What evidence is there for evolution being non-random?

[Schneibster]

Do you agree with Behe in post #1630 where he says that the most important part of evolution is random mutation?

Or do you agree with Dawkins that the most important part of evolution is the non-random aspect that builds the complexity we see--natural selection?

In fact, I disagree with both; and I think both are oversimplifying. Dawkins at least has the excuse that he is doing so in order to respond to an oversimplified argument; Behe is merely indulging in solipsism.

But I think that if you examined Dawkins' views in more detail, what you'd find is what I've said: here is some random stuff over here, and there is some random stuff over there, and out of all this random stuff comes order. And that order emerges as the result of very simple (but counterintuitive) laws. Isn't it interesting that you get all that order out of all that randomness? And that's the impression I came away with from The Blind Watchmaker, and The Selfish Gene. "Evolution is not random" in Dawkins' mouth is not a statement that the components of evolution are not random; it is not a statement that selection criteria are not random. It is a statement that evolution results in order; that this order emerges smoothly and naturally by natural law from the underlying randomness of selection and mutation and recombination. And every time I say this, which is obviously precisely what Dawkins believes, if his books are any indication, you tell me it's "not informative." If it's not informative when I say it, then why is it informative when Dawkins says it?

I say the latter. The randomites seem to be saying the former.

Straw man. You do not say the latter; you say something completely different from what Dawkins says and pretend it's the same. I say what Dawkins says and you claim it's "not informative" when I say it, and that it is informative when Dawkins says it. And that I've said it is in black and white on this very thread.

Who explains evolution the best? Who is the clearest? Who is offering something better and more useful and clearer?

To whom?

To me, just as is true for most people who have posted on this thread, the answer is obvious. It's a semantics argument, of course, because the facts are the same no matter what language you use. But, if clarity is your goal...

First, fallacy of popularity. Second, you haven't shown this is true; please provide evidence. Third, you have yet to represent my argument properly, or even to ask me what it is; you are bent on a political task, not a scientific one.

You aren't interested in the science at all, and the proof is you're not discussing the science; instead, you're lying, using solipsisms, misrepresenting the arguments of opponents, cherry picking and quote mining, ignoring contrary evidence, and refusing to discuss the matter at hand.

 

[Schneibster]

So why do you think he says "non random" as opposed to probabilistic?

Because he's responding to the cretinists.

Why do you think nobody is actually saying "natural selection IS (random, probabilistic, a stochastic process) even though the randomites keep rephrasing sentences to assert that they are saying just that?

Here's a quote for you:

The fossil record shows that life has evolved in a haphazard fashion.

That's Ayala. Here is the paper in question. It's the one you quoted earlier. It's the first thing he says in the summation of the points he's making in the paper. Now, what precisely does "haphazard" mean?

 

[mijopaalmc]

Normal people don't call that a random process if they desire clarity.

And Rouzine is very careful to distinguish between the stochastic part of evolution (mutation) and what is selected. He does not call selection random.

Cut and paste whatever the hell you think it is where you think he is. I cut and pasted that which clearly showed he distinguished between the two. You do not.

Uh....there is a reason that I prefer "probabilistic" and "stochastic" to "random": using the former two helps avoid the equivocation that seems to be de riguer among creationist and non-randomites alike when one uses "random". I have already provided a very basic description of how I am rigorously defining "random" with respect to probability theory:

In axiomatized probability theory, there are object called probability space that consist of a set known as the sample space, a collection of subsets of that set called a sigma algebra the elements of which are called events, and a measure that maps each element of the sigma-algebra to a point on the closed interval [0,1] following the axioms of probability. Random variables are measurable functions that map events in the sample space to events in another set called the state space, which are elements in the sigma-algebra on the state space. A probability distribution is a measure on the state space that maps each event in the state space to a point on the real line or subset thereof.

It should be painfully obvious that not everything can be described in this way. For example, most of calculus and mathematical analysis is based on measures that do not obey the axioms of probability and are therefore not random. Furthermore, the functions of elementary algebra are not random because they are not defined on sigma-algebras but rather solely on the elements of sets, most often the real numbers. This means that when you use these branches of mathematics to describe physical systems, you are by definition providing a non-random (or deterministic) explanation, even though it might not be the most accurate. Thus, you are intentionally obfuscating and misrepresenting their argument when you say that the definition of "random" the randomites use makes everything "random".

You are also misrepresenting Rouzine's conclusion about the stochasticity of evolution. While he and his coworkers do go to great lengths to distinguish (stochastic) drift and mutation from (deterministic/Darwinian) natural selection, this does not keep them from acknowledging that evolution is an inherently stochastic and that deterministic models only arise from the limit behavior of the stochastic processes when the population is "sufficiently large":

One of the most striking properties of HIV is the extent of genetic variation within the virus population in a single infected individual. A much debated issue is the degree to which the variation is controlled by deterministic (Darwinian) as opposed to stochastic effects (1). The most universal deterministic force is purifying selection caused by the fitness difference between genetic variants. The random nature of mutations and random genetic drift due to sampling of progenitor alleles (Fig. 1a) are omnipresent stochastic factors. The relative importance of deterministic and stochastic factors for virus evolution depends essentially on the size of the virus population (the number of productively infected cells). Random factors can be neglected, and deterministic theory applied, only if the population is sufficiently large. If both the population size and the fitness difference are small, selection becomes negligible compared with random drift, and ‘‘neutral’’ theory rules (2).

Selection becomes important and causes the plots to curve after a growing subpopulation becomes sufficiently large.

Boundaries of deterministic approximation. Random drift, always present even in very large populations, causes the frequency of mutants to fluctuate around its deterministic value. As the population size decreases, the magnitude of fluctuations becomes comparable to the average frequency of the minority allele (either mutant or wild type), and the deterministic description breaks down. The corresponding condition on the population size varies significantly depending on the initial conditions of the experiment (equation 65). When the population starts from a monomorphic state (reversion or accumulation), the deterministic criterion is met when mN is much larger than unity. A population that is strongly diverse to start with, as in the growth competition experiment, is already deterministic at a much smaller population size in the selection-drift regime. (The criterion for diversity is that the mutant frequency must be higher than its characteristic “tail” at steady state [Fig. 5] ). The reason for this difference is that a small polymorphism is influenced by rare and random mutation events while a strongly polymorphic population is controlled by selection alone.

In the present work, we consider a model of multilocus evolution that does not include recombination but does include advantageous, deleterious, and compensating mutations. We predict the rate of either decline or advance in fitness for arbitrary values of the parameters and compare these results to the well-studied case of very strong recombination. When either the frequency of mutant alleles or the population size is sufficiently large, deleterious mutations can be neglected, and advantageous mutants accumulate. In this case, our results represent an accurate prediction for the Fisher–Muller effect. In the opposite limit, in which advantageous mutations are not important and deleterious mutation accumulate, our results give the rate of Muller’s ratchet. In contrast to previous studies of the Fisher–Muller effect (7, 13, 27), we do not consider fixation events of single advantageous mutants. Instead, we count together as a group all of the sequences with the same number of uncompensated deleterious mutations (22) and study the time dependence of the size of each group. We treat all of the groups deterministically, with the exception of the smallest, best-fit group (28, 29). In contrast to previous studies of Muller’s ratchet, our framework does not depend on the population being either genetically uniform or close to the infinite-population equilibrium. As a result, our findings are valid over a very broad range of population parameters and can be used to predict the overall evolution rate for a variety of experimental populations. We show how the model can be applied to data from vesicular stomatitis virus passed in cell culture (30, 31). Detailed mathematical derivations are published in Mathematical Appendix as supporting information on the PNAS web site, www.pnas.org. We present the principal results below.

