Intelligent Evolution?

[articulett]

Do you consider my explanation misleading?

I thought it was great... but I predict it would move Jim's understanding one iota forward.

 

[mijopaalmc]

I thought it was great... but I predict it would move Jim's understanding one iota forward.

Unfortunately for you and Southwind17, jimbob is the one with the correct understanding. Mutations in biological evolution are random with respect to function (i.e., they do not occur for the benefit or detriment of the organism). Changes to the blueprint in technological development are not random with respect to function (i.e., they are usually made with the express purpose of fixing a perceived problem).

 

[articulett]

I thought it was great... but I predict it would move Jim's understanding one iota forward.

damn... I just re-read this and now it's typographically incorrect forever... I meant that I predict it will NOT move Jimbob's understanding one iota forward... or anyone else's who is sure the analogy is bad. They'd rather be right than learn something cool, you know?

 

[fishkr]

Changes to the blueprint in technological development are not random with respect to function (i.e., they are usually made with the express purpose of fixing a perceived problem).

You should avoid talking about things you know little about.

This assertion is so naive it's comical; Tech Evo is very often fed by mutation input. Every time a tech paradigm is scrambled by an accidental leap in knowledge, material, or process improvement, or more often than not FAILURE, the leap can be thought of as a mutation. In nature it may be random DNA scrambling, in tech it could be driven by a "breakthough" or by a fresh remix of old ideas (chromosomes, traits) yeiding new results, or by a combination of the two, or by some ridiuclously improbable disaster (which happens quite often) The culture of tech R&D is rife with examples of an engineer or designer playing with Material or Object A, or A+B, discovering object C by accident. It is a very messy business.

". . . express purpose of fixing a percieved problem", indeed. You watch too much TV.

But it's just an analogy, after all.

Hey, there's this group of five very powerfull men that control all the economies of the world. Really! And an omniscient God watcing over you . . .

What I'm still waiting for is a single piece of evidence that ET needs your tripe to explain how life is such as it is. Without evidence, not only are you pissing in the wind, but by now you must have a bladder the size of a small developing nation. Serbia?.

 

[articulett]

Indeed Fishkr-- in fact... computer viruses evolve computer programs to fix the viruses and this spawns new holes and new worms and new bugs which begets better debuggers and so on... you have to be purposely obtuse not to see the underlying sameness... how one explains the other... how it has to be bottom up...

 

[jimbob]

damn... I just re-read this and now it's typographically incorrect forever... I meant that I predict it will NOT move Jimbob's understanding one iota forward... or anyone else's who is sure the analogy is bad. They'd rather be right than learn something cool, you know?

Well I agree with your first part of the atatement:

It would not move my understanding forward. As I have said before, the Sam and Ollie story is a demonstration of an evolutiouary approach, and as such is of some, limited use. The fundamental difference from biological evolution is that it still requires a set of intelligently-defined set of selection criteria, because the variants do not self-replicate, so there is no natural selection.

Firstly in "letting the market choose" you are actually letting "individual customers" choose which ones they want, and this means that every one that is sold is actually chosen by an intelligent agency.

Secondly, to make the system work, you would need to specify some form of time limit fo how long you need to keep any variant "in the market" before considering it a failure. If not, and you have finite showroom resources, unviable variants will eventually occupy every slot in the showroom: If the variant sells, fine, if not, it remains there and no other variant can use that slot, eventualy random chance will mean that the offspring of a viable parent will not sell and that will stop that "sales slot".

The Sam and Ollie analogy needs an artificaially imposed "death" at the minimum. Any evolutionary approach that doesn't use self-replication will need thie. Biological evolution doesn't because natural selection is a consequence of self-replication. Evolution is a consequence of imperfect self-replication. Imortal, non-breeding "biological units" might use up resources, but if a different, breeding, "variant" outcompetes them for resources, then this variant's offspring will continue to evolve.


Now, equating biological evolution, and technical development in general is misleading because the two processes differ in almost every way except that both are iterative processes and thus tend to show optimisation over time.

 

[fishkr]

Now, equating biological evolution, and technical development in general is misleading because the two processes differ in almost every way except that both are iterative processes and thus tend to show optimisation over time.

Finally.

Now shut up about analogies and give evidence for ET failing to explain life as it is, how it is.

Otherwise you're urinating in in a small segment of velocity-enhanced troposphere.

