Intelligent Evolution?

[JonM1121]

I'm with wowbagger here. The essence of the argument is that a person that views complexity they cannot place in familiar context are likely to incorrectly deduce its origin. I don't think that is counter-intuitive at all, and directly refutes the proposition of intelligent design, which is essentially the opposite: a person viewing complexity that they cannot place in a familiar context will likely deduce its origin correctly. It sets up the argument in a very understandable way. Good job, Southwind 17.

 

[articulett]

By the way-- I agree with this much, Mijo... the analogy does not further your understanding. However. If you think it doesn't further the understanding of others, you would need to provide evidence--maybe one respected teacher of evolution who says that such analogies confuse more than they clarify. Or a creationist using the evolution of technology and likening it to the evolution of species...as Jimbob incorrectly assumes Behe would. Because a tornado in a junkyard is a "poof" like a god-- only even more hard to swallow. But evolution of technology makes a lot of people able to understand the power of natural selection. The same goes for the nozzle example or artificial selection of domesticated animals and crops... At it's essence--the two are very, very similar.

The design for building a 747 did not poof into sudden existence any more than a design (genome) for building a dog or a "design" for the AIDS virus.

The fact is that you guys have a belief (faith) that the analogy doesn't work or that your explanations somehow work better and no amount of evidence will allow you to believe otherwise. I know better than to argue with faith. You guys just shout louder to convince yourselves--but I've already experienced and seen disproof of your faith. So unless you have evidence to the contrary--a teacher of evolution who thinks as you do or a creationist that uses this analogy, --I'll take your claims as seriously as I take all faith based claims.

 

[cyborg]

So, could someone explain why there is no difference between the iron and carbon in cars and the iron and carbon in cats?

First, tell me what is the same.

 

[cyborg]

But the people who contributed to the development of the interned all did.

Do the goals of the people who wanted to implement a packet shifting network still shape the progress of the Internet? Or is it perhaps at this stage an a priori assumption that we're dealing with a network of a certain shape and hence it is no longer helpful to talk about it as if it were to tell us anything new?

When are you going to respond to my basic questions?

 

[ImaginalDisc]

It's not argumentum ad populum, silly. It was a response to the OP. Is technological advancement a good or useful analogy. Yes, it is.

That is your as yet unsupported thesis.

See Steven Jones nozzle example. Read the writings of those responsible for convey evolution to others and see what they have to say.

You keep assuming that I haven't. Not only have I read those books, I own them, cherish them, and have given copies away to my friends. It does not appear, however, that you understood them. One of Dawkin's most important points in, for example, The Blind Watchmaker is that life is fundamentally unlike machines that it requires special sort of explanation to account for its special qualities. Analogy to design takes into account none of the unique qualities of life, and it therefore fails as an explanation.

In my experience and the experience of others, Southwind is on the right track-- what I offer is evidence; you confuse in with fallacious reasoning.

What evidence? You have none.

You however have offered no evidence of a better or more useful analogy nor have you offered any expertise or even coherence as to why his analogy is not useful just because you don't "get it".

I have repeatedly used the analogy of annealing metal as an analogy for Natrual Selection. The reason I haven't used an analogy for Evolution based on the familiar is because there is no other process in the world like it. There are many good entirely theoretical systems which opperate much like Evolution, and can help us understand it, but since machines are not by any process like Evolution, they make a terrible analogy.

That makes you committing the fallacy of arguing from incredulity.

False. I have attacked the premises of the analogy by showing how the assumed commonalities are actually entirely unalike.

If you think the analogy doesn't work, but there's evidence for that it does work for many and is used by those known to teach the subject...

There is a difference between having your students understand your terrible analogy and having your students understand how Evolution actually works.

AND there is no evidence that anyone thinks you are conveying the process in a simpler clearer manner--then that just makes you wrong with your entire premise.

Clear? The analogy between machines and Evolution is so muddled and based on so many tennuous -at best- assumptions, it couldn't be less clear. It's as vauge and meanginless as the Mad Hatter's riddle; Why is a raven like a writing desk? They aren't, at least not in any way that provides special insight into the origins of ravens or tables.

