Re: Human design and natural "design"
- From: Matt Silberstein <RemoveThisPrefixmatts2nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 17:53:35 GMT
On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 15:09:44 -0600, in talk.origins , dkomo
<dkomo871@xxxxxxxxxxx> in
<5eWdnZ2dnZ0m_7TDnZ2dnYDLn96dnZ2dRVn-yJ2dnZ0@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>Matt Silberstein wrote:
>> On Mon, 15 Aug 2005 17:56:59 GMT, in talk.origins , Mark Isaak
>> <eciton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in
>> <nfk1g1tubleq5jo14fp0j9ed9796dohsol@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 15:01:22 -0600, dkomo <dkomo871@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Mark Isaak wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On Fri, 12 Aug 2005 09:03:21 -0600, dkomo <dkomo871@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>>>>>wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>[...]
>>>>>>In the general world of human design, is there anything more than random
>>>>>>variation and selection? Yes, an evaluative memory. As a design
>>>>>>proceeds, it is *guided* using a combination of what has worked in the
>>>>>>past with foresight into what may work in the future. A large and
>>>>>>highly complex neural network continuously monitors the progress of the
>>>>>>design, providing highly discriminatory feedback. This type of guidance
>>>>>>is what is missing in evolution and the computer science examples.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>That "evaluative memory" is another term for selection. Human design
>>>>>goes through the same sort of selection that plant and animal
>>>>>populations do.
>>>>
>>>>It most certainly does not. You're trying to compare a closed loop
>>>>process like human design which contains large amounts of feedback to an
>>>>open loop process like evolution which has *no* direct feedback links
>>>>between the environment and genomes.
>>>
>>>Yes, evolution does have feedback links between the environment and
>>>genomes. They just occur over many generations.
>>>
>>>
>>>>There is only the most superficial
>>>>connection between the two processes in that human design involves some
>>>>selection based on desired criteria.
>>>
>>>And what does "desired criteria" mean? Often, it means survival of
>>>the design. And designs which survive get built upon to make future
>>>generations of design. In the cases where survival is not a desired
>>>criterion, the design goes extinct early.
>>>
>>>
>>>> This is not enough similarity to
>>>>try to force the kind of sweeping analogy between design and evolution
>>>>that you're attempting.
>>>
>>>The two are not analogous processes; they are the *same* process: a
>>>continuous process of variation, selection, and building upon the
>>>selected variants.
>>>
>>>There are three differences I see between evolution and design.
>>>First, design uses conceptual modelling to do most of the selection in
>>>a fraction of a second, rather than in multiple generations.
>>
>>
>> Which just means that the evolution goes on internal to our minds.
>
>Only if you assume there is nothing but random variation going on inside
>our minds. To make a direct link to evolution like you guys are trying
>to do, you must accept random variation, and nothing but random
>variation, in our thinking process. Good luck.
And in order to show the freedom from evolution you assert you have to
so some kind of direction *generation* of ideas. Good luck on that. I
can point to the seeming impossibility of predicting the future
*absent* previously build models. I can point to how our ideas are
usually wrong and rejected, how they are modifications of previously
ideas.
>> Does not make it magic, just hard to see.
>>
>>
>>>Second,
>>>design allows new designs to be based on parts from multiple lineages,
>>>not just one immediate ancestor.
>>
>>
>> Which absolutely occurs in biology, it is just less common than single
>> inheritance. I think I know why. Organisms have had a few billion
>> years to build of defenses against this foreign DNA, human designs not
>> quite as long.
>>
>
>Horizontal gene transfer? Bacteria certainly practice it, but there is
>a lot of controversy as to what extent it goes on between different
>species of plants, or animals.
Which does not mean it does not happen or is not part of evolution.
Once you accept that it does exist, as you have, it is kind of silly
to point out where it does not exist. SFW if animals don't do it,
cross-fertilization is certainly part of the evolutionary toolkit.
>>>Third, design allows old designs to
>>>be saved in a library, so they may be resurrected after they go
>>>extinct.
>>
>> Sort of like how genes are turned off rather than eliminated. And how
>> small populations of organisms can survive when the maim population is
>> wiped out.
>
>Can you resurrect a trilobyte? What library do you go to?
Can you resurrect 1st C Christian communities? North American
Neolithic culture? Gee, I guess we both have this problem.
>>>But the process of change of existing forms by variation and
>>>selection is the same in both design and evolution.
>>
>>
>>>> This
>>>>makes the process deterministic in large part, which is certainly not
>>>>the case in evolution, which proceeds from random variation. And this
>>>>deterministic component makes design proceed much faster than biological
>>>>evolution.
>>>
>>>Have you ever participated in a brainstorming session? There is a
>>>hell of a lot of random variation going on there, at least as much as
>>>in biological evolution (or so it seems to me; I have no idea how one
>>>would measure it). And the random variation that gets expressed in a
>>>brainstorming session is only a subset of the random variation that
>>>occurs in a brain. People are good enough at censoring out the bad
>>>ideas quickly that they think they don't have them. Well, they do.
>>
>>
>> Either that of dkomo has to tell us how the idea generation mechanism
>> can work, other than by random variation. How does the *generating
>> mechanism* know that some idea will be better than another?
>>
>
>My irony meter is pegged here because in past discussions of free will
>and determinism I dared suggest that our brains operate partly randomly,
>and generated many hoots of derision.
I don't give a, well, hoot, what other said. Now what meaning of
"random" did you have? Mine is not somehow that there is some truly
random feature, free from the causal rules of nature, only that the
generated ideas are random *with respect to* the problem at hand.
>Whether or not there are random elements to the way our brains operate,
>unless you guys can demonstrate that thinking and human design are
>completely non-deterministic the way mutations in genomes are, you can't
>call human design just another variation of evolution. Again, good luck
>in demonstrating this.
Good luck in showing that some goal oriented generative feature
exists. Such would have to be able to predict the future absent the
existence of later add-on predictive models.
--
Matt Silberstein
And now our bodies are oh so close and tight
It never felt so good, it never felt so right
And we're glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife
C'mon! Hold on tight!
C'mon! Hold on tight!
Though it's cold and lonley in the deep dark night
I can see paradise by the dashboard light
Paradise by the dashboard light
Jim Steinman
.
- References:
- Human design and natural "design"
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