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Virtual Genetic Evolution
Sleeperservice writes "This story at New Scientist describes how, using cell simulation in computers, evolution can be simulated. How long until we can work out what the DNA sequence for a Dragon should be I wonder?"
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They're speeding up evolution via a cell simulator. How long will it be before we get true AI by teaching a virtual human that was just freshly evolved? :)
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I'd written an essay on something similar to this, of using DNA Mapping long ago when I'd just started doing AI. You can find the essay here.
/virtual humans/ and so on.
Ofcourse, once you start working on it, you just realise how damn tough it is, and although it sounds easy on paper, it's just not that simple. Simulated environments are just too complex.
And it's also interesting that David Zindell has written some interesting stuff on this in his series Requiem for Homo Sapiens, on simulated
The Simulation Argument
Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?
Nick Bostrom (2002)
Forthcoming in Philosophical Quarterly.
ABSTRACT. This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a "posthuman" stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.
The sheer arrogance of the slashdot poster is unbelievable. Just listen to this:
This story at New Scientist describes how, using cell simulation in computers, evolution can be simulated. How long until we can work out what the DNA sequence for a Dragon should be I wonder?
Come on! The simulation is about as closer to reality as the economist assumptions of the rational consumers. You don't know how many corners they can cut in their simulation. It's just a simulation and it is as good as the assumptions made by the people who created the simulation. Real life is messy and difficult to predict. It will be hundreds of years before they get the simulation even close to the true working of a real cell.
Besides, how can you can believe in evolution when it violates basic laws of the universe? There are so many arguments against evolution that it's ridiculous. Even those that ignore the written record of humanity cannot ignore the scientific facts making it impossible.
:)
:P It says that the universe as a whole is moving towards disorder. This doesn't prevent portions of the universe from achieving states of increased order. And to think otherwise is completely absurd - if everything could only move in the direction of disorder, how could anything really get accomplished? This is a rediculous way to try and twist the 2nd law of thermodynamics, it reeks of manipulation.
:P
I very highly suspect this as a troll, but I'll give it a go
Evolutionists claim that universe the earth is billions of years old, but how is that possible when the rotation of the earth slows by 30 seconds every century? If the earth were billions of years old the speed at which it would have been rotating four years ago would have been so fast that it could not have held together.
Er, 30 seconds every century indeed! More like 2.2 seconds every 100,000 years. Here are some references.
There's also the second law of thermodynamics to look at. It states that the universe is constantly heading toward disorder. Evolution violates that law, so which one is right?
Well the second law of thermodynamics only makes sense when you understand what it's actually saying
Another problem with evolution is that certain nucleic acids cannot form without the help of certain proteins, but those proteins cannot form without certain nucleic acids. That makes it impossible to occur naturally.
Admittedly, I know nothing about nucleic acids and proteins, so I cannot comment on this.
Oh well, so I got 2 out of 3. Perhaps somebody with a biology tilt can comment in on the proteins and acids.
It is called GOLEM and is found at http://golem03.cs-i.brandeis.edu/. It's not a bad little program and fun to watch as a screensaver (personally more fun than the SETI@Home fast Fourier transforms flying by).
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
Whether or not this is a joke or not, we need a moderation that roughly sums up this: "these exact arguements, and the common rebuttals of them, have been posted on slashdot a million times before, and the discussions that inevitably come from them are both predictable and pointless."
I mean seriously, "Dr." Putting aside ENTIRELY the issue of who's right in this case, you are either extremely ignorant of the wealth of debate on these subjects, or are just being grossly dishonest in simply glossing over it all in order to win cheap converts that you hope wont read or think any further.
If you have any experience with creationist/evolution debates, you would know that all of these arguements have very good rebutals. Regardless of your opinion of these rebutals, the least you could do is address THEM, adding something new and intelligent to the actual living debate, instead of posting the same dumb starting challenges that almost everyone, even most creationists, agree are dishonest and misleading, and at the very least have hashed through a million times before. Or you could link to the hundreds of sites on the web that respond to things like the rotation question, or the question on entropy, and then criticize THEM.
