Is Evolution on Alien Planets the Key to Understanding Intelligent Design?

[Les Sleeth]

I'm not in the mood to get into another ID debate tonight, but just wanted to point out one thing here.

Do you think I am an IDer? Guess again. I am a skeptic of physicalist enthusiasm, and tired of physicalist propaganda. Period. Fliption is right to say I might be jaded by too many debates with people who claim they haven't assumed a physicalist ontology, yet every single ontological thing they say suggests otherwise. If it weren't for physicalist ontology constantly being slipped into the media, textbooks, and remarks here . . . I would have absolutely no problem with all the truly awesome things discovered through science.

 

[Moonbear]

Do you think I am an IDer? Guess again. I am a skeptic of physicalist enthusiasm, and tired of physicalist propaganda. Period. Fliption is right to say I might be jaded by too many debates with people who claim they haven't assumed a physicalist ontology, yet every single ontological thing they say suggests otherwise. If it weren't for physicalist ontology constantly being slipped into the media, textbooks, and remarks here . . . I would have absolutely no problem with all the truly awesome things discovered through science.

Oh, sorry, no, I didn't mean to imply I thought you were an IDer. I was just prefacing with that to say I'm not going to discuss the ID part of this debate tonight.

Out of curiousity, were those others with whom you have debated the topic of evolution biologists? I've seen other scientists who are not biologists jump in too quickly into debates on evolution without a solid understanding of the theory themselves. As for how it's portrayed in the media, I'm afraid much of that is likely reactionary to those promoting ID and Creationism. It's hard to explain it in 30 second clips in a way that explains the aspects of it that are theory without having the Creationists and IDists jump in and use that possibility of doubt to leverage their position.

 

[wave]

The defense of "billions of years of natural selection" is nonsense (if you ask me) if you can't show physicalness is even capable of being creatively organizational to that degree of quality.

I am having a really difficult time in understanding your position, so please be patient with me. Are you saying that the theory of evolution is inadequate because it fails to explain how abiogenesis supposedly occurred?

 

[wave]

Are you saying that there is scientific evidence that natural selection alone explains life as we know it?

I am guessing you mean evolution instead of just natural selection. "Life as we know it" is rather vague. Please be more specific.

I always find it useful to step back and contemplate the big picture. And when I do this with natural selection, quite honestly, it leaves me speechless.

I get how you feel, I really do. But what is it in particular about evolution that makes you feel this way? Please be more precise than "all that we see" or "diversity in life".

But it also seems to me that in many of the ways that scientists communicate to the masses i.e. television shows, books etc. they do not choose the same words you do. They do indeed state theses things as truth.

Sometimes scientists speak as if they are omniscient. However, they still implicitly subscribe to the scientific method. It's unfortunate that the general public has misconstrued notions of scientific proof, scientific evidence, scientific fact, etc. I am not laying blame, but it's too bad they don't know that when a scientist says "this is the truth" they really mean "this is the truth (but I might be wrong)".

 

[Paul Martin]

Wave,

Thanks again for your responses and your thought. I apologize for the delays between my responses.

Before we proceed, it would be helpful if you tell me how an evolutionary biologist would define "biological evolution".

Since I haven't used the term 'biological evolution' in this discussion (as far as I remember), and since you didn't ask me how I would define the term, I don't see how my guess at how others might define the term would be useful.

But what I think might be useful before we proceed would be to clear up exactly what we are debating. You used the phrase "for or against evolution" a couple times in your response which makes me wonder if you think our debate is you taking a position "for evolution" and me taking a position "against evolution". Let me make myself clear: I am "for evolution". I believe that evolution occurred pretty much exactly like Darwin described it. I believe the fossil record shows how changes happened and in what time frames.

Where I think you and I disagree is that I don't believe that Darwinian evolution is the complete explanation. I believe there is something more going on than the physical processes of random mutation, Mendelian genetics, natural selection, and changing environmental factors. I think there was some process of design involved in addition to the physical processes.

The reason I think so is that there are some (yes) gaps in the purely physical evolutionary explanation. The most salient of these is the lack of an adequate explanation for consciousness. The second most important, IMHO, is the lack of an adequate explanation for sleep. Following these are the lack of adequate explanations for the origin of life, morphogenesis, regulation, instinct, learning, etc.

After considering these problems, it seems to me that all of them could be solved by hypothesizing that consciousness itself is ontologically fundamental. (See post #32 in https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=667129#post667129 ). One consequence of this hypothesis would be that a designer would be available to close those gaps.

Now, back to our discussion. We were pursuing two prongs: 1) Sleep as an explanatory gap, and 2) my thought experiment attempting to show that there was "not enough time".

Canis lupus arctos require sleep but they are not extinct. Is it more obvious now?

Is what more obvious now? It is obvious to me that the arctic wolf is but one of many counter-examples to the proposition that animals requiring sleep will go extinct. But it is not obvious to me that I "have greatly overestimated [sleep's] disadvantage".

Let me put this issue in the context of my hypothesis. Let's say that your car is parked right now as you are reading this sentence (It's my guess that it is.) Then, let's say Joe comes in and asks you, "Wave, why is your car parked?". Before you can answer, Joe interrupts and says, "Wait, wait, don't tell me. I think your car is parked because the advantages of it being parked outweigh the disadvantages. Isn't that right?"

To this my guess is that you would respond something like, "Well, I suppose you could say that, but it really doesn't make much sense. The real reason my car is parked is because I am not driving it (and nobody borrowed or stole it). It has nothing to do with advantages or disadvantages without some real contrivances. I suppose you could say that it is advantageous to park my car when I read the PF posts because I don't have a computer in my car, etc., but that would be silly."

In my view, based on my hypothesis, the reason animals sleep is simply because they aren't being "driven" during those intervals (consciousness being the driver and the chemical/biological organism being the vehicle). Now, the reasons they aren't being driven could be as varied and unrelated to the particular animal, as are the varied reasons you aren't driving your car, most of which reasons have nothing to do with your car.

I will demote sleep on my list of gaps, or remove it entirely, as soon as science comes up with a plausible explanation for sleep. Until then, it is a gap worth working on. I wish more people would.

Before I leave the topic of sleep, I'll address your specific questions.

What exactly is the problem with sleep in terms of evolution?

