Dawkins’ WEASEL: Proximity Search With or Without Locking?

_{William Dembski
March 16, 2009

Darwinism, Evolution, Informatics

3}_{Categories
Darwinism
Evolution
Informatics}

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On pp. 47-48 of THE BLIND WATCHMAKER, Richard Dawkins gives two runs of his WEASEL program (note that there were typos in both initial seeds — one had 27 characters, the other 29 whereas they should have 28; I’ve corrected that). Here are the two runs using the Courier typeface, which assigns equal width to each character (spaces are represented by asterisks):

WDL*MNLT*DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO*P
WDLTMNLT*DTJBSWIRZREZLMQCO*P
MDLDMNLS*ITJISWHRZREZ*MECS*P
MELDINLS*IT*ISWPRKE*Z*WECSEL
METHINGS*IT*ISWLIKE*B*WECSEL
METHINKS*IT*IS*LIKE*I*WEASEL
METHINKS*IT*IS*LIKE*A*WEASEL

Y*YVMQKZPFJXWVHGLAWFVCHQXYPY
Y*YVMQKSPFTXWSHLIKEFV*HQYSPY
YETHINKSPITXISHLIKEFA*WQYSEY
METHINKS*IT*ISSLIKE*A*WEFSEY
METHINKS*IT*ISBLIKE*A*WEASES
METHINKS*IT*ISJLIKE*A*WEASEO
METHINKS*IT*IS*LIKE*A*WEASEP
METHINKS*IT*IS*LIKE*A*WEASEL

These runs are incomplete. The first, according to Dawkins, required 43 iterations to converge, the second 64 (Dawkins omitted the other iterates to save space).

As you can see, by using the Courier font, one can read up from the target sequence METHINKS*IT*IS*LIKE*A*WEASEL, as it were column by column, over each letter of the target sequence. From this it’s clear that once the right letter in the target sequence is latched on to, it locks on and never changes. In other words, in these examples of Dawkins’ WEASEL program as given in his book THE BLIND WATCHMAKER, it never happens (as far as we can tell) that some intermediate sequences achieves the corresponding letter in the target sequence, then loses it, and in the end regains it.

Thus, since Dawkins does not make explicit in THE BLIND WATCHMAKER just how his algorithm works, it is natural to conclude that it is a proximity search with locking (i.e., it locks on characters in the target sequence and never lets go).

Interestingly, when Dawkins did his 1987 BBC Horizons takeoff on his book, he ran the program in front of the film camera:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sUQIpFajsg (go to 6:15)

There you see that his WEASEL program does a proximity search without locking (letters in the target sequence appear, disappear, and then reappear).

That leads one to wonder whether the WEASEL program, as Dawkins had programmed and described it in his book, is the same as in the BBC Horizons documentary.

In any case, our chief programmer at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab (www.evoinfo.org) is expanding our WEASEL WARE software to model both these possibilities. Stay tuned.

