Why Mathematicians, Computer Scientists, and Engineers Tend to be More Skeptical of Darwinian Claims

_{Gil Dodgen

December 17, 2007

Darwinism, Engineering, Science}

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Larry Moran’s presentation in a comment in Granville Sewell’s UD post, I found not particularly persuasive, for the following reasons. I’m not interested in definitions of science; I’m interested in how stuff actually works. I’m perfectly amenable to being convinced that the complexity, information content, and machinery of living systems can be explained by stochastic processes filtered by natural selection, and I would not even demand hard evidence, just some rigorous argumentation based on the following:

1) A particular aspect of any living system that displays a machine-like function (such as a ribosome).
2) Some specifics about what random genetic changes (of any type) would be required to engineer intermediate forms.
3) A reasonable estimate about the likelihood of these random changes occurring.
4) Another reasonable estimate about the likelihood of the hypothetical intermediate forms providing a statistically significant survival value.
5) Some kind of evidence or even reasonable conjecture that the number of individuals and reproductive events could provide the requisite probabilistic resources. Appeals to “deep time” are irrelevant.

These are the kinds of challenges that those of us involved in mathematics, computer science, and engineering tend to present, and the kinds of questions we tend to ask, because we must demonstrate that our stuff can actually work in the real world, or at least that it has a reasonable prospect of working in the real world. That’s why many of us tend to be skeptics.

