"Ami Chopine" writes
in message <009201bfc4d5$b73bf020$3f8df4d0@vh2>:
Before I get to the details I want to understand something: is
it your contention that any process or experiment that involves
intelligence in any way can not model a non-intelligent process?
For example, we can set up an erosion experiment in the lab with
a slab of rock, sand and running water. Would you claim that
any erosive features formed prove nothing about nature since
the experiment involved intelligence? If not, please clarify
how intelligence does or does not allow the extrapolation
of lab results to nature.
<snip>
> Tedd:
> > Think about asking the question "who designed our economy?".
> > The answer obviously isn't a single person or intelligence;
> > however, answering "human beings" has some problems. How can
> > we be said to have designed something that large when all we
> > did was individually add small steps to a process with solving
> > only simple, short-term goals in mind?
>
> Ami:
> But it was intellegence which moved here, and there is no such
> thing in the traditional view of RM and NS.
The point I'm trying to make is that invoking "intelligence" is
*not* enough to explain economic complexity. How can we correctly
say the economy was intelligently designed when no one planned,
conceived or predicted it? Who had the blueprint for it? Who
directed each of the billions of tiny steps it required? The
conclusion seems unavoidable that complexity from simple origins
can occur without an intelligent plan or blueprint.
Or are you saying that because humans are intelligent, in some
sense our collective intelligence over time and space forms a
sort of vast "brain" that *can* be said to be the intelligence
that designed our economy? I sort of agree with that, but then
I want to highlight the principle that emerges from that -- that
many simple steps, each requiring only simple, limited intelligence
can produce something that only a vastly greater intellence could
conceive.
If limited goal-directed intelligence can produce something like
that, why not even more limited intelligence? Let's keep
decreasing the level of intelligence while assuming that organisms
still have to reach some sort of goals (food, reproduction,
etc.). At what point does complexity not naturally emerge from
that kind of arrangement? I maintain that complexity *always*
emerges from that. The ecosystem, the "balance" of nature,
is the complexity that emerges from millions of unintelligent
organisms going about their simple business.
> > > This is the thing that leads me to ID. I just see too much
> > > purpose. Sure, I can see simple changes, such as antibiotic
> > > resistance occuring all the time, and within a design paradigm
> > > occuring without intervention.
> >
> Tedd:
> > What purpose specifically? If we can see purpose in antibiotic
> > resistance (and I can, superficially), doesn't that suggest that
> > our idea of purpose is flawed?
>
> Ami: I don't see purpose in antibiotic resistance. It was a
> simple mutation, and it worked because it only took one step to
> achieve it. I expect to see millions of such examples in nature.
Wouldn't you have seen purpose before you knew about the mutation?
Virus and bacteria want to live and infect hosts and beating an
antibiotic is very important to them and they've found a way to
do it. That seems to fit the definition of purpose to me.
What I'm asking is why we should ever trust "seeing purpose" at
all, since, so far, it's been about as reliable as a desert mirage.
> Tedd:
> > Actually, with feathers accounted for (warmth), the idea of
> > running creatures using the aerodynamic features of feathers
> > (strong but lightweight extensions) for leaping or short glides
> > seems to make any hopeful monster unnecessary.
>
> And where are the feathers placed, and how is the limb they used
> to glide shaped?
Changes in limb shape need only occur after feathers have evolved,
since feathers have their own selection advantages without
any flight whatsoever. Noting how common biped dinosaurs are,
it makes some degree of sense that upper limbs are more free to adopt
new functions than would be quadrupeds.
> How did they happen to be aerodynamic?
They probably weren't initially. But the features of feathers
that make them light and thermally protective lead naturally
to increased surface area without increased weight -- the ideal
first step for aerodynamic surfaces.
> The
> only natural selection for flight is either escape from predators,
> or capture of prey. It would be far quicker to just develop
> speed.