Comments

Onlookers: I must first conclude some unfinished, rather distasteful business. Pardon. For, S. having dropped a clanger, I see what looks uncommonly like a discreet silence on the part of those who so enthusiastically endorsed a dismissive statement in the Jamaican press, but which turned out on closer examination to be dripping with blood slander and with endorsement of public lewdness. if this is so, such a tip-toeing away in silence would itself speak volumes. Sadly. Let us hope S et al will explain themselves here and that the denizens of Anti Evo will correct their ill-judged use of the same remarks int eh Jamaican media. Anyway, it is time to speak to a fairly substantial pair of comments; one of which inadvertently reaches the same conclusion that J and I have long since done on Weasel, while not recognising that we have spoken to evident latching of o/p and two different possible causes: [T2] explicit latching in program modules, {T3] implicit latching and/or quasi-latching. One hopes that this arrival at consensus on actual analysis will finally lay to rest the hot rhetoric both here and at Anti Evo. I will turn to that in a moment. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{March 23, 2009
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...my apologiesUpright BiPed_{March 22, 2009
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Let's stay on topic, please. I'm just discussing the latching issue in Weasel - we are not discussing any larger issues. This is an exercise in math, and math only.hazel_{March 22, 2009
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hazel, you have presented a good case. I want to suggest one possible improvement. Dawkins refers to "mutant nonsense phrases, the ‘progeny’ of the original phrase." In other words, each chosen phrase mutates multiple times in each generation, and the choice is made not betweeen the "parent" and the single mutated offspring but among multiple mutations. Upright BiPed, Berlinski may once have been a mathematician, but the quote you present is not a mathematical analysis.David Kellogg_{March 22, 2009
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Hazel, personally I enjoyed your analysis., and reasd every word of it. I am simply not convinced of the exercise made by Dawkins to begin with. I think of the analysis made by another mathmatician, David Berlinski: - - - - - - - - Advent of the Head Monkey IT IS Richard Dawkins's grand intention in The Blind Watchmaker to demonstrate, as one reviewer enthusiastically remarked, "how natural selection allows biologists to dispense with such notions as purpose and design." This he does by exhibiting a process in which the random exploration of certain possibilities, a blind stab here, another there, is followed by the filtering effects of natural selection, some of those stabs saved, others discarded. But could a process so conceived -- a Darwinian process -- discover a simple English sentence: a target, say, chosen from Shakespeare? The question is by no means academic. If natural selection cannot discern a simple English sentence, what chance is there that it might have discovered the mammalian eye or the system by which glucose is regulated by the liver? A thought experiment in The Blind Watchmaker now follows. Randomness in the experiment is conveyed by the metaphor of the monkeys, perennial favorites in the theory of probability. There they sit, simian hands curved over the keyboards of a thousand typewriters, their long agile fingers striking keys at random. It is an image of some poignancy, those otherwise intelligent apes banging away at a machine they cannot fathom; and what makes the poignancy pointed is the fact that the system of rewards by which the apes have been induced to strike the typewriter's keys is from the first rigged against them. The probability that a monkey will strike a given letter is one in 26. The typewriter has 26 keys: the monkey, one working finger. But a letter is not a word. Should Dawkins demand that the monkey get two English letters right, the odds against success rise with terrible inexorability from one in 26 to one in 676. The Shakespearean target chosen by Dawkins -- "Methinks it is like a weasel"-is a six-word sentence containing 28 English letters (including the spaces). It occupies an isolated point in a space of 10,000 million, million, million, million, million, million possibilities. This is a very large number; combinatorial inflation is at work. And these are very long odds. And a six-word sentence consisting of 28 English letters is a very short, very simple English sentence. Such are the fatal facts. The problem confronting the monkeys is, of course, a double one: they must, to be sure, find the right letters, but they cannot lose the right letters once they have found them. A random search in a space of this size is an exercise in irrelevance. This is something the monkeys appear to know. What more, then, is expected; what more required? Cumulative selection, Dawkins argues- the answer offered as well by Stephen Jay Gould, Manfred Eigen, and Daniel Dennett. The experiment now proceeds in stages. The monkeys type randomly. After a time, they are allowed to survey what they have typed in order to choose the result "which however slightly most resembles the target phrase." It is a computer that in Dawkins's experiment performs the crucial assessments, but I prefer to imagine its role assigned to a scrutinizing monkey-the Head Monkey of the experiment. The process under way is one in which stray successes are spotted and then saved. This process is iterated and iterated again. Variations close to the target are conserved because they are close to the target, the Head Monkey equably surveying the scene until, with the appearance of a miracle in progress, randomly derived sentences do begin to converge on the target sentence itself. The contrast between schemes and scenarios is striking. Acting on their own, the monkeys are adrift in fathomless possibilities, any accidental success-a pair of English-like letters-lost at once, those successes seeming like faint untraceable lights flickering