The problem is really not with evolution, but it is related. If evolution is true, then the fact that sleep is ubiquitous among animals implies that there is an important reason for it. The problem is that science cannot tell us that important reason. If there is no important reason for sleep, then that would cast some doubt over evolution as a complete explanation for biological phenomena.

All you're saying is that sleep has disadvantages.

That may be all I said, but that is not all I meant to imply. I meant to imply that sleep is no small, insignificant problem that doesn't deserve study and resolution. The scope of the phenomenon is enormous. First of all, sleep affects virtually all animals. Secondly, sleep occupies a significant portion of the lifetimes of most animals (nearly a third in humans, and maybe 90% in my cats.) This great scope, coupled with the obvious disadvantages to living, and further coupled with the fact that no biological function seems to need it, should, in my opinion, justify much more attention than the problem is getting. If, for example, we found that sleep was truly unnecessary, and a way could be found to eliminate it in humans, think of what a boon to humanity that would be. If, on the other hand, if we discovered the real reason for sleep, we might be on the track of some great extension to our understanding of the universe.

Granted it's not a perfect solution, but since when does evolution require perfection?

It's not a perfect solution to what problem? There is no known problem to which sleep is any kind of a solution, perfect or imperfect.

You dismissed my supporting evidence [that sleep may enhance semen quality] and came to that conclusion because...?

Because it is irrelevant and immaterial.

Do you consider the maintenance of cognitive functions, such as learning and memory, to be benefits of sleep? If not, why?

There are obviously benefits to sleep; if we are sleep-deprived we can't function as well as if we sleep. But exactly what those benefits are is not obvious. I know of no compelling evidence that sleep contributes to the maintenance of cognitive functions.

Now, on to my thought experiment. Thank you so much for thinking about it.

Before I begin, I should explain what I mean by 'designer' and 'design'. By 'designer' I mean a conscious entity who uses conscious imagination to construct representations of some intended artifact prior to the physical instantiation of the artifact. By 'design' I mean some of the representations constructed in the imagination of a designer transcribed or encoded in some symbolic physical form.

The two important features are that the designer is conscious and that the design is produced prior to the first actual artifact.

So, in the example I used of a computer operating system, the design, which may run to many hundreds of thousands of pages of diagrams, words, and other symbols, is developed long before the actual operating system is actually written on the first CD. And those hundreds of thousands of pages were all produced from the imaginations of conscious, thinking designers.

Originally Posted by Paul Martin
1. Do you agree that evolution should provide an explanation for how genomes are developed?

In what sense? An explanation for the mechanisms of evolution? An explanation for how mutations occur? Please be more specific.

In the sense of the information encoded in the genome, not in the sense of the chemical mechanisms. For the purposes of this thought experiment, the mutation mechanism is not important except that we must rule out any mechanism that would involve conscious choice or interference. The whole point is to describe a scenario where a designer is absent from the process. If, as I expect it will, it turns out that there was insufficient time without a designer, then it would be reasonable to hypothesize that a designer was involved after all. In this case, a hypothesis of deliberately chosen mutations would make sense.

Originally Posted by Paul Martin
3. Do you agree that Darwinian Evolution provides no abstract design encoded in language or other symbols prior to the initial instantiation of any biological structure?

I am not sure what you mean. Perhaps a simple example would help.

It is important to understanding my argument that you do know exactly what I mean here. And, after reading what I wrote, I can see that I was not careful enough. Sorry.

For a simple example, let's consider a new airplane type built 80 years ago (prior to computers). Prior to actually building the first prototype airplane, the designers would make a lot of drawings and write a lot of paragraphs which would describe (to a person then; to an automatic milling machine later on) how the airplane was to be built and what it would look like. Those papers containing drawings and paragraphs constituted the design of the new airplane. The important idea here is that the design (or a significant part of it) existed prior to the actual construction of the first airplane of that type. My question number 3 to you is whether you agree that no such "design" exists prior to the first, or initial, organism or organ or other biological structure.

Now it gets complicated here in both cases. No airplane was ever built exactly according to its initial plan, and all organisms carry a "plan" for development in their DNA complements. But what I am getting at is that even if there are design changes that are implemented part-way through the assembly of the first prototype airplane, or design changes which affect later versions of the airplane, all of those design changes started in the imagination of a conscious designer and only afterwards, did the design (change) get implemented.

That is in contrast to the biological case in which evolutionary theory disallows any conscious designer involvement, even though there is significant symbolic representation at work (e.g. codons representing amino acids via tRNA.).

I am just asking you to agree that according to evolution, there is no conscious designer and no "prior" design. I hope that makes it a little more clear.

Originally Posted by Paul Martin
4. Is the method I outlined for developing an operating system without any use of abstraction or symbolic representation (design) a fair comparison with the Darwinian processes?

I have no doubts with this one - your method is not a fair comparison with biological evolution in many aspects. A fundamental flaw is that your experiment has a predetermined goal, namely "to build an operating system". On the other hand, biological evolution has no specific goals.

Here again I don't think I made myself clear. I probably confused two different methods of developing the operating system. The first is the familiar way in which they have been developed. In this method, there certainly is a predetermined goal for what the end result should be. But the second method is the hypothetical (and unrealistic) method of the thought experiment. In this second method, we have deliberately removed all design involvement and we have reduced the designer's involvement to what would be equivalent to environmental processes in evolution. Specifically, we don't allow the designers to produce any designs or to directly influence the development of the code. Specifically, there would be no predetermined goal of building an operating system. The idea is that the thought experimenter will watch the thought experiment to see how long it would take for an operating system, (or compiler or any other useful computer system) to get developed.

Your experiment resembles Dawkins' Weasel program rather than a genetic algorithm.

I'm not familiar with Dawkins' Weasel program, so I can't comment.

Now suppose your experiment does not produce an operating system, and you end up with some nonsense or a compiler instead. How would you interpret those results?

I would say that if any useful program (not nonsense) were produced, then the experimenter could stop the clock and report how long it took.

In order to compare with biological evolution, it is necessary that your algorithm do not have any preordained goals regardless of your fitness functions or setup - period.

I think it has no pre-ordained goals.

Originally Posted by Paul Martin
5. Are my time estimates reasonable? (This is where I would really like some help because my estimates are very rough and unsupported.)

I don't know because there is insufficient information. You haven't even defined a fitness function.

