Anything HGT does, Darwinian evolution did not do

_{Denyse O'Leary

August 13, 2015

horizontal gene transfer}

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Talk to the Fossils.jpg 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

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Comments

WD400: I know what the term [conservation of information] 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.
Since you refuse to read the article I referred to several times and keep insisting on its irrelevancy to Dawkins Weasel, an excerpt:
For the target phrase METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL, Dawkins bypasses the Shakespeare hypothesis -- that would be too obvious and too intelligent-design friendly. Instead of positing Shakespeare, who would be an intelligence or designer responsible for the text in question (designers are a no-go in conventional evolutionary theory), Dawkins asks his readers to suppose an evolutionary algorithm that evolves the target phrase. But such an evolutionary algorithm privileges the target phrase by adapting the fitness landscape so that it assigns greater fitness to phrases that have more corresponding letters in common with the target. And where did that fitness landscape come from? Such a landscape potentially exists for any phrase whatsoever, and not just for METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. Dawkins's evolutionary algorithm could therefore have evolved in any direction, and the only reason it evolved to METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL is that he carefully selected the fitness landscape to give the desired result. Dawkins therefore got rid of Shakespeare as the author of METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL, only to reintroduce him as the (co)author of the fitness landscape that facilitates the evolution of METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. The bogusness of this example, with its sleight-of-hand misdirection, has been discussed ad nauseam by me and my colleagues in the ID community. We've spent so much time and ink on this example not because of its intrinsic merit, but because the evolutionary community itself remains so wedded to it and endlessly repeats its underlying fallacy in ever increasingly convoluted guises (AVIDA, Tierra, ev, etc.). For a careful deconstruction of Dawkins's WEASEL, providing a precise simulation under user control, see the "Weasel Ware" project on the Evolutionary Informatics website: www.evoinfo.org/weasel. How does conservation of information apply to this example? Straightforwardly. Obtaining METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL by blind search (e.g., by randomly throwing down Scrabble pieces in a line) is extremely improbable. So Dawkins proposes an evolutionary algorithm, his WEASEL program, to obtain this sequence with higher probability. Yes, this algorithm does a much better job, with much higher probability, of locating the target. But at what cost? At an even greater improbability cost than merely locating the target sequence by blind search. Dawkins completely sidesteps this question of information cost. Foreswearing any critical examination of the origin of the information that makes his simulation work, he attempts instead, by rhetorical tricks, simply to induce in his readers a stupefied wonder at the power of evolution: "Gee, isn't it amazing how powerful evolutionary processes are given that they can produce sentences like METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL, which ordinarily require human intelligence." But Dawkins is doing nothing more than advise our hapless borrower with the juice loan to suppose a key to a safety deposit box with the money needed to pay it off. Whence the key? Likewise, whence the fitness landscape that rendered the evolution of METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL probable? In terms of conservation of information, the necessary information was not internally created but merely smuggled in, in this case, by Dawkins himself. [W. Dembski, Conservation of Information Made Simple]
Box_{August 16, 2015
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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:
At last, a Darwinist mathematician tells the truth about evolution - VJT - November 2011 Excerpt: In Chaitin’s own words, “You’re allowed to ask God or someone to give you the answer to some question where you can’t compute the answer, and the oracle will immediately give you the answer, and you go on ahead.” https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/at-last-a-darwinist-mathematician-tells-the-truth-about-evolution/
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:
Life as Evolving Software, Greg Chaitin at PPGC UFRGS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlYS_GiAnK8
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.
