Re: Temporal Learning

Traveler <traveler@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 11 Oct 2005 18:50:31 GMT, curt@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch) wrote:

> >Population size doesn't really prevent [evolution] from working, it just
> >limits the speed of adapation to a changing envrionment.
>
> It prevents it from working the way we've been told. In order for new
> species to emerge, there must be a lot of opportunities for mutations.
> The problem with the mutation hypothesis is that, the more complex the
> organism, the less chance any mutation has to be successful. The
> mutation process discourages complexity. Big time.

It discorages the type of complexity humans like to build into their
machines. It encourages the type of complexity created by indepdendence
instead of the type created by codependence.

In a computer, you can break any single transitor, or any single wire in
the CPU, and the thing will crash and burn in very short order. That's the
type of complexity evolution can't work with. In the human body, you can
distroy any single cell, and nothing bad happens. There's not a single
cell in the entire body that is so important you can't just kill it and
have they body keep functioning. Everything is redudant to some degree.

Likewise, in the specification for the design (DNA etc), there's no doubt a
huge amount of redundant flexibility so that small mutations make small
changes. To start with, DNA is redundant. We have two copies most all
genes (except the ones on that retarded little Y chromosome). So if one
gets mutated, the other has a chance to carry on the old role. This allows
the DNA to carry around mutations that are currently harmless but which one
day, might prove useful when combined with other new mutations.

There's probably a lot more independence in the genes than we understand as
well, because we know so little about what all the genes do and how they
work totgether.

> >> We should be seeing a lot more new human species emerging
> >> now (we have billions of mating specimens) than in the distant past
> >> when populations were sparse.
> >
> >No we shouldn't be. Evolution is not a processes of creating new
> >species.
>
> You're mistaken. Darwinian evolution is precisely about the origin of
> species.

Well, what I wrote wasn't very clear, but what I meant was - "Evolution is
not JUST a processes of creating new species". It's far more than that.
It's the processes which creates all structure in the universe. I've not
read Darwin's work so I don't know for sure what his main points were.
However, just because the title of his most famous work was about the orgin
of the species, I doub't it's only point was about the origin of the
species. It was no doubt about how life changes on it's own through
natural selection without the need of some external force like GOD to make
it happen. Darwin didn't know about DNA, but that's not important. DNA is
not evolution. Evolution is change through natrual selection. It explains
how the planets and stars and rocks got to be here just as well as it
explains how man came to be.

> >It's a processes of finding the optimal solution to the problems created
> >by the environment. It's the environment that defines the species, not
> >the processes of evolution. When the environment changes, the species
> >change to adapt.
>
> But there is no change, genetically speaking. Unless the gene that
> allows an individual to survive an environmental hardship already
> existed in the individual, the individual has no chance of surviving.
> Nothing new is created. Obviously the genes were already present in
> some individuals. Why? Where do they come from? How did they emerge
> without previous evolutionary pressure? Pressure from the environment
> does not create new genes. The genes are already there. Why? That's
> the chicken and egg problem of Darwinian evolution. It needs
> environmental pressure to change but it cannot change unless the genes
> somehow existed before the pressure arrived to cause the change.
> Mutation alone cannot account for new gene creation because the more
> complex the organism the less successful the mutations. In the
> Darwinian scheme of things, complexity is its own worst enemy.

Not at all. Man's lack of understanding about how to create complexity
without dependency is man's worse enemy in understanding the power of
natural selection.

> Let me add that natural selection is kind of like reinforcement
> learning.

It's not kind of like it. It's the same thing.

> It does not create new genes; it only selects pre-existing
> genes via the mechanism of sexual breeding. Likewise, RL does not
> created new behaviors; it selects existing behaviors; some other
> principles create the behaviors. It's a selection process.

That's right.

DNA based life is a special type of "evolution machine" which greatly
speeds up the processes of natrual selection. The brain is yet another
type of "evolution machine" which greatly speeds up the processes of
natural selections effects on behavior.

But evoluton and natural selection are at work on all matter, not just DNA
machines and not just brains.

The prime system of evolution we see at work transforming animals in front
of us, is not mutation. It's the DNA hardware operating as a reinforcement
learning machine. The gene pool of any speces stores the current set of
genes which specify the design of the individual organisms. Every time an
organism in the group dies, it's genes are removed from the gene pool, and
in doing so, reduces the probablity of those genes being used in the
future. It's an act of punishment to the reinforcement learning machine
and it does exactly the same thing that punishment does in all
reinforcement learning machines. It reduces the probablity of the behavior
being repeated in the future. But in this case, the "behavior" is a
processes of the DNA building a life form. So the DNA itself has behaviors
of building life forms, and those behaviors are operantly conditioned
through the death, and birth, of life forms.

Even a small gene pool has billions of different variations it can create
without the help of any mutations just by mixing and matching all the
genetic variations already present in the gene pool. And that processes is
what produces the quick changes we see happening though cross breading and
natrual selection.

But beyond that, genes get randomly mutated all the time by forces like
xrays. These mutations don't always kill the organism because all genes
are redundant and the backup gene is always there ready to do what needs to
be done. And in addition, most genes probably don't work alone, and when
you kill one of the set, the net effect of the group changes slightly, but
not completly. Because if the group depended on all the genes doing a
precise job, then we never could have evolved this level of complexity in
the first place. So once a mutation enters the gene pool, the DNA RL
system goes to work testing it's usefulness, (in the context of the current
enviornment).

