> When Susan argued (and Chris agreed) that design implies
> states that are clean and smooth, and evolution implies
> states that are messy and opportunistic, I agreed and took
> it a step further:
Chris
I did *not* agree that design implies states that are clean and smooth. I
said that messiness makes design *questionable*, not false. Obviously, *if*
there is a designer, we don't know what his plans or means are, so we don't
know that messiness is *not* part of his plan. But messiness makes the
notion *suspect* (and that's all).
On the other hand, a nice clean orderly structure, such as might be designed
by a human bio-engineer of the future with a lot of computer capacity at his
disposal, should be *much* less complex than many existing cells (for the
same functions).
Mike [?]
> >And guess what? It has become increasingly clear that cells are anything
> >but messy. This view may have been held in the 60s, but we now know
> >that cellular life exists in such a way that precise timing, precise
> positioning,
> >and precise arrangement is crucial. Or consider my posts on
proofreading.
> >Every step along the pathway of information flow is proofread (DNA
> replication
> >transcription, the charging of tRNA, the binding of tRNA to mRNA). This
> >is the very opposite of messy and opportunistic.
Chris
Hardly. If it was as neat as you suggest, it would not *need* the
proofreading process (or only to a much lower degree). The replication
process would get it right the *first* time, if it was so good. This is the
very opposite of neat and methodical. It is this very kind of kludginess
that suggests that there *isn't* a designer (but, as I said, it does not
*prove* that there is no designer).
And you are confusing cells with evolution. Susan was talking about the
*process* by which things come about as an explanation for much of the
kludginess of nature. Because organisms either evolve or move or die out
under strong selective pressures, and because these pressures keep changing
directions without concern for the needs of the local organisms, there is a
disjointedness in the accumulated changes, a degree of hodge-podgeness.
Obviously, too much kludginess and organisms will go out of existence
because the cost of maintaining the structure becomes too high, but there is
still room for a significant degree of such kludginess because not only is
each organism in the environment faced with the need to adjust, but so are
its competitors, its predators, its prey, etc., so, while the survivors have
to be "better" than the competing organisms that die out, they don't have to
be *much* "better." They only have to be -- and often *are* -- just "good
enough."
I'd bet that when we find out enough about cells, we *will* find that they
are not as "neat" as you suggest. For example, it may turn out upon
examination and experimentation that there are many *much* more compact ways
of doing the things that cells do, but that cells "can't get there from
here," because it would require steps that are too big for DNA evolution
*or* steps in directions and along paths that are not permitted by current
selection pressures. If we follow the development of structures and genes,
we
don't find any signs of this development being *planned*. Cells for an
organism
may be at a local minimum of complexity, so that *small* changes of any one
or several factors will disturb its functioning, but that does not mean that
there are not much lower such minima that it can't (yet) reach because of
the accidents of the past.
Mike
> If we are to propose a messy process generated cells, then
> for this proposal to be good science, it ought to carry
> implications about what we should find in the world and
> these implications should be turned into predictions that
> are then supported by what we do find.
>
> So what implications about life are made by the
> "messy process" proposal?
>
> It would seem to me a natural implication to propose
> messy products of a messy process. Common
> experience indicates this (I'm a fairly unorganized and
> messy person (process) and you should see my desk (product)).
> And it is unclear why natural selection would remove the mess, as
> natural selection cares only if "something works" and messy
> things can "work."
Chris
Natural selection *doesn't* remove the mess. That's the point, silly.
Mike
> For example, is the existence of proof-reading, at every step
> along the path of information flow, implied by a messy process
> behind origins? I don't see why. For I really don't see why
> the "messy process" would evolve proofreading at every
> step since the messy process *already* involves a proofreader
> called natural selection.
Chris
This messy process is needed because the initial replication process
is *so* error-prone, *so* messy, that proofreading is a necessity.