Comments

Semiotic 007, Life is a subset of machines in general, specifically information processing machines. Engineers design, build, test, debug, and thoroughly understand machines in general and information processors in particular. In the same way, I am a software engineer but I have never looked at Microsoft source code. If someone from Microsoft were to say "We designed code that tests for for every possible error, including infinite loops within the program" I'd know they were wrong. Why? Even though I haven't studied their particular instantiation of code (I'm not an "expert" in Microsoft Code), I am quite familiar with code in general and the underlying concepts. So my general knowledge of code also applies to their Code. In the same way, all machines, whether silicon based or carbon based, are subject to the same laws of physics and information processing. We are talking about the limits and flow of information in general; Carbon-based Life is just a particular example we can apply these principles to.Atom_{December 18, 2007
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As a computer science student, I recoil in horor at the though of injecting random code into my working system unless my working system was designed to handle random injections.
Hmm. So C-language code inserted after return and break statements is problematic? How often do you suppose a randomly-generated condition for an if statement would be satisfied in practice? There are more ways to introduce junk code into programs than are apparent to the casual observer. Look into genetic programming, and you'll find that much of the "injected" code serves no function. Many researchers in the field consider bloat a problem. Google "genetic programming" AND bloat, and you get about ten thousand hits. Of course, IDists don't care much for the claim that much of the genetic code of biota is nonfunctional. But it is commonly the case that much of the code in genetic programs is nonfunctional.Semiotic 007_{December 18, 2007
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oh now you're talking about "the odds."ari-freedom_{December 18, 2007
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The majority of degreed computer scientists, engineers, and mathematicians have completed no college course work in the life sciences. Virtually all have college physics under their belts. Some studied chemistry in college. Relatively few enrolled in college courses in biology. Among "expert" critics of scholarly fields not their own, at most one in a thousand makes a substantive contribution. If UD should happen to be chock-full of engineers, computer scientists, and mathematicians who have all caught life scientists in fundamental error, then it would constitute a singular event in the history of science. Most of us who have actually contributed to the bodies of knowledge in our own fields know that the most reliable sources of information in other fields are the people devoted to investigation of those fields. Scientists are sometimes in error, but as consumers of scientific knowledge we have no choice but to play the odds. The odds of getting useful explanations of the diversity of life forms on earth are much greater when one goes to people who have studied the matter intensively and have worked their way to consensus than when one goes to people who have little or no higher education on the matter. Maverick geniuses are very rare, and if you ever seem to be surrounded by them, you can count on it that appearances are deceiving.Semiotic 007_{December 18, 2007
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Aagh! Zooloca -> Zoologici BobBob O'H_{December 18, 2007
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i.e., there are a finite small number of mutations that can become fixed with small populations and long reproductive cycles.
Right, but only in a worsening environment - see for example Leonard Nunney's paper in Annales Zooloca Fennici (links from here). He also talked about this at ESEB this summer, and made the link to work on the Red Queen Hypothesis. BobBob O'H_{December 18, 2007
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"'But frequently, the pure mathematicians invent/discover new math, and later it is found that it “works” in the real world.' Is this a source of dissapointment for them ? I did hear comments to that effect from someone" I do remember hearing a story like this. They used to say that number theory was the purest of the maths because there were no applications of it. But then they found out that it could be used for coding, etc. That upset some people, IIRC. My own field is topology and some recent work has been done on practical applications, but it's never bothered me. But me and other graduate students at my school like to say that people going into applied math have went to the dark side. But we're just kidding...mostly.mathstudent_{December 18, 2007
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Bob O'H at 46, 47 Good to have an population genetics practioner responding. I was popularly describing Haldane's Dilemma as extended by Walter Ramine. ReMine, W. J., 2005, Cost Theory and the Cost of Substitution — a clarification. TJ 19(1), 2005, pp. 113-125, i.e., there are a finite small number of mutations that can become fixed with small populations and long reproductive cycles. e.g., Haldane's 300 to Ramine's 1667 changes between man and chimp. These are may orders of magnitude smaller than the base pair differences between the species. Just between man and chimp there are nominally over 150 million changes. e.g. the 5% difference shown by Britten 2002. Majority difference between closely related DNA samples is due to indels Roy J. Britten et al. PNAS April 15, 2003 Vol 100 Nr 8, 4661-4665 Michael Behe's Edge of Evolution discussion shows the limits of multiple changes with very large numbers in Malaria or HIV. This is compounded when you need much larger number of changes with complex organisms, yet have much fewer number of generations to achieve them. So I see evolutionists trying to bridge gaps many orders of magnitude wide with hand waving "evolution of the gaps" arguments.DLH_{December 18, 2007
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Atom Thanks for the "simple steps" case for ID. Excellent. Re:
Life is of Machine Type A (Complex, integrated, functional machines.) Intelligence is the only demonstrated cause capable of producing Machine Type A.
Once, in the course of "witnessing" to a microbiologist who claimed to be an atheist, I asked him: With all the complexity of life -- which has taken the collective efforts of the best brains science can produce over several generations just to begin to understand -- how can you say it all arose by accident? Actually, life remains a subcategory of Machine Type A, which to date, requires an intelligence more advanced than our own merely to replicate (forget about originate).jstanley01_{December 18, 2007
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By contrast, the appearance is that most evolutionists (like Richard Dawkins) rarely use population genetics models possibly because from taking biology, zoology etc and avoiding calculus.