Sorry about that. I'm not sure what a fitness function is, but my guess it would be something like viability in biology. If so, I would say that the usefulness I mentioned above would provide that function. I guess I would qualify that though after thinking about it for a moment. If the "non-design" program development process produced a useful program that was only 1K bytes in size, then I would balk. To be fair, the program would have to be on the same order of complexity as a genome. You mentioned that you would accept that sort of comparison if I was talking about a human genome. In fact, I think that the range of sizes of genomes among the various organisms would be about the same as the range of sizes of various operating systems. So my condition would be that a qualifying "useful program" must be at least of the size of some genome.

The vague idea that you presented is a greedy algorithm that does not relate to biological evolution at all.

I'm not sure what a "greedy algorithm" is but I think the process I outlined does relate to biological evolution. The mutation mechanism could be based on pure chance, or it could be environmentally related in the thought experiment just as it is in real biology. The marketplace for useful software in the thought experiment corresponds to the struggle for survival in biology. Etc.

Inferior individuals of a population (even the worst ones) are not necessarily excluded in biological evolution.

Inferior programs (even the worst ones) are quite often bought and sold in the software markets.

Similarly, the best individuals in a population are never guaranteed to be selected.

Nor are the best programs, as you must surely know.

On the other hand, in your experiment "only successful "mutations" would drop out the other side to be integrated with various versions of the rest of the operating system". That is another crucial and fundamental flaw.

I don't see the flaw. In biology, only successful mutations will be propagated. What's the difference?

Thanks once again for your efforts. It's fun talking with you.

Paul

 

[neurocomp2003]

Paul: If there are designers...then why would you believe in chemical or physical mechanisms...like reproduction, or even simple chemical reactions? The designer could simply put those new frames in place without the actual reaction occurring...so then no reaction exists in our universe like the processes in developing a computer game

 

[Paul Martin]

Paul: If there are designers...then why would you believe in chemical or physical mechanisms...like reproduction, or even simple chemical reactions?

Because I have no reason to believe that those designers are omnipotent. In particular, I don't believe they can break the laws of physics. I also believe there are designers of cars but that doesn't mean that I don't believe in the laws of physics that determine how cars work. Cars have physical mechanisms as well as designers. I think the same is true of organisms.

The designer could simply put those new frames in place without the actual reaction occurring...

Not without violating the laws of physics.

so then no reaction exists in our universe like the processes in developing a computer game

I don't understand that last comment.

Paul

 

[wave]

what I think might be useful before we proceed would be to clear up exactly what we are debating.

I agree. Since our discussion revolve primarily around the theory of evolution, let's make sure we're using the same definition or at least understand what the other mean by "evolution".

When I talk about the theory of evolution, I am referring to Modern Synthesis as it is accepted by mainstream biology. Are you using it in the same sense? If not, then what is your definition of "evolution"?

When you use the term "Darwinian evolution", are you referring to the original theory that Darwin created as is? If you don't mind, let's agree to use it only in that context so we can distinguish between the original theory from modern synthesis.

In case you're wondering, I use "biological evolution" in order to explicitly distinguish between evolution of biological and non-biological systems.

I will reply to the rest of your post as soon as we establish our definitions. I apologize for the delay.

 

[Paul Martin]

Hi Wave,

I am not familiar with the term "Modern Synthesis" so I don't know if my understanding of biological evolution is the same as yours or not. I am no expert in evolution, but I understand that Darwin's original theory of random mutation, Mendelian genetics, and natural selection has been augmented by Punctuated Equilibrium. In this version, species typically develop over a relatively short period and then remain in stasis for sometimes extremely long periods.

I have no quarrel with any of these ideas except that they don't explain everything that needs to be explained.

Paul

 

[nameta9]

My original thought was something very different. I think that a pure physical process can evolve to any extent. The idea I put forward was simply that you could have a system that "evolves" as understood in biology or something similar (without introducing any metaphysics like consciousness/ god /mystery) only either much faster or with different materials and processes. So for example a "silicon" planet given a combination of conditions and elements could possibly evolve a microprocessor after a billion years. And from there that CPU could evolve to the point of intelligence and intelligent design. Or something similar could have occurred with a soliton electromagnetic field in a star or planet that self organizes up to the point of becoming intelligent and designing biological systems. Now of course this is all wild speculation, but if we won't be able to resolve the evolution riddle, maybe some of these far out ideas could be plausable. Remeber that we desing CPUs "faster" than us, and we are still at the beginning. A material system could "design" a higher system than itself in a similar way.

 

[wave]

I understand that Darwin's original theory of random mutation, Mendelian genetics, and natural selection has been augmented by Punctuated Equilibrium.

Close enough. We'll settle for a definition that is consistent with modern mainstream science, OK?

 

[Paul Martin]

Close enough. We'll settle for a definition that is consistent with modern mainstream science, OK?

Yes. In fact, for the purposes of my thought experiment, it is important that the imagined software development method match as closely as possible to the mechanisms and methods of the mainstream theory of evolution. For example, the mutations of the code should be made on the same sort of basis as they are in evolutionary theory.

Looking forward to your responses.

Paul

 

[nameta9]

I think the abstraction level of this thread is higher than most posts replying. I am trying to imagine if evolution or self organization of complex material systems and processes can occur only with carbon molecules or with other systems and materials.

A silicon planet with metals and all kinds of heavy elements that slowly evolves into a cpu that slowly evolves into a superbrain that manipulates carbon atoms. Maybe bacteria are their computers! It sounds far out but if you look at it from the "end result" , a CPU is effectively much much simpler than a bacteria. It could be possible if evolution goes from simpler to more complex items.

So maybe evolution started on other planets with other elements and other processes we can't even imagine...

Someone said that that is "spontaneous generation". But Why call that "spontaneous generation" and call carbon molecules that synthesize into amino acids that automatically evolve into DNA and cells and bacteria and man "evolution" ? Is it just an "aesthetical" choice ? Fundamentally we are always talking about physical systems that "spontaneously" evolve into complex forms and processes. Why should this be allowed and apply only to carbon molecules ? A silicon planet could have storms and electricity and germanium that "evolve" into a full blown 8080 CPU and then a pentium and then a trillion bit CPU etc...

Or maybe the strange new processes occur in a superfluid ocean where self organized vortices grow larger and larger with turbulance and then become intelligent and manipulate carbon atoms and then decide to design US humans. Then they threw us around the galaxy and here we are.

