From Horizontal gene transfer: Sorry, Darwin, it’s not your evolution any more:
Richard Dawkins: For over a century, Darwinism was the “must be” explanation, the only “scientific one.” As Dawkins put it (p. 287, Blind Watchmaker, 1986):
My argument will be that Darwinism is the only known theory that is in principle capable of explaining certain aspects of life. If I am right it means that, even if there were no actual evidence in favour of the Darwinian theory (there is, of course) we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories.
But Darwinism is not “the only known theory that is in principle capable of explaining certain aspects of life.” Claims that were formerly merely preferred must be tested against HGT. True, some of the example findings given above may need revision or replacement. But many more will likely turn up, as research uncovers HGT in many genomes.
Anything HGT does, Darwinian evolution did not do. As more and more pieces are carved out of Darwin’s territory, just think of the impact on the vast project of “Darwinizing the culture.” More.
See also: Links to the rest of the series at Talk to the fossils: Let’s see what they say back
Follow UD News at Twitter!
Any random, as in happenstance, genetic change is OK by all forms of Darwinism. HGT would qualify as such a change.
If Darwin had known about HGT he may have thought it was evidence for his pangenesis. However if Darwin had known about HGT and other cellular activities, he never would have made the claims he did.
Darwinian evolution has pretty much been relegated to high school biology textbooks and Richard Dawkins twitter feed. And wherever baby science or pseudo science is located.
Dawkins is wrong. there is NO biological scientific evidence for a false hypthesis on biological origin processes.
Anyways.
As people get smarter in this stuff it will be that other mechanisms are found for biological changes.
We must all explain human “race looks” differences. for example.
So indeed other mechanisms be seized by evolutionists as needed.
its a prediction. indeed other threads here show non creationist scientists looking for a third way. because THEY NEED ANOTHER WAY cause old man chuck ain’t working in a modern world.
Anything meiosis did Dariwnian evolution didn’t do! Evolution did nothing at all because genes get passed on… or something?
Makes as much sense as this.
wd400, and your real time empirical evidence that unguided material processes can create any non-trivial functional information/complexity at all is where exactly?
Stephen Meyer Critiques Richard Dawkins’s “Mount Improbable” Illustration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rgainpMXa8
Thanks BA77.
Meyers/Axe: “Unguided purposeless NS could not do a Cambrian in 500 trillion years”
PZMeyers/Dawkins: “Blind Watchmaker had eons and eons. 30+ million years”
Math was never a Dawkins strongpoint. Or rationality & logic for that matter:(
No problem ppolish.
Moreover, not only are the unguided material processes of neo-Darwinism grossly inadequate to explain how a billion-trillion protein molecules can possibly cohere as a single unified whole in the single human body for a life time,,,
Not only are the ‘bottom up’ unguided material processes of neo-Darwinism grossly inadequate to explain how a billion-trillion protein molecules can possibly cohere as a single unified whole in a single human body for a life time, but the unguided material processes of neo-Darwinism are also grossly inadequate to explain how even a single protein can possibly cohere as a single unified whole.
Cruise Control permeating the whole of the protein structure? This is an absolutely fascinating discovery. The equations of calculus involved in achieving even a simple process control loop, such as a dynamic cruise control loop, are very complex. In fact it seems readily apparent to me that highly advanced mathematical information must reside ‘transcendentally’ along the entirety of the protein structure, in order to achieve such control of the overall protein structure. This fact gives us clear evidence that there is far more functional information residing within, and along, protein chains than meets the eye. Moreover this ‘oneness’ of cruise control, within the protein structure, can only be achieved through quantum computation/entanglement principles, and is inexplicable to the reductive materialistic approach of neo-Darwinism!
And indeed we find quantum information/entanglement residing along the entirity of protein molecules:
Moreover, this quantum information/entanglement which gives the protein a ‘unity of form’ so as to enable it to function as a cohesive whole as is witnessed with ‘cruise control’, is also found in DNA molecules:
News: Sorry, Darwin, it’s not your evolution any more
Evolutionary theory has undergone constant change as the field has expanded and matured. It hasn’t been Darwin’s original theory for a long time.
Horizontal gene transfer between widely separated taxa isn’t consistent with branching descent. That doesn’t mean humans don’t share common ancestry with other apes, but it does mean some human genetic material may come from other sources, as well, such as viruses.
BA77 @7
‘Cruise Control permeating the whole of the protein structure? This is an absolutely fascinating discovery. The equations of calculus involved in achieving even a simple process control loop, such as a dynamic cruise control loop, are very complex. In fact it seems readily apparent to me that highly advanced mathematical information must reside ‘transcendentally’ along the entirety of the protein structure, in order to achieve such control of the overall protein structure. This fact gives us clear evidence that there is far more functional information residing within, and along, protein chains than meets the eye. Moreover this ‘oneness’ of cruise control, within the protein structure, can only be achieved through quantum computation/entanglement principles, and is inexplicable to the reductive materialistic approach of neo-Darwinism!
And indeed we find quantum information/entanglement residing along the entirety of protein molecules:’
Nothing to see here. Move along. No design involved. Just random chance in deep time.
Zachriel:
Gone missing- no one can find this alleged evolutionary theory. And there isn’t any way to test the claim that humans share a common ancestry with other apes. The claim is out of the realm of science.
Or related note, one method of horizontally transferring genetic material is with the bacteriophage virus. Yet, the “horizontal” gene transferring bacteriophage virus is far more complex than many people have imagined it ever would be, as these following videos and article clearly point out:
Here is a short video of the Bacteriophage ‘landing’ on a bacterium:
The first thought I had when I first saw the bacteriophage virus is that it looks very similar to the lunar lander of the Apollo program. The comparison is not without merit considering some of the relative distances to be traveled and the virus must somehow possess, as of yet un-elucidated, orientation, guidance, docking, unloading, loading, etc… mechanisms. And please remember this level of complexity exists in a world that is far too small to be seen with the naked eye.
As well, horizontal gene transfer is far more tenuous as a ‘mechanism of evolution’ than many Darwinists are apparently willing to admit:
Here is a recent article (2015) by Jeffrey Tomkins which shows that the mechanism of Horizontal Gene Transfer falls far short of being a satisfactory explanation.
I would be shocked that such slipshod science, as Dr. Tomkins highlighted, could be practiced by Darwinists. But after many years of seeing how Darwinists constantly practice their brand of ‘science’, never allowing the core of their theory to be challenged by empirical evidence, such shenanigans by Darwinists has come to be expected by me.
Apparently it is the only way that they can keep their supposedly ‘scientific’ theory afloat amongst all the contradictory evidence that comes along.
Also of note: Even many supposed viral sequences, that are held, by Darwinists, to have been gained by horizontal gene transfer to humans, are now called into question:
It still sounds like a materialist account of evolution. Did News mean to suggest it isn’t?
The main problem with Darwin’s evolution theory is that natural selection doesn’t do anything for the coming into existence of organisms.
Selection is NOT creation.
Box: The main problem with Darwin’s evolution theory is that natural selection doesn’t do anything for the coming into existence of organisms.
Sure. Evolutionary theory only explains how life how life has diversified, not its origin; just as gravitational theory only explains how masses interact, not their origin. Scientists continue to probe the question of how life began on Earth, but the circumstances are very ancient.
Zachriel:
How life originated has a direct tie to how it diversified and evolutionism can’t even explain how to get eukaryotes from populations of prokaryotes.
All evolutionary theory has to offer is the concept that all life forms, and all its features, came into existence by chance alone. Natural selection hasn’t caused the coming into existence of one single organism nor even one single feature of an organism.
Selection is not creation.
Box: All evolutionary theory has to offer is the concept that all life forms, and all its features, came into existence by chance alone… Selection is not creation.
Evolution is creative, but it requires both variation and selection. It’s the interplay between the two that results in adaptation.
Nope, the adaptive organisms and their adaptive features are produced by chance alone.
Because selection is not creation.
Nah — the mutations giving rise to adaptations arise by chance. Selection means many individually-unlikely but beneficial traits can be brought together in a single lineage. So it’s more than chance that creates adaptations.