[...]

If back or compensating mutations are present, the wave can move either to the right (ratchet) or to the left (reversion), slowing down gradually as it approaches a steady-state point (Fig. 1 d and e). At sufficiently large N, a steady state is reached at k_av close to zero (see below), so that only reversion can be observed (except for extremely small initial values of k_av). Although a distribution obtained by pseudorandom simulation fluctuates around the average obtained in the semideterministic approach (Fig. 1 b and d), the accumulation rates over long time scales obtained by the two methods are similar (similar slopes in Fig. 1 c and e).

We assume that, at sufficiently large N, random drift be neglected for groups of sequences with k located from the wave edges and that Equation 9 holds in ensemble-average sense. This assumption is equivalent to neglecting the correlation function <δf(k, t)δk>, where δf(k, t) and δk are random fluctuations of corresponding quantities, in the right-hand side of Equation 3. Results of the Monte Carlo simulation show the accuracy of this approach for the average values of φ(x), together, the function φ(x) V, and w² up to N as small as 100–1000 (Figure 3 and Figure 4, C and F).

 

[Schneibster]

Just to put this other lie to bed:

You keep claiming, articulett, that I never said how you were hoist by your own petard. In this post, you gave the following link: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/chance/chance.html

In the middle of that page, I found this:
"To understand the randomness claimed for evolution by scientists, as opposed to that feared by theologians and moral philosophers, it's important to ask 'random relative to what?'"

The beginning of that sentence is, "To understand the randomness claimed for evolution by scientists..." and pointed out that you'd been saying (and I am pointing out now that you continue to say) that scientists say evolution is not random. These are contradictory to one another. Scientists cannot both claim randomness for evolution and claim evolution is not random. It's a logical inconsistency. It's your source, that you provided, and it's your claim, that you've been making throughout this thread. Either the source doesn't say what you claim it does, or scientists are not saying evolution is not random. One way or the other, you're caught in yet another lie. And hoist by your own petard (your own statements, and your own evidence).

And to put a point on it, follow that link and look over my next couple of posts. I illustrated this exact point in both of them, and you have been claiming ever since that I never showed it. And lying some more.

 

[cyborg]

Schneibster - if you understand the computational aspects here then I total fail to understand why you are arguing for evolution being random.

I will ask one more time before giving up completely:

HOW DOES YOUR ARGUMENT CHANGE IF GENETIC CHANGE IS DETERMINED?

Everyone here who is scrambling to grasp at randomness by appealing to truly random sources (QM) or psudeo-randomness miss the ****ing point so badly. (And yeah, we both know what the stars represent and I am not one to mince words for notional concepts of offence and social acceptability - so we all know what page we are on right?)

Namely it is this:

Evolution is computable. Randomness is not.

When meaning is applied to chaos determinism naturally arises. I ain't going to solve P vs NP for you here so you're going to have to start another topic if you want to do that but in the mean time if you don't understand that calling a process that clearly contains meaning random is incredibly unhelpful when trying to convey meaning then I am clearly wasting my (****ing) time.

Oh, and do you want to know why you guarantee that you'll win a Poker game? Can you construct an infinite machine? No? Well there's your answer.

 

[Schneibster]

Schneibster - if you understand the computational aspects here then I total fail to understand why you are arguing for evolution being random.

You've failed to understand that I'm arguing that evolution is the apparently orderly result of random mutation, recombination, and selection on a random and randomly changing fitness landscape. Articulett and you appear to be arguing that selection is orderly; it's not. It's random.

And the order we believe we see in evolution is the result of classifications we impose; the real world is more messy. Go google up "ring species," or for that matter read Wikipedia or TalkOrigins on what ring species are. The ends of the ring are likely incapable of sexual reproduction; the union would likely be infertile. But that is not always the case. And plants can hybridize.

So if we can't even really define "species" in all contexts, much less in the genetic context, what precisely do you mean when you say, "evolution is not random?" Hell, LIFE is random. Look around you.

But one thing works in our favor: we are pattern detectors. And the patterns we see tell us that nature does the same thing over and over again. Look at individuals, and their interactions, and you see chaos. Randomness. But look at aggregate behavior, and order emerges. It's everywhere. In the derivation of the laws of thermodynamics from the laws of quantum mechanics (see the fluctuation theorem for what I'm talking about- and bear in mind that this is not a theory, but a mathematical theorem, but it also has been experimentally confirmed). In the appearance of orderly field behavior from quantum mechanics. In the actuarial tables that insurance companies use. In evolution. In fluid dynamics (at least until you get to chaotic regimes in the flow rate). In the shapes of mountains, cauliflower, storms on Jupiter and on Earth, and solar prominences. This is the type of order evolution has: messy order, just like the real world is messy. But order nevertheless.

As far as computational models go, they're pretty good and getting better all the time. Perhaps by the time we know the median genetics and range of genetic variation for a few score species, they will be ready to answer some questions when we want to do some simulations. Likely they will. If I am lucky, that will be before the day I die. But the map is not the territory; the model is not the real world. Especially not a computational model; we just can't make them fine enough. So when you apply a computational model to something, you have to keep reminding yourself of that.

I will ask one more time before giving up completely:

HOW DOES YOUR ARGUMENT CHANGE IF GENETIC CHANGE IS DETERMINED?

I believe you mean, how does my argument change once the sexual recombination has occurred, and my answer is, not at all. There is still life to go through until the next recombination, and life is messy.

Everyone here who is scrambling to grasp at randomness by appealing to truly random sources (QM) or psudeo-randomness miss the ****ing point so badly. (And yeah, we both know what the stars represent and I am not one to mince words for notional concepts of offence and social acceptability - so we all know what page we are on right?)

I don't really care much if you swear- I do myself. You're confusing me with someone else.

I dislike, however, the characterization "scrambling." I've been trying to get across to you (and articulett, but along a different thread of argument) that your theories are all well and good, but the real world is messy. I've been doing it for quite a few pages, in case you hadn't noticed. I've gotten the impression you haven't. I believe I've answered your points so far above.

Namely it is this:

Evolution is computable. Randomness is not.

LOL, now I KNOW you know better than this. First, what about analog computers? Second, what about fractals? No one can predict a fractal's next branching more quickly than by doing the calculations that yield the fractal. Looks like computation of the random to me. So that disposes of the second point.

Evolution is not computable; it can be modeled, but not predicted. Show me a computer program that will confidently and accurately predict the evolution of a species now alive over the next million (hell, twenty) years. We can simulate it; but we cannot predict it. The simulation will necessarily contain assumptions that we have no way to test: assumptions about what genetic changes will arise, and assumptions about how the environment will be. Real genetic changes will be different from those we assume, and the real environment will change in ways that differ from our assumptions, too.

You have confused the map with the territory.

And that disposes of the second point.

When meaning is applied to chaos determinism naturally arises. I ain't going to solve P vs NP for you here so you're going to have to start another topic if you want to do that but in the mean time if you don't understand that calling a process that clearly contains meaning random is incredibly unhelpful when trying to convey meaning then I am clearly wasting my (****ing) time.

There is no meaning in evolution but that we impose upon it. See "ring species." There is order; the exact kind of order you think you're talking about. It's not meaning, though.

Never forget that the order you think you see (the Second Law of Thermodynamics, for example) is underlaid, at smaller scales, by chaos (reversal of the 2LOT at microscopic- that is, super-molecular- scales). And there are mathematical reasons for this (as we have discovered by creating the fluctuation theorem- which predicted the reversal of the 2LOT at those scales, and was proven correct by experiment). Never forget, either, that the nature of that order is determined by the precise probability distributions of the individual interactions that make it up.

