Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: I explained in a post above why evolution does not select weels. An autonomous living being must be topologically connected, and weels are not. Explaining why Evolution is incompetent does not make it one bit less incompetent. No autonomous robot with weels can work for long time without supoort. And a biological organism can not work for a long time period. Everything dies. And the Laxey Water Wheel won't last forever either but it was built in 1854 and still works fine. And John Harrison's big wooden clock at Brocklesby Park contains lots and lots of wheels, it was built in 1722, needs virtually no maintenance and works beautifully to this day. . Evolution does not work in the rarefied realm of pure mathematics it works in the physical world, and as near as we can tell in physics there is not a infinite number of anything. Evolution works with the computer of all reality Evolution works with physical reality and as I said physics has not found a infinite number of anything. It is massivelly parallel. Yes. it has the maximum paralellism that may be achieved Bullshit. Evolution isn't the maximum of anything and never produces the perfect solution to a problem, it just produces a solution; and then a few years or maybe a few million years later it produces a solution that is a little bit better but still very far from perfect. Just look at the cells of the retina of the eye of any vertebrate animal, the blood vessels that feed those cells and the nerves that communicate with them aren’t in the back of the eye as would be logical but at the front, so light must pass through them before the light hits the light sensitive cells, this makes vision less sharp than it would otherwise be and creates a blind spot right in the middle of the visual field. No amount of spin can turn this dopey mess into a good design, a human engineer would have to be drunk to come up with a hodgepodge like that. This desing is better because it permits the eye to rotate. How the hell does the nutrient support pipeline and communication cable coming out of the front of the eye where it interferes with the light make an eye easier to rotate than if all that support machinery were out of the way and came out the back?? And a invertebrate like a squid which has all the eyes plumbing and nerves at the back as anybody can see they should be can move its eyes in ways that we can not. If we turn our head sideways our eyes do too, but a squid can keep its eyes horizontal if it wants to. And the eye is far from the only example of Evolutionary incompetence. The vagus nerve connects the brain to the larynx, in a giraffe the two organs are less than a foot apart, but the vagus nerve is more than 15 feet long, it runs all the way down the neck and then double backs and goes back up the neck to the larynx; no human designer would be that stupid. evolution does not work by modofying the best design every time. tha´ts wrong. Yes that's wrong and it's wrong for two reasons: 1) Evolution never ever works with the best design. 2) Even if it did there would be no need to modify it because its already the best design. He works with all variations that the genetic code can produce. BULLSHIT!! Evolution hasn't even come close to investigating all variations that the genetic code can produce! The human genome has 3.2 billion base pairs, there are 4 bases so that means there are 4^3,200,000,000 variations of the human genetic code; by means of comparison, there are only about 4^90 atoms in the observable universe, calling that number astronomically smaller doesn't do it justice but it's the best word I could come up with. So there must be potential humans being that would be superior to any that has ever been born using any criteria for superior you care to name. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 06 Oct 2012, at 04:55, Russell Standish wrote: On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 06:59:11PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: On 10/5/2012 6:48 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 06:32:21PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: Do we have any reason to believe ideas reproduce with variation and then those that reproduce most successfully rise to consciousness? THAT would be a Darwinian theory of consciousness. Brent Dennett's pandemonium theory would seem to be like that. I don't think Dennett contemplated sexual reproduction of ideas. That's irrelevant. Plenty of biological life reproduce asexually. This is an open problem to me. Even bacteria exchange genetic materials, and even bacteria which don't practice sex, get their genetic material exchanged through virus. And I don't know if Dennett contemplated sexual reproduction of ideas, but I like to see dialog and exchange of ideas as a form of sexual reproduction, even if it is more sophisticated than crossing over, mutation, or typical low level exploitation of code. Of course, there must be differences in the details between conscious thought and biological evolution - for example, thought may well be Lamarckian in character (like cultural evolution). The 'natural selection' that acts on ideas is mainly consilience with other ideas that are already occupying brain resources. I'm not convinced one way or other by this. I suspect we still don't know enough to say. Nevertheless, in the pandemonium model, there is a selection process of some sort going on. I agree. In arithmetic too. And consciousness is the main selector there. It makes physics evolving like biology, except that the context is a logico-arithmetical setting, instead of a space-time. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 06 Oct 2012, at 06:04, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 10:12 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 8:00 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 8:32 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 4:56 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 1:32 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 2:04 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Dear john: 2012/10/4 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Wrote: Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago I know, that's why I said macroscopic. It's easy to make if the wheel is microscopic because nutriments can just diffuse in and waste products diffuse out; but as parts get bigger the volume increases by the cube of the radius but the surface area only increases by the square, so when things get big diffusion just isn't good enough. Evolution never figured out how to do better and make a wheel large enough to see, but people did. I explained in a post above why evolution does not select weels. An autonomous living being must be topologically connected, and weels are not. This is a neat consequence of the need of repairability. No autonomous robot with weels can work for long time without supoort.. This is explained in detail somewhere above. I can imagine a design in which wheels are connected to the circulatory system just as some vehicles are built with hydraulic motors in their wheels. Or the wheels might be separate organisms in a symbiotic relation. Those are possible - but it's too hard to get there from here. So you make the point yourself, evolution is constrained in ways that rational design is not. Do we know that imagination doesn't use an evolutionary process (behind the scenes) to come up with new ideas? Could it be that our brains use evolutionary techniques, combining different things we know in random ways and running internal testing and selection of those ideas, before they bubble up into an Ah-Ha moment that we become conscious of? Do we have any reason to believe ideas reproduce with variation and then those that reproduce most successfully rise to consciousness? THAT would be a Darwinian theory of consciousness. The only known implementations of artificial creativity involved genetic programming. In fact, this computer used such techniques to invented patent-worthy designs: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.100.4146 When I try to conceive of how creativity works, it is hard for me to to imagine it could be anything other than random permutation and cross pollination of existing ideas, which must then be evaluated and the nonsensical ones pruned. New (good) ideas do not fall from the sky, nor are they directly implied by the existing set of ideas. It seems then that the process involved is to generate a bunch of new ideas (using methods similar to the tools of evolution works), and then apply selection criteria to determine which are the good ones and which are the useless ones. This strikes me as disingenously stretching meaning to fit an argument. Yes, random variation and recombination of ideas and selection according to some values is probably how creativity works. But do you really think that shows Evolution outshines reason? I was only making the point that reason may itself use the same techniques evolution does. Aren't you overlooking the fact that reason does all this in imagination, symbolically, not by reproducing and competing for resources and suffering and dying? Before there were minds to experience all the suffering and dying, you might say that evolution was equally symbolic. That is, the molecular interactions in the biosphere held a similar role to the flurry of ideas in a reasoning mind. Being able to develop ideas quickly and without whole generations having to suffer and die is a great improvement to the process, but it is an improvement natural selection (not we) made. Biological evolution is now largely inconsequential compared to the evolution of technology and ideas. But the trends in technology and ideas are still evolutionary. Reason may be able to make longer strides than was possible with mutation of DNA molecules, but the products of reason are still very much subject to the same evolutionary forces: ideas must reproduce (spread), and compete to survive, or risk extinction. I don't see that reason can be said to outshine evolution since they seem to be inseparable. Reason is a product and tool of evolution (just as DNA is). Reason itself may even use evolutionary
