear... apparently not

OK... I can imagine you are now crying "foul!", based on your ability to mix and match parameters to suit your perverse world-view

Stiff cheese

You were wrong

Admit it

And no... I'm not pretending I'm always - or even msotly - right... I readily accept that I may well make far more than my fair share of mistakes. However, I am not psychologically allergic to the mere thought of swallowing humble pie. Rather, I suspect that a regular dose of it is beneficial to my understanding

Earlier, I asked what your intent was on this thread - a question you conveniently ignored, choosing instead to ask the same question of me (which I answered with something along the lines of "I'm here to learn, etc.")

I assume you think you are in a position to teach, in a text-based medium

If so, I strongly suggest that you don't give up your day job, as one essential trait of a teacher is the ability to listen to questions and facilitate a means for the student to discover an answer. When the teacher doesn't understand the question (let alone know the answer), it is most efficient for all concerned if this is acknowledged from the outset; I have a hunch that current pedagogical thinking asserts that assuming the stance of 'a source of knowledge' is counter-productive in (almost?) all settings

You "don't know" that evolution requires both selection and mutation?

Shouting, from a position of false authority, is NOT big, nor is it clever

And you call my discussion "spineless"?

No I call you spineless

You are not discussing

You are ranting, from a flimsy, wishy-washy position of ignorance

As you seem to disagree with this [above statement], please give me a convincing counterexample;

Why? So you can go off on yet another self-aggrandising onanistic rant?

Read this, you idiot: I am NOT here for your perverse pleasure.

You know that I readily acknowledge that my knowledge of evolution is lacking, so it is obvious that you asking me for a 'counterexample' is the desparate act of a foolish bully, building a tangential strawman in a futile attempt to gain the high ground

I have leaned NOTHING from you other than there is a high probability that you are an utter fool

Considering how it has been clearly illustrated that you have NO IDEA about self-replication, the passing of information, etc., and yet you still persist in pretending otherwise, I very much doubt that I or anyone else can teach you anything

I won't be putting you on ignore, but I very much doubt I will reply to many more of your posts

 

[cyborg]

jimbob doesn't seem to have grasped is that his argument for non-fluorescing mice equally applies to fluorescing jellyfish.

That is to say jimbob is arguing fluorescing jellyfish shouldn't exist.

 

[mijopaalmc]

cyborg-

So you find the explanation that mice evolved GFP more convincing than the explanation that mice are genetically engineered to express GFP?

 

[six7s]

cyborg-

So you find the explanation that mice evolved GFP more convincing than the explanation that mice are genetically engineered to express GFP?

mijo-

When did you stop beating your bishop?

 

[cyborg]

So you find the explanation that mice evolved GFP more convincing than the explanation that mice are genetically engineered to express GFP?

You don't get it at all do you mijo?

 

[mijopaalmc]

mijo-

When did you stop beating your bishop?

So you like you fallacies, don't you?

 

[President Bush]

Well, if you like the argument you made as is then you should be aware that it is the same one made by those who insist your existence is not "the product of randomness."

Which argument? Anyhow, I DFC about stupid creationshit theory.

I've been out all day. Thanks everyone for not reporting "creationshit theory" as a violation of some rule. It was a typo I now hope "information" might somehow select.

Well namely the "functionally zero" argument.

ANY specific sequence constructed simply by randomly constructing sequences will have a limiting probability of zero as the length of the sequence approaches infinity. This in and of itself is really a very uninteresting fact.

The point is that Hamlet is NOT just some arbitrary sequence of characters - it is supposed to convey meaning.


The fact that it is supposed to convey meaning gives the text properties that other arbitrary sequences do not possess - but only when in combination with interpreters to extract that meaning.

Precisely why the particular example of Hamlet is chosen: Hamlet seems a more meaningful text than most (to interpreters seeking meaning).

As the text I quote is intended to convey meaning, giving it properties that other arbitrary sequences do not possess.