 

[mijopaalmc]

What I'm still waiting for is a single piece of evidence that ET needs your tripe to explain how life is such as it is. Without evidence, not only are you pissing in the wind, but by now you must have a bladder the size of a small developing nation. Serbia?.

You just don't get it, do you?

I am not challenging the Theory of Evolution; I am challenging the appropriateness of its analogy to technological development. Until you understand the difference between the two positions, you will fail to grasp the fundamentals of my argument.

 

[fishkr]

You just don't get it, do you?

I am not challenging the Theory of Evolution; I am challenging the appropriateness of its analogy to technological development. Until you understand the difference between the two positions, you will fail to grasp the fundamentals of my argument.

You're such an intellectual sissy boy Mijo. Forget about the analogy and answer the question.

Unless you can, you lose.

 

[Southwind17]

Unfortunately for you and Southwind17, jimbob is the one with the correct understanding. Mutations in biological evolution are random with respect to function (i.e., they do not occur for the benefit or detriment of the organism). Changes to the blueprint in technological development are not random with respect to function (i.e., they are usually made with the express purpose of fixing a perceived problem).

You'd do well not to respond on impulse but instead open your mind to the idea that you might, just might, not be right about everything you think you are. It's served me well in the past! That way you might, just might, start to pay attention to what people are writing here.

Please re-read my commentary on the ladder analogy and focus on the obvious randomness of the process by which different length ladders are tried and tested. Then try to understand that from the ladder maker's point of view he has absolutely no idea how well each new ladder is performing. All he receives are instructions from the original fruit picker to deliver a new ladder. The fruit picker doesn't say whether it needs to be longer or shorter than the last. THERE IS NO INTENT ON THE LADDER MAKER'S PART - HE DOES NOT PERCEIVE A PROBLEM FOR FIXING - HE SIMPLY DELIVERS LADDERS OF RANDOM LENGTH! Eventually, the ladder maker stops receiving instructions from the original fruit picker (because he happens, by chance, to have hit on the optimum length ladder), but instead receives numerous instructions from other fruit pickers who state a specific length of ladder, i.e. the same as the original fruit picker's. The ladder maker now 'knows', through natural selection (NOT INTENT!), what length ladders will survive and proliferate, and what length ladders are effectively extinct.

Yes, he can continue to try to introduce other length ladders again by delivering them randomly, but he'll just continue to receive calls requesting changes until the right length ladder happens to be delivered to each fruit picker. Indeed, it might pay to take along a longer ladder now and then on the off-chance that the fruit picker has come upon a slightly higher fruit tree that demands a longer ladder.

 

[mijopaalmc]

You're such an intellectual sissy boy Mijo. Forget about the analogy and answer the question.

Unless you can, you lose.

What possible relevance does the answer to your question have to the rejection of the analogy?

 

[fishkr]

It goes like this silly boy: ID as a concept has no relevance in the world unless someone can show that ET fails to explain life as it is. They are contradictory. One is evidentially supportably and the other is Disney.

Until you or someone smarter than you can accomplish the task of debunking ET no one really needs to hear ID gibberish and thus, you are babbling on about nothing. I and others here have been patient and put significant time into constructing means to convey some pretty basic ideas, without success.

The other, nicer people may continue to do so, but not me.

Show me the goods or **** off. Explain how ET fails in describing life as it is.

Or squirm around arguing about semantics and analogies like a tadpole.

 

[mijopaalmc]

It goes like this silly boy: ID as a concept has no relevance in the world unless someone can show that ET fails to explain life as it is. They are contradictory. One is evidentially supportably and the other is Disney.

Until you or someone smarter than you can accomplish the task of debunking ET no one really needs to hear ID gibberish and thus, you are babbling on about nothing. I and others here have been patient and put significant time into constructing means to convey some pretty basic ideas, without success.

The other, nicer people may continue to do so, but not me.

Show me the goods or **** off. Explain how ET fails in describing life as it is.

Or squirm around arguing about semantics and analogies like a tadpole.

The fatal flaw in your argument is that, despite your assertions to the contrary, I am not trying to debunk the Theory of Evolution. Until you understand this, your arguments are full of straw.

 

[Southwind17]

As I have said before, the Sam and Ollie story is a demonstration of an evolutiouary approach, and as such is of some, limited use. The fundamental difference from biological evolution is that it still requires a set of intelligently-defined set of selection criteria, because the variants do not self-replicate, so there is no natural selection.