 

[neurocomp2003]

it is possible...its a matter how teh sensorimotor(not necessary humans type) is generated to interact with the environment[ie my comment on crystallography]...however I believe that since stars generates CNO before SI/Ge and with the amount of time it took for our planet to evolve and for us to be placed on this planet(either by evolution or by design) it is more plausible for CNO to evolve intelligence ina time scale shorter than Si/Ge

as for teh comment on game programming i was suggested that perhaps the chemical reactions we observed is not real motion but frame based at some low time scale like that of game programming where motion is based on frames not true motion.

 

[chronon]

Er X-Files, UFO theories, random science fiction novels, some math and physics (the easy parts) a lot of the physics books like Hawkins, random everything.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html see#8

(Or maybe you do mean Stephen Hawkins, who does seem to have contributed to the subject in question - see http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/3697_the_list_2_16_2003.asp )

 

[Paul Martin]

as for teh comment on game programming i was suggested that perhaps the chemical reactions we observed is not real motion but frame based at some low time scale like that of game programming where motion is based on frames not true motion.

Thanks. I think I see what you meant now. Yes, I agree that is a possibility. In fact we really don't know what the "real" substrate for the physical universe is. Whatever it is, it evidently supports the evolution of features within it according to the laws of physics. It is entirely possible that the substrate is some eqivalent of a computer memory and that the laws of physics are implemented in the software that drives the evolution of the information stored in that memory. That would make our physical reality nothing more than a virtual computer game. Could be.

Paul

 

[wave]

Sorry for the delayed response.

I think there was some process of design involved in addition to the physical processes.

The reason I think so is that there are some (yes) gaps in the purely physical evolutionary explanation. The most salient of these is the lack of an adequate explanation for consciousness. The second most important, IMHO, is the lack of an adequate explanation for sleep. Following these are the lack of adequate explanations for the origin of life, morphogenesis, regulation, instinct, learning, etc.

Argumentum ad ignorantiam. Just because there are no naturalistic explanations at this time does not mean a naturalistic explanation is impossible. Considering how little we understand about consciousness, it's no surprise that evolution cannot yet provide an adequate explanation. It's a logical fallacy to use that as a reason to invoke a "God of the Gaps" or a similar argument.

Evolution deals with how life developed after its origin. That's why Darwin titled his book "The Origin of Species" and not "The Origin of Life". The entire theory is based on the premise that life already exists. Whether life was created by gods, aliens or abiogenesis is irrelevant to the theory. You might as well add the origin of the universe to that list because evolution has nothing to say about that either. These are "gaps", in the sense that they are irrelevant to the theory of evolution. However, to use that as a justification for design is irrational.

What in particular are you referring to regarding morphogenesis? I fail to see why evolution should explain morphogenesis. As for "regulation", it is ambiguous so I don't know what you are referring to.

Instincts evolve when an organism's behavioral trait is favored by natural selection relative to those without that disposition. For example, natural selection could favor the instinct to flee when smoke is detected, if those who remain are more likely to perish. Similarly, the ability to learn allows an organism to adapt its phenotype in response to environment stimuli, thereby increasing its survival probability in unpredictable environmental conditions. There are ample evidence to support those ideas. What makes you think evolution doesn't have an explanation for the origin of instinct or learning?

The problem is really not with evolution, but it is related.

Then why did you say that sleep is such a "disadvantage that any organism requiring it would have gone extinct long ago"? You made it sound like sleep is an anomaly that contradicts evolution, so I presented some evidence in an attempt to show you otherwise. If I interpreted your statement incorrectly then I apologize, and we probably don't have any reason to discuss the topic of sleep.

If evolution is true, then the fact that sleep is ubiquitous among animals implies that there is an important reason for it. The problem is that science cannot tell us that important reason.

How did you reach that conclusion? Once again, just because science doesn't have a definitive explanation now does not mean it cannot provide one.

I know of no compelling evidence that sleep contributes to the maintenance of cognitive functions.

Did you read reference 6 and 7 in post #22? On what grounds do you dismiss those evidence?

1. Do you agree that evolution should provide an explanation for how genomes are developed?

In what sense? An explanation for the mechanisms of evolution? An explanation for how mutations occur? Please be more specific.

In the sense of the information encoded in the genome

Sorry, I still don't quite understand what you're looking for. Are you suggesting that evolution should account for the origin of every base in your genome? If not, can you give me an example of what you mean?

I am just asking you to agree that according to evolution, there is no conscious designer and no "prior" design. I hope that makes it a little more clear.

It's a little more clear now, thank you. If you are referring to before the existence of life, then I fail to see what it has to do with evolution. If you are referring to after the existence of life, then I agree that it would be wrong to characterize the mechanisms of evolution as a "conscious designer". However, I disagree that evolution "disallows any conscious designer involvement" because scientists have tempered with nature before. Does any of those answer your question?

The idea is that the thought experimenter will watch the thought experiment to see how long it would take for an operating system, (or compiler or any other useful computer system) to get developed.

That is a crucial piece of information. I don't recall anything like that in your essay.

I'm not sure what a fitness function is, but my guess it would be something like viability in biology.

No, they're different concepts. Your marketplace idea is an unintentional attempt at a fitness function, although I wouldn't qualify it as such in its current form.

If the "non-design" program development process produced a useful program that was only 1K bytes in size, then I would balk.

If usefulness is a halting condition, then you need to quantitatively define what you mean by "useful". Otherwise your experiment would require conscious and subjective decisions to work.

To be fair, the program would have to be on the same order of complexity as a genome.

In that case, you also need to quantitatively define what you mean by "complexity" for the same reason stated above.

You mentioned that you would accept that sort of comparison if I was talking about a human genome.

I played along for the sake of the discussion, so that you can make your point. How you define "complexity" will determine whether or not I accept the comparison.

So my condition would be that a qualifying "useful program" must be at least of the size of some genome.

Why?


Several things are still unclear in your essay. I would like a better understanding before commenting on the rest of your post.

1) What do you mean by "successful mutation"?

2) Please elaborate on the marketplace idea. In addition, what kind of information do you gather (e.g. number of units sold)? How do you use that information in your experiment?

3) Please clarify on how new generations are created and how code is propagated. You mentioned "various versions" but it is unclear if and how they interact. I am also uncertain in regards to how "different components" relate to the process.