No, that’s not the case.
Nope
Well, how can I reply to such a cogent argument. I guess I withdraw….
(even your quote doesn’t say what you seem to think it says)
Zachriel:
Your position offers variation and elimination.
wd400:
Beneficial is relative and changing. Natural selection is non-random in that not every individual has the same probability of being eliminated. There is still plenty of chance at play all throughout the process.
wd400:
Not really. Chance is not a cause of anything. “Chance” is just a word to be used in place of “we don’t know how.”
If we knew how, appeals to “chance” would be superfluous. Ignorance is not an explanation.
But evolution is a fact, Fact, FACT!
as to wd400’s claim:
Mung is correct in noting the way Darwinists disingenuously use the word chance,,,
In other words, although the term “chance” can be defined as a mathematical probability, such as the chance involved in flipping a coin, when Darwinists use the term ‘random chance’, the vast majority of the time it’s substituting for a more precise word such as “cause”, especially when the cause, i.e. ‘mechanism’, is not known. Several people have noted this ‘shell game’ that is played with the word ‘chance’ and cause.
Thus to say ‘it happened by chance’, as it is usually used by Darwinists, is in reality a ‘placeholder for ignorance’ instead of being an appeal to a known cause.
Moreover, it is now known that the vast majority of changes to the genome are being accomplished via sophisticated molecular machines and that the changes being implemented in the genome by those molecular machines are not happening in a random pattern as was presupposed by Darwinists.
Mutations have causes, of course. Just like the outcomes of dice rolls and lottery draws have physical causes. But they are random with respect to fitness.
Darwin’s Evolution Theory breaks down like this:
Notes:
1. Assuming a self-replicator is assuming a lot. See e.g. here
2. By ‘viable’ is meant that a replicator miraculously doesn’t succumb to the second law (falls apart) before it replicates itself. A replicator must be robust — “however many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead” (Richard Dawkins).
There is no materialistic explanation for robustness: “ (…) the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?” (Steve Talbott).
3. Not only is NS not creative, it severely hampers chance-driven evolution by eliminating viable organisms — NS does not produce information, but continuously destroys information.
– – – –
Bottom line: (2) would be better off without (3). IOW the ‘chance-driven filling of viable self-replicator space’ is not at all served by the effects of a restrictive hostile environment a.k.a. ‘natural selection’.
Box: 1. Assuming a self-replicator is assuming a lot.
It’s called an organism. They can be observed commonly on the Earth.
Box: 2. By ‘viable’ is meant that a replicator miraculously doesn’t succumb to the second law (falls apart) before it replicates itself.
Entropy is not an impediment to life — life revels in it.
Box: 3. Not only is NS not creative, …
As already stated, it’s not variation or selection that is creative, but the interplay between the two.
Indeed, and its existence is assumed by Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory — quite an assumption.
The question is of course: “what is working so hard to stave off death?”
Nope, it’s chance that is creative and NS that is destructive.
wd400:
“random with respect to fitness” is useless and does not say whether or not the mutations were guided. With evolutionism all mutations are accidents, errors and/ or mistakes.
Zachriel:
And your position cannot explain their existence.
Box: Indeed, and its existence is assumed by Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory — quite an assumption.
As already pointed out, the assumption is well-grounded in observation.
“Assume there are two masses separated by a distance, the gravitational force of attraction will be … ”
Box: Not all animals work so hard to avoid coming into equilibrium with their surrounding temperature, but all animals do some comparable work.
That’s right! Without thermodynamics, there would be no life. The work comes from energy gradients. That’s what life does!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_(physics)
Box: “what is working so hard to stave off death?”
Energy powers work. Most organisms receive their energy directly or indirectly from the Sun.
Box: it’s chance that is creative and NS that is destructive.
Presumably, by creative, you mean novel complex adaptations, in which case, it is the interplay between variation and selection that is creative. If, by creative, you mean simply novel variations, then there are many known sources of variation.
Zachriel continues to prove that it is a clueless dolt or a dishonest troll as natural selection is an eliminative process not a selection process.
The point is that it’s natural origin isn’t. Which is, as I stated, simply assumed — quite an assumption.
So, ‘energy powers’ work to stave off death?
By ‘creative’ I mean any new organism or any new feature.
No, there is no creative interplay. Chance offers viable organisms to NS. NS kills off most of them. NS does not add to the coming into existence of new organisms or new features. All NS does is hampering chance’s impossible job. That’s not worthy of the term ‘interplay’ by any standard.
Box: The point is that it’s natural origin isn’t.
The Theory of Evolution doesn’t require that assumption.
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” — Charles Darwin
Box: So, ‘energy powers’ work to stave off death?
More properly, organisms thrive on thermodynamic gradients.
Box: By ‘creative’ I mean any new organism or any new feature.
“Feature” doesn’t answer the question. By “creative”, do you mean novel, complex features? If so, then that requires the interplay of variation and selection, a.k.a. evolution.
Box: there is no creative interplay.
The interplay results in creative adaptation.
I’m talking about the naturalistic interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Why didn’t you get that?
So, ‘organisms’ stave off death? Why would they?
No, chance alone produces novel complex features — despite the destructive role of NS.
Box: I’m talking about the naturalistic interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
The Theory of Evolution certainly does posit natural mechanisms to explain the diversification of life.
Box: So, ‘organisms’ stave off death? Why would they?
Why do masses attract? Just like masses attract, organisms thrive on thermodynamic gradients. It’s in their observable natures. Scientific theories are always of limited domain.
Box: No, chance alone produces novel complex features
Mechanisms of variation are limited in their scope. Complex adaptations require the interplay of variations with selection.
Creative interplay and creative adaption? Creatively requires imagination, Zach. Blind Watchmaker has a good imagination;)
What theory of evolution?
Only intelligent agencies can select.
ppolish: Creatively requires imagination
Intricate things form in non-living nature all the time, from galaxies to emeralds to hurricanes.
“Intricate things form in non-living nature all the time, from galaxies to emeralds to hurricanes.”
It’s awesome isn’t it Zachriel:)
Darwinism outline / analysis:
1. assume a replicator
2. replication takes off: the “step-by-step filling of viable-replicator-space”; henceforth SSVRS. If SSVRS proceeds undisturbed by NS, then one day all possible viable replicators will be ‘found’ – obviously all animals that roamed the earth included.
3. However SSVRS is hampered by a variable restrictive hostile environment with limited resources and so forth. All these negative effects are known by the generic term “natural selection” (NS). It’s role is often misunderstood … the fact is that NS is purely eliminative and has zero creative power. It’s up to chance alone to produce any novelties — despite the destructive role of NS.
1. Quite a safe assumption, I think.
2. Not in finite time.
3. Because NS prevents lineages from wandering around the terrible places of the “replicator-space”, they instead takes those “narrow roads through gene land” that contain adaptations. Witouut NS life would be smeered out over the “replicator-space”, because of NS it’s instead concentrated in the adaptive regions.
Confined to a “replicator-space”, did you just make that up WD400?
The Blind Watchmaker works in a prison. Guarded by Blind Prison Guards. Oh the tangled brush we weave..,
Box made up “replicator space”, it’s pretty obvious that that NS constrains the parts of the space that will be explored, isn’t it?
Yes, by definition NS is constraining. Strangling even. But Nature is creative in spite of NS, not because of it. HGT is pretty nifty:)
ppolish: It’s awesome isn’t it
Yes, it is. What’s really awesome is that many of these phenomena can be shown as due to simple interrelationships.
Box: If SSVRS proceeds undisturbed by NS, then one day all possible viable replicators will be ‘found’ –
No. Only replicators that are available through descent from other viable replicators. The vast majority of conceivable, but viable replicators will never be found.
Box: obviously all animals that roamed the earth included.
As all organisms that exist are related by descent from viable replicators, then that is correct.
Box: It’s role is often misunderstood … the fact is that NS is purely eliminative and has zero creative power.
While we can imagine every possible viable pathway, in fact, natural selection is inevitable due to limitations in resources. More specifically, the sources of variation do not explore the vast majority of possible structures. Evolution only explores areas which are nearby known areas of high fitness. Natural selection ‘pushes’ organisms into these regions, so it is the interplay of variation and selection which leads to complex adaptations.
