Slashdot Mirror

(I am asking a bit of a trick question. The way, if any, which Gould's position was different from standard evol biology is diffuse. Gould liked it that way. See e.g. for something Gould didn't want to answer...)

Besides that.

How do you explain that evolutionary algorithms work if you don't think evolution works? You have seen articles discussing evolution of e.g. eyes, I hope? Go read up on criticism of Behe, or something.

• The Selfish Gene
• Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology
• Chimpanzee Politics
• Getting to Yes
• In a Different Voice
• The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
• Consilience: The Unity of Human Knowledge
• The World's Religions
• Life 102: What To Do When Your Guru Sues You
• Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

That was Isaac Asimov's idea, and very likely will happen one day. I don't have a problem with that. It's possible to see robots as our extended phenotype. I think they're very likely to be better at sentience than we are.

The answer is yes, Dembski only gives lectures about ID at churches, never at scientific conferences. The reason is simple: ID is not science. Science is strictly about naturalistic events, but ID assumes from the get-go a supernatural intelligent designer, with a wink and a nod about who that designer is..."scientific" creationists and IDers use the same arguments, and in some cases the same people! No one inside or outside of the ID movement has ever figured out how to bend science--constrained exclusively to the study of natural events by definition--with a supernatural intelligent designer. Not Johnson, Behe, Dembski, anyone. This and other fatal flaws (such as the inability of IDers to say when something is "irreducably" complex, or even a way of making ID falsifiable, a requirement for all sceintific ideas) were noted for example when Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" came out. This book probably has the highest level of scientific "acceptance," in that it was reviewed in a couple of journals, most notably Nature (note that it is from Richard Dawkin's website as it is unavailable from Nature). The Nature review was par for course: very unkind and taking a few paragraphs to utterly refute the entire notion of ID being science. Not surprisingly, there are currently no IDers out there who have successfully published pro-ID papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals. I doubt that any effort has ever been made to do so anyway. They have made books for the mass market and have occasionally gotten the odd letter to the editor published, but that's all: a sure mark of pseudoscience. As a scientific idea, ID rates a full 4 cuckoos.

I've read articles by Behe and Dembski and was not favorably impressed. Behe and Dembski are not taken seriously by the scientific community for that matter either. For example, read Nature's review of Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" (Nature 1996, Volume 383, pages 227-228, available pay-only from them, but freely available here). Another review that is available online is from the National Center for Science Education--the premier science education body in the USA. Naturally, both it and Nature (and, well, science in general) are firmly in the evolutionists' camp. You've probably heard it before, but why not give talkorigins a try? They have their own pages on Behe and Dembski as well.

I suggest you read The Blind Watchmaker, that goes into such things.

It has enough sex talk in it to satisfy your prurient interests. Not the gross squshy kind, but the clean, technical sex that will hit /.ers right in the honeypot.

Ooh baby... you extended my phenotype!

or have deeper religious convictions about right and wrong

I don't think video cameras existed about the time of creation.

So there is no creation going on now? Any explanation of why? Or is this one of those mysteries where you need to consult religion for the answers?

He spoke and it happened. Feel free to repliacte that in you lab.

Pretty thin explanation there, and I am not really sure what the evidence for this is supposed to be. What makes you think that speaking was involved? What makes you think it was a "he"?

As far as you other questions, I'd love to hear the evolutionary explaination for those.

You can start reading here:

You will find all sorts of interesting evolutionary explanations - everything from explanations of vestigial biological structures, to the oddities of human psychology. Is there anything like this published by Creationists? Anything at all that looks remotely like a use of the theory to solve an actual scientific question?

See, as far as I can tell from reading Creationist literature (and I have read quite a bit) it all amounts to little more than the claim that "God did it" plus a laundry list of objections to the theory of evolution. There is no actual creationist theory. Just that one singular claim. No evidence is ever given for Creationism, no explanation is ever given of what the creator was, no explanation is ever given of how the creating was done or even why it was done, no use of the theory is ever made in answering the kinds of questions that scientists want to answer.

An interesting observation that I missed, given that I agree with the Selfish Gene idea of Richard Dawkins. Thanks for pointing out. But the question reamins. If it were truly advantageous, why doesn't Evolution favor twins? It is advantageous only if those are "good" genes. Nature would prefer to have a few bad apples than an entire basket of bad ones, given you can't determine what DNA goes into the offspring. Also, if you buy the theory of Selfish Gene, it applies only at individual genes (or small sets of genes) and not whole genome, simply because a complete genome is bound to be destroyed after a few generations. So, me thinks Evolution doesn't exactly favor identical DNAs.