4) What do you start with? You said "we would ask developers to induce some random changes into some of their code" but you never mentioned what kind of code exist in the first generation.

 

[neurocomp2003]

wave are you a programmer? in AI/graphics/ALife?

 

[nameta9]

The real problem is how to explain the first single cell from the molecule soup that was in oceans 4 billion years ago. Since the first cell is very complex it seems hard to imagine all the steps that lead to it. So the idea is that maybe a much simpler physical system with fewer "steps" could self organize into a somehow intelligent "designer" that designed the first cell. Now an 8 bit CPU is way more simpler than the simplest cell. If there is a process that can somehow evolve matter into an 8 bit cpu and then this evolves into a superbrain that can design a biological cell, you have the problem licked. The fact is an alternative physical process that can generate intelligence more directly without all the very complex biology would be very welcome. Is there one available ? There are "complexity" theories and chaos theories that somehow suggest some remote possibility. Can an "intentional" intelligence emerge from much simpler physical systems than a human brain ? It is a very abstract question indeed or maybe the origin of life problem will never be understood because we can't perform a planet wide experiment with all the trillions of macromolecules in the oceans to see what happens.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Scientists are looking at the idea that orderly reproduction preceded cellular life in all its glory, and they are particularly interested in RNA, which of course can carry a genetic code, but can also act as a protein, even a catalyst. So maybe there was an RNA world (google that phrase for more) starting with just a two-base RNA string. In a famous old experiment, strings of one-base RNA (all Uracyl) self assembled from inert precursor chemicals in a test tube.

 

[Fliption]

I am guessing you mean evolution instead of just natural selection. "Life as we know it" is rather vague. Please be more specific.

No, I mean Natural selection. I have no problem with evolution at all; just the mechanism for how it supposedly happened, which I believe the current thinking is that this is natural selection.

"Life as we know it" is only meant to capture all the knowledge that we currently have about life. I would say the study of Biology captures most of this knowledge.

I get how you feel, I really do. But what is it in particular about evolution that makes you feel this way? Please be more precise than "all that we see" or "diversity in life".

Ok I'll try to explain it but I'll remind you that this is purely an argument of incredulity. At a high level, my understanding of natural selection is that it is a process of random mutations that are "selected" purely on the lifeform's ability to survive and copy itself/multiply in it's given environment. This does make sense to me as "a way" for things to evolve. The shock comes in when I look at how complex life is. Since I know the next question is "what do you mean by complex?", I will say that complexity is related to the number of moving parts, variables or processes that all have to exists in a certain way in order for the whole to be maintained.

So, let's just mention a few examples to help illustrate the point. First let's just take something simple and mechanical like the human eye. I think I will reference what Paul has been saying and ask you to imagine the number of variables you would have to include to program something to work as the eye does(not just a camera but one that heals itself!). It would be a huge number of variables that would have to be just right for the eye to work the way it does. Statistically speaking, since all these variables are the result of random mutations then now we must consider all the millions of other possibilities "for each variable". Statistically, these are not the variables that could have happened. These are the variables that did happen and just didn't survive. The number of sheer lifeforms it would take to accomplish something like the human eye with this random plug and chug process is what makes this seem so unlikely. The impression I get when I think of this over the course of billions of years is that the Earth would have a 20 foot crust of nothing but bones. (hmm I suppose you could argue that the Earth's crust is indeed largely the remains of dead lifeforms but I would have to read a source on that)

I remember seeing a special about a female fish that could change herself into a male once the male of the species died. Let's just forget the complexity of a female fish changing into a male fish. Let's just toy with the timing of the change. This fish changes into a male only when the male dies. How many different variations could there have been? The female could have changed into a male at any particular time in her life that isn't linked with the life of the male and this would have ultimately ended this species because there would be no more females. Since this species doesn't exists, this means that there are millions and millions of species that didn't make it because they didn't change at the right time. Of course you could argue that the fish got the timing down before the change but you still have the same problem. How many different things could the fish have changed into after the male died?

Now, let's go back to the programming analogy that Paul is referencing. I don't know if you are a programmer but there are developer tools available nowadays that make programming easier than manually typing in every line of code. With some of these tools you can very quickly generate a form, for example, that collects data simply by dragging and dropping the "objects" where you'd like them and then filling in some pre-defined variable information for them. To manually have to program this form without this tool would be a major headache because you'd have to program every line of code, including the objects and their behaviors.

This programming "environment" is what I suggest our universe could be like. That there are some fundamental properties of it that make the evolution of life not quite so daunting of a task. I've even read where some scientists have commented that our universe may be pre-disposed to life under the right conditions. But these scientists never seem to explore the implications of what they're saying. That there are certain fundamental biases in nature is much easier for me to accept than to believe that random mutations generated something as unthinkable as consciousness .

 

[neurocomp2003]

nameta9: again it comes down to the elements comprised of these entities and the sea of elements or soup that they are produced in...it seems more logical for a "Biological" system to grow intelligence first only because the sea(stars) produce them first..i can't remember the timeline from when a star goes from CNO to higher element burning. but its pretty long.

 

[selfAdjoint]

So, let's just mention a few examples to help illustrate the point. First let's just take something simple and mechanical like the human eye. I think I will reference what Paul has been saying and ask you to imagine the number of variables you would have to include to program something to work as the eye does(not just a camera but one that heals itself!). It would be a huge number of variables that would have to be just right for the eye to work the way it does. Statistically speaking, since all these variables are the result of random mutations then now we must consider all the millions of other possibilities "for each variable". Statistically, these are not the variables that could have happened. These are the variables that did happen and just didn't survive. The number of sheer lifeforms it would take to accomplish something like the human eye with this random plug and chug process is what makes this seem so unlikely. The impression I get when I think of this over the course of billions of years is that the Earth would have a 20 foot crust of nothing but bones. (hmm I suppose you could argue that the Earth's crust is indeed largely the remains of dead lifeforms but I would have to read a source on that)

David Dennett, in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea gives the example of a coin tossing tournament. 100 pairs of contestents call and toss a coint. The winners go on to the second round, same thing again. And so on for ten rounds. The winner of the torunament has won ten coin tosses in a row; the odds against that are huge, and ain't he wonderful! Well no, somebody HAD to win the tournament and he was just the one out of a hundred who did.

