Oh Good, for a while there we sounded confused. My point was exactly that. But you're missing a key point, bacteria did not have the ability to metabolize citrate. You're ignoring that completely new structures developed in the cell to make the process possible, apparently because you just don't like the implication.
This is a guy countering an anti-evolution article on this very subject - notice that he does not dispute that E Coli can metabolize citrate under specific conditions, and even cites a study that describes the process.
Your claim that E Coli completely evolved a new ability from scratch seems to be sadly mistaken. It seems to be more like the various types of antiobiotic resistances documented - there are existing structures within the bacterium that can be slightly modified for different effects. (For citrate E Coli, seems to be an existing metabolic pathway repurposed) Modifying existing structures is not the same as evolving a completely new structure. You cannot accomplish every aspect of evolution by minor tweaks (prove this claim wrong).
Citrate metabolizing E Coli is not slamdunk evidence for evolution, especially since you have not accounted for an alternative explanation - bacterium were designed to be robust and adaptible organisms. It'd also be worth testing how well the new functionality sticks around in the population within a competitive environment. Just because a lucky break happened doesn't mean it stuck.
You continue to conflate abiogenesis (the beginning of life) with evolution (the development of life), and you seem to do it in places that only serve to help your argument. This leads to fairly deep misunderstand about the requirements and processes of evolution because everytime I point out something you try a "NO TRUE SCOTTSMAN!" fallacy. So this conversation isn't getting very far.
You're the one who brought up, "once something's started". _If_ something is started, then you may indeed iterate upon it. It's a very big "if" that you insist that evolution may take for granted. That's all I had to say about your assumption - "If" - I was skeptical, but discussing it wasn't important to my point.
You're trying too hard to put all of my objections into the categories of "common evolutionary misunderstandings". I'm not bringing up abiogenesis - I'm pointing out how hard it is for a bacterium to evolve into a mammal. You're the one who took a single word - "If" - to mean that I'm conflating "abiogenesis" with "evolution".
Last try: Your claim was 'evolutionary processes CANNOT create new information'. Or more specifically it was: 'Random bit flips + filter can't create new information'.
...
Ultimately you've already acknowledging the process CAN create information. You've also acknowledge in previous responses to others that the environment qualifies as a filter, and mutations qualify as random bit flips. My contention is that you've already acknowledged evolution and are either trolling or have such irrational resistance to the word 'evolution' that you cannot think clearly.
It is not that it is perfectly impossible, but that it is practically improbable. Can a random string generator create a bestseller novel? A best seller novel (like Twilight, or LotR) is certain a possible outcome of a random string generator, but it is practically impossible for the random string generator to write a readable novel, let alone a best seller. Using a dictionary and grammar filter on the output and iterating isn't likely to help you any - were awl familiar wit automated spill cheek fails. The most likely outcome of a random string generator, even with generous filters, is junk - garbage in, garb
But in the meantime I have no reason to doubt all the car companies that say they can do it.
I do. Product doesn't always live up to marketing. Note that there's generally a difference between advertised EPA mileage and actual mileage.
What makes you think it was arbitrarily chosen instead of chosen based on a study of all those tradeoffs you rightly have been pointing out?
Because said study, if it exists, has not been cited at all by the supporters of the EPA rule.
If the carmakers are already on target to achieve these gains - why need the EPA rule at all? To answer the question - it's because not issuing an EPA rule means politicians and bureaucrats don't get a chance to assert authority over people.
Well, according to your definitions (which are quite silly), here's something from your so-called 'nothing': Bacteria Evolve New Ability The information was not there one day, and there the next. You might even say a number of small minor changes built up into something more complex later.
I don't understand what you're disagreeing with here. If you start with something, the capability exists, and doesn't need to be mutated into existence. Evolution doesn't claim that the entirety of human genetics is encoded within the first ancestor lifeform.
Though for E. Coli metabolizing citrate, apparently that is the case - they already have the ability to metabolize it under certain conditions. The mutation documented gives them the ability to use it more freely, but with some tradeoffs in other aspects. "[the mutation] decreased their ability to survive long periods in stationary phase cultures"
... Once you have started something, you can get all kinds of stuff out.
If.
Really? You're going to call millions of molecules a nothing/null to serve your argument?
I'm saying that there are low chances that a self-replicating machine will pop into existence by random chance and mindless processes. If you disagree with this claim, would you like to show how it's a high probability event?
Why sure, here we found an entirely new way to use an FPGA, look here. The original paper is sourced in the reference section. The telling part is that the ultimate implementation was beyond the understanding of the experimenter. How could he be the source of the information if he didn't have it in the first place? Sure he had an idea how to test for what he was looking for but that doesn't mean he knew all the structures possible to use. In the original paper (it's not listed on the TO website unfortunately, but the paper is cited and published for reading) there were temperature sensitive effects that were not anticipated and not looked for as well, but existed in the final output.
Uhm, read your own article.
"His goal was to evolve a device that could at first discriminate between tones of different frequencies (1 and 10 kilohertz), then distinguish between the spoken words "go" and "stop".
He performed a directed randomized search for an FPGA circuit that would respond to voice commands, and found an FPGA circuit that would respond to voice commands.
I asked for an example where what was found had NOTHING to do with what was being searched for - so for example, finding a voice analyzer circuit while searching for a sort algorithm.
That a human designed a machine to look in a solution space, perform automated evaluation of those solutions, and then pick out the best solution - is not an example of mindless, purposeless evolution. For one, the human (intelligence) provided the evaluation criteria, and he also built the search engine. Those aspects make genetic algorithms different from random mutation + natural selection because the evaluation criteria is not so specific in nature, nor is the randomization specially limited. (Note that the FPGA circuit was restricted in what parameters could be randomized; if not, the search would create many non-working circuits).
Finally see the inset here Keane and Brown 1996 It's also a cited published paper. The Algorithm was designed to look for structures that fit criteria like stronger, flexible, etc. The result looks curiously like a biological bone structure and would probably be closer, but in 1996 computing power was tough to come by, so low number of iterations. That structure was not planned or built in. Like it or not, information CAN and DOES appear out of your theoretical "no-where", but it's not free and doesn't v
DNA is not computer code. It is not analogous to computer code. There isn't enough information to encode the human brain in DNA, so clearly small changes to DNA can have large effects.
1. DNA is not a computer code, but it is a digital code that is analogous to a computer's source code. The key part is that DNA is *more* complex than a computer's source code, and computer source code was designed by a large number of highly intelligent humans. The effort those people put into computer code is a rough indicator of how much information is encoded into both the design of computer code, and the software written with computer code. So how much more information is encoded into the design of DNA, as well as the animals whose designs are encoded by DNA?
2. Somehow, the DNA that "can't encode the human brain", manages to contain the blueprints for it - unless you'd like to suggest that DNA is not essential to the formation of a new human. A better explanation is that the information in DNA is highly compressed, rather than there being no design behind the brain (why do they develop the same across the human race, then?). You cannot get around the fact that the brain's design is the embodiment of much information; if it takes a network of supercomputers to emulate the capabilities of the brain, that's a hint to the level of the design. (it sets the floor for the minimum amount of information built into the human brain design) We're still trying to make AI mimic the basic capability of the human brain; don't be so dismissive of it.
Your basic argument seems to be that evolution is obviously wrong for all these obvious reasons, and those scientists just aren't smart enough to see what seems to obvious to you.
My argument is that until evolution has an answer for these very applicable arguments, its claims are unproven.
I don't care how many scientists believe evolution is true. I want to see their arguments for evolution that manages to answer these objections.
So far, I've gotten repeated chants of "mutation + selection!" as if that magically solves every engineering problem. As an engineer... no, it does not, and I've pointed out why and how. An idea that sounds plausible in the high level summary can be very wanting when examined in detail.