Or that most don't do population genetics. Those that do have to learn the maths. It's also a very vibrant areas mathematically at the moment, thanks to bioinformatics. There are some good mathematicians involved. Well, there always have been, even since before Fisher. I would agree that many biologists avoid the maths, but for me one of the appeals of population genetics (and why I work in the field) is that it has such a strong mathematical and statistical foundation. BobBob O'H_{December 17, 2007
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One challenge is that greater advantages of sex in smaller populations does not explain anything about how sexual differentiation originated.
True. For me, that's Somebody Else's Problem - it's a historical question and I doubt we'll find many transitional forms. :-)
The larger challenge is how to explain origin and survival of more complex biological systems with slow reproduction rates such as man , elephants and whales.
I don't see that as a problem. The niches these organisms occupy require a crtain level of complexity, and size is presumably advantageous. The reduction in reproductive rates is perhaps an inevitable consequence of this. I could go on about r and K selection but that's so seventies. The efects of population size on viabilitgy are well studied, and the sizes have to befairly small (there's a lot of work on this in conservation genetics). The problems mainly come about due to inbreeding depression, which is how mutational load is expressed. BobBob O'H_{December 17, 2007
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Corey said:
How have you shown intelligence to be capable of designing these things that we are looking at?
An equivalent question: And how has anybody shown that the intelligence that's looking at it knows what its looking at? Of course, this is a fundamental skepticism which underlies my skepticism of materialism and ID. Not just a special purpose skepticism, which is only used as a bait and switch for a replacement certainty. If we cannot grasp it, then we have to accept that at some point, regardless of intent, Science is stopped, which makes all this noise about who's committing the "Science-stoppers" moot. We're not going to get our evolution toasters, and evolution cars and evolution computers. Believing that there was an evolutionary pathway or not is not going to bring that new Evolution technology, or people being cured by "evolving out of their diseases" -- all this technology, which is the hallmark of "emerging from a dark age" (which historians don't any longer know existed--so how come biologists are so sure?) would have to be put on hold. It is well within the "bounds" of this un-stop-able Science to know how to design life even better than the existing complex systems that happened.jjcassidy_{December 17, 2007
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p.noyola: rub his nose in his own claims. He is believing in 'science of the gaps'. He is believing lots of stuff on FAITH, not EVIDENCE. Is that reasonable given his empirical presuppositions? There is no evidence for other universes; it is even possible to test the theory? It is really easy to point you at talk origins, but remember Logic 101: he who makes the claim bears the burden. Don't let him get away with making a claim without HIM providing the evidence.Robo_{December 17, 2007
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DLH you stated: Right off, there appears to basis for avoiding mutational meltdown in large asexual populations vs small. There may be a difference in fixation, but that does not lessen the total mutational load. Worth examining Lynch’s arguments in detail to identify the fallacy is. Dr. Sanford goes over this in his book Genetic Entropy. He says they get around this problem by ignoring or greatly underestimating "slightly deleterious mutations". They do this in most studies by declaring them completely neutral so as to avoid the impossibilities soon faced by accumulating deleterious mutations in the entire population. It truly is a severe and real problem that evolutionists just hand wave away. If you want I will dig out Sanford's book and quote the exact the slight of hand they use to get by this crushing problem. As well, the long term study (270 million years), of all the orders of trilobites, by Webster, confirms the ID/Genetic Entropy , although the genetic meltdown (loss of variation within species and within order) takes far longer than would be expected from Sanfords' estimates.bornagain77_{December 17, 2007
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Corey, again I already laid this out. Life is of Machine Type A (Complex, integrated, functional machines.) Intelligence is the only demonstrated cause capable of producing Machine Type A. And as I wrote in the previous comment:
The type of machine is important, not the individual instantiation of that type (car, aircraft, computer, etc.)
I'd add life to that list. Unless you want to argue that life is not 1) Complex, 2) Integrated, or 3) functional?Atom_{December 17, 2007
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shaner74: My experience tells me that unguided natural forces will destroy something easily enough - including natural selection and genetic drift...the very forces that Larry depends on. Larry will have to look for some other kind of Maxwell's Demon. Atom wrote: It can be seen in the TV show Heroes (which I love) in that the “ability” to levitate is the result of random mutations. Really, it takes that little special machinery to gain that ability? - Evolution is mentioned in almost every episode. Hello? They have supernatural powers! It must be a "new age" thing.ari-freedom_{December 17, 2007
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I meant life, not things we've built, which I already acknowledged. Or are you joking?Corey_{December 17, 2007
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Great thread, Gil. I, like many here, have to design and build things to work in the real world. My experience tells me that unguided natural forces will destroy something easily enough, but they never create, and to suggest that all life is the result of these natural forces is, to me, insane. I was watching the Science Channel recently and they were explaining how birds, lobsters, and bacteria navigate their environment; they all have internal compasses. In fact, bacteria will manufacture particles of magnetite within themselves and then align them to form a compass (incredible enough). The alignment sort of looks like a backbone, so of course, here comes the darwinist, explaining how me "may" owe our backbones to these bacteria that make compasses. And the narrator instantly starts speaking about how our backbones come from these bacteria. It's stuff like this which makes me want to scream. A few particles in a bacteria is *nothing* like a human skeletal system, but in darwin-land, just come up with a nice story, and bang it's fact. Here's a fun project: Go take that bacteria's string of particles, and then from there, provide a list of all the changes which need to occur to go from that to a human skeletal system. When you've given up, realize that this experiment was a purposeful, goal-oriented engineering project, and it still couldn't be done. Time and chance?? No $!#*& way!shaner74_{December 17, 2007