To create separate species, you must split a gene pool into separate
breeding groups, and then let them evolove on their own, long enough for
the designs to drift far enough part to be called separate species. That
doesn't happen in 100 years. It takes 100's of generations - an it will
only work if you have created independent breading pools (DNA RL engines).

In today's world, yes, the human DNA RL engine is running faster than it
ever has in the past because the poplution is larger today. But, because
the gene pool is becomming more tightly coupled into on large engine,
there's not hope of it splitting into different species. We will have to
send a group of to a different set of starts and let them evolve on their
own for a few hundred thousand years before the DNA RL engine would create
a new species.

> >The only way to force variation in a species, is to split then into
> >separate breeding pools and put each pool into a separate environment.
> >That allows the breeding pool to evolve into a different form optimized
> >for the needs of their unique environment. This is what happaned to
> >man, as he spread around the world and became isolated in different
> >areas with different environmential demands.
>
> If other species are any indication, we should witness several species
> of human-like creatures that are more or less equally intelligent even
> though they cannot interbreed. This is not observed and, regardless of
> claims to the contrary, the fossil record does not show evidence of
> intelligent humanoids who did not interbreed. There are all kinds of
> bird species who cannot genetically interbreed. Same with lizards,
> spiders, fish, etc...

There's just no evidence to support that claim. Why are there not two
species of horses with black and white vertical stripes? Or two breads of
horse like abimals with long necks to reach high leaves on the trees? All
thoughout the tree of life we find species with singular unique features
not found in any other species. The fact that man has a feature (his
brain) which is not duplicated in any other species is not at all unusal.

In addition, our brain has only been with us for a few hundred thousand
years. Geneticaly speaking, it's a brand new feature. Give the rest of
the life a few million more years and then see how many other species might
have one. Then you can try to make the argument.

More important however, is that in the recent past, there were several
species with simlar "strong brains", and they all died off except us. This
might be explained by the fact that what a stronger brain brings with it,
is the ability to understand, and deal with, the threat created by
intelligent competition. No species on the planet goes to war against the
threat of intelligence like humans do. Our brain is our strongest weapon,
and we know it. And when our competition gets strong weapons and threaten
us, we kill them. So, to expect a world filled with "equaly intelligent
species" at the top of the intelligence ladder would be contrary to what
natrual selection would predict.

> >Of course it is. We are cross breeding at increasing higher rates.
> >That means we are forming one large breeding pool for the entire
> >environment of earth and we are becoming a species which is optimized
> >for one large single environment - Earth. Do you want to see man evolve
> >apart, send a million people to Mars and don't let the Martians cross
> >breed with the Earthlings for the next 100,000 years and then see what
> >happens.
>
> A billion years from now, they would still be human.

Anyone that understands evolution would not agree with that.

> >Man is not an individual. He's part of a large breeding pool which
> >works as a single large machine designed for the purpose of survial by
> >adapting to the environment. If you want to see these large machines
> >take different paths, you have to cut them in half and create two
> >machines and then left them each go off on their own way.
> >
> >The more cross breading that takes place on earth because of the
> >increased transportation and mobility of people, the more we act as one
> >machine, instead of 20 separate machines and the more we become one
> >homogeneous race. This is not a surprise, it's exactly what you would
> >expect from evolution.
>
> I don't think so. According to the Darwinian doctrine, new species
> arise as a result of mutations in a large population. The larger the
> population, the more numerous the mutations and the greater the
> chances for successful ones. We have more people on earth than ever
> before. Where are the new species of intelligent humans? Sure we have
> lots of races but a race is just a variety, not a separate species.

You don't understand how evolution works. A single species which exists in
a single breading pool, forms ONE single reinforcment learning machine
which evolves not in different directions, but in one single direction.

Do you understand what a species is? It's a gene pool which has split into
two parts, and then the two parts evolved far enough part, that they can no
long cross breed. The only way for that to happen, is to split a single
gene pool into two pools, and let each evolve for a long long time on
separate paths.

You can't have a single mutation in a single gene pool that manages to
create a new species. The odds are so astronomically small that it's just
won't happen. If a single mutation happens that makes enough changes that
prevents the offspring from breeding with anyone but themself, then who is
that offspring going to breed with to start a new pool?

As long as the species is interbreeding in a single large gene pool, it
can't form two species. The gene pool can't drift far enough apart to
create two species where there is currently only one.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@xxxxxxxx http://NewsReader.Com/
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Temporal Learning
    ... >> species to emerge, there must be a lot of opportunities for mutations. ... environment is consequently subject to quite dramatic non-linear ... > genes. ... The gene pool of any speces stores the current set of ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • From Russia (and adman) With Love:
    ... There are no fossils of partially-evolved species to indicate that ... fossils used to support human evolution from a supposed ape-like ancestry. ... The nature and issue of mutations will be ... previously existing genes - not because of mutations. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Science and Faith (Serious)
    ... Some mutations will be harmful, ... only operates at the level of species. ... This applies equally to lions in the wild as well. ... And so mix up the gene pool again. ...
    (soc.culture.irish)
  • Re: Has talk.origins convinced any creationists?
    ... This tremendous amount of variation within species has been ... progenitors of each kind possess enough variability among their genes to ... What we know about mutations, however, makes ... In her genetics textbook, Anna Pai makes it clear that "the word ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: From Russia (and adman) With Love:
    ... There are no fossils of partially-evolved species to indicate ... that a gradual process of evolution ever occurred. ... nature and issue of mutations will be discussed later and the reader ... possessed genes to produce all the varieties and races of men. ...
    (talk.origins)
Loading