Artificial Death
Arthur Chandler
Has anyone attempted to model death in a fashion analogous to the
creation of systems to study artificial life?
Would the process involve hardware disintegration, or could the
process be modelled entirely in software?
Steve Grand
Arthur Chandler <art...@crl.com> wrote in article
<4stqba$i...@crl12.crl.com>...
But first you have to simulate life!
Our 'Creatures' program (see another thread in this newsgroup) does at
least simulate *old age* reasonably well. Different genes switch on at
different times in a creature's life. Some genes (especially mutants) may
well turn out to be harmful - those that harm a creature while it's still
reproductive should be selcted out over a few generations, but any mutants
which are detrimental and yet don't switch on until after the creature's
reproductive cycle is over, have less reason to be selected against. It's
partly the general poisoning and so on caused by such "senescence" genes
that screws us humans up and eventually kills us. Since you can model this
process of differential selection and also the biochemical effects of such
senescence genes, then it's probably fair to say that you *can* model
artificial death, at least in a dynamical sense, if not a realistic model.
But where do A-Life organisms *go* when they die??
--
Steve Grand
Senior Programmer, Cyberlife
Millennium Interactive Ltd.
email: step...@cyberlife.co.uk
Jim Barr
>
>Our 'Creatures' program (see another thread in this newsgroup) does at
>least simulate *old age* reasonably well. Different genes switch on at
>different times in a creature's life. Some genes (especially mutants) may
>well turn out to be harmful - those that harm a creature while it's still
>reproductive should be selcted out over a few generations, but any mutants
>which are detrimental and yet don't switch on until after the creature's
>reproductive cycle is over, have less reason to be selected against. It's
>partly the general poisoning and so on caused by such "senescence" genes
>that screws us humans up and eventually kills us. Since you can model this
>process of differential selection and also the biochemical effects of such
>senescence genes, then it's probably fair to say that you *can* model
>artificial death, at least in a dynamical sense, if not a realistic model.
>
>But where do A-Life organisms *go* when they die??
>
I remember the reaction of one person who was watching my 'ANT'program,
as lots of dots scurried around the screen with white ones aparently
seeking out and eating the green ones.... and as the explanation of what
was going on finally dawned, she shrieked
"But your killing them, thats awfull."
So I hope there is a heaven for pixels, I did explain that by using
dynamic memory management, the ants recovered all their RAM, but she
still hates me for being so beastly.
AH well,.... Jim
Jim Barr Machine Conversation, Bedfordshire England
Best is the enemy of good enough
Leaves Rustle....Blades turn..... Water moves
Steve Grand
Jim Barr <Jim...@wandana.demon.co.uk> wrote in article
<1nQraPA2...@wandana.demon.co.uk>...
> I remember the reaction of one person who was watching my 'ANT'program,
> as lots of dots scurried around the screen with white ones aparently
> seeking out and eating the green ones.... and as the explanation of what
> was going on finally dawned, she shrieked
>
> "But your killing them, thats awfull."
>
> So I hope there is a heaven for pixels, I did explain that by using
> dynamic memory management, the ants recovered all their RAM, but she
> still hates me for being so beastly.
>
Funny. People usually have no qualms about killing *real* ants. Maybe soft
life feels more precious than wet life? Or maybe it's because your ants
didn't have vicious-looking mouthparts? I've often thought it odd that we
go to such lengths to conserve endangered butterflies, but are happy to
wipe out whole species of crawly insect. "Save the krill - kill a whale"!
I was demonstrating Creatures to my mum, and she'd begun to build up an
attachment between two little souls when all of a sudden my PC crashed.
When I explained that little Ron and Eve were gone, never to be seen again,
mum cried. Best sign I've ever had that the program was on the right
track!.
Bill Tschumy
"Steve Grand" <step...@cyberlife.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Arthur Chandler <art...@crl.com> wrote in article
><4stqba$i...@crl12.crl.com>...
>> Has anyone attempted to model death in a fashion analogous to the
>> creation of systems to study artificial life?
>> Would the process involve hardware disintegration, or could the
>> process be modelled entirely in software?
>>
>
>But first you have to simulate life!
>
[SNIP]
>But where do A-Life organisms *go* when they die??
>
>--
>Steve Grand
>Senior Programmer, Cyberlife
>Millennium Interactive Ltd.
>email: step...@cyberlife.co.uk
I found my alife organisms took on a new realism once I implemented
the ability to die through starvation and old age. It was almost as
if one of the defining qualities of life was the "ability to die".
-----
Bill Tschumy
Otherwise -- Austin, TX
Creators of Artificial Life
bi...@otherwise.com
Bill Tschumy
"Steve Grand" <step...@cyberlife.co.uk> wrote:
>Funny. People usually have no qualms about killing *real* ants. Maybe soft
>life feels more precious than wet life? Or maybe it's because your ants
>didn't have vicious-looking mouthparts? I've often thought it odd that we
>go to such lengths to conserve endangered butterflies, but are happy to
>wipe out whole species of crawly insect. "Save the krill - kill a whale"!
>
>I was demonstrating Creatures to my mum, and she'd begun to build up an
>attachment between two little souls when all of a sudden my PC crashed.
