Randomness in Evolution: Valid and Invalid Usage

[Earthborn]

For example, if you expose a population of bacteria to an antibiotic, it will either become extinct or evolve resistance.

Or it will thrive, using the antibiotic as food.

Furthermore finding a definition which encompasses both 1) and 2) will mean the definition is so broad it includes everything, making it not very useful.

I fail to see why a definition of "randomness" that excludes evolution is more useful than one that includes it.

 

[articulett]

Or it will thrive, using the antibiotic as food.

I fail to see why a definition of "randomness" that excludes evolution is more useful than one that includes it.

Did you bother reading the posts on the previous page of the people who actually teach the subject and convey understanding to many people? I posted Dawkins, Coyne, and Ayala... and before that, PZ Meyers... I don't think there's any biologist in the world that would describe evolution as random --just as there is no one who teaches people how to play poker that would describe the game as random.

Having random components does not make a process itself random. The most important part in regards to understanding evolution is the part that is decidedly non random-- the derandomizer, if you will... natural selection.

Perhaps degrees of randomness could be useful for one needing to see evolution as random... but why would anyone seek to describe evolution in a way that leads to the very misunderstanding promoted by intelligent design proponents when those who actually educate others give us a much more elegant way to describe the process.

Your failure to understand just reflects your failure to understand... not any evidence that anyone finds describing evolution as "random" useful or informative on any level. Moreover, if one wanted to be understood, why wouldn't one use the definitions of those who ARE understood? That's what stymies me. Why are those who show no evidence of being able to convey understanding about natural selection to anyone imagining that somehow they are being more clear than all the experts who actually explain the process eloquently to many? Why the imagined expertise on a subject that no one but they seem to think they understand? Why would you think your failure to understand conveys something about how evolution should be described or that Dawkins is "wrong" rather than just ignorance on your part?

 

[mijopaalmc]

As has been said before, creationists like to pretend that evolution is haphazard, and that this is what scientists mean by random.

This is incontrovertibly true for Ayala, the author of the PNAS article artculett cites as saying evolution is non-random:

The fossil record shows that life has evolved in a haphazard fashion. The radiations of some groups of organisms, the numerical and territorial expansions of other groups, the replacement of some kinds of organisms by other kinds, the occasional but irregular occurrence of trends toward increased size or other sorts of change, and the ever-present extinctions are best explained by natural selection of organisms subject to the vagaries of genetic mutation, environmental challenge, and past history. The scientific account of these events does not necessitate recourse to a preordained plan, whether imprinted from the beginning or through successive interventions by an omniscient and almighty Designer. Biological evolution differs from a painting or an artifact in that it is not the outcome of preconceived design. The design of organisms is not intelligent but imperfect and, at times, outright dysfunctional.

(emphasis added)

I realize that Ayala says that evolution is "not random" several times, but that is a curiously contradictory statement given the passage above and the fact that "random" and "haphazard" are actually synonyms.

The passage also seems to make kjkent's post nonsensical, as kjkent says you can prove neither randomness nor its opposite, design.

 

[sol invictus]

I am slightly puzzled by your statement:

My bad - I missed your "significantly", which was rather crucial! In that case, while I still prefer my definition (predictable versus unpredictable, at least in the context of broad phenomena), I more or less agree.

 

[mijopaalmc]

My bad - I missed your "significantly", which was rather crucial! In that case, while I still prefer my definition (predictable versus unpredictable, at least in the context of broad phenomena), I more or less agree.

So the fact that radioisotopes have a fixed have life is non-random despite the fact that radioactive decay is itself a random process?

 

[zosima]

zosima, what about compound eyes?

several types

Lobster eye...

ETA:

Here is the organism that I was thinking about (one of the "eyes", is more of a light sensor...)