over a wine-dark sea. The advent of the Head Monkey changes things entirely. Successes are conserved and then conserved again. The light that formerly flickered uncertainly now stays lit, a beacon burning steadily, a point of illumination. By the light of that light, other lights are lit, until the isolated successes converge, bringing order out of nothingness. The entire exercise is, however, an achievement in self-deception. A target phrase? Iterations that most resemble the target? A Head Monkey that measures the distance between failure and success? If things are sightless, how is the target represented, and how is the distance between randomly generated phrases and the targets assessed? And by whom? And the Head Monkey? What of him? The mechanism of deliberate design, purged by Darwinian theory on the level of the organism, has reappeared in the description of natural selection itself, a vivid example of what Freud meant by the return of the repressed. This is a point that Dawkins accepts without quite acknowledging, rather like a man adroitly separating his doctor's diagnosis from his own disease.(6) [(6) The same pattern of intellectual displacement is especially vivid in Daniel Dennett's description of natural selection as a force subordinate to what he calls "the principle of the accumulation of design." Sifting through the debris of chance, natural selection, he writes, occupies itself by "thriftily conserving the design work . . . accomplished at each stage." But there is no such principle. Dennett has simply assumed that a sequence of conserved advantages will converge to an improvement in design; the assumption expresses a non sequitur. Nature presents life with no targets. Life shambles forward, surging here, shuffling there, the small advantages accumulating on their own until something novel appears on the broad evolutionary screen-an arch or an eye, an intricate pattern of behavior, the complexity characteristic of life. May we, then, see this process at work, by seeing it simulated? "Unfortunately," Dawkins writes, "I think it may be beyond my powers as a programmer to set up such a counterfeit world."(7) [(7) It is absurdly easy to set up a sentence-searching algorithm obeying purely Darwinian constraints. The result, however, is always the same -- gibberish. This is the authentic voice of contemporary Darwinian theory. What may be illustrated by the theory does not involve a Darwinian mechanism; what involves a Darwinian mechanism cannot be illustrated by the theory.Upright BiPed_{March 22, 2009
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Very nice!madsen_{March 22, 2009
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OK, I’ve gotten interested in the Weasel problem. Let me summarize a bit, and then show some actual math that will help clarify things, I think. 1. The key issue is whether the program uses LATCHING (or locking). I take “latching” to mean that once a correct letter appears in the correct slot, it can NOT mutate again, and will therefore stay correct for the duration of the program. 2. Everyone agrees that the 1987 video clearly shows that the program does NOT use latching: some letters which are correct in one generation are later not correct. As Dembski says in the opening post, “There [in the film] you see that his WEASEL program does a proximity search without locking (letters in the target sequence appear, disappear, and then reappear).” 3. The question is whether he used the same program when he wrote the Blind Watchmaker (BWM). In the book he shows examples of every tenth generation of two runs, and in those examples there are no incidences of a correct letter mutating to an incorrect letter and then mutating back again. As Dembski says, “That leads one to wonder whether the WEASEL program, as Dawkins had programmed and described it in his book, is the same as in the BBC Horizons documentary.” 4. Dawkins does not give many details about how his algorithm works. Some (notably Joseph and kairosfocus (GEM)) claim, based on the examples, that the BWM algorithm DID use latching (and was thus different than the video version), while others argue that the BWM algorithm and the video algorithm are the same, and that it is only the limited data set in BWM that makes us think that latching was used. 5. Dembski’s response to this was:
Thus, since Dawkins does not make explicit in THE BLIND WATCHMAKER just how his algorithm works, it is natural to conclude that it is a proximity search with locking (i.e., it locks on characters in the target sequence and never lets go).
I disagree. I think the natural thing to do is assume that the two algorithms are the same, and that the apparent latching in the BWM examples in just an artifact of a limited data set. More importantly, I’m going to show some math that will help support my claim. I will show why a correct letter mutating to incorrect is a fairly rare event, so that we would not expect to “capture” this event by taking snapshots of every ten generations for just two runs, as illustrated in the BWM. Dembski is a mathematician, and his specialty is probability, so perhaps he will comment on what I present below. 6. Here is what Dawkins says in BWM a. We have 28 slots to fill and each slot can take one of 27 letters (counting a space as a letter.) b. We begin by choosing a random letter for each slot. There are 27^28 = power ways of doing this, so the odds of getting the right phrase by pure luck is about 1 x 10^-40 c. each generation the letters mutate, although Dawkins does not state what mutation rate he used. d. Here’s the key sentence:
The computer examines the mutant nonsense phrases, the ‘progeny’ of the original phrase, and chooses the one which, however slightly, most resembles the target phrase. [p.47 in my book]
