Can we make software that comes to life?
| August 9, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design |
An interesting article talking about the progress, or lack thereof, in evolution of computer “life”.
Can we make software that comes to life?
A few choice snips:
On January 3 1990, he started with a program some 80 instructions long, Tierra’s equivalent of a single-celled sexless organism, analogous to the entities some believe paved the way towards life. The “creature” – a set of instructions that also formed its body – would identify the beginning and end of itself, calculate its size, copy itself into a free region of memory, and then divide.
Before long, Dr Ray saw a mutant. Slightly smaller in length, it was able to make more efficient use of the available resources, so its family grew in size until they exceeded the numbers of the original ancestor. Subsequent mutations needed even fewer instructions, so could carry out their tasks more quickly, grazing on more and more of the available computer space.
A creature appeared with about half the original number of instructions, too few to reproduce in the conventional way. Being a parasite, it was dependent on others to multiply. Tierra even went on to develop hyper-parasites – creatures which forced other parasites to help them multiply. “I got all this ecological diversity on the very first shot,” Dr Ray told me.
Hmmm… starts out complex and then gets simpler and simpler. Yup. That’s how Darwin described it. Right? Oh hold it. That was our side who said life had to begin with all the complexity it would ever have because RM+NS can’t generate CSI.
Other versions of computer evolution followed. Researchers thought that with more computer power, they could create more complex creatures – the richer the computer’s environment, the richer the ALife that could go forth and multiply.
But these virtual landscapes have turned out to be surprisingly barren. Prof Mark Bedau of Reed College in Portland, Oregon, will argue at this week’s meeting – the 11th International Conference on Artificial Life – that despite the promise that organisms could one day breed in a computer, such systems quickly run out of steam, as genetic possibilities are not open-ended but predefined. Unlike the real world, the outcome of computer evolution is built into its programming.
More Darwinian predictions confirmed? Hardly. Front-loading confirmed by computer modeling of evolution. Again.
His conclusion? Although natural selection is necessary for life, something is missing in our understanding of how evolution produced complex creatures.
Truer words were never said! 
By this, he doesn’t mean intelligent design – the claim that only God can light the blue touch paper of life – but some other concept.
Gratuitous disclaimer regarding ID required to get by peer review. Can’t leave that out. 
I don’t know what it is, nor do I think anyone else does, contrary to the claims you hear asserted,” he says. But he believes ALife will be crucial in discovering the missing mechanism.
Dr Richard Watson of Southampton University, the co-organiser of the conference, echoes his concerns. “Although Darwin gave us an essential component for the evolution of complexity, it is not a sufficient theory,” he says. “There are other essential components that are missing.”
Dangerously candid admission with only one ID disclaimer. Does this guy have a death wish or something? 
Here’s a clue, doc. The missing mechanism you’re searching for is commonly called “programmer” or “engineer”. Or in a more inclusive form a “designer”. 
One of these may be “self-organisation”, which occurs when simpler units – molecules, microbes or creatures – work together using simple rules to create complex patterns and behaviour.
Yeah, that would be one way. One imaginary way with no empirical support whatsoever. These things somehow just “self-organize”. No intelligence needed. They just poof into existence through some unknown laws of self-organization. Good science there alrighty. 
Heat up a saucer of oil and it will self-organise to form a honeycomb pattern, with adjacent “cells” forming as the oil turns by convection. In the correct conditions, water molecules will self-organise into beautiful six-sided snowflakes. Add together the correct chemicals in something called a BZ reaction, and one can create a “clock” that routinely changes colour.
Ah, the old snowflake argument. The modern version of Darwin’s blobs of protoplasm are ice crystals. Now all that’s left is the minor detail of how snowflakes become complicated machines made of thousands of interdependent components each of which has its specification encoded in abstract digital codes. No great leap there. No sir. Space shuttles and computers, both of which pale in complexity compared to the molecular machinery in any single protozoan, form in same manner as snowflakes. There’s some real science for ya! 
“Evolution on its own doesn’t look like it can make the creative leaps that have occurred in the history of life,” says Dr Seth Bullock, another of the conference’s organisers. “It’s a great process for refining, tinkering, and so on.
What’s this? Someone gets it! Yay! 
