Intelligent Evolution?

[mijopaalmc]

No.

Now tell me: does the creation of an explanation for said add to the sum total of existence or is it merely a reconfiguration of physicality?

Wow, you really do try hard to miss the point.

The point is that there are totally physical and naturalistic properties of systems, which are themselves totally physical and naturalistic in their nature, that cannot be explained by simply summing the actions of their parts together.

 

[cyborg]

The point is that there are totally physical and naturalistic properties of systems, which are themselves totally physical and naturalistic in their nature, that cannot be explained by simply summing the actions of their parts together.

You're going to have to tell me what you mean by "sum" and "explain" because if I mash two physical systems together what happens is the explanation.

 

[Southwind17]

It was an example of an invalid analogy as my attempt to share how I see your analogy as invalid. You can ignore it, it wasn't crucial.

OK

Proven. The differences are readily apparent but absolute proof is impossible for anything. Just preempting possible word-games.

Recognizing the point to which this thread has 'solidified' (to use cyborg's term), namely the extension of the OP analogy to a hypothetical, albeit testable, analogy (I'm referring to the Sam & Ollie story, which I'll refer to hereafter in this post, and the thread generally, as "the Automaton Analogy", or simply "AA", as replacement of Sam with an automaton might help to remove any potential remaining erroneous perception that Sam was actually thinking about what he was doing!), what, exactly, are those 'readily apparent differences'? The AA adequately reconciles the ostensible differences of self/non-self-replication, mutation/variation and natural/artificial selection, including any notion of intelligence inherent within them. Are you saying there are remaining 'differences' between natural evolution and the AA that have yet to be adequately reconciled in this thread?

Because nothing in your Sam and Ollie story nor in the explanation of how it is possible to produce a complex result through a pre-made system with no intervening intelligence explains how it is impossible to conceive of design without intelligence. Intelligence is required for conception, thus no intelligence = no conception of design or anything else. I intended it originally as a rhetorical question.

Wait a second; do I read you correctly here: "Intelligence is required for conception, thus no intelligence = no conception of design or anything else."?

Does your 'anything else' include the origins of life on Earth, or the fertilization of an ovum, for example?! Could this be the Forum's greatest faux pas, and you're really an IDer who's recognized that the AA actually has teeth?!

If Sam was a vegetable he could not have designed his random methodology as doing so would require intelligence.

"... designed his random methodology."! You mean the 'methodology' whereby the very basic building blocks of a future electronics device are combined by chance, and variations made to each iteration by chance, and each iteration (replication) is triggered by an external event that proves its survival in its environment? You call that an intelligent 'methodology'? You're beginning to sound more and more like an IDer!

Similarly, the automaton we agreed sorting Sam was equivalent to could not have designed the procedure without being programmed. It could perform the procedure but not design either the creative process nor the standards of success.

Admittedly, an automaton would have to be instigated by a human with intent, but don't forget that such 'intent' is only an intent to replicate natural evolution for the purpose of showing that intelligence is not required. It's not an intent with any particular electronics device in mind, just like nature does not have any particular species in mind. The process of evolution that the automaton then performs has no intelligence associated with it. The automaton has simply been programmed to assemble the basic building blocks of 'electronic life' in a random fashion, despatch the output to the market, wait for the signal that the output has survived its environment (however long that may take), replicate the output with the introduction of a random, incremental variation, despatch the 'mutated' output to the market, wait, etc. Just the same as natural evolution, except that instead of humans, cheetahs, dolphins, etc. we end up creating sat. nav. systems, radar installations, mass spectrometers, MRI scanners, etc. - 'irreducibly complex' machines!

Incidentally, the 'standards of success', as you call them, and as explained by me ad nauseum earlier, are not 'designed'. The environment, through selection of the electronics devices over the competing devices, determines what succeeds and what doesn't. This happens day in day out in the real world. No doubt you've not only witnessed it, but been party to it many times. Every time you and everybody else goes out and buys a new computer or digital watch or mobile phone or Blackberry-type device or iPod you're 'selecting' for what is best suited to its environment, and in consequence causing the extinction of other devices. Survival of the fittest. It's staring you in the face right now as you read this on your screen!!!