On Algorithmic Specified Complexity by Robert J. Marks II - 2014 - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No3LZmPcwyg&feature=player_detailpage#t=600
Here is the paper that Marks confronted Chaitin with:
Active Information in Metabiology - Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, Robert J. Marks II - 2013 Excerpt: Introduction: Chaitin’s description of metabiology [3] is casual, clear, compelling, and mind-bending. Yet in the end, although the mathematics is beautiful, our analysis shows that the metabiology model parallels other attempts to illustrate undirected Darwinian evolution using computer models [10–13]. All of these models depend on the principle of conservation of information [14–21], and all have been shown to incorporate knowledge about the search derived from their designers; this knowledge is measurable as active information [14,22–25]. Except page 9: Chaitin states [3], “For many years I have thought that it is a mathematical scandal that we do not have proof that Darwinian evolution works.” In fact, mathematics has consistently demonstrated that undirected Darwinian evolution does not work. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2013.4/BIO-C.2013.4 podcast: "Dr. Robert Marks: Active Information in Metabiology" - May 2014 http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2014-05-28T16_06_40-07_00 Dr. Robert Marks: Active Information in Metabiology - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJSJg0IZtfI
bornagain77_{August 16, 2015
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@Mung,
I can find the target on the first attempt without any selection whatsoever.
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?eigenstate_{August 16, 2015
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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.
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.eigenstate_{August 16, 2015
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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.
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?wd400_{August 16, 2015
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wd400:
How quickly will you find a sentence like the target without selection? How quickly with selection?
I can find the target on the first attempt without any selection whatsoever.Mung_{August 16, 2015
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Zach: natural selection tends to push the search into areas of highest fitness.
As in, cold weather eliminates 'non-cold-weather-animals'? Sure, but that is elimination and not creation.
Zach: Generally less useful pathways are not explored.
"Less useful" such as the pathways related to warm weather?Box_{August 16, 2015
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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':
Natural Selection Can’t Select a Future Function – June 2015 In this short video from the Discovery Institute, Paul Nelson follows the development of a C. elegans worm from one cell to an adult, showing how “even these little worms, a millimeter long, humble little creatures out there in the compost heap…carry the signal of design unmistakably.”… If something’s going to function in natural selection, it’s got to function now, at this particular moment in time—not five minutes from now, half an hour, a week, a thousand years. So a process that lacks foresight in principle cannot build a[n] unfolding trajectory, an unfolding lineage [of intermediate cells], where you need to know the target. That’s the fundamental difficulty for any undirected process of evolution. What natural selection and other undirected natural mechanisms cannot achieve, intelligent agents can. Intelligent agents are able to foresee distant functional goals. Intelligent agents can coordinate and choreograph the assembly of many separately necessary parts to achieve a functional end. http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2015/06/natural-selection-cant-select-a-future-function.html
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:
Richard Dawkins interview with a ‘Darwinian’ physician goes off track – video Excerpt: “I am amazed, Richard, that what we call metazoans, multi-celled organisms, have actually been able to evolve, and the reason [for amazement] is that bacteria and viruses replicate so quickly — a few hours sometimes, they can reproduce themselves — that they can evolve very, very quickly. And we’re stuck with twenty years at least between generations. How is it that we resist infection when they can evolve so quickly to find ways around our defenses?” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/video_to_dawkin062031.html
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':
"Perhaps you should look at the work of Spiegelman and others on evolution of RNA molecules in an RNA replicase environment. They have found that, repeatedly, if you 'seed' such a solution with an RNA molecule, it will converge on a particular size and form of 'optimal' replicator, sometimes called Spiegelman's minivariant." Richard Dawkins http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/08/conservation_of063671.html
Yet when we look at 'Spiegelman's minivariant' we find:
Spiegelman Monster is the name given to an RNA chain of only 218 nucleotides that is able to be reproduced by an RNA replication enzyme. It is named after its creator, Sol Spiegelman, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Spiegelman introduced RNA from a simple bacteriophage Q? (Q?) into a solution which contained Q?’s RNA replication enzyme, some free nucleotides, and some salts. In this environment, the RNA started to replicate. After a while, Spiegelman took some RNA and moved it to another tube with fresh solution. This process was repeated. Shorter RNA chains were able to replicate faster, so the RNA became shorter and shorter as selection favored speed. After 74 generations, the original strand with 4,500 nucleotide bases ended up as a dwarf genome with only 218 bases. Such a short RNA had been able to replicate very quickly in these unnatural circumstances. In 1997, Eigen and Oehlenschlager showed that the Spiegelman monster eventually becomes even shorter, containing only 48 or 54 nucleotides, which are simply the binding sites for the reproducing enzyme RNA replicase. http://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Spiegelman%20Monster