7. Note that Dawkins does not explain the rules the program uses to decide which phrase “most resembles the target phrase.” I am going to make some assumptions. a. The the number of correct letters determines which phrase is to be kept. If the parent phrase has 14 correct letters and the child has 15 correct letters, we pick the child. b. However, what if the parent has one correct letter mutate to incorrect (remember, I am assuming no latching) and also an incorrect letter mutate to a correct one, so that both phrases have the same number of correct letters? I am going to assume, because I think it is the most reasonable thing to do, that in this case we keep the parent phrase. c. Also, obviously, if the child phrase is worse than the parent phrase because a correct letter mutated to incorrect and no incorrect letter mutated to correct, then obviously we keep the parent. d. So if a correct letter mutates to incorrect, the only way the child phrase could be more fit would be if two or more incorrect letters mutated to correct. OK now let’s do some math! 8. First we need a mutation rate. Dawkins gives no hints as to what he used, but both Wesley Elsberry and kairosfocus (GEM) have used 5% in their examples, so I’ll use that. (Note that the argument I make is not dependent on any particular rate, but it’s much easier to make my points when we have actual numbers to think about rather than writing everything as formulas with a variable rate r.) So, let p = probability of a letter mutating in any one generation = 5% and let q = probability of a letter not mutating in any one generation = 95%. 9. So in each generation how many letters can we expect to mutate in the whole 28 letter phrase. The Binomial Probability formula nCk•p^n•q^n-k applies to this situation: Probability of no mutations = 95%^28 = 24% Probability of one mutation = 28C1•5%^1•95%^27 = 35% Probability of two mutations = 28C2•5%^2•95%^26 = 25% Probability of three mutations = 11% Probability of four mutations = 4% Probability of five mutations = 1% Probability of more than five mutations = negligible So note that most of the time the phrase will mutate three or fewer letters in any one generation. 10. Now let’s look at the probabilities of what happens to each letter each generation. A letter can either be correct or not correct in the parent generation. a. Chance of correct staying correct is 95%, and chance of correct changing to incorrect is 5%. (Remember, no latching) b. The chance of incorrect changing to correct is different, though. The incorrect letter has to not only mutate, it has to mutate to the correct letter, which will only happen 1/26 of the time it mutates. (There are 27 letters, so there are 26 other letters it could mutate into.) Therefore the probability of incorrect changing to correct is 5% • 1/26 = 0.2%, or about 1/500 of the time. Therefore the probability of incorrect staying incorrect is 99.8% 11. Looking at these two probabilities (correct to incorrect and incorrect to correct) might lead one to think that the program would take a very long time to reach the target. However let’s now look at things generation by generation as opposed to letter by letter. Suppose we have a parent phrase with n correct letters so far, and suppose one of those n correct letters mutates. There are three possibilities a. No incorrect letter becomes correct, and so the child phrase is worse, not better, so the parent phrase is kept and we never see that the correct letter mutated. b. One incorrect letter becomes correct. There are now still n correct letters, and I decided at the beginning that in the case of a tie, we keep the parent. So again we don’t see that the correct letter mutated because the parent lived, not the child. c. So the only way that a correct mutation can survive is if two or more incorrect letters become correct at the same time, because only then would the child phrase have more correct letters than the parent. For this to happen, we would have to have three mutations: one correct to incorrect and two from incorrect to correct. As we say in 9 above, three or more mutations only happen 15% of the time anyway, and since incorrect staying incorrect even after a mutation is much more common than incorrect becoming correct, the probability of a correct letter mutating to incorrect AND that child phrase being better than the parent are very small because it would take at least two or more incorrect to correct mutations to compensate and improve the fitness of the child The conclusion here is, then, that correct letters can mutate to incorrect but they very seldom survive because they weaken the fitness of the phrase too much. Even if Dawkins had printed out all of the successful generations instead of every tenth one we might not see an example of correct mutating into incorrect. Only if he showed not only the successful phrases that lived but also all the rejected phrases that died would we see all the correct to incorrect mutations. So latching is not needed. The process itself ensures that most of the time a correct letter will stay correct. It’s not that correct stays correct because there is some latching rule in the algorithm, but rather because correct mutating to incorrect is too detrimental to the fitness of the phrase. My reasoned conclusion, as I stated in the beginning, is that the algorithm did not use latching. [A disclaimer. I know that the situation is much more complicated than what I have explained, because you have 28 slots subject to the conditions in 10 and 11 above in each generation, and you have different numbers of correct letters at different times, and so on. Analysis of that would be extremely complicated, being full of various probability trees. I’m not going there - this has been time-consuming enough as it is.) Comments on this analysis?hazel_{March 22, 2009
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ericB,
I think we all agree that they don’t know in advance which design will win. They don’t even have a list of all the possible designs. (This could be prohibitively large. The search algorithm doesn’t even consider all possible candidates. It’s job is to try to efficiently seek out the optimal ones.)
I agree with everything you have said, and the above paragraph is the point I was trying to make.madsen_{March 22, 2009
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madsen: Again, I’m talking about whether or not the particular design of the winning antenna was specified beforehand. The answer is clearly no.