>When I explained that little Ron and Eve were gone, never to be seen again,
>mum cried. Best sign I've ever had that the program was on the right
>track!.
I agree totally! I will consider my ePets program a success if people
feel a sense of loss when one of their animats dies.
>
>--
>Steve Grand
>Senior Programmer, Cyberlife
>Millennium Interactive Ltd.
>email: step...@cyberlife.co.uk
-----
Tim Taylor
Arthur Chandler <art...@crl.com> wrote in article
<4stqba$i...@crl12.crl.com>...
> Has anyone attempted to model death in a fashion analogous to the
> creation of systems to study artificial life?
> Would the process involve hardware disintegration, or could the
> process be modelled entirely in software?
>
I am also trying to model death in my system which is designed to look
at evolution in self-replicating programs (a bit like Tierra). In this
system, each program has to collect `energy tokens' from the
environment which it can store and exchange for CPU time to run its
code. To reproduce, a program therefore first has to ensure that it
has collected sufficient energy before it starts copying itself. Death
occurs when the energy stored by a program falls below a particular
threshold. As Steve Grand said in his posting, I expect that once
a program has reproduced there will be little selective pressure
against mutations which disrupt a program's ability to collect energy
(or disrupt the program in other ways), so that the lifetime of the
programs is yet another parameter which is optimised (from a gene's
point of view) by evolution.
I am in the process of coding this system right now, so I'm afraid
I have no results just yet...
Tim.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Taylor, Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh
tel +44-(0)131-650-3081/4496/4493 fax -650-6899
home page http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/students/timt/
Morten Lauritsen
Thus spake "Steve Grand" <step...@cyberlife.co.uk>:
>Arthur Chandler <art...@crl.com> wrote in article
><4stqba$i...@crl12.crl.com>...
>> Has anyone attempted to model death in a fashion analogous to the
>> creation of systems to study artificial life?
I believe death is kind of an essential feature of life. When simulating life,
you can't avoid simulating death. But I agree that death has been widely
overlooked in AI.
>> Would the process involve hardware disintegration,
Hm. That wouldn't be nice now, would it?
Further, it would be hard to observe the effects of such death on simulated
life.
>> or could the
>> process be modelled entirely in software?
Terminate any program and you got it.
>But first you have to simulate life!
Easy. Done every day. In doubtful detail, for sure. :)
>Our 'Creatures' program (see another thread in this newsgroup) does at
>least simulate *old age* reasonably well. Different genes switch on at
>different times in a creature's life. Some genes (especially mutants) may
>well turn out to be harmful - those that harm a creature while it's still
>reproductive should be selcted out over a few generations, but any mutants
>which are detrimental and yet don't switch on until after the creature's
>reproductive cycle is over, have less reason to be selected against. It's
>partly the general poisoning and so on caused by such "senescence" genes
>that screws us humans up and eventually kills us.
Good point. Also, that's why AIDS is such a bastard. Ebola tends to eliminate
itself quite efficiently.
>Since you can model this
>process of differential selection and also the biochemical effects of such
>senescence genes, then it's probably fair to say that you *can* model
>artificial death, at least in a dynamical sense, if not a realistic model.
>But where do A-Life organisms *go* when they die??
Where do we go when we die?
I'm not sure either question makes sense.
Morten.
--
Morten Lauritsen | Student at the Department of Computer Science and
Spobjergvej 38 vaer 10 | Programmer at the Department of Genetics and Ecology
8220 Brabrand | at the University of Aarhus
Denmark, Europe | Email: mo...@daimi.aau.dk Web: www.daimi.aau.dk/~moffe
Eric Minch
Arthur Chandler <art...@crl.com> wrote in article
<4stqba$i...@crl12.crl.com>...
> Has anyone attempted to model death in a fashion analogous to the
> creation of systems to study artificial life?
>
,,,and a good many people have commented on this in messages since then.
Arthur, as originator of this thread, has put his finger on one of the
fundamental problems of ALife which is only rarely addressed in the field.
All forms of life are made up of the same stuff as what surrounds them,
and this stuff, when arranged so as to make up an organism, obeys the same
physical and chemical laws as it did when not part of an organism. This
means that what makes life alive is not the stuff but the organization.
Now we've all heard lip-service paid to this concept, but if there are any
simulations which actually implement it--as opposed to vague handwaving
allusions--I've yet to see them.
Please don't try to argue that Tierra does. Tierra is an ingenious model,
but the "stuff" that's not in a Tierra "organism" doesn't behave according
to any laws of physics or chemistry except in the most degenerate sense:
it just sits there inertly. Furthermore, the organisms don't have any
lifetime, they neither develop nor senesce, and they only "die" because of
the Reaper. Tierra is a lovely simulation of populations, but not of
individual organisms.
Of course, if anyone does have a simulated chemistry in which organisms
arise either spontaneously through self-organization (which would be an
origin of life model) or via genetic instruction (which would be an ALife
model), then the problem becomes one of detecting the organisms once they
emerge, right?