But self-organisation is the process that is needed alongside natural selection before you get the kind of creative power that we see around us.” [Bullock concludes]
Crap. Spoke too soon. 
At least he got the requirement for organization right. Maybe Bullock will get a clue and figure out that complex things don’t just “self” organize like a magic origami. What a dope. Where do they find these clueless chuckleheads and how do they possibly get advanced degrees? 
106 Responses to Can we make software that comes to life?
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Paul Giem @ 89
“Right now it looks like those who claim that some biological DNA code is essentially unevolvable have more evidence on their side than their opponents.”
It’s a very interesting question with an even more interesting twist. DNA is subject to ‘evolution’ because we know that it is inherited, that mutations happen and that some form of selection happens (your probability of reproducing is a function of the environment, your physical morphology and your behaviour). It would seem that in one sense DNA is evolvable because it doesn’t appear to be brittle to inheritance and mutation, and natural fitness landscapes don’t appear to be too jagged. The question is whether this process can generate new species or phenotypic novelty.
DaveScot @ 90
The problem with wheels is not the complexity but how you grow them. In most complex living systems you have the transfer of fluids throughout the entity to supply nutrients and gasses in order to maintain the living cells. If you want a constantly rotating joint in an entity made of living cells then you either need each half to be capable of digesting and distributing food to its cells, or you need some method to pass these materials through the joint – along with whatever nervous and chemical signals are required. By contrast constrained articulated joints are quite simple if you can grow muscles across a pair of loosely coupled rigid elements. (Something I wish I could do in my lab!)
GCUGreyArea
Wheel and axle were perfected by cavemen for transporation purposes. Artificial articulated legs for transportation still aren’t quite perfected and weren’t even in the running (pun intended) more than a few decades ago.
Point stands on which is the more difficult thing to engineer.
You said nothing about the wheel being made of living cells in your original claim. Why is that now a requirement?
Wheels could be easily made of cellulose, calcium, keratin, or God only knows how many other non-living materials which are incorporated into or extruded out of living things for various purposes.
DaveScot @ 93
It wasn’t a claim, just an observation. There is no reason why wheels need to be made of living tissue, although the ability to self repair and sense might be an advantage. The other problem with growing a wheel is how to actuate. The only actuator used in animal design is the muscle (outside of the cellular mechanism) which only works in one direction over a finite stroke so it can only generate rotary motion if you have several driving a crank (like a pushbike only pulling) To attach the muscles to the crank you need more rotating joints because the tendons on the crank need to be on bushes, and the crank needs to be supported. All in all when you break down the mechanism it becomes a surprisingly complex thing if you are thinking about it in terms of cellular self assembly, and a lot more complicated than a simple cart. That is not to say it is impossible though.
GCUGreyArea
Let’s see. In the face of my retorts you’ve modified your original (whatever you call it) from a macroscopic continually rotating joint to a drive wheel composed of living cells.
Talk about a moving target!
Do the words dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge ring any bells for you?
Before we get to the point where you’re claiming that nature doesn’t have reciprocating internal combustion engines because they’re too difficult to make out of living cells I must insist that you address my objection for your original point that there are no macroscopic continuously rotating joints in nature.
My objection, again, is that wheels are impractical compared to legs absent smooth roadways.
Evolution by chance & necessity isn’t going to produce a wheel unless a wheel is a necessity. Show me it’s a necessity. An intelligent designer seems even less likely to produce unnecessary things. I would put to you the only reason airplanes have wheels and propellers is we aren’t yet smart enough to build articulating wings and legs like a bird. A lets not even bother talking about how difficult it would be to build an aircraft that repairs itself, replicates itself, and is built from and fueled by no more than raw sunflower seeds and water.
DaveScot @ 95
“Talk about a moving target!”
I don’t understand. I’m speculating about methods of design and construction, not making claims about whether wheels can evolve or not.
The point is that from my perspective as a human designer assembling things like wheels, crankshafts, combustion chambers etc is an easy way to make things. If I wanted to make a machine that could produce a copy of its self using only its self and raw material (i.e. no factory, machine shop, assembly line) then it MIGHT turn out that unlimited rotating assemblies are difficult to generate as compared to restricted motion joints.
