On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 12:02 PM, Alberto G. Corona <[email protected]> wrote: > I think that the whole business of putting numbers to fitness and so on > either is flawed or alternatively if the parameter is accurate, it is > useless.
Snow leopards are much more likely to go extinct than E. Coli bacteria. The latter are much less complex, so evolved complexity doesn't always help. I think this is an interesting fact. > In the long term anything could happen. I can have 10 children in a flawed > society that enter in decadence and war. And maybe I support the ideas that > push this society to the limits. Then most of these sons die a few decades > later by war, hunger etc. What was my fitness?. It was zero, but for most of the people that had 10 children it turned out to be high, so a high estimation was a reasonable one. Couldn't this criticism be applied to statistics in general? Pill X cures 99.9% of people with pneumonia, but it killed Mr. Y because he had a weird genetic mutation. Was it reasonable to give Mr. Y the pill? Telmo. > > 2013/9/10 Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> >> >> On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 1:52 AM, Russell Standish <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> > On Mon, Sep 09, 2013 at 11:58:37AM +0200, Telmo Menezes wrote: >> >> Hi Alberto, >> >> >> >> On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Alberto G. Corona >> >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> > I think that there are real progress that can be even measured in >> >> > terms of >> >> > entropic order. That a man embodies more structure and organization >> >> > than a >> >> > bacteria is objective and measurable, and it is a product of more >> >> > emergent >> >> > levels of evolution. In concrete the human being includes the >> >> > eucariotic >> >> > level, the multicelularity level and human society level, that are >> >> > aggregations of coordinated individuals to achieve an individuality >> >> > of an >> >> > higher level. These levels are absent in bacteria . >> >> >> >> Ok, there's an arrow of complexification, that's undeniable. I'm not >> >> convinced that Darwinism alone explains that. One of the reasons for >> >> my scepticism is the failure of ALife models to replicate unbounded >> >> complexification. My favourite attempt in this domain is the Echo >> >> model by John Holland -- which is beautiful but didn't work in this >> >> sense. There's also Tierra/Avida, where you get a lot of interesting >> >> stuff but no unbounded complexification. >> >> >> >> One idea I heard but don't know whom to attribute to is this: >> >> evolutionary complexification is just an artefact of the simplicity of >> >> the initial state. The idea being that the laws of physics inherently >> >> contain a "pressure" towards a certain level of complexity and that >> >> evolution is just following the path of least resitance, in a way. It >> >> is then conceivable that there is a state of equilibrium that we >> >> haven't reached yet and that complexification will halt at some point. >> >> This is wild speculation, of course, but I like to ponder on this >> >> hypothesis. >> >> >> > >> > I think this idea goes by the name of "modal bacter". It was, perhaps, >> > most >> > forcefully argued in Stephen Gould's 1996 book "Full House". >> >> Thanks Russell! >> >> > I suspect the idea is wrong, because it fails to explain the >> > exponential growth of diversity, seemingly observed by >> > Palaeontologists such as Michael Benton: >> > >> > @Article{Benton01, >> > author = {Michael J. Benton}, >> > title = {Biodiversity on Land and in the Sea}, >> > journal = {Geological Journal}, >> > year = 2001, >> > volume = 36, >> > pages = {211--230} >> > } >> >> Ok, but I guess that depends on how we measure diversity, which is not >> a trivial matter. From a quick look at this paper, it seems to focus >> on the number of biological orders/families/genus. Suppose we were >> able to estimate the Kolmogorov complexity of the entire ecosystem, do >> you figure it would also grow exponentially? >> >> >> > What is not true is that human beings are more "adapted" than >> >> > bacteria. That >> >> > is not true. Because there is no objective and absolute measure of >> >> > adaptation. It ever depends on the concrete environment, and varies a >> >> > lot. >> >> >> >> Humm... I think ecologists are able to estimate the likelihood of a >> >> species going extinct. I'd argue that this could be taken as a measure >> >> of adaption. >> >> >> > >> > That measure is called persistence, and no, it is not really related to >> > adaption. For an adaption measure, one good possibility is Mark >> > Bedau's "cumulative evolutionary activity" >> > >> > @InProceedings{Bedau-etal98, >> > author = {Mark A. Bedau and Emile Snyder and Norman H. Packard}, >> > title = {A Classification of Long-Term Evolutionary Dynamics}, >> > crossref = {ALifeVI}, >> > pages={228--237} >> > } >> >> I read this paper some years ago, it's a very nice one. >> I would say that cumulative evolutionary activity is a metric that >> applies to the entire evolutionary system as a whole. The article >> makes it depressingly clear the Holland's Echo does not match the >> unbounded evolution dynamics found in the fossil record. But maybe I'm >> missing something. >> >> In the previous discussion I was arguing that persistence could be >> intuitively taken as a fitness measure of some specific population or >> species, and I still feel that's the case. If you want to estimate the >> biological fitness of an individual, you could determine an analogous >> probability of the individual producing x viable offsprings before >> dying. >> >> I think. >> >> Telmo. >> >> > >> > -- >> > >> > >> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> > Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) >> > Principal, High Performance Coders >> > Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] >> > 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 unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >> > an email to [email protected]. >> > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > > > -- > Alberto. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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