From the World of Dawkins we get the following:

Yes, Michael Behe is a scientist, but is "Intelligent Design" science? If so, it will be the first science established without a single technical paper published for peer-review, including zero by Behe himself. For some reason he has decided to completely bypass professional review and go directly to a Darwin-doubting public. But more to the point, what is wrong with this book?...

If you want to find out what is wrong with the book take a look here. A short summary would be that Behe starts out with an interesting question but then goes on to supply a series of shoddy argumements, half-truths, and occasional outright falsehoods, in support of a very dubious answer to his original question.

I mean anyone can say "look at a real biologist", and "if you actually understood it [evolution]." This is exactly the same type of hype that has given evolution the appearance of any kind of credibility.

You seem to think that it is unreasonable to ask that you understand a theory before you decide that it is false. It is not.

From the World of Dawkins we get the following:

Yes, Michael Behe is a scientist, but is "Intelligent Design" science? If so, it will be the first science established without a single technical paper published for peer-review, including zero by Behe himself. For some reason he has decided to completely bypass professional review and go directly to a Darwin-doubting public. But more to the point, what is wrong with this book?...

If you want to find out what is wrong with the book take a look here. A short summary would be that Behe starts out with an interesting question but then goes on to supply a series of shoddy argumements, half-truths, and occasional outright falsehoods, in support of a very dubious answer to his original question.

I mean anyone can say "look at a real biologist", and "if you actually understood it [evolution]." This is exactly the same type of hype that has given evolution the appearance of any kind of credibility.

You seem to think that it is unreasonable to ask that you understand a theory before you decide that it is false. It is not.

Could this be the latest expression of what the selfish gene?

consider this: just burn your genome to cd, and lable the disk(s) "Microsoft paladium crack" and give them to an asian cd pirate and you suddenly have thousands of copies of your genome out there in the world.

It's the cheapest way to clone your genome, and no toilet training, or college educating required.

...was to fund Richard Dawkins' professorship:
Article at www.world-of-dawkins.com.

The Biologist Richard Dawkins (author of The Selfish Gene, River out of Eden, The Blind Watchmaker and more) has been an outspoken fan of macs for That very reason. I think he's writted some software for them himself (ai programs that mutate and evolve). Perhaps someone could find out more on this.

Romana#2's real name is Lalla Ward and she's now married to creationist fanboy Richard Dawkins.

When will we see one like him again?

Try reading Richard Dawkins :)

For interesting reading about Gould and how he was regarded in his field, see The Gould Files

There are some critical reviews of The Mismeasure of Man:

http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/jensen-gould- fossils

http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/psycho logy/IQ/carroll-gould.html

You're misunderstanding Dawkins. Neither he nor (AFAIK) any serious evolutionary scientist claims that evolution is a justification for social conservatism. There's a big difference between saying we are selfish (a la The Selfish Gene) and that we should be selfish.

Social Darwinism is little more than a straw man. They certainly had differences, but this wasn't one of them.

Well, Christians don't try to subvert the legal process to their own ends, at least not in an organized way.

That's silly. Of course they do. There are many different shades of Christianity, but the evangelical crowd would be quite happy to see the United States become a Christian nation, and frequently espouse their wish for laws that would establish this. More frequently than not, their tactics are just as unethical as the Scientologists are. From stealth candidates to pushing for so-called "intelligent design" theories, they are well versed in using the political system to achieve religious ends.

Read up on the rise and fall of the Christian Coalition for more information on this.

What Oliphant means by "spatial structure" is that interaction, including mating, occurs only with individuals who were born near each other. This is a realistic first-order approximation of the structure of evolutionary history in most species -- allowing for Saussurean Communication as well as C to become stable within inbreeding groups.

PRIMORDIAL HYPOCRISY AND MIGRATION

Given the presence of Saussurean communication evolved in the presence of kin, the potential arises for successful mutations that combine D with signals that impute kinship thereby eliciting C from the recipients.

This is the primordial origin of the H strategy, and the C thereby elicited is first-order extended phenotypic cooperation.

However, given Oliphant's assumption of spatial structure, H quickly dies out as Saussurean communication and C are selected out of its environment and H individuals are interacting with other H individuals so frequently that the payoff for D sinks below the average payoffs of neighboring inbreeding groups not exhibiting H.

