>If God can fully predict what will occur
>from the development of such a program, doesn't this imply that the
>program is determinisic.
Thanks for a really insightful post (most of which I've deleted) Lloyd.
Since I don't really understand the detailed workings of Glenn's programs
I'll try to answer this from the more general context chaotic dynamics
and complexity "theory" [I have to put theory in quotes here in view
of the recent SciAm article :-) ].
Chaos is commonly misunderstood to mean non-deterministic when it
actually means deterministic yet unpredictable. I think there is
some difference in opinion on whether unpredictable means
unpredictable in principle or unpredictable in practice. I prefer
the latter except possibly for the case of quantum chaos, which I
know absolutely nothing about. Anyway, a chaotic system is totally
determined by the governing equations and the initial (and/or boundary)
conditions. The problem is that the behavior is extremely sensitive to
the initial conditions. In trying to extrapolate a prediction to
longer and longer times, the required specificity of the initial
conditions becomes so large that no computer could store the
data. Even if the entire universe were converted into a storage
medium, the capacity would still be exceeded. Of course, our
difficulties at predicting chaos should not apply to God :).
The above observations may, however, be irrelevant with respect to
your points. I think most people would say that life is complex
rather than chaotic [insert puns here :)] where complexity
(or "emergent" phenomena) occurs "at the edge of chaos". This would
tend to make complex phenomena somewhat more amenable to prediction.
Sorry to treat your statements out of order but I also wanted to
comment on the following:
LE: "If the program were run again, would it develop in the same
way or differently?"
Interestingly enough, many of the complexity folks would say,
contra-Gould, that much of life would emerge the same if the
tape were re-wound and played again. Actually, I've found quite
a few things coming from the complexologists that fly in the face
of traditional neo-Darwinist thinking. My gut feeling is that there
is an ulterior motive lurking behind the recent SciAm article
on complexity and that the Lumpenintelligentsia [I learned this
word from Yockey ;-)] are getting nervous.
I have just about finished Brian Goodwin's book <How the Leopard
Changed its Spots> and heartily recomend it to everyone. Terry
recommended this book some time ago on the reflector. I must say
that I had many mis-givings about it initially [after all, it was
recommended by Terry ;-)] and began reading it primarily so that
I could poke holes in it :). Boy was I surprised. Great book.
Goodwins stated objective is to rescue biology from the prevalent
genocentric reductionism and return it to its original organocentric
approach.
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Brian Harper | "Do not conclude from your apprenticeship |
| that you have nothing left to learn" -- Pascal |
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