Intelligent Evolution?

[cyborg]

Be prepared for the old "Do not does not mean cannot" flawed retort cyborg!

I'm still waiting to be told why I can't use betamax tapes in a VHS machine if technology is inherently compatible.

 

[mijopaalmc]

I'm still waiting to be told why I can't use betamax tapes in a VHS machine if technology is inherently compatible.

Where did anyone say that?

Sounds like another of your famous straw men.

 

[cyborg]

Where did anyone say that?

Sounds like another of your famous straw men.

Then it is either a straw man to demand the same of biology or a refusal to accept the facts.

The list has been destroyed.

 

[Southwind17]

I'm still waiting to be told why I can't use betamax tapes in a VHS machine if technology is inherently compatible.

You mean VHS machines aren't simply storage containers for betamax tapes? I wondered why the drop box was so wide!

 

[mijopaalmc]

Then it is either a straw man to demand the same of biology or a refusal to accept the facts.

The list has been destroyed.

Hmmm....the lack of cross compatibility between similarly functioning technologies seems to be yet another fundamental difference between biological evolution and technological development. Because all life is, it is possible for one to use RNA polymerases and ribosomes from one organism to transcribe genes and synthesize protein in almost any other organisms. For instance, the much discussed GFP mouse is made possible by the fact that both mice and jellyfish use the nearly identical promoter and ribosome recognition sequences.

Can you take the tape out of a betamax cassette, put it into a VHS cassette and play it, on a VHS VCR?

 

[articulett]

It is amusing how the stupid people don't know that they are the stupid ones. It's especially ironic when the imagine themselves experts without cluing into the fact that no one but them recognizes their expertise.

And it's sad that they insult those whom they might actually get a clue from if they weren't so sure they knew everything there was to know already.

 

[cyborg]

Hmmm....the lack of cross compatibility between similarly functioning technologies seems to be yet another fundamental difference between biological evolution and technological development.

I can use my VHS machine as a drop box if I wish. To an abstraction machine that seems silly. To nature it's just what it is. Notions of technological compatibility require a notion of what a technology is intended for. This particular example was brought up with reference to species of course: just because the information may be compatible (i.e. the DNA can be shifted from one organism to another as you express and VHS tapes express much the same thing a betamax ones) doesn't mean it has to be simple to get the information from one thing to the other.

But that's not a "fundamental difference," it's a fundamental similarity of the properties that both these design spaces have.

 

[articulett]

My head fits on my body so well, it must have been intelligently designed. My body couldn't work without it, therefore it's irreducibly complex.

 

[mijopaalmc]

My head fits on my body so well, it must have been intelligently designed. My body couldn't work without it, therefore it's irreducibly complex.

Look: No-one is claiming that life is intelligently designed, so you can stop with the straw man.

What we are saying is that the "how" and the "why" of the changes that take place in technological development differ fundamentally from the "how" and the "why" of the changes that take place in biological evolution. No-one corrects deleterious mutations in the gametes of a organism that carries said deleterious mutations. However, engineers routinely correct mistakes in blueprints of the technologies they modify.

Isn't that difference between the two processes?

 

[Southwind17]

Really? How exactly would one do that?

Remember, its not logical to dismiss differences just because the are not convenient for your analogy.

You've not been reading my posts have you mijo! I've fully explained and demonstrated the elimination of the pertinent differences.

The working definition that I have used is intelligent is the ability to perceive causal relationships and understand them well enough to obtain a specific out come by inputting specific initial conditions.

Well you'd better read the Story about Sam & Ollie above then (Post #1059), or read it again but this time pay attention.

Hmmm....the lack of cross compatibility between similarly functioning technologies seems to be yet another fundamental difference between biological evolution and technological development.

This comment makes it so obvious that you're simply looking for differences between natural evolution and technological development and erroneously concluding that they invalidate the analogy. The anaology only applies at a certain level within the comparison, sufficient to make the case, which it has done. I think we established some time back that an analogy, by definition, relies on differences between the two things being compared, although it's obvious that this notion has had to be repeated many times in order to get certain people to recognize that; people who should already know better.

Look: No-one is claiming that life is intelligently designed, so you can stop with the straw man.

What we are saying is that the "how" and the "why" of the changes that take place in technological development differ fundamentally from the "how" and the "why" of the changes that take place in biological evolution.

Here we go again. The analogy is fundamentally not concerned with the 'how' and the 'why'. It simply shows that seemingly irreducibly complex machines can arise in the absence of intelligence.

No-one corrects deleterious mutations in the gametes of a organism that carries said deleterious mutations. However, engineers routinely correct mistakes in blueprints of the technologies they modify.

Isn't that difference between the two processes?