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.bornagain77_{August 16, 2015
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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’:
Flatland – 3D to 4D shift – Dr. Quantum – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWyTxCsIXE4
bornagain77_{August 16, 2015
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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:
Classical and Quantum Information in DNA – Elisabeth Rieper – video (Longitudinal Quantum Information along the entire length of DNA discussed at the 19:30 minute mark; at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper remarks that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it) https://youtu.be/2nqHOnVTxJE?t=1176 Quantum entanglement holds together life’s blueprint - 2010 Excerpt: When the researchers analysed the DNA without its helical structure, they found that the electron clouds were not entangled. But when they incorporated DNA’s helical structure into the model, they saw that the electron clouds of each base pair became entangled with those of its neighbours. “If you didn’t have entanglement, then DNA would have a simple flat structure, and you would never get the twist that seems to be important to the functioning of DNA,” says team member Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford. http://neshealthblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/quantum-entanglement-holds-together-lifes-blueprint/ Classical and Quantum Information Channels in Protein Chain - Dj. Koruga, A. Tomi?, Z. Ratkaj, L. Matija - 2006 Abstract: Investigation of the properties of peptide plane in protein chain from both classical and quantum approach is presented. We calculated interatomic force constants for peptide plane and hydrogen bonds between peptide planes in protein chain. On the basis of force constants, displacements of each atom in peptide plane, and time of action we found that the value of the peptide plane action is close to the Planck constant. This indicates that peptide plane from the energy viewpoint possesses synergetic classical/quantum properties. Consideration of peptide planes in protein chain from information viewpoint also shows that protein chain possesses classical and quantum properties. So, it appears that protein chain behaves as a triple dual system: (1) structural - amino acids and peptide planes, (2) energy - classical and quantum state, and (3) information - classical and quantum coding. Based on experimental facts of protein chain, we proposed from the structure-energy-information viewpoint its synergetic code system. http://www.scientific.net/MSF.518.491
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!
Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php Closing the last Bell-test loophole for photons – Jun 11, 2013 Excerpt:– requiring no assumptions or correction of count rates – that confirmed quantum entanglement to nearly 70 standard deviations.,,, per physorg etc.. etc..
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:
John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. Goo Goo Dolls: All That You Are https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7hnYzdB-nE
bornagain77_{August 16, 2015
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Moreover, dimensionally speaking, Natural Selection is not even be on the right playing field in the first place:
Post-Darwinist - Denyse O'Leary - Dec. 2010 Excerpt: They quote West et al. (1999), “Although living things occupy a three-dimensional space, their internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional. Quarter-power scaling laws are perhaps as universal and as uniquely biological as the biochemical pathways of metabolism, the structure and function of the genetic code and the process of natural selection." They comment, "In the words of these authors, natural selection has exploited variations on this fractal theme to produce the incredible variety of biological form and function', but there were severe geometric and physical constraints on metabolic processes." "The conclusion here is inescapable, that the driving force for these invariant scaling laws cannot have been natural selection. It's inconceivable that so many different organisms, spanning different kingdoms and phyla, may have blindly 'tried' all sorts of power laws and that only those that have by chance 'discovered' the one-quarter power law reproduced and thrived." Quotations from Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, What Darwin Got Wrong (London: Profile Books, 2010), p. 78-79. https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/16037/
4-D power scaling is pervasive in biology:
4-Dimensional Quarter Power Scaling In Biology – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5964041/ The predominance of quarter-power (4-D) scaling in biology Excerpt: Many fundamental characteristics of organisms scale with body size as power laws of the form: Y = Yo M^b, where Y is some characteristic such as metabolic rate, stride length or life span, Yo is a normalization constant, M is body mass and b is the allometric scaling exponent. A longstanding puzzle in biology is why the exponent b is usually some simple multiple of 1/4 (4-Dimensional scaling) rather than a multiple of 1/3, as would be expected from Euclidean (3-Dimensional) scaling. http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/~drewa/pubs/savage_v_2004_f18_257.pdf Kleiber’s law Excerpt: Kleiber’s law,[1] named after Max Kleiber’s biological work in the early 1930s, is the observation that, for the vast majority of animals, an animal’s metabolic rate scales to the 3/4 power of the animal’s mass. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleiber%27s_law
