Ascertaining Non-Function
| August 15, 2009 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
One of the main arguments to support evolution appeals to shared non-functional structures between organisms. Since design entails design for function, shared non-functional structures would suggest common ancestry in the absence of common design. But how can we tell whether something is truly non-functional? Here are some insights from a colleague that address this point:
As a programmer, sometimes I spend a lot of time designing error-detection and/or error-correction algorithms (especially for dealing with user input). Some of these functions may never, ever be used in a real-life situation. There are also various subroutines and functions that provide either exotic or minor capabilities that, likewise, maybe be used very seldom if at all. But they are there for a reason. Good programming practice requires considerable extra design and implementation of features that may only rarely, if ever, be used.
If someone were to cut out and eliminate these sections of code, repairing what’s left so that the program still functions, the program may work perfectly well for just about all situations. But there are some situations that, without the snipped code, would create havoc if the program tried to call on a function that was no longer there or that was replaced by some different function that tried to take its place. (Ask yourself what percent of the functionality of your spreadsheet or word processor program you use, and then ask if you would even notice if some of the lesser-known functionality were removed.)
I think biological life is like that. It seems to me that if some DNA code can be successfully removed with no apparent effects, one possibility is that the removed portion is rarely used, or the impact of it not being there has effects that are masked or otherwise hidden.
Perhaps redundancy is what was removed, meaning the organism will now not be quite as robust in all situations as before. I can give a kidney to someone else and suffer no ill effect whatsoever… until my remaining kidney fails and cannot be helped by the redundant one that I gave up (which situation may never, ever really occur due to my general good health).
P.S. Being able to snip something with no apparent ill effect may in fact provide support for ID by showing that the system was so well engineered that it could automatically adjust to a certain degree, and in most cases completely (apparently). It would be interesting to see some ID research into some of the evo cases that are being used to support the various flavors of junk DNA, to see what REALLY happens long term with the new variety now missing something snipped.
70 Responses to Ascertaining Non-Function
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jerry:
1-> Write a WEASEL programe using the algorithm Dawkins describes (i.e. wirhout latching)
2-> Run some trials using different population sizes and mutation rates
3-> Observe how it is possible to get the same results that Dawkins published, that appear to preserve correct letters once selected and converge on a solution quickly.
Thats the whole point – selection is the mechanism that preserves correct letters, not latching.
The selfish gene ‘idea’ has nothing to do with latching mechanisms, it is about selection.
So are you going to apologise to Dawkins for misrepresenting his work?
Oops, my mistake. Patrick May writes a Weasel program in C which finds the phrase in only 74 generations.
http://www.softwarematters.org/more-weasel.html
He uses a population of 100 and a mutation rate of 5%. He also has extensive quotes from “The Blind Watchmaker” in his article and Dawkins found a solution after only 43 and 64 generations.
Of course, 74 generations times a population of 100 is 7400 tries. Rather slow, actually. But lightning fast compared to changing all 28 letters every time, the standard ID method of doing it.
“So are you going to apologise to Dawkins for misrepresenting his work?”
No because you have no clue what he did for the Blind Watchmaker. You and the other anti ID people should apologize to the pro ID people for wasting so much of our time with your inane inappropriate comments. Most of the time around here is spent dealing with the moronic objections that the anti ID people conjure up.
But to the disinterested observer it is all in good cause as the lack of any logic, facts or judgment does the most good for the pro ID point of view than anything. When the supposedly received wisdom is shown to be intellectually and argumentatively bankrupt, it helps your cause.
So while it is a pain in the rear to deal with the anti ID people, carry on with your nonsense.
Jerry:
Dawkins describes what he did in his book ‘The Blind Watchmaker’:
He also mentions that he uses BASIC initially and then re-wrote it in Pascal, not that it make much difference because it is his description of the algorithm that is important, not the language he implemented it in. I wrote my own version in c++ but it can also be done in a spreadsheet.
You risk shooting yourself in the foot with your own arguments – If you are right and we can have no idea what Dawkins did (despite him describing what he did) then neither can Marks or Dembski – so on what basis can they claim to know both what he did, and that it is different to what he says he did?
