Re: Is evolution an intelligent process?


"JGCASEY" <jgkjcasey@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1186906697.537610.197000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: c...@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch)
Date: 12 Aug 2007 05:33:53 GMT
Local: Sun, Aug 12 2007 3:33 pm
Subject: Re: Intelligent Evolution

"J.A. Legris" <jaleg...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 10, 5:30 am, c...@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch)
wrote:
The thing you need to explain in greater detail,
which is common among crackpots, seers, and other
loons is how your claims might be falsified.
By your criteria, all states that persist,
including those that persist in not existing,
do so by virtue of feedback from the environment
(i.e. reinforcement) that contributes to the
persistence of those states. To test such a
claim, we would have interrupt all feedback from
the environment, which is not going to happen in
this universe. Of course, this provides a neat
explanation for the Big Bang, which is that if
you have nothing, including no reinforcers to
enforce that nothingness, then you must have
everything. Boom!

CW:
Well, what I'm talking about here, looking at
evolution as a process of reinforcement, is not
something that needs to be falsified. If you
simply look at it right, you see the parallels
I'm talking about. There's nothing here to prove.
It's like saying: "if you look at a cylinder from
the side, you see a square". If I pointed that
out to you, would you then turn to me and say,
how can you prove what you say is true? If you
can't falsify what you suggest, then it's just
the rambling of a crackpot?


JC:
Have you read the story of the six blind men who
were to determine what an elephant looked like by
feeling different parts of its body?

They all disagreed and yet each had part of the
truth. The one the felt the leg described it as
like a pillar, the other felt its tail and said
it was like a rope, and so on...

With your example above we can all be looking at
the cylinder from different views.



This is like the most stupid reply I've seen in a long, long time. CW is taking about evolution, intelligence and reinforcement. You talk about six blind man and an elephant. Can you explain to the world wide population what six blind man and one elephant have to do with evolution, intelligence and reinforcement?

You didn't say anything new about evolution.
You didn't say anything new about intelligence.
You didn't say anything new about reinforcement.
You just reminded us that there is one funny story about six blind men and an elephant but you didn't prove that this story has anything to do with this discussion. Why the hell do you think that your story applies to this discussion?


You can start your next reply with:
You don't know what you talk about! There is an old story about Snow-White....

.

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