Here is picture and schematic of, what a Darwinist termed, a ‘horrendously complex’ metabolic pathway, (which operates as if it were ’4-Dimensional'):
Map Of Major Metabolic Pathways In A Cell – Picture http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AKkRRa65sIo/TlltZupczfI/AAAAAAAAE1s/nVSv_5HRpZg/s1600/pathway-1b.png ExPASy - Biochemical Pathways - interactive schematic http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1
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:
Information and entropy – top-down or bottom-up development in living systems? Excerpt: This paper highlights the distinctive and non-material nature of information and its relationship with matter, energy and natural forces. It is proposed in conclusion that it is the non-material information (transcendent to the matter and energy) that is actually itself constraining the local thermodynamics to be in ordered disequilibrium and with specified raised free energy levels necessary for the molecular and cellular machinery to operate. A.C. McINTOSH - Dr Andy C. McIntosh is the Professor of Thermodynamics Combustion Theory at the University of Leeds. (the highest teaching/research rank in U.K. university hierarchy) http://journals.witpress.com/paperinfo.asp?pid=420
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'.
Information and Thermodynamics in Living Systems - Andy C. McIntosh - 2013 Excerpt: ,,, information is in fact non-material and that the coded information systems (such as, but not restricted to the coding of DNA in all living systems) is not defined at all by the biochemistry or physics of the molecules used to store the data. Rather than matter and energy defining the information sitting on the polymers of life, this approach posits that the reverse is in fact the case. Information has its definition outside the matter and energy on which it sits, and furthermore constrains it to operate in a highly non-equilibrium thermodynamic environment. This proposal resolves the thermodynamic issues and invokes the correct paradigm for understanding the vital area of thermodynamic/organisational interactions, which despite the efforts from alternative paradigms has not given a satisfactory explanation of the way information in systems operates.,,, http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789814508728_0008 Biological Information – Information and Thermodynamics in Living Systems 11-22-2014 by Paul Giem (A. McIntosh) – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR_r6mFdwQM
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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.Virgil Cain_{August 16, 2015
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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_{August 16, 2015
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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:
Atheist's logic 101 - cartoon "If I can only create life here in the lab (or in my computer), it will prove that no intelligence was necessary to create life in the beginning" http://legacy-cdn-assets.answersingenesis.org/assets/images/articles/ee/v2/life-by-chance.jpg
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:
video - Dr. Paul Giem - In the book "Biological Information: New Perspectives" the chapter entitled "Computational Evolution Experiments Reveal a Net Loss of Genetic Information Despite Selection" looks at two computer programs (Mendel's Accountant and Avida) and notes that with similar input they give similar output and they require "un-biological" settings in order for evolution to work. Biological Information - Mendel's Accountant and Avida 1-31-2015 by Paul Giem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGd0pznOh0A&list=PLHDSWJBW3DNUUhiC9VwPnhl-ymuObyTWJ&index=14
The following comment gives us a glimpse as to just how unrealistic the default settings for Avida actually are:
Panda’s Thumb Richard Hoppe forgot about Humpty Zombie - April 15, 2014 Excerpt: I discovered if you crank up Avida’s cosmic radiation parameter to maximum and have the Avida genomes utterly scrambled, the Avidian organisms still kept reproducing. If I recall correctly, they died if the radiation was moderate, but just crank it to the max and the creatures come back to life! This would be like putting dogs in a microwave oven for 3 days, running it at full blast, and then demanding they reproduce. And guess what, the little Avida critters reproduced. This little discovery in Avida 1.6 was unfortunately not reported in Nature. Why? It was a far more stupendous discovery! Do you think it’s too late for Richard Hoppe and I to co-author a submission? Hoppe eventually capitulated that there was indeed this feature of Avida. To his credit he sent a letter to Dr. Adami to inform him of the discovery. Dr. Adami sent Evan Dorn to the Access Research Network forum, and Evan confirmed the feature by posting a reply there. http://www.creationevolutionuniversity.com/idcs/?p=90
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:
“The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain - Michael Behe - December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/ Getting There First: An Evolutionary Rate Advantage for Adaptive Loss-of-Function Mutations Michael J. Behe - 2013 http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814508728_0020 Biological Information - Loss-of-Function Mutations (Michael Behe) by Paul Giem 2015 - video (Behe - Loss of function mutations are far more likely to fix in a population than gain of function mutations) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzD3hhvepK8&index=20&list=PLHDSWJBW3DNUUhiC9VwPnhl-ymuObyTWJ
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.