WD400 commenting on #44,
Obviously, I’m talking about the assumption of a replicator with natural origins — which is quite an assumption, as you will agree.
I agree. On top of that I hold that SSVRS is pure fantasy — a non-starter for several reasons. However it is the underlying concept of Darwinism.
True.
Here we possibly disagree. My point is that the regions, where your “narrow roads through gene land” lead, are also reached without NS. Faster even, because there is no information loss along the way. SSVRS unhampered by NS reaches goals faster.
True.
Yes. However, there is a cost, because chance without NS reaches the adaptive regions faster. Which brings me to my main point: NS added nothing to the creative process.
Have you heard of Dawkins weasel….
From Whence the WEASEL Cometh?
In a way limitations of resources is NS. But let’s say you are right Zachriel: “You are right”.
However, what I’ve shown with my argument is that there is an clear tendency: NS leads to information loss and hampers chance and SSVRS.
NS is indeed inevitable, but evolution needs as little of it as possible. NS means information loss and slows things down.
Yes. That toy example seems to disprove your thesis.
Box: NS leads to information loss and hampers chance and SSVRS.
In an imaginary environment with unlimited material resources, the fastest replicators would predominate by numbers.
In any case, because evolution can’t explore every possible line of descent, natural selection pushes the search into areas of higher fitness, including complex adaptation.
Box: NS means information loss and slows things down.
Only when compared to the imaginary world with unlimited resources.
So?
Why not? Due to “natural selection” or “limited resources” — heck, what’s the diff?
Nonsense. NS removes information relevant to the search. Viable organisms are being killed off. Important information is lost forever.
Which provides us with a clear understanding of the negative effects of
limited resourcesnatural selection.– – – –
WD400 #51 #54,
Dawkins weasel? Are you serious? I thought that debate was over and done with.
I don’t know that there is a debate about Dawkins’ weasel (creationists have said a lot of stupid things about it, which i quite different). Anyway that chapter demonstrates that you are wrong that selection stops lineages from adaptive parts of “replicator space”. Quite the opposite is true.
Zachriel:
The fastest are always the simplest. Complexity and speed are directly correlated.
That is the untestable claim but no one seems to be able to model such a thing.
How are you defining “intricate”? And why would we expect that in a materialistic universe?
Is “Dawkin’s Weasel” even considered serious science? Leading edge computational biology or maybe Dawkins is trolling? Weasel is the Atari Pong of computational biology?
It wasn’t cutting edge when it was written — it’s just a useful demonstration of an important idea.
The only truthful thing about Dawkin’s weasel program is that it was appropriately named:
Dr. Dembski and Dr. Marks comment on the inherent fallacy built into all evolutionary algorithms here:
Despite the stubborn denial of some Darwinists to admit the abject failure that is inherent in Dawkins’ “Weasel” computer program for providing any support whatsoever for Darwinian claims, I am grateful for what Dawkins’ “Weasel” computer program has personally taught novices like me.
Because of the simplicity of the WEASEL program and the rather modest result, i.e. “Methinks it is like a weasel”, that the program was trying to achieve by evolutionary processes, it taught me in fairly short order, in an easy to understand way, that,,
In regards to learning the ‘brick wall’ limitation for material processes ever creating even trivial levels of functional information, I highly recommend Wiker & Witt’s book “A Meaningful World” in which they show, using the “Methinks it is like a weasel” phrase, (that Dawkins’ used from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet to try to illustrate the feasibility of Evolutionary Algorithms), that the ‘information problem’ is much worse for Darwinists than just finding the “Methinks it is like a weasel” phrase by a unguided search.
Basically this ‘brick wall’ problem for unguided material processes is because the “Methinks it is like a weasel” phrase doesn’t make any sense at all unless the entire context of the play of Hamlet is taken into consideration.
Moreover the context in which the weasel phrase finds its meaning is derived from several different levels of the play. i.e. The ENTIRE play, who said it, why was it said, where was it said, and even nuances of the Elizabethan culture, etc… are taken into consideration to provide proper context to the phrase.
The Weasel phrase simply does not make sense without taking its proper context into consideration
In fact, it is interesting to note what the specific context is for the “Methinks it is like a weasel” phrase that is used in the Hamlet play.
The context in which the phrase is used is to illustrate the spineless nature of one of the characters of the play. i.e. To illustrate just how easily the spineless character in the play can be led to say anything that Hamlet wants him to say:
After realizing what the actual context of the ‘Methinks it is like a weasel’ phrase was, I remember thinking to myself that it was perhaps the worse possible phrase that Dawkins could have possibly chosen to use to try to illustrate his point.
Especially since the phrase, when taken into proper context, reveals deliberate, nuanced, deception and manipulation of another person.
I’m sure deception and manipulation is hardly the point that Dawkins was trying to convey with his ‘Weasel’ program.
Yet that, i.e. deception and manipulation, is not only what we find with the WEASEL program itself, but we find deception and manipulation is exactly what the phrase is about when taken into proper context.
Of supplemental note as to the brick wall limitation that ‘context’ places on AI:
Can you provide the relevant quote from the chapter? And where exactly did I claim that selection stops lineages from adaptive parts of “replicator space”? “Stops” is too much. I’m fine with “slows down”.
I don’t have the book here with me. But think about it: how quickly will you find a sentence like the target without selection? How quickly with selection?
So selection has foresight to ‘see’ a distant target?
HMMM, somebody needs to realize that selection can’t see even one microsecond into the future so as to reach a distant ‘target’.
As per usual Bornagain77 has provided some excellent references. Here you can find another interesting article. Dembski writes about his e-mail correspondence with Dawkins on the weasel subject and ‘conservation of information’.
excerpt:
“Conservation of information” doesn’t have anything to do with this. How quickly will you find a sentence like the target without selection? How quickly with selection?
Unguided selection would never find a sentence like that. Guided selection pretty darn quick. Does google count? Or does it have to be an actual book. Info in a book.
Btw, Andreas Wagner did not mention “Me thinks it’s a weasel” in his book “Arrival not Survival”. Don’t google that, you won’t find it.
wd400:
It demonstrated the power of guided evolution, ie a goal oriented targeted search.
Try the weasel program by merely eliminating the furthest away from the target.
Joe,
It’s pedagogy, and not pedagogy on guided (or unguided) evolution. It’s pedagogy towards the understanding — and this basic concept is a challenge here, still so it’s not like this not needed — of cumulative process and positive feedback loops. With random variations, the addition of a feedback loop can produce dramatic improvements in a search for optima.
That’s all. It’s good pedagogy, but just pedagogy.
Selection guided by feedback. Seems valid. Feedback is information btw. Purposeful useful information.
Sure. For evolution, the natural world is the source of the information, the source of feedback, with the events that transpire, eliminating or not this individual or that from the gene pool, while this other individual produces offspring or not.
Any feedback loop we might say is purposeful, at least tautologously — the purpose is to provide feedback of course. The ear piercing scream of microphone feedback in a loud PA system has the purpose of feeding back re-amplified sound to be reamplified again, doncha know.
But beyond that, it’s physics doing its mindless, impersonal thing.
You couldn’t be more wrong. Conservation of information, as Dembski and Marks use the term, applies to (evolutionary) search. You are obviously not familiar with the term.
Your assertion sounds hollow after your implicit admission that you have no idea how ‘creationists’ use the term ‘conservation of information’.
eig
In Weasel, nature is represented by the target phrase. In your description above, nature is “events that transpire”.
However nature is actually a continuum. It’s a random variable.
So, you have random mutations guided by feedback from a random variable.
You use the terms ‘optimization’ and ‘dramatic improvements’ but that’s a teleological or theistic view of evolution.
Feedback on a random variable from another random variable cannot produce optimization towards a target.
Natural Selection has been grossly overestimated by Darwinists as to having the causal adequacy within itself to explain the overwhelming ‘appearance of design’ in biology.
Even William Provine, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University, himself admits that Natural Selection is not a ‘cause’ that pushes or pulls anything:
In other words, to postulate natural selection as the cause for an after the fact observation of an effect, is to illegitimately switch the whole cause and effect relationship in science.