If this was a piece of work by an ID proponent being misrepresented by an ID critic in a peer reviewed publication I’m sure you not consider it ‘moronic’ to point that out and ask for it to be corrected.
Onlookers|:
I have just a few moments, so I will simply highlight again what Mr Dawkins said circa 1986 (I have already linked my discussion of it, and note that this is being wrenched to set up and knock over a handy strawman or two. On fair comment at best BillB has skimmed through it looking for points to make in rebuttal that will sound plausible to those who will not take time to work through a fairly technical matter.
Now, Dawkins, circa 1986, in BW:
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>> I don’t know who it was first pointed out that, given enough time, a monkey bashing away at random on a typewriter could produce all the works of Shakespeare. The operative phrase is, of course, given enough time. Let us limit the task facing our monkey somewhat. Suppose that he has to produce, not the complete works of Shakespeare but just the short sentence ‘Methinks it is like a weasel’, and we shall make it relatively easy by giving him a typewriter with a restricted keyboard, one with just the 26 (capital) letters, and a space bar. How long will he take to write this one little sentence? . . . .
It [Weasel 86] . . . begins by choosing a random sequence of 28 letters … it duplicates it repeatedly, but with a certain chance of random error – ‘mutation’ – in the copying. The computer examines the mutant nonsense phrases
[Now this ducks the issue of required functionality to be fit in an environment and substitutes instead mere proximity to a target -- in short, the whole exercise is invalid from the outset]
, the ‘progeny’ of the original phrase, and chooses the one which, however slightly, most resembles the target phrase
{so, with reasonable parameters, it will either preserve the present state or advance it a step or so towards the target . . . and preserving closest to target in a context where on reasonable mutation rates it is vanishingly small odds that here will be no no-change cases in a population will tend to implicit latching with the right sort of filter present — observe here that the published runs c 1986 show NO reversions in over 200 cases where such reversions could have been possible, so reversions of letters are either rare or nonexistent; that is, the interpretation tha the case is partitioned letterwise search, and latched on hitting target is a good one — and the next best explanation is that he interactions summarised will implicitly latch once we have a high likelihood of members of the mutant population that will be unchanged]
, METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL . . . . What matters is the difference between the time taken by cumulative selection, and the time which the same computer, working flat out at the same rate, would take to reach the target phrase if it were forced to use the other procedure of single-step selection: about a million million million million million years. This is more than a million million million times as long as the universe has so far existed . . . .
Although the monkey/Shakespeare model is useful for explaining the distinction between single-step selection and cumulative selection, it is misleading in important ways.
[such as, proximity is substituted for actual functionality, also the search has a long term target which is opposite to what NS could do as a non-purposeful proposed mechanism]
One of these is that, in each generation of selective ‘breeding’, the mutant ‘progeny’ phrases were judged according to the criterion of resemblance to a distant ideal target
[So he knew that it was targetted search and that this was not a legitimate representation of what RV + NS should be trying to do]
, the phrase METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. Life isn’t like that. Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection
[Again, weasel words that he probably knew in advance would provide an escape hatch while allowing the power of a "computer simulation of evolution" to impress the unwary]
, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution. In real life, the criterion for selection is always short-term, either simple survival or, more generally, reproductive success. [TBW, Ch 3, as cited by Wikipedia, various emphases and colours added.] >>
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In short, BillB’s objections are specious, and were answered before he made them, just a click away. In particular, on the direct statements and printouts of Weasel 1986, it is a reasonable interpretation to use a latched letterwise search algorithm.
And, on the protest that no that sort of algorithm was not used, it can be — and was — shown, months ago, that with population and mutation rates and filters suitably set up, we can see implicit latching where the parameters and filter interact to give “good runs” that show a steady march to the target without reversions.