In my rather contrived melody example, you suggest that the method is equivalent to brute-forcing the entire solution space. This is false for numerous reasons. First, the solution space is infinite, as modifications to the melody may add notes as well as change them and/or remove them - so it is theoretically impossible to brute-force, and therefore I can't be brute-forcing it. Secondly, you suggest that because in my example I have human ears choosing the 'best' melody, that I am actually running an experiment in 'intelligent prediction'. This is also false, since in the example the only way of choosing the 'best' melody is via some-ones ears.
Your randomization chooses random samples from the entire sample space. You randomly guess at a good solution and use the filter to see if the guess was good.
If the best melody "solutions" are neighbors to good melodies, then focusing the effort around previously successful (or least horrible) guesses, does have improved odds over a completely blind search. Blind search is brute force (and is your starting point). Iterating on previous successes is a directed search. Given enough tries, it will find *something* - that is the brute force aspect; you cannot predict with any level of certainty that you can find a solution within O(???). (estimating the O() requires understanding the problem. We're still learning what the "problem" of life is, let alone trying to solve it)
The point about intelligence in your filter, is that creating a filter to decide that a melody is "good" is difficult. A good melody is appealing to a subjectiv
No, the filter does not add work. It only leaves behind any "meaningful work" done. All natural selection does it take a set of living organisms, and kill off a subset (which could be all of them). This is always a reduction in diversity and information.
Any meaningful work must be done by the random mutation part of the equation - and unless you abandon random mutation, you don't have enough tries to even have a tiny chance of success. Count how many steps you must take between bacterium and human - and then roll a thousand sided dice (generous approximation) for each step. Each step is an exponential reduction of success rate, and population size (# of tries) decreases with complexity of the organism - you simply don't have enough tries to make the expected value even approach a meaningful %.
Anyways, where is that "world's fastest sorting algorithm"? Something that is the best in the world should not be that hard to find.
You (and the EPA) haven't validated the claim that the standards are attainable, either.
My opinion supporting the status quo costs nothing extra. The EPA's desire for higher mileage, however, reduces safety, increases price, and adds various other tradeoffs made in the pursuit of higher (gas) efficiency.
It's not like the EPA invented efficiency improving technology that it wants car markers to adopt. All it did is threaten penalties on carmakers for failing to meet arbitrarily chosen mileage standards.
Why not just ask for infinite mileage? Clearly that would encourage effiiciency even more than the finite number they chose!
Firstly, starting with nothing is a false requirement,...
Compare a bacterium to a human being. Notice any differences?
Such as... multiple cells, specialized functionality, sexual reproduction... ?
Does the bacterium have the information for that functionality encoded within its DNA? No? Then yes, it's starting with "nothing", and ends up with "something".
... Once you have started something, you can get all kinds of stuff out.
If.
Secondly, your definition of filter needs work. Filters don't always only remove information, sometimes they just move it around. Ultimately you should think of the selection part of evolution not like a filter, but more like an informational version of Maxwell's demon. When a useful bit of information shows up, it's trapped. The more useful the information is the stronger the walls of the trap. Get past those points and you'll be OK.
However you use them, filters do not add information. They find subsets, not supersets.
As far as evolution is concerned, yes, if you passed the right information to the filter of natural selection, natural selection will "retain" it. (Somewhat - minor errors can creep in over time, and various animals have gone extinct). But that's not the entirety of the problem - you also have to have the right information to pass to the filter - and the only mechanism for generating that right information is random mutation. The right information is not something likely to be found by random mutation; so your only solution is to try again and again and again and hope to hit the jackpot.
If you're actually curious, google Genetic Algorithms. A large number of experiments have already been done similar to what you propose. Heck I even wrote one a while back to see if random mutations would converge to a solution, and they did. It wasn't complicated or sophisticated, but a set of numbers would converge on a solution.
If the algorithm cannot fail to succeed, it's not modeling evolution.
Genetic algorithms do borrow from the concept of gene transfer, but that's not enough to prove out the claims of evolution - that random chance is sufficient to create the vast number of complex functional life forms we see on Earth today. The main thing to note is that all genetic algorithms with useful results were crafted to find those useful results, and you get what you look for.
But is nature really searching for a fur-less biped with an affinity for lolcat videos? Can you find me a genetic algorithm that found something it wasn't searching for?
I figured you'd ask, so I started looking for it, but got flooded with articles using genetic algorithms in the past 10 years. The one I speak of is older than that.
I'll keep looking though.
Funny that the world's fastest sort algorithm is so difficult to find. You'd think people would care to use it, and talk about the methods by which it reaches the best performance.
So now you'll claim the product of evolution is not evolution because the process was chosen by the creator was intelligently designed? You just backed up one step too far. That would be to imply that God invented evolution, which does not disprove evolution. Rather it disproves God, because non evolution would not create anything new, whereas evolution does. Therefore, by the anthropic principal, evolution is true.
Purposeless mutation does not create usable search algorithms. To find the algorithm in question, a purposeful search system. The system did use purposeless mutation as an input, but it then used a purposeful filter to remove the non desired results. The filter, which graded search algorithms and picked out the best ones, is what gave the system its purpose.
If you removed the filter, then you have purposeless mutation - but you'd end up with mostly bad or useless sorting algorithms
They add efficiency. There are financial, environment and national security reasons for the efficiency standards.
And that efficiency comes at the cost of safety, or performance, or various other difficult to capture factors.
The whole point of the standards is to change the equilibrium. But the equilibrium is the equilibrium because that's the sum of people's desires vs. the choices and costs. That means your new equilibrium (thanks to the standard) has ignored some input - maybe people want a bigger car to haul things around, or a cheaper car that is more affordable for a low income family. You've shut them out of choices for some "greater good".
It does not take gov't action to raise the "minimum standard". But gov't will gladly take more power and money marketing themselves as wise managers of the economy and industry.
Doesn't bother me. Personally, I'd be embarrassed if "my side" was guilty of that tactic. It's surrendering the battlefield of ideas. "Bravely ran away..."
I think this is where you're stuck. Information + Noise, fed through a filter that only allows fitter results to reproduce, will obviously encourage change. The question surely is, if evolution does not occur, then why not? The whole argument can be approached from another direction - and so, answer me this; what prevents evolution?
Just try to apply that to computer code. That you can randomize some parameters does not mean you can mutate any part of the code. Mutate your drivers? Blue screen of death is more likely than +5% FPS in Skyrim.
The problem is one of probability. One quality of information is that it's a tiny subset of all the possibilities. "Awesome" has meaning, but "Awsmoe", "Maewes", etc do not. If possibilities have equal weight, a random change to a string is much more likely to find a non-word (non-information, junk, noise), then an actual word.
That's why noise destroys information. Without outside interference, the noise "averages" the information - and the average is not information. It's pretty much entropy, but applied to a non-material quality.
Question; where did that information come from? Let's remove the issue of the syntax of the message, and instead suggest that the message should be a melody. Let's randomly alter the melody millions of times, and recruit millions of willing listeners to choose their favorite. Let's do this for millions of years. Are you suggesting that the result wouldn't be a better melody?
The information you've found is by taking the entire solution space, and filtering it down to the working solution space. That's a brute force method to finding a solution, and it's incredibly inefficient and slow. You can make it more practical by using a directed search instead of a blind search, but then that's not random mutation anymore - pseudo random using intelligent prediction, maybe. You also used a million intelligences in order to create a smart enough filter.