Moreover, natural selection, as it is broadly used by Darwinists in the literature, is added on as a superfluous narrative gloss, i.e. a just so story, that gives the illusion that nature, i.e. the ‘Blind Watchmaker’, has somehow ‘selected’ FOR some future target.
To say such story telling by Darwinists with the term ‘natural selection’, and/or evolution, is unscientific would be an understatement. I would hold the abuse of science to be, besides deceptive, anti-scientific, since invoking natural selection, and/or evolution, gives the appearance of having provided an actual explanation for how something came to be when it has in fact done no such thing.
Invoking natural selection, and/or evolution, as a cause for something is useless, even misleading, as a heuristic in science, since natural selection, as it is often used by Darwinists, falsely claims to have supplied a valid explanation as to how something came to be when it has in fact done no such thing. But was only brought in, as Dr. Skell pointed out, as a superfluous ‘narrative gloss’ after the observation was made.
Falsely attributing almost unlimited creative power to natural selection, and/or evolution, is rampant within the literature.
At the 7:00 minute mark of this following video, Dr. Behe also gives a specific example of how positive evidence was falsely attributed to natural selection, and/or evolution, by using the word ‘evolution’ as a narrative gloss in peer-reviewed literature:
Here are some more examples of Darwinists falsely crediting positive evidence to natural selection, and/or evolution, when no credit is due:
Even though Darwinists constantly try to force the evidence into a Darwinian narrative, the evidence for design many times, despite their attempts to suppress the evidence, still comes bleeding through these neo-Darwinian papers:
Nothing is selected. Survival is not a goal. Chemicals don’t want or need to survive or reproduce. Non-life is no more or less optimal as living organisms in the materialist view. The material elements of the universe cannot show benefit or improvement to whatever they are.
eigenstate, you have no clue as to what you are saying. Weasel definitely instantiates guided evolution. Natural selection does not have any goals and weasel definitely had one and the variations were guided to it.
To be Captain Obvious for a moment, for Darwinists to appeal to intelligently designed computer algorithms to try to offer support for unguided Darwinian evolution should be the very definition of non-sequitur we find in dictionaries:
Moreover, the evolutionary algorithm Avida, when using realistic biological parameters as its default settings, instead of using highly unrealistic default settings as it currently does, actually supports John Sanford’s model of Genetic Entropy instead of neo-Darwinian evolution:
The following comment gives us a glimpse as to just how unrealistic the default settings for Avida actually are:
Moreover, the real world is far less supportive of the power of Natural Selection than these intelligently design computer programs are. In fact, the real world evidence supports John Sanford’s genetic entropy model instead of Darwinian evolution.
Dr. Behe surveyed four decades of laboratory evolution experiments and found that Loss of Function mutations are far more likely to fix in a population than gain of function mutations are:
In multi-cellular creatures, due to the orders of magnitude increase in integrated complexity over and above single celled creatures, the problem of finding and fixing a beneficial mutation should be expected to be greatly exasperated.
And indeed in fruit flies we find that ‘exasperation’ for fixing a single beneficial mutation by selection to be the case:
Zachriel: because evolution can’t explore every possible line of descent
Box: Why not? Due to “natural selection” or “limited resources”
That’s right, due to competition for limited resources.
Box: NS removes information relevant to the search. Viable organisms are being killed off. Important information is lost forever.
Natural selection means that many pathways will never be explored, so even though search resources are limited, natural selection tends to push the search into areas of highest fitness. Generally less useful pathways are not explored.
Box: Which provides us with a clear understanding of the negative effects of limited resources natural selection.
Yes, limited resources is limiting.
Box: Conservation of information, as Dembski and Marks use the term, applies to (evolutionary) search.
Conservation of information, as Dembski and Marks use the term, has no currency in mathematics.
Silver Asiatic: However nature is actually a continuum. It’s a random variable.
The natural environment is hardly random, but highly structured.
Zachriel is back with it’s pithy double-speak. How is it that Zachriel can post so many words and not say a thing?
Natural selection means that evolution is very limited as natural selection has proven to be impotent.
Moreover, dimensionally speaking, Natural Selection is not even be on the right playing field in the first place:
4-D power scaling is pervasive in biology:
Here is picture and schematic of, what a Darwinist termed, a ‘horrendously complex’ metabolic pathway, (which operates as if it were ’4-Dimensional’):
I personally hold that the reason why internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional instead of three dimensional is because of exactly what Darwinian evolution has consistently failed to explain the origination of. i.e. functional information.
Dr. Andy C. McIntosh, who is the Professor of Thermodynamics Combustion Theory at the University of Leeds (the highest teaching/research rank in U.K. university hierarchy), has written a peer-reviewed paper in which he holds that it is ‘non-material information’ which is constraining the local thermodynamics of a cell to be in such a extremely high non-equilibrium state:
Moreover, Dr. McIntosh holds that regarding information as independent of energy and matter ‘resolves the thermodynamic issues and invokes the correct paradigm for understanding the vital area of thermodynamic/organizational interactions’.
Dr. McIntosh’s contention that ‘non-material information’ must be constraining life to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium has been borne out empirically.
It is now found that ‘non-local’, beyond space-time matter-energy, quantum entanglement/information ‘holds’ DNA (and proteins) together:
That ‘non-local’ quantum entanglement, which conclusively demonstrates that ‘information’ in its pure ‘quantum form’ is completely transcendent of any time and space constraints (Bell, Aspect, Leggett, Zeilinger, etc..), should be found in molecular biology on such a massive scale, i.e. found in every DNA and protein molecule, is a direct empirical falsification of Darwinian claims, for how can the ‘non-local’ quantum entanglement ‘effect’ in biology possibly be explained by a material (matter/energy) cause when the quantum entanglement effect falsified material particles as its own causation in the first place? Appealing to the probability of various ‘random’ configurations of material particles, as Darwinism does, simply will not help since a timeless/spaceless cause must be supplied which is beyond the capacity of the material particles themselves to supply!
In other words, to give a coherent explanation for an effect that is shown to be completely independent of any time and space constraints one is forced to appeal to a cause that is itself not limited to time and space!
i.e. Put more simply, you cannot explain a effect by a cause that has been falsified by the very same effect you are seeking to explain! Improbability arguments of various ‘special’ configurations of material particles, which have been a staple of the arguments against neo-Darwinism, simply do not apply since the cause is not within the material particles in the first place!
Thus neo-Darwinism, even though most Darwinists will, for ‘religious reasons’, certainly refuse to accept the falsification, is empirically falsified as to its claim that information is ‘emergent’ from a material basis.
Verse and Music:
supplemental note:
The reason why a ‘higher dimensional’ 4-Dimensional structure, such as a ‘horrendously complex’ metabolic pathway, would be, for all intents and purposes, completely invisible to a 3-Dimensional process, such as Natural Selection, is best illustrated by ‘flatland’:
Moreover, as mentioned previously, Natural Selection, since it has no mind, cannot ‘see’ even one microsecond into the future so as to reach a ‘target’:
In other words, the only thing that the ‘blind watchmaker, i.e. natural selection, can ‘see’ is not some future target, but natural selection can only ‘see’ what is directly in front of it. Namely, the only thing that natural selection can ‘see’ is successful reproduction.
Thus, if evolution by natural selection were actually the truth about how all life came to be on Earth then the only ‘life’ that would be around would be extremely small organisms with the highest replication rate, and with the most mutational firepower, since only they, since they greatly outclass multi-cellular organism in terms of ‘reproductive success’, would be fittest to survive in the dog eat dog world where blind pitiless evolution rules and only the fittest are allowed to survive. The logic of this is nicely summed up here:
i.e. Since successful reproduction is all that really matters on a neo-Darwinian view of things, how can anything but successful reproduction be realistically ‘selected’ for? Any other function besides reproduction, such as sight, hearing, thinking, etc.., would be highly superfluous to the primary criteria of successfully reproducing, and should, on a Darwinian view, be discarded as so much excess baggage since it would, sooner or later, slow down successful reproduction.