So, it is a strawman laced with ad hominems to attack those who took legitimate interpretations of the given information c 1986, and it is worse to attack those who have shown that even without explicit latching of letters that hit home, latching of outputs can appear implicitly for “good runs.” once parameters for mutation rates, population size and filters are suitably set up. (And, remember, only credible code c 1986 will actually tell us the truth on what algorithm was used for sure; but we have enought o see that he o/p published credibly latched, and we can see how that could have been done explicitly or implicitly. And it is Mr Dawkins who, on the evidence of his confession of the misleading nature of Weasel, who needs to come clean and give us the code. We already have a confession that the whole Weasel exercise is at best misleading, at worst deceptive based on artful half truths and the difference between the image and the headline and the qualifying details..)
To now pretend that presenting a paragraph that describes the situation of a latched letterwise search weasel is somehow a slander against Mr Dawkins, is even more grotesquely unjustified.
Let the record reflect that.
GEM of TKI
KF.
The debate here is about latching mechanisms not about whether this is a targeted search. Please stop trying to distract from the issue.
PRECISELY! WEASEL does not require any of these imagined extra mechanisms to produce results that where reversions almost never appear in the fittest member of each generation.
Why then precede that sentence with this
Why is it reasonable to claim that a mechanism exists where, by your own admission, none is required, and which is never described?
PLEASE KF can you focus on this one question and provide an HONEST answer.
BillB:
Not so.
You do not get to rule arbitrary self-serving datum lines,nor do you get to toss around slanderous implications of dishonesty, in the teeth of longstanding statements on the record on my part that on any fair reading lay out the situation and address the issues truthfully and fairly.
First, the fundamental truth about weasel 86 that we all need to know is as noted, and that the whole exercise is misleading –as confessed by Dawkins in BW — is highly material.
Next, enough has been cited from Dawkins c 1986 — and with the printouts to back it up — we have good reason to understand why an explicitly latched interpretation is valid on the terms of “cumulative selection” — i.e each step builds on the last so progress to date is latched-in [as the print-offs support] — the slightest increment in proximity to target.”
Third, we know that when we move ro algors that do not explicitly latch, with some parameter values and filter types, we have implicit latching, with others we have quasi-latching, with yet others we have far from latched behaviour [esp. as the remaining incorrect letters become few -- I recall watching runs that spent thousands of gens flicking back and forth without closing the deal].
IN THE LIGHT OF THE ABOVE, YOUR IMPLICATION OF DISHONESTY ON MY PART — ESPECIALLY GIVEN WHAT I HAVE PUT ON THE RECORD JUST ONE LINK AWAY FOR MONTHS NOW — IS UNCIVIL AND SHOULD BE WITHDRAWN.
G’day, sir.
GEM of TKI
1-> The debate here is about latching mechanisms not about whether this is a targeted search.
2-> Dawkins describes his algorithm EXPLICITLY – He does not mention latching.
-> All the published results are consistent with an non latching algorithm and this has been empirically demonstrated OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN!
-> Dawkins has been asked if he ever wrote a version that employed latching and he has (allegedly) said no.
-> Your attempt to dismiss this as some kind of frivolous straw-man is uncivil.
-> I am not accusing you of being Dishonest, deluded, blinkered, blinded by your own arrogance perhaps, but the question of honesty of something only you can truly answer. Be honest with yourself, that’s what I’m asking of you!
-> Your imagined accusation on my part is yet another attempt to divert from the issues, and a predictable ploy to try and drag Clive into the debate in order to get me censored. It is insulting.
-> You consistently and frequently throw out accusations that those arguing against your claims are involved in distraction, straw-men burning, and ad hominem attacks. These are implied accusations of dishonesty against your opponents who would claim that they are trying to address real points, but you happily sling this mud out on an almost daily basis whilst constantly seeking the faintest whiff of an accusation against yourself so you can have a tantrum about it.
This is gutter politics, can you not see how morally bankrupt it is?
BillB:
You are wrong, as long since step by step and repeatedly pointed out, and are insistent on using ad hominems against me.
You have sacrificed any right to civil discourse.
Good bye
GEM of TKI
Pointing out your errors is not a personal attack, asking you to refrain from engaging in gutter politics is not part of the debate about WEASEL, it is a personal request for you to evolve a sense of decency. Stop slinging mud at people.