Multiple Overlapping Genetic Codes Profoundly Reduce the Probability of Beneficial Mutation George Montañez 1, Robert J. Marks II 2, Jorge Fernandez 3 and John C. Sanford 4 - May 2013 Conclusions: Our analysis confirms mathematically what would seem intuitively obvious - multiple overlapping codes within the genome must radically change our expectations regarding the rate of beneficial mutations. As the number of overlapping codes increases, the rate of potential beneficial mutation decreases exponentially, quickly approaching zero. Therefore the new evidence for ubiquitous overlapping codes in higher genomes strongly indicates that beneficial mutations should be extremely rare. This evidence combined with increasing evidence that biological systems are highly optimized, and evidence that only relatively high-impact beneficial mutations can be effectively amplified by natural selection, lead us to conclude that mutations which are both selectable and unambiguously beneficial must be vanishingly rare. This conclusion raises serious questions. How might such vanishingly rare beneficial mutations ever be sufficient for genome building? How might genetic degeneration ever be averted, given the continuous accumulation of low impact deleterious mutations? http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814508728_0006
And indeed in fruit flies we find that 'exasperation' for fixing a single beneficial mutation by selection to be the case:
Experimental Evolution in Fruit Flies (35 years of trying to force fruit flies to evolve in the laboratory fails, spectacularly) - October 2010 Excerpt: "Despite decades of sustained selection in relatively small, sexually reproducing laboratory populations, selection did not lead to the fixation of newly arising unconditionally advantageous alleles.,,, "This research really upends the dominant paradigm about how species evolve," said ecology and evolutionary biology professor Anthony Long, the primary investigator. http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2010/10/07/experimental_evolution_in_fruit_flies http://eebweb.arizona.edu/nachman/Suggested%20Papers/Lab%20papers%20fall%202010/Burke_et_al_2010.pdf
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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.Virgil Cain_{August 16, 2015
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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.Silver Asiatic_{August 16, 2015
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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:
"Natural selection does not act on anything, nor does it select (for or against), force, maximize, create, modify, shape, operate, drive, favor, maintain, push, or adjust. Natural selection does nothing…. Having natural selection select is nifty because it excuses the necessity of talking about the actual causation of natural selection. Such talk was excusable for Charles Darwin, but inexcusable for evolutionists now. Creationists have discovered our empty “natural selection” language, and the “actions” of natural selection make huge, vulnerable targets." The Origin of Theoretical Population Genetics, 2001 (pp. 199-200) William Provine - Professor of Evolutionary Biology - Cornell University
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.
Why Do We Invoke Darwin? – Evolutionary theory contributes little to experimental biology – Philip S. Skell -The Scientist – August 29, 2005 Excerpt: In the peer-reviewed literature, the word "evolution" often occurs as a sort of coda to academic papers in experimental biology. Is the term integral or superfluous to the substance of these papers? To find out, I substituted for "evolution" some other word – "Buddhism," "Aztec cosmology," or even "creationism." I found that the substitution never touched the paper's core. This did not surprise me. From my conversations with leading researchers it had became clear that modern experimental biology gains its strength from the availability of new instruments and methodologies, not from an immersion in historical biology."... I found that Darwin’s theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss.,,, Darwinian explanations for such things are often too supple: Natural selection makes humans self-centered and aggressive – except when it makes them altruistic and peaceable. Or natural selection produces virile men who eagerly spread their seed – except when it prefers men who are faithful protectors and providers. When an explanation is so supple that it can explain any behavior, it is difficult to test it experimentally, much less use it as a catalyst for scientific discovery. Darwinian evolution – whatever its other virtues – does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology. http://www.discovery.org/a/2816
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.