Humorously, the real world example that Dawkins gave to Dembski, (in Dembski’s critique of the hidden teleology within the “WEASEL” program), illustrates exactly this point, i.e. the point that natural selection can only ‘see’ successful reproduction and will ‘discard excess baggage’:
Yet when we look at ‘Spiegelman’s minivariant’ we find:
Needless to say, Dawkins real world example of ‘Spiegelman’s minivariant’, i.e. loss of information to gain a reproductive advantage, to support his WEASEL program to Dembski is NOT what Dawkins needed to prove his point. But in actuality Dawkins’ real world example proved Dembski’s ‘hidden teleology’ critique of Dawkins’ to be on the mark.
As in, cold weather eliminates ‘non-cold-weather-animals’? Sure, but that is elimination and not creation.
“Less useful” such as the pathways related to warm weather?
wd400:
I can find the target on the first attempt without any selection whatsoever.
I know what the term means, I even referred to it in my comment (“creationists have said a lot of stupid things about [Dawkins’ Weasel]”). But it’s really not relevant at all here. You say adding selection slows the process of discovering adaptive regions of the space of all replicators. So I’ll ask you a third time:
How quickly will you find a sentence like the target without selection? How quickly with selection?
The “goal” in evolution, to use telic language, is survival and fecundity. Selection is our term for the process of nature sorting out which individuals survive and reproduce and which don’t.
Weasel doesn’t even approach “toy model” status in terms or representing biological evolution. For example, in nature, the environment is dynamic, and so what configures are best adapted to flourishing and reproduction are constantly changing, a fundamental dynamic Weasel doesn’t even try to capture (and that’s a feature, as it’s pedagogy trying to demonstrate a principle rather than a model). Furthermore, in biological evolution, the selection process is statistical; a particularly “fit” individual — say a baby bird born with extraordinarily strong traits (fast, acute vision, coloring that is advantageous for that part of the forest it lives in, etc.) gets eaten by predator who just happened by when the chick was still just a few hours out the egg. Another nearby nest was missed by the predator, and baby birds in that nest, with less advantageous traits, at least advanced to live beyond their first few hours.
The statistical nature of selection isn’t captured at all by Weasel, nor should it be, because it’s not intended as or even remotely qualified as a model of evolution.
It’s just pedagogy, Joe, a way to understand an important principle about the efficacy of random variation and cumulative processes.
@Mung,
In the weasel program, the search function doesn’t know the answer — the answer is kept in an “oracle”, and successive attempts by the search process are judged by the oracle.
Unless you suppose you are the oracle, here, I don’t see how you would do this. How do you determine the target on your first attempt without “peeking behind the curtain” of the oracle? The weasel search function doesn’t do that, so if you are trying to best Weasel, how would this be done better, let alone on the first attempt?
Here is what Gregory Chaitin said, in 2011, about the limits of the computer program he was trying to develop to prove that Darwinian evolution was mathematically feasible:
Here is the video where, at the 30:00 minute mark, you can hear the preceding quote from Chaitin’s own mouth in full context:
Moreover, at the 40:00 minute mark of the video Chaitin readily admits that Intelligent Design is the best possible way to get evolution to take place, and at the 43:30 minute mark Chaitin even tells of a friend pointing out that the idea Evolutionary computer model that Chaitin has devised does not have enough time to work. And Chaitin even agreed that his friend had a point, although Chaitin still ends up just ‘wanting’, and not ever proving, his idea Darwinian mathematical model to be true!
Chaitin is quoted, by Marks, at 10:00 minute mark of following video in regards to Darwinism lack of a mathematical proof – Dr. Marks also comments on the honesty of Chaitin in personally admitting that his long sought after mathematical proof for Darwinian evolution failed to deliver the goods that he thought it had.
Here is the paper that Marks confronted Chaitin with:
Since you refuse to read the article I referred to several times and keep insisting on its irrelevancy to Dawkins Weasel, an excerpt:
Box: “Less useful” such as the pathways related to warm weather?
Assuming binary survival, then it reduces the search space in half, making the search more tractable.
In your example, NS eliminates half the search team. What’s the gain? More resources available to the remaining half, what else can be said?
What are the negatives? Massive loss of valuable information. And the eliminated part of the search team might have been on to something which was right around the corner — we’ll never know.
You guys can try to spin the Darwinian nonsense anyway you want, but eliminating half the search team doesn’t improve chances for a successful Easter egg hunt.
So you can’t answer the question?
Selection doesn’t find targets.
Weasel doesn’t model selection, unless you think matching and locking to a pre-defined target is “selection”.
In that case, Dawkins found the target sentence before he needed any algorithms to select it. So, much faster without Weasel.
eigenstate already correctly explained that Weasel is not even good enough to be a toy model. Do you really want to waste more time defending it?
WD400,
I think you know my answer already. I fully agree with ‘creationist’ Dembski.
Here goes for the record:
If “selection” [read: elimination] is tampered with, if information is smuggled in — as is the case with Dawkins’ weasel — then …
What is it that about that algorithm that makes people say such strange things. I’ve never claimed Weasel is a good model of real biological evolution — just a good demonstration of an important idea. Which is all Dawkins uses it for.
It is a very simple model of a sort of selection, and it’s enough to demonstate that Box is wrong. I guess that’s why he or she refuses to answer this simple question.
The target sequence creates a fitness landscape. Since you claim is that selection will be slow to find regions of high fitness there is necessarily a fitness landscape in your claim. So…
WD400,
Have you come to the understanding that Dawkins’ weasel is bogus? If so, do you also understand that — on principle — you cannot prove anyone wrong based on a bogus argument?
wd400: How quickly will you find a sentence like the target without selection?
Immediately. By cutting out the middleman, as it were. I don’t need selection and I don’t need to do a search. Instead of generating strings at random to start with I just generate the target phrase. Done.
eigenstate: How do you determine the target on your first attempt without “peeking behind the curtain” of the oracle?
The program already peeks behind the curtain. You might say I just peek and then remember what I saw rather than pretending that no peeking went on.
To begin with, the target is a fixed length string. It consists of a specific number of characters. How does the program know to only generate strings of that specific length? Let’s just say it “peeks behind the curtain.”
That significantly reduces the size of the search space.
Second, the characters that are generated are quite limited. 26 plus a space iirc. How does the program know to include only those specific characters in the candidate strings it generates and no others? Let’s just say it “peeks behind the curtain.”
That also significantly reduces the size of the search space.
That’s the magic of “cumulative selection.” It works by peeking behind the curtain.
Yes, Mung. Very clever. Not at all relevant but well done.
Box, you know that everyone can read the rest of my comments right? Not just the bits you quote?
@Mung
No it doesn’t and you can examine the source code to establish this with certainty for yourself. The search never has access to the target value and only goes on the feedback given to it by the oracle. If it could do what you are suggesting you would do, it too would have the answer in one step. You’ve just misunderstood what is being kept hidden from the search function and how it incorporates the feedback it gets from the oracle (which doesn’t give it access to the target itself) to eventually converge on the target.
As Dawkins points out, for any subtantial length of string (more than a dozen chars, say), the search space is so large that targets cannot expected to be found in any practical time frame. If we wanted to make Weasel more complex (not advised for its purposes), we could have the string lengths be unknown as well, and the oracle would just return champions based on a matching algorithm that would incorporate character matching and string length.
Doesn’t matter. The search space as defined is already way beyond huge enough to make the point it is trying to make, which is that a cumulative search radically accelerates the speed at which we move toward the target. A dumb search would never get there in our lifetimes. Making the search harder would provide nothing that’s not already there, pedagogically.
See above, the search space as is already many orders of magnitude beyond what it needs to be to make the point it is trying to make.
Oy, I think you’ve missed the whole point of Weasel’s pedagogy. It’s precisely because it can’t ‘peek behind the curtain’, to see the target, that a cumulative query process against an oracle is so effective. Making Weasel guess at the string length, and making the string candidates any UNICODE character would not change anything but make the search space larger, and take longer for Weasel to run. The dynamics would be the same, and the pedagogy the same, it would just make you wait longer to see it work.
eigenstate:
Clueless.