Jimbob, please identify to us all exactly what in the Sam & Ollie story, and now your very own ladder analogy (the scenario that I have described, that is), constitutes the 'intelligently-defined set of selection criteria' that you allude to. Please explain why the kid at the bring-and-buy sale choosing from the multitude of offerings, and the fruit picker assessing for suitability each ladder delivered, is not very closely analogous to natural selection. Neither sets out with any particular intent other than the school kid seeking the 'best' buy he can find (fitness for purpose) and the fruit picker aiming to pick as much fruit as he can (again, fitness for purpose of his ladder - he gets paid according to quantity picked).

Firstly in "letting the market choose" you are actually letting "individual customers" choose which ones they want, and this means that every one that is sold is actually chosen by an intelligent agency.

To avoid the connotation you could, alternatively, have written: "... and this means that every one that is sold is actually chosen by a person." I believe you're committing a fallacy of assuming a necessary causal link between choosing and intelligence. If some of the 'individual customers' happened to be wearing yellow rain coats would you draw a similar causal link between their preferences and yellow rain coats?!

Secondly, to make the system work, you would need to specify some form of time limit fo how long you need to keep any variant "in the market" before considering it a failure. If not, and you have finite showroom resources, unviable variants will eventually occupy every slot in the showroom: If the variant sells, fine, if not, it remains there and no other variant can use that slot, eventualy random chance will mean that the offspring of a viable parent will not sell and that will stop that "sales slot".

Geez jimbob, talk about taking things literally! We're talking about a hypothetical (do you know what that means?) showroom, which, as such, could be of unlimited size. But we don't need to go that far. New products fail to sell all the time. If a supermarket finds that a new brand of yoghurt, for example, isn't selling before the expiry date what does that tell the manager? It's not rocket science jimbob. The manager concludes, rightly, that it's not as good as other brands, i.e. it's not as 'fit' as the others. He, therefore, discontinues it (makes it extinct) and tries an alternative product instead. The yoghurts are naturally selected for or against by the discering shopper. Have you ever wondered why the supermarket shelves just happen to be full with different products; not too many nor too few of each type? Even supermarkets have evolved jimbob, with the aim of just providing the right range and amount of what people want and are prepared to pay for (again, survival of the 'fittest' (products)).

Don't you find it odd that the longer we debate this the more analogies we seem to identify? Hell, even you're introducing them now with your fruit picker. Shame you seem unable to open your mind and look at things a little differently from your fixed notions.

The Sam and Ollie analogy needs an artificaially imposed "death" at the minimum.

No it doesn't. All products could be left on the hypothetically infinite and eternal showroom shelves to either sell or gather dust. As I've pointed out before, we're not interested in those that don't sell. They just sit there on the showroom shelves adding absolutely nothing to the evolutionary process. Just like a four-headed tiger would if born today. We're only interested in the products that sell, because they're the ones that, through their sales, provide information as to what is better than what, which leads to the evolution of increasingly complex products.

Any evolutionary approach that doesn't use self-replication will need thie. Biological evolution doesn't because natural selection is a consequence of self-replication. Evolution is a consequence of imperfect self-replication. Imortal, non-breeding "biological units" might use up resources, but if a different, breeding, "variant" outcompetes them for resources, then this variant's offspring will continue to evolve.

And you're STILL writing from a position from which you have STILL to both explain and demonstrate to us all what, exactly, you really mean by self-replication and the relevance of it in invalidating the analogy.

Now, equating biological evolution, and technical development in general is misleading because the two processes differ in almost every way except that both are iterative processes and thus tend to show optimisation over time.

Well, I'd suggest that this 'exception' succinctly describes biological evolution to a significant degree from an observational standpoint (which is where we started out in the OP). Add randomness (per the Sam & Ollie story, or ladder analogy, if you like) and natural selection (again, per the Sam & Ollie story or ladder analogy) and we're looking at a very useful analogy. As such, we've identified, but maybe not explained, what constitutes 'ID' in the technological development process, and we've demonstrated that it need not necessarily be there for complex technological development still to occur. But I wouldn't expect you to grasp this logic.

 

[fishkr]

This is a thread about intelligent design. I don't need straw, or hemp, or anything else, you silly rabbit. Until you can show evidence that ET fails to explain life as it is, you are sucking on a signet's nipple.