Now theoretically, random mutations can just pop out a fitter individual - just like a million monkeys and typewriters could recreate the works of Shakespeare given enough chances (if they don't get into a poopfight). The problem then is finding enough chances. A billion tries at a 1 in a million chance is going to get you a few success. On the flip side, a few million tries at a 1 in googolplex chance has practically 0 chance of succeeding.
Trying to brute force your way to life and higher order lifeforms requires many orders of magnitude more chances than we've actually experienced. The universe isn't remotely old enough. To insist it did happen by random chance is to insist a miracle happened.
If we can boil down evolution to "a miracle happened", how ironic that its opponents are derided as "anti-science".
Add up a million such mutations, and you do not end up with a higher order organism. Wrong direction matters. If these mutations are reducing functionality (destroying information), then add up enough of them and you will end up with a nonviable genetic code.
You're selling items at a loss, but you're not worried about the lack of profit, since you'll make up for it in volume.
It does have such a mechanism, namely acquiring those parts separately for different purposes, and later combining them and evolving them together. Indeed, every time we've explored the evolution of some complex organ (like the eye, which creationists often use as an example of "irreducible complexity"), we universally found out that there are, in fact, a series of obvious separate steps, each of which gives a definite advantage in and of itself while remaining plausible to evolve.
A scientist's imagination is not proof that the sequence you describe is physically possible. It's a starting point to find the proof - if it exists.
The level of proof you must demonstrate is to reconstruct the "intermediate" life form with all of its intermediate traits. (We're a long way from this, obviously, as we still can't even plagiarize life and create our own single celled organisms). That's the scientific level of proof. A historic level of proof is to show documentation that the lifeform existed - but fossils don't provide that level of detail.
It's not enough that you have a valid sequence of genetic code that creates the structures in question. (Which we know exists because the organism with the structures exists) You must be able to build that sequence in incremental steps, with every intermediate form being completely valid. (fit to survive, capable of reproducing and outcompeting the previous version)
Try to build Windows 7 that way starting with DOS, using a greedy algorithm. It is possible, but improbable, and highly inefficient in both time and resources.
Finally, the very existence of the aforementioned evolutionary baggage - i.e. the fact that organisms are often constructed in a very convoluted way, all the way down to how cells operate - shows that the argument of there being some "neat" code base that would be inevitably polluted by mutations is flawed. What we have is more like a hodgepodge of simple code snippets that are randomly copy-pasted, and occasionally changed, all over the place. All the time, you see the same base thing used for vastly different purposes in different organisms, and usually in both cases it has to be mangled considerably to become suitable for that purpose. If that is the product of an intelligent designer, that would indicate considerable lack of skill on his behalf, and the lack of understanding of such basic principles as code reuse.
Convoluted way? Compared to what? Show me the human built organism that does it better - it doesn't exist yet, we're still sixth graders trying to copy a DaVinci painting.
Those "simple" code snippets? We don't fully understand how they work yet. If we did, we'd be coding up our own lifeforms from scratch. Instead, we're tinkering with the existing lifeforms at the margins.
Unless you can build it better, you have no grounds to criticize the implementation - maybe you're simply ignorant of the tradeoffs necessary to make the design feasible.
Natural selection is that mechanism.
Natural selection subtracts, it does not add.
You must abandon random mutation in order for evolution to make progress - but that "allows the divine foot in the door", so to speak. It abandons the natural mechanism that evolutionary theory prides itself on.
This is plainly false, and shows that you don't actually have familiarity with the subject at hand. I sugg
Let's say the standards are attainable - why aren't the currently existing cars built to that standard?
Thinks like safety or mileage are good selling points for cars - given the competition between the various car manufacturers, they all have an incentive to maximize those aspects - if it were cost effective.
Chances are that they aren't doing it right now because people don't want it. It's ugly, it's expensive, or unreliable, or whatever tradeoffs exist for that quality. The standards don't really add anything, except coercing car manufacturers to make certain tradeoffs, and limiting the options of car drivers.
Your "world's fastest sorting algorithm" doesn't have a name? I'd like to read up on the actual algorithm, rather than hearing your vague summary. An algorithm "that does not make any logical sense", but which works the best, must be seen to be believed.
But as for your algorithm being "un-intelligently designed" - it's being used by intelligences that designed a system to find the algorithm and used it. Intelligence was quite intimately involved with finding the algorithm.
For fucks sake people. This is completely attainable and not an unrealistic goal. Fucking shill posters out in force early.
It's unattainable when the same gov't entity demanding high efficiency demands that the cars be as safe as possible with crumple zones and airbags and all the other myriad safety features, as well as being environmentally friendly and non-polluting.
Yes, on average harmful mutations are more common than beneficial ones. That's precisely why you need natural selection, which will screen out harmful mutations, only allowing non-harmful ones to persist, and re-enforcing the beneficial ones.
Note that beneficial mutations are not necessarily the same thing as gaining information. There are flightless birds that have "evolved out of flying", as well as blind fish that have "evolved out of seeing". They certainly have a higher level of survivability in their niche environment, but that doesn't increase the information contained in their genetics, or the functionality of the organism itself.
That's not the right direction to get from a single celled organism to a human being. On top of that, evolution as described is a "greedy algorithm" - it cannot plan ahead, and has no good mechanism to develop complex capabilities that require multiple parts.
You seem to be arguing against abiogenesis here rather than evolution. Evolution is not concerned with how life is created - it only deals with how life changes once it's there. We have a reasonably decent understanding of how, say, single-cell organisms could have evolved into multi-cell ones, and from there on - all based on evolution.
They're highly interlinked because they use the same handwave to the probabilistic improbability - give us a lot of time and a lot of tries. The problem is that there isn't enough time and there aren't enough tries. You're trying to win a 1 in a trillion chance lottery by buying a million tickets. An extra million tickets doesn't improve your odds enough to make things a certainty, but that's exactly what supporters of evolution will claim.
We do not know, as yet, how single-cell organisms have evolved. We do have some theories based on the application of same principle - biological evolution is certainly not a single instance of complexity arising spontaneously when selection is involved. All that's needed is some form of reproduction, and that can happen on level much lower than genes.
All replication means is a few more tries. That's not an explanation, that's a handwave. Replication itself is a feature that must be randomly mutated into existence. You haven't offered anything that will overcome "information + noise => less information".
All the work we can do with computers, we accomplish by suppressing the noise. It's why we use digital over analog circuitry wherever possible - it can almost perfectly suppress noise. (Conveniently, our DNA is also a digital code) To say that noise adds information is absurd - but that's what evolution repeatedly asserts. If taken seriously, it contradicts the entire field of computing. Why bother removing noise when noise could be adding information to the message you're transmitting? You just need to filter it afterwards!
Also, you should realize that evolution scientists have carefully crafted mathematical models based on the data that we have - a quick google search will give you plenty of papers to read on the subject. And, the models do in fact support evolution - and also show that it is effectively inevitable once some replication mechanism is in play.
The computer models that show evolution is inevitable are universally flawed. They're making the assumption that the average mutation is a net gain, so voila, positive feedback loop and a ratcheting gain. Again, random mutation is noise, and a net loss, it is a negative feedback loop that destroys information without external intervention. Generally, evolution models provide permanent "savepoints" for "fit" configurations that guarantee progress; evolution is inevitable in the models because the model is designed to make it inevitable.
In reality, life is not in every nook and cranny of the universe. There are areas of the universe completely inhospitable to life. On top of that, life can go extinct - a possibility not seriously entertained in the models.
A computer model that does not allow extinction or failure is not modeling reality, and shows us nothing about what happens in reality.
Creationist is the set of people who believe the world was created. That's what the world means.
If you want to only talk about the subset of Creationists who believe in a young earth, we have words to describe that subset - "Young Earth Creationists", as opposed to "Old Earth Creationists". Only referring to YECs with "Creationist" is to confuse sets and muddle the discussion.