Clueless, it’s a way to understand intelligently designed, goal-oriented processes. Or, in your case, it’s a way to teach dishonesty and equivocation.
If weasel merely eliminated the less fit, ie the furthest from the target, the target would never be reached.
Suppose an Easter egg hunt on a round island. The search team starts at the center of the island. The search team consists of replicators who each move in a straight line in a random direction. These replicators need food in order to replicate. The replicators need to replicate every 10 minutes. There is not enough food for all replicators. More food implies more replication.
The Easter egg is located somewhere at the border of the island. The shortest route (straight line) for a replicator from the center of the island to the Easter egg takes 30 minutes.
Let’s start the search! The replicators take off in all directions.
After 10 minutes into the search we see that only a few replicators have positioned themselves in a position from which the Easter egg can be reached in approximate 20 minutes.
Now suppose that “natural selection” steps in and the fitness landscape is so that it kills off all the replicators that are positioned 21 minutes or more from the Easter egg. This means more food for the ‘20 minutes replicators’, which means more replication by the ‘20 minutes replicators’. It follows that directions from the ’20 minutes position’ on the island will be better explored — a larger search team is formed than expected without natural selection. This will indeed increase the chance of finding the Easter egg.
Suppose that the same thing happens after 20 minutes into the search. A small percentage of the replicators find themselves at a 10 minute distance from the Easter egg. And again natural selection steps in to increase the number of replicators that find themselves at 10 minutes distance.
This is IMO an alternative version of Dawkins’ Weasel.
And I do admit that under this unlikely scenario natural selection enhances chances for a successful search.
Allow me to step aside and let Dembski explain the problems with this depiction of natural selection:
Box: In your example, NS eliminates half the search team. What’s the gain? More resources available to the remaining half, what else can be said?
It eliminates half the search space, making the search more tractable.
Box: Massive loss of valuable information.
You defined it as valueless information.
Silver Asiatic: Weasel doesn’t model selection, unless you think matching and locking to a pre-defined target is “selection”.
The phrase “Methinks …” represents an arbitrary environment.
Silver Asiatic: eigenstate already correctly explained that Weasel is not even good enough to be a toy model.
It’s not a toy model of biological evolution, but is a simplified model of selection.
Box: where did these well-wrought fitness landscapes come from, such that evolution manages to produce the fancy stuff around us?
The fitness landscape is the relationship of the organism to the environment.
This is among my favourite creationists/ID tactics. Not just the trusty retreat tot the origin of life, but now to the origin of the universe!
wd400- Yours cannot explain anything. Not the origin of life. Not the universe and not the diversification of life.
Not only is natural selection impotent, it is useless as a research heuristic.
Only intelligent agents can select. So thank you for admitting “weasel” is an example of intelligent design evolution.
Z
Nice manipulative double-speak.
It’s not a model of evolution, it’s just a simplified model of evolutionary selection. The selection is intelligent, but that’s only in the model. Evolution does it without the intelligence.
It’s not a toy. It’s a toy model of simplified selection, but not real selection. It’s just an excellent pedagogical tool for how evolution works. No, not how evolution really works. It just proves that evolution really does work if evolution worked like the toy does. Which it doesn’t, but that’s ok. I mean, come on – it’s just meant to prove something!
Silver Asiatic: It’s not a model of evolution, it’s just a simplified model of evolutionary selection.
There’s a mathematical set which includes instances of evolutionary processes. Biological evolution is an element of this set. Weasel is not a model of *biological* evolution. It is a simplified model of selection.
Only intelligent agents can select. And because of tat “weasel” is an example of intelligent design evolution.
Mung: The program already peeks behind the curtain. You might say I just peek and then remember what I saw rather than pretending that no peeking went on.
eigenstate: No it doesn’t and you can examine the source code to establish this with certainty for yourself.
First, I can’t examine the source code, be cause it no longer exists. So you are wrong about that.
Second, Yes it does “peek” and I provided two clear instances of how it does, and you even go on later to admit that this is in fact the case.
eigenstate:
So yes, there it is in your own words, the program is in possession of information about the target that would otherwise be hidden to it and encapsulated in the oracle.
This is the mistake that Carpathian made and never did manage to bring himself to admit. So you’re one up on Carpathian. [Only up one because you earlier denied what you now admit.]
It’s not that you might have to wait longer to see it work, it’s more like it may never be seen to work, and thus lose the alleged value it has, pedagogical or otherwise.
There’s not “power of cumulative selection” if there’s no cumulative selection to demonstrate.
Can you revive the weasel? I’d like to see you at least make the attempt.
Tell you what, I’ll even spot you a couple modifications to the oracle:
1.) You can let the oracle give a higher fitness to strings that are closer in length to the length of the target phrase.
2.) You can let the oracle give a higher fitness to strings that are contain only ASCII characters.
Anything more than that and I will go back to claiming you’re a stacking the deck by sneaking in information that does not proceed from the oracle as a fitness value.
Do try.
WD400 and Zach,
I do hope that you guys have come to the understanding in general it’s unhelpful to decimate the search team (natural selection) even if that frees up resources.
Such barbarism is only beneficial when you get extremely lucky or when circumstances have been tampered with — see Dawkins’ Weasel.
Box: I do hope that you guys have come to the understanding in general it’s unhelpful to decimate the search team (natural selection) even if that frees up resources.
We do hope you have come to the understanding in general that resources are necessarily limited (e.g. physical space, energy sources), so natural selection leads to adaptation for acquisition of resources.
Box,
No. It’s not even really about rescoures. As long as there is a fitness landscape and and genotypes that are close to each other have similar finesses then natural selection will prevent your “team” from exploring unprofitable parts of the landscape.
I don’t think this can be put more clearly, but it seems unlikely you are going to modify your position so I guess I’m done.
Zachriel:
Your rhetoric isn’t evidence
Unprofitable parts of the landscape? There is no way of knowing. My eliminated team may have been on to something and maybe your team of winners got itself isolated. In the real world one cannot count on Dawkinian oracles.
Oh, you mean fitness landscapes are full of adaptive regions and just wandering off in any which way will find them? That’s not a normal ID position…
That’s not what I wrote at all. I object to your suggestion that natural selection steers organisms to greener pastures far away from “unprofitable parts of the landscape”. My objection is that there is no basis whatsoever for your expectation in reality — as opposed to Dawkins’ oracle fantasy land.
Box. Do you think the genotypes close to a git genotype are more likely to be themselves be fit than random genotypes?
If you do, and and so selection keeps organisms from the fitness valleys/holes. Or you don’t, and the fitness lanscape if full of adaptive regions and evolution is easy as anything.
I should have guessed that brining up the Weasel algorithm would lead to a side-track circus. If you are interested in real evolutionary biology (and not just a demonstration of one key point) on realted topics you could start with Wright(in the 1930s), Fisher on his so called geometric model and if you really get into it Gavrilets book on landscapes and speciation.
@Mung,
There are weasel implementations available in a large number of languages see here for example, a C++ implementation.
There’s no peeking. The implementation linked above uses, as did Dawkins, a fixed string length, but this is define in the structure of the code at compile time. The program doesn’t “look” anywhere to discover anything that will help it in either case.
More importantly, the part of the program that is generating mutations and new candidates does not know, and cannot access the target value. The mutation loop calls the fitness function, and supplies the candidate string, just getting back a score in return indicating the fitness, or relative distance to the target, but not the target itself:
// this function returns 0 for the destination string, and a
// negative fitness for a non-matching string. The fitness is
// calculated as the negated sum of the circular distances of the
// string letters with the destination letters.
static int fitness(std::string candidate)
{
assert(target.length() == candidate.length());
int fitness_so_far = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < target.length(); ++i)
{
int target_pos = allowed_chars.find(target[i]);
int candidate_pos = allowed_chars.find(candidate[i]);
int diff = std::abs(target_pos - candidate_pos);
fitness_so_far -= std::min(diff, int(allowed_chars.length()) - diff);
}
return fitness_so_far;
}
This function is the “oracle” I mentioned earlier. It has access to the target value, which it must in order to assess fitness. But the caller of this function does not get the target value returned, or have access to it. There’s no “peeking” at the answer, just a score returned that enables prioritizing of candidates as some score better than others. As this runs in a cumulative fashion, the repeated variation and re-scoring will converge on the target, which remains unknown until the actual target is matched exactly (fitness score == 0).