I'm not arguing with you Mijo, I'm negating anything you have to say on the subject of the OP. You can babble on about analogies if you want but they are irrelevant.

 

[mijopaalmc]

This is a thread about intelligent design. I don't need straw, or hemp, or anything else, you silly rabbit. Until you can show evidence that ET fails to explain life as it is, you are sucking on a signet's nipple.

I'm not arguing with you Mijo, I'm negating anything you have to say on the subject of the OP. You can babble on about analogies if you want but they are irrelevant.

You seem to be in the wrong thread then, fishkr. This thread is specifically about an analogy that likens technological development to biological evolution, as jimbob said, because both are iterative processes and thus tend to show optimisation over time. This is a very poor justification for such an analogy because it leaves the analog for the engineer/designer in technological devlopment, which ID proponents then fill with the Intelligent Designer of all life. This is of course fallacious reasoning, because, if the Theory of Evolution has shown nothing else, it has shown that complexity and diversity can arise without the intervention of an intelligent agent. Thus, one can accept (as I do) the Theory of Evolution as a superbly robust scientific theory without having to accept the validity of an analogy which likens it to an intelligently directed process such as technological development.

For your benefit, I repeat:

I see no guiding intelligence behind biological evolution (which I accept as a superbly robust scientific theory) and that is why I object to it being likened to a process that does have a guiding intelligence behind it such as technological development.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Southwind17-

How is changing a ladder to make it longer so that it can reach the branches of a fruit tree "random" in any sense of the word?

Can it be described as:

1. "[h]aving no specific pattern, purpose, or objective"?
2. "[o]f or relating to a type of circumstance or event that is described by a probability distribution"?
3. "[o]f or relating to an event in which all outcomes are equally likely, as in the testing of a blood sample for the presence of a substance"?
4. "[w]ithout a governing design, method, or purpose; unsystematic"?

If so, how?

 

[six7s]

I am challenging the appropriateness of its analogy to technological development. Until you understand the difference between the two positions, you will fail to grasp the fundamentals of my argument.

(My emphasising)

It is obvious (even to mijo?) that there are several contributors to this thread who do "understand the difference between the two positions" AND realise that, as far as the analogy is concerned, the differences are irrelevant

Therefore, the assertion that "Until you understand the difference between the two positions, you will fail to grasp the fundamentals of [mijos] argument" is complete and utter nonsense

I see no guiding intelligence behind biological evolution (which I accept as a superbly robust scientific theory) and that is why I object to it being likened to a process that does have a guiding intelligence behind it such as technological development.

What is the "that" of which you rant?

 

[Southwind17]

Southwind17-

How is changing a ladder to make it longer so that it can reach the branches of a fruit tree "random" in any sense of the word?

Geez - you can lead a horse to water ... You'd do well to dedicate as much time to reading carefully what people write as you do to scripting your impulsive, ill-considered responses, including the irrelevant and unnecessary semantics of trying to score points over definitions of words, and the like.

Allow me to enlighten you by re-writing what I previously wrote. Tip: concentrate on the now emboldened words!:

OK, let's turn this on it's head slightly. You're a fruit picker, not a ladder maker. You don't know the first thing about carpentry. I, however, am a ladder maker, but not a fruit picker. I know nothing about fruit nor the trees they grow on, including the height. I just go about my business making ladders; ladders of varying lengths. You call me up one day and tell me that your ladder is the wrong length for your needs. I hang up and deliver another ladder right away. It could be longer, shorter or the same length than that you're currently using, but I'm not a fruit picker. I know nothing about fruit nor the trees they grow on, including the height, so I just throw a random ladder on the back of the truck and deliver it to you.

Does that answer your question?

 

[Herzblut]

It is obvious (even to mijo?) that there are several contributors to this thread who do "understand the difference between the two positions" AND realise that, as far as the analogy is concerned, the differences are irrelevant

Therefore, the assertion that "Until you understand the difference between the two positions, you will fail to grasp the fundamentals of [mijos] argument" is complete and utter nonsense

In some users, the intend to carefully read somebody else's post in order to understand its message and to give meaningful replies to it is absent to an amazing degree. Strong language doesn't compensate this deficiency, it only makes ignorance worse.

I assume you don't understand what I'm talking about and somehow manage to get it wrong completely.