> > > > > Don't knock randomness and occasional errors in code replication. They > can > > be good things. Our species didn't get where we are today without > > randomness and error propagation. > > Perhaps.
Bob Z - Not perhaps - a certainty > > > Perhaps. But only in very limited cases, where the 'error' or 'Mutation' > occurs in reproductive cells, AND those cells are involved in > reproduction. In sexual reproduction it gets reduced even further > because their only say a 50% chance of that particular gene being passed > on. Now that mutation cannot mathematically spread to every organism in > the species without a very small breeding population, i.e. if the > (population) > (some x) then it will never become a feature of every > organism in the species. (This is why only a very few people have six > fingers). Without isolation the feature will die off / remain marginal > for large populations. But all of this comes after the greatest of the > selectors, _Sexual selection_. Some 'errors' will cause no changes in > the appearance of an organism. These Errors are the most likely to > survive to reproduce. Errors that cause changes in the appearance of an > organism, however, run afoul of Sexual selection. Most of these 'errors' > will cause negative effects in the appearance of an organism (especially > those that cause the greatest increase in survivability / 'fitness'). > Most of these changes whether beneficial or not will be selected against > by sexual selection, and again they die out. > But in fact all of the conditions you describe exist in nature and yet natural selection has worked to produce every adaptation found in the world today. Every biological machine (and we are all of us from the first selfreplicating film to the current creatures alive) got that way because of natural selection. Sexual selection does not build adaptations although if may supply novel variations that can effect function (that is sexual selection may provide the raw materials for natural selection). > > In a similar vein, a random error in a OS's code might conceivably make > > > that code ever so slightly better at, say, retrieving data through a > USB > > port. Very unlikely -- astronomically so -- but this is how mutations > > occur and get passed on. > > Perhaps. But almost all changes that have an increase in one area, also > have a decrease in another area, providing no real advantage. Bob Z > But there is no way to know which small changes will on balance "improve: a design. A system that must search in a directed manor cannot find such subtle improvements but natural selection can. And once it finds something novel it can rapdily exploit the innovation. Selection will start to improve on the initial subtle advantage. Use a biologic example; wings - animals probably developed wings for another purpose (since 10% of a wing does not permit flight). If this initial purpose was an adaptation (say heat exchange) it could have been recruited for flight (technically an exaptation) and the wing like things may have been ornaments to attract the opposite sex (sexual selection). It doesn't matter. The initial aerial animals would have been very inefficient but they would have stumbled upon an environmental gold mine. They would create entirely new ecological niches. The rewards would be enormous and they would quickly increase in number. After a time compettion withi! ! n the niche would lead to escalating eff iciency as adaptation improve. Note the key that the initial steps are taken without knowledge of the ultimate value of the adaptation. > It is entirely possible to create a system that would know when errors of > these kinds occur and fix them. DNA has 'copy' and 'repair'. That's it. > This system would employ significantly more advanced techniques: 'copy', > 'repair', 'compare' (backup, and distant copies of the system very far > away (more than one copy of them (millions)) such that it is impossible > for every single one of them to be corrupt, or corrupt in the same way) Bob Z In fact DNA does many of these things. It does have compare codes to determine which sequences have errors within them. DNA itself has a major advantage over RNA in this regard. When new RNA is made if there is an error in the copying then there is no way to know this. But with DNA original strand of the Double Helix exactly encodes the complimentary strand and therefore the genome can compare the code of the newly constructed molecule to the parent. If there is a difference the cell can know which molecule is "correct". DNA is famously redundant. There are many copies of the sam genes and these can be used for error correction. > > > > > But It would only want to add changes that it fully > understands, not something that works, but it does not understand how it > works. Bob Z But this is the beauty of natural selection and self organizing systems. They do not have to understand something to take advantage of it. They do what works. If a system has to understand something "fully" before it employs it, it may never employ something truly innovative since important innovations change everything in ways that cannot be fully predicted. Ironically your intelligent system may intentionally not explore innovations that will change the environment (defined any way you want, the machine itself, the virtual ecosystem it inhabits or the "real world") too much. But at some point a different system will explore these options. It may develop something novel that is simply superior to your system.