Ignoring punctuation, spacing, and capitalization, a monkey typing letters uniformly at random has one chance in 26 of correctly typing the first letter of Hamlet. It has one chance in 676 (26 times 26) of typing the first two letters. Because the probability shrinks exponentially, at 20 letters it already has only one chance in 26 [size=-4]20[/size]=19,928,148,895,209,409,152,340,197,376, roughly equivalent to the probability of buying 4 lottery tickets consecutively and winning the jackpot each time. In the case of the entire text of Hamlet, the probabilities are so vanishingly small they can barely be conceived in human terms. Say the text of Hamlet contains 130,000 letters (it is actually more, even stripped of punctuation), then there is a probability of one in 3.4×10 [size=-4]183946[/size] to get the text right at the first trial. The average number of letters that needs to be typed until the text appears is also 3.4×10 [size=-4]183946[/size].

For comparison purposes, there are only about 10 [size=-4]79[/size] atoms in the observable universe and only 4.3 x 10 [size=-4]17[/size] seconds have elapsed since the Big Bang. Even if the observable universe were filled with monkeys typing for all time, their total probability to produce a single instance of Hamlet would still be less than one chance in 10 [size=-4]183800[/size]. As Kittel and Kroemer put it, "The probability of Hamlet is therefore zero in any operational sense of an event…", and the statement that the monkeys must eventually succeed "gives a misleading conclusion about very, very large numbers."

If you don't insist on the primacy of English to convey that meaning then there suddenly becomes a hell of a lot more ways for "Hamlet" to appear out of the mists...

I assume the monkey would need to remain consistent.

For example... Spanish (I speak Spanish fairly well). There are three additional letters in Spanish compared to English: rr, ll, and ch. I doubt this makes it more likely a monkey types Hamlet in Spanish than English.

Not to mention other languages (here on earth... or elsewhere?). Nothing like a random letter in another random language to suddenly muck up a perfectly good line of text.

 

[articulett]

Hamlet was not spontaneously created. It evolved. Shakespeare didn't invent language or letters or tragedies or dramas or stories... he just assimilated the information in a way that people liked-- humans spread ihuman assimilated info. that tweaks certain buttons--

How many monkeys it would take to type Shakespeare in the absence of a selection mechanism (something that would allow the information to accumulate and evolve) is irrelevant to the fact that a single monkey descendent DID evolve to write Hamlet. Whatever meaning you are trying to convey is lost in your blinding lack of understanding regarding natural selection and so your point is on par with jimbobs bioluminescence digression or the OP strawman that evolution is like a tornado in a junkyard creating a 747. It just reveals your ignorance... and why you can't be a person who understands the analogy enough to assess whether it is useful. You have to actually understand natural selection to be able to convey it... and the creationist strawman you chose to convey meaning DOES convey meaning-- the meaning it conveys is that you haven't got a clue-- and you haven't got a clue that YOU are the clueless one. I'm sure even the other clueless ones all think they are making more sense than you.

Your cheesy smiley insertions highlights that point. It's what the woo do to pretend that others are in on a joke that only exists in their mind. You are the only one thinking you are communicating something of value or something amusing. The rest of us just find you vapid and unintelligible and impervious to remedying the situation. Cyborg is actually communicating something of value... lots of people are. You are not. Nobody is learning anything from you except the fact that you are a dunderhead.

I know you think you are making a point about something. But whatever that point is, it only exists in your head. Just like the imagined points of Mijo and Jimbob. Maybe you guys can align yourselves and get on the same page and you won't sound like such a trio of stooges. As far as I can tell-- the three of you are only making sense to your individual selves and whatever voices inhabit your head. It never ceases to entertain, however. Do let us know if anyone other than you think you understand the analogy and/or natural selection enough to offer a valid opinion on the topic. We are already well aware of what you think regarding your own competence-- we are just curious as to whether anyone intelligible can understand your point and convey it more successfully than you.

 

[cyborg]

Not to mention other languages (here on earth... or elsewhere?). Nothing like a random letter in another random language to suddenly muck up a perfectly good line of text.

Teh ting bout uman etxrtacion ov maening is tat errs aer corected by unterpretateon.