As you know, too little variation and the organism cannot keep up
with environmental pressures, but too *much* variation and it
disintegrates genetically and dies out. That is, the organism would die out
if
it did not have some protection for the accuracy of its genes. As I said
above, the need for the error correction just shows how *messy* the
*basic* replication process is. That is, under evolutionary theory, those
organisms that did not have such a process did not retain enough genetic
integrity (the replication process was too messy and sloppy for that) to
enable them to survive in competition with organisms that *did* have such
genetic correction mechanisms to fix some of the errors introduced by the
kludgy and corruption-prone replication process.
My question here is: *Why* did you interpret this *additional* layer of
molecular activity and complexity as a sign of *neatness* and method? Let's
see: We take something that doesn't work too well by itself, and we add a
bunch of stuff to it to *make up* for its failures, and this is *neatness*?
What
you seem to be implying is that the *more* complex and kludgy something is,
the *more* you will claim that it's neat and methodical? Weird, man, we-IRD.
I don't get it. I *am* glad you are not an engineer or computer programmer,
though, if this is the approach you would use in designing things.
Indeed, the need for a "proofreading" process is *precisely* the sort of
thing one would predict on the basis of the premise that evolution is a
messy and opportunistic process, and the additional premise that *plain*
DNA replication is too error-prone, but *not* on the basis of the premise
that there is a designer, because we *might* suppose that he'd design things
so that they got replication right from the beginning. However, since this
is
such a useless and unscientific premise, we can't really draw *any*
empirical predictions from it (this makes your requests (and those of
Stephen) for testable implications a little ironic, to say the least).
There *are* of course, *some* instances of "neatness" in biology, but they
are obviously not the norm. Evolution is the ultimate pragmatist, so *some*
things will turn out to be neat and some things will turn out to be kludgy.
I can already predict some areas in which we will find more kludginess than
in others: Those where evolutionary pressures have been most varied and most
rapidly changing, so that there was not an opportunity for straightforward
development from much simpler states, where life had to take a "right-angle"
turn, so to speak, where existing organs, structures, and genes were pressed
into service for functions that they did not originally evolve to handle. If
development is guided along a smooth path toward some condition along a
single dimension, and is not "jerked about," you will tend to find cleaner
structures. For example, if you take a single-cell organism and selectively
"guide" it *directly* toward adaptedness for some environmental condition,
the result will tend to be simpler and cleaner than if you guide it toward
some significantly different condition *first* and then redirect it toward
the same condition. This will not turn out to be the case for *every*
organism or such set of conditions, but, *statistically,* it will be the
case. If you breed a "camel" directly from a single-celled organism, you
will get a cleaner result than if you breed a camel by first breeding a
pseudo-whale, then a pseudo-polar bear (from the pseudo-whale) and then a
flying organism and *then* finally breed the flying organism into a "camel"
(or pseudo-camel).
Why? Because there will be much more genetic baggage along, and much more
adaptation of genes, organs, structures from one function to another,
greatly different function. Breeding the single-celled organism *directly*
to a pseudo-camel will *still* produce a lot of complexity, of course, and
probably still a lot more than the pseudo-camel really needs (because, even
without the evolutionary "jerking around," the genes will have accumulated
much that could be gotten rid of by a full-fledged redesign). But, still,
the kludginess of the "directly-evolved" vs. the "jerked-around"
pseudo-camel should be much lower, on average.
A designer, of course, would not have to include *any* such genetic baggage
from past times or species. Each newly-introduced species could be designed
from scratch to have *just* the genes and *just* the structures *it* needs,
and the structures could be made *truly* minimal for their level of
effectiveness and function. Since macroevolution by naturalistic means is
excluded by ID theory (except for nearly trivial versions of ID theory, such
as the "Deistic Designer"), we would *expect* that each new organism would
have its own nice clean set of genes, clearly designed for it and it
*alone*. Instead, we find *frequent* apparent genetic, molecular, and
morphological "leftovers" from earlier organisms that lived in radically
different environments. Again, a designer *could* design things the way they
are, but that they *are* the way they are, instead of *much* cleaner and
neater, is *very* suspicious. Why would a "perfect being" be so sloppy? Was
he a dropout at the Godding school of bioengineering? *Very* suspicious.