In sexual reproduction only half the genetic material is passed on--it's combined with other material which affects the traits...sometimes there are mutations or methylations and ERVS and nondisjunction and other ways the info is modified--and it gets passed on or weeded out with how well it furthers the aims of information copying. And yes, there is parsing of the information--deleterious stuff is weeded right out if it's really bad

No. The material gets weeded out if it causes errors in miosis, mitosis, or other purely celluar mechanisms. If the data genes have code for a maladaptive phenotype, the embryo will still grow. Here is where an analogy is useful: If a blueprint has a copying error that makes it illegible, the machine it's for never gets built. But, if the blueprint has an error that makes the machines just a little worse, the machine can still be built. I must hasten to add that there's a difference, still. The machine builder can read the blueprints, and can try to predict the outcome of building the machine with faulty blueprints. Evolution cannot.

It's the SAME-- it's just information being selected via the environment.

False. The organism is being selected in favor of, or against. If the organism's genes provide a net benefit, it may have high fitness even though it has detrimental genes. It's a package deal. When you make a new car, you are not restricted to faithfully making like the previous car in all ways, except for random error. This is yet another way in which the analogy between machines and living things is horrible.

Whether the systems are "fundamentally different" in form and function is irrelevant on the atomic level. A carbon atom in you is the exact same thing as a carbon atom in a machine. They are interchangeable at an atomic level. Genes direct the building of things made of atoms and directions, blueprints, recipes, software, etc. build things that are made of atoms.

Why are you deliberately changing the subject? We're talking about machines and living things. They are different in form and function. If you're going to use their complexity and development as a basi for analogy, why are you comparing their atoms? No one is arguing that the atoms of machines and living things are dissimilar. Drop your strawman.

The problem most people have in understanding evolution is that the complexity seems impossible-- and Southwind has offered an example of just how possible it is... as has Steven Jones with his nozzle example. The fact is that these examples have worked for a lot of people--they suddenly "understand" how it could look designed and seem so complex and yet just happen via selection over time. You are just wrong. It doesn't work for you. But you are not representative. And your arguments as to why it won't work are muddled and not based on any experience in the area. Moreover, you offer nothing better. In fact, you don't even seem to "get" the simple analogy.

Information that has a trick (be it usefulness, making it's vector preferentially survive, or something else--sticks around to be honed through time.)

Southwind's analogy is horrible, for all the reasons I have listed. Southwind's analogy to machines, which require a designer, does not address the most basic pinciple of Evolution - there is no designer.

 

[jimbob]

If you think the analogy doesn't work, but there's evidence for that it does work for many and is used by those known to teach the subject..

Some people claim to understand the doctrine of Transubstantiation..

It doesn't make it right.

 

[jimbob]

Do the goals of the people who wanted to implement a packet shifting network still shape the progress of the Internet? Or is it perhaps at this stage an a priori assumption that we're dealing with a network of a certain shape and hence it is no longer helpful to talk about it as if it were to tell us anything new?

When are you going to respond to my basic questions?

I was clearly talking about the development of the internet. Are you saying that it did evolve but now isn't or that it is only now evolving?

Nowdays you could talk about the induividual goals of the website owners, the ISPs, the infrastructure manufacturers and all the individuals and organisations involved in the internet.

It still doesn't evolve, but does demonstrate Adam Smith's "invisible hand".


Please remind me what your basic questions are.

 

[jimbob]

Whether the systems are "fundamentally different" in form and function is irrelevant on the atomic level. A carbon atom in you is the exact same thing as a carbon atom in a machine. They are interchangeable at an atomic level. Genes direct the building of things made of atoms and directions, blueprints, recipes, software, etc. build things that are made of atoms.
The things made of atoms react with their environment and the information is honed based on those interactions. Just because you can't get that, doesn't mean that the majority can't get that and use that information to understand how complexity can seem designed, and yet not be. Just because you think that analogy doesn't address the 747 in the junkyard canard...doesn't mean you could address it better. The Canard is wrong because it leaves out the incremental nature and exponential growth of the "best info." over time.

What does a discussion of atoms have to do with this discussion or the OP?

 

[ImaginalDisc]

What does a discussion of atoms have to do with this discussion or the OP?

He's using a new "level of abstraction" to show how life forms and machines are similar. How that's useful, I have no idea.

 

[mijopaalmc]

What does a discussion of atoms have to do with this discussion or the OP?