This goes back to why I think a process where you need intent and forethought to design the mechanics of the process and the standards for success is a bad comparison to evolution where those things happen without intent and forethought.

You might wish to re-think this statement now!

I'm not sure that they do in any significant way, but if you come up with something that changes my mind, I'll let you know.

Well that's helpful, given that I haven't a clue what the two systems to which you allude are! But at least it shows that you're comfortable with many aspects of the AA, at least, as a useful tool for fending off the IDers.

As arguments they are completely valid.

As analogies they are not useful, just as focusing on the one skydiver who happens to be carrying a jetpack when his parachute doesn't open is not useful. Focus on that and you will not successfully communicate what happens when a skydiver's chute doesn't deploy.

As I wrote before, and you acknowledged, I didn't follow your jetpack 'logic'. I cannot, therefore, use it to benchmark the validity of the AA.

Even if you specifically limited your references to those specific differing instances, in using the instances that are different you must first explain the aspects of how they are like evolution that differentiate them.

No. You explain the aspects of how they are different from mainstream technological development to differentiate them. Then, after that, you reconcile those differentiators to identify and define the 'intelligence' component that mainstream technological development holds so dear. Then, having done that, in the understanding of what 'intelligence' really means, you come to the sudden, profound realization (if you didn't realize it already, as some of us do) that the big 'I' in 'ID' has very limited, if any, merit, and you conclude that if mere humans can 'conjure up' the big 'I' as a notion simply to reconcile the difference between man-made creations that could come about blindly and those that have been directed to emerge, then to ascribe that very same big 'I' to some supernatural creator only serves, embarrasingly, to denigrate, if not eliminate it! (No disrespect intended to all of the good designers out there - you're doing a fantastic job!)

As it is the aspects of evolution that you are trying to express through the analogy, the exercise is pointless. You may as well simply explain the aspects of evolution and leave analogies out of it altogether.

You might wish to re-think this statement now!

Sam knew what he wanted to do.

No he didn't. Anyhow, he's been replaced with an automaton that has no brain!

He wanted to sell electronic toys for a profit.

No he didn't. Anyhow, the automaton now simply randomly assembles basic electronics building blocks, with random variations each iteration, and despatches them to the marketplace. The automaton, having no brain, doesn't even have a notion of the concept of 'electronics', or 'electronic toys', or 'money', or 'profit'! You NEED to understand this to appreciate the analogy, and I actually thought you did understand it, given some of your recent comments, but I'm beginning to wonder now.

To accomplish this he did not begin finger painting, hopping backwards in a circle, or spontaneously farting the tune to Kansas City as sung by Wilber Harrison (as far as I know).

You're right here, he didn't, but he could have (and that's the point!), and we would never then have been privy to the electronics devices that would never have transpired as a result. Just like we've not been privy to the infinite number of possible species that could have emerged through natural evolution but didn't!!! Don't you realize what you're actually inferring here when you write like this?!

He foresaw that in order to sell electronic toys he would need to use the kit you gave him, and he decided that the metric of success would be his sales volume.

No, no, no! He, like the automaton, has absolutely no conceptualization of 'selling', or 'electronics toys', or 'success', or 'sales volume', just like the cheetah has absolutely no conceptualization of 'survival', or 'success', or 'breeding'. Now I'm convinced you've not quite 'got it' yet!

The baby is not making those kinds of decisions, it's on a simple "feel good <--> do it" feedback loop with no thought necessarily involved.

There are no 'decisions' to be made. Sam and the brainless automaton simply react to a different 'trigger' from the 'feel good' trigger that the baby responds to!

I was referring to the other arguments I had made in that post.

Nutshell:

Human tech development usually requires design.
Evolution does not.
Therefore analogous comparison between the two is more likely to mislead than enlighten.

Everything else is gravy.

I should like to think that these arguments are old hat and superfluous now, but that pre-supposes you can understand and appreciate my clarifications above. Let's see how we go.

