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To me, the main controversy is that evolution seems to work too well. Almost as if some "intelligent designer" guided it.

by p1esk 8y ago

heurist 8y ago
No, that's just how existence works. Systems that perpetuate themselves are more likely to continue existing. Systems that don't perpetuate themselves stop existing. No intelligence required.
- p1esk 8y ago
  Perpetuate themselves by making random changes? Or the changes are not quite random? Software simulations of the former do not lead to much intelligence, and the latter hints at some higher order. I'm not an evolutionary biologist, so this is just a layman's pondering...
  - ithkuil 8y ago
    Higher order doesn't imply design by an intelligent agent. Higher order can be an emergent property of a system under the pressure of raw, inanimated, constraints.
    - p1esk 8y ago
      That's hand-waving. Again, how does it "emerge"? Through random mutations? Perhaps so, but it is statistically highly unlikely. Clearly there's a significant gap in our understanding of evolution, because otherwise we would have modeled it by now. Theory of evolution is like theory of how brain works: incomplete.
      - ithkuil 8y ago
        I didn't intend to start an argument in favour of proving or disproving one point or the other. Just wanted to mention that the existence of an "higher order" is not a proof in itself in the existence of a purposeful creator of that higher order. Consider for example the game of Go board game (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)). It has an extremely small set of rules, yet it produces astounding patterns in the way games develop. The Go board game obviously has a creator; humans invented it. But that doesn't mean that whover thought up the rules of Go knew upfront the intricate complexity that we explored throughout the centuries (by playing games). We gain no further insight in the higher order that emerges by following the rules of Go by knowing the precise circumstances that led to its creation. When thinking about the universe and life itself, I think this aspect is more important than the unknowable answer about whether there was a creator or not: would knowing the creator necessarily explain most of the complex behaviour we see?
        p1esk 8y ago
        Not only we don't know if there is/was a "creator", we don't even know the "rules". Using your Go analogy, we are watching the game and assume the moves are random.
        ithkuil 8y ago
        sure we know the rules: laws of physics on which chemistry is based. if a random mutation produces a protein that cannot act as a catalyst for a given chemical reaction that reaction won't happen and that can make a hell of a difference to the the organism that had everything else setup depending on that thing to happen, decreasing the odds of survival (which often simply means not even survive for long enough to develop). There are so many constrains at so many levels, many we know of, many are in plain sight, many are hidden, some we know since long time, some we have yet to discover. There are so many things we don't know, but pretending we are completely oblivious about the rules of the game is a stretch. The sheer complexity of it all is mind-boggling, but that doesn't mean the only reasonable approach is just to give up. So far every time humanity has thought that we've reached our limit in understanding and that only the existence of a deity can explain the next step, we unveiled the next layer of the puzzle. Even if a deity does exists, it doesn't appear reasonable to expect that we've finally exhausted all there was to learn and we finally found the truly unexplainable. We no longer have to posit the existence of a deity to explain our diurnal cycle and other everyday miracles, because we now know; we convinced ourselves that what seemed utterly incomprehensible to our ancestors (who we have no reason to assume less intelligent individually than us) is to be attributed to simple celestial mechanics governed that rules that no longer seem that incomprehensible. We moved our questions to the next layer, to the why those rules exist: what did set planets in motion etc; if you want, we never really "answered" the question, we just pushed it one layer further, and in the process we uncovered so many new beautiful layers of our reality.
        p1esk 8y ago
        I agree with you. My previous comments were directed at those who believe that there's nothing controversial about evolution. The example I gave was we don't understand enough to explain why it works so well.
      - heurist 8y ago
        Yes, random mutations. Random mutations that cause cancer kill an organism and random mutations that make them more attractive to mates make them more likely to pass that mutations to offspring, who pass it to their offspring, and so on. This is all basic evolutionary theory...
        p1esk 8y ago
        Yes, I'm questioning the "basic evolutionary theory" (and it appears that Dyson does too), because all efforts to test it in software have failed so far. Which is especially troubling given that processing power has been increasing exponentially for decades since people started experimenting with genetic algorithms and artificial life simulations.
        heurist 8y ago
        > all efforts to test it in software have failed so far What does "failed" mean? Evolution is a universal concept with infinite potential implementations. Trying to measure "success" means nothing unless you have some particular goal in mind, and as soon as you add a goal you severely restrict the pool of potential "successful" implementations, which makes success harder to find. Even then, you can look to processes like stochastic gradient descent as a "successful" use. It goes a lot deeper than that but as someone who has spent many years studying evolutionary biology, computer science, information theory, cognitive science, socioeconomics, and complex adaptive systems I have no idea where your comment is coming from so I won't elaborate here.
ItsMe000001 8y ago
But "intelligent designs" work less well! The only ever work for very specific things. On a larger scale there again is no design anywhere, see for example the economic principles, the "invisible hand". As soon as humans tried to "design" such larger systems it all fell apart (communism - in which I grew up). No single entity can manage the complexity, unless that entity is the universe ("it models itself") - at which point we have a useless tautology.
- p1esk 8y ago
  No design in economy? Are you serious? Do you really think that US (or any other developed country) does not plan or regulate its economy and just lets things happen? Also, it's funny you mention communism, because no "design" was planned there originally, and the economy was supposed to just "emerge" from fundamental principles and real life conditions. My understanding of biological evolution is that seemingly random mutations take place. This is like having a bunch of monkeys with typewriters, and hoping they produce a Shakespeare's sonnet. Yes, it's possible, but highly unlikely. I see several explanations of why biological evolution is successful: 1. trillions of trillions of planets launched evolutionary processes during the last 14B years, and ours just happened to be extremely lucky one, where intelligent life has appeared (through random mutations) against all odds. 2. intelligent life has emerged through random mutations on some other lucky planet, and those intelligent beings planted some kinds of seeds capable of developing into intelligent life eventually on other planets. 3. life on Earth was not planted like in the second scenario, but the random mutations are not really random, and are guided by something we don't understand (yet). Living in a simulation, all-mighty God, or some not yet developed branch of complexity theory, would belong here. Note that the second scenario is extremely more likely than the first one, and the third one imo is more likely than the second one. In any case, it's not just "controversy". It's a serious lack of understanding of biological evolution (either on my part, or in general), similar to how there's a serious lack of understanding of how a brain works.