"Much of the vast neo-Darwinian literature is distressingly uncritical. The possibility that anything is seriously amiss with Darwin's account of evolution is hardly considered. ... The methodological skepticism that characterizes most areas of scientific discourse seems strikingly absent when Darwinism is the topic." Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/07/second_thoughts098141.html Jonathan Wells on pop science boilerplate - April 20, 2015 Excerpt: Based on my reading of thousands of Peer-Reviewed Articles in the professional literature, I’ve distilled (the) template for writing scientific articles that deal with evolution: 1. (Presuppose that) Darwinian evolution is a fact. 2. We used [technique(s)] to study [feature(s)] in [name of species], and we unexpectedly found [results inconsistent with Darwinian evolution]. 3. We propose [clever speculations], which might explain why the results appear to conflict with evolutionary theory. 4. We conclude that Darwinian evolution is a fact. https://uncommondescent.com/darwinism/jon-wells-on-pop-science-boilerplate/ Rewriting Biology Without Spin By Ann Gauger - Jan. 12, 2014 Excerpt: It’s a funny thing—scientific papers often have evolutionary language layered on top of the data like icing on a cake. In most papers, the icing (evolutionary language) sits atop and separate from the cake (the actual experimental data). Even in papers where the evolutionary language is mixed in with the data like chocolate and vanilla in a marble cake, I can still tell one from the other. I have noticed that this dichotomy creates a kind of double vision. I know what the data underlying evolutionary arguments are. By setting aside the premise that evolution is true, I can read what’s on the page and at the same time see how that paper would read if neutral, fact-based language were substituted for evolutionary language. Let me give you an example.,,, http://www.biologicinstitute.org/post/107965814309/rewriting-biology-without-spin
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:
Michael Behe - Life Reeks Of Design – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdh-YcNYThY
Here are some more examples of Darwinists falsely crediting positive evidence to natural selection, and/or evolution, when no credit is due:
It's Optimal. It Must Have Evolved! - August 16, 2014 Excerpt: "Cell-surface signaling receptors are organized into different architectures that have been arrived at multiple times in diverse contexts. To understand the trade-offs that lead to these architectures, we pose the generic information-processing problem of identifying the optimal strategy for distributed mobile noisy sensors to faithfully "read" an incoming signal that varies in space-time. This involves balancing two opposing requirements: clustering noisy sensors to reduce statistical error and spreading sensors to enhance spatial coverage, resulting in a phase transition that explains the frequent reemergence of a set of architectures. Our results extend to a variety of engineering and communication applications that involve mobile and distributed sensing, and suggest that biology might offer solutions to hard optimization problems that arise in these applications." These (optimal) solutions "have been arrived at" -- by design? No; read the last sentence in the paper: "It is appealing that one might look to biology for insights into solutions of hard optimization problems, arrived at as a result of evolution within an information niche." Evolution did it. Give evolution the engineering design award. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/08/its_optimal_it089031.html Like a Grandfather Clock: The Splicesome's Intricate Dance of Parts - June 17, 2014 Excerpt: Then come the required nods to Darwinian evolution, in three places, always assumed, as usual: "The structure yields clues about the relationship and the relative ages of RNA and proteins, once thought to be much wider apart on an evolutionary time scale."... "What's so cool is the degree of co-evolution of RNA and protein," Brow says. "It's obvious RNA and protein had to be pretty close friends already to evolve like this.".... "It's exciting studying these machines," he says. "There are only three big RNA machines. Ours evolved 2 billion years ago. But once it's figured out, it's done." Darwinian theory had nothing to do with the discoveries. These references to evolution are superfluous. They do more harm than good for Darwinists, anyway. 1. The RNA and protein parts were "once thought to be much wider apart on an evolutionary time scale," implying that a previous assumption about evolution has been overturned. Since they are not wider apart, this exacerbates the problem: how could this intricate relationship occur in less time? Where is the evidence? 2. RNA and protein are not "friends" that co-evolve on purpose; that's nonsense. 3. Saying it "evolved" does not explain how it evolved; the statement is vacuous. The final nonsense is the last sentence: "But once it's figured out, it's done." Ay, there's the rub: how is it "figured out"? Calculations show that the probability of chance "figuring out" a protein are vanishingly small -- so much so, that one as complex as the spliceosome would never arise in the entire history of the universe. Like a late-model SUV equipped with a buggy whip, this was an elegant design article carrying unnecessary baggage. Intelligent design did the work. Evolution, as a useless narrative gloss, adds mass but no force. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/06/like_a_grandfat086791.html
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:
Biologists Are Getting to Be Less Reticent About Using the Phrase "Design Principles" - November 28, 2014 Excerpt: The word "design" appears 24 times in the paper. "Selection" appears twice, in the phrase "selective pressure" (one of them is just a repetition from the Abstract). Any form of the word "evolution" appears just once:,,, We see, therefore, that "design" references outnumber evolutionary references eight to one. We also find "machine" or "machinery" four times, "coding" or "encoding" 15 times, "information" (in terms of information to be processed) five times, "accurate" (in terms of sensing accuracy) 11 times, "precision" 29 times, "efficient" four times, and "optimal" or "optimum" 28 times. Taken together, these design words outnumber evolution words 40 to 1. Do the three passing references to evolution/selection add anything to the paper? One would expect to see it in the final Discussion section, but instead, we find these references to design:,,, The paper would lose nothing if its three passing references to evolution/selection were left on the cutting-room floor. All these scientists could do was look at the end product and decide, "Yep, it's fit. It's optimal." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/11/biologists_are091531.html
bornagain77_{August 16, 2015
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eig
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.
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.Silver Asiatic_{August 16, 2015
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WD400:
Box: Here you can find another interesting article. Dembski writes about his e-mail correspondence with Dawkins on the weasel subject and ‘conservation of information’.
“Conservation of information” doesn’t have anything to do with this.
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.
WD400: 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).
Your assertion sounds hollow after your implicit admission that you have no idea how ‘creationists’ use the term ‘conservation of information’.Box_{August 16, 2015
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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.eigenstate_{August 15, 2015
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Selection guided by feedback. Seems valid. Feedback is information btw. Purposeful useful information.ppolish_{August 15, 2015
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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.eigenstate_{August 15, 2015
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wd400:
It wasn’t cutting edge when it was written — it’s just a useful demonstration of an important idea.
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.Virgil Cain_{August 15, 2015
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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.ppolish_{August 15, 2015
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"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?wd400_{August 15, 2015
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WD400: how quickly will you find a sentence like the target without selection? How quickly with selection?
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:
Where I want to focus is Dawkins's one-word answer to the charge that his WEASEL simulation incorporates an unwarranted teleology -- unwarranted by the Darwinian understanding of evolution for which his Blind Watchmaker is an apologetic. The key line in the above quote is, "In real life of course, the criterion for optimisation is not an arbitrarily chosen distant target but SURVIVAL." Survival is certainly a necessary condition for life to evolve. If you're not surviving, you're dead, and if you're dead, you're not evolving -- period. But to call "survival," writ large, a criterion for optimization is ludicrous. As I read this, I have images of Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate being taken aside at a party by an executive who is about to reveal the secret of success: PLASTICS (you can watch the clip by clicking here).
Box_{August 15, 2015
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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'.
Natural Selection Can’t Select a Future Function - June 2015 In this short video from the Discovery Institute, Paul Nelson follows the development of a C. elegans worm from one cell to an adult, showing how “even these little worms, a millimeter long, humble little creatures out there in the compost heap…carry the signal of design unmistakably.”... If something's going to function in natural selection, it's got to function now, at this particular moment in time—not five minutes from now, half an hour, a week, a thousand years. So a process that lacks foresight in principle cannot build a[n] unfolding trajectory, an unfolding lineage [of intermediate cells], where you need to know the target. That's the fundamental difficulty for any undirected process of evolution. What natural selection and other undirected natural mechanisms cannot achieve, intelligent agents can. Intelligent agents are able to foresee distant functional goals. Intelligent agents can coordinate and choreograph the assembly of many separately necessary parts to achieve a functional end. http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2015/06/natural-selection-cant-select-a-future-function.html
bornagain77_{August 15, 2015
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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?wd400_{August 15, 2015
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WD400: Anyway that chapter demonstrates that you are wrong that selection stops lineages from adaptive parts of “replicator space”. Quite the opposite is true.