In any case, my post was more about the poster confusing instances of "intelligent design" for "evolution". There is an "evolution" (change over time) of human designs, but it has little to do with the concept of evolution as applied to biology. (purposeless random processes creating cool things) There are similarities, but the former is not evidence of the latter.
Again, you completely misunderstand the premise of evolution. It's not about organism "adapting" to their living environment. It's about the environment having a selection bias on specific traits (those that raise the probability of spreading one gene's; on a simplified level, those that lead to more offspring). A single organism does not adapt - it lives, reproduces and dies. The entire population adapts. That adaptation is inherent in the laws under which the system operates - it's not guided in any way, and it does not have a goal. It happens because: 1) mutations happen, and 2) natural selection happens. The existence of those two things - which is a verifiable fact - is sufficient for evolution. In fact, you'd have to come up with a reasonable explanation of how evolution would not happen in these circumstances.
Quick tangent: Single organisms do adapt to their environment. (ex: We tan in response to sunlight) There are also scientific studies that an animal's experiences affect the genetics of their offspring. (genetics are not completely fixed at birth as thought)
Back to the main point - I'm talking about systems - so my point applies both to the individual and to the population of individuals. Whether an individual and its offspring, or the population in general - there is a genetic source code that contains the information encoding all of the organism's functionality. Senses, processing, movement, self-assembly and replication. The only way to add to that code under evolutionary theory is random mutation. It is insufficient, and I'll get to why that is.
1) mutations happen, and 2) natural selection happens. The existence of those two things - which is a verifiable fact - is sufficient for evolution. In fact, you'd have to come up with a reasonable explanation of how evolution would not happen in these circumstances.
Cars and operating systems do not evolve in that sense because they do not reproduce, and do not mutate. If they did, then, yeah, they'd evolve as well.
Self replication isn't sufficient to create information.
If I take a hard drive and pass a magnet over it to create a random bit configuration - the chances of that creating a working operating system on the hard drive is practically nil (possible, but improbable). If I do it a second time, it's still unlikely. That's all replication really means in terms of building information randomly - reroll the dice and hope. That's great if you're dealing with a 50+% chance of success; but it's meaningless if your chance of success is 1 in a billion. One hundred more tries doesn't noticeably improve the odds.
Your mistake is that you treat living organisms as some kind of intricate machines, where one cog out of place breaks the whole thing down. It's not how it works. In fact, most mutations are neutral with respect to fitness, so they don't get weeded out at all. Thus it's pretty easy for them to accumulate over time, and eventually their combinations producing either harmful or beneficial effects, which are then weeded out or strengthened via positive feedback loops that are inherent in the natural selection process.
I didn't make that mistake. Life has a lot of redundancy and error checking built into it. That's engineering margin, and completely consistent with a designer creating a robust system. Evolution has to explain it as random chance evolving this extra capability over time (so at some point there was no margin, and the organism was fragile; yet somehow survived as a population long enough to develop out of it)
Random mutation is applying noise (entropy) to information - and you're expecting natural selection to somehow filter (information + noise) into (more information).
Indeed - and what exactly is wrong with that picture? You're right that random noise by itself would not result in evolution, you also need a filter
Show me a gear or wheel in nature. Immediately we've exceeded the designer's initial design.
Your point being... ? I'm not claiming that all that's worth using was already designed and created. (Though if a god created the universe, he definitely made it possible for gears/wheels to exist)
Show me the world's fastest sorting algorithm. I'll give you a hint it sorts 6 values using 5 comparisons. This was found using genetic algorithms.
Not sure which algorithm that is, but whichever one it was, it was found using some sort of software search system created by intelligent designers. That a computer automated the search process does not make it any less a product of intelligent design.
That genetic algorithm did not need the theory of evolution in order to exist. This is giving evolution credit where it deserves none.
Is Windows "evolving" when it installs and works in different computing environments? Is a red car with satellite radio an "evolution" from a blue car with power windows? Both are products of intelligent designers building the system with support for variability. There is a base platform with "optional plugins".
Where did the capability of Windows configuring itself to its hardware come from? The intelligent designers (programmers) behind it. (Sure, we like to make fun of MS products, but they're still products of intelligence)
Where did the capability of living organisms to adapt to their living environment come from? Evolution says random chance created a system that adapts to its environment. Okay, but the existence of an adaptable system is not proof for the creative power of random mutation, because anything random mutation can do, intelligence can design.
Now how plausible is it that random mutation can create functioning systems? It sounds easy, get something working and bootstrap from there.
That's until you start paying attention to just how easy it is to break the system with random mutation. Functionality is information, and information is subject to entropy. Random mutation is applying noise (entropy) to information - and you're expecting natural selection to somehow filter (information + noise) into (more information).
I have yet to see a good argument on how evolution gets past information theory. Would you like to take a shot?
Calling it "microevolution" accepts the premise that there's any evolution at all. Quit trying to sneak in the evolutionary premise and start from scratch - we have an adaptable self-replicating system of systems - does random mutation evolution provide sufficient explanatory power for its existence? Trivial number crunching + information theory says no - so time to do the homework.
Human residences evolved from sticks and feces-laden mud all the way to hi-grade structural steel, carbon fiber reinforced concrete, carbon fiber beams, etc. to construct buildings as tall as the imagination can take us.
Using incremental design improvements by intelligent designers as proof for evolution and against creation is nonsensical.
The core of evolution is that mindless random processes can create products on the level of those designed by an intelligence.
Humans are intelligent. Homes - whether built with sticks or steel or mud or concrete - are all products of intelligent design.
You don't seem to understand the core claims of the competing theories, or how to apply the evidence you have. Creationism only needs a creator (God) to start off the universe, it does not deny humanity's ability to create its own designs or incrementally improve them.
That a field of engineering copies what exists in nature, is not evidence that nature came into existence by random chance, or that a belief of it is necessary.
Consider that the competing belief is that an intelligent designer created what exists in nature. Structural engineers would then be copying from a better engineer who left behind some impressive work.
Considering that junior engineers copy from existing designs all the time, the theory of evolution is completely unnecessary for the existence or utility of biomimetics.
In order to be a competent engineer, you must be capable of facing reality, even when it doesn't fit with your presuppositions. If you'd rather stick your fingers in your ear and yell "LA LA LA GODDIDIT!" then you've got no business dealing with anything that other people's lives will depend on.
Competent engineers don't believe working systems pop out of nothing. Compare the feature list of any living organism and then compare it to the feature list of your computer.
Random noise as a creative instrument is an attempt to brute force the problem. It doesn't take much analysis to realize that the set of working configurations is greatly outnumbered by the set of non-working configurations. Natural selection doesn't improve the generation of mutations (new configurations), it only reduces the mutations to the "working ones".
Evolutionary theory itself is a historical claim on events that occurred "millions and billions" of years ago. A dogmatic belief on what happened in the past is completely unnecessary for an engineer to correctly apply scientific principles (which are concerned with the ongoing mechanics of the universe).
So no, a competent engineer should recognize that evolution is in no way a prerequisite to science or knowledge, and all appeals to its popularity are logical fallacies.
But the employee salaries and corporate profits come entirely from customer bills...
So yeah, it is still the "poor citizens" who end up paying your "corporate tax". They will end up paying more for the exact same goods, or be forced to pay for a higher quality/quantity of goods than what they actually want.
So no, you're still sucking money out of "poor citizens". Maybe it's for a good cause, but don't delude yourself on who's paying the bills.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh Good, for a while there we sounded confused. My point was exactly that. But you're missing a key point, bacteria did not have the ability to metabolize citrate. You're ignoring that completely new structures developed in the cell to make the process possible, apparently because you just don't like the implication.