Joseph: It designed the thing it was programmed to design. And even though no one knew what it would be beforehand, they knew what it needed to do.
One can say, more specifically, that they predetermined the process in two ways. 1. By the way they coded the modification / "mutation" software they controlled and defined the set of possible candidates that could be considered. (This is not by specifying a list, but rather by specifying the rules of construction, composition, variation.) The algorithm could not consider any kind of candidate design that their own rules did not allow for. This is necessary, since every candidate design must be of a kind that their fitness software will both understand and know how to score. 2. By the way they coded the fitness function, they also predetermine the manner in which competing candidate designs will be scored and compared. They have predefined what they want for specifying which design is "better." I think we all agree that they don't know in advance which design will win. They don't even have a list of all the possible designs. (This could be prohibitively large. The search algorithm doesn't even consider all possible candidates. It's job is to try to efficiently seek out the optimal ones.) On the other hand, it cannot be that the algorithm considers designs outside of what they have expressly allowed for. It could not decide, for example, to try changing something that the programmers did not anticipate changing, e.g. changing to a different material if the program wasn't expressly designed to search among and evaluate different materials. In short, genetic algorithms are simply tools to quickly search within chosen very large sets of possibilities as specified and bounded by programmers for cases that may maximize (or minimize) conditions set by the programmers.ericB_{March 22, 2009
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Apologies; I meant to post the above in the moderation policy thread. 195 refers not to madsen but to a comment in that thread.David Kellogg_{March 22, 2009
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Joseph,
“Locking” taken in context, means there isn’t any backward movement. Ratcheting means there isn’t any backward movement. The way Dawkins uses and describes the “weasel” program in TBW it is a ratcheting process in every sense of the word.
Looking back through the thread and reading your latest comment, I think we actually agree on what is happening with the program---there isn't anything in it which prohibits backward movement, but the probability of that happening given the parameters involved is very small.
madsen_{March 22, 2009
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hazel, The argument ONLY pertains to the book "The Blind Watchmaker". That is because it was the BOOK that was referenced in the Marks/ Dembski paper. The video is irrelevant.Joseph_{March 22, 2009
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hazel:
If by ratcheting you mean latching in the sense that Dembski defines it in the opening post, then the program does NOT ratchet.
Perhaps not in the same sense but with exactly the same result. IOW there isn't a coded statement that locks each letter as they appear and match. The process itself takes care of that.
If by ratching you mean that EVENTUALLY all letters fall in place,
No going backward. THAT is what I mean by ratcheting. The way Dawkins uses and describes it in TBW the output will always be greater than or equal to the input. See comment 152Joseph_{March 22, 2009
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Good - it clear that you use ratcheting to mean the same as latching. That clears that up. Now, just to clarify, do you agree that the 1987 video shows non-latching?hazel_{March 22, 2009
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The person/ people who wrote the code [created the novel designs]
Ok, let’s stipulate that for now. As long as you allow that design can arise through the application of GA’s.
Yes design can arise from a GA if the purpose of the GA is create a design.
Again, I’m talking about whether or not the particular design of the winning antenna was specified beforehand. The answer is clearly no.
It designed the thing it was programmed to design. And even though no one knew what it would be beforehand, they knew what it needed to do. IOW they didn't write some general GA and then that GA evolved into an antenna- designing GA for just the application they were looking for.Joseph_{March 22, 2009
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madsen, "Locking" taken in context, means there isn't any backward movement. Ratcheting means there isn't any backward movement. The way Dawkins uses and describes the "weasel" program in TBW it is a ratcheting process in every sense of the word.Joseph_{March 22, 2009
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kairosfocus @ 164
In the case of Weasel, it is now abundantly clear that it uses a targetted, proximity based search strategy that rewards non-functional configs on proximity without reference to functionality. So, it is yet another misleading icon of evolution.