Evolution by variation and natural selection can build things arbitrarily complex because each individual change is adaptive at the time it passes the selective test and that adaptivneness is passed on to the next change that happens.

The evolution of the eye used to be thought to have happened indpendently 30-something times, in different phyla - insects, cephalopods, mammals, etc. But now they think all eyes started from the chemical recognition mechanisms of a very early blind worm The mechanism got passed down and mutated various ways and gave us for example the opsin moecule that transduces photon energy into nervous system signals for our vision.

 

[Fliption]

Well no, somebody HAD to win the tournament and he was just the one out of a hundred who did.

Yes, I'm aware of this. It's just like the lottery example. But life is hardly like this. Unless you are assuming that a large percentage of those variations always lead to something as complex and functional as the eye? This doesn't address my impressions at all. It merely assumes that if it weren't an eye then it would be something else when anyone who understands statistics would say it shouldn't be anything at all with that sort of complexity. Unless of course we live on a crust of bones.

 

[nameta9]

For those of you that keep on putting up "combinational" arguments about evolution, I think you got it all wrong. You must consider the entire "ecosystem" of a planet with trillions of molecules each undergoing slight changes. Now these changes are reflected by other molecules and are sometimes enhanced and sometimes eliminated. Remember the Earth is a large sphere, look at how much grass there is etc. The first cell came about after a very complex and long process of molecules somewhat "talking to each other" if you will, in as far as they respond to changes in other molecules in a very intricate web of trillions of molecules on an entire planet. My initial idea was more if an "intentional" intelligence can arise in much simpler systems, like a silicon CPU.

 

[nameta9]

Some other odd philosophical problems that arise:

1) why is "complexity" considered special and therefore built by intelligence and simplicity not ? what is complexity and simplicity ? is gravity simple and biochemistry complex ?

2) If there is an "intelligent designer" ( aside from the fact that even intelligence is a very vague concept) then he was designed by another intelligence and on and on in a loop and maybe the fundamental structure of the universe is only pure "intentional" intelligence without any physical laws.

3) There could be an "intelligent" design in that we are all "brains in a vat" or inside a giant computer simulation. The alien race governing it all could be made up of completely different matter and physical laws and even much simpler physical laws that quickly evolve super intelligence.

4) Biochemistry seems to suggest that life is the result of thousands of levels and interactions between protein foldings, chemical reactions , neurons etc.
Then what we actually touch and feel is just pure infromation or electric signals. Then any substrate could create the same informational structure and be alive. Then in these cases life is truly an arbitrary invention, and any other invention that has the same information organization could become alive and actually could inhabit a radically different universe as seen by that life form. Protein folding and biochemistry is no closer to matter or reality than a transistor switch.

I can imagine within stars at a given depth there could be self organized plasma organizations and reactions that evolve just like biochemistry even though in a completely different "ecosystem", magnetic fields, electrons protons etc.

These are just some of many odd philosophical problems that arise when thinking about this topic.

 

[Fliption]

Some other odd philosophical problems that arise:

1) why is "complexity" considered special and therefore built by intelligence and simplicity not ? what is complexity and simplicity ? is gravity simple and biochemistry complex ?

I defined the measure of complexity earlier as the volume of variables/entities/interactions that all together form a single unit. A unit typically of function. Without anyone part, the whole doesn't exist. You can also look at complexity as those things that are statistically unlikely, given the natural laws/environment in which they exists.

Gravity is not necessarily simple. I would say gravity is a fundamental property of the universe. To make the claim that Life is a fundamental property doesn't seem to support natural selection, which is exactly the point many of us here are making.

2) If there is an "intelligent designer" ( aside from the fact that even intelligence is a very vague concept) then he was designed by another intelligence and on and on in a loop and maybe the fundamental structure of the universe is only pure "intentional" intelligence without any physical laws.

I never get caught up in this loop that so many people do because I don't assume my understanding of time and cause/effect applies to everything. Our understanding of time alone is so vague, I wouldn't feel comfortable forcing my perception of how it works on any form of intelligence. And yes, "Intelligence is vague" but "consciousness" is not.

3) There could be an "intelligent" design in that we are all "brains in a vat" or inside a giant computer simulation. The alien race governing it all could be made up of completely different matter and physical laws and even much simpler physical laws that quickly evolve super intelligence.

Maybe

4) Biochemistry seems to suggest that life is the result of thousands of levels and interactions between protein foldings, chemical reactions , neurons etc.
Then what we actually touch and feel is just pure infromation or electric signals. Then any substrate could create the same informational structure and be alive. Then in these cases life is truly an arbitrary invention, and any other invention that has the same information organization could become alive and actually could inhabit a radically different universe as seen by that life form. Protein folding and biochemistry is no closer to matter or reality than a transistor switch.

I equate "being alive" and "touching and feeling" as the results of consciousness. No convincing link has ever been shown to suggest that "consciousness" is the result of anything in Biochemistry.

 

[nameta9]

If we were a brain in a vat, well then maybe we could be a chip in a computer, just as long as all the electrical signals simulate the world perfectly. These chips then could be made up of a completely different matter and physical laws than we can ever imagine. Then maybe that chip is inside yet another simulation in yet another matter/physical world. The loops could be endless, the physical worlds and laws endless hence infinite universes. Then even a given simulation could correspond to one universe as seen by the chip, another simulation could be another universe, there is truly no limits to what is conceivable and possible.

 

[wave]

wave are you a programmer? in AI/graphics/ALife?

I have some experience in those fields. Not that I mind, but why do you ask?

 

[wave]

Are you saying that there is scientific evidence that natural selection alone explains life as we know it?

I am guessing you mean evolution instead of just natural selection. "Life as we know it" is rather vague. Please be more specific.

No, I mean Natural selection. I have no problem with evolution at all; just the mechanism for how it supposedly happened, which I believe the current thinking is that this is natural selection.

"Life as we know it" is only meant to capture all the knowledge that we currently have about life. I would say the study of Biology captures most of this knowledge.

Natural selection is not the mechanism for evolution. After Darwin proposed natural selection in 1859, scientists have discovered other mechanisms including sexual selection, genetic drift, gene flow, mutation, as well as recombination. Perhaps human evolution won't seem as "far-fetched" when you take those mechanisms into consideration. Secondly, natural selection does not explain "life as we know it" nor does it claim to. What gave you the impression that I thought otherwise?