Do a search for "citrate" on this page: http://aigbusted.blogspot.com/2008/07/answers-in-genesis-on-ecoli-and-citrate.html
This is a guy countering an anti-evolution article on this very subject - notice that he does not dispute that E Coli can metabolize citrate under specific conditions, and even cites a study that describes the process.
Your claim that E Coli completely evolved a new ability from scratch seems to be sadly mistaken. It seems to be more like the various types of antiobiotic resistances documented - there are existing structures within the bacterium that can be slightly modified for different effects. (For citrate E Coli, seems to be an existing metabolic pathway repurposed) Modifying existing structures is not the same as evolving a completely new structure. You cannot accomplish every aspect of evolution by minor tweaks (prove this claim wrong).
Citrate metabolizing E Coli is not slamdunk evidence for evolution, especially since you have not accounted for an alternative explanation - bacterium were designed to be robust and adaptible organisms. It'd also be worth testing how well the new functionality sticks around in the population within a competitive environment. Just because a lucky break happened doesn't mean it stuck.
You continue to conflate abiogenesis (the beginning of life) with evolution (the development of life), and you seem to do it in places that only serve to help your argument. This leads to fairly deep misunderstand about the requirements and processes of evolution because everytime I point out something you try a "NO TRUE SCOTTSMAN!" fallacy. So this conversation isn't getting very far.
You're the one who brought up, "once something's started". _If_ something is started, then you may indeed iterate upon it. It's a very big "if" that you insist that evolution may take for granted. That's all I had to say about your assumption - "If" - I was skeptical, but discussing it wasn't important to my point.
You're trying too hard to put all of my objections into the categories of "common evolutionary misunderstandings". I'm not bringing up abiogenesis - I'm pointing out how hard it is for a bacterium to evolve into a mammal. You're the one who took a single word - "If" - to mean that I'm conflating "abiogenesis" with "evolution".
Last try: Your claim was 'evolutionary processes CANNOT create new information'. Or more specifically it was: 'Random bit flips + filter can't create new information'.
...
Ultimately you've already acknowledging the process CAN create information. You've also acknowledge in previous responses to others that the environment qualifies as a filter, and mutations qualify as random bit flips. My contention is that you've already acknowledged evolution and are either trolling or have such irrational resistance to the word 'evolution' that you cannot think clearly.
It is not that it is perfectly impossible, but that it is practically improbable. Can a random string generator create a bestseller novel? A best seller novel (like Twilight, or LotR) is certain a possible outcome of a random string generator, but it is practically impossible for the random string generator to write a readable novel, let alone a best seller. Using a dictionary and grammar filter on the output and iterating isn't likely to help you any - were awl familiar wit automated spill cheek fails. The most likely outcome of a random string generator, even with generous filters, is junk - garbage in, garb
But in the meantime I have no reason to doubt all the car companies that say they can do it.
I do. Product doesn't always live up to marketing. Note that there's generally a difference between advertised EPA mileage and actual mileage.
What makes you think it was arbitrarily chosen instead of chosen based on a study of all those tradeoffs you rightly have been pointing out?
Because said study, if it exists, has not been cited at all by the supporters of the EPA rule.
If the carmakers are already on target to achieve these gains - why need the EPA rule at all? To answer the question - it's because not issuing an EPA rule means politicians and bureaucrats don't get a chance to assert authority over people.
Well, according to your definitions (which are quite silly), here's something from your so-called 'nothing': Bacteria Evolve New Ability The information was not there one day, and there the next. You might even say a number of small minor changes built up into something more complex later.
I don't understand what you're disagreeing with here. If you start with something, the capability exists, and doesn't need to be mutated into existence. Evolution doesn't claim that the entirety of human genetics is encoded within the first ancestor lifeform.
Though for E. Coli metabolizing citrate, apparently that is the case - they already have the ability to metabolize it under certain conditions. The mutation documented gives them the ability to use it more freely, but with some tradeoffs in other aspects. "[the mutation] decreased their ability to survive long periods in stationary phase cultures"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment
... Once you have started something, you can get all kinds of stuff out.
If.
Really? You're going to call millions of molecules a nothing/null to serve your argument?
I'm saying that there are low chances that a self-replicating machine will pop into existence by random chance and mindless processes. If you disagree with this claim, would you like to show how it's a high probability event?
Why sure, here we found an entirely new way to use an FPGA, look here. The original paper is sourced in the reference section. The telling part is that the ultimate implementation was beyond the understanding of the experimenter. How could he be the source of the information if he didn't have it in the first place? Sure he had an idea how to test for what he was looking for but that doesn't mean he knew all the structures possible to use. In the original paper (it's not listed on the TO website unfortunately, but the paper is cited and published for reading) there were temperature sensitive effects that were not anticipated and not looked for as well, but existed in the final output.
Uhm, read your own article.
"His goal was to evolve a device that could at first discriminate between tones of different frequencies (1 and 10 kilohertz), then distinguish between the spoken words "go" and "stop".
He performed a directed randomized search for an FPGA circuit that would respond to voice commands, and found an FPGA circuit that would respond to voice commands.
I asked for an example where what was found had NOTHING to do with what was being searched for - so for example, finding a voice analyzer circuit while searching for a sort algorithm.
That a human designed a machine to look in a solution space, perform automated evaluation of those solutions, and then pick out the best solution - is not an example of mindless, purposeless evolution. For one, the human (intelligence) provided the evaluation criteria, and he also built the search engine. Those aspects make genetic algorithms different from random mutation + natural selection because the evaluation criteria is not so specific in nature, nor is the randomization specially limited. (Note that the FPGA circuit was restricted in what parameters could be randomized; if not, the search would create many non-working circuits).
Finally see the inset here Keane and Brown 1996 It's also a cited published paper. The Algorithm was designed to look for structures that fit criteria like stronger, flexible, etc. The result looks curiously like a biological bone structure and would probably be closer, but in 1996 computing power was tough to come by, so low number of iterations. That structure was not planned or built in. Like it or not, information CAN and DOES appear out of your theoretical "no-where", but it's not free and doesn't v
DNA is not computer code. It is not analogous to computer code. There isn't enough information to encode the human brain in DNA, so clearly small changes to DNA can have large effects.
1. DNA is not a computer code, but it is a digital code that is analogous to a computer's source code. The key part is that DNA is *more* complex than a computer's source code, and computer source code was designed by a large number of highly intelligent humans. The effort those people put into computer code is a rough indicator of how much information is encoded into both the design of computer code, and the software written with computer code. So how much more information is encoded into the design of DNA, as well as the animals whose designs are encoded by DNA?
2. Somehow, the DNA that "can't encode the human brain", manages to contain the blueprints for it - unless you'd like to suggest that DNA is not essential to the formation of a new human. A better explanation is that the information in DNA is highly compressed, rather than there being no design behind the brain (why do they develop the same across the human race, then?). You cannot get around the fact that the brain's design is the embodiment of much information; if it takes a network of supercomputers to emulate the capabilities of the brain, that's a hint to the level of the design. (it sets the floor for the minimum amount of information built into the human brain design) We're still trying to make AI mimic the basic capability of the human brain; don't be so dismissive of it.
Your basic argument seems to be that evolution is obviously wrong for all these obvious reasons, and those scientists just aren't smart enough to see what seems to obvious to you.
My argument is that until evolution has an answer for these very applicable arguments, its claims are unproven.
I don't care how many scientists believe evolution is true. I want to see their arguments for evolution that manages to answer these objections.
So far, I've gotten repeated chants of "mutation + selection!" as if that magically solves every engineering problem. As an engineer ... no, it does not, and I've pointed out why and how. An idea that sounds plausible in the high level summary can be very wanting when examined in detail.