--
Eric Minch
Stanford Genetics Department
J. W. Davison
Eric Minch writes:
>All forms of life are made up of the same stuff as what surrounds them,
>and this stuff, when arranged so as to make up an organism, obeys the same
>physical and chemical laws as it did when not part of an organism. This
>means that what makes life alive is not the stuff but the organization.
>Now we've all heard lip-service paid to this concept, but if there are any
>simulations which actually implement it--as opposed to vague handwaving
>allusions--I've yet to see them.
>Please don't try to argue that Tierra does. Tierra is an ingenious model,
>but the "stuff" that's not in a Tierra "organism" doesn't behave according
>to any laws of physics or chemistry except in the most degenerate sense:
>it just sits there inertly. Furthermore, the organisms don't have any
>lifetime, they neither develop nor senesce, and they only "die" because of
>the Reaper. Tierra is a lovely simulation of populations, but not of
>individual organisms.
>Of course, if anyone does have a simulated chemistry in which organisms
>arise either spontaneously through self-organization (which would be an
>origin of life model) or via genetic instruction (which would be an ALife
>model), then the problem becomes one of detecting the organisms once they
>emerge, right?
>--
>Eric Minch
>Stanford Genetics Department
I like it. Hmmm... Thinking Tierra, for the moment. The environment is
the memory of the virtual machine, and the vm defines the physics. What if
one consider the '1' bits as "matter" and the '0' bits as "space" -- (just
for the moment) -- Look at the instruction set -- does it conserve the
'1's? Probably not; could one design an instruction set that would? Would
that instruction set define the chemistry -- how molecules (bytes?)
interact to produce other molecules? If so, one could then require that an
organism collect a sufficient supply of '1's before it could reproduce.
Suddenly there's food in the environment -- all those '1's become resources
to compete for. Ingesting food means extending the boundary of the
organism to include additional memory. Instructions/sequences of
instructions that have the effect of compacting the '1's might be seen as
digestion?... Ignore the huge problem of having life emerge from a soup of
'1's and '0's, just examine the possibility of creating a replicator and
evolving it. -- Conservation of '1's might be a pretty tough conservation
law.
Might be fun to explore the idea...
--
Joe Davison jwda...@lucent.com
todd m shrider
Morten Lauritsen (mo...@daimi.aau.dk) wrote:
> Thus spake "Steve Grand" <step...@cyberlife.co.uk>:
>
>
> ><4stqba$i...@crl12.crl.com>...
> >> Has anyone attempted to model death in a fashion analogous to the
> >> creation of systems to study artificial life?
>
> you can't avoid simulating death. But I agree that death has been widely
> overlooked in AI.
>
>
>
> Further, it would be hard to observe the effects of such death on simulated
> life.
>
> >> process be modelled entirely in software?
>
--
+---------------------------------------------+
| Todd M. Shrider Indiana University |
+---------------------------------------------+
| tshr...@indiana.edu |
+---------------------------------------------+
| http://vertigo.iue.indiana/~tshrider/ |
+---------------------------------------------+
"Der Herrgott wurfelt nicht"
- Albert Einstein
Bill Zimmerly
Eric Minch wrote:
>
> Arthur Chandler <art...@crl.com> wrote in article
> <4stqba$i...@crl12.crl.com>...
> > Has anyone attempted to model death in a fashion analogous to the
> > creation of systems to study artificial life?
> > process be modelled entirely in software?
> >
>
> Arthur, as originator of this thread, has put his finger on one of the
> fundamental problems of ALife which is only rarely addressed in the field.
>
> and this stuff, when arranged so as to make up an organism, obeys the same
> physical and chemical laws as it did when not part of an organism. This
> means that what makes life alive is not the stuff but the organization.
> Now we've all heard lip-service paid to this concept, but if there are any
> simulations which actually implement it--as opposed to vague handwaving
> allusions--I've yet to see them.
>
> Please don't try to argue that Tierra does. Tierra is an ingenious model,
> but the "stuff" that's not in a Tierra "organism" doesn't behave according
> to any laws of physics or chemistry except in the most degenerate sense:
> it just sits there inertly. Furthermore, the organisms don't have any
> lifetime, they neither develop nor senesce, and they only "die" because of
> the Reaper. Tierra is a lovely simulation of populations, but not of
> individual organisms.
>
> Of course, if anyone does have a simulated chemistry in which organisms
> arise either spontaneously through self-organization (which would be an
> origin of life model) or via genetic instruction (which would be an ALife
> model), then the problem becomes one of detecting the organisms once they
> emerge, right?
> --
>
> Eric Minch
> Stanford Genetics Department
>
Eric,
You bring out some very interesting points, but I have
another question myself along the same intellectual lines
that you've drawn...
...How is it conceivable that the facilities for
reproduction simply "arise spontaneously".
Ignoring for a moment the extreme complexity of bisexual
reproduction and it's components, the ovaries, testes,
sex-drive programming, etc. Let's consider the
self-replicating complexity of cells...the nucleus and it's
built-in software in the form of DNA, the transcription and
translation mechanisms of mRNA and tRNA, for creating the
proteins and enzymes that go into JUST STARTING the process
of mitosis, etc. etc.
The complexity is mind-boggling and to attribute this
"organization", as you correctly pointed out, to