It's another failed attempt at "analogy". articulett and cyborg are claiming that since every carbon atom has six protons they are all the same. While it is true that carbon is carbon because it has six protons, it is also only half the story. It doesn't explain why the carbonyl carbon in acyl halides is more reactive than the carbonyl carbon in carbocylic acid anhydrides which is more reactive than the carbonyl carbon in carboxylic acids which is more reactive than the carbonyl carbon in amides. Nor does the fact all hydrogen have one proton explain why the α-hydrogens of diketones are more acidic than the α-hydrogens of ketones which are more acidic than the hydrogens of alkanes. Nor does it explain why d-methamphetamine is a powerful central nervous system stimulant while l-methamphetamine is only mildly so. An understanding of these differences and others in carbon reactivity and stereochemistry is vital to an understanding of biochemistry, an understanding that cannot be achieved simply by declaring all carbons to be the same because they have six protons.

 

[Paulhoff]

It's another failed attempt at "analogy". articulett and cyborg are claiming that since every carbon atom has six protons they are all the same. While it is true that carbon is carbon because it has six protons, it is also only half the story. It doesn't explain why the carbonyl carbon in acyl halides is more reactive than the carbonyl carbon in carbocylic acid anhydrides which is more reactive than the carbonyl carbon in carboxylic acids which is more reactive than the carbonyl carbon in amides.

So, are you saying that if I could exchange a carbon atom in a molecule with another carbon atom there would be a change in that molecule, because if you are, you are wrong. The reason there is a difference is because the molecules are not the same.

Paul

 

[mijopaalmc]

So, are you saying that if I could exchange a carbon atom in a molecule with another carbon atom there would be a change in that molecule, because if you are, you are wrong. The reason there is a difference is because the molecules are not the same.

Paul

You know, it's a little frustrating when people come up with interpretations of what I write like this. It seems as if they are trying to deliberately misinterpret what I am saying.

No, Paulhoff, I am not saying that you could exchange one carbon for another and get a different molecule. I am saying that the differences in the reactivities of atoms in general and carbon atoms in organic molecules specifically are not fully explained by the fact that carbon has six protons. Chemistry is based on how atoms are arranged in space and how they are connected to one another. So, to say that the differences in the properties of carbon in steel and carbon is glucose don't matter because the carbon no matter where it occurs has six protons miss the conceptual core of chemistry. The carbon in steel does not react the same way as the carbon in glucose because the carbon in steel is immersed in a sea of iron where as the carbon in glucose is bonded to other carbons, oxygen, and hydrogen. Similarly, the iron in steel does not have the same chemical properties as the iron in hemoglobin because the iron in steel is in a metallic or ceramic for (cementite or iron carbide, the iron-carbon compound in steel is considered to a ceramic in its pure for) whereas the iron in hemoglobin is ligated to for porphyrin nitrogens, one histidine nitrogen, and sometimes molecular oxygen.

 

[Paulhoff]

And you seem to think, the way you state it, that we don't know this.

Paul

 

[articulett]

It's not an equivocation... the algorithm of DNA means that life is "designed" by DNA to make more DNA...

People use the word "design" all the time in evolution... the sex drive is "designed" to be strong and begat so that it can copy more DNA. Genes that that encode for stronger sex drives are more likely to get passed on.

It isn't equivocation. It's using the best words and analogies we have to explain the facts. And this is a method that works for many. I suspect it works better than anything you'd offer and that most would see the overall similarities and not the negligible differences. When you think of genomes as "instructions" or "information" (which it is) and life as things composed of matter just like everything else include expressions of our technology-- then you can't help but see the similarities. At least that is true for most people. That is why a creationists doesn't take to the analogy. I suspect they know instinctively that understanding how the complexity and seeming design arise with or without specific intent on anybody's part, god looks a little clumsy and superfluous.

 

[articulett]

Some people claim to understand the doctrine of Transubstantiation..

It doesn't make it right.

You suck at analogies. Evolution is a fact. The way we explain is based on what works best for understanding those facts. Transubstantiation is not a fact. And explanations aren't "right" or "wrong"-- they are useful or non useful. Your attempts at explaining natural selection are mealy mouthed and useless, and now I see it's because you suck so bad at anlalogies... like the above.

