Re: design: purposeful or random?

lhaarsma@OPAL.TUFTS.EDU
Thu, 10 Oct 1996 10:33:07 -0400 (EDT)

Art Chadwick wrote:
> Glenn says:
> >Christians should be aware that design via evolution is a coming field.
>
> Yes, it will be when the process takes place without computers and software
> engineers. I know of no analog in naturalistic molecular evolutionary
> scenarios for the engineer who built the computer, designed the operating
> system, and developed the software to do the "evolving".

True, but there *is* an analog in theistic evolutionary scenarios.

The analogy is usually developed this way:

Computer Biology
-------- -------
Engineer God
Hardware particles, atoms, molecules
Software/operating system laws of nature
running the program biological evolution
random generation of mutation, recombination
new "genomes"
selection by natural selection
programmed criteria
artificial selection artificial selection
non-random "mutations" added guided mutations
to "genomes" by user
rewriting "genomes" and miraculous intervention
adding new commands

David Tyler wrote:

> I am wondering whether anything in Glenn's post shows "new
> information" in the sense of innovative design. I will explain -
> although I don't wish to "defend" the Wilder-Smith quote Glenn
> provides.
>
> This month's _Scientific American_ has, according to Glenn,
> relevant examples.
> "Brian Howley of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space guided
> the evolution of a program that can figure out how to manoeuvre
> a spacecraft from one orientation to another within 2 percent of
> the theoretical minimum time--10 percent faster than a solution
> hand-crafted by an expert. And researchers at University College
> in Cork, Ireland, grew a system that can convert regular
> programs, which execute instructions one at a time, into parallel
> programs that carry out some instructions simultaneously."
>
> I want to suggest that these examples are of optimisation, not
> the generation of new information. Both relate to procedures,
> pathways to achieve a goal, and in both cases the program can be
> written to explore a large number of possibilities and find the
> best solution.

You are right. To get any sort of "new information" or novel behavior
in the computer program would require at least three things: (1) A way
to duplicate and reposition commands or incorporate new commands from
other programs; (2) a way to modify commands; (3) a selection criteria
which rewards novel behavior. While the spacecraft guidance program may
have had the first two, it didn't have the third, since "reward" was
based upon success at a narrowly defined task. Are there any genetic
algorithm programs which have all three of those? A few versions of
artificial "life" games are all I can think of.

Are those three things *sufficient* to generate novelty? Well, that
depends upon the specific features of the system, doesn't it? :-)

> The quote continues:
> "To create their software, Fernandez and Howley did not have
> to divine insights into neurophysiology or rocket science. The
> task of the genetic programmer is simpler. First, build an
> environment that rewards programs that are faster, more accurate
> or better by some other measure."
>
> Building an environment is an intelligent activity. The
> "measures" used to assign rewards are critical for success - and
> choosing appropriate measures is an intelligent activity.

I agree. It's far from "simple." (As the saying goes, if it was
simple, everyone would be doing it.)

> OK. Here is the evidence that an enormous search space is being
> explored. The more options programmed into the software, the
> longer will be the search. It seems to me that there is a
> problem here for neo-Darwinians. The number of replications
> required to develop "perfect adaptations" using these programs
> is extraordinarily high - 83 hours is a long time for a computer
> to search, and it represents a correspondingly high number of
> replications!

Actually, we don't know how many "generations" it took. How much
time did it take to test each solution. Was it one millisecond or
ten seconds? We don't know.

> Design CAN take several forms. Darwinian design seems to me to
> be viable where optimisation is the goal, where the performance
> of the finished product can be specified but where there are
> numerous variables affecting the final performance, and where
> there is relatively little knowledge about the variables.
> However, as soon as there is knowledge about these parameters,
> the programmer is unlikely not to build this into the program -
> it will prune the search space and yield solutions more quickly.
> One could argue that if the designer had perfect knowledge, the
> need to design using darwinian techniques would be gone. This
> point may help to explain why some continue to find difficulty
> with the idea that God used a Darwinian mechanism to "create".

But ... but ... it's fun! :-)

Loren Haarsma