****If I might comment on Nelson's comments....see below...
mine are preceded by *****
>I spoke at the University of Colorado a couple
>of weeks ago, a bright undergraduate came up after
>the talk and said, "Dr. Nelson, you've just GOT to
>go on the net and play Conway's 'Game of Life' --
>that will answer all the questions you have about
>natural selection!" I listened as this young man
>described the remarkable, organismal-appearing
>patterns that arise from what he called "a few
>simple rules."
>Interesting, I replied. But then there's Conway.
>Right?
***Do you think this scores a point for I.D.?
I still see it at best as a stalemate.
If Conway's program was invented to mimic random
mutation and selection then it doesn't matter WHO
or WHAT came up with the original program.
Obviously the human mind has a lot of knowledge at
it's disposal with which it can do marvelous things,
but it was not always so. Mankind's own knowledge
was gained over hundreds of thousands of years,
and began to advance most rapidly after the advent
of written languages and numbers. In fact, one might
argue that it often advanced by trial and error,
or mutation and natural selection.
-------------------------------------------------
> Among the earliest experiments in evolutionary
> computation, Friedberg (1959) attempted to
> evolve functioning computer programs by mutating
> and selecting the code, but found that the
> mutations effectively randomized the behavior
> of the programs, and adaptive evolution was
> impossible. There is no way to improve the
> performance of a conventional computer program
> by randomly altering letters in the source
> code. It became understood that the mutation/
> selection process is not universally effective
> in producing adaptation if favorable mutations
> cannot be produced....In contrast to Friedberg's
> results, Koza (1992) succeeded in evolving
> computer programs that perform well on complex
> tasks (such as prediction of protein structure
> or random number generation) by recombining
> branches of parse trees for the programs.
> Ray (1992) succeeded in designing computer
> programs that exhibit evolution as an
> emergent property by careful design of the
> data structures.
>Note: "by careful design of the data structures."
>Wagner and Altenberg (1996, p. 968) continue:
***One might "note" that it took nature and/or the I.Der.
hundreds of millions of years just to produce an oyster, with
most species leading nowhere, branches cut off all over the place.
In the case of biological evolution the vast toll of death and
extinction takes the place of "careful design." The price
is paid not in long hours at the drawing board by mental moving
of figures in a trial and error fashion, nor by playing with
calculations until they work, but the price is paid in cells
and animals that try to live (trial and error again) which produce
many offspring, only a handful of them living to reproduce,
and many many lines that simply become extinct. The processes
of creating evolutionary algorithms, and of evolution itself,
are thus, analogically related, and not totally unrelated
as I.Der's teach.
--------------------------------------------------------
> The "representation problem" is how to code a
> problem such that random variation and selection
> can lead to a solution. The representation
> problem underlies the issue of whether selection,
> mutation, and/or recombination can produce
> adaptation.
***It has ALREADY been proven on a bacterial level that
selection/mutation and/or recombination CAN produce adaptation.
As in the case of the bacterium that evolved a new and limited
capacity to digest a newly man-made fiber, nylon. The frame shift
mutation can be seen in the species that can digest nylon.
It's quite a simple mutation. And it works, to a limited degree,
to obtain life-sustaining energy from digesting nylon.
There are other examples.
-------------------------------------------------------
Minimal complexity considerations (see, e.g., Hutchison
et al. 1999) suggest that entities capable of heritable
variation require a lot of specified complexity (CSI).
***So what? The question is whether or not the genome
is adaptable. Biologists have proven it is, in the simplest
most straightforward bacterial experiments. There is
also evidence in the progression of the fossil record that
addaptable changes are taking place since creatures
that are not fully formed for various things precede
those creatures that are. Why should pre-mammalian
reptiles have a double jaw joint, since it only allowed
them partial hearing in their ears? Yet those double-jaw
jointed mammals preceded those with the jaw bone fully
developed into a hearing device in the ear. Why should
pre-flight reptiles be relatively ill suited for flight,
while only later did more and more well adapted bird arise?
Why did the land walking mammal precede the whale?
Why do whale's still have a remnant of the pelvis and
some have thigh bones inside their skins, and some on
a rare occaision are born with a little leg protruding from
their bodies? Why did the first whales resemble their
land-walking kin in terms of body size and slimness, while
only later did the gigantic thick waisted whales evolve?
There is evidence of adaptation in nature. One might
even cited the arrival of monkeys prior to apes, and
apes prior to man. Such adaptibility is part of the
evidence nature provides scientists with. Moreover,
the level of "specified complexity" required at each step
along the way is not necessarily "unbridgable." Heck,
the differences in the DNA of man and chimp is no greater
than that found between sibling species of fruit flies.
One final comment, I.D. can make all the "inferences"
it wants, it can even infer if it wants, that ears were
placed on the side of the head because the Designer saw
the need for spectacles. And that cork trees were invented
because the Designer saw the need for wine in bottles
to be sealed property. But every I.D. inference I've
yet seen, including all of Behe's "examples," don't PROVE
that nature was "designed," not even after the addition
of Dembski's philosophical ramblings. All I've seen I.D.
do is highlight areas that require study. I've never seen
I.D. prove a thing, scientifically or philosophically.
Besides, once a plausible evolutionary explanation is
discovered for a particular thing in nature, it is simply
whisked off the I.D. drawing board, and placed on the other
side of the line. Centuries ago, people believed that
just about EVERYTHING required an "I.D." or "miraculous"
type of explanation from lightning to disease to organic chemicals
and the way plants gained energy from the sun, to the way
the elements are formed (we now know how, inside stars).
I.D.ers continue to simply harp on the fact that we don't
have a lot of evolutionary pathways figured out. What we
have figured out is what exists here and now and how it works,
such as sight and basic biochemical reactions inside the cell.
It will take MUCH MUCH longer to figure out how those things
evolved than it took to figure out how they presently work.
Yes, nature is complex, but the evolutionary steps are not from
nothing to man with no steps inbetween. There are connections
and steps all throughout nature, and science is studying those
steps, studying the dance of what we can know about nature,
following the trail in the dust, the trail in our genes,
the trail through various geological epochs. Keep your eyes
on the "Designer" they say, don't let science beguile you with
the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Well, you know what?
I say, let me be kicked out of the I.D. "paradise,"
so long as I first get a taste of the fruit of the tree of
knowledge.
Best, Ed Babinski
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