As does Mijo. It's irrelevent that carbon reacts differently when combined with different elements. It's still the same stuff. And even Imaginal Disc sucks... He thinks the exceptions invalidate the rule-- he thinks the differences make the model useless-- but analogies aren't exact--they are supposed to match up at key points.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

It isn't equivocation. It's using the best words and analogies we have to explain the facts. And this is a method that works for many. I suspect it works better than anything you'd offer and that most would see the overall similarities and not the negligible differences. When you think of genomes as "instructions" or "information" (which it is) and life as things composed of matter just like everything else include expressions of our technology-- then you can't help but see the similarities. At least that is true for most people. That is why a creationists doesn't take to the analogy. I suspect they know instinctively that understanding how the complexity and seeming design arise with or without specific intent on anybody's part, god looks a little clumsy and superfluous.

More argumentum ad populum. Just because you like and other people like it, that doesn't make it correct or consistent.

When a biochemist or a geneticst says that DNA is "designed" to make more DNA, they aren't using it in a context where it clearly implies a designer, I grant you. You are using it in the context of explaining complexity, and in that context, it is critical not to muddle Evolution with design. When explaining Evolution for the first time to a theroetical person who lives in future (the scenario in the OP) it is extremely important not to give them the wrong idea about things. It is a bad analogy for all the reasons I have previously listed, including the fact that it is highly misleading in that the machine/life analogy actually implies a designer because machines are made by designers and owe their complexity to such designers, whereas living things require a different explanation all together.

What Thomas Wolsey said of Henry VII is true of many people learning Evolution for the first time, "Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out." It ill becomes a teacher to make misleading analogies.

 

[articulett]

More argumentum ad populum. Just because you like and other people like it, that doesn't make it correct or consistent.

What Thomas Wolsey said of Henry VII is true of many people learning Evolution for the first time, "Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out." It ill becomes a teacher to make misleading analogies.

And just because you don't get it, doesn't mean it doesn't work. It works for experts like Dawkins and Jones and it works for me. Perhaps you ought to address your teachers because they inserted one of those mental blocks you refer to in your head and now you can never get it out.

Does it work? If so, keep it around and hone to better it. The explanation will evolve in the manner that works the best--even if your thinking can't.

It's not a matter of "correctness" just as DNA is not "good" or "bad"-- it either furthers itself or it disappears. Moreover, Southwind's analogy appears to be entirely consistent with the very best teachers on the subject, and you haven't presented a single case of an expert or even a teacher or ID debater saying otherwise. Moreover, you can show no creationists who use the evolution as an analogy. It ill becomes you to be pedantic when you lack such evidence.

You are pretending that it doesn't work, because you don't get it. But you are not representative, and the few who are arguing on your side are scarcely good communicators on the topic. At least those who understand the analogy are all on the same page. The dissenters each have their own bizarro reasons why the analogy doesn't work.

The essence IS the same. The semantic problem is yours. Southwind explains natural selection in a way that indicates that he "gets it". You don't.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

It's not a matter of "correctness" just as DNA is not "good" or "bad"-- it either furthers itself or it disappears.

Wrong, again. Either the organism reproduces, or it doesn't. The DNA is not some mastermind or puppeteer that controls the organism, because environmental influence,s many of which are entirely random, are also a factor. Your model is too simplistic.

Moreover, Southwind's analogy appears to be entirely consistent with the very best teachers on the subject, and you haven't presented a single case of an expert or even a teacher or ID debater saying otherwise. Moreover, you can show no creationists who use the evolution as an analogy. It ill becomes you to be pedantic when you lack such evidence.

You are pretending that it doesn't work, because you don't get it. But you are not representative, and the few who are arguing on your side are scarcely good communicators on the topic. At least those who understand the analogy are all on the same page. The dissenters each have their own bizarro reasons why the analogy doesn't work.

The essence IS the same. The semantic problem is yours. Southwind explains natural selection in a way that indicates that he "gets it". You don't.

Please cite any point where Dawkins has used an analogy just like Southwind's to explain Evolution. As I recall, he takes great pains to explain why the explanation for machines and life must be different.