In my rather contrived melody example, you suggest that the method is equivalent to brute-forcing the entire solution space. This is false for numerous reasons. First, the solution space is infinite, as modifications to the melody may add notes as well as change them and/or remove them - so it is theoretically impossible to brute-force, and therefore I can't be brute-forcing it. Secondly, you suggest that because in my example I have human ears choosing the 'best' melody, that I am actually running an experiment in 'intelligent prediction'. This is also false, since in the example the only way of choosing the 'best' melody is via some-ones ears.
Your randomization chooses random samples from the entire sample space. You randomly guess at a good solution and use the filter to see if the guess was good.
If the best melody "solutions" are neighbors to good melodies, then focusing the effort around previously successful (or least horrible) guesses, does have improved odds over a completely blind search. Blind search is brute force (and is your starting point). Iterating on previous successes is a directed search. Given enough tries, it will find *something* - that is the brute force aspect; you cannot predict with any level of certainty that you can find a solution within O(???). (estimating the O() requires understanding the problem. We're still learning what the "problem" of life is, let alone trying to solve it)
The point about intelligence in your filter, is that creating a filter to decide that a melody is "good" is difficult. A good melody is appealing to a subjectiv
No, the filter does not add work. It only leaves behind any "meaningful work" done. All natural selection does it take a set of living organisms, and kill off a subset (which could be all of them). This is always a reduction in diversity and information.
Any meaningful work must be done by the random mutation part of the equation - and unless you abandon random mutation, you don't have enough tries to even have a tiny chance of success. Count how many steps you must take between bacterium and human - and then roll a thousand sided dice (generous approximation) for each step. Each step is an exponential reduction of success rate, and population size (# of tries) decreases with complexity of the organism - you simply don't have enough tries to make the expected value even approach a meaningful %.
Anyways, where is that "world's fastest sorting algorithm"? Something that is the best in the world should not be that hard to find.
You (and the EPA) haven't validated the claim that the standards are attainable, either.
My opinion supporting the status quo costs nothing extra. The EPA's desire for higher mileage, however, reduces safety, increases price, and adds various other tradeoffs made in the pursuit of higher (gas) efficiency.
It's not like the EPA invented efficiency improving technology that it wants car markers to adopt. All it did is threaten penalties on carmakers for failing to meet arbitrarily chosen mileage standards.
Why not just ask for infinite mileage? Clearly that would encourage effiiciency even more than the finite number they chose!
Firstly, starting with nothing is a false requirement, ...
Compare a bacterium to a human being. Notice any differences?
Such as ... multiple cells, specialized functionality, sexual reproduction ... ?
Does the bacterium have the information for that functionality encoded within its DNA? No? Then yes, it's starting with "nothing", and ends up with "something".
... Once you have started something, you can get all kinds of stuff out.
If.
Secondly, your definition of filter needs work. Filters don't always only remove information, sometimes they just move it around. Ultimately you should think of the selection part of evolution not like a filter, but more like an informational version of Maxwell's demon. When a useful bit of information shows up, it's trapped. The more useful the information is the stronger the walls of the trap. Get past those points and you'll be OK.
However you use them, filters do not add information. They find subsets, not supersets.
As far as evolution is concerned, yes, if you passed the right information to the filter of natural selection, natural selection will "retain" it. (Somewhat - minor errors can creep in over time, and various animals have gone extinct). But that's not the entirety of the problem - you also have to have the right information to pass to the filter - and the only mechanism for generating that right information is random mutation. The right information is not something likely to be found by random mutation; so your only solution is to try again and again and again and hope to hit the jackpot.
If you're actually curious, google Genetic Algorithms. A large number of experiments have already been done similar to what you propose. Heck I even wrote one a while back to see if random mutations would converge to a solution, and they did. It wasn't complicated or sophisticated, but a set of numbers would converge on a solution.
If the algorithm cannot fail to succeed, it's not modeling evolution.
Genetic algorithms do borrow from the concept of gene transfer, but that's not enough to prove out the claims of evolution - that random chance is sufficient to create the vast number of complex functional life forms we see on Earth today. The main thing to note is that all genetic algorithms with useful results were crafted to find those useful results, and you get what you look for.
But is nature really searching for a fur-less biped with an affinity for lolcat videos? Can you find me a genetic algorithm that found something it wasn't searching for?
I figured you'd ask, so I started looking for it, but got flooded with articles using genetic algorithms in the past 10 years. The one I speak of is older than that. I'll keep looking though.
Funny that the world's fastest sort algorithm is so difficult to find. You'd think people would care to use it, and talk about the methods by which it reaches the best performance.
So now you'll claim the product of evolution is not evolution because the process was chosen by the creator was intelligently designed? You just backed up one step too far. That would be to imply that God invented evolution, which does not disprove evolution. Rather it disproves God, because non evolution would not create anything new, whereas evolution does. Therefore, by the anthropic principal, evolution is true.
Purposeless mutation does not create usable search algorithms. To find the algorithm in question, a purposeful search system. The system did use purposeless mutation as an input, but it then used a purposeful filter to remove the non desired results. The filter, which graded search algorithms and picked out the best ones, is what gave the system its purpose.
If you removed the filter, then you have purposeless mutation - but you'd end up with mostly bad or useless sorting algorithms
They add efficiency. There are financial, environment and national security reasons for the efficiency standards.
And that efficiency comes at the cost of safety, or performance, or various other difficult to capture factors.
The whole point of the standards is to change the equilibrium. But the equilibrium is the equilibrium because that's the sum of people's desires vs. the choices and costs. That means your new equilibrium (thanks to the standard) has ignored some input - maybe people want a bigger car to haul things around, or a cheaper car that is more affordable for a low income family. You've shut them out of choices for some "greater good".
It does not take gov't action to raise the "minimum standard". But gov't will gladly take more power and money marketing themselves as wise managers of the economy and industry.
Doesn't bother me. Personally, I'd be embarrassed if "my side" was guilty of that tactic. It's surrendering the battlefield of ideas. "Bravely ran away ..."
I think this is where you're stuck. Information + Noise, fed through a filter that only allows fitter results to reproduce, will obviously encourage change. The question surely is, if evolution does not occur, then why not? The whole argument can be approached from another direction - and so, answer me this; what prevents evolution?
Just try to apply that to computer code. That you can randomize some parameters does not mean you can mutate any part of the code. Mutate your drivers? Blue screen of death is more likely than +5% FPS in Skyrim.
The problem is one of probability. One quality of information is that it's a tiny subset of all the possibilities. "Awesome" has meaning, but "Awsmoe", "Maewes", etc do not. If possibilities have equal weight, a random change to a string is much more likely to find a non-word (non-information, junk, noise), then an actual word.
That's why noise destroys information. Without outside interference, the noise "averages" the information - and the average is not information. It's pretty much entropy, but applied to a non-material quality.
Question; where did that information come from? Let's remove the issue of the syntax of the message, and instead suggest that the message should be a melody. Let's randomly alter the melody millions of times, and recruit millions of willing listeners to choose their favorite. Let's do this for millions of years. Are you suggesting that the result wouldn't be a better melody?
The information you've found is by taking the entire solution space, and filtering it down to the working solution space. That's a brute force method to finding a solution, and it's incredibly inefficient and slow. You can make it more practical by using a directed search instead of a blind search, but then that's not random mutation anymore - pseudo random using intelligent prediction, maybe. You also used a million intelligences in order to create a smart enough filter.
Now theoretically, random mutations can just pop out a fitter individual - just like a million monkeys and typewriters could recreate the works of Shakespeare given enough chances (if they don't get into a poopfight). The problem then is finding enough chances. A billion tries at a 1 in a million chance is going to get you a few success. On the flip side, a few million tries at a 1 in googolplex chance has practically 0 chance of succeeding.