Oh, and do you want to know why you guarantee that you'll win a Poker game? Can you construct an infinite machine? No? Well there's your answer.

I believe you and I discussed Kolmogorov complexity recently. You appear to have forgotten that the requirement for an infinite machine is spawned by randomness.

 

[cyborg]

You've failed to understand that I'm arguing that evolution is the apparently orderly result of random mutation, recombination, and selection on a random and randomly changing fitness landscape. Articulett and you appear to be arguing that selection is orderly; it's not. It's random.

Um no. The argument is that selection is orderly because the universe imposes meaning.

It is not random simply because the rules of the game are consistent even though they are unknown.

Natural selection would not be possible if the rules were constantly changing. It would at that point be arbitrary what is and is not selected. It would therefore be random.

Can you really defend the notion that it is arbitrary what does and does not survive when the whole point of natural selection is that it is not arbitrary; you have to survive.

And the order we believe we see in evolution is the result of classifications we impose; the real world is more messy. Go google up "ring species," or for that matter read Wikipedia or TalkOrigins on what ring species are. The ends of the ring are likely incapable of sexual reproduction; the union would likely be infertile. But that is not always the case. And plants can hybridize.

I fail to see how ring species changes the argument at all. I don't believe I have at any point argued that the real world is not "messy".

[qupte]So if we can't even really define "species" in all contexts, much less in the genetic context, what precisely do you mean when you say, "evolution is not random?" Hell, LIFE is random. Look around you.[/quote]

That is a very odd objection. You do get that species are abstractions and that by their very nature abstractions remove information for the sake of simplicity? The reason one cannot really define a species in all contexts is that in order to define a species you have to ignore some differentiating factor in an individual in order to be able to make the group part of the same set.

But one thing works in our favor: we are pattern detectors. And the patterns we see tell us that nature does the same thing over and over again. Look at individuals, and their interactions, and you see chaos. Randomness.

But it is not random. Individuals and their interactions do in fact follow patterned behaviour because we are pattern detectors.

But look at aggregate behavior, and order emerges.

Yet again this is my point. Order emerges because meaning is constrained. Because meaning is constrained there is no sense in which one can say the product of evolution is random because it is not arbitrary what does and what does not survive. If it were arbitrary then there would be, by definition, no order and you and I would not be engaging in this discussion.

But the map is not the territory; the model is not the real world.

That has been my argument if you did not notice.

I believe you mean, how does my argument change once the sexual recombination has occurred

No, I meant what I said precisely.

I don't really care much if you swear- I do myself. You're confusing me with someone else.

I was not referring to you explicitly since my flow had switched to a plural you (English really could do with restoring such a differentiation).

I dislike, however, the characterization "scrambling." I've been trying to get across to you (and articulett, but along a different thread of argument) that your theories are all well and good, but the real world is messy.

Yet again I must point out just how well aware I am of this.

LOL, now I KNOW you know better than this. First, what about analog computers?

What about them?

Second, what about fractals?

What about them?

No one can predict a fractal's next branching more quickly than by doing the calculations that yield the fractal. Looks like computation of the random to me. So that disposes of the second point.

Eh? No one can predict ANY computation more quickly than by performing the (optimal) computation - that is the nature of computation!

You simply, absolutely, and categorically MUST do it. We don't have the luxury of oracles now do we?

Unless you are telling me either of your computers above can do more than a TM.

Show me a computer program that will confidently and accurately predict the evolution of a species now alive over the next million (hell, twenty) years.

Missing the point somewhat - again.

Is evolution a computable process? (I did not ask you to build a computer, I asked if it was computable).

There is no meaning in evolution but that we impose upon it. See "ring species." There is order; the exact kind of order you think you're talking about. It's not meaning, though.

You misunderstand - meaning is imposed to that which is arbitrary by the very fact that there are rules.

It is quite simple really - if one takes a machine that understands the meaning of a stream of tokens (i.e. an interpreter) then a random stream of tokens will have meaning imposed upon it by the mere act of interpretation.

This is why non-determinism cannot build a computer that can compute more - you have to have a finite concept of meaning in order to perform computations that don't take an infinite amount of time.

I believe you and I discussed Kolmogorov complexity recently. You appear to have forgotten that the requirement for an infinite machine is spawned by randomness.

Incorrect. It would be more correct to note the reciprocal nature of the relationship and the problem of time in computation and self-referential questions.

 

[Schneibster]

Um no. The argument is that selection is orderly because the universe imposes meaning.

What? What are you talking about? What meaning? The universe is not conscious, and therefore incapable of assigning meaning to anything. Meaning is something thinking beings assign to aspects of their environment and selves. There is no intrinsic meaning.

It is not random simply because the rules of the game are consistent even though they are unknown.

They are inconsistent; what do you think coevolution is? And fitness landscapes change all the time; a drought comes, or the locusts come through, or an asteroid falls. All of these events are essentially random from the point of view of evolution. How can you call a continuously changing set of rules "consistent?"

Natural selection would not be possible if the rules were constantly changing.

The rules are constantly changing. See above.

It would at that point be arbitrary what is and is not selected. It would therefore be random.

Ummm, yep. Looks like you got that one right.

Can you really defend the notion that it is arbitrary what does and does not survive when the whole point of natural selection is that it is not arbitrary; you have to survive.

At any given time in any given area, over a few generations, conditions are likely stable enough that what you're saying here makes at least some sense. But I'd hesitate a long time before calling it "non-random." Even if I were in your place.

As long as conditions are stable, the fitness landscape doesn't vary much. Over that time, there is the opportunity for new adaptations to appear. This is just sufficient order to provide the time for selection to operate. But conditions always change; there is continental drift, there are the Milankovitch cycles, just for starters. Species go extinct as the conditions change; others develop to take their places, from the outliers in the gene pools who happen to have the characteristics (or develop them) to survive in the new conditions. Over the long haul, then, there is constant turnover in species. But the line stretching back to the first life, whatever that might have been, remains unbroken. Still, that looks pretty arbitrary to me; I would go one further and quote Ayala's "haphazard."

I fail to see how ring species changes the argument at all. I don't believe I have at any point argued that the real world is not "messy".

Sure you have; you've said evolution is not random.

That is a very odd objection. You do get that species are abstractions and that by their very nature abstractions remove information for the sake of simplicity? The reason one cannot really define a species in all contexts is that in order to define a species you have to ignore some differentiating factor in an individual in order to be able to make the group part of the same set.

But the order that people see in evolution is the, pardon me, Origin of the Species. Go poke around, and you find out "species" is meaningless in at least some contexts; like I keep saying, the real world is messy. Now, you can point to some creatures, and some other creatures, and say, "this is one of those, and that is one of these." There are centroids. But there are also outliers, and they too are ubiquitous. And some of them are usually the ones that carry on when the conditions change and the old centroid is maladapted and dies out.

See, the whole thing about cretinism is, they point to one centroid, and another centroid, and go, "tell me how those evolved into these." And that's just not what really happens. It's messy.

But it is not random. Individuals and their interactions do in fact follow patterned behaviour because we are pattern detectors.

No, individuals don't. At least not in the real world, and not in physics, and not in biology, either. The order doesn't emerge until you study a population, or an aggregate, or an ensemble, or whatever you want to call your statistical universe. The initial order emerges as a result of the law of large numbers. And without large numbers, there is therefore no order. You can violate the 2LOT over a short time, in a small space.

