Happy Wonderer

Hi Albert. I know that this discussion is challenging some of your basic philosophical assumptions but try to pay attention.

Think: there may be a relationship between indeterminacy, randomness, and the evolution of complexity. Since we are on the Evolution/Creation forum, discussing the indeterminacy (or lack thereof) of evolution seems appropriate -- don't you think?

Almost every process has an element of randomness somewhere in it. The individual bolts that are used to build your car are randomly selected from a bin. The bolt ID is random with respect to the design of the car. However, the size and thread pattern of the bolt are definitely non-random. So here we have a deterministic auto-building process (the opposite of random) that has random subprocesses. It would be incoherent to argue that "auto building" is still a random process because we are somehow conflating all the individual steps and ignoring the randomness of bolt selection.

I can keep coming up with analogies but it is difficult to believe that you really don't understand the point. It is sort of interesting that you want to contest it, which to me indicates that there is something critical to your philosophy that is being challenged here.

HW

pz

Ugh. I hate to give Albert any consolation at all, since I think he is about a million miles off track, but random variation does produce significant complexity. Most of our complexity is a muddle of gunk all crufted together, as if those million typing monkeys had been pounding away, and every time they produced a page of gobbledygook with some comprehensible short phrase buried in it, it was whisked away and preserved in some lineage.

Sans slop and noise and random eruptions of happy coincidence, the best evolution would have produced is swarms of extremely efficient bacteria, with minimal genomes and extremely short generation times.

Lobstrosity

Could everyone here be happy if I defined evolution as random walk along equipotential surfaces of phase space? I don't see evolution as the "opposite" of random and I don't see it as the epitome of true randomness. It's a mixture. Just like if you take DT's example and make it a little more realistic by, say, favoring any one of four different six-digit numbers (say 123456, 298304, 543076, and 987643). In my book all four of these numbers are equally as good. Now, I start with given number XXXXXX and decide to randomly mutate digits. Natural selection will act to keep those digits that are favored. At the end of the day, what will I have? Well, if the algorithm is very simple and treats each digit as independent, I'll have some random mixture of the four numbers. If the algorithm is more complex and takes into account coupling factors between the digits (i.e. if it can recognize that I want either 123456 or 298304, not merely some mixture of the two) then the evolution will be quite interesting indeed. Natural selection will have a fight on its hands as mutations cause the number to sway between the valid options. I will end up with one of the four numbers, but which one I arrive at will be random governed by some probabilistic distribution. If I run the program forty times, I would expect to have each possible final result occur approximately ten times if this distribution is uniform (if one was easier to evolve than the other, I would expect that one to evolve with greater frequency). But is complete randomness? Of course not. I start with a fully random number (of which there are 1,000,000 possibilities to choose from) and I end up one of four possible answers. Clearly a great deal of the randomness has vanished. Natural selection has weeded away the vast majority of it because the vast majority of it was non-optimal (as defined by this specific trivial problem).

To me it is this random component that makes evolution interesting and unpredictable. You clearly need non-random natural selection to drive it, but the road it takes is limited by random mutations and hence the exact solution found is not always what one would expect when thinking about the problem beforehand.

Principia

One of the problems with these discussions on randomness is the tendency to let the meaning drift with each use: randomness as indeterminacy, as uncorrelated, as a non-uniform distribution, as unintentional, as purposeless. I think it helps here to define (or at least narrow the scope of) "randomness" specifically with respect to evolution. To say "randomness (or chance) is the fuel cell for evolution" is a bit vague, imo.

Lobstrosity

I always mean random in the mathematical sense of the word: any value may be obtained for any given sample (and for completeness it should be noted that this value will be independent of any other samples), but an ensemble of samples will conform to a mathematical probability distribution that governs the process. Does that suffice?

Doubting Didymus

Granted. Now what's your point?

Albert Cipriani

Wow,
You guys have earned my renewed respect. Even Darwin's Terrier and Happy Wanderer, while being bombastically condensending, were, nevertheless, helpful. We definitely understand each other now regarding randomness. And Alix, Baloo, and I have a deal. This is cool.

Happy: That puts the head on the pin for me. And to mix metaphors, it takes the wind out of my sails for where I was going with this. It would be unfair of me to grandstand on the randomness of evolution when randomness underlies everything. I had wanted to argue that, as coldness cannot cause heat, randomness cannot cause organization.

Doubting: My point is blunted, it's more like a mace now.

If the non-random process of Natural Selection is the operative principle of evolution, why has life grown increasingly complex? If Natural Selection is selcting soely on the basis of survival, why hasn't evolution simply brought us "life and life more abundantly," instead of life more and more complexly? If anything, complexity seems to be a maladaption if evolution's golden rule is to simply mindlessly replicate. If replication is the name of the game, it would seem the less there is to replicate, the better.

In short, I believe in information as a design principle. The more complicated the design, the more information required. As money cannot grow on trees, it seems to me that complexity cannot grow by replication. It must be rooted in information. Thus, I posit an outside source of information for the increase in bio-complexity, a non-naturalistic non-explaination, a God.