 

[mijopaalmc]

You're going to have to tell me what you mean by "sum" and "explain" because if I mash two physical systems together what happens is the explanation.

Why is water wet?

Is one molecule of water wet?

At what point does water become wet?

 

[cyborg]

Why is water wet?

Is one molecule of water wet?

At what point does water become wet?

Are you a dualist or not mijo?

 

[Southwind17]

The reason the analogy falls is because the particular properties of "intelligence" that make it differ from biological evolution are important to the point made in the analogy.

We moved on some time ago Walt. I've recently made my views known re. the late arrival of party goers!

 

[mijopaalmc]

Are you a dualist or not mijo?

No.

I'm merely pointing out that there is a difference between the intensive and extensive properties of a system and that the extensive properties of a large system may not be fully explicable from the intensive properties of its most fundamental part.

Didn't you get on my case about objecting to saying all carbon is the same because it has six protons?

 

[cyborg]

I'm merely pointing out that there is a difference between the intensive and extensive properties of a system and that the extensive properties of a large system may not be fully explicable from the intensive properties of its most fundamental part.

Bigger system: more numbers.

Didn't you get on my case about objecting to saying all carbon is the same because it has six protons?

Man did you ever miss the point.

 

[Southwind17]

And here is anouther attempt to muddle evolutionary algorithms with evolution itself.

IDers would like the Sam and Ollie story.

I'm sure they would, unless they came to understand the more-than-subtle points within it, and realize its implications, as you fail to do. Gee jimbob, you're almost as gullible as the people whom this article is aimed at! Perhaps a little contrasting of your quote with the Sam & Ollie story might help. I've emboldened all of the operative words that essentially need to be negated for the narrative to compare with the Sam & Ollie story (context aside). Some of the emboldening was already present within the original quote!!!:

Evolution is being used. A press release from University of Wisconsin-Madison was titled, “Using evolution, UW team creates a template for many new therapeutic agents.” How does one use evolution? It continued, “By guiding an enzyme down a new evolutionary pathway, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers has created a new form of an enzyme capable of producing a range of potential new therapeutic agents with anticancer and antibiotic properties.”
We must keep up the heat on evolutionists till they become too embarrassed to say such things. You cannot “use” evolution. The moment you use it, you are doing intelligent design. Evolution has no purpose, no aim, no guidance, no goal, and no reward – not even survival. In Darwin’s universe, extinction happens and is just as dispassionate an outcome as survival. If you think survival is somehow good, that’s your soul speaking.
The moment a human does the selecting, guiding or rewarding, evolution stops and intelligent design begins. Evolution, as used by Darwin, is not just change. It is a particular kind of change: undirected, dispassionate, purposeless, blind. Darwin and his disciples believe that an evolutionary process could have produced all the beauty and variety of today’s highly-adapted lifeforms. Whether it could or not, Darwin certainly would deny that anyone “used” evolution. Darwin fought against any suggestion by compromising theologians of his day (even his close friend Asa Gray) that God used the evolutionary process to create life.
Such stories do nothing but obfuscate. Evolution has nothing to do with it. These scientists had a goal, and purposely selected enzymes with the properties they desired. Darwin team, the referee just blew the whistle. The penalty for your foul is to yield those two points to the ID team. The title now reads, “Using selection criteria by intelligent design, UW team discovers a template for many new therapeutic agents.” Much better; play ball. Whoops; we just remembered the Darwin team has no goal. Game over by forfeit.

I guess that's game, set and match to me smart guy!

 

[mijopaalmc]

Bigger system: more numbers.

And?

Man did you ever miss the point.

No, I didn't. You kept insisting that the properties that I wanted to discuss only existed on the interatomic level and therefore were irrelevant to the properties that you wanted to discuss, which was nonsensical because you were discussing carbon in bulk materials such as steel and proteins. In short, the properties that you were dismissing as irrelevant there were properties that arose from interactions between carbon and other atoms, exactly the type I am talking about here.

 

[cyborg]

And?

Exactly.

No, I didn't.

Your subsequent words tell me otherwise.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Your subsequent words tell me otherwise.

So what was your point then?