Instead, all you've done here is copy and paste (out of a recent reading of some tract, if not litterally via computer) some of the most well known creationist arguements. You are not surprising anyone with them. They are not new, damning charges against the theory of evolution: most of them were exposed a CENTURY ago, and well refuted even back then. All anyone does by posting them yet again is make modern creationism look stupid. Anyone who can state that evolution violates the second law is completely clueless about the second law (do endothermic chemical reactions violate the second law, going from simple atoms to complex molecules)? There are creationists out there who are at least willing to be honest and reasonable about their critiques: I suggest you join their ranks instead of preaching Hovind.
I've always been interested in this, because if this is possible, it would seriously increase the chances of life being elsewhere, since the odds of an "Earth-like" planet are supposedly not that great.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Um ... we know perfectly well what they do: make copies of themselves. Now, the circumstances under which they make copies of themselves, and close analogues of themselves in RNA, is in most cases still an open question -- but simulations like this are an important step on the road to figuring that out. Of course it's trial and error; that's how science works.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Before I reply to this article, I would like to say that I am an Evangelical Christian. I believe in God, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that the Bible is the revealed work of the Holy Spirit. ... and I believe that we are here as the result of many years of evolution.
I am aware that this thread is not about the evolution/creation debate, so I am not going to try to counter the poster's comments point for point. I would just like /.ers to know that there are Christians who can still think straight (at least in Germany).
I believe in God because I find the evidence overwhelming. I believe in evolution because I find the evidence overwhelming.
It belittles God and makes Christians look stupid when Christians say that evolution runs counter to the second law of thermodynamics, or when they point to mistakes that scientists have made in the past while trying to formulate the theory of evolution. If evolution could be so easily disproved, then I think the thousands of scientists who have studied evolution over the years would have worked this out by now.
I am sure I will be flamed for this, but I am prepared to take the risk. However, I have written this for all the Cristians in the world who have not had their brains removed, who can worship God and marvel at the amazing things evolution has made. For these Christian (I know of many who hold this view, several educated to Doctorate level) there is no tension.
I had a population of simulated organisms competing in a shared 2d grid for food, which appeared in a pile at a random location when the old food was depleted. While the organism had basic looking/moving operations to rely on, invariably some would discover that with enough organisms, the food moves enough that you can survive by just looking around until the food is in your line of sight, and then jumping on it. My arbitrary decision to place the food randomly formed the basis for an *entire species* of organisms (which didn't fare too well when some got smarter).
These same organisms used a stack to do their thinking. Looking and eating produced values, which could be used for simple branching. Out of sheer laziness, I designed the stack to allow infinite pops off an empty stack which would return false, and infinite pushes on a full stack which would discard the values. One memorable run produced a dominant species which relied on this stack behavior to implement COUNTING! It intentionally (well, purposefully) left crud on the stack in a main loop, relying on the filled-stack behavior to detect a certain number of iterations. The stacksize and the arena size happened to be comparable, and this is how it determined when to turn.
I highly suspect that it is a troll too, but misguided trolls exist who just don't believe or understand or don't want to understand.
The third component that you passed on is also known as the interlocking component conundrum, or the chicken-and-egg problem ('which came first...'), or the idea that when you have a complex system composed of multiple interdependent parts (e.g. the coagulation cascade of clotting factors in the blood, the DNA -> RNA -> protein -> multiple protein activities and A,T,C,G creating enzymes -> nuclear bases -> DNA system, etc.) then there must have been NO reason for the individual elements to have evolved on their own because they serve no purpose without their interdependent parts.
This anti evolution argument has been expounded most strongly by Michael Behe, a chemist or biochemist, in his book Darwin's Black Box. The strongest counterargument is that proteins and other molecules do not simply play a single role. A protein that is known as Coagulation Factor X does not simply play a role in coagulating. It may also have other activites. And these other activities may have been selected for after they had arisen out of random mutation. Philip Johnson, a lawyer, is another anti-evolution creationist who has also published a few books on this topic. Rather than list any specific book that argues against Behe or Johnson, I recommend looking at general biology and biochemistry books.
Evolution may be called a theory, but it is a well accepted theory that is buttressed by a strong scientific and evidentiary basis. Creationism is not.