H, therefore, becomes stable only with ongoing migration to unexploited inbreeding groups.

Migratory behavior makes H persist.

Migration and H can therefore be considered codependent evolutionary strategies.

SYCOPHANT HYPOCRISY AND XENOPHOBIC TIT-FOR-TAT

Once migratory behavior has arisen (giving persistence to H) the complexity introduced by the iterated PD becomes necessary to explain global demographic stability. Global demographic stability can persist (even if Saussauran communication is globally sacrificed as a defensive measure against H signals) only if repeat encounters allow a TFT strategy to emerge based on recognition of individuals who have previously exhibited D behavior. Moreover, if the TFT must be xenophobic -- that is, the TFT must presume an unknown immigrant to be H and therefore initially exhibit D toward any unknown immigrant. The H immigrant must, therefore, evolve toward initial sycophantry: in the initial encounter, the immigrant H must unconditionally exhibit C despite the expectation of a non-reciprocal exploitative initial response.

This initial investment for H can pay off only if sufficient C is elicited in the host population to provide enough exploitable individuals to make up for the cost of initial sycophantry . Stable Saussarian communication in the host inbreeding group is crucial for this condition to be met -- otherwise all individuals of the host inbreeding group will D in their first interaction with the H immigrant, causing the H strategy to fail in that environment. Therefore, reputational Saussurean communication, elicited by initial sycophantry, is crucial to the persistence of H in the presence of xenophobic TFT.

The C elicited by reputational Saussurean communication in response to sycophantic H is second-order extended phenotypic cooperation.

Such second-order extended phenotypics is the origin of biologically pathogenic memes as weapons in genetic arms races and are, in the most primitive form, "recommendation" memes.

The existence of such second-order extended phenotypics means it is inevitable that the H individuals will evolve to emit false recommendation signals for themselves and "defamation" signals for members of the host population. Since it takes longer to receive TFT responses to a defamation (or false recommendation) signal than it does to actually exploit (or be exploited), the defamation signals will target individuals that are reacting to exploitation or are passing on warning memes from those who have been exploited. Defamation memes targeting the members of the host population that react to exploitation is a third-order extended phenotype, attacking the host population's TFT response and generating the equivalent of an extended phenotypic auto-immune deficiency within the host population.

Having stabilized enough of the nonkin inbreeding group in C- exhibiting TFT, H individuals will then exhibit D toward nonkin to recoup the costs of initial sycophantry and then continue to D so as to reap the primary benefits of the H strategy. Mass emigration ensues as the exploitable population diminishes to the point that the costs imposed by D-responses from the host population's TFT strategy (enhanced by reputational Sassurean communication which is also inhibited by second and third order extended phenotypes as described above) exceed the benefits of further exploitation.

HYPOCRITICAL PROMOTION OF GLOBAL MIGRATIONS

To this stage of evolution, only H populations are migrating, and the exploited populations are homogeneous inbreeding groups. As the genetic arms race continues, and the H strategy advances beyond the sycophant adaptations to extended phenotypic promotion of C and inhibition of TFT, there comes a point where it is advantageous to H individuals to promote random migrations in non-H populations.

The reason for this is that non-H populations, being dependent on spatial structure (kin selection) for the primary stability of C within their populations, as described above, become dependent on the extended phenotypic promotion of C provided by H individuals. The H individuals thereby remove the ability of non-H populations to sustain C within themselves in the absence of H extended phenotypic influence. This has the effect of extending time during which H populations can reap the benefits of their strategy subsequent to losses due to initial sycophantry. The tolerance of non-H populations for being exploited by H individuals dramatically increases since they are under the threat of other nonkin populations whose ability to invoke TFT to stabilize C with nonkin has been suppressed by the general suppression of their TFT phenotypes by the extended phenotypes of the H population.

CONCLUSION

Thus we can see that in addition to the theory that heterogenous populations make hypocrite populations less visible to an otherwise homogeneous population that may be preparing to expell them in a tit- for-tat reaction subsequent to hypocritical exploitation, there is an selective pressure for evolutionarily advanced hypocrite populations to promote immigration to homogeneous host populations subsequent to or in conjunction with defection against those populations: to create dependence on the presence of the hypocrite population, and its evolved (extended phenotypic) ability to elicit cooperative behavior in non-kin, thereby extending the time during which the pay off subsequent to initial defection may be reaped beyond the recovery of losses due to initial sycophantry.