 

[quixotecoyote]

Recognizing the point to which this thread has 'solidified' (to use cyborg's term), namely the extension of the OP analogy to a hypothetical, albeit testable, analogy (I'm referring to the Sam & Ollie story, which I'll refer to hereafter in this post, and the thread generally, as "the Automaton Analogy", or simply "AA", as replacement of Sam with an automaton might help to remove any potential remaining erroneous perception that Sam was actually thinking about what he was doing!), what, exactly, are those 'readily apparent differences'? The AA adequately reconciles the ostensible differences of self/non-self-replication, mutation/variation and natural/artificial selection, including any notion of intelligence inherent within them. Are you saying there are remaining 'differences' between natural evolution and the AA that have yet to be adequately reconciled in this thread?

If you wish to limit our conversation to the AA I have no objection.

I will speak to the remaining differences as I go through your post.

Wait a second; do I read you correctly here: "Intelligence is required for conception, thus no intelligence = no conception of design or anything else."?

Does your 'anything else' include the origins of life on Earth, or the fertilization of an ovum, for example?! Could this be the Forum's greatest faux pas, and you're really an IDer who's recognized that the AA actually has teeth?!

If I have no intelligence, I have no ability to conceive. Intelligence is a prerequisite for thought, for anything above a stimulus-response action and possible not even that.

From your extended questioning, I deduce you are using the term in a different way, although I'm not sure what. I confess to being slightly perplexed at your focus on intelligence in general. To my mind design is the much greater question as the ID'ers designer could be an unthinking cosmic machine and still make their theory work.

And please do not descend into creationist smearing. For the first time in these debates we're approaching something resembling honest discussion instead of smears, insults, and arrogance.

"... designed his random methodology."! You mean the 'methodology' whereby the very basic building blocks of a future electronics device are combined by chance, and variations made to each iteration by chance, and each iteration (replication) is triggered by an external event that proves its survival in its environment? You call that an intelligent 'methodology'? You're beginning to sound more and more like an IDer!

No I do not call it an intelligent methodology. The methodology itself is random, possibly excepting the selection criteria. Before we had agreed to replace Sam with Robot Sam, Ollie also had a role in your story. In your story Ollie chose a method of constructing electronics in a preset pattern/according to the directions while Sam chose to do so randomly. In this example there were two methods of construction, just like in computer modeling you might choose an evolutionary algorithm or a more directed structure.

Unless you are going to take cyborg's route and deny the existence of intent, saying you are simply posting as a result of deterministic forces over which you assert no conscious control, then it follows inescapably that intent defines methodology in this and similar instances.

Admittedly, an automaton would have to be instigated by a human with intent, but don't forget that such 'intent' is only an intent to replicate natural evolution for the purpose of showing that intelligence is not required. It's not an intent with any particular electronics device in mind, just like nature does not have any particular species in mind. The process of evolution that the automaton then performs has no intelligence associated with it. The automaton has simply been programmed to assemble the basic building blocks of 'electronic life' in a random fashion, despatch the output to the market, wait for the signal that the output has survived its environment (however long that may take), replicate the output with the introduction of a random, incremental variation, despatch the 'mutated' output to the market, wait, etc. Just the same as natural evolution, except that instead of humans, cheetahs, dolphins, etc. we end up creating sat. nav. systems, radar installations, mass spectrometers, MRI scanners, etc. - 'irreducibly complex' machines!

We come again to out divergence in purpose. The ID'ers claims (if not their agendas) would be satisfied by a cosmic robot designing according to preset plans (it's builder could be totally uninvolved).

My focus is thus on design, as I hope you've gathered over the course of my posts. All you have done here is moved the intelligence one step backwards while the design remains in place. You have chosen the robot's method of construction to be random just as you could have chosen to have it manufacture in the style of a car factory robot. You have chosen to have it register the sale as a signal.

Depending on how you present it, you could still have it work. Limiting discussion to the AA is a vast improvement from a comparison to tech development in general and I salute you for the development of your argument.

If you could make it clear that you were limiting discussion to the process of randomness and selection itself, and not the entire system, it could work.