Yet again this is my point. Order emerges because meaning is constrained. Because meaning is constrained there is no sense in which one can say the product of evolution is random because it is not arbitrary what does and what does not survive. If it were arbitrary then there would be, by definition, no order and you and I would not be engaging in this discussion.

See, you want it all one way or all the other, and the real world just isn't like that. There's order for a time, in a place; then that order is disturbed. That's how new species arise, and old ones go extinct.

That has been my argument if you did not notice.

Oh, I noticed; I just don't think you noticed the implications of it. That's why I used it.

No, I meant what I said precisely.

Then I have to point out that that is the only point at which genetic change is determined; before that, you have a collection of haploid cells that could be mutated at any time, and only some of which will actually reach an egg and fertilize it. Once they have done so, then that egg could be destroyed by a cosmic ray, or a disease could sweep through the flock and that egg's host could die, or the chick could hatch and any number of things that are totally unrelated to its fitness could kill it off before it has eggs of its own. At that point, assuming it makes it, another change will be determined. But until that spermatozoan actually reaches that egg, there is no determinism. Recombination is the moment of truth. A new, and almost certainly completely unique for all time, genome has been created. The individual that results from that genome is also unique. It will carry those genes, almost certainly unaltered, until it dies.

I was not referring to you explicitly since my flow had switched to a plural you (English really could do with restoring such a differentiation).

Very well. Just didn't want you to think I'm uptight about it. Swear if you need to. It's a good way of expressing frustration, and as long as you don't swear directly at me, I don't care.

Yet again I must point out just how well aware I am of this.

You don't seem to be; you're talking about things like determinism in genetics, and order that doesn't exist to anything like the extent you seem to believe it does. That's why I keep pointing it out.

Eh? No one can predict ANY computation more quickly than by performing the (optimal) computation - that is the nature of computation!

But these are parametric equations- whose input is determined by the output of the previous time you ran the equation. So the only way to find out is actually rerun the equation the requisite number of times to see if you get a branch or not. No one has found a way around this. There do not appear to be any mathematical tricks one can use to shortcut running the same equation over and over on its own output. This is not true for all iterative situations; many are tractable, and their details can be predicted using more complex mathematics.

So pick a point on the real plane, arbitrarily close to the edge of the Mandelbrot pattern, and state whether that point will be inside or outside that edge. You can't. For those points, the Mandelbrot is essentially random. In fact, finding out if that point is inside or outside requires an arbitrary number of computations, and that number can get extremely large in a heck of a hurry. In other words, although we know each such test must eventually terminate, we can't predict when. It might take a millisecond; it might take until next week; or the present age of the universe might pass again before we find out. Now tell me the number of computations isn't essentially random.

Missing the point somewhat - again.

Is evolution a computable process? (I did not ask you to build a computer, I asked if it was computable).

No, it is not. I offer this for your consideration. Here is a quote:

"Figuratively speaking, nature by feeding an iterative process with external data tries to find a solution to an optimization problem. Non-optimal solutions lead to species less adaptable that eventually fade away. Also, there are solutions that are better than others and that is why certain species are more adaptable to radical changes. Thus, evolution is an interactive trial-and-error process. At this point we should note that Wegner [20] argues that interactive systems transcend the capabilities of Turing machines. Ergo, evolution is actually a non-computable process." (Emphasis mine.) (The reference, number 20, is to Wegner, P. Interactive foundations of computing. Theoretical Computer Science 192 (1998), 315–351.)

You misunderstand - meaning is imposed to that which is arbitrary by the very fact that there are rules.

It is quite simple really - if one takes a machine that understands the meaning of a stream of tokens (i.e. an interpreter) then a random stream of tokens will have meaning imposed upon it by the mere act of interpretation.

This is why non-determinism cannot build a computer that can compute more - you have to have a finite concept of meaning in order to perform computations that don't take an infinite amount of time.

Again, there is no meaning but that which we assign. The world IS. We divide it up like this and like that, and assign this meaning to that thing, and all that sort of thing, but it just does it's thing whether we assign meaning to it or not. You are speaking of order, not meaning.

Incorrect. It would be more correct to note the reciprocal nature of the relationship and the problem of time in computation and self-referential questions.

Mmmm, well, put it this way: you cannot determine whether it is random or not. Satisfied?

 

[cyborg]

What? What are you talking about? What meaning? The universe is not conscious, and therefore incapable of assigning meaning to anything. Meaning is something thinking beings assign to aspects of their environment and selves. There is no intrinsic meaning.

Randomness lacks meaning; by definition. The application of meaning to randomness causes meaningful manifestations to occur naturally. Since the last time I checked it was two humans using human abstractions in order to provide an accurate description of the natural world my terminology is in fact quite sensible in the correct context.

Looking to something as a cause for meaning is quite moot - you are not thinking abstractly enough. Meaning is a machine.

They are inconsistent; what do you think coevolution is? And fitness landscapes change all the time; a drought comes, or the locusts come through, or an asteroid falls. All of these events are essentially random from the point of view of evolution. How can you call a continuously changing set of rules "consistent?"

Physics is the constant set of rules I refer to here. Physics dictates the rules by which machines can be built. Physics dictates the rules by which the machines may win or lose. This is not random and as such it is not random what machines will occur and in what settings they can win - all designs are not equal. If all designs were equal the choice of winning design would be arbitrary and therefore random.

By constantly invoking random events you are missing the point significantly - namely that the occurrence of an asteroid or climate change does not change how machines can be built nor which environments in which such a machine could win. What machines occur is still not by any means arbitrary - it is always based on the meaning imposed on the random changes (i.e. mutation) by physics.

At any given time in any given area, over a few generations, conditions are likely stable enough that what you're saying here makes at least some sense. But I'd hesitate a long time before calling it "non-random." Even if I were in your place.

I cannot fathom why, "dynamic system," means, "random," to you. If I implemented a dynamic packet routing algorithm I doubt you'd call the results "random," even though the nature of the inputs to the algorithm are highly subject to chaotic behaviour.

Sure you have; you've said evolution is not random.

Yet again I am going to have to ask just how on Earth the existence of ring species affects anything I've said here because I am just not seeing it at all.

Go poke around, and you find out "species" is meaningless in at least some contexts; like I keep saying, the real world is messy.

****, it's like you aren't even listening to me when I tell you that I agree.

It's messy.

Messy != random. That's an equivocation fallacy.

No, individuals don't.

Well, they do I'm afraid. Hell, you can go right ahead and think you don't but the whole reason why we can see patterns in groups is because the underlying behavioural patterns are being exposed.

There's no magic that separates what causes "individual behaviour," from "group behaviour," it's just really noticeable when group behaviour does arise.

See, you want it all one way or all the other, and the real world just isn't like that. There's order for a time, in a place; then that order is disturbed. That's how new species arise, and old ones go extinct.

Yet again I fail to see how that affects my argument at all. I still don't get why, for you, determined must mean, "unchanging in all contexts."

Evolution is an algorithm that does not care for end products - it just runs and organisms are just the internal working for a computation that has no goal.

Oh, I noticed; I just don't think you noticed the implications of it. That's why I used it.

That's my line.

Then I have to point out that that is the only point at which genetic change is determined; ...

****, it's not like I haven't pointed that out since the beginning - what you guys seem to be so resistant to is the idea that equal genetics does not mean equally strength players because the nature of the game precludes that. It is inherently unfair.

And for the record I must state, once again:

Unfair != random. That's an equivocation fallacy.

But these are parametric equations- whose input is determined by the output of the previous time you ran the equation. So the only way to find out is actually rerun the equation the requisite number of times to see if you get a branch or not.