Trying to brute force your way to life and higher order lifeforms requires many orders of magnitude more chances than we've actually experienced. The universe isn't remotely old enough. To insist it did happen by random chance is to insist a miracle happened.
If we can boil down evolution to "a miracle happened", how ironic that its opponents are derided as "anti-science".
... and? Evolution is about survivability ...
Add up a million such mutations, and you do not end up with a higher order organism. Wrong direction matters. If these mutations are reducing functionality (destroying information), then add up enough of them and you will end up with a nonviable genetic code.
You're selling items at a loss, but you're not worried about the lack of profit, since you'll make up for it in volume.
It does have such a mechanism, namely acquiring those parts separately for different purposes, and later combining them and evolving them together. Indeed, every time we've explored the evolution of some complex organ (like the eye, which creationists often use as an example of "irreducible complexity"), we universally found out that there are, in fact, a series of obvious separate steps, each of which gives a definite advantage in and of itself while remaining plausible to evolve.
A scientist's imagination is not proof that the sequence you describe is physically possible. It's a starting point to find the proof - if it exists.
The level of proof you must demonstrate is to reconstruct the "intermediate" life form with all of its intermediate traits. (We're a long way from this, obviously, as we still can't even plagiarize life and create our own single celled organisms). That's the scientific level of proof. A historic level of proof is to show documentation that the lifeform existed - but fossils don't provide that level of detail.
It's not enough that you have a valid sequence of genetic code that creates the structures in question. (Which we know exists because the organism with the structures exists) You must be able to build that sequence in incremental steps, with every intermediate form being completely valid. (fit to survive, capable of reproducing and outcompeting the previous version)
Try to build Windows 7 that way starting with DOS, using a greedy algorithm. It is possible, but improbable, and highly inefficient in both time and resources.
Finally, the very existence of the aforementioned evolutionary baggage - i.e. the fact that organisms are often constructed in a very convoluted way, all the way down to how cells operate - shows that the argument of there being some "neat" code base that would be inevitably polluted by mutations is flawed. What we have is more like a hodgepodge of simple code snippets that are randomly copy-pasted, and occasionally changed, all over the place. All the time, you see the same base thing used for vastly different purposes in different organisms, and usually in both cases it has to be mangled considerably to become suitable for that purpose. If that is the product of an intelligent designer, that would indicate considerable lack of skill on his behalf, and the lack of understanding of such basic principles as code reuse.
Convoluted way? Compared to what? Show me the human built organism that does it better - it doesn't exist yet, we're still sixth graders trying to copy a DaVinci painting.
Those "simple" code snippets? We don't fully understand how they work yet. If we did, we'd be coding up our own lifeforms from scratch. Instead, we're tinkering with the existing lifeforms at the margins.
Unless you can build it better, you have no grounds to criticize the implementation - maybe you're simply ignorant of the tradeoffs necessary to make the design feasible.
Natural selection is that mechanism.
Natural selection subtracts, it does not add.
You must abandon random mutation in order for evolution to make progress - but that "allows the divine foot in the door", so to speak. It abandons the natural mechanism that evolutionary theory prides itself on.
This is plainly false, and shows that you don't actually have familiarity with the subject at hand. I sugg
Let's say the standards are attainable - why aren't the currently existing cars built to that standard?
Thinks like safety or mileage are good selling points for cars - given the competition between the various car manufacturers, they all have an incentive to maximize those aspects - if it were cost effective.
Chances are that they aren't doing it right now because people don't want it. It's ugly, it's expensive, or unreliable, or whatever tradeoffs exist for that quality. The standards don't really add anything, except coercing car manufacturers to make certain tradeoffs, and limiting the options of car drivers.
Your "world's fastest sorting algorithm" doesn't have a name? I'd like to read up on the actual algorithm, rather than hearing your vague summary. An algorithm "that does not make any logical sense", but which works the best, must be seen to be believed.
But as for your algorithm being "un-intelligently designed" - it's being used by intelligences that designed a system to find the algorithm and used it. Intelligence was quite intimately involved with finding the algorithm.
For fucks sake people. This is completely attainable and not an unrealistic goal. Fucking shill posters out in force early.
It's unattainable when the same gov't entity demanding high efficiency demands that the cars be as safe as possible with crumple zones and airbags and all the other myriad safety features, as well as being environmentally friendly and non-polluting.
Efficiency, safety, price. Tradeoffs happen.
Yes, on average harmful mutations are more common than beneficial ones. That's precisely why you need natural selection, which will screen out harmful mutations, only allowing non-harmful ones to persist, and re-enforcing the beneficial ones.
Note that beneficial mutations are not necessarily the same thing as gaining information. There are flightless birds that have "evolved out of flying", as well as blind fish that have "evolved out of seeing". They certainly have a higher level of survivability in their niche environment, but that doesn't increase the information contained in their genetics, or the functionality of the organism itself.
That's not the right direction to get from a single celled organism to a human being. On top of that, evolution as described is a "greedy algorithm" - it cannot plan ahead, and has no good mechanism to develop complex capabilities that require multiple parts.
You seem to be arguing against abiogenesis here rather than evolution. Evolution is not concerned with how life is created - it only deals with how life changes once it's there. We have a reasonably decent understanding of how, say, single-cell organisms could have evolved into multi-cell ones, and from there on - all based on evolution.
They're highly interlinked because they use the same handwave to the probabilistic improbability - give us a lot of time and a lot of tries. The problem is that there isn't enough time and there aren't enough tries. You're trying to win a 1 in a trillion chance lottery by buying a million tickets. An extra million tickets doesn't improve your odds enough to make things a certainty, but that's exactly what supporters of evolution will claim.
We do not know, as yet, how single-cell organisms have evolved. We do have some theories based on the application of same principle - biological evolution is certainly not a single instance of complexity arising spontaneously when selection is involved. All that's needed is some form of reproduction, and that can happen on level much lower than genes.
All replication means is a few more tries. That's not an explanation, that's a handwave. Replication itself is a feature that must be randomly mutated into existence. You haven't offered anything that will overcome "information + noise => less information".
All the work we can do with computers, we accomplish by suppressing the noise. It's why we use digital over analog circuitry wherever possible - it can almost perfectly suppress noise. (Conveniently, our DNA is also a digital code) To say that noise adds information is absurd - but that's what evolution repeatedly asserts. If taken seriously, it contradicts the entire field of computing. Why bother removing noise when noise could be adding information to the message you're transmitting? You just need to filter it afterwards!
Also, you should realize that evolution scientists have carefully crafted mathematical models based on the data that we have - a quick google search will give you plenty of papers to read on the subject. And, the models do in fact support evolution - and also show that it is effectively inevitable once some replication mechanism is in play.
The computer models that show evolution is inevitable are universally flawed. They're making the assumption that the average mutation is a net gain, so voila, positive feedback loop and a ratcheting gain. Again, random mutation is noise, and a net loss, it is a negative feedback loop that destroys information without external intervention. Generally, evolution models provide permanent "savepoints" for "fit" configurations that guarantee progress; evolution is inevitable in the models because the model is designed to make it inevitable.
In reality, life is not in every nook and cranny of the universe. There are areas of the universe completely inhospitable to life. On top of that, life can go extinct - a possibility not seriously entertained in the models.
A computer model that does not allow extinction or failure is not modeling reality, and shows us nothing about what happens in reality.
Then nobody is the only person who gets it right.
Creationist is the set of people who believe the world was created. That's what the world means.