Adding variable string length, or Unicode support is not hard to do, but adds nothing to the demonstration, except make it run longer to show what it is designed to show. There’s nothing special about 28 characters — it could have been a longer string (will take more time on average), or shorter (less time). This is just the length of the string Dawkins fancied from Shakespeare to use for the example.
The size of the search space is not a factor in this demonstration. It can be arbitrarily small or large, doesn’t matter. The pedagogy here is to show that for any given search space, large or small, cumulative processes with positive feedback loops will converge much faster on any given target (and this true whether the target is static or dynamic across the running time of the program) than a simple incremental search will.
eigenstate, Thank you for proving “weasel” has nothing to do with natural selection.
Evolutionism isn’t a search. And its “cumulative process” will give you an albino dwarf with sickle-cell anemia.
Mung:
Mung, this is a key point.
Different parts of the process do not have an indication of what the other parts are doing.
For instance, the selection function might be changed in the middle of a run and the other functions would not know that the selection criteria had changed.
There is no “conspiracy” between the functions that result in the output.
I am amazed that someone who likes to talk as much about software as you do, has such a misguided understanding of how software works.
Mung:
I don’t understand why you insist on looking at source code all the time.
How is it you don’t simply understand the underlying concept?
If I gave you a function name and it’s parameters you should be able to understand what’s going on.
Secondly, whether or not one implementation of algorithm X contains a certain functionality, doesn’t mean that other implementations do.
You should be able to write a Weasel program yourself from scratch that does not require the code to be modified with different string lengths or content.
If you can’t, then that’s a limitation of yours, not the Weasel algorithm’s.
Weasel doesn’t implement natural selection, nor does it purport to. Selection in biology isa vastly more complex, dynamic and non-linear process. Weasel just shows how a cumulative process — simple like Weasel’s or mind-crushingly complex like selection in biology — vastly accelerates convergence on local optima.
I agree it’s not a search — “search” implies a kind of teleology that isn’t apt for biology. But the process is one that optimizes. And that optimization is radically improved by cumulative feedback loops. Weasel is a nice window into the power of cumulative feedback loops in a converging processes.
eigenstate- the only selection in biology is artificial selection. Natural selection is eliminative, not selective. Natural selection does not optimize. Whatever is good enough gets the chance at reproduction.
wd400
When you ask a clown (Dawkins) to demonstrate some tricks on a toy model, and the carnival barkers try to sell it with double-talk (“Step right up! Take a look at something that’s a kind of selection, and watch it create Shakespeare! With no intelligent design involved at all!”)
Yes, I’d say you have the beginnings of a circus right there.
You introduced it, wd. Then you asked several pointed questions about Weasel. Then tried to defend it, amazingly.
@Joe
Removal is selection — the unremoved remain, the removed are… removed. If you deal 5 cards to you and tell you to discard three, by removing three cards from your hand — any three — you are necessarily selecting the remaining two.
It can’t be otherwise, Joe, and the is basic.
eigenstate, Ernst Mayr explains the difference in “What Evolution Is”:
Eliminating the bottom 3% is much different from selecting the top 3%. That is basic.
Eigenstate,
So soldiers were selected during the Battle of Wounded Knee? Is that the proper basic way to look at things?
eigenstate: Weasel doesn’t implement natural selection, nor does it purport to.
Don’t be a fool. It allegedly demonstrates “cumulative selection” (whatever that means).
Are you saying that natural selection is not cumulative selection?
Or perhaps I should say don’t take us for fools.
eigenstate: I agree it’s not a search — “search” implies a kind of teleology that isn’t apt for biology.
Yet the Weasel algorithm is a search algorithm. What’s wrong with this picture then? Oh, it’s not apt for biology.
Then why is it constantly coming up (or other programs like it) in discussions of biological evolution?
Oh, I know, blame the creationists!
Virgil Cain:
If you select the top 3%, you have eliminated the bottom 97%.
If you eliminate the bottom 3%, you have selected the top 97%.
Carpathian:
Really? Wow
And that is much different than selecting the top 3%.
Thank you for proving my point.
Mung:
The selection function could display pixels on the screen corresponding to the bits in the string and accept input from viewers as selection criteria.
The algorithm would then use the most pleasant display as voted on by viewers as the new parent.
The string that eventually evolves might not be readable or predicted by anyone.
This demonstrates selection .
Since there is now no target with this new selection function, can we agree that selection is what is being demonstrated?
Virgil Cain,
What point?
If you eliminate the bottom, you select the top.
So the bottom of the fitness scale gets eliminated which means the top has been selected.
Just like “Darwinism” says.
SA,
I sometimes really wonder if you even read these posts.
Carpathian, Mayr explained the difference. The top 97% is very different from the top 3%. Selection gets you the top 3% and elimination gets you the top 97%.
Carpathian- The main problem is that reproduction is the very thing that requires an explanation and reproduction is granted in the algorithms.
I could full a bucket with sand.
Then I could allow people to select a handful of sand from the bucket.
That demonstrates selection.
Mung: It allegedly demonstrates “cumulative selection” (whatever that means). Are you saying that natural selection is not cumulative selection?
Natural selection is a subset of selection. Weasel demonstrates selection, but does not model natural selection.
Virgil Cain:
How could you have missed that I have said to you the very same thing you’re saying to me.
I go to the supermarket and I select the three best tomatoes on the shelf.
The other seven I ignore because they’re not good enough for me.
OR……
I go to the supermarket and take the seven worst tomatoes and eliminate them.
I take the remaining three and buy them.
In both cases, I end up with the same three tomatoes.
We use the term “selection” metaphorically , not literally.
This is the problem I see between the two sides.
IDists tend to take a “concept” and analyze it literally while evos look at that same “concept” from a virtual/metaphorical point-of-view.
This is why Dawkins’ Weasel algorithm is so difficult to understand for IDists.
“Selection” is a “concept” which Weasel does a good job of simulating.
Weasel is not actually demonstrating every aspect of evolution.
Carpathian:
Who says that I missed it?
It is you who doesn’t understand it.
Selection is only an intelligent design process.
No, moron. You get to select 3 OR eliminate 3.
Perhaps in your limited mind.
Selection is telic.
Virgil Cain, kairosfocus would not get this wrong.
He’s explained things to Mung before, so maybe he can give you a hand now.
Carpathian, You are clueless. I am saying that you have erected yet another strawman. Obviously you are too stupid to grasp what Mayr said.
BOTH of your scenarios are artificial selection.
Virgil Cain:
And nature performs natural “selection” by “eliminating” those that can’t “survive”.
Again, the idea of a “concept” or “metaphor” is lost on IDists.
Ask kairosfocus for help on understanding what a metaphor is.
Carpathian:
Yes, those 3% that are eliminated and those 97% that survive.
In contrast selection would choose 3% and eliminate the 97%.
As I said you are too stupid to grasp what Mayr said.
Virgil Cain, kairosfocus, Virgil Cain needs help in understanding “metaphors”.
Also, please explain to him how negative logic is used on a motherboard.
It may help him understand the concept of a “concept”.
Typical response when you don’t have a good argument.
So why don’t you break the following down for me.
Carpathian, You need help.
I did. They are both examples of artificial selection. That means it is a strawman as it doesn’t represent the reality of selection and elimination. Mayr explained it. What part of Mayr’s explanation didn’t you understand?
Eliminating the bottom 3% is much different from selecting the top 3%. That is basic.
Instead of responding to that you erected a strawman in which selection and elimination are artificially the same. Clearly Mayr states they are not the same nor do they produce the same result.
Carpathian:
Umm natural selection isn’t a metaphor. Maybe it was supposed to be but, again, there isn’t any selecting. It was a misleading metaphor.
I know more about that than you ever will.
It may help if you stop with your false accusations and actually make a case. So far all you have done is to prove that you are ignorant and in some cases willfully so.