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 05 Oct 2012, at 11:04, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Dear john: 2012/10/4 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Wrote: Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago I know, that's why I said macroscopic. It's easy to make if the wheel is microscopic because nutriments can just diffuse in and waste products diffuse out; but as parts get bigger the volume increases by the cube of the radius but the surface area only increases by the square, so when things get big diffusion just isn't good enough. Evolution never figured out how to do better and make a wheel large enough to see, but people did. I explained in a post above why evolution does not select weels. An autonomous living being must be topologically connected, and weels are not. This is a neat consequence of the need of repairability. No autonomous robot with weels can work for long time without supoort.. This is explained in detail somewhere above. under intense comet bombardement. try to do it yourself in the same conditions Oh I think if I tried real hard I could figure out how to make a wheel that you didn't need a electron microscope to see, particularly if you gave me 3.8 billion years to work on the problem. But the task stumped Evolution. If there is no weel in natural evolution is because legs are far superior. Claiming that nature could find no use for a macroscopic part that could move in 360 degrees, a part like a neck or a shoulder or a wrist or a ball bearing, is simply not credible. And I have no doubt that a supersonic bird or a propeller driven whale or a fire breathing lizard or a nuclear powered cow could successfully fill environmental niches, but making such a thing was just too hard for random mutation and natural selection to do. Electron are wheels. Rolling pebbles are wheel. Planets are wheels. Solar systems are wheels, galaxies are wheels. Unitary transformations are abstract wheels. Some plants in the desert, when they dried, transforms themselves into wheels, and roll with the wind, to spread the seeds. It is not reason which invented the wheels, it is reason which get inspired by the nature's many wheels and circles (e^ix). Also, evolution uses reasons, all the time, and reason(s) already exist(s) completely in arithmetic. It is the Noùs, divided in his terrestrial part and divine parts (G and G*). With comp there is still a danger to say that evolution is superior to (human) reason: the computationalist will retort that addition and multiplication of integers is superior to evolution. Bruno The claim of superiority of reason over nature is the last vestige of unjustified antropocentrism Anthropomorphism is a very useful tool but like any tool it can be misused; not all anthropomorphisms are unjustified. in its most dangerous form: Pride and self worship. Guilty as charged, I'm a big fan of pride and self worship, it may be a bit dangerous but is sure beats the hell out of worshiping God. you at least agree that is dangerous. Beware of all these self-help books. My theory is that self-steem, like suicide and the white of the eyes are social adaptations. No other animal has the white of the eyes. Thanks to it, other people can monitor very well your eye movements, so they can detect your lies, deceptions, but the others can trust you, because you bring them a mechanism for mind reading. In the overall, the social group fitness is inproved. Thats why sunglasses make people to look untrusty and menacing!!! I left to you to elaborate the conjecture of why self-steem and suicide are social adaptations. These social level adaptation may not be good for each one as individuals, but are good for the society. No society, no you. Therefore in the middle-long term, these things are good for you and your descendants. evolution works simultaneously with infinite variables Evolution does not work in the rarefied realm of pure mathematics it works in the physical world, and as near as we can tell in physics there is not a infinite number of anything. Evolution works with the computer of all reality, that is at the same time its own game scenario. It is massivelly parallel. It has the maximum paralellism that may be achieved: a computer for each element in the game. we NEVER are sure of knowing in FULL the reasons behind an evolutionary design True, but we don't need to know all the reasons to make something better; we don't know all the factors than caused bone to have the exact composition that it does, but a human made titanium girder is a hell of a lot stronger
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 10/5/2012 2:04 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Dear john: 2012/10/4 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com mailto:agocor...@gmail.com Wrote: Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago I know, that's why I said macroscopic. It's easy to make if the wheel is microscopic because nutriments can just diffuse in and waste products diffuse out; but as parts get bigger the volume increases by the cube of the radius but the surface area only increases by the square, so when things get big diffusion just isn't good enough. Evolution never figured out how to do better and make a wheel large enough to see, but people did. I explained in a post above why evolution does not select weels. An autonomous living being must be topologically connected, and weels are not. This is a neat consequence of the need of repairability. No autonomous robot with weels can work for long time without supoort.. This is explained in detail somewhere above. I can imagine a design in which wheels are connected to the circulatory system just as some vehicles are built with hydraulic motors in their wheels. Or the wheels might be separate organisms in a symbiotic relation. Those are possible - but it's too hard to get there from here. So you make the point yourself, evolution is constrained in ways that rational design is not. under intense comet bombardement. try to do it yourself in the same conditions Oh I think if I tried real hard I could figure out how to make a wheel that you didn't need a electron microscope to see, particularly if you gave me 3.8 billion years to work on the problem. But the task stumped Evolution. If there is no weel in natural evolution is because legs are far superior. Claiming that nature could find no use for a macroscopic part that could move in 360 degrees, a part like a neck or a shoulder or a wrist or a ball bearing, is simply not credible. And I have no doubt that a supersonic bird or a propeller driven whale or a fire breathing lizard or a nuclear powered cow could successfully fill environmental niches, but making such a thing was just too hard for random mutation and natural selection to do. The claim of superiority of reason over nature is the last vestige of unjustified antropocentrism Anthropomorphism is a very useful tool but like any tool it can be misused; not all anthropomorphisms are unjustified. in its most dangerous form: Pride and self worship. Guilty as charged, I'm a big fan of pride and self worship, it may be a bit dangerous but is sure beats the hell out of worshiping God. you at least agree that is dangerous. Beware of all these self-help books. My theory is that self-steem, like suicide and the white of the eyes are social adaptations. No other animal has the white of the eyes. Thanks to it, other people can monitor very well your eye movements, so they can detect your lies, deceptions, but the others can trust you, because you bring them a mechanism for mind reading. In the overall, the social group fitness is inproved. Thats why sunglasses make people to look untrusty and menacing!!! I left to you to elaborate the conjecture of why self-steem and suicide are social adaptations. These social level adaptation may not be good for each one as individuals, but are good for the society. No society, no you. Therefore in the middle-long term, these things are good for you and your descendants. evolution works simultaneously with infinite variables Evolution does not work in the rarefied realm of pure mathematics it works in the physical world, and as near as we can tell in physics there is not a infinite number of anything. Evolution works with the computer of all reality, that is at the same time its own game scenario. It is massivelly parallel. It has the maximum paralellism that may be achieved: a computer for each element in the game. Natural selection only works in the here and now and it only works with whatever random variations occur. That's why isolation in a an environmental niche produces biota well adapted to that niche, but not elsewhere. And such niches depend on the isolation. Once they are open to all of reality the marsupials get displaced by the placentals. we NEVER are sure of knowing in FULL the reasons behind an evolutionary design True, but we don't need to know all the reasons to make something better; we don't know all the factors than
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 1:32 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 2:04 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Dear john: 2012/10/4 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Wrote: Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago I know, that's why I said macroscopic. It's easy to make if the wheel is microscopic because nutriments can just diffuse in and waste products diffuse out; but as parts get bigger the volume increases by the cube of the radius but the surface area only increases by the square, so when things get big diffusion just isn't good enough. Evolution never figured out how to do better and make a wheel large enough to see, but people did. I explained in a post above why evolution does not select weels. An autonomous living being must be topologically connected, and weels are not. This is a neat consequence of the need of repairability. No autonomous robot with weels can work for long time without supoort.. This is explained in detail somewhere above. I can imagine a design in which wheels are connected to the circulatory system just as some vehicles are built with hydraulic motors in their wheels. Or the wheels might be separate organisms in a symbiotic relation. Those are possible - but it's too hard to get there from here. So you make the point yourself, evolution is constrained in ways that rational design is not. Do we know that imagination doesn't use an evolutionary process (behind the scenes) to come up with new ideas? Could it be that our brains use evolutionary techniques, combining different things we know in random ways and running internal testing and selection of those ideas, before they bubble up into an Ah-Ha moment that we become conscious of? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 10/5/2012 4:56 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 1:32 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 2:04 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Dear john: 2012/10/4 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com mailto:agocor...@gmail.com Wrote: Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago I know, that's why I said macroscopic. It's easy to make if the wheel is microscopic because nutriments can just diffuse in and waste products diffuse out; but as parts get bigger the volume increases by the cube of the radius but the surface area only increases by the square, so when things get big diffusion just isn't good enough. Evolution never figured out how to do better and make a wheel large enough to see, but people did. I explained in a post above why evolution does not select weels. An autonomous living being must be topologically connected, and weels are not. This is a neat consequence of the need of repairability. No autonomous robot with weels can work for long time without supoort.. This is explained in detail somewhere above. I can imagine a design in which wheels are connected to the circulatory system just as some vehicles are built with hydraulic motors in their wheels. Or the wheels might be separate organisms in a symbiotic relation. Those are possible - but it's too hard to get there from here. So you make the point yourself, evolution is constrained in ways that rational design is not. Do we know that imagination doesn't use an evolutionary process (behind the scenes) to come up with new ideas? Could it be that our brains use evolutionary techniques, combining different things we know in random ways and running internal testing and selection of those ideas, before they bubble up into an Ah-Ha moment that we become conscious of? Do we have any reason to believe ideas reproduce with variation and then those that reproduce most successfully rise to consciousness? THAT would be a Darwinian theory of consciousness. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 06:32:21PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: Do we have any reason to believe ideas reproduce with variation and then those that reproduce most successfully rise to consciousness? THAT would be a Darwinian theory of consciousness. Brent Dennett's pandemonium theory would seem to be like that. Of course, there must be differences in the details between conscious thought and biological evolution - for example, thought may well be Lamarckian in character (like cultural evolution). -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 10/5/2012 6:48 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 06:32:21PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: Do we have any reason to believe ideas reproduce with variation and then those that reproduce most successfully rise to consciousness? THAT would be a Darwinian theory of consciousness. Brent Dennett's pandemonium theory would seem to be like that. I don't think Dennett contemplated sexual reproduction of ideas. Of course, there must be differences in the details between conscious thought and biological evolution - for example, thought may well be Lamarckian in character (like cultural evolution). The 'natural selection' that acts on ideas is mainly consilience with other ideas that are already occupying brain resources. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 06:59:11PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: On 10/5/2012 6:48 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 06:32:21PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: Do we have any reason to believe ideas reproduce with variation and then those that reproduce most successfully rise to consciousness? THAT would be a Darwinian theory of consciousness. Brent Dennett's pandemonium theory would seem to be like that. I don't think Dennett contemplated sexual reproduction of ideas. That's irrelevant. Plenty of biological life reproduce asexually. Of course, there must be differences in the details between conscious thought and biological evolution - for example, thought may well be Lamarckian in character (like cultural evolution). The 'natural selection' that acts on ideas is mainly consilience with other ideas that are already occupying brain resources. I'm not convinced one way or other by this. I suspect we still don't know enough to say. Nevertheless, in the pandemonium model, there is a selection process of some sort going on. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 8:32 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 4:56 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 1:32 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 2:04 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Dear john: 2012/10/4 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Wrote: Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago I know, that's why I said macroscopic. It's easy to make if the wheel is microscopic because nutriments can just diffuse in and waste products diffuse out; but as parts get bigger the volume increases by the cube of the radius but the surface area only increases by the square, so when things get big diffusion just isn't good enough. Evolution never figured out how to do better and make a wheel large enough to see, but people did. I explained in a post above why evolution does not select weels. An autonomous living being must be topologically connected, and weels are not. This is a neat consequence of the need of repairability. No autonomous robot with weels can work for long time without supoort.. This is explained in detail somewhere above. I can imagine a design in which wheels are connected to the circulatory system just as some vehicles are built with hydraulic motors in their wheels. Or the wheels might be separate organisms in a symbiotic relation. Those are possible - but it's too hard to get there from here. So you make the point yourself, evolution is constrained in ways that rational design is not. Do we know that imagination doesn't use an evolutionary process (behind the scenes) to come up with new ideas? Could it be that our brains use evolutionary techniques, combining different things we know in random ways and running internal testing and selection of those ideas, before they bubble up into an Ah-Ha moment that we become conscious of? Do we have any reason to believe ideas reproduce with variation and then those that reproduce most successfully rise to consciousness? THAT would be a Darwinian theory of consciousness. The only known implementations of artificial creativity involved genetic programming. In fact, this computer used such techniques to invented patent-worthy designs: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.100.4146 When I try to conceive of how creativity works, it is hard for me to to imagine it could be anything other than random permutation and cross pollination of existing ideas, which must then be evaluated and the nonsensical ones pruned. New (good) ideas do not fall from the sky, nor are they directly implied by the existing set of ideas. It seems then that the process involved is to generate a bunch of new ideas (using methods similar to the tools of evolution works), and then apply selection criteria to determine which are the good ones and which are the useless ones. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 10/5/2012 8:00 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 8:32 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 4:56 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 1:32 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 2:04 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Dear john: 2012/10/4 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com mailto:agocor...@gmail.com Wrote: Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago I know, that's why I said macroscopic. It's easy to make if the wheel is microscopic because nutriments can just diffuse in and waste products diffuse out; but as parts get bigger the volume increases by the cube of the radius but the surface area only increases by the square, so when things get big diffusion just isn't good enough. Evolution never figured out how to do better and make a wheel large enough to see, but people did. I explained in a post above why evolution does not select weels. An autonomous living being must be topologically connected, and weels are not. This is a neat consequence of the need of repairability. No autonomous robot with weels can work for long time without supoort.. This is explained in detail somewhere above. I can imagine a design in which wheels are connected to the circulatory system just as some vehicles are built with hydraulic motors in their wheels. Or the wheels might be separate organisms in a symbiotic relation. Those are possible - but it's too hard to get there from here. So you make the point yourself, evolution is constrained in ways that rational design is not. Do we know that imagination doesn't use an evolutionary process (behind the scenes) to come up with new ideas? Could it be that our brains use evolutionary techniques, combining different things we know in random ways and running internal testing and selection of those ideas, before they bubble up into an Ah-Ha moment that we become conscious of? Do we have any reason to believe ideas reproduce with variation and then those that reproduce most successfully rise to consciousness? THAT would be a Darwinian theory of consciousness. The only known implementations of artificial creativity involved genetic programming. In fact, this computer used such techniques to invented patent-worthy designs: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.100.4146 When I try to conceive of how creativity works, it is hard for me to to imagine it could be anything other than random permutation and cross pollination of existing ideas, which must then be evaluated and the nonsensical ones pruned. New (good) ideas do not fall from the sky, nor are they directly implied by the existing set of ideas. It seems then that the process involved is to generate a bunch of new ideas (using methods similar to the tools of evolution works), and then apply selection criteria to determine which are the good ones and which are the useless ones. This strikes me as disingenously stretching meaning to fit an argument. Yes, random variation and recombination of ideas and selection according to some values is probably how creativity works. But do you really think that shows Evolution outshines reason? Aren't you overlooking the fact that reason does all this in imagination, symbolically, not by reproducing and competing for resources and suffering and dying? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 10:12 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 8:00 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 8:32 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 4:56 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 1:32 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 2:04 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Dear john: 2012/10/4 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Wrote: Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago I know, that's why I said macroscopic. It's easy to make if the wheel is microscopic because nutriments can just diffuse in and waste products diffuse out; but as parts get bigger the volume increases by the cube of the radius but the surface area only increases by the square, so when things get big diffusion just isn't good enough. Evolution never figured out how to do better and make a wheel large enough to see, but people did. I explained in a post above why evolution does not select weels. An autonomous living being must be topologically connected, and weels are not. This is a neat consequence of the need of repairability. No autonomous robot with weels can work for long time without supoort.. This is explained in detail somewhere above. I can imagine a design in which wheels are connected to the circulatory system just as some vehicles are built with hydraulic motors in their wheels. Or the wheels might be separate organisms in a symbiotic relation. Those are possible - but it's too hard to get there from here. So you make the point yourself, evolution is constrained in ways that rational design is not. Do we know that imagination doesn't use an evolutionary process (behind the scenes) to come up with new ideas? Could it be that our brains use evolutionary techniques, combining different things we know in random ways and running internal testing and selection of those ideas, before they bubble up into an Ah-Ha moment that we become conscious of? Do we have any reason to believe ideas reproduce with variation and then those that reproduce most successfully rise to consciousness? THAT would be a Darwinian theory of consciousness. The only known implementations of artificial creativity involved genetic programming. In fact, this computer used such techniques to invented patent-worthy designs: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.100.4146 When I try to conceive of how creativity works, it is hard for me to to imagine it could be anything other than random permutation and cross pollination of existing ideas, which must then be evaluated and the nonsensical ones pruned. New (good) ideas do not fall from the