I don't doubt that there are other types of eyes, but they don't matter for the point I'm making. I would think they're probably optimizing for other constraints, but I don't care if you believe that. If you looked at the numerical argument that I made, if we look at some very generous numbers for a random evolution argument. The probability of two very similar eyes evolving twice is so astronomically low that it effective eliminates the possibility of a random evolution theory. 10 million billion years is well shorter than the total life of the earth and shorted than the length of the universe so far, this is one of those "we're getting close to heat death of the universe" numbers.
Thus, The process must be highly directed and repeatable because the fossil record shows these improbably events happening over an over again, and we don't see it happening over long periods of time. We see long periods of no change and short periods of huge change.

 

[sol invictus]

So the fact that radioisotopes have a fixed have life is non-random despite the fact that radioactive decay is itself a random process?

Excellent example!

You tell me - is it random that a smoke detector will go off when the room it's in fills with smoke?

 

[articulett]

Excellent example!

You tell me - is it random that a smoke detector will go off when the room it's in fills with smoke?

Let me guess...

Mijo won't say...

"Ah... I finally see your point!" Nor will Jim-Bob. Nor any of the same people who imagine themselves as having more expertise than the actual experts.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Excellent example!

You tell me - is it random that a smoke detector will go off when the room it's in fills with smoke?

I understand what you are trying to get at here, but I would say that the orderly operation of the ionizing smoke detector arises from many random decay of americium-241 nuclei, which causes a nearly steady current across the ionization gap. Calling something "non-random" simply because it displays orderly behavior is confusing and misleading, especially when the underlying mechanism is random.

 

[zosima]

have just realised that you have completely misunderstrood me.

Random, but not haphazard.

I think I understand you. Your view of evolution is not uncommon in the mainstream. I wasn't really imagining that you think it is haphazard. What I and articulett are trying to tell you, is that the evidence and the math does not bear your argument out, that no evolutionary biologists would agree with what you are saying. What I find funny is that articulett favors quoting dawkins, while I favor gould. Two separate schools of evolution, who come to the same conclusion regarding randomness, by different means.

Not everything.

Quantum events might conceivably affect the Earth's orbit, but not significantly (or even measurably). A slight change in the wind direction due to a difference at the quantum level several weeks earlier could very easily affect the survival or otherwise of a particular trait.

I'm suspicious that it could even change the direction of the wind in a way that would be significant. Just because someone can generate a "butterfly flapping its wings" argument to show that small effects can be significant doesn't mean that they ever are. There are always significant stabilizing effects. While wind may appear complex that is no reason to automatically assume that its behavior hinges upon the behavior of quarks and leptons.

The reason quantum physics is a modern theory, why scientists for many many years thought that the universe was a very ordered and regular place, is because on all scales that effect processes above the atomic level it is very very regular. The discovery of quantum physics does not invalidate those results.

I've noticed that it is not uncommon for the wooish arguments to hinge on the infinitesimally improbably, so imo this line of reasoning seriously undermines your argument. As I've stated before, it also makes it very different to talk about the science.

The feedback loops I am talking about is because an organism alters the fitness landscape for other organisms in its ecosystem. Which mutation occurs first in which organism would help define the fitness lancdscape for the other organisms.

I dispute that it is trivial. When discussing with other people, most would consider it to be a significant difference whether anything was filling our ecological niche. In fac, given our effect on the evolution of other organisms, this is probably true.

Mamoths, passenger pigeons, dodos, moas, rats, TB, would all have had different evolutionary histories without mankind.

If this depended on random events, as well as nonrandom but unpredictable events, then I can see it is valid to talk about randomness in evolution. It is also valid to talk about inevitibility in evolution too, for example the loss of flight in birds on isolated islands with no predators.

You can dispute it. I think I've laid out my argument in excruciating detail. Your argument either reduces to the claim that history is random or is very wrong. Either way you aren't talking about evolution. But as I've stated several times, the argument I'm making is based in large part on the evidence, and I've recommended you go to the primary sources. So if you choose to dispute it without examining those sources, you chose to dispute it via ignorance* not argument.

