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> I didn't see any misunderstandings of evolution in the book The greatest feature of evolution that it makes teleology unnecessary. It can operate as a mindle

by szemet 10y ago

> I didn't see any misunderstandings of evolution in the book The greatest feature of evolution that it makes teleology unnecessary. It can operate as a mindless/goalless algorithm. Of course evolution may be operated by someone/something with specific goals instead of pure chances, but thats just an unnecessary assumption until it proved - so we may employ Occam razor here until someone proves it. The possibility of design without a designer is one of the main point and contribution of the theory and it should be fully understood - even if if later turns out (which have not happened yet, and no sign for that happening beside metaphysical opinions...) that there was a designer. > of actually existing computers is also extremely complex, and not obviously any less complex than the mapping from these states to physical states of rocks You can't be serious: First map a Computer chess program states to human interpretable visualization to play chess against it And then do this with your rock. First is mainly one-to-one mapping of digital signs to pixels by using a static table, the second is..., I'm not even sure how to inject my move into the states of the rock, but no idea either how to extract its response. You know why? There is simply no one to one mapping there. The states of a rock is a large bundle of everything without interpretation, the states of the chess program is CLEARLY more constrained - the proof is empirical: it CAN be implemented. Like if you say that the set of all positive integers contains the solution of factorizing any large number. Of course it does: you just have to point to those numbers. ;) But how? All states are not the solution - selecting the proper states is the computation, and if those selection mechanism is in the mapping process then the mapping IS the computer.

foldr 10y ago
>The greatest feature of evolution that it makes teleology unnecessary. That's what Nagel is disputing. > Of course evolution may be operated by someone/something with specific goals instead of pure chances, but thats just an unnecessary assumption until it proved Nagel isn't a theist or an ID advocate. The existence of such a designer isn't part the thesis of the book. >First is mainly one-to-one mapping of digital signs to pixels by using a static table I was talking about mapping to a physical state, not an abstract computational state. If you try to specify the relevant "digital signals" in physical rather than computational terms, you'll find that it's an impossibly complex task. Even individual transistors are enormously complex physical systems. We simply don't know whether the mapping to physical states would be significantly more complex in the case of the waterfall. If you're allowed to cheat by using more abstract states (e.g. "on" or "off" for each transistor), then you can equally well cheat in the case of the waterfall by giving names to disjunctions of physically distinct states. >There is simply no one to one mapping there. Not sure what you mean by this. If the rock has a sufficient number of possible physical states, then you certainly can specify a one-to-one mapping from chess states to rock states. It's true that this mapping will be difficult or impossible for humans to exploit. Rather obviously, that's because computers were designed in such a way that it's easy for humans to manipulate their states in certain ways, whereas rocks weren't.
- szemet 10y ago
  Ah we don't need this discussion. The rigth answer is in The Library of Babel of Borges. Guess you can find it easily without much thinking, and then you will see I was right! ;)
- szemet 10y ago
  > That's what Nagel is disputing We have many many evidence that random mutation is enough for describing the biological evolution on Earth. If the mutation is controlled by someone than it is done according to random distributions as far as we currently know. He should provide evidence if he thinks otherwise but he is not doing it and not qualified for it, thats only what I see.
  - foldr 10y ago
    >He should provide evidence if he thinks otherwise That's what he does in the book. But Nagel isn't claiming to make any original contribution to biology or evolutionary theory. His main aim, as far as I can see, is to point out that the standard arguments for mutations being random are less strong than is usually thought. I don't think he claims to know whether or not mutations are in fact random, or what controls them if they are not.

by szemet 10y ago

foldr 10y ago

>The greatest feature of evolution that it makes teleology unnecessary. That's what Nagel is disputing. > Of course evolution may be operated by someone/something with specific goals instead of pure chances, but thats just an unnecessary assumption until it proved Nagel isn't a theist or an ID advocate. The existence of such a designer isn't part the thesis of the book. >First is mainly one-to-one mapping of digital signs to pixels by using a static table I was talking about mapping to a physical state, not an abstract computational state. If you try to specify the relevant "digital signals" in physical rather than computational terms, you'll find that it's an impossibly complex task. Even individual transistors are enormously complex physical systems. We simply don't know whether the mapping to physical states would be significantly more complex in the case of the waterfall. If you're allowed to cheat by using more abstract states (e.g. "on" or "off" for each transistor), then you can equally well cheat in the case of the waterfall by giving names to disjunctions of physically distinct states. >There is simply no one to one mapping there. Not sure what you mean by this. If the rock has a sufficient number of possible physical states, then you certainly can specify a one-to-one mapping from chess states to rock states. It's true that this mapping will be difficult or impossible for humans to exploit. Rather obviously, that's because computers were designed in such a way that it's easy for humans to manipulate their states in certain ways, whereas rocks weren't.

szemet 10y ago
Ah we don't need this discussion. The rigth answer is in The Library of Babel of Borges. Guess you can find it easily without much thinking, and then you will see I was right! ;)
szemet 10y ago
> That's what Nagel is disputing We have many many evidence that random mutation is enough for describing the biological evolution on Earth. If the mutation is controlled by someone than it is done according to random distributions as far as we currently know. He should provide evidence if he thinks otherwise but he is not doing it and not qualified for it, thats only what I see.
- foldr 10y ago
  >He should provide evidence if he thinks otherwise That's what he does in the book. But Nagel isn't claiming to make any original contribution to biology or evolutionary theory. His main aim, as far as I can see, is to point out that the standard arguments for mutations being random are less strong than is usually thought. I don't think he claims to know whether or not mutations are in fact random, or what controls them if they are not.