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".Box_{August 15, 2015
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The only truthful thing about Dawkin's weasel program is that it was appropriately named:
wea·sel noun noun: weasel; plural noun: weasels 1. a small, slender, carnivorous mammal related to, but generally smaller than, the stoat. 2. informal a deceitful or treacherous person. synonyms: scoundrel, wretch, rogue; informalswine, bastard, creep, louse, rat, ratfink, toad, snake, snake in the grass, serpent, viper, skunk, dog, cur, scumbag, scumbucket, scuzzball, sleazeball, sleazebag, slimeball, sneak, backstabber, heel, nogoodnik, nasty piece of work; datedcad; archaicblackguard, knave, varlet "he was a double-crossing weasel" verb verb: weasel; 3rd person present: weasels; past tense: weaselled; past participle: weaselled; gerund or present participle: weaselling; past tense: weaseled; past participle: weaseled; gerund or present participle: weaseling 1. achieve something by use of cunning or deceit. "she suspects me of trying to weasel my way into his affections"
Dr. Dembski and Dr. Marks comment on the inherent fallacy built into all evolutionary algorithms here:
LIFE’S CONSERVATION LAW - William Dembski - Robert Marks - Pg. 13 Excerpt: (Computer) Simulations such as Dawkins’s WEASEL, Adami’s AVIDA, Ray’s Tierra, and Schneider’s ev appear to support Darwinian evolution, but only for lack of clear accounting practices that track the information smuggled into them.,,, Information does not magically materialize. It can be created by intelligence or it can be shunted around by natural forces. But natural forces, and Darwinian processes in particular, do not create information. Active information enables us to see why this is the case. http://evoinfo.org/publications/lifes-conservation-law/
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,,
“Information does not magically materialize. It can be created by intelligence or it can be shunted around by natural forces. But natural forces, and Darwinian processes in particular, do not create information.” - William Dembski
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
A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature – Book Review Excerpt: They focus instead on what “Methinks it is like a weasel” really means. In isolation, in fact, it means almost nothing. Who said it? Why? What does the “it” refer to? What does it reveal about the characters? How does it advance the plot? In the context of the entire play, and of Elizabethan culture, this brief line takes on significance of surprising depth. The whole is required to give meaning to the part. http://www.thinkingchristian.net/C228303755/E20060821202417/
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:
Ham. Do you see yonder cloud that ’s almost in shape of a camel? Pol. By the mass, and ’t is like a camel, indeed. Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel. Pol. It is backed like a weasel. Ham. Or like a whale? Pol. Very like a whale. http://www.bartleby.com/100/138.32.147.html
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:
What Is a Mind? More Hype from Big Data - Erik J. Larson - May 6, 2014 Excerpt: In 1979, University of Pittsburgh philosopher John Haugeland wrote an interesting article in the Journal of Philosophy, "Understanding Natural Language," about Artificial Intelligence. At that time, philosophy and AI were still paired, if uncomfortably. Haugeland's article is one of my all time favorite expositions of the deep mystery of how we interpret language. He gave a number of examples of sentences and longer narratives that, because of ambiguities at the lexical (word) level, he said required "holistic interpretation." That is, the ambiguities weren't resolvable except by taking a broader context into account. The words by themselves weren't enough. Well, I took the old 1979 examples Haugeland claimed were difficult for MT, and submitted them to Google Translate, as an informal "test" to see if his claims were still valid today.,,, ,,,Translation must account for context, so the fact that Google Translate generates the same phrase in radically different contexts is simply Haugeland's point about machine translation made afresh, in 2014. Erik J. Larson - Founder and CEO of a software company in Austin, Texas http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/05/what_is_a_mind085251.html
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