****, I wonder which process I could possibly analogise to this?

There do not appear to be any mathematical tricks one can use to shortcut running the same equation over and over on its own output.

Except to construct an oracle - that's always possible.

This is not true for all iterative situations; many are tractable, and their details can be predicted using more complex mathematics.

If it's time that is important than either one can use a more complicated algorithm for a time optimal result or one cannot. Either way no matter what one is talking about, you can't calculate without, er, actually calculating.

Now tell me the number of computations isn't essentially random.

It isn't essentially random. To say it is essentially random would be to say that the time it would take is arbitrary. If that were the case then performing the same calculation about the same point would take a different amount of time each time the algorithm were run. Now I am not familiar with this problem but I'm going to have to assume that is not the case.

"Figuratively speaking, nature by feeding an iterative process with external data tries to find a solution to an optimization problem. Non-optimal solutions lead to species less adaptable that eventually fade away. Also, there are solutions that are better than others and that is why certain species are more adaptable to radical changes. Thus, evolution is an interactive trial-and-error process. At this point we should note that Wegner [20] argues that interactive systems transcend the capabilities of Turing machines. Ergo, evolution is actually a non-computable process." (Emphasis mine.) (The reference, number 20, is to Wegner, P. Interactive foundations of computing. Theoretical Computer Science 192 (1998), 315–351.)

That's all very well and good but as you should very well know there is no proposed super-TM that can exist that has been shown to actually provide the ability to compute something a TM cannot.

Non-determinism only allows for computation time to be reduced for certain classes of computation. It provides no more power whatsoever.

So in other words Evolution is computable since it is entirely possible to provide a deterministic ordering that will simply evaluate every possibility.

Again, there is no meaning but that which we assign. The world IS. We divide it up like this and like that, and assign this meaning to that thing, and all that sort of thing, but it just does it's thing whether we assign meaning to it or not. You are speaking of order, not meaning.

No, I am speaking of meaning because I am using a computational argument. To a machine the meaning of its inputs is simply the change of state that it causes. To you and I the meaning of this words is simply whatever particular associations we have learnt for them that get triggered by our interpretation of these symbols. I use the word meaning because randomness is devoid of meaning.

Mmmm, well, put it this way: you cannot determine whether it is random or not. Satisfied?

Well the real problem is that true randomness is indistinguishable from an infinite machine that could exist that could produce the output. Now whether or not true randomness exists or not is neither here nor there - the point is that we implicitly understand meaning as deriving from machine-like processes; rules, causality, order.

Now the important part of evolution, the part that shapes the output, is not the random changes in the design of the machine, nor the random appearance of the environment, it is how the machine succeeds in whatever environment it happens to be lucky or unlucky enough to find itself in.

That is why natural selection is not random. That is why evolution is not random. Meaning is imposed by the nature of reality.

 

[Schneibster]

Randomness lacks meaning; by definition. The application of meaning to randomness causes meaningful manifestations to occur naturally. Since the last time I checked it was two humans using human abstractions in order to provide an accurate description of the natural world my terminology is in fact quite sensible in the correct context.

Looking to something as a cause for meaning is quite moot - you are not thinking abstractly enough. Meaning is a machine.

It sounded quite mystical from over here. Ah, well, OK, I guess I can hang with that definition of meaning- I don't necessarily agree with it, it's what I call "order," but I understand what you mean.

Physics is the constant set of rules I refer to here. Physics dictates the rules by which machines can be built. Physics dictates the rules by which the machines may win or lose. This is not random and as such it is not random what machines will occur and in what settings they can win - all designs are not equal. If all designs were equal the choice of winning design would be arbitrary and therefore random.

Well, sure, but that's not the only, or even the most likely, definition of random in this setting, IMO. The constraints in operation in this system are far more stringent than the laws of physics.

By constantly invoking random events you are missing the point significantly - namely that the occurrence of an asteroid or climate change does not change how machines can be built nor which environments in which such a machine could win. What machines occur is still not by any means arbitrary - it is always based on the meaning imposed on the random changes (i.e. mutation) by physics.

I don't get what you're saying here, nor how it relates to what I'm saying. What you appear to be saying is either, ducks don't lay eggs that hatch mice, or that the ducklings that hatch don't have four wings. Since that's trivially obvious, and well within my assumptions for how evolution works, I can only assume that you have something else in mind.

I cannot fathom why, "dynamic system," means, "random," to you. If I implemented a dynamic packet routing algorithm I doubt you'd call the results "random," even though the nature of the inputs to the algorithm are highly subject to chaotic behaviour.

I don't see this analogy as having much to do with how fitness landscapes change. To mangle the analogy, a fitness landscape change is as if wires suddenly no longer worked and you had to use optical fiber. At that point, your router is a very expensive doorstop. Hopefully one of the variations its offspring (another manner in which this analogy fails) have is optical ports.

Yet again I am going to have to ask just how on Earth the existence of ring species affects anything I've said here because I am just not seeing it at all.

The existence of ring species questions whether the order that most people believe they see, the order of the separation of organisms into species, exists in the real world. If you had some other sort of order in mind, you should say what that order is at this point.

****, it's like you aren't even listening to me when I tell you that I agree.

Perhaps you might look your statement over a bit more carefully and note that I wasn't responding to that part of it.

Messy != random. That's an equivocation fallacy.

And that's a straw man. I never said it did.

Well, they do I'm afraid. Hell, you can go right ahead and think you don't but the whole reason why we can see patterns in groups is because the underlying behavioural patterns are being exposed.

There's no magic that separates what causes "individual behaviour," from "group behaviour," it's just really noticeable when group behaviour does arise.

You seem to see individual behavior as far more programmed than I do. Individuals may take it into their heads to do many things that are not driven by underlying behavioral patterns, when driven by exigencies. And even when not. If only one individual chooses to do that particular thing, it's hard to see how that's not separate from group behavior, since upon analysis it will be outside the normal range, merely adding "noise" to the analysis of the things that all of the individuals of that species do. It's a data point that will be thrown out upon statistical analysis.

Yet again I fail to see how that affects my argument at all. I still don't get why, for you, determined must mean, "unchanging in all contexts."

Because you keep saying selection is not random, and maintaining that this proves that evolution is not random, and implying the corollary that if selection were random, evolution would have to be too. If selection criteria cannot be shown to be stable, then selection can hardly be said to be non-random. But this does not affect whether evolution is orderly or not; it just means that order arises from chaos. I have quite deliberately never stated that evolution is random; that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is, it's not non-random. I don't think either class fits it well.

Evolution is an algorithm that does not care for end products - it just runs and organisms are just the internal working for a computation that has no goal.

Selection is an algorithm that does not care for end products- evolution is about the end products. To put this another way, selection is an algorithm whose parameters are constantly changing; and you're right, such an algorithm cares nothing for its end products, it merely produces them. Evolution, however, is a statement about the character of the end products that have been through this algorithm, and being made up of those end products, can hardly be said not to "care" about them. Selection could, in other words, just operate until all the organisms are gone. But there would be no evolution if that happened.

****, it's not like I haven't pointed that out since the beginning - what you guys seem to be so resistant to is the idea that equal genetics does not mean equally strength players because the nature of the game precludes that. It is inherently unfair.

And for the record I must state, once again:

Unfair != random. That's an equivocation fallacy.

And what you seem so resistant to is the idea that no one is saying that the players are of equal strength; merely that even if they were, selection would not operate non-randomly, if "selection" means whether they breed or not. As it is, there is no guarantee, at the individual level, that a "fitter" organism, by the standards of fitness that apply to its species, will procreate, or that a "less fit" organism, by those same standards, will not. It is only in the aggregate that these become close enough to true that selection drives the evolution of new adaptations.