One of the best ways I grasped evolution was a little program where little dots moved in a series of individual and random directions. After a given time if the dots were in given position they had a better chance of going into the next round than those that didn't. If the dot went into the next round it had a chance of duplicating itself (if there was a spot open from a dot that didn't make it) with the duplicate having the original's movement script and the possibility of a changed part of the move.

You can probably guess how that went. But if someone had told me that the program was proof of evolution, I'd have been skeptical. "You made the program," I'd have said, "so how does that prove anything?"

Once we've adopted just the AA, I can see it working if, IF, you make the distinction between the behaviors/actions within the system and the system itself.

If you meet me that far, I can agree with it being a semi-useful example. Semi-useful instead of fully useful only because I doubt that once you've crafted the elaborate scenario of the electronics building robot going to market, you'll get people who don't understand evolution to separate the element. I'm a reasonably intelligent person who shares the knowledge you are trying to express and look at the battles I've had on this thread. Imagine the issues with an ID'er.

As an aside, I have no idea how fast your robot is working, but if you expect it to duplicate sat. nav. systems, radar installations, mass spectrometers, MRI scanners, etc. you are going to end up confirming the ID'ers arguments about evolution being fantastically unlikely in the time frames involved. You might get a working circut or two, but expecting highly specialized machines from basic building blocks would be like watching a bacteria and expecting it to morph into a duck. The timeframe just isn't there. Minor point.

Incidentally, the 'standards of success', as you call them, and as explained by me ad nauseum earlier, are not 'designed'. The environment, through selection of the electronics devices over the competing devices, determines what succeeds and what doesn't. This happens day in day out in the real world. No doubt you've not only witnessed it, but been party to it many times. Every time you and everybody else goes out and buys a new computer or digital watch or mobile phone or Blackberry-type device or iPod you're 'selecting' for what is best suited to its environment, and in consequence causing the extinction of other devices. Survival of the fittest. It's staring you in the face right now as you read this on your screen!!!

My reference to standards of success was not simply whether it sold or not. It was deciding that sales would be the deciding factor rather than aesthetic appeal, or utility, or whether grandma liked it enough to put on her mantle.

You might wish to re-think this statement now!

I'll stand by it, but as I said above, if we do the legwork in preparing a specific scenario rather than a broad category comparison, I think it can be made to work.

Well that's helpful, given that I haven't a clue what the two systems to which you allude are! But at least it shows that you're comfortable with many aspects of the AA, at least, as a useful tool for fending off the IDers.

The first system was similar enough to the current version of the AA that further explaination is unnecessary. My reference to a system that mimics evolution was to something like this:

http://www.truthtree.com/evolve.shtml

Which is similar to the program I described earlier.

As I wrote before, and you acknowledged, I didn't follow your jetpack 'logic'. I cannot, therefore, use it to benchmark the validity of the AA.

Fair enough.

No. You explain the aspects of how they are different from mainstream technological development to differentiate them. Then, after that, you reconcile those differentiators to identify and define the 'intelligence' component that mainstream technological development holds so dear. Then, having done that, in the understanding of what 'intelligence' really means, you come to the sudden, profound realization (if you didn't realize it already, as some of us do) that the big 'I' in 'ID' has very limited, if any, merit, and you conclude that if mere humans can 'conjure up' the big 'I' as a notion simply to reconcile the difference between man-made creations that could come about blindly and those that have been directed to emerge, then to ascribe that very same big 'I' to some supernatural creator only serves, embarrasingly, to denigrate, if not eliminate it! (No disrespect intended to all of the good designers out there - you're doing a fantastic job!)

Again, I fail to appreciate your focus on intelligence. I am more focused on the "D" in ID so I'm not grasping your point here at all.

You might wish to re-think this statement now!

I'll stand by this one as well. If you don't start by explaining the differences at all, but instead have a scenario that doesn't invoke conventional tech design at all and instead explains evolutionary principles themselves in a more understandable format (AA) then you have avoided my objections.

No he didn't. Anyhow, he's been replaced with an automaton that has no brain!