This is just a vague hypothesis. I’m not making claims that it is true but it it is an interesting one that might be testable – a route to falsification might be to demonstrate that wheels can easily be made via self assembly cellular systems or that they are simply less practical, as you suggested.
If I understand you then your objection to the idea that there are no rotating joints in nature is that cavemen have built them. This would be an example, possibly the only example, of a known intelligence designing wheels. What I am interested in is if there are examples of these mechanical systems that are not designed by us, and why they don’t seem to crop up.
GCUG
You’ve still not answered my claim that continuously rotating macroscopic joints are simply unnecessary. If my claim is true then there is no further explanation required for why continuously rotating joints are not found in nature.
DaveScot:
Ok, if your hypothesis is that these joints are unnecessary then I can’t just answer it, that would be mere speculation. It needs to be empirically tested, if that is possible.
I didn’t raise the issue or rotating joints to make specific claims about them, I wanted to explore the idea and its implications.
GCUGreyArea
Anything that wasn’t witnessed or duplicable is mere speculation. If we bound science by those requirements then the field of evolutionary biology would no longer be a science except in the cases where evolution can actually be observed or duplicated.
I will accept your wish to avoid speculation but I will ask that you be consistent and not speculate about other things.
And by the way, one way to grow a wheel is through scaffolding. The same way a broken bone is repaired. But that’s just speculation so we can’t talk about it any further. In fact we can’t even say there are no macroscopic wheels in nature because we are speculating that none exist that we simply haven’t observed. I’m afraid without speculation we’re going to be quite restricted in future dialog.
GCUG (91),
You give a good discussion of why some DNA is evolvable, then raise the last question, quoted above. I would refine the question somewhat. Most ID people I know, including most creationists (meaning YLC’s) would agree that species is not the proper place to draw the line. It is closer to the family level in most cases. And I would say, “major genotypic novelty” rather than “phenotypic novelty”, as legs in the place of antennae could qualify for phenotypic novelty, but is not what evolution needs to explain to be a comprehensive theory.
But with those caveats, the key statement that I made, that you quoted, is,
Would you agree with that statement?
Paul Geim, DaveScot.
I might try and respond to your posts in a few days. My wife had a baby girl earlier today by emergency c-section, neither of us have slept in 48 hours and they are both in hospital for the next few days. I hope you will accept that as a good excuse to duck out of these discussions for a while. I’m so tired I can hardly type…
GCUG
I wouldn’t even accept it as an excuse from your wife unless she was given general anesthesia and even then only for the time she was actually unconscious.
Just to show you that I’m capable of magnanimous gestures I’ll make an exception here if you promise that when you look at all the babies in the maternity ward you keep in mind two things:
1) life comes only from life
2) intelligence comes only from intelligence
Now be off with you.
GCUG (101),
Congratulations on your baby girl. And take your time answering. I prefer well-thought-out responses to rapid ones.
This discussion is getting a little out of date and its probably time to move on to more current discussions but I promised a reply so here it is:
DaveScot @ 99
You missed my point entirely, all the way. I am perfectly happy to speculate on biological wheels but I was responding to your specific phrasing ‘my claims…’ (which I may have over-interpreted). I would normally interpret a claim as something that can be backed up by empirical data and so when you asked me to respond to your claim I couldn’t because I have no data on the subject, all I can do is speculate. If I had just speculated in response then you might have thought I was also making a claim.
Anyway my point was that it seems to me that all we can do on the issue of why wheels don’t seem to appear in nature is to speculate, at least for the moment.
I am always happy to speculate and enjoy it a great deal.
Paul Giem @ 100
“Right now it looks like those who claim that some biological DNA code is essentially unevolvable have more evidence on their side than their opponents.”
I wouldn’t agree with that at all, but I’m not a biologist. I do work with some biologists and from the bits I glean from talking with them and the few presentations I see on the subject it appears that DNA is highly evolvable (almost as if it were designed for it)
GCUG (105)
I guess if you don’t feel comfortable defending the idea that all biological DNA code is reasonably evolvable (“I wouldn’t agree with that [that some DNA code is essentially unevolvable] at all, but I’m not a biologist.”), but do not wish to concede the point because of the opinions of some people you regard as authorities in this matter, perhaps it is best if we agree to disagree on this point.