It's also a straw man to state that unfair != random, I never said it did.

****, I wonder which process I could possibly analogise to this?

Try real physics. Or real biology. This is the sort of algorithm that creates mountains, or that organisms use to construct themselves.

Except to construct an oracle - that's always possible.

How? In this case, as far as we know, there is no way to construct an oracle more effective at this type of problem than the computer itself- and we cannot predict the computer's time to find a solution. I think this might be what I was getting at above when I said you can't make a shortcut for this algorithm.

If it's time that is important than either one can use a more complicated algorithm for a time optimal result or one cannot. Either way no matter what one is talking about, you can't calculate without, er, actually calculating.

That's not the point. The point is, there is no shortcut algorithm for such a calculation, and the calculation is not guaranteed to end after a known number of iterations.

It isn't essentially random. To say it is essentially random would be to say that the time it would take is arbitrary. If that were the case then performing the same calculation about the same point would take a different amount of time each time the algorithm were run. Now I am not familiar with this problem but I'm going to have to assume that is not the case.

You're correct, it's not- but your definition of "essentially random" is far different from mine, so in that respect, since you're commenting on my analogy, this is aside from the point.

That's all very well and good but as you should very well know there is no proposed super-TM that can exist that has been shown to actually provide the ability to compute something a TM cannot.

Ummm, ever hear of Persistent Turing Machines, or interaction theory? No? This is the basis upon which OOP was created. TMs cannot do OOP. They do not interact. You might want to check this out. Interaction implies Godel incompleteness, and that in turn provides the basis of more complex operations that a standard TM is not capable of. Here are some quotes from a related paper by Wegner:

"Interaction machines, defined by extending Turing machines with input actions (read statements), are shown to be more expressive than computable functions, providing a counterexample to the hypothesis of Church and Turing that the intuitive notion of computation corresponds to formal computability by Turing machines. The negative result that interaction cannot be modeled by algorithms leads to positive principles of interactive modeling by interface constraints that support partial descriptions of interactive systems whose complete behavior is inherently unspecifiable. The unspecifiability of complete behavior for interactive systems is a computational analog of Gödel incompleteness for the integers.

Incompleteness is a key to expressing richer behavior shared by empirical models of physics and the natural sciences. Interaction machines have the behavioral power of empirical systems, providing a precise characterization of empirical computer science. They also provide a precise framework for object-based software engineering and agent-oriented AI models that is more expressive than algorithmic models."

Wegner directly states the underpinnings of what I am getting at (and what the paper I previously referenced says explicitly): evolution is not computable. By the way, you might want to take a look at some of his other work; I suspect you'll find this interesting. Wegner states that it is a myth that the Church-Turing Thesis says that there is no more expressive model of computation than the TM. And proves it, at least to my satisfaction.

Now, Wegner changes the definition of "computable;" but you were not talking about this changed definition, you were talking about the original definition, "computable on a TM." And evolution is not. It is, however, computable on a PTM.

Non-determinism only allows for computation time to be reduced for certain classes of computation. It provides no more power whatsoever.

So in other words Evolution is computable since it is entirely possible to provide a deterministic ordering that will simply evaluate every possibility.

I think you need to study the above a bit more. I also think you need to take a hard look at what "computable" means. Don't try shifting the goalposts to the PTM, either; your original contention is, and will remain, "computable on a TM," not "computable on a PTM."

No, I am speaking of meaning because I am using a computational argument. To a machine the meaning of its inputs is simply the change of state that it causes. To you and I the meaning of this words is simply whatever particular associations we have learnt for them that get triggered by our interpretation of these symbols. I use the word meaning because randomness is devoid of meaning.

You are trying to stuff infinite precision real numbers into a TM. It doesn't work that way. The action table and state register are finite. It will take infinite time to enter a single infinite precision real number into a finite machine. Never mind computation, you'll never finish the first input.

Well the real problem is that true randomness is indistinguishable from an infinite machine that could exist that could produce the output. Now whether or not true randomness exists or not is neither hear nor there - the point is that we implicitly understand meaning as deriving from machine-like processes; rules, causality, order.

Now, that I'll partly go along with; however, the real world does not necessarily conform to our understanding in that regard. Again, these are classifications we apply to messy real-world phenomena; when you're talking about particle physics, you get some of the most well-defined order we have found, but at the expense of sharply definable causality. Some particle actions are acausal. When you apply it to biology, you are in yet another completely different game. At the scale of genes, 2LOT does not apply. That is a consequence of the fluctuation theorem.

Now the important part of evolution, the part that shapes the output, is not the random changes in the design of the machine, nor the random appearance of the environment, it is how the machine succeeds in whatever environment it happens to be lucky or unlucky enough to find itself in.

Precisely! That's what I've been saying the entire time. Evolution is orderly; that does not mean it is non-random. Nor does the statement that it is not non-random necessarily imply the statement that it is random. It is neither. It is orderly. But if you push too far down into what "orderly" means, in this case you will encounter randomness. Do you see now why I used fractals, and conceptually invoked dynamical systems theory? Is a fractal orderly? Of course it is. Is a fractal random, or non-random? No. Here is an apparently simple function that may run completely out of control. Or it may not. You won't know just by looking at it; you have to compute it, and you may not be able to complete the computation on a finite machine. You can't know in advance whether you will or not. Period three implies chaos. (Yes, that was a reference to the famous paper of that title.)

That is why natural selection is not random. That is why evolution is not random. Meaning is imposed by the nature of reality.

No. Meaning is NOT imposed by the nature of reality. Please read what I have said and linked to carefully.

 

[Schneibster]

BTW, worth noting that there is an extremely good argument against the old cretinist canard about how "evilution denies the 2LOT!!112!!" in there. Note that the fluctuation theorem says that the 2LOT does not apply strictly to molecules. DNA for example.

 

[mijopaalmc]

You know, I find it interesting that the non-randomites have used just about every definition of "random" except the only definitions that the randomites have ever used, "[o]f or relating to a type of circumstance or event that is described by a probability distribution" or "[o]f or relating to a type of circumstance that has more than one outcome", yet they are the ones who accuse the randomites of playing semantic games.

 

[articulett]

Cyborg--I feel your pain, buddy. I think it's clear and easy as can be: The environment (including meteors) determines which organisms get to copy the info. that gave rise to them and which ones do not.

The algorithm is simple--get the most copies of your info. into vectors that copy the info. the most...the same for ring DNA, viruses, and even computer viruses.

When you read the OP, you presume someone is asking how order or complexity arises from the randomness--or why the creationist canard (scientists think this all got here by chance) is incorrect or uninformative--
and so you explain natural selection--but then you realize that the question was not supposed to really be answered...because they've already determined there really is "no evidence"...since their definition of random is so vague that the relatively unpredictable aspects of the environment end up being enough for them to define evolution as random (or "probabilistic).

In physics, the order comes from physical laws (spiral galaxies, spherical planets, double helix) or from huge numbers coupled with our ability to notice the hits and certain patterns. But in evolution of life, the order comes from the exponential increase in the information in the gene pool from the most successful replicators in whatever environment they find themselves in. That's it. And though computers can and do model evolutionary algorithms (spore, for example...or even "google")--there really isn't anything in classic physics that replicates. That is the only excuse I can imagine for Schneibsters' blind spot. Either that, or he's insane. Per Formosa's law, I put him on "ignore". Heck, if you and Dawkins, and Ayala and the many others here cannot make a dent; I'm not going to pretend I have the magic "logic" bullet.