sky, nor are they directly implied by the existing set of ideas. It seems then that the process involved is to generate a bunch of new ideas (using methods similar to the tools of evolution works), and then apply selection criteria to determine which are the good ones and which are the useless ones. This strikes me as disingenously stretching meaning to fit an argument. Yes, random variation and recombination of ideas and selection according to some values is probably how creativity works. But do you really think that shows Evolution outshines reason? I was only making the point that reason may itself use the same techniques evolution does. Aren't you overlooking the fact that reason does all this in imagination, symbolically, not by reproducing and competing for resources and suffering and dying? Before there were minds to experience all the suffering and dying, you might say that evolution was equally symbolic. That is, the molecular interactions in the biosphere held a similar role to the flurry of ideas in a reasoning mind. Being able to develop ideas quickly and without whole generations having to suffer and die is a great improvement to the process, but it is an improvement natural selection (not we) made. Biological evolution is now largely inconsequential compared to the evolution of technology and ideas. But the trends in technology and ideas are still evolutionary. Reason may be able to make longer strides than was possible with mutation of DNA molecules, but the products of reason are still very much subject to the same evolutionary forces: ideas must reproduce (spread), and compete to survive, or risk extinction. I don't see that reason can be said to outshine evolution since they seem to be inseparable. Reason is a product and tool of evolution (just as DNA is). Reason itself may even use evolutionary processes. And in the end, everything, including the ideas and inventions created by reason are still bound to the
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 10/5/2012 9:04 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 10:12 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 8:00 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 8:32 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 4:56 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 1:32 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/5/2012 2:04 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Dear john: 2012/10/4 John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com mailto:agocor...@gmail.com Wrote: Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago I know, that's why I said macroscopic. It's easy to make if the wheel is microscopic because nutriments can just diffuse in and waste products diffuse out; but as parts get bigger the volume increases by the cube of the radius but the surface area only increases by the square, so when things get big diffusion just isn't good enough. Evolution never figured out how to do better and make a wheel large enough to see, but people did. I explained in a post above why evolution does not select weels. An autonomous living being must be topologically connected, and weels are not. This is a neat consequence of the need of repairability. No autonomous robot with weels can work for long time without supoort.. This is explained in detail somewhere above. I can imagine a design in which wheels are connected to the circulatory system just as some vehicles are built with hydraulic motors in their wheels. Or the wheels might be separate organisms in a symbiotic relation. Those are possible - but it's too hard to get there from here. So you make the point yourself, evolution is constrained in ways that rational design is not. Do we know that imagination doesn't use an evolutionary process (behind the scenes) to come up with new ideas? Could it be that our brains use evolutionary techniques, combining different things we know in random ways and running internal testing and selection of those ideas, before they bubble up into an Ah-Ha moment that we become conscious of? Do we have any reason to believe ideas reproduce with variation and then those that reproduce most successfully rise to consciousness? THAT would be a Darwinian theory of consciousness. The only known implementations of artificial creativity involved genetic programming. In fact, this computer used such techniques to invented patent-worthy designs: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.100.4146 When I try to conceive of how creativity works, it is hard for me to to imagine it could be anything other than random permutation and cross pollination of existing ideas, which must then be evaluated and the nonsensical ones pruned. New (good) ideas do not fall from the sky, nor are they directly implied by the existing set of ideas. It seems then that the process involved is to generate a bunch of new ideas (using methods similar to the tools of evolution works), and then apply selection criteria to determine which are the good ones and which are the useless ones. This strikes me as disingenously stretching meaning to fit an argument. Yes, random variation and recombination of ideas and selection according to some values is probably how creativity works. But do you really think that shows Evolution outshines reason? I was only making the point that reason may itself use the same techniques evolution does. Aren't you overlooking the fact that reason does all this in imagination, symbolically, not by reproducing and competing for resources and suffering and dying? Before there were minds to experience all the suffering and dying, you might say that evolution was equally symbolic. There were minds enough to try to avoid suffering and dying. Are really going to try to stretch this analogy to say that our ideas 'compete and suffer and die' and this is just as wasteful and cruel as the Darwinian struggle for existence? That is, the molecular
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Wrote: Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago I know, that's why I said macroscopic. It's easy to make if the wheel is microscopic because nutriments can just diffuse in and waste products diffuse out; but as parts get bigger the volume increases by the cube of the radius but the surface area only increases by the square, so when things get big diffusion just isn't good enough. Evolution never figured out how to do better and make a wheel large enough to see, but people did. under intense comet bombardement. try to do it yourself in the same conditions Oh I think if I tried real hard I could figure out how to make a wheel that you didn't need a electron microscope to see, particularly if you gave me 3.8 billion years to work on the problem. But the task stumped Evolution. If there is no weel in natural evolution is because legs are far superior. Claiming that nature could find no use for a macroscopic part that could move in 360 degrees, a part like a neck or a shoulder or a wrist or a ball bearing, is simply not credible. And I have no doubt that a supersonic bird or a propeller driven whale or a fire breathing lizard or a nuclear powered cow could successfully fill environmental niches, but making such a thing was just too hard for random mutation and natural selection to do. The claim of superiority of reason over nature is the last vestige of unjustified antropocentrism Anthropomorphism is a very useful tool but like any tool it can be misused; not all anthropomorphisms are unjustified. in its most dangerous form: Pride and self worship. Guilty as charged, I'm a big fan of pride and self worship, it may be a bit dangerous but is sure beats the hell out of worshiping God. evolution works simultaneously with infinite variables Evolution does not work in the rarefied realm of pure mathematics it works in the physical world, and as near as we can tell in physics there is not a infinite number of anything. we NEVER are sure of knowing in FULL the reasons behind an evolutionary design True, but we don't need to know all the reasons to make something better; we don't know all the factors than caused bone to have the exact composition that it does, but a human made titanium girder is a hell of a lot stronger than any bone. That gives evolutionary design an appearance of mess poor design It certainly does! This is NOT the case. Baloney. Evolution has no need to be perfect because an organism need not be perfect, it just needs to be a little better than the competition. Just look at the cells of the retina of the eye of any vertebrate animal, the blood vessels that feed those cells and the nerves that communicate with them aren’t in the back of the eye as would be logical but at the front, so light must pass through them before the light hits the light sensitive cells, this makes vision less sharp than it would otherwise be and creates a blind spot right in the middle of the visual field. No amount of spin can turn this dopey mess into a good design, a human engineer would have to be drunk to come up with a hodgepodge like that. If evolution and reason collide, the prudent is to consider that the reason don´t know enough. That's not being prudent that's just making lame excuses for Evolution. In the case of invertebrates nature got it right and so in the eye of a squid it put the blood vessels and nerves in the back of the eye as any idiot can see where they belong, but it's far too late for Evolution to give that improvement to vertebrates because it would have to go backwards and start over, and with Evolution every change must confer a immediate advantage; Evolution can never admit that it made a mistake in the past but must always blindly march forward, a human designer can swallow his pride junk his old design an create a new and better standard. natural evolution does not start from scratch it has to modify previous designsz Exactly, and that is a huge disadvantage, Evolution can't erase anything it can only add new crap on top of the old crap because every change must confer a immediate advantage. Consider the task of changing the tire on a car and imagine if every single part of the task no matter how small, every movement of a bolt every adjustment of both the flat and the good tire, must confer a IMMEDIATE advantage to the operation of the car. You'd never get the tire changed! while reason without the help of tradiction, operates from scratch. Yes, so a human can jump directly from the tangled mess of DOS to a clean streamlined operating system like LINUX, but Evolution can only add even more tangled bells and whistles to DOS. John K