Absolutely not mijo. As I wrote above, you've not been reading my posts have you. Read the story about Sam & Ollie, and the subsequent repeatedly erroneous challenges from jimbob that have been satisfactorily put to bed.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Southwind17-

Can you explain how you analogy counters intelligent design for an intelligent design proponent like Behe who acknowledges common descent and descent with modification but think they don't adequately explain the differences between the species that we see today?

 

[articulett]

Nobody knows deleterious mutations are deleterious until the product is built. And DNA does have a built in repair mechanism... and programmed cell death. These evolved, because those that didn't have these traits didn't pass on their genes as well as those who started eking towards such tendencies. Information that is good at getting itself replicated drives evolution, remember. Humans are just the copiers-- perfect or not... tweaking and recombining the info. or not-- it's the same. Whether it's butterflies making new butterflies or humans making machines-- the environment decides what changes and recombinatins stick around for the future.

And Mijo IS arguing for intelligent design by obfuscating natural selection. He always does. He never changes. He never gets a clue. He imagines himself an expert though repeated people have told him he has no expertise. I don't know why he thinks his opinion on the analogy should matter in any way. He is hell bent on describing natural selection as random-- so you see he cannot allow himself to fathom how it chooses what is selected. I know you know not to take him seriously, Southwind. He's an endless loop. Nobody seeks out his advice on anything... particularly not on anything to do with natural selection. As is evident, he could learn from you-- you understand the process better than him-- but he's just so sure that he's an expert that he has lost the ability to get a clue.

 

[mijopaalmc]

articulett-

You are still missing the point (why am I not surprised?). Once the mutation has been determined to be deleterious in biological evolution, it can inly be removed form the population by removing the individual who possess it from the population. Since most of the time the individuals who possess such a deleterious mutation only reproduce less often (rather then not at all), the deleterious mutation persists in the population and is only weeded out by its differential rate of reproduction. Therefore, the deleterious mutation is only removed from the population indirectly by removing individuals. A mistake in a blueprint in technological development can be removed directly from the blueprint by altering the blueprint itself. Thus, the mistake need not be made manifest in any more than one future generation. This is closest to altering the gametes of the individual who possesses a deleterious mutation before the individual reproduces, which does not happen on the wholesale level in biological evolution as it does in technological development.

It seems to me that you are the one who is arguing for intelligent design if you think direct alteration of the information before it is made manifest in the next iteration is the same thing as indirect weeding out of erroneous information as it is made manifest in successive iterations.

 

[Southwind17]

Southwind17-

Can you explain how you analogy counters intelligent design for an intelligent design proponent like Behe who acknowledges common descent and descent with modification but think they don't adequately explain the differences between the species that we see today?

I don't know; maybe I could, given enough time to research the matter and formulate a suitable response. In the meantime, however, you seem to be forgetting what the analogy set out to do. It's purpose was to demonstrate that seemingly irreducibly complex machines can arise over time from very basic natural ingredients, indeed the very same ingredients that all of nature's living organisms are created from. Initially, when I posted the OP I felt that the simplicity of those ingredients was sufficient to show that technological development must have followed an analogous evolutionary process in terms of increased complexity, especially when you consider the history of something like the motor car.

As the debate developed, however, it became apparent that 'intelligence' (and in jimbob's mind, at least, self-replication) is a seemingly key differentiator between the two processes, and, obviously, the most important distinction for ID proponents. The analogy, very interestingly, has, therefore, developed, and now shows that intelligence is somewhat of a red herring in human design. As I've argued and demonstrated on numerous occasions now (the Sam & Ollie scenario probably being the most conclusive of my analyses), intelligence, namely intent and forethought (but including any other humanistic aspect of technological development, such as research, prototyping and testing) are completely unnecessary for complex machines like those we see around us to develop. The same machines, or comparable variants, would inevitably emerge from a design process where the intelligence was removed, relying then entirely on replication, random variation and selection.

I have shown, and it should be intuitively obvious without my showing, that replication and random variation of materials, components and their assembly need absolutely no intelligence. Over time interesting and useful devices would emerge purely by chance. The most difficult issue for some people to grasp, including jimbob, is the concept of selection without intelligence, and I have shown how the selection process in Sam's world is completely analogous to that in the natural world. It simply boils down to survival of the 'fittest' as tested by an entity's ability to survive its environment long enough to trigger replication. An extension of that notion is all that is required to see how that is exactly what happens in the real world, when products are put out into the commercial marketplace for sale. Do you think that all of the obsolete products that were once best sellers became obsolete on a whim of the manufacturer (sorry, replicator)? Why would the manufacturer do that? No, they became obsolete either because they evolved characteristics and features that enabled them to continuousy survive or thrive in their competitive environment beyond recognition, or they failed to evolve characteristics and features that enabled them to continuously compete with other products and, as a result, they became extinct.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Southwind17-

I think that your missing a crucial point in your Sam and Ollie story.

