Happy Wonderer

I think the program was originally in The Blind Watchmaker but I can't find my copy.

HW

Lobstrosity

Considering how many hundreds of millions of years it has taken for random mutations to develop the eye (i.e. considering how complex the eye truly is), I don't possess at this time the knowledge of how to write such a program. I can easily demonstrate a simplified proof of concept, however. For example, in my program, there is a specific optimal way for the females to guide the males to them. You can map out exactly which move the males should be making at each step they wish to reach the females in the fewest number of moves. I could have easily just pre-programmed the males to follow this algorithm and presto, I would have had a population of efficiently reproducing organisms. Rather than take this path, however, I decided to not work out this optimal algorithm. I had them initially behave completely randomly, letting their initial actions span quite a relatively large phase space, and then had them evolve completely randomly (i.e. by mating with whomever they randomly encountered and by adding in random mutations). At the end of the day, guess what mate-finding strategy I would find them using? It was no longer random motion; they were using the very same optimal strategy I would have derived had I mathematically worked through the problem ahead of time. Clearly random processes are capable of leading to organized, ideal behavior. Why would you assume such a process would fail if we started dealing with the mechanics of the eye rather than navigation?

Here, let me ask you this: why can bees see UV light? Why can eagles see much farther than we can? Why is it that cats can see much better in the dark than humans? Is there any reason why God would endow mere animals with such spectacular capabilities and then deny them to man, his most cherished creation? Can you see any down side to our being able to see UV light; to our being able to see farther; to our being able to see better in dimmer light? The only argument for why these animals possess vision capabilities superior to our own is that they need them for their survival whereas we do not. This need has driven evolution to develop the eyes that help them best survive in the ecological niche they fill. If a human does not need to see a fish a mile away, there is no evolutionary pressure for such a change and the change will not occur. Evolution is often economical that way: by and large you evolve what you need.

Keith

Because God is the source of reasoning and logic. Because God has shown us that he is good. We can't know every part of God's plan for the universe because we don't need to know every detail for our sense of purpose and for our happiness, and we wouldn't comprehend every part of God's plan even if he told us.

I haven't seen anything that contradicts ID, and I haven't seen any evidence that humans evolved from ape-like creatures, or bats evolved from mice.

Keith

Keith

Yes, you seem to have grasped that point. I'm not a big fan of TOE partly because it appears to be both unverifiable and unfalsifiable--not a great combination if the goal of the TOE was to try to be scientific. Why does ANYTHING survive? And doesn't life come from life? Where did the very first living thing come from? But I digress....I'm not really trying to defeat TOE in my argument. What I've done is to show that regardless of the means of producing the life-forms we observe around us, we can't avoid the miraculous. Nature shows intelligent, intricate, planned, design with purpose.

Keith

Keith

As I said before, utility to whom? Utility in what sense? To be coherent utility has to be objectively meaningful rather than just someone's ides of what is useful.

How did some species of mice "know" that their diet was going to change and that it's time to prepare wings and a sophisticated echolocation system for future utility? How did spiders just happen to develop the ability to make a web? This sounds like planning and purpose to me, even if I don't understand the purpose of some species being lost forever.

Keith

Keith

I'm still trying to figure out what soccer has to do with this topic. Are you saying that evolution is a non-natural process? If so, what sort of a process is evolution in your view? I didn't understand the last part here at all. Can you clarify?

Keith

Lobstrosity

The same way my artificial organisms "knew" how to evolve a language that would allow them to coordinate their actions. Trust me, there was no planning or purpose involved. I'm the God of that world and I did not plan any of the emergent behaviors, just in the same way it seems the God of this universe (should he actually exist) didn't plan any of the evolutionary paths taken by organisms here on Earth. Your questions reveal that you are criticizing a theory you obviously know very little about. Perhaps you should actually learn how evolution is postulated to work and brush up on your biology/chemistry before you start to criticize its feasibility. The theory might be wrong, but you're hardly in a postition to point out why until you first understand how it's supposed to work. That's like my arguing that ID is impossible because creating all that life would just be far too complicated for God. You see, this is demonstrating that I don't understand the ID "theory" as you postulate it (under which God has infinite power and intelligence, so complicated things wouldn't be a problem). Do you see how my arguing that ID is too complicated for God to pull off is not an argument that would phase you and would not convince you of anything other than my ignorance? Well in the same way, your questions do not phase anyone who understands the Theory of Evolution as it is proposed because they simply demonstrate your lack of understanding with regard to what the theory states.

You should note that micro-evolution has been clearly documented to exist--there is no denying that solid evidence exists on this front. You may not buy that macro-evolution is feasible, but you can't with a straight face argue that DNA does not evolve under shifting enviromental pressures--scientists have actually seen it happen right in front of them. Then you're left to answer why you think it's impossible for millions of years of micro-evolution to lead to the macro-evolution supported so strongly by all the evidence we have. Where do these limits you place on where micro-evolution can go actually come from? If something changes very slowly (e.g. adiabatically), over time it can eventually change into anything. Why couldn't slow change over a long enough time result in a population that is fundamentally different from it's distant ancestors?

Happy Wonderer

(Let's see if I can summarize the converstation in a readable but nonverbose format.)

You are making the claim:

Because indviduals are observed purposefully "gaining an advantage" by reproducing
and Individuals are part of natural populations
Therefore nature has a purposeful goal of improving populations


So I make a claim in the same form to show the absurdity and make a small pun:

Because individuals are observed purposefully scoring goals in soccer
and Individuals are part of natural populations
Therefore nature has a purposeful goal of scoring points in soccer.

I point out that not all individuals reproduce, nor do all individuals play soccer. You have to give a reason why the two statements are logically different.

...

All observed processes are natural ones, but that doesn't make any particular process interchangeble with the term "nature." The statement "this is a process observed in nature" is not equivalent to "nature is an entity that has the result of this process as a goal."


HW

Happy Wonderer

How does one fact not falisfying evolution mean that evolution is unfalsifiable? "The fact that people exist who score goals in soccer doesn't falsifiy evolution, therefore evolution is unfalsifiable." (Sorry, couldn't resist.) There have been a great many discoveries that had the potential to prove evolution false (DNA for example). This can be seen by the efforts of creationists to prove some fact or another (young earth, human footprints next to dinosaur tracks, etc.) that would prove evolution false. If it were truly unfalsifiable they would only be able to point that out and list all of the absurd things that could be true without falsifying evolution.

....
Once again, utility to the individual.

This is backwards. What would have made their diet change? Echolocation enabled a subgroup of mouse-like creatures to eat different food and thus occupy a different ecological niche. There are ancestors of this mouse-like creature that look like, er, mice and who still eat mouse-like food.

I do not understand the purpose of the last sentence, how did we get from 'gaining functionality' to extinction? Must have been the soccer.

HW

Keith

Near-optimal? How does one determine what is near-optimal? And without someone to write the GA program, what have you got?

Keith