On 05/12/2007, at 4:02 PM, Nick Arnett wrote: >> >> >> Nah-ah. Just a fact. No-one knows everything in a field, and lay- >> people often think they have a far better grasp of a technical field >> than they do. > > > Sure. But you don't know what I have or haven't studied about > evolution and > Darwinism, so there was no basis for you to evaluate what I said.
Which is why I'm asking you some questions, to find out what you *do* actually know. > The fact > that I know how complexity relates to it might have suggested that I > have a > more than passing acquaintance... eh? Not necessarily. You could just be repeating buzz-words (in fact, "complexity" is a red-flag buzz-word in precisely the same way "transitional fossils" or "macroevolution" are - makes me think you're alluding to William Dembski, but I'd be shocked and disappointed if you were). Which is why I was asking for a more in-depth discussion of the perceived issues complexity has to a specific "Darwinian model". If you can do that, then we can have a discussion. If you can't, or won't, then it's just a waste of time. > > >> >>> One doesn't have to be an expert in evolutionary biology to >>> understand the state of knowledge. I'm not an expert software >>> engineer, but >>> I have a pretty good idea of what is possible and what isn't. >> >> Really? I *am* a biologist, and I wouldn't claim to have a grasp on >> the state-of-the-art. What I meant was, it depends greatly on your >> sources, and what you're reading. > > > You don't know which major questions have been answered and which > haven't? Um? There are a lot of questions in a lot of fields. > > You don't have a good overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the > generally accepted theories? That's the sort of knowledge I'm > talking about > when I say that you don't have to be an expert to have a good idea > of what > is possible and what isn't. I have a reasonable grasp of undergraduate evolution as taught 10 years ago (which encompasses about 5 textbooks and maybe a couple of kilos of journal offprints). But again, I'm not sure what specifically you're talking about, 'cause you're not telling me. I know quite a bit about the stuff I studied, and I know a smattering of other biology. Speaking in such general terms is simply not actually telling me anything about what you do or do not know, or even what we're actually talking about. If you actually ask a question, I may or may not be able to answer it off the top of my head, or go look to see what is known. You're talking about a huge field. Right now, it's all happening in evo-devo. Huge leaps are being made thanks to genome sequencing. The tree of life is mapped moderately well, although we're still shuffling branches. Molecular genetics has largely confirmed relationships to a high degree of confidence for many well-conserved genes (although there have been a few surprises along the way when comparing molecular trees against the trees derived from fossils and taxonomy). We know rather a lot about how cells work, but not enough to reliably predict the activity of all drugs. We know a fair bit about ecosystems and sustainability (but not enough about how to communicate this to people who set quotas, apparently). I could keep listing stuff I know, and stuff I know other people know, but this is missing the point. I'm trying to understand what you mean about "Darwinian models" and how complexity poses problems, and you're not helping me understand, you're either being deliberately obtuse, or you think it's something I ought to already know, or you don't actually know and you're smokescreening. Being charitable, I'll assume it's the middle of those, and ask you again to point out a specific example of how a "Darwinian model" is struggling with "complexity". > > > >> In any system with finite resources, >> there will be competition. > > > You are correct of course. But you are correct in the way that > television > network explain their programming -- "We only show what people want." Not quite, but I take the point. > > Trouble is, it's not *all* they want. The fact that you can find > competition happening doesn't mean other things aren't going on. No, it doesn't. But in order to discuss it, you have to point out what else may be going on... > > >> >> >> But calling phenomena >>> "emergent" may be saying little more than "this doesn't come about >>> by any >>> mechanism we can understand other than the way the universe >>> operates." >> >> It's defined well enough as "complex-appearing behaviours or >> attributes which arise from a few simple rules or characteristics". >> >> But that explains EVERYTHING, so it is trivial. It's simply a definition of emergence, as opposed to simple causes -> simple results (dropping something, say), complex start -> simple results (bushfire maybe, or collapsing debris clouds), or complex cause -> complex result (epidemiology, sociology). How it works requires a different field of study for whatever you're talking about. Emergence isn't trivial, it's actually an important insight, one of those (like natural selection) that seems so damned obvious in hindsight that it's hard to imagine not understanding it. However you're right in that pointing out that a system exhibits emergence doesn't tell you much about it unless you bother to discover the nature of the simple causes and how they generate complex results. This is where demonstrations like Craig Reynolds' Boids were so important - they showed that you didn't necessarily need to postulate highly complex behavioural traits to explain flocking or swarming, just a few simple rules could produce extremely lifelike behaviour. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
