Re: [asa] Parameterized Evolution

> How can one tell whether a feature is a local minimum or an optimized state? Does it really matter?<

This is extremely difficult because you're dealing with real organisms
whose goal is surviving and reproducing, not making the absolutely
most efficient enzyme, eye, etc. In some cases, it seems reasonable
to suppose that maximum efficiency of a particular feature would be
good. I know there was a study not long ago on RuBisCo, a key enzyme
in photosynthesis. It has a high level of incorrect activity, but the
study found that real plant enzymes seem to be about as good as you
can get in the tradeoff between wanted and unwanted results. However,
useful details like the journal, author, date, etc. do not come to
mind.

This cuts both ways-examples of apparently inefficient design are not
valid arguments against design (not to be confused with ID). For
example, the panda's thumb is not nearly as versatile as ours, being
an overgrown wrist bone. They can gather enough bamboo to survive
with it, so there's no evident incentive to change it. A more
efficient thumb might allow the panda to deplete the local bamboo
supply, thus harming itself in the long term. Hard to test, but it
illustrates the multiple optimization issue.

The laws of physics provide certain contraints, but beyond that we
really don't know what range of possibilities might exist. Several
different organisms have converged on similar lensed eyes, suggesting
that it's a pretty good system, but are other possibilities
theoretically available? Hard to know for certain.
To me, it doesn't seem like a good issue for Dembski to bring up
because it seems to be more of an argument against ID than for it. We
don't know what alternative ways there might be to make life.
Intervention ID argues that particular complex structures are
unlikely. However, if any of numerous different complex structures
would do just as well, or if it's possible to do without it, the fact
that any particular structure is unlikely is not very significant.

The ideal way to test this would be having samples of life from
several different solar systems and checking if they were different.
(Within a system, there's enough chance that meteorites could carry
spores that similarity would not be defiitive, though clearly
independent origins of life would be informative.)

Changing environment and thus changing optima are a major issue for
real organisms; in fact, a good designer would almost certainly
include some sort of adaptability.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
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