The number of sheer lifeforms it would take to accomplish something like the human eye with this random plug and chug process is what makes this seem so unlikely.

I agree. What you've described is incredulous and beyond belief. The odds against picking the right variables out of all those combinations must be astronomical! However, evolutionary biologists don't believe it happened that way because the evidence suggest a very different process.

The process you've described is like safecracking - try a random combination and repeat if that combination is unsuccessful. The number of unsuccessful attempts would likely be large if there are billions of possible combinations. On the other hand, the process I am about to describe is more like a game of golf. You don't have to hit a hole-in-one. You just have to hit the ball towards the hole and continue from where the ball lands. It's not a perfect analogy, but the important point is that the process is gradual and cumulative rather than all-or-nothing. It's tough to hit a hole-in-one, but not as tough to hit a bogie.

When you study the eyes of various animals, you'll see a gradation from simple photosensitivity to human-like eyes. The stages we observe are as follows:

1. Photosensitivity at the cellular level can be found in unicellular organisms such as bacteria, protozoa and algae. Some Eukaryotic algae utilize this advantage to stay close to the water surface where light is more abundant.
2. An aggregation of photosensitive cells forms a light sensitive patch called an eyespot. In addition, some eyespots are protected by a transparent layer of cells. Leeches have eyespots that can detect movement and possible sources of food.
3. A ridge forms around the eyespot to create a depression called an eyecup. The cup-like shape allows an organism to recognize shadows and its direction, whereas eyespots can only distinguish between light and dark. Eyecups can be found in animals such as flatworms and starfish.
4. Eyecups gradually become deeper and hence distinguish directions better. Eventually, they form a sphere called a pinhole eye because they can form images like a pinhole camera. Various species of snails and mollusks have pinhole eyes.
5. Pinhole eyes can form a sharper image by reducing the size of its opening. However, brightness would be reduced as well. So the transparent protective layer develops into a lens to focus the image without having to shrink the opening. Mayflies and ragworms have vitreous masses that acts like a lens over their pinhole eyes.

The human eye most likely took a very similar developmental path. Small improvements can gradually accumulate over time to form a complex organ. Using pessimistic numbers, a team of researchers found that a fish-like eye including the lens could evolve that way in 364,000 generations and take less than 500,000 years [1]. So according to the evidence, eyes are so likely to evolve that we should see it develop multiple times over the course of several hundred million years. In fact, that is consistent with observation because eyes have evolved at least 40 separate times in the animal kingdom.

The number of sheer lifeforms it would take to accomplish something like the human eye with this random plug and chug process is what makes this seem so unlikely. The impression I get when I think of this over the course of billions of years is that the Earth would have a 20 foot crust of nothing but bones.

Even if that was true, bones and shells usually decompose beyond recognition after a few hundred years. Fossilization is rare and fossils are also prone to decay and erosion. Your impressions have misled you again.

I remember seeing a special about a female fish that could change herself into a male once the male of the species died. Let's just forget the complexity of a female fish changing into a male fish. Let's just toy with the timing of the change. This fish changes into a male only when the male dies. How many different variations could there have been?

Sequential hermaphroditism is quite common in many species of fish, so I am not sure which you're referring to. Nonetheless, natural selection can predict the conditions under which hermaphroditism is most likely to occur. Take the Thalassoma bifasciatum for example. According to natural selection, there should be a bias toward reaching sexual maturity as a female and then later changing into a male. The reason being their bodies continue to grow after they reach sexual maturity, but females will choose to mate with larger males almost exclusively. In other words, a female can breed right after she reaches sexual maturity while a male will have to wait until he grows larger. A female will become a male when she gets larger, so that she can mate more often. Therefore, an individual can increase their reproductive success by protogynous hermaphroditism according to natural selection.

Scientists used mathematical models of natural selection to predict their expected gender ratio, and confirmed that prediction through observation [2]. Other similar predictions have also been confirmed, for over a hundred different species with various alternative reproductive strategies - including socially controlled hermaphroditism like the one you described. Can you explain why there is such a correlation between natural selection and observation?

The female could have changed into a male at any particular time in her life that isn't linked with the life of the male and this would have ultimately ended this species because there would be no more females.

Differential reproductive success, among other factors, would preclude that from happening. Individuals with better timing would be favored by natural selection and eventually the population would improve their timing as well. Extinction can only occur if every population of the entire specie happen to consist of the same gender at the same time, which is an absurd idea unless they were already on the verge of extinction.

1. Nilsson D.E., Pelger S., 1994. A pessimistic estimate of the time required for an eye to evolve. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Biological Sciences, 256: 53-58.
   
2. Allsop D.J., West S.A., 2004. Sex-ratio evolution in sex changing animals. Evolution Int J Org Evolution, 58: 1019-27.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Natural selection is not the mechanism for evolution. After Darwin proposed natural selection in 1859, scientists have discovered other mechanisms including sexual selection, genetic drift, gene flow, mutation, as well as recombination. Perhaps human evolution won't seem as "far-fetched" when you take those mechanisms into consideration. Secondly, natural selection does not explain "life as we know it" nor does it claim to. What gave you the impression that I thought otherwise?

The mechanisms you specify, except gene drift, are all examples of natural selection or else kinds of variation whilch will subsequently be acted on by selection. Evolution proceeds by variation which is normally by mutation (typically a very small one: replacement of one base by another is typical), followed by selection, the adaptive winnowing of the varied genes though differential production of offspring by the phenotypes. But neutral, that is non-adaptive, variation does happen and a lot of the variation we see in everyday life is thought to be neutral; there isn't any obvious adaptive advantage between straight and curly hair, for example.

"Life as we know it" is due to two distinct processes:
1) The origin of life some two billion years ago. The details of this are currently speculative.
2) The evolution of life to create the present variety of life. This is adequately explained by variation of the genes accompanied by selection to pass on only the non-harmful genes to succeeding generations. All the complexity and detail of present-day life is fully accounted for by this simple mechanism.

 

[neurocomp2003]

wave:was just curious seems lik you knowquite abit about bio/cs, figured would have played around with ai and alife..

 

[wave]

The mechanisms you specify, except gene drift, are all examples of natural selection or else kinds of variation whilch will subsequently be acted on by selection.