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On Thu, Oct 04, 2012 at 09:01:14AM -0400, John Clark wrote: Yes, so a human can jump directly from the tangled mess of DOS to a clean streamlined operating system like LINUX, but Evolution can only add even more tangled bells and whistles to DOS. John K Clark Actually, one could argue with this analogy. Linux bears no ancestral relationship with DOS - rather it is descended (in some sense) from Unix, so bears a lot of cruft from that OS (admittedly less than the Windows camp, which descended from DOS). Windows is arguably a lot of additional tangled bells and whistles on top of DOS - anyone programming to the Win32 API sees this. Linux had less of a requirement to be backward compatible, so is relatively cleaner, but there is still a lot of cruft - take a look at some of the obsoleted system calls that are still supported to allow old software to compile. Both are examples of evolutionary design than revolutionary design, as it were. Another example is the design of x86_64 processors by Intel. It is debatable whether anything _really_ complex could be designed by means other than evolution. I have worked on 3 projects now in the many 100K LOC size (approaching 1M LOC) class. All of these have stupid design features that are now locked in because it is too expensive to simply start over. Now, back to the main programme. Cheers. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 10/4/2012 6:52 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, Oct 04, 2012 at 09:01:14AM -0400, John Clark wrote: Yes, so a human can jump directly from the tangled mess of DOS to a clean streamlined operating system like LINUX, but Evolution can only add even more tangled bells and whistles to DOS. John K Clark Actually, one could argue with this analogy. Linux bears no ancestral relationship with DOS - rather it is descended (in some sense) from Unix, so bears a lot of cruft from that OS (admittedly less than the Windows camp, which descended from DOS). Windows is arguably a lot of additional tangled bells and whistles on top of DOS - anyone programming to the Win32 API sees this. Linux had less of a requirement to be backward compatible, so is relatively cleaner, but there is still a lot of cruft - take a look at some of the obsoleted system calls that are still supported to allow old software to compile. Both are examples of evolutionary design than revolutionary design, as it were. Another example is the design of x86_64 processors by Intel. It is debatable whether anything _really_ complex could be designed by means other than evolution. Sure they evolved. But they weren't designed by *random* variation. Engineers could see what improvements they needed and they did sometimes backtrack and stop supporting old features in order to make new ones work better. I think there's a crucial difference between a design evolved and it was designed by (Darwinian) evolution. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On Thu, Oct 04, 2012 at 07:02:59PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: On 10/4/2012 6:52 PM, Russell Standish wrote: Both are examples of evolutionary design than revolutionary design, as it were. Another example is the design of x86_64 processors by Intel. It is debatable whether anything _really_ complex could be designed by means other than evolution. Sure they evolved. But they weren't designed by *random* variation. Engineers could see what improvements they needed and they did sometimes backtrack and stop supporting old features in order to make new ones work better. I think there's a crucial difference between a design evolved and it was designed by (Darwinian) evolution. If it is crucially different, then that difference ought to be measurable. Got any ideas? One possibility might be modularity, although modularity can be favoured in Darwinian evolution too, so as to increase evolvability. See eg Pepper (2000), The evolution of modularity in genome architecture, http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~comqcln/al7ev/pepper.ps -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 10/4/2012 7:31 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, Oct 04, 2012 at 07:02:59PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: On 10/4/2012 6:52 PM, Russell Standish wrote: Both are examples of evolutionary design than revolutionary design, as it were. Another example is the design of x86_64 processors by Intel. It is debatable whether anything _really_ complex could be designed by means other than evolution. Sure they evolved. But they weren't designed by *random* variation. Engineers could see what improvements they needed and they did sometimes backtrack and stop supporting old features in order to make new ones work better. I think there's a crucial difference between a design evolved and it was designed by (Darwinian) evolution. If it is crucially different, then that difference ought to be measurable. Got any ideas? Sure, the ratio of the number of new designs built that didn't work compared to those that did. It's a difference of process. It doesn't have to show up in the successful designs. Brent One possibility might be modularity, although modularity can be favoured in Darwinian evolution too, so as to increase evolvability. See eg Pepper (2000), The evolution of modularity in genome architecture, http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~comqcln/al7ev/pepper.ps -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On Thu, Oct 04, 2012 at 07:48:01PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: If it is crucially different, then that difference ought to be measurable. Got any ideas? Sure, the ratio of the number of new designs built that didn't work compared to those that did. It's a difference of process. It doesn't have to show up in the successful designs. Brent That would be a rather large figure in both cases. After all, it is rare for a changeset to just work without any debugging. In the three years I worked on the SCATS project, I think it happened once (and I remarked on it to my colleagues, because it was so rare), out of many hundreds of changesets. Another difficulty with your measure is the evidence of failed designs is usually instantly erased - both in source code repository, and in the fossil record. It might be achievable in an ALife simulation, but how to do comparisons? -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 9:52 PM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.auwrote: Yes, so a human can jump directly from the tangled mess of DOS to a clean streamlined operating system like LINUX, but Evolution can only add even more tangled bells and whistles to DOS. John K Clark Actually, one could argue with this analogy. Linux bears no ancestral relationship with DOS - rather it is descended (in some sense) from Unix, I know, that was my point. If Evolution was dissatisfied with DOS it couldn't start from scratch and switch to a new operating system like Linux or Unix, it could only add more bells and whistles to DOS. Actually it's even worse than that, imagine if you had to improve DOS but you couldn't remove a single line of code or even part of a line unless it conferred a IMMEDIATE advantage to the operation of the system, nor could you add a line of code no matter how short unless it conferred a IMMEDIATE advantage to the operation of the system. Linux had less of a requirement to be backward compatible, Yes, even for human designers once a standard is set it's not practical to switch to a new one unless its enormously better; and with Evolution it's flat out impossible because it can't backtrack its steps, that's why we're stuck with an eye with the blood vessels and nerves put in backward. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 10/4/2012 8:54 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Thu, Oct 04, 2012 at 07:48:01PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: If it is crucially different, then that difference ought to be measurable. Got any ideas? Sure, the ratio of the number of new designs built that didn't work compared to those that did. It's a difference of process. It doesn't have to show up in the successful designs. Brent That would be a rather large figure in both cases. After all, it is rare for a changeset to just work without any debugging. But I'll bet they didn't try to fix the bug by making random changes either. In the three years I worked on the SCATS project, I think it happened once (and I remarked on it to my colleagues, because it was so rare), out of many hundreds of changesets. Another difficulty with your measure is the evidence of failed designs is usually instantly erased - both in source code repository, and in the fossil record. Aren't there estimates of the rate of mutations in DNA? Of course most don't even make it to becoming fossils. Instead of one out of a hundred, I'd guess the biological success rate of random mutations to be a couple of orders of magnitude smaller. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 10/4/2012 9:24 PM, John Clark wrote: On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 9:52 PM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au mailto:li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: Yes, so a human can jump directly from the tangled mess of DOS to a clean streamlined operating system like LINUX, but Evolution can only add even more tangled bells and whistles to DOS. John K Clark Actually, one could argue with this analogy. Linux bears no ancestral relationship with DOS - rather it is descended (in some sense) from Unix, I know, that was my point. If Evolution was dissatisfied with DOS it couldn't start from scratch and switch to a new operating system like Linux or Unix, it could only add more bells and whistles to DOS. Actually it's even worse than that, imagine if you had to improve DOS but you couldn't remove a single line of code or even part of a line unless it conferred a IMMEDIATE advantage to the operation of the system, nor could you add a line of code no matter how short unless it conferred a IMMEDIATE advantage to the operation of the system. I think you're overstating your case. Darwinian evolution couldn't add a line of code if it produced a *disadvantage*. But it can add code that makes no difference at the phenotype level. This is important for evolution because sometimes these neutral changes get used in an advantageous change. Linux had less of a requirement to be backward compatible, Yes, even for human designers once a standard is set it's not practical to switch to a new one unless its enormously better; and with Evolution it's flat out impossible because it can't backtrack its steps, that's why we're stuck with an eye with the blood vessels and nerves put in backward. But evolution can delete unused things. Our ancestors probably had tails. Our descendants may not have a vermiform appendix. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 01 Oct 2012, at 10:39, Alberto G. Corona wrote: 2012/9/30 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 30 Sep 2012, at 15:54, Alberto G. Corona wrote: And if you think that weels are superior, NS invented it, because the invertor of the weel was a product of natural selection. Even your feeling of superiority of the weel and the very feeling of superiority of reason is a product of natural selection. The claim of superiority of reason over nature is the last vestige of unjustified antropocentrism in its most dangerous form: Pride and self worship. Good point. And today, those who get the real power on this planet are still the bacteria. We need them. The vast majority doesn't need us, except, well many but still a minority which lives with us. Strictly speaking those bacteria are as modern as us, as leaves of the fourth dimensional life structure of this planet. But all this might be the result of something more simple, a bit like z := z^2 + c iterations in the complex plane. Bruno Hi bruno: Seen from outside, life has the appearance of regions with low entropy going in the direction of increasing entropy . There is a mathematical definition of entropy: the metric entropy. I do not know if this can be applied to the Mandelbrot set. I guess it can, as the Mandelbrot set is an example of deterministic chaos. It classifies an infinity of more and more complex dynamical processes. But I have not studied this entropic feature very closely. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