In other words, it does no more than Dawkins said it did: illustrates that cumulative selection converges on a target much more quickly than any random search. If it was elevated to "an icon of evolution" it was only in the minds of critics who either misunderstood it or saw in it an opportunity to erect a strawman which could be demolished much more easily and dramatically than the real thing. As for the reference to the Gleaner article, that was, like the WEASEL program, just an illustration. It demonstrated only that it was easy to find evidence of the use of your proper name in the public domain. I had no knowledge of the nature of the dispute being reported there nor did I comment on it, so your inference about my views on Christianity is presumptuous. As to your request that we only use your "handle" or initials in posts to this board I am happy to comply. I will only note, as before, that it is absurd to pretend that your name is not now widely known in these circles. I would also point out that any contributor who wants to preserve anonymity will usually choose a "handle" that has no obvious connection to them, as I have. If someone appends their actual initials to most of their posts and chooses a "handle" that leads straight to their website, we are bound to wonder just how serious they really are about remaining anonymous.Seversky_{March 22, 2009
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Joseph, In post #152 you define ratcheting as the process described by Dawkins in his book. No locking is described or implied there. Yet in post #183, you claim that ratcheting does involve "locking into place". So I have to ask, which definition of "ratcheting" am I to use?madsen_{March 22, 2009
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Hi, I've been lurking in this thread for a long time and I feel a little guilty for not contributing, so I thought I'd add some fuel to the fire. Just to be clear, I'm pro-ID, although sometimes I do waver in that. I've been trying to account for my own bias while reading this. For a while I was leaning towards agreeing with GLF that there is no letter latching going on. At this point though, I think there is implicit letter latching. I don't think there is any way to prove or disprove it, but based on the output printed from the 1986 run, it seems unlikely that "correct" letters reverted to "incorrect" letters and then back to "correct" letters. I'm not claiming that I "know" that to be true or that my conclusion should sway anybody. That is just my conclusion based on reading the thread and looking at the charts. There could be different versions of the program, different configurations, or whatever is used to generate randomness could have led to the (apparent) implicit letter latching. I don't think Dawkins is trying to mislead people with this example. My impression is that he's demonstrating a concept, not trying to say that it proves the concept. Obviously he hopes to persuade people, and its likely that some people, especially people who are predisposed to agreeing with him, will read more into the results than is warranted. Based on what I've read (in particular, Climbing Mount Improbable), I get the impression that he is willing to assume far too much. For example, when discussing the evolution of the eye, he concentrated on how "easy" it would be to duplicate photoreceptors, while ignoring the much bigger problem of the initial evolution of the photoreceptors. To his credit, he did acknowledge that he was ignoring that issue, but he spent significantly more time showing how the "easy" part could happen. This will probably sound like a personal attack, but its not meant as one. GLF seems more intent on proving KF wrong than he is on proving his beliefs to be right. I know it could be my own biases that are making me interpret (or misinterpret) what is being said. I try to account for that, but this seems more like a personal grudge than an attempt to show the truth. Even if it could be proven that there was no letter latching, it would have a negligble impact on the overall arguments. When I see so much effort spent on a relatively unimportant point, (and I've had the same reaction to some pro-ID posters), it makes me question the judgement of the person making the arguments. Thanks. dldl_{March 22, 2009
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Joseph: Do you see the difference between the two idea I described above. If by ratcheting you mean latching in the sense that Dembski defines it in the opening post, then the program does NOT ratchet. If by ratching you mean that EVENTUALLY all letters fall in place, even though a letter might have been in place and later out of place, then the programs ratchets without latching. Ratcheting (your word) and latching do NOT mean the same thing.hazel_{March 22, 2009
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Joseph,
The person/ people who wrote the code [created the novel designs]
Ok, let's stipulate that for now. As long as you allow that design can arise through the application of GA's.
I am pretty sure they knew they were going to get an antenna that matched the results they were looking for.
Again, I'm talking about whether or not the particular design of the winning antenna was specified beforehand. The answer is clearly no.madsen_{March 22, 2009