To me, the main controversy is that evolution seems to work too well. Almost as if some "intelligent designer" guided it.

by p1esk 8y ago

To me, the main controversy is that evolution seems to work too well. Almost as if some "intelligent designer" guided it.

heurist 8y ago

No, that's just how existence works. Systems that perpetuate themselves are more likely to continue existing. Systems that don't perpetuate themselves stop existing. No intelligence required.

p1esk 8y ago
Perpetuate themselves by making random changes? Or the changes are not quite random? Software simulations of the former do not lead to much intelligence, and the latter hints at some higher order. I'm not an evolutionary biologist, so this is just a layman's pondering...
- ithkuil 8y ago
  Higher order doesn't imply design by an intelligent agent. Higher order can be an emergent property of a system under the pressure of raw, inanimated, constraints.
  - p1esk 8y ago
    That's hand-waving. Again, how does it "emerge"? Through random mutations? Perhaps so, but it is statistically highly unlikely. Clearly there's a significant gap in our understanding of evolution, because otherwise we would have modeled it by now. Theory of evolution is like theory of how brain works: incomplete.
    - ithkuil 8y ago
      I didn't intend to start an argument in favour of proving or disproving one point or the other. Just wanted to mention that the existence of an "higher order" is not a proof in itself in the existence of a purposeful creator of that higher order. Consider for example the game of Go board game (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)). It has an extremely small set of rules, yet it produces astounding patterns in the way games develop. The Go board game obviously has a creator; humans invented it. But that doesn't mean that whover thought up the rules of Go knew upfront the intricate complexity that we explored throughout the centuries (by playing games). We gain no further insight in the higher order that emerges by following the rules of Go by knowing the precise circumstances that led to its creation. When thinking about the universe and life itself, I think this aspect is more important than the unknowable answer about whether there was a creator or not: would knowing the creator necessarily explain most of the complex behaviour we see?
      - p1esk 8y ago
        Not only we don't know if there is/was a "creator", we don't even know the "rules". Using your Go analogy, we are watching the game and assume the moves are random.
        ithkuil 8y ago
        sure we know the rules: laws of physics on which chemistry is based. if a random mutation produces a protein that cannot act as a catalyst for a given chemical reaction that reaction won't happen and that can make a hell of a difference to the the organism that had everything else setup depending on that thing to happen, decreasing the odds of survival (which often simply means not even survive for long enough to develop). There are so many constrains at so many levels, many we know of, many are in plain sight, many are hidden, some we know since long time, some we have yet to discover. There are so many things we don't know, but pretending we are completely oblivious about the rules of the game is a stretch. The sheer complexity of it all is mind-boggling, but that doesn't mean the only reasonable approach is just to give up. So far every time humanity has thought that we've reached our limit in understanding and that only the existence of a deity can explain the next step, we unveiled the next layer of the puzzle. Even if a deity does exists, it doesn't appear reasonable to expect that we've finally exhausted all there was to learn and we finally found the truly unexplainable. We no longer have to posit the existence of a deity to explain our diurnal cycle and other everyday miracles, because we now know; we convinced ourselves that what seemed utterly incomprehensible to our ancestors (who we have no reason to assume less intelligent individually than us) is to be attributed to simple celestial mechanics governed that rules that no longer seem that incomprehensible. We moved our questions to the next layer, to the why those rules exist: what did set planets in motion etc; if you want, we never really "answered" the question, we just pushed it one layer further, and in the process we uncovered so many new beautiful layers of our reality.
        p1esk 8y ago
        I agree with you. My previous comments were directed at those who believe that there's nothing controversial about evolution. The example I gave was we don't understand enough to explain why it works so well.
    - heurist 8y ago
      Yes, random mutations. Random mutations that cause cancer kill an organism and random mutations that make them more attractive to mates make them more likely to pass that mutations to offspring, who pass it to their offspring, and so on. This is all basic evolutionary theory...
      - p1esk 8y ago
        Yes, I'm questioning the "basic evolutionary theory" (and it appears that Dyson does too), because all efforts to test it in software have failed so far. Which is especially troubling given that processing power has been increasing exponentially for decades since people started experimenting with genetic algorithms and artificial life simulations.
        heurist 8y ago
        > all efforts to test it in software have failed so far What does "failed" mean? Evolution is a universal concept with infinite potential implementations. Trying to measure "success" means nothing unless you have some particular goal in mind, and as soon as you add a goal you severely restrict the pool of potential "successful" implementations, which makes success harder to find. Even then, you can look to processes like stochastic gradient descent as a "successful" use. It goes a lot deeper than that but as someone who has spent many years studying evolutionary biology, computer science, information theory, cognitive science, socioeconomics, and complex adaptive systems I have no idea where your comment is coming from so I won't elaborate here.

ItsMe000001 8y ago

But "intelligent designs" work less well! The only ever work for very specific things. On a larger scale there again is no design anywhere, see for example the economic principles, the "invisible hand". As soon as humans tried to "design" such larger systems it all fell apart (communism - in which I grew up). No single entity can manage the complexity, unless that entity is the universe ("it models itself") - at which point we have a useless tautology.

p1esk 8y ago
No design in economy? Are you serious? Do you really think that US (or any other developed country) does not plan or regulate its economy and just lets things happen? Also, it's funny you mention communism, because no "design" was planned there originally, and the economy was supposed to just "emerge" from fundamental principles and real life conditions. My understanding of biological evolution is that seemingly random mutations take place. This is like having a bunch of monkeys with typewriters, and hoping they produce a Shakespeare's sonnet. Yes, it's possible, but highly unlikely. I see several explanations of why biological evolution is successful: 1. trillions of trillions of planets launched evolutionary processes during the last 14B years, and ours just happened to be extremely lucky one, where intelligent life has appeared (through random mutations) against all odds. 2. intelligent life has emerged through random mutations on some other lucky planet, and those intelligent beings planted some kinds of seeds capable of developing into intelligent life eventually on other planets. 3. life on Earth was not planted like in the second scenario, but the random mutations are not really random, and are guided by something we don't understand (yet). Living in a simulation, all-mighty God, or some not yet developed branch of complexity theory, would belong here. Note that the second scenario is extremely more likely than the first one, and the third one imo is more likely than the second one. In any case, it's not just "controversy". It's a serious lack of understanding of biological evolution (either on my part, or in general), similar to how there's a serious lack of understanding of how a brain works.