 

[Schneibster]

Peace, child. He hasn't answered yet.

 

[articulett]

You know, I find it interesting that the non-randomites have used just about every definition of "random" except the only definitions that the randomites have ever used, "[o]f or relating to a type of circumstance or event that is described by a probability distribution" or "[o]f or relating to a type of circumstance that has more than one outcome", yet they are the ones who accuse the randomites of playing semantic games.

As much as you would like to associate the fact that most people think it's uninformative to sum up evolution as "random" --that does not really qualify as a category of people (i.e. there is no such thing as a non-randomite.) It's sort of like being an atheist. People don't form groups based on what they don't believe in or semantic vagaries they'd never use. I suppose you are one of those people who equate faith with evidence too, aren't you? Oh that's right...you just have very differing standards of evidence--none is necessary to conclude that it means something to call evolution random and all the evidence in the world is not good enough if it disagrees with your preformed conclusion, right? And that goes for every post of yours, mijo. You asked for the evidence that evolution was not random. You were told about natural selection. Scientists do not consider the force in one's environment random... nobody cares how you need to define evolution... Non-randomites is another semantic game. No one actually cares if you or Behe understand natural selection. The facts are the same no matter how vague or muddled you choose to convey them--no matter how much you try to turn it into a "debate". Evolution is what it is. Your description is indistinguishable from a known intelligent design proponent who does not seem to grasp natural selection. You have shown no ability to convey information about evolution to anyone using your definitions and you call people "wrong" when they actually have been hugely successful at explaining evolution to others.

Why don't you and your fellow randomites agree on a definition for random and a way to describe evolution and come up with something coherent that says why Ayala, Dawkins, and the Berkeley site are wrong. Or maybe find one peer reviewed article that actually says "evolution is random" or "natural selection is random" the way I found one that said it is not. Don't cut and paste stuff that you can twist through your own vagaries to say whatever it is you are saying. Nobody else is defining random as "probability" unless you have a peer reviewed article that includes such a definition. (I provided several that defined random). No one actually cares that you and behe and Schneibster think evolution is best described as a random process. It just makes you sound like idiots who don't "get" natural selection...don't understand that the environment selects...don't understand the difference between blueprints and that which is built from the blue prints...don't understand the difference between the model and artifacts....you guys don't even understand why random is an ambiguous word despite pages and pages testifying to that. And you want to define it in a way that no peer reviewed paper is defining it! It's just so, so silly. Sure, evolution is random per your vague definition--but there isn't anybody credible using your vague definition when they are talking about natural selection.

Are you just trying to convince yourselves that evolution is secretly random and those evolutionists just won't admit it because they aren't using your one true (vague) definition of random? I mean, don't you think that if you actually had a useful model for describing the facts--someone somewhere would think you were right and use words the way you do? What was your goal again mijo?

I'm not a "non-randomite". I'm representative of the vast majority of people on this thread and those teaching and writing about evolution today. I'm not the one with the problem understanding the "non random" parts of evolution--I understand the answer to your OP. You cannot. I suspect that if you ask the people you quote what the non-random aspects of evolution are--they would have a lot more to say than "nothing". Even Behe can say more than that.

 

[articulett]

And Mijo... please learn the difference between randomness as it effects the genotype (genetic drift)--all info. gets copied as a group...a package....versus phenotype (measurable differences from changes in genes)--most mutations are in junk DNA so they are neutral...most of the mutations in genes are deleterious to the organism...some may be neutral and some may be positive... but this is all still talking about the genotype--the random part... environment can only act on changes to the phenotype--if the environment can't see the mutations it's "irrelevant" to selection. You think those papers just like Kimura are calling evolution random or stochastic or calling natural selection random or stochastic...but they aren't...they are only talking about the changes in the DNA is regards to those words--

If you asked Rouzine if natural selection was random in regards to pheontype, the answer is no. Yes, you can get "genetic drift" and all sorts of randomness copied along withing successful genome packages...because natural selection is blind unless there are phenotypic affects. But unless the genome builds a successful replicator in whatever environment, the information cannot be selected. Damn...you just can't get this, can you? Natural selection can only act on DNA that produces phenotypic changes--genetic drift is about other stuff in the genome that goes along for the ride in successful replicators. DNA can change "randomly" and "random" stuff can go along for the ride in successful genomes. But the only stuff that can be selected for or against in an environment is DNA that confers phenotypic results.

If you have a mutation that makes some of your blood cells sickle shaped--you have a phenotypic change that gives you a survival/reproductive advantage in malarial regions. If you move out of malarial regions--the phenotypic change might hang out in your descendants through genetic drift. Or it might disappear. It becomes deleterious when an offspring is homozygous.

But it sure wasn't selected randomly! It was selected because it conferred an advantage...it was then passed on in these successful genomes even when it no longer conferred an advantage to its carriers because it was a neutral mutation in successful replicators--unless (or until) an offspring had two copies...in which case it became deleterious and usually those affected could not pass on their genes. And that is not "random" either. Having sickle cell anemia reduces reproductive fitness. Not randomly! Because having all your blood cells sickle shaped makes them get clogged up and produce infarctions and clots and priapism and other health problems. Yet you call this random! The first sickle cell mutations (it evolved numerous times and there are numerous mutations) came about randomly. But they were selected for or against based on pheotypic changes they code for in the vectors that copied them.

That is what Rouzine is saying. Natural selection is everything in the physical environment...and it can only act on things that have an environmental output. But of course, everyone can tell you this again and again but all you can see is that Rouzine is supporting your vague definition of evolution. Truly, neither he nor Kimura are. Natural selection does not act on DNA directly...it can only act of DNA that affects the organism carrying it. Ask them...ask anyone...ask if they consider "natural selection" to be random. Ask them what the "non-random" aspects of evolution are. They are not saying what you are saying. Do you just see the word "random" and assume they are saying evolution is random? Do you just not "see" the word deterministic and how it's associated with selection? Don't you see that the word random and "stochastic" only has to do with the DNA...not the environment--the selector. It's like you've made up your mind that it makes sense to call evolution random despite all evidence that it's misleading and uninformative and then you take papers that you somehow twist in your head to support your viewpoint and they DON'T support your viewpoint at all. If they did, they would use your words...not deterministic. And they would use the word random it talking about something other than changes in the DNA.

I mean, it's pretty lame when you don't understand the papers you are citing.

 

[cyborg]

Well, sure, but that's not the only, or even the most likely, definition of random in this setting, IMO.

You prefer the definition of random that makes everything random?

The constraints in operation in this system are far more stringent than the laws of physics.

Try to think about how ludicrous that sounds - the constraints on what an environment and a machine are, or can be, and how they can interact; they can be only what can be physically allowed. There is no sense in which one can say it's 'more stringent'.

Since that's trivially obvious, and well within my assumptions for how evolution works, I can only assume that you have something else in mind.

So on the one hand you tell me that because you haven't explicitly said that because life is messy evolution is random and on the other you constantly use such arguments to underline that this is in fact the case.

I am NOT buying that.

I don't see this analogy as having much to do with how fitness landscapes change. To mangle the analogy, a fitness landscape change is as if wires suddenly no longer worked and you had to use optical fiber.

Uhhh, no. It really isn't.

The 'fitness' of a routing table is based on the network. If the network changes then the (wait for it) fitness landscape has changed!

Yet again you spectacularly miss the point by introducing some physical aspect the routing algorithm does not give a singular **** about - it's not part of it's world in anyway at all.