Zachriel: Natural selection is a subset of selection. Weasel demonstrates selection, but does not model natural selection.
Yet another non-informative response from Zachriels. Which of you do I need to talk to to get an answer that actually addresses the question?
According to Dawkins, Weasel demonstrates “the power of cumulative selection.”
Zachriel: Weasel demonstrates selection, but does not model natural selection.
Is that because Weasel doesn’t demonstrate cumulative selection or is that because natural selection is not cumulative selection?
Carpathian:
The algorithm is amazingly simple. There’s nothing about it that is difficult to understand. Even you can understand it. It follows that it cannot possibly be difficult for any IDist to understand it.
You’re just making things up. Again.
Carpathian:
Only a fool thinks that a computer simulation is needed to make selection understandable.
Carpathian:
Correction. Weasel is not actually demonstrating any aspect of evolution.
Carpathian,
Weasel is notoriously known for being an incorrect model of evolution. Even Dawkins himself recognized that, after a while. It is amusing to see others defending the lost case, as the Russian saying goes, waving their hands after a fight.
Weasel is an example of artificial selection. Whenever there is (even implicitly) a defined fitness function, it is not a model of evolution by definition. Instead it is a model of artificial selection. Another example is Genetic Algorithms.
Also, what amuses me is how people are resisting the idea that Darwinian evolution has been falsified, because by saying that it’s been falsified we actually give it credit as a scientific theory. And yet people who vehemently oppose the facts are doing a bad service to Darwinian evolution 🙂 It has played its role in science and can be put back on the shelf. It is a matter of the past. Things prove a lot more complicated than Darwin could even imagine. It is not his fault, of course. But the truth is that his theory cannot even get anywhere near addressing the problem of explaining the observed biological complexity.
Mung:
Then you should understand it, but you don’t.
So why don’t you understand it?
Then you should be able to understand it too, but you don’t.
Then IDists should have recognized the selection algorithm at work, but they haven’t.
A few years ago, there was a discussion that Weasel needed to latch its best selections, which is not true.
If IDists had understood the algorithm they never would have said that.
Then you make up a simple paragraph which describes the Weasel algorithm.
If you understand it, then it should match a description that I or anyone else who understands it would write.
EugeneS:
Neither can ID.
While “Darwinism” has no target to find, ID does.
Finding one target is less probable than “finding” 1000000 targets that will somewhat do the job.
Now take the number of species and populations and “find” a target that will benefit them all and not cause distress to other organisms.
ID’s second engineering problem is rolling out a new design and then fixing any problems out in the field.
Before answering, take a look at the how difficult it is has been to design and then modify F-35 fighters in the field.
Every time there is a redesign of a part, all the units that have already been built have to be modified.
The cost is enormous.
Now try this with billions of new organisms across millions of species spread over the planet.
EugeneS:
Then let’s change the selection algorithm.
Instead of matching a target string, the selection argument will print all the mutated text with a number beside each.
The “environment”, i.e. the user, will enter the number of the selected string.
That text will be the string sent for the next round of mutation and selection.
There will be no input string or “target” so no one can say the algorithm has any idea of what the string should be.
I predict that this program will generate strings that closely reflect what any particular user or groups of users are interested in.
In other words, it will “evolve” a “fit” string for its “environment”.
Carpathian:
We have and thus the argument that weasel is intelligent design evolution in action.
ID doesn’t say there is just one target. Yours doesn’t have a mechanism capable of finding any.
And AGAIN, Carpathian, reproduction is the very thing you need to explain. Using a program that grants reproduction is cheating.
Virgil Cain:
IDists claim there is one target all the time.
Anytime they post a comment that shows the improbability of getting a Royal Flush or unique “CSI” configuration, that is exactly what they are doing.
Look at kairosfocus’ posts about CHI and 500 bits.
When trying to find the best tire for a car, you don’t need to design a new car each time.
“Selection” is just one part of evolution, it is not all of evolution.
This proves you are an IDist that does not understand selection.
There doesn’t seem to be a million different opportunities to evolve a blood-clotting cascade. If evolution finds the wrong target then it can’t just go to the simulator and say “run it again”.
Carp
How many targets did Dawkins create in Weasel?
Carpathian:
There is with “weasel”.
There are 4 possible royal flushes and if the CSI configuration is truly unique then it applies. However yours cannot account for any CSI.
Nice attempt at distraction. I would not attempt to replicate and mutate tires to get a new tire.
“Selection” only applies to ARTIFICIAL selection. Also natural selection includes heritable variation (ie mutations).
REPRODUCTION is still the very thing that requires an explanation.
Silver Asiatic,
Here is selection without a target.
In real life, the environment doesn’t choose a selected string. The environment is continually changing. Mutations also destroy things. They are not ‘cumulative’. The target string in your example is the one the “user selects”.
Evolution is not interested in anything. It doesn’t care. It doesn’t select. There are no targets. The environment changes continually, as does the population. Resources, competitors, environmental events.
You’re locking results to what you imagine “fitness” to be. That is the same as selecting and latching to a target.
This is not different than selecting a phrase from Shakespeare and locking random results that match it.
Carp: crickets, then change the topic.
That’s how a troll responds to a question which exposes his errors.
Carpathian,
Implicit does not mean non-existent. You are still selecting. Read this paper: “Climbing the Steiner Tree” by Ewert, Dembski and Marks
In your case, this is trivial as the user decides. Environment cannot decide anything. Environment is no oracle. You don’t see the difference between the passive filtering of no-hopers by the environment and the active selection process, albeit sometimes implicit, that drives the search towards the area in the search space where the expected number of solutions is higher. This is called active information: you or your user inputs active information to the search algorithm. And then you take the onlooker ‘by surprise’.
One does not have to be an IDist to notice a gross error in Dawkins’ Weasel and in your bogus claim. It just takes a graduate in computer science.
Silver Asiatic: Mung would disagree with you.
No results are locked.
Ask Mung to explain the code of a “Weasel” program.
Silver Asiatic,
Let’s change the selection function again.
Again, the selection function will print all the mutated text with a number beside each.
The “environment”, i.e. a group of users, 10 times the size of the population and unknown to each other, will vote in secret on the number of the selected string.
The text with the highest vote count will be the string sent for the next round of mutation and selection.
There will be no input string or “target” so no one can say the algorithm has any idea of what the string should be.
It will “evolve” a “fit” string for its “environment” without any preconceived idea of what that string should be.
We use a string because a string contains “information”, an attribute that ID should be comfortable working with.
Note that we are not simulating every aspect of evolution .
We are going to see what impact selection has on the building of “information”.
Carpathian:
Selection requires information.
Virgil Cain:
No, it doesn’t.
“Selection” is a metaphor in evolution.
It’s not like going to the record store and buying an album.
It is a metaphor .
Selection requires information
Carpathian:
Of course it does. Show us selection in the absence of information.
“Selection” was a nonsensical attempt to confuse the public. With evolution only artificial selection is actual selection. Natural selection is mere elimination and as Mayr pointed out there is a huge difference between selection and elimination.
Virgil Cain:
The term “selection” was used because it was a good metaphor for what’s going on in nature.
Now please read ….carefully….
You are right about “selection” in nature.
It is actually/explicitly/really , a process of elimination.
What do you understand from this?
Carpathian:
Except it isn’t a good metaphor as that is not what is going on in nature, as Mayr said.
Darwin used it to try to fool people.
What do you understand from this?
Virgil Cain:
You can’t even risk being right if it means you have to think for yourself.
Ask Mayr what I meant.
🙂
And more substance-free, nonsensical crap from the Carpathian.
Loser
Is Carpathian Keith S?
Carpathian “argues” like the cupcake, Richard T Hughes.
Virgil Cain:
Our side argues logically and your side argues emotionally.
I can almost predict when the name calling starts.
It starts right after it becomes obvious that your side can’t answer simple questions about biological ID.
Come up with answers and you won’t have to resort to emotional outbursts.
Carpathian:
Your side doesn’t have any logic. It doesn’t have any evidence and it doesn’t even have a methodology. And your side doesn’t have any answers, either. It can’t answer the most basic of biological questions.