2012/9/30 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net On 9/30/2012 6:54 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Whoever said that does not know what he says: There are great differences between evolutionary designs and rational design, rational designs are, well, rational, but evolutionary designs are idiotic. Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! Rational designers had less difficulty coming up with the wheel. The only advantage Evolution had is that until it managed to invent brains it was the only way complex objects could get built. First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago under intense comet bombardement. Did you miss the word macroscopic? Try to do it yourself in the same conditions ;). If there is no weel in natural evolution is because legs are far superior. And if you think that weels are superior, NS invented it, because the invertor of the weel was a product of natural selection. Even your feeling of superiority of the weel and the very feeling of superiority of reason is a product of natural selection. The claim of superiority of reason over nature is the last vestige of unjustified antropocentrism in its most dangerous form: Pride and self worship. But NS couldn't 'invent' it for macroscopic size animals traveling on hard smooth surfaces, because it had already 'invented' legs and there was no evolutionary path from legs to wheels. That is right, but this is not the most important. This is not the complete reason behaind lack of usage of macroscopic wheels by nature. Neiter mine that I expose here below. To gasp how NS works is to admit the basic we don´t know that return us to the human condition. The reason behind is repairability. much of the wheel pieces are not accessible from outside, because a weel is made of topologically disconected pieces. Whenever men manage to create an autonomous robot that can travel trough a planet for years without human support, it will be made of legs rather than wheels. A living being by definition to have control of its parts has to be topologically connected. The weels in the flagella of a bacteria are inside the bacteria, so she can absorb them and create new ones. So, surprise surprise, evolution use also macroscopic wheels inside organisms: The wheels we use daily in the cars are internal to the social organism. That´s why the weels can be repaired. The human societies are natural organisms at a level above animal organisms. There are many levels. A multicellular animal is the result of five levels of natural selection. There is no reason why not consider human societies as a leven in natural evolution. And second, with more relaxed mood, I have to say, as I said many times here, that evolution works simultaneously with infinite variables and problems at the same time: log term and short term. Therefore we NEVER are sure of knowing in FULL the reasons You mean the random events and the selection events - there are no *reasons*. The human understanding when he discover a cause consider it as reasonable because it obey a discovered reason. The reasons behind bird wings is the i laws of flying. Apparently if the cause is not discovered, many people despises it as unreasonable or irrational or idiotic. That, by the way is probably the most tragic error in logic of our time. Selection introduces teleology where previously there were non teleological laws. from each level, selection produces the emergence of new teleological levels of meaning and purpose. from non-life, selection creates plant-like life. from this, selection creates the teleology of avoiding suffering and going after pleasure of animals. From this level, selection produces the teleology of avoiding evil and going after beauty, truth and the good of humans in society, that is what we are doing now in this discussion group. behind an evolutionary design and therefor we can not understand FULY an evolutionary design. That gives evolutionary design an appearance of mess poor design and so on. This is NOT the case. If evolution and reason collide, the prudent is to consider that the reason don´t know enough. That is because Reason work to solve a single problem, Cognitive scientist say that can handle no more than seven variables at the same time for a single problem. THAT is the reason WHY the human designs are made of modules with discrete interfaces. No matter if we talk about architecture, computer science or social engineering, Each rational design module solves a single problem and comunicate with other modules in discrete ways. This is what is considered good designs ,. Not in general. Some engineers consider it good design to make multiple uses of the same structure, e.g. there was a German
Re: Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
Hi Stathis Papaioannou Numbers were there before man. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 10/1/2012 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen - Receiving the following content - From: Stathis Papaioannou Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-30, 11:04:19 Subject: Re: Evolution outshines reason by far On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 11:54 PM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Whoever said that does not know what he says: There are great differences between evolutionary designs and rational design, rational designs are, well, rational, but evolutionary designs are idiotic. Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! Rational designers had less difficulty coming up with the wheel. The only advantage Evolution had is that until it managed to invent brains it was the only way complex objects could get built. First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago under intense comet bombardement. Try to do it yourself in the same conditions ;). If there is no weel in natural evolution is because legs are far superior. And if you think that weels are superior, NS invented it, because the invertor of the weel was a product of natural selection. Even your feeling of superiority of the weel and the very feeling of superiority of reason is a product of natural selection. The claim of superiority of reason over nature is the last vestige of unjustified antropocentrism in its most dangerous form: Pride and self worship. And second, with more relaxed mood, I have to say, as I said many times here, that evolution works simultaneously with infinite variables and problems at the same time: log term and short term. Therefore we NEVER are sure of knowing in FULL the reasons behind an evolutionary design and therefor we can not understand FULY an evolutionary design. That gives evolutionary design an appearance of mess poor design and so on. This is NOT the case. If evolution and reason collide, the prudent is to consider that the reason don? know enough. That is because Reason work to solve a single problem, Cognitive scientist say that can handle no more than seven variables at the same time for a single problem. THAT is the reason WHY the human designs are made of modules with discrete interfaces. No matter if we talk about architecture, computer science or social engineering, Each rational design module solves a single problem and comunicate with other modules in discrete ways. This is what is considered good designs ,. BUT THESE RULES OF GOOD DESIGN ARE A CONSEQUIENCE OF THE LIMITATIONS OF REASON. Reason does not produce optimal solutions. it produce the optimal solution that he can handle without breaking. Natural selection takes the whole problem and produce the optimal solution without modular limitations. Starting from scratch, evolutionary algoritms have designed electronic circuits with a half or a third of components, that are more fast that the equivalent rational designs. As Koza, for example has done: http://www.genetic-programming.com/johnkoza.html These circuits designs are impossible to understand rationally. why? because they are not modular. There is no division of the problem in smaller problems. a transistor may be connected to more than one input or output and so on. But they are better, ligther, faster. it seems a Bad design but this is a subjective perception, as a consequience of our rational inherent limitations. It is not a casual that genetic algoritms are used whenever 1) it is or very difficult to break a problem in parts 2) is easy to measure how good a solution is. I have used genetic-evolutionary algoritms for deducing the location of extinction resources in a simulated firing. The algoritm deduced the optimal location every time. the only problem is that we did not know WHY this was the optimal solution. In the same way, an human organ can perform 3 4 5 functionalities at the same time. the capillar tubes in a tree act as pumps, conducts, architectural sustaining foundation and may be many more that still we don? know. In the same way societies are subjects of evolution. A natural socio-biological institution, like the family has many functions, far more than the social engineers think. Its functions can not be extracted away by public institutions ruled by social engineers without a failure of the whole society. That is why conservatives rely on nature where progressives rely on reason and this is the reason why the latter fail. But natural evolution does not start from scratch it has to modify previous designs for new needs, while reason without the help of tradiction, operates
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 10/1/2012 2:47 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Conservatives are those who find themselves on top and call it 'natural'. What a waste of power to be in the top and wanting to do leave things as they are... In contrast, the progressives supposedly consider themselves in the bottom, but still they want to change everything while insult whatever established before them. it´s a weird way of feeling at the bottom. Isn't? If you're on the bottom it's perfectly rational to want to change things. I see no evidence that progressives want to change *everything* or insult what is established. Did those who established democracies change everything?...those who abolished slavery?...instituted universal education? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 01 Oct 2012, at 18:36, meekerdb wrote: On 10/1/2012 2:47 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Conservatives are those who find themselves on top and call it 'natural'. What a waste of power to be in the top and wanting to do leave things as they are... In contrast, the progressives supposedly consider themselves in the bottom, but still they want to change everything while insult whatever established before them. it´s a weird way of feeling at the bottom. Isn't? If you're on the bottom it's perfectly rational to want to change things. I see no evidence that progressives want to change *everything* or insult what is established. Did those who established democracies change everything?...those who abolished slavery?...instituted universal education? It might be the people on the middle who want the less changes. The bigger is the middle class, the more stable is the state. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 10/1/2012 3:54 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: You've only demonstrated your own prejudice against reason. no comment Evolution produces many designs that are suboptimal, because natural selection only requires that a design be 'good-enough' suboptimal for what? optimal has a meaning for a finite set of requirements, but not for a almost infinite set of them. good enough is the best design when you have not a single optimization but hundreds of them at different levels. the best trade of between opposite requirements may be the optimum global solution, even if there is no optimal solution for each individual requirement. Do you agree? I agree that there are no optimal solutions except relative to some well defined criteria. But it is you who were praising evolution as more clever than reason. Yet even absent well defined criteria, some 'designs' are better than others and can be seen to be so by reason. It's just obfuscation to say, well there are no well defined criteria so nothing can be judged better or worse. Arthropods make an elastic protein, rezulin, which is much more elastic than that in molluscs (abductin) and in vertebrates (elastin). Thus a fly can flap it's wings with less energy loss than a horse can run or a scallop can swim. Probably the artropods can trade durability or repearability for elasticity. who knows. Do you?. Now you're just making things up. Do you know rezulin is more or less reparable than elastin? All are natural designs. What is the problem?. Probably Artropods rely more in elasticity by the nature of the skeleton. More unsupported conjecture. Where is your evidence for this? In the same way a parasite is an step before the host defenses in parasiting strategies because the parasite has more pressure to be ahead. I fail to see an analogy. The nerves in a mammals eye join the photoreceptor cells at the end facing the pupil. They run across the inside surface of the retina and exit together. Where they exit they create a 'blind spot' in our field of vision. So, first, they partly obstruct the retina and, second, they create a blind spot. This is the vaunted topic of the eye in the mammals. Contrary to other clades The eyes of mamals can rotate, that is a greath advantage. to rotate they have to be spherical. to be spherical the nerves have to be internal. But they could be spherical exactly as they are with the photoreceptor cells flipped end for end so that they faced the light instead of the photons having to pass through the nerves. This would also eliminate the blind spot. Incidentally cephalpods can also see polarization. being internal they have to exit trough a place, to exit, it creates a blind spot. but the faculty of rotating and focusing an object without having to move the entire head or body is a far greater advantage than in non mammals, even if the cost is a blind spot (which does not appear in the brain image, because the eye constantly rotates) You are just inventing stuff. this does not means that octopuses , which have no blind spot have an inferior eye . Probably it is perfect for its requirements. People swallow and breathe through a shared passage. A design that results in many deaths due to choking on food. That is a optimum design for a mammal with articulated talk that still can breathe. After complaining that there can be no optimal, now you are claiming an evolutionary design is optimal. Yet dolphins communicate with separate breathing and swallowing channels. Are they suboptimal? Trade offs appear in any design, there is no way to avoid trade offs when there is more than one requirement. In the ideal world of progressivia perhaps this does not happens. Trade offs implies a simple binary choice. A human designer considers different performance variables and weighs them. Of course there is no single opitmum, but there are still some designs that are better than others. Oxidation of fatty acids unnecessarily reverses the handedness of methylmaloyl. In the biosynthesis of some plant alkaloids, reticuline is formed in the S configuration and then inverted to the R configuration; a step which could have been avoided by just using the S form for all the alkaloids. Lysine is biosynthesized via two different parallel processes when one would have served. Probable we don愒 know the whole story. As many cases in evolution. The last case is the so called Junk DNA which was supposed to be redundant, has a crucial function, And what is that crucial function you have discovered - a Nobel prizes awaits. but self appointed biological engineers considered it a failure of evolution The designer of a larger and heavier vehicle on the softer surface uses more wheels to avoid sinking into the surface. Yet among animals the small ones, arthropods, have six or more legs; while the
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 10/1/2012 3:39 PM, Jason Resch wrote: An interesting perspective on evolution vs. engineering: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdg4mU-wuhI From an engineer who uses evolution to design computers. Notable points: He is unable to understand how some of the outputs of this evolutionary process work, but they work better than any design he could come up with. So does he have a sorting algorithm that's does better than O(n log n)? I've never heard of it. And if he doesn't understand the program how can he be sure it correctly sorts all inputs - did he try them? Traditional engineering methods fail when the human mind can't understand a machine that has billions of independent components (transistors). Can't understand is relative to levels of description and function. Of course computer designers depend on computers to do details of the design, but they still understand it at higher level. He sees us humans not as the end product of evolution, but as a stage, or a tool of evolution to bring about the next thing. But if we don't use our reason to bring it about, it may be radiation resistant blue-green algae that likes hot water. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 30 Sep 2012, at 15:54, Alberto G. Corona wrote: And if you think that weels are superior, NS invented it, because the invertor of the weel was a product of natural selection. Even your feeling of superiority of the weel and the very feeling of superiority of reason is a product of natural selection. The claim of superiority of reason over nature is the last vestige of unjustified antropocentrism in its most dangerous form: Pride and self worship. Good point. And today, those who get the real power on this planet are still the bacteria. We need them. The vast majority doesn't need us, except, well many but still a minority which lives with us. Strictly speaking those bacteria are as modern as us, as leaves of the fourth dimensional life structure of this planet. But all this might be the result of something more simple, a bit like z := z^2 + c iterations in the complex plane. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 9/30/2012 6:54 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Whoever said that does not know what he says: There are great differences between evolutionary designs and rational design, rational designs are, well, rational, but evolutionary designs are idiotic. Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! Rational designers had less difficulty coming up with the wheel. The only advantage Evolution had is that until it managed to invent brains it was the only way complex objects could get built. First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago under intense comet bombardement. Did you miss the word macroscopic? Try to do it yourself in the same conditions ;). If there is no weel in natural evolution is because legs are far superior. And if you think that weels are superior, NS invented it, because the invertor of the weel was a product of natural selection. Even your feeling of superiority of the weel and the very feeling of superiority of reason is a product of natural selection. The claim of superiority of reason over nature is the last vestige of unjustified antropocentrism in its most dangerous form: Pride and self worship. But NS couldn't 'invent' it for macroscopic size animals traveling on hard smooth surfaces, because it had already 'invented' legs and there was no evolutionary path from legs to wheels. And second, with more relaxed mood, I have to say, as I said many times here, that evolution works simultaneously with infinite variables and problems at the same time: log term and short term. Therefore we NEVER are sure of knowing in FULL the reasons You mean the random events and the selection events - there are no *reasons*. behind an evolutionary design and therefor we can not understand FULY an evolutionary design. That gives evolutionary design an appearance of mess poor design and so on. This is NOT the case. If evolution and reason collide, the prudent is to consider that the reason don´t know enough. That is because Reason work to solve a single problem, Cognitive scientist say that can handle no more than seven variables at the same time for a single problem. THAT is the reason WHY the human designs are made of modules with discrete interfaces. No matter if we talk about architecture, computer science or social engineering, Each rational design module solves a single problem and comunicate with other modules in discrete ways. This is what is considered good designs ,. Not in general. Some engineers consider it good design to make multiple uses of the same structure, e.g. there was a German motorcycle that used the gear shift lever to also serve as the kickstarter, more recently Ducati designed their racing motorcycles to be 'frameless', using the engine as the structural member. BUT THESE RULES OF GOOD DESIGN ARE A CONSEQUIENCE OF THE LIMITATIONS OF REASON. Reason does not produce optimal solutions. it produce the optimal solution that he can handle without breaking. Not limitations, but the recognition that a modular design can be easily changed to solve problems, usually by changing one module. But with a non-modular design you may have to start over from scratch; which is why evolution gets stuck on local maxima like legs and no wheels. Incidentally Ducati's frameless design was a maintenance nightmare, didn't handle well, and couldn't be modified. They went back to a conventional frame. Natural selection takes the whole problem and produce the optimal solution without modular limitations. Starting from scratch, evolutionary algoritms have designed electronic circuits with a half or a third of components, that are more fast that the equivalent rational designs. As Koza, for example has done: http://www.genetic-programming.com/johnkoza.html These circuits designs are impossible to understand rationally. why? because they are not modular. There is no division of the problem in smaller problems. a transistor may be connected to more than one input or output and so on. But they are better, ligther, faster. it seems a Bad design but this is a subjective perception, as a consequience of our rational inherent limitations. It is not a casual that genetic algoritms are used whenever 1) it is or very difficult to break a problem in parts 2) is easy to measure how good a solution is. I have used genetic-evolutionary algoritms for deducing the location of extinction resources in a simulated firing. The algoritm deduced the optimal location every time. the only problem is that we did not know WHY this was the optimal solution. But in genetic-evolution algorithms you have the luxury of adjusting the randomness and of starting over from different initial values. In the same way, an human organ can perform