The existence of ring species questions whether the order that most people believe they see, the order of the separation of organisms into species, exists in the real world. If you had some other sort of order in mind, you should say what that order is at this point.

Yet again, totally and utterly failing to see why that, in any singular way whatever, undermines any aspect of my argument whatsoever.

At what point did I introduce the notion of a 'species' as some sort of fundamental part of natural selection? I didn't - you did.

You seem to see individual behavior as far more programmed than I do.

Despite what people may want to be the case one cannot escape the fact that it is entirely valid to consider people to be programmed. Emotional reactions against the idea of being a 'mere machine' are invalid.

Individuals may take it into their heads to do many things that are not driven by underlying behavioral patterns, when driven by exigencies. And even when not. If only one individual chooses to do that particular thing, it's hard to see how that's not separate from group behavior, since upon analysis it will be outside the normal range, merely adding "noise" to the analysis of the things that all of the individuals of that species do. It's a data point that will be thrown out upon statistical analysis.

To mangle a metaphor you yet again fail to note that forests are indeed made of trees and that trees are made of wood and that means forests are also made of wood.

If selection criteria cannot be shown to be stable, then selection can hardly be said to be non-random.

Uh huh. Who was it who said that they were not making an equivocation fallacy earlier?

Unstable != random.

What I'm saying is, it's not non-random. I don't think either class fits it well.

Your issues with terminology are your own.

Selection could, in other words, just operate until all the organisms are gone. But there would be no evolution if that happened.

Uh no. Evolution is just a description for what happens to the change in design when natural selection is applied.

Evolution is no more a goal than anything else here.

And what you seem so resistant to is the idea that no one is saying that the players are of equal strength; merely that even if they were, selection would not operate non-randomly, if "selection" means whether they breed or not.

I don't know about you but breeding doesn't appear to be a spontaneous random event from what I know of it. It actually requires a little effort.

As it is, there is no guarantee, at the individual level, that a "fitter" organism, by the standards of fitness that apply to its species, will procreate, or that a "less fit" organism, by those same standards, will not.

Jesus **** - why are you still trying to apply fitness back-to-front?

It's also a straw man to state that unfair != random, I never said it did.

Uh huh. Well it sure as hell doesn't look like it from this position.

Try real physics. Or real biology. This is the sort of algorithm that creates mountains, or that organisms use to construct themselves.

Right, so in other words do exactly what I've said one can do with regards to modelling evolution.

In this case, as far as we know, there is no way to construct an oracle more effective at this type of problem than the computer itself

Uh... look-up tables? Age old technique for fast computation?

You still have to do the computation at least once - that's what I mean by constructing an oracle.

That's not the point. The point is, there is no shortcut algorithm for such a calculation, and the calculation is not guaranteed to end after a known number of iterations.

Which doesn't affect anything I've said - so where's the randomness? Are you now going to imply that anything not already calculated is 'random'?

You're correct, it's not- but your definition of "essentially random" is far different from mine, so in that respect, since you're commenting on my analogy, this is aside from the point.

Is anyone yet getting the point why I came into this conversation pointing out how ****ing foolish it is to deal with terminology which will have its semantics repeatedly abused?

Ummm, ever hear of Persistent Turing Machines, or interaction theory? No? This is the basis upon which OOP was created. TMs cannot do OOP. They do not interact.

You are not really going to start arguing that because an abstract formalism for computation would not operate in the same way as some other formalism if one were to build a machine to implement it that the notion of computational equivalence is out of the window?

The guy is just plain wrong about algorithms I'm afraid - interactions sure as hell can be modelled by an algorithm and it is trivially easy. I'm thinking monads for starters so we can throw out the notion that lambda calculus would be crying into it's pint about this.

For me these guys are selling technological snake-oil.

Time can be expressed logically as well as analogically - no? So why the hell do I need to have a TM that has to be analogical in its understanding of time?

It's all just information and ways of shifting it about. The TM represents a minimal model of a machine capable of shifting information about in all the ways that matter. Doesn't mean it's practical in any real sense. I think you and these guys have missed that little caveat.

(Decidedly non-interactive models are used all the time to model interactive systems. Decidedly non-event driven models are used all the time to model event driven systems. This is simply stuff I did at Uni - concurrency, robotics, software engineering models and others. I don't know why these guys don't get that what's expressible analogically is expressible logically but it could have saved a lot of time if they did.)

You are trying to stuff infinite precision real numbers into a TM. It doesn't work that way. The action table and state register are finite. It will take infinite time to enter a single infinite precision real number into a finite machine. Never mind computation, you'll never finish the first input.

That has something to do with what now?

At the scale of genes, 2LOT does not apply. That is a consequence of the fluctuation theorem.

Thermodynamics has what to do with this now?

Evolution is orderly; that does not mean it is non-random.

Not if one is insistent to use unhelpful terminology.

Is a fractal random, or non-random? No.

Must compute before you know != random.

See infinite machines.

No. Meaning is NOT imposed by the nature of reality.

I see.

Where did you buy your meaning from?

 

[cyborg]

You know, I find it interesting that the non-randomites have used just about every definition of "random" except the only definitions that the randomites have ever used, "[o]f or relating to a type of circumstance or event that is described by a probability distribution" or "[o]f or relating to a type of circumstance that has more than one outcome", yet they are the ones who accuse the randomites of playing semantic games.

Your definition makes everything random.

I am glad you are happy with that. It is totally unhelpful but I'm truly happy for you that you like it.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Your definition makes everything random.

I am glad you are happy with that. It is totally unhelpful but I'm truly happy for you that you like it.

Uh....no, my definition does not make everything "random".

I have already given you examples of some systems that are not "random" and explained why the are not "random":

Uh....there is a reason that I prefer "probabilistic" and "stochastic" to "random": using the former two helps avoid the equivocation that seems to be de riguer among creationist and non-randomites alike when one uses "random". I have already provided a very basic description of how I am rigorously defining "random" with respect to probability theory:

In axiomatized probability theory, there are object called probability space that consist of a set known as the sample space, a collection of subsets of that set called a sigma algebra the elements of which are called events, and a measure that maps each element of the sigma-algebra to a point on the closed interval [0,1] following the axioms of probability. Random variables are measurable functions that map events in the sample space to events in another set called the state space, which are elements in the sigma-algebra on the state space. A probability distribution is a measure on the state space that maps each event in the state space to a point on the real line or subset thereof.

It should be painfully obvious that not everything can be described in this way. For example, most of calculus and mathematical analysis is based on measures that do not obey the axioms of probability and are therefore not random. Furthermore, the functions of elementary algebra are not random because they are not defined on sigma-algebras but rather solely on the elements of sets, most often the real numbers. This means that when you use these branches of mathematics to describe physical systems, you are by definition providing a non-random (or deterministic) explanation, even though it might not be the most accurate. Thus, you are intentionally obfuscating and misrepresenting their argument when you say that the definition of "random" the randomites use makes everything "random".

It is true that by definition of "random" covers a much larger class of physical and biological phenomena that any of the ones that you have use (which seem not to cover most of said phenomena), but it is often acceptable to use deterministic approximation stochastic systems when the stochastic fluctuations are negligible to the overall "determinism" of the system (e.g., one does not care if you are micron off the desired target due to air resistance when using a trebuchet to demolish a castle wall). Nonetheless, this "'random' describes everything" argument is just another one of your straw men that allows your to avoid the fact that stochastic descriptions of evolution have immense explanatory power.

 

[cyborg]

I know P(X) = 1 is invalid for you.

That is also unhelpful.

But I'm glad you like it.