On a personal note, last night, all night long, I dreampt about evolution. This is a symptom of cognitive dissonance. I always dream about that which troubles me. But being troubled by something is the surest proof that we can have of being honest and of perhaps doing what comes hardest to us, changing. I was far more dismissive of evolution before I came to this forum. So I've already changed my mind a little. Hopefully, I've changed my mind enough! -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

P.S. I just landed a job today, will start tomorrow. So pardon my lapses in advance if I'm slightly more scarce in these parts.

Oolon Colluphid

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Albert Cipriani
[B]You guys have earned my renewed respect.
Thank you for that.
It’s a speciality of mine. Or more precisely, it’s difficult not to be like that, when you’ve been in E/C discussions as long as I have. One has to repeat oneself so often, and when doing so to someone who, it seems, ought to know better (eg you), condescension is hard to avoid.
It ain’t what you’ve got, it’s what you do with it. what makes you think there’s really a target to hit with your mace? Beware of clobbering straw men.

Remember: one hell of a lot of people have been working on evolution for a very long time. Why do you think you have a point that hasn’t already been thought of ages ago? Think away, by all means. But be aware of what you’re up against, and so be doubly aware that your own lack of detailed knowledge of the subject might be leading you astray.
You’ll need to define complexity. Your premise is not a certain ‘given’. Has life grown increasingly complex? Most life is (still) single-celled. Viruses are radically simpler than that. The stuff we can see is more complex, sure, but it is the exception really. And, is a fish, say, really that much less complex than a mammal? Is a fish really orders of magnitude more complex than a worm? Most of the gobsmacking complexity is at more fundamental levels than that, and most of the variety we see is mere detail.

And anyway, the simple answer is that life is all about finding ways of making a living. Being ‘simple’ is still a very profitable way of making a living... and so is very widely used. Being complex is a more convoluted way of doing the same thing: getting your heritable material into future generations. Not just be DNA and make copies, but be surrounded by membranes, build a body, find food to use in building a body, find a mate... and then make copies. The most likely answer for being complex is that the simple niches are already taken. You don’t go a circuitous route if a straight road is open.

And also, please beware of thinking of increasing complexity as inevitable. It is not. Where (comparative) simplicity is a viable option, it may well be ‘chosen’. Examples include the loss of usable eyes in many cave-dwelling creaures, and the loss of a gut in some parasitic barnacles. Parasites, particularly, have often opted for simplification (though there’s some amazing adaptive complexity among them too... but then, ‘them’ is the easy majority of lifeforms!).
It has. One word: bacteria. Complexity -- the big multicellular stuff that is so obvious to us -- is the exception, not the rule.

I’ve just realised: I’ve been here before with you. I refer you back to page 3 above, and my post of 26 Feb. My condescension is therefore rather more justified .

Why? It is a less direct route, sure. But it is viable if the straight routes are already being successfully used by others. The single-celled niches are occupied... but there are ways of making a living -- available niches -- if you group together, make a body or whatever, that you can’t exploit if you’re single-celled.
Yup. That is why bacteria are so successful.
True... more or less. A bacterial genome is smaller than a badger’s. But how is that relevant?
This is a non sequitur. You’re missing ‘random variation’, and ‘selection of it’, as well as the replication. Can genes not be duplicated by accident? Can these new extra bits not mutate? Can they not acquire new functions? All of these things are well demonstrated. They can happen. Let us know if you want specific examples.
Then please define ‘information’. Is there, for instance, more ‘information’ in a fish that has an antifreeze protein -- useful for living in the Arctic -- than in one that does not? Then read this:
(Full text (pdf) here.)

Please explain how an “old protein gene spawn[ing] a new gene for an entirely new protein with a new function” is not an increase in information.
Why? Why is this ‘source of information’ not superfluous? (As well as being unverified -- where’s your other evidence for this god’s existence, and why is it the Christian god, not some other? -- and probably unverifiable, thus lacking any scientific merit?)

We have DNA. It gets copied. Bits can get duplicated, deleted, miscopied, inverted and spliced, and turned ‘on’ or ‘off’ ref protein transcription, all by accidents in the copying process. See any genetics textbook for plenty of examples. All of this can affect what proteins -- and ultimately bodies -- are formed. Why do we need anything else?
Many congrats, and best of luck!

Cheers, DT

Doubting Didymus

Dammit!!! I've just spent an hour typing a massive response to this question and lost the whole damn thing. I'll rewrite it later tonight.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Darwin's T,
I dreamed about evolution again last night. Ergo, I remain in that awkward and uncomfortable stage of suspended decision. Like a simmering sauce, I can't be hurried tho I wish I could be.

You made excellent points and asked the right questions. I have half answers that do not quite satisfy me so should not be pressed on you.

The cheap and easy way out is to trust intuition. Evolution is as counter-intuitive as the rotating Earth in place of the rising sun. I hate the implications of evolution more than Medieval man hated to learn he wasn't at the center of the universe anymore. But our hates and intuitions are luxuries.

I'm crawling back into my cave and will come out when I've hybernated on this long enough to fight you worthily or grudgingly agree. Right now I need to stew on it some more. Thank you for your efforts with me. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic