Secondly, did you emulate random factors in nature that happen to kill the fittest? Did you emulate forest fires and arbitrarily kill whole familes of variants? Did you send in any floods to drown them, volcanoes to bury them, predators to eat them, etcetera?

Introduction of random factors will slow down the convergence of a genetic algorithm on optimized strategies, but it will not prevent it from converging unless you make the random factors so large that the entire population is likely to go extinct from random factors before it has time to evolve.

Third, did you make the fitness landscape more complex than just win – lose – draw at checkers? In nature when an antelope gets faster he also requires more food which is a disadvantage in some situations. Did you try emulate the complexity of the environment that RM+NS in nature must confront?

Ultimately, natural selection boils down to win-lose-draw in terms of producing more descendants. Of course, there are multiple subgoals required to achieve that, just as a successful checkers playing simulated organism needs to succeed in tactical subgoals (protecting one’s pieces, crowning pieces, jumping opposing pieces) in order to achieve the strategic end of winning the game. And of course, these subgoals must be balanced, e.g. a player that is too aggressive in trying to capture pieces may place itself at greater risk.

“How does your challenge relate to the bacteria flagellum, for example, with regards to the question of design? Nothing, as far as I can tell, since nobody knows if the flagellum was designed or not. (Duh.) In other words, your challenge doesn’t help to answer whether a particular entity IS designed or not. If you set up a test where the fitness algorithms were randomly generated as well as the mutations, and could generate something on the order of a flagellum, that would be impressive….When somebody can find some randomly produced fitness algorithms that use random inputs to generate some complex virtual machines like the flagellum, please let me know. The war will be over…Nobody has ever demonstrated that it’s even possible for a flagellum to have been assembled the way MET asserts. For that to be true, at least one precise (down the molecule) developmental pathway would have to be demonstrated. For all we know, the laws of nature might actually *forbid* any putative pathway that could be devised due to various chemical interactions. It’s an open question.”

It would certainly be nice to have a detailed history of the evolution of the flagellum. On the other hand, given the number of degrees of freedom of protein folding and interaction, resulting in an extremely high dimensionality of the “search space” traversed by evolution, I believe that we can with confidence make the following prediction from evolutionary theory:

The detailed, mutation-by-mutation pathway of evolution of the flagellum (and indeed, or most biological structures) will never be known

(Of course, that doesn’t mean that we won’t be able to come up with models, which have been suggested by multiple researchers e.g.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/en.....t=Abstract
http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html

but they will always contain a substantial degree of speculation. Actually testing every one of the millions of possible intermediate for fitness is an impossible project)

So does this meant that we must reject evolutionary theory because it refuses to provide us with an answer that we would like to have? If so, it will be in good company, because we will also have to discard such things as quantum physics, which perversely refuses to provide us with the exact trajectory of a photon through a slit. And Newtonian physics, which perversely refuses to provide us with an exact solution of the n-body problem, enabling us to accurately extrapolate planetary positions for any time.

But the scientific criterion for rejection of a theory is not failure to answer a question that we would like it to answer—it is experimental refutation based on the theory’s predictions. Here, of course, evolutionary theory has no problem, because it serves up a wealth of predictions, testable by methods ranging from computer simulations of genetic algorithms to genomic sequence comparisons (and so far has accumulated a remarkable track record of success).

ID on the other hand has a big problem. Predictions, after all, arise from the limitations of a model: the things that it cannot do. And since the ID crowd, perhaps for political reasons, is unable to get specific about the nature—and particularly the limitations—of their hypothetical designer, they have been unable to make any testable predictions. The closest they can get to a prediction is “No pathway for evolution of the flagellum exists.” Unfortunately, this kind of prediction is next to worthless, because to test it, they would have to show that they have examined every possible sequence of mutations from every possible set of protein precursors, and determined whether all of them are blocked by low-fitness “chasms” in the fitness landscape. Of course, they have no desire to take on this impossible task themselves. So instead, they turn to biologists, and say—“You must carry out the impossible studies to test our theory; if you can’t disprove it, then our theory must be right.”

But of course, biologists have no interest in trying to carry out this impossible study, because they have a rich theory that makes lots of testable predictions, and are busy testing those predictions and making discoveries. And all the ID guys seem to do is stand on the sidelines and heckle, “Hey, what about the flagellum?”

“A couple questions for Tom English about the checkers code to see if he was seriously trying to emulate RM+NS.”

I have no idea why anyone would emulate evolution in software. I have written repeatedly that genetic algorithms are abstract simulation models of evolution. (I include the word “abstract” in this forum only to try to get people to understand that modeling is abstract. The modifier is redundant.) A simulation model does not emulate.

“First of all – exactly how were the variations accomplished on the variants selected for reproduction? If you didn’t use a random number generator to pick a bit in the variant’s code or data space to flip then you weren’t emulating RM+NS.”

The term I used above, “reproduction with variation,” is confusing you, I suppose. “Random mutation” is a misnomer, and “reproduction with variation” is an alternative some people are using. The details of the random variation operator are unimportant. The principle is that random variation in offspring is inevitable.

“Secondly, did you emulate random factors in nature that happen to kill the fittest? Did you emulate forest fires and arbitrarily kill whole familes of variants? Did you send in any floods to drown them, volcanoes to bury them, predators to eat them, etcetera?”

Again, modeling is abstraction. You seem to be asking for artificial life here, not an evolutionary algorithm. If you don’t know the difference between the two, Wiki will help set you straight. But I will mention that selection of parents had a strong random component. The strong strategies could die and the weak ones could live.

“Third, did you make the fitness landscape more complex than just win – lose – draw at checkers? In nature when an antelope gets faster he also requires more food which is a disadvantage in some situations. Did you try emulate the complexity of the environment that RM+NS in nature must confront?”

RM+NS does not confront anything in nature. It IS nature. There is no fitness function, and there is no fitness landscape. The system is not mine, and the abstract environment in which individuals were evaluated was essentially Checkers World. The fact that it is not an “emulation” does not detract from the study a bit.

“It’s a bloody obvious method, Tom.”

Ever since Darwin.

“Even so, it isn’t really how nature does it.”

Please tell me, then, the abstract properties of evolution my simulation model should capture.

The issue is conservation of CSI. The fact that the strategies remained checkers strategies does not imply that there was no gain in CSI. In particular, I will point out that the specification for all strategies in the initial generation was

“sub-novice checkers player”

and the specification of most or all in the final population was

“expert checkers player.”

Does that sound like conservation of CSI to you?

First of all – exactly how were the variations accomplished on the variants selected for reproduction? If you didn’t use a random number generator to pick a bit in the variant’s code or data space to flip then you weren’t emulating RM+NS.

Secondly, did you emulate random factors in nature that happen to kill the fittest? Did you emulate forest fires and arbitrarily kill whole familes of variants? Did you send in any floods to drown them, volcanoes to bury them, predators to eat them, etcetera?

Third, did you make the fitness landscape more complex than just win – lose – draw at checkers? In nature when an antelope gets faster he also requires more food which is a disadvantage in some situations. Did you try emulate the complexity of the environment that RM+NS in nature must confront?

I suspect what you did was set out with a goal of using an interative process, essentially trial and error with a feedback mechanism to select improved starting points for each successive trial (making slight modifications to the starters each iteration in a blind search for serendipitous improvement), and when it worked you would claim this is just like nature does it. I could have told you 25 years ago that method will work. It’s a bloody obvious method, Tom. Thousands of programmers have recreated this algorithm without ever being taught how. I used to review patent abstracts at Dell and if someone came to me with this algorithm I’d reject it as being obvious to an expert in the field even if I thought it was novel, which it ain’t. Even so, it isn’t really how nature does it. It’s how intelligent agents sometimes look for solutions.

Thanks Gil!

Salvador

Oky dokey. There’s not such thing as a platypus but there might be multiple universes.

This sentence is meaningful only if you by what you can “see and measure” you can distinguish whether the universe is singular or multiple, or whether it is finite or infinite.

Or maybe we are just batteries powering a super computer controlling our reality. Take the red pill to find out.

You can see a platypus.

I’ve looked all around my neighborhood. I can assure you that I cannot see a platypus anywhere. So by what I can see and measure, there is no such thing.

hat it states is that “by what we can see and measure, the universe is singular and finite.” The physical evidence indicates the universe is singular and finite. If you want to believe otherwise you have to believe via faith.

This sentence is meaningful only if you by what you can “see and measure” you can distinguish whether the universe is singular or multiple, or whether it is finite or infinite.

Can you state one piece of physical evidence that would be different if the universe is infinite? Or multiple? Or both? If you cannot, then it is equally rational to say “By what I can see and measure, the universe is infinite and multiple.” Clearly, an observation that is equally consistent with either of two conclusions does not constitute evidence either way.

You can see a platypus.

“By what we can see and measure, the universe is singular and finite” necessarily includes and implies the following claims:

No, it doesn’t. What it states is that “by what we can see and measure, the universe is singular and finite.” The physical evidence indicates the universe is singular and finite. If you want to believe otherwise you have to believe via faith.

By what we can see and measure, the universe is singular and finite.

Sorry, no. That is like arguing that “by what I can see and measure,” there is no such thing as a platypus, because I’ve looked around my neighborhood, and I have never seen a platypus. The fallacy should be obvious: to logically make such an assertion, I must be able to show that I have looked thoroughly enough that I would have found platypuses if they exist. As the adage goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

So the claim “By what we can see and measure, the universe is singular and finite” necessarily includes and implies the following claims:

1) We could see and measure other universes if they exist.
2) We can see and measure entire extent of the universe that exists.

Both are false.

A devout believer in a multiverse is in in the same boat as a YECer

I agree, but would extend it to say that such a person is also in the same boat as a devout believer in a universe that is singular or finite.