 

[articulett]

http://www.knowledgecontext.org/Reading/book.htm

The difference: biology stores the information necessary for evolution in genes and technology stores it in human brains. Scientist Richard Dawkins coined the term “memes” for a “unit of cultural transmission.” Memes could include ideas, designs, practices, or even musical melodies. They spread by word of mouth, through books, in classrooms, and on television. They spread imperfectly, with some individuals perceiving a variation of the original meme. Survival of the fittest selects which memes will be repeated to friends and which will sell on the media. The meme we get retains part or all of the information from the original meme.

http://www.def-logic.com/articles/evolution_of_technology.html

Dawkins's idea suggests that humankind is really co-evolving with its artifacts; genes that can't cope with that new reality will not survive into future millennia.

What happens to life - to artificial life - when our unit of evolutionary observation becomes the replicator? By framing life and its evolution in the context of replicators and networks of replicators, Dawkins has forced all of biology to reexamine its assumptions of the fundamental mechanics of living things. Is technology just what our genes want, or is it a cultural conspiracy of our genes and memes? Does human DNA control the technosphere we've created and live in and around? What does it mean to say that nerve gas and microprocessors are extensions of selfish genes? These questions - as much as the genetic underpinning of embryology and neurophysiology - are the sorts of questions that evolutionists must now address, posits Dawkins.

So essential is Dawkins's work to redefining life that he might have fairly titled one of his books On the Origin of Replicators and expected it to revolutionize science in the most radical fashion since Darwin. But Dawkins is not the sort to run the risk of parodying Darwin in this way, because of his respect for the principles of natural selection. Already, however, this transforming view is proving to be an extraordinarily robust meme that is rapidly replicating in human minds.

When Dawkins spoke at the first artificial life conference in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1987, he delivered a paper on "The Evolution of Evolvability." This essay argues that evolvability is a trait that can be (and has been) selected for in evolution. The ability to be genetically responsive to the environment through such a mechanism as, say, sex, has an enormous impact on one's evolutionary fitness. Dawkins's paper has become essential reading in the artificial life community. His multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary fluency in fields ranging from ethology to software has made him someone who is closely watched not only by fans of his popular books but especially by his scientific peers, who range from Stephen Jay Gould to Marvin Minsky to Roger Penrose.

Now 54, Dawkins has few students of his own. Dawkins likes tossing around a semi-serious idea of awarding prize money to spur innovation and ingenuity in artificial life. (A decade ago, when his Biomorph program came out, he offered US$1,000 of his own money to anyone who could find the exact image of a chalice, or Holy Grail, he had come across in his own explorations. To Dawkins's surprise, a Caltech software jock claimed the prize within a year.) Dawkins detailed his new idea in an exchange of e-mail: "My prize would be for a visually appealing world in which the life-forms have a visible, and preferably 3-D, morphology on the computer screen. They must evolve adaptations not just to 'inanimate' factors like the weather (which would produce essentially predictable, not emergent evolution) but to other evolving life forms (which is a recipe for emergent properties)."

http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Biography/bio.shtml

Dawkins predicted computer viruses before they even existed. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=r...aA8SpRu5KsYG2k5QA&sig2=VgJk6xV5heI0w6Yh_rsWqg

I think it's you who does not understand Dawkins, Dennett, Ken Miller, Steven Jones and the very many fine teachers of evolution who use technology as an analogy with memes on par with genes, ID.

 

[mijopaalmc]

And just because you don't get it, doesn't mean it doesn't work. It works for experts like Dawkins and Jones and it works for me. Perhaps you ought to address your teachers because they inserted one of those mental blocks you refer to it your head.

This is still an argumentum ad populum; you are still essentially saying that "experts" using the analogy makes it correct. Besides, I wouldn't get too lathered up over a Dawkins description; he has shown a ttnedency yo use terms imprecisely when it suits him. For instance, he is know to rail about how evolution is "non-random" but then go on to say that advantageous mutations improve their possessors greater chances or higher probability of reproduction.

It's not a matter of "correctness" just as DNA is not "good" or "bad"-- it either furthers itself or it disappears. Moreover, it appears to be entirely consistent with the very best teachers on the subject, and you haven't presented a single case of an expert or even a teacher or ID debater saying otherwise. Moreover, you can show no creations who use the evolution as an analogy.

This is exactly the point: evolution is not concerned with "correctness" and technological development is. Engineers see what worked in the past and deliberately try to emulate in their designs. Evolution has no such mechanism of deliberate emulation.