I would disagree with what Sam knew, but as he's been assimilated, I agree the point is mute.

No he didn't. Anyhow, the automaton now simply randomly assembles basic electronics building blocks, with random variations each iteration, and despatches them to the marketplace. The automaton, having no brain, doesn't even have a notion of the concept of 'electronics', or 'electronic toys', or 'money', or 'profit'! You NEED to understand this to appreciate the analogy, and I actually thought you did understand it, given some of your recent comments, but I'm beginning to wonder now.

In your original example Sam's entire motivation was the sale of electronics.

In the AA, it is much easier to agree with so long as we can avoid discussing why the robot is doing his mindless doings.

You're right here, he didn't, but he could have (and that's the point!), and we would never then have been privy to the electronics devices that would never have transpired as a result. Just like we've not been privy to the infinite number of possible species that could have emerged through natural evolution but didn't!!! Don't you realize what you're actually inferring here when you write like this?!

Quite. Although my implication was quite different from your inference (cough cough).

My point was that Sam was not acting in a truly random manner. If he was, he would be just as likely to destroy the electronic kit entirely as to ever produce something with it and the analogy would sink completely.

This is however, FYI, as Sam has been turned into a mindless cyborg and no longer has the ability to behave as randomly.

No, no, no! He, like the automaton, has absolutely no conceptualization of 'selling', or 'electronics toys', or 'success', or 'sales volume', just like the cheetah has absolutely no conceptualization of 'survival', or 'success', or 'breeding'. Now I'm convinced you've not quite 'got it' yet!

In your original example those conceptualizations were Sam's motivation. Now in AA we don't have to deal with that. Again, with the proviso that we can avoid taking the analogy to a higher level.

There are no 'decisions' to be made. Sam and the brainless automaton simply react to a different 'trigger' from the 'feel good' trigger that the baby responds to!

Meh. A little close to denying the existence of intent, which I feel is an ontological blunder, but we'll move on.

I should like to think that these arguments are old hat and superfluous now, but that pre-supposes you can understand and appreciate my clarifications above. Let's see how we go.

So how did we go?

 

[cyborg]

A little close to denying the existence of intent,

Are you a dualist?

 

[quixotecoyote]

I'm sure they would, unless they came to understand the more-than-subtle points within it, and realize its implications, as you fail to do. Gee jimbob, you're almost as gullible as the people whom this article is aimed at! Perhaps a little contrasting of your quote with the Sam & Ollie story might help. I've emboldened all of the operative words that essentially need to be negated for the narrative to compare with the Sam & Ollie story (context aside). Some of the emboldening was already present within the original quote!!!:



I guess that's game, set and match to me smart guy!

I don't think you're Sam and Ollie story holds up as well as you think it does. Your refinement holds up better, but I hope after reading my post you'll get why Sam and Ollie shouldn't give you license to mock jimbob for his perception.

 

[quixotecoyote]

Are you a dualist?

No. Please contribute something to the discussion other than sniping and insinuation.

 

[cyborg]

No.

Then on what basis do you contend that it is meaningful to say "intent" exists?

Please contribute something to the discussion other than sniping and insinuation.

Yet again you fail to comprehend the difference between me telling you that you are something and me trying to clarify what it is you are trying to infer.

 

[quixotecoyote]

Intent in no way needs to be defined in dualist terms. That you immediately try to link my use of intent with mystical nonsense doesn't pass the smell test.

One can define Intent (and I am) as a result or part of the mental phenomenon produced by the brain. It is intangible, yet completely material, and completely real. If you are conscious, which I assume you are, then that consciousness is the overarching intangible yet material mental phenomenon under which concepts such as intent, thought, feeling, emotion, desire, pain, etc. are placed.

 

[cyborg]

Then you have no grounds for complaint: it is a label. Labels do not entail physical consequences.

 

[quixotecoyote]

Then you have no grounds for complaint: it is a label. Labels do not entail physical consequences.

. Please contribute to the discussion instead of posting one-liners of inanity.

I have just enough respect for you to think you're simply baiting me instead of actually being that dense.

"Labels have no physical consequences"