Nope, not in a terrain without a lot of running room. Imagine
a landscape full of boulders or thorn bushes. Not only would
feathers give advantages in leaping but they would allow quicker
and tighter ground maneuvering.
> So either both animals are taking the same evolutionary
> path: flight which is more difficult, or one of them gets faster
> and the race is lost. You need a lot of chance happenings
> falling into place at just the right time. Remember, there is
> no purpose. The leaping animal does not intend its children to
> fly, nor does it imagine how it came to leap or how it can leap
> better or make better use of its insulating coat. Even if it
> can imagine how to leap better, it can do nothing about it.
What I've described above requires no multiple chance happenings,
merely step by step. Feathers have interesting genetic connections
with scales and "scutes" suggesting that one evolved from the
other (whether proto-feathers or scales were first is open to
question). Biped dinosaurs having proto-feathers have the selection
advantage of warmth, sexual display or maneuverability. At that
point, changes in arm shape for better control of leaps or glides
is another selective possibility.
Of course this is speculation, but I think it serves to refute
your claim that a whole lot of events must happen at once
to make flight possible.
> (BTW, do we have fossils of primative feathers? That is just a curious
> question, not a point of argument)
Yes, we do. See http://www.cyberus.ca/~sharding/grant/essay/feather.htm
for a summary of feathered dinosaurs.
There's enough of a change in scientific opinion regarding
dinosaur coverings that we'll be seeing more and more feathered
dinosaurs in movies. I believe a new movie coming out (not the
Disney one I think) features Velociraptor (of Jurassic Park
fame) with multi-hued down feathers.
> And that is only one example. Insects, bats, pterosaurs are
> all examples of this same thing happening in different ways.
> Convergent evolution, I think they call it. Big coincidences
> are occuring many times over or some selection specifically for
> flight is occuring.
Well, flight clearly is a major advantage.
> > > But what if there was intellegent selection? What if that is
> > > the form that ID takes?
> >
> Tedd:
> > Seems unncessary.
>
> Ami:
> Only to those who have faith in chance. It is an underlying
> philosophical assumption, not a tested fact or theory.
I took your original objection to state that there were too many
coincidences that must be invoked to explain flight (which I've
shown need not be the case) -- not that the evolution of flight
has some kind of philosophical nature to it. I don't see
that faith in chance is required, only that selection and
mutation are logically capable of a great deal of change.
> There is an interesting example of evolution in Discover Magazine,
> June 1998, page 73. Put briefly, Adrian Thompson of University
> of Sussex used a chip (Field Programmable Gate Array) which
> can be recofigured by its users hooked up with a genetic algorithim
> designed by Hugo de Garis. They gave it the task of distinguishing
> between two tones. They started 50 random strings of artificial
> DNA to describe the configuration of the chip, tested them at
> how well they performed the task, then recombined the strings
> with some built in prefernece for those that did well as well
> as a clone of the best one. After 5,000 generations, it is
> incredibly efficient, using only 32 of the 100 cells it was
> allowed to configure in the chip. And they do not even know
> how it is working. It just does.
>
> How incredible this is! It shows how innovative nature can be.
> There is one glaring difference between this and RM and NS.
> The selection isn't natural. It is intellegently contrived.
> Indeed, this evolution would never have happened at all without
> the original equipment designed.
See my opening paragraph. Thompson and Garis appear to be only
doing the equivalant of laying down a stone slab and setting
up a flow of water to observe the effects of natural erosion.
The behavior of genetic algorithms simply models what happens
in nature.
> Nothing in evolution is going to happen without selection. I
> suspect it gets more specific than mere survival. What would
> happen with this "Darwin Chip", as it was named in the magazine,
> if the process went on for the equivalent of the number of
> generations as have existed on the earth? Would we get suprising
> new developments, new abilities? The only selection process
> was how well they performed the task compared to other
> configurations.
>
> The only task natural selection takes into account is survival
> long enough to reproduce. Obviously single celled creatures do
> that very well. How did they gain new abilities?
It seems there is no barrier to prevent it.
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