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I'll make it even simpler for you Corey: Machine Type A = Complex, integrated, functional machine. 1) Computers are an example of Machine Type A. 2) Human intelligence can create computers. 3) Therefore, human intelligence can demonstrably create Machine Type A. 4) Human intelligence is a specific type of intelligence. 5) Therefore, intelligence as a causal class (which includes human intelligence) is capable of creating Machine Type A. 6) Furthermore, no other causal class has been demonstrated capable of producing Machine Type A. Until there is an alternative, empirically demonstrable causal class, ID is the default rational position concerning the origin of any instances Machine Type A. Very easy to follow.Atom_{December 17, 2007
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I don’t think you have shown it to be capable of that either, except that we assume it to be so. i.e. How have you shown intelligence to be capable of designing these things that we are looking at?
Are you serious? So intelligence (human intelligence in particular) is not responsible for the computer you type on? You must be joking.Atom_{December 17, 2007
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I don't think you have shown it to be capable of that either, except that we assume it to be so. i.e. How have you shown intelligence to be capable of designing these things that we are looking at?Corey_{December 17, 2007
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"type" being complex, integrated, functional machines, btw.Atom_{December 17, 2007
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[A]tom, your argument works for explaining computers cars and aircraft, but we already knew about them.
Exactly why I used the words "empirical" and "demonstrated". We can show intelligence in action.
There’s nothing in your argument that really explains why intelligence is required for the systems we’re trying to explain here.
I didn't say it was required (though I think it is); no, my argument is simply that intelligence is capable. No other causes have been shown capable. The type of machine is important, not the individual instantiation of that type (car, aircraft, computer, etc.)Atom_{December 17, 2007
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Hi Gil, there's thirty-some-odd comments here, but none yet from the great Dr. Moran. Based upon comments in the previous thread, I wonder if he is being blocked. I would love to see him get involved in the discussion, put out his evidence, and see how it flies. I bet that if he engages seriously he will soon begin to sound awfully like an IDer as Dr. MacNeill before him has done.bFast_{December 17, 2007
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also, atom, your argument works for explaining computers cars and aircraft, but we already knew about them. There's nothing in your argument that really explains why intelligence is required for the systems we're trying to explain here. And ari, I wasn't referring to calculus in regards to multiverses, but rather to DLH in #10Corey_{December 17, 2007
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Atom, unfortunately it really isn't that simple, in that cogent arguments such as yours make absolutely no headway against closed minds. It gets back to the profound effects of cultural conditioning.magnan_{December 17, 2007
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p.noyola, Make the case for ID, and against RV + NS in these simple steps: 1) Complex, integrated, functional machinery exists. 2) Two causal classes (A:intelligence and B: non-intelligent forces of nature and chance conditions) are logically possible causes for 1. 3) Non-intelligent causes have NOT YET been empirically demonstrated to produce complex, integrated, functional machinery. This has only been assumed (see just-so stories.) 4) Intelligent causes HAVE BEEN (and can be) empirically demonstrated to cause such machines. (Computers, Cars, aircraft, etc). 5) Therefore, intelligence is currently the best and only explanation for 1. Until another causal class can be empirically demonstrated as a viable cause, ID is the default position. It really is that simple.Atom_{December 17, 2007
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This reminds me of something Darwinists (and sometimes the general population) seems to suffer from: "Machines-Just-Happen" syndrome I was made aware of this when watching the recent movie "Transformers." In the film, the aliens/robots simply shoot an energy ray at normal houshold items and these items immediately become complex, advanced robotics. My engineer mind began thinking "If I were to transform a cellphone into a mobile, autonomous robot, what whould I have to change...?" Then, I thought of at least 10 major components I would have to add hardware-wise, not to mention all the new programming I'd have to intelligently design. But no, in the movie all it takes is some energy beam. Of course it is a fictional plot, so I'm not nitpicking; what amazes me, however, is that the audience didn't recoil in horror at the obvious physical contradiction of what occurred. It can be seen in the TV show Heroes (which I love) in that the "ability" to levitate is the result of random mutations. Really, it takes that little special machinery to gain that ability? I am an engineer. I actually have the JOB of tranforming one machine into another (I change information processing machinery all day long.) Therefore, I know QUANTATATIVELY, even on a gut level, what kinds and quantity of changes must occur to change machine A into machine B. I think this is the root of it.Atom_{December 17, 2007
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Re. p.noyola (#24), unfortunately many if not most engineers tend to be hard headed skeptics and materialists if not pathological skeptics like The Amazing Randi. This induces them to reject any notions of ID out of sheer kneejerk reflex. I am an electronics engineer and programmer and have found my point of view to be a distinct minority among my peers. A few engineers somehow break out of the culturally conditioned mindset. They are then able to correlate their unique engineering and software engineering insights with the design of life and ID principles.magnan_{December 17, 2007
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It's not about the calculus. The people who come up with such ideas as the multiverse to avoid ID are evolutionists and they certainly know calculus. They'll take a truck filled with calculus and dump it all over you. The real problem is that none of these evolutionists know what works and doesn't work in the real world.ari-freedom_{December 17, 2007
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