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 9/30/2012 2:51 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 9/30/2012 6:54 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Whoever said that does not know what he says: There are great differences between evolutionary designs and rational design, rational designs are, well, rational, but evolutionary designs are idiotic. Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! Rational designers had less difficulty coming up with the wheel. The only advantage Evolution had is that until it managed to invent brains it was the only way complex objects could get built. First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago under intense comet bombardement. Did you miss the word macroscopic? Hi Brent, Could it be that legs are more efficient in generating motion that can be directed than wheels? For example, how do you propose that Nature would implement way to get blood and nerve signals across the gap in the bearings that is necessary in some form of wheel. It is hard enough to get signals reliably across the boundary of the moving part of a wheel and the axle in the steering wheel of a car. How do you do implement an interface for liquids? The main unstated assumption in this conversation is that organism have to be mutually compatible to some degree with each other in order for living to occur. Evolution that does not jump gaps. /*Natura non facit saltus.*/ Sometimes your remarks demonstrate a remarkable lack of imagination. Try to do it yourself in the same conditions ;). If there is no weel in natural evolution is because legs are far superior. And if you think that weels are superior, NS invented it, because the invertor of the weel was a product of natural selection. Even your feeling of superiority of the weel and the very feeling of superiority of reason is a product of natural selection. The claim of superiority of reason over nature is the last vestige of unjustified antropocentrism in its most dangerous form: Pride and self worship. But NS couldn't 'invent' it for macroscopic size animals traveling on hard smooth surfaces, because it had already 'invented' legs and there was no evolutionary path from legs to wheels. And second, with more relaxed mood, I have to say, as I said many times here, that evolution works simultaneously with infinite variables and problems at the same time: log term and short term. Therefore we NEVER are sure of knowing in FULL the reasons You mean the random events and the selection events - there are no *reasons*. That you can imagine, sure. behind an evolutionary design and therefor we can not understand FULY an evolutionary design. That gives evolutionary design an appearance of mess poor design and so on. This is NOT the case. If evolution and reason collide, the prudent is to consider that the reason don´t know enough. That is because Reason work to solve a single problem, Cognitive scientist say that can handle no more than seven variables at the same time for a single problem. THAT is the reason WHY the human designs are made of modules with discrete interfaces. No matter if we talk about architecture, computer science or social engineering, Each rational design module solves a single problem and comunicate with other modules in discrete ways. This is what is considered good designs ,. Not in general. Some engineers consider it good design to make multiple uses of the same structure, e.g. there was a German motorcycle that used the gear shift lever to also serve as the kickstarter, more recently Ducati designed their racing motorcycles to be 'frameless', using the engine as the structural member. So what? You are assuming an intelligent entity in your argument and complaining that Nature is stupid because it does not seem to do things as nicely as some tiny cherry-picked selection of human engineered designs. What is your purpose in this conversation? It is certainly not to increase the understanding of the members of this list! BUT THESE RULES OF GOOD DESIGN ARE A CONSEQUIENCE OF THE LIMITATIONS OF REASON. Reason does not produce optimal solutions. it produce the optimal solution that he can handle without breaking. Not limitations, but the recognition that a modular design can be easily changed to solve problems, usually by changing one module. But with a non-modular design you may have to start over from scratch; which is why evolution gets stuck on local maxima like legs and no wheels. Incidentally Ducati's frameless design was a maintenance nightmare, didn't handle well, and couldn't be modified. They went back to a conventional frame. Organism on Earth seem to have a basic structure that is modular, in that each cell has a power supply, guidance system and other
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
Hi John, Thank you for you wise remarks. ;-) I hope we can weed out the errors On 9/30/2012 5:10 PM, John Mikes wrote: Dear Stephen (Brent, Alberto, plus plus plus) with a discussion so long that my arthritic fingers stopped scrolling down - on EVOLUTION - back and forth. I resent the word because it points to a forward-looking *_aim_* to reach SOME end (whatever that may be) - coming at best as a remnant from religious-like ways of thinking. I consider the 'change' involved as outcome of a non-random transformational process under pressures partially knowable and partially not, as influences from the infinite complexity, the background of our 'world'. The 'givens' are unrestricted, natural selection is an artifact of compliance with circumstances WITHIN the model WE consider for us. Lots of good ideas in the discussion - with lots of erroneous conclusions. The variety of Everything exceeds our imagination and every item participates unlimitedly on its own. The 'perfect' engineering is a variant of the human animal's mindwork, definitely not the only and not the best. Wheel? good idea. Can it perform a sidestep for safety, as a foot does? no. I apply the word almost to characterise the quality of human technology. We are missing the still unknown from our applicable inventory and do not even 'imagine' how and in what form that infinite part may work(?). I say: relations. Are these agents? When in my 'body' (undefined!) trillion cells and 100trillion microbes cooperate as a society and I feel like 'myself', every one item is subject to attraction/repulsion in activity in more aspects than we MAY know. We know more than we can take and less than necessary. My solution in my (scientific?) agnosticism is: I dunno. Keeps me from drawing faulty conclusions and erecting theories that do not fit (later on to be corrected, like: dark matter/energy/mass etc. - or the 'unflat' Earth). JM -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Evolution outshines reason by far
On 9/30/2012 1:26 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 9/30/2012 2:51 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 9/30/2012 6:54 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: Whoever said that does not know what he says: There are great differences between evolutionary designs and rational design, rational designs are, well, rational, but evolutionary designs are idiotic. Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! Rational designers had less difficulty coming up with the wheel. The only advantage Evolution had is that until it managed to invent brains it was the only way complex objects could get built. First of all, 360 degrees rotation is present in the flagela of the bacteria, invented about 3800 million years ago under intense comet bombardement. Did you miss the word macroscopic? Hi Brent, Could it be that legs are more efficient in generating motion that can be directed than wheels? They are more effective over rough surfaces and obstacles, which is no doubt why they evolved first. For example, how do you propose that Nature would implement way to get blood and nerve signals across the gap in the bearings that is necessary in some form of wheel. It is hard enough to get signals reliably across the boundary of the moving part of a wheel and the axle in the steering wheel of a car. How do you do implement an interface for liquids? Exactly my point. It's hard to get there from here. The main unstated assumption in this conversation is that organism have to be mutually compatible to some degree with each other in order for living to occur. Evolution that does not jump gaps. /*Natura non facit saltus.*/ Sometimes your remarks demonstrate a remarkable lack of imagination. Or so you imagine. Try to do it yourself in the same conditions ;). If there is no weel in natural evolution is because legs are far superior. And if you think that weels are superior, NS invented it, because the invertor of the weel was a product of natural selection. Even your feeling of superiority of the weel and the very feeling of superiority of reason is a product of natural selection. The claim of superiority of reason over nature is the last vestige of unjustified antropocentrism in its most dangerous form: Pride and self worship. But NS couldn't 'invent' it for macroscopic size animals traveling on hard smooth surfaces, because it had already 'invented' legs and there was no evolutionary path from legs to wheels. And second, with more relaxed mood, I have to say, as I said many times here, that evolution works simultaneously with infinite variables and problems at the same time: log term and short term. Therefore we NEVER are sure of knowing in FULL the reasons You mean the random events and the selection events - there are no *reasons*. That you can imagine, sure. So are you contending that evolution is not driven by random variation? that there are secret reasons for what evolved? Sounds like Intelligent Design. behind an evolutionary design and therefor we can not understand FULY an evolutionary design. That gives evolutionary design an appearance of mess poor design and so on. This is NOT the case. If evolution and reason collide, the prudent is to consider that the reason don´t know enough. That is because Reason work to solve a single problem, Cognitive scientist say that can handle no more than seven variables at the same time for a single problem. THAT is the reason WHY the human designs are made of modules with discrete interfaces. No matter if we talk about architecture, computer science or social engineering, Each rational design module solves a single problem and comunicate with other modules in discrete ways. This is what is considered good designs ,. Not in general. Some engineers consider it good design to make multiple uses of the same structure, e.g. there was a German motorcycle that used the gear shift lever to also serve as the kickstarter, more recently Ducati designed their racing motorcycles to be 'frameless', using the engine as the structural member. So what? You are assuming an intelligent entity I thought it was common knowledge that engineers are intelligent entities. in your argument and complaining that Nature is stupid because it does not seem to do things as nicely as some tiny cherry-picked selection of human engineered designs. What is your purpose in this conversation? It is certainly not to increase the understanding of the members of this list! It should improve Alberto's understanding who seems to be under the misapprehension that evolution will always produce a design that reason cannot improve on - and if it seems that reason can improve on it, it is just because evolution has foreseen a future in which its design will be better. BUT THESE RULES OF