Yes, human design (as in design that involves humans) can function without intelligence (or at least knowledge of what is being designed), but most often doesn't function that way. Electrical engineers (not amateur "inventors" like Sam) do not randomly throw circuit elements together in the hopes of getting a circuit that doesn't melt or destroy capacitors or diodes. They assemble circuits according to rules specifically to avoid melting or otherwise destroying their circuits.

 

[articulett]

Don't worry about Behe-- he sounds like Mijo. His whole goal is to obfuscate the power of natural selection and sum up evolution as random... just like Behe. Behe doesn't use any analogies like this-- he just basically infers that if things look designed or are "irreducibly complex", that implies a designer. Your analogy clearly shows that it does not... only time and an an environment that selects from a pool of variants created via information that can be replicated, recombined, etc.

And all the explanations in the world cannot clue Mijo into any of this anyhow. In his head, he's an export. In reality he sounds like typical obfuscating creationists-- Behe, Von Neumann, Kleinman... the smarter ones seem to fool more people... but no one here.

 

[six7s]

articulett-

You are still missing the point

mijo-

You don't even know what the point is

(why am I not surprised?)

Consider that you may well be hard-wired to reject the facts, in favour of anything that props up your distorted world-view

It strikes me that you are either

• woefully ignorant and limiting your bull-science rants to the little you do know

or

• wilfully over-looking the parts of reality that conflict with your agenda

For example:

Once the mutation has been determined to be deleterious in biological evolution, it can inly be removed form the population by removing the individual who possess it from the population.

...the deleterious mutation is only removed from the population indirectly by removing individuals

Either

• you are pretending that promotion of a mutation is reliant solely on a host in which it (the mutation) is fully expressed

Or

• you know little, if anything, of significance about legumes, which are - as even I know - (in)famous for their 'dormancy mechanism'

Maybe you are simply so self absorbed that you haven't ever done any 'common, garden' procreation... if you had, you'd know how many species (e.g kowhai, gorse and broom) are exceedingly tenacious... you (or fire, drought, etc) can wipe out EVERY living specimen... and then, perhaps 80 years later, when the conditions are right... up pops the progeny... i.e the next genertation of 'information carriers'

A mistake in a blueprint in technological development can be removed directly from the blueprint by altering the blueprint itself

So f[rule-8]ing what? Although you obviously have access to a computer, you seem either bissfully or conveniently ignorant of how, in Information Systems, Management, Technology, etc., version control is - almost invariably - simply a goal that is rarely, if ever, realised

A blueprint is not a guarantee for the shape, form and function of the product

In light of what you are missing, it seems to me that you are simply adept at copying and pasting nonsense, under the guise of, if not actually a real scientist, at least an advocate of the science

It seems to me that you {articulett} are the one who is arguing for intelligent design

It seems to me that you are simply an undercover wooist, on a mission to make science look stupid by posting (?copy and pasting?) convoluted, jargon heavy and - often semantically erroneous - waffle

...if you think direct alteration of the information before it is made manifest in the next iteration is the same thing as indirect weeding out of erroneous information as it is made manifest in successive iterations.

Tip: your mission ain't accomplished and, as long there are those who not only know what they are talking about but also the damage your woo can do, it will be impossible

 

[Southwind17]

Southwind17-

I think that your missing a crucial point in your Sam and Ollie story.

Yes, human design (as in design that involves humans) can function without intelligence (or at least knowledge of what is being designed), but most often doesn't function that way. Electrical engineers (not amateur "inventors" like Sam) do not randomly throw circuit elements together in the hopes of getting a circuit that doesn't melt or destroy capacitors or diodes. They assemble circuits according to rules specifically to avoid melting or otherwise destroying their circuits.

I'm not missing any points at all, seemingly crucial or otherwise. The point is, mijo, that we can illustrate (we can actually demonstrate it, if you have the time!) that complex machines can evolve by human effort with the 'convenience' of intelligence removed equally well compared to how they evolve in practice. In other words, we can show that intelligence is not a prerequisite to seemingly irreducibly complex design. It's that simple.

 

[mijopaalmc]

six7s-

You still have not explained why you think I'm a "wooist", except that "disagreement with articulett" seems to be the new definition of "woo".

 

[articulett]

Aack... so that's what he's writing while I've had him on ignore... boy does he not have a clue. When humans tweak designs-- they are replicators making a mutation or a recombination (like animals do with sex)-- until that design is tested in the environment, it is untested... useless... not worthy of copying... the program needs to be played... otherwise, all the tweaking in the world can't tell us if it codes for something worth replicating-- worthy copying the design for.

When you're obsessed with obfuscating,you couldn't see a clue if it was dancing naked on your nose.

And Mijo has always been this way. He convinces some people for a little while that he might be saying something--but then they flee the land of gobbledy gook for a chance at drinking from the font of clarity and reason.