I don't see the anti-creationists admitting to any of this stuff ... e.g. Dawkins.

Dawkins' aggressive style is a common approach in scientific debate when the scientist feels the evidence is strong. His attacks are as forceful on his fellow Darwinists like Stephen Gould when he disagrees with them as on creationists.

Generally, scientists who think their case is strong will welcome a forceful attack as a good test of the strength of their position. From such clashes of ideas and evidence truth will somehow emerge.

Consistent with this approach, Dawkins has said: "I really have less trouble than some of my colleagues with so-called creation science being taught in the public schools as long as evolution is taught as well. By all means let creation science be taught in the schools. ...children can be allowed to make up their own minds in the face of evidence."

Evolution is a fact of nature. It is the cornerstone of modern biology. "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of biology" said Theodosius Dobzhansky. To say "there is not such thing as evolution supported in science" is just, well, ignorant.

Natural selection is a theory that explains the fact of evolution. This is the theory that most biologists support since it is most consistent with observed evidence.

Think of it this way:

Fact Massive bodies attract.

Theory to explain fact Gravity.

Fact Biological "things" evolve.

Theory to explain fact Natural selection.

If you are still confused about the issue, check these out:

• Talk Origins
• The World of Dawkins

Ryan T. Sammartino

...and I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this very simple solution:

1) A novel like this is written from the "omniscient narrator" viewpoint.

2) Since we know god is omniscient then therefore whatever observations are provided by the author can be easily substituted for God's observations according to Behe's Mousetrap Analogy

3) Therefore, since the author describes these things as occcurrring simultaneously, ie simultaneous to the point of view of the author, these things occcurrred simultaneously to the viewpoint of God

4) This fact is self-verifying considering he's the one that made them happen and he probably wanted to get all that biotic-life-prodding over at the same time while he had the oven already preheated and before the Knicks game.

5) Since we now see that these events happened simultaneously in reference to God's point of view, all we have to do is either have God tell us when they happened or just go to his house and take our own measurments from there.

See, i told you it was simple.
the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.

Danny.

For a course project I've spent the past six months exploring the connections between machine/biological vision and our growing understanding of Quantum mechanics and it's implications for computing. The bottom line is that we are far enough along to ask credible scientific questions about the implications of Physics to Computation and Biology. For another popular science account that makes connections between evolution, Quantum mechanics and theory of computation read: Fabric of Reality

It is very early to judge what "Physics can do for Evolution" but I've read enough Dawkins to know that we can fruitfully think of evolution as a kind of computation. Quantum computer "simulations" of evolution or intelligence may turn out to be much more efficient than the "real" thing. OR it might turn out that Nature already "thought" of that and used the most powerful computing model available-- that would be the Quantum computing model and it's what many people are trying to find out.

Briefly, this notion of community that the author argues is part of evolution is supported by Richard Dawkins analysis of the evolution of the DNA in "The Selfish Gene" (http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/selfish.h tm).

Most notably is the notion of the "Prisoner's Dilemma", which shows that the most effective path for success of a gene (or of an entire organism or society) is co-operation. Nice explanation and applet at http://www.midwinter.com/~piaw/p risoner/prisoner.htm.

Most people commonly think that the only way is strong competition and the "survival of the fittest", when in fact there is so much evidence against this.

The computer community and the whole 'open-source thang' has always seemed to be in tune with this. Thankfully.

I too was given a big jumpstart into the world of computing when I first read Stephen Levy's artificial life, Dawkins' Selfish Gene, and Moravec's Mind Children.

Those books showed me that we're actually not just playing games and getting political about OS's for no reason. The rise in the importance of technology has been exponantial ever since people started letting down the old rusty barriers against progress.

If already so much synergy results from commerce and society, then the dream of there being such an incredible future spurred me on to do computer studies, and now internet communities.

Of course, not all of the effects of a new sum-of-the-parts are positive, but the way I see it, I have to be here in this profession to make sure it goes the way I'd like it to because it's going to happen anyway.

Also, the actual theory behind alife, genetic algorithms, or even moravec's mad ramblings,
is really complicated and full of boring math and biology (too much for me: that's what I was studying when I read those books), but pop science books on all those matters can't f
ail to show those things to people who wouldn't otherwise have had the patience nor maybe
even the time or disposition to sit figuring out journals & stuff.