If you want to only talk about the subset of Creationists who believe in a young earth, we have words to describe that subset - "Young Earth Creationists", as opposed to "Old Earth Creationists". Only referring to YECs with "Creationist" is to confuse sets and muddle the discussion.
In any case, my post was more about the poster confusing instances of "intelligent design" for "evolution". There is an "evolution" (change over time) of human designs, but it has little to do with the concept of evolution as applied to biology. (purposeless random processes creating cool things) There are similarities, but the former is not evidence of the latter.
Bleh. That should read "less than 1.0 expected value", not "1.0 expected value". Stupid me and html tags.
Again, you completely misunderstand the premise of evolution. It's not about organism "adapting" to their living environment. It's about the environment having a selection bias on specific traits (those that raise the probability of spreading one gene's; on a simplified level, those that lead to more offspring). A single organism does not adapt - it lives, reproduces and dies. The entire population adapts. That adaptation is inherent in the laws under which the system operates - it's not guided in any way, and it does not have a goal. It happens because: 1) mutations happen, and 2) natural selection happens. The existence of those two things - which is a verifiable fact - is sufficient for evolution. In fact, you'd have to come up with a reasonable explanation of how evolution would not happen in these circumstances.
Quick tangent: Single organisms do adapt to their environment. (ex: We tan in response to sunlight) There are also scientific studies that an animal's experiences affect the genetics of their offspring. (genetics are not completely fixed at birth as thought)
Back to the main point - I'm talking about systems - so my point applies both to the individual and to the population of individuals. Whether an individual and its offspring, or the population in general - there is a genetic source code that contains the information encoding all of the organism's functionality. Senses, processing, movement, self-assembly and replication. The only way to add to that code under evolutionary theory is random mutation. It is insufficient, and I'll get to why that is.
1) mutations happen, and 2) natural selection happens. The existence of those two things - which is a verifiable fact - is sufficient for evolution. In fact, you'd have to come up with a reasonable explanation of how evolution would not happen in these circumstances.
Cars and operating systems do not evolve in that sense because they do not reproduce, and do not mutate. If they did, then, yeah, they'd evolve as well.
Self replication isn't sufficient to create information.
If I take a hard drive and pass a magnet over it to create a random bit configuration - the chances of that creating a working operating system on the hard drive is practically nil (possible, but improbable). If I do it a second time, it's still unlikely. That's all replication really means in terms of building information randomly - reroll the dice and hope. That's great if you're dealing with a 50+% chance of success; but it's meaningless if your chance of success is 1 in a billion. One hundred more tries doesn't noticeably improve the odds.
Your mistake is that you treat living organisms as some kind of intricate machines, where one cog out of place breaks the whole thing down. It's not how it works. In fact, most mutations are neutral with respect to fitness, so they don't get weeded out at all. Thus it's pretty easy for them to accumulate over time, and eventually their combinations producing either harmful or beneficial effects, which are then weeded out or strengthened via positive feedback loops that are inherent in the natural selection process.
I didn't make that mistake. Life has a lot of redundancy and error checking built into it. That's engineering margin, and completely consistent with a designer creating a robust system. Evolution has to explain it as random chance evolving this extra capability over time (so at some point there was no margin, and the organism was fragile; yet somehow survived as a population long enough to develop out of it)
Random mutation is applying noise (entropy) to information - and you're expecting natural selection to somehow filter (information + noise) into (more information).
Indeed - and what exactly is wrong with that picture? You're right that random noise by itself would not result in evolution, you also need a filter
Show me a gear or wheel in nature. Immediately we've exceeded the designer's initial design.
Your point being ... ? I'm not claiming that all that's worth using was already designed and created. (Though if a god created the universe, he definitely made it possible for gears/wheels to exist)
Show me the world's fastest sorting algorithm. I'll give you a hint it sorts 6 values using 5 comparisons. This was found using genetic algorithms.
Not sure which algorithm that is, but whichever one it was, it was found using some sort of software search system created by intelligent designers. That a computer automated the search process does not make it any less a product of intelligent design.
That genetic algorithm did not need the theory of evolution in order to exist. This is giving evolution credit where it deserves none.
Is Windows "evolving" when it installs and works in different computing environments? Is a red car with satellite radio an "evolution" from a blue car with power windows? Both are products of intelligent designers building the system with support for variability. There is a base platform with "optional plugins".
Where did the capability of Windows configuring itself to its hardware come from? The intelligent designers (programmers) behind it. (Sure, we like to make fun of MS products, but they're still products of intelligence)
Where did the capability of living organisms to adapt to their living environment come from? Evolution says random chance created a system that adapts to its environment. Okay, but the existence of an adaptable system is not proof for the creative power of random mutation, because anything random mutation can do, intelligence can design.
Now how plausible is it that random mutation can create functioning systems? It sounds easy, get something working and bootstrap from there.
That's until you start paying attention to just how easy it is to break the system with random mutation. Functionality is information, and information is subject to entropy. Random mutation is applying noise (entropy) to information - and you're expecting natural selection to somehow filter (information + noise) into (more information).
I have yet to see a good argument on how evolution gets past information theory. Would you like to take a shot?
Calling it "microevolution" accepts the premise that there's any evolution at all. Quit trying to sneak in the evolutionary premise and start from scratch - we have an adaptable self-replicating system of systems - does random mutation evolution provide sufficient explanatory power for its existence? Trivial number crunching + information theory says no - so time to do the homework.
Human residences evolved from sticks and feces-laden mud all the way to hi-grade structural steel, carbon fiber reinforced concrete, carbon fiber beams, etc. to construct buildings as tall as the imagination can take us.
Using incremental design improvements by intelligent designers as proof for evolution and against creation is nonsensical.
The core of evolution is that mindless random processes can create products on the level of those designed by an intelligence.
Humans are intelligent. Homes - whether built with sticks or steel or mud or concrete - are all products of intelligent design.
You don't seem to understand the core claims of the competing theories, or how to apply the evidence you have. Creationism only needs a creator (God) to start off the universe, it does not deny humanity's ability to create its own designs or incrementally improve them.
That a field of engineering copies what exists in nature, is not evidence that nature came into existence by random chance, or that a belief of it is necessary.
Consider that the competing belief is that an intelligent designer created what exists in nature. Structural engineers would then be copying from a better engineer who left behind some impressive work.
Considering that junior engineers copy from existing designs all the time, the theory of evolution is completely unnecessary for the existence or utility of biomimetics.
In order to be a competent engineer, you must be capable of facing reality, even when it doesn't fit with your presuppositions. If you'd rather stick your fingers in your ear and yell "LA LA LA GODDIDIT!" then you've got no business dealing with anything that other people's lives will depend on.
Competent engineers don't believe working systems pop out of nothing. Compare the feature list of any living organism and then compare it to the feature list of your computer.
Random noise as a creative instrument is an attempt to brute force the problem. It doesn't take much analysis to realize that the set of working configurations is greatly outnumbered by the set of non-working configurations. Natural selection doesn't improve the generation of mutations (new configurations), it only reduces the mutations to the "working ones".
Evolutionary theory itself is a historical claim on events that occurred "millions and billions" of years ago. A dogmatic belief on what happened in the past is completely unnecessary for an engineer to correctly apply scientific principles (which are concerned with the ongoing mechanics of the universe).
So no, a competent engineer should recognize that evolution is in no way a prerequisite to science or knowledge, and all appeals to its popularity are logical fallacies.
But the employee salaries and corporate profits come entirely from customer bills ...
So yeah, it is still the "poor citizens" who end up paying your "corporate tax". They will end up paying more for the exact same goods, or be forced to pay for a higher quality/quantity of goods than what they actually want.
So no, you're still sucking money out of "poor citizens". Maybe it's for a good cause, but don't delude yourself on who's paying the bills.