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Joseph [177], Yes to the first sentence if you agree with what hazel [180] says:
Ratcheting just means, as far as I can tell, that the program incrementally moves from the original random sequence to the “methinks” phrase, which it does. The word was first used by Joseph, and is not part of the original issue. No one denies that the process “ratchets” in this sense.
No to your second sentence: the ratcheting process has never been denied by anybody associated with Weasel. Recall that in [140], once you had a copy of TBW, you confirmed that this was the way it worked. So this has never been denied. DavidDavid Kellogg_{March 22, 2009
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hazel, Ratcheting involves "locking into place".Joseph_{March 22, 2009
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madsen:
Please tell me exactly what ratcheting means in the context of the weasel program, and I’ll be happy to answer.
see comment 152Joseph_{March 22, 2009
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Joseph,
madsen, Yes or No- In “The Blind Watchmaker” the example of cumulative selection known as the “weasel” program, uses a ratcheting process.
Please tell me exactly what ratcheting means in the context of the weasel program, and I'll be happy to answer.madsen_{March 22, 2009
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The issue has been ratcheting vs latching. Ratcheting just means, as far as I can tell, that the program incrementally moves from the original random sequence to the “methinks” phrase, which it does. The word was first used by Joseph, and is not part of the original issue. No one denies that the process “ratchets” in this sense. Latching, or locking, is a word used by Dembski in the original post, to refer specifically to the idea that once a letter occurs in the correct place, such as the first m, then it never changes in further generations. This is different than ratcheting, and is the issue under discussion. Everyone agrees that that 1987 video clearly shows that the program does NOT latch (or lock - they mean the same thing.) At 164, kairosfocus (GEM), quoting himself writes,
4 –> This is also consistent with the emergence of implicit [quasi-]latching. That is, the numbers of cases in a generation where a letter reverts and another letter advances so that the resulting flicked back population member becomes the advanced champion of the generation is very rare. 5 –> As a result, we see steady ratcheting of progress to target, with letters that make an advance preserved from one generation to the next, i.e latched or effectively latched.
It seems clear that GEM has accepted that the latching is NOT built into the program, but is rather quasi or implicit. Since the program does eventually reach the target, all letters eventually become correct and stay correct, even though along the way they may have been correct, then changed to incorrect, then became correct again. So the program does not display real latching even though it ratchets its way to the target. Calling what happens quasi or implicit latching obscures rather than clarifies the distinction being argued, which is that the program does not latch (or lock) letters once they are correct. That’s my understanding of this long, and long-winded, discussion Hope that helps. :-)hazel_{March 22, 2009
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Patrick, At issue is the paper by Marks and Dembski which uses the "weasel" program as an example of a partitioned search which "locks" the letters into place once they match the target. The anti-ID side was quick to jump on the paper because of that. However upon further investigation the example they reference is an example of a targeted search which uses a ratcheting process. And that is as described by Dawkins.Joseph_{March 22, 2009
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kf, In the absence of source code this whole argument seems to be about whether Dawkins was cheating more than previously admitted, but it's difficult to come to any solid conclusion due to lacking all relevant information. Personally I don't see the point since all know that the program is irrelevant to the main issues for reasons already discussed. I've quickly scanned this conversation and I'm looking for some clarification in order to bring this thread to an end. By "explicit latching" do you mean that the latching mechanism is a function in the program? By "implicit latching" do you mean that the runtime parameters of the program were fine-tuned to produce such results but nothing was explicitly hard-coded except that non-functional intermediates are allowed? If so, is this the scenario that Darwinists are preferring on other sites?Patrick_{March 22, 2009
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David Kellogg, It is a targeted search that uses a ratcheting process to reach that target. And it would be fair to say the "ratcheting process" part has been denied.Joseph_{March 22, 2009
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madsen, Yes or No- In "The Blind Watchmaker" the example of cumulative selection known as the "weasel" program, uses a ratcheting process.Joseph_{March 22, 2009
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