They are definitely related to natural selection. However, they are not examples of natural selection - although you can argue that it is a superset of sexual selection. By definition, natural selection is a mechanism that decreases allele frequency over time. On the other hand, mutation, gene flow and recombination increases genetic variation. Therefore if what you say is true, then a population would eventually become homogenous and subsequent evolution would be impossible.

 

[wave]

wave:was just curious seems lik you knowquite abit about bio/cs, figured would have played around with ai and alife..

I am currently in biophysics research (nonlinear optical microscopy of cellular structures). I also have a computer science background. Very similar to you, huh?

 

[neurocomp2003]

sort of...i want to do Neuralnets/ALife/Cogsci and Astrophysics/Particles Physics and chemistry

But i did everything backwards and am now struggling to get to grad school(doesn't help that the 5 great references that i had for 2 years I bailed on in my 5th year of undergrad-2 psych profs 2 phys, and the chair of the math dept). That is to say I'm learning coding now(on my own) part after the other junk...shoulda did the cs first. especially in 3D engine building though i didn't know that was an option at the time.

 

[Fliption]

Natural selection is not the mechanism for evolution. After Darwin proposed natural selection in 1859, scientists have discovered other mechanisms including sexual selection, genetic drift, gene flow, mutation, as well as recombination. Perhaps human evolution won't seem as "far-fetched" when you take those mechanisms into consideration. Secondly, natural selection does not explain "life as we know it" nor does it claim to. What gave you the impression that I thought otherwise?

Yes I did know that the picture is a bit a more complicated than has been painted here but I don't see these things as necessaily convincing. The topic here has been one about randomness vs some sort of design. Since these things you have mentioned don't change what I believe the natural selection view to be, then you must have brought them up because you think they make the "random" theory seem more plausible. But that point has not been sufficently made here imo.

When you study the eyes of various animals, you'll see a gradation from simple photosensitivity to human-like eyes. The stages we observe are as follows:

Again, I am aware that things happened in the way you have described. I realize that my earlier impressions make light of this and paint a ghastly statistical picture. Even though these things make things statistically more plausible, they are still so incredulous as to remain ridiculous...to me. Your point only seems to be one of degree of statistical absurdity.

The human eye most likely took a very similar developmental path. Small improvements can gradually accumulate over time to form a complex organ. Using pessimistic numbers, a team of researchers found that a fish-like eye including the lens could evolve that way in 364,000 generations and take less than 500,000 years [1]. So according to the evidence, eyes are so likely to evolve that we should see it develop multiple times over the course of several hundred million years. In fact, that is consistent with observation because eyes have evolved at least 40 separate times in the animal kingdom.

No matter how "small" we dive down into the details to talk about "improvements", the number of possibilities still makes this scenario equivalent to 18 holes in one. What good is a bogie when you have 5 billion holes to play?

Even if that was true, bones and shells usually decompose beyond recognition after a few hundred years. Fossilization is rare and fossils are also prone to decay and erosion. Your impressions have misled you again.

I'll concede that this may be true. I mentioned as much earlier. The main point being made is the sheer number of trials that would have to be done to get to where we are now.

According to natural selection, there should be a bias toward reaching sexual maturity as a female and then later changing into a male. The reason being their bodies continue to grow after they reach sexual maturity, but females will choose to mate with larger males almost exclusively.

I don't think this answers my question. Maybe I didn't understand your point. I wasn't referring to a female that turned into a male at some set time in her life. I was referring to a female that turned into a male only when the male died. The timing of the change alone could have how many different possibilities?

Can you explain why there is such a correlation between natural selection and observation?

Because it is a theory developed on observations? Much like Quantum physics and relativity are. They both can't be right but they sure do match the observations. Also, I have claimed from the beginning that natural selection works. I wouldn't even know how to argue against it if I was being paid to. My only suspicion is its ability to completely explain the evolution of life. I am including all of your other terms in this impression as well.

Differential reproductive success, among other factors, would preclude that from happening. Individuals with better timing would be favored by natural selection and eventually the population would improve their timing as well. Extinction can only occur if every population of the entire specie happen to consist of the same gender at the same time, which is an absurd idea unless they were already on the verge of extinction.

This is a good explanation of natural selection. But it doesn't make it any more reasonable as a complete explanation.

I said from the beginning that this was a position of incredulity and based on my impression. So this is largely a subjective thing I realize. But there is a point where most reasonable people will agree about subjective things. Even you have said that you agreed with the original picture I have painted. So you have a point where you think the odds are too great as well. The point where NS becomes a plausible complete answer for me hasn't been reached. Whenever I think of the things that have to happen to explain the life properties that I see, my mind almost goes into shock. Even when I think about it in the gradual way that you have descibed(which I was aware of previous to this thread). Given certain other knowledge trouble spots in science(mentioned earlier in this thread), there are other possibilities that seem more reasonable to me. When I step back and look at the big picture, the most intuitive answer is NOT natural selection. Which won't stand up in a court of law I know.

 

[Rade]

Back to first post on this thread:
Intelligent design without god ?

Answer is yes. Design is a form of "communication". Thus consider formula: Entity [E] designs [M]. Of interest is how [M] comes to be selected by [E]. [M] selected is part of a set of possible [M's] non-selected. The process of selecting [M] takes place in discrete stages of time, and selection is measured by the decrease in the variety of [M's] to a single final [M]. A decrease in variety is information--communication. By this process, nature [N] can design species by selecting groups of individual members of such that they increase their possibility of survival and reproduction. The mechanism of design requires placing a regulator between members of and their environment (think cell wall in a plant cell, shell of the turtle, etc.). One measure of intelligence is having the "ability to respond quickly and successfully to a new environment" (Webster). Thus, [N] not only can design species it can do it intelligently in such a way that can respond quickly (e.g.. survive) and successfully (e.g., reproduce) to changing environments (e.g., microevolution). The mechanism of the selection process by [N] is called "non-random reproduction of genotypes", and if given sufficient time via a process of successive selective dichotomies (e.g., selections between groups of individual members of rather than individual members of ), then new [S'] can be created from (e.g., macroevolution). In summary, the process of intelligent design does not require god, it is also a fundamental outcome of laws and forces of nature. Thus, any attempt to "teach" intelligent design as science must put forward the hypothesis that nature is an intelligent designer, in addition to other possible designers, both mythological and other worldly.

 

[kair]

unintelligent design