With that I'm out.

*p.s. I'm not trying to be rude, by saying that it is an ignorant position, I'm trying to impress upon you the importance of reading some of the work in the field, before you assert that it is false.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

So the fact that radioisotopes have a fixed have life is non-random despite the fact that radioactive decay is itself a random process?

I should hope so. If we're going to call a measurement random even when it is very close over an arbitrarily large number of samples, then, as people have noted before, the word random becomes useless.

A coin flip is random. However, would you call it random that a large number of coin flips tends to be 50% heads?

Calling something "non-random" simply because it displays orderly behavior is confusing and misleading, especially when the underlying mechanism is random.

Calling it "nonrandom, full stop" is misleading, but not even close to being as misleading as calling it "random, full stop." You have to distinguish between individual events and probabilistic trends.

~~ Paul

 

[sol invictus]

I understand what you are trying to get at here, but I would say that the orderly operation of the ionizing smoke detector arises from many random decay of americium-241 nuclei, which causes a nearly steady current across the ionization gap. Calling something "non-random" simply because it displays orderly behavior is confusing and misleading, especially when the underlying mechanism is random.

Is the smoke detector random, mijo? Yes or no?

 

[mijopaalmc]

Calling it "nonrandom, full stop" is misleading, but not even close to being as misleading as calling it "random, full stop."

But I have never done that or advocated doing that.

You have to distinguish between individual events and probabilistic trends.

Probabilistic trends ares still mathematically random. They are, however, not random according to another definition, as is the mathematical framework of probability theory.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Is the smoke detector random, mijo? Yes or no?

False dichotomy. It's order operation arises from random processes.

 

[sol invictus]

False dichotomy. It's order operation arises from random processes.

"False dichotomy"? What delicious hypocrisy, coming from someone that maintains that "evolution is random".

Answer the question, mijo - yes or no?

 

[mijopaalmc]

"False dichotomy"? What delicious hypocrisy, coming from someone that maintains that "evolution is random".

Where have I proposed a false dichotomy?

Answer the question, mijo - yes or no?

It's not a question with a yes or no answer.

 

[articulett]

"False dichotomy"? What delicious hypocrisy, coming from someone that maintains that "evolution is random".

Answer the question, mijo - yes or no?

As if.

Mijo must have the last word and the last word must convince himself that somehow in some way it is meaningful to call evolution random... much more meaningful than anything any one else is saying. This is a guy who began posting relatively recently with an opening post wondering about "discontinuity" in the fossil record. He brings up the top straw men of creationists again and again and cannot understand any explanation whatsoever as to why they are straw man... but he is angry that I might suggest that he is a creationist. He will soon be thanking you in a similar manner for all your patient time spent trying to convey understanding to him.

IMO, he is not an honest person. He is not honest with himself or anyone else. And he is the first to lay accusations such as that upon others when they are far more fitting of himself. I have long had him and his ilk on ignore. Your explanations will not go unpunished, I assure you.

 

[sol invictus]

Where have I proposed a false dichotomy?



It's not a question with a yes or no answer.

Do you truly fail to realize how ridiculous your position is? You claim that evolution - an extremely complex process involving a rich set of phenomena, some predictable, some not - is random, and yet when I ask about a smoke detector you call it a false dichotomy with no answer?

 

[articulett]

If nothing else, I appreciate the delicious irony, sol.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Do you truly fail to realize how ridiculous your position is? You claim that evolution - an extremely complex process involving a rich set of phenomena, some predictable, some not - is random, and yet when I ask about a smoke detector you call it a false dichotomy with no answer?

You are completely missing the point: the long-term predictability of a system says nothing about its short-term structure. If random processes (e.g., radioactive decay) could not produce long-term predictability, not only would an ionization smoke detector not work, but the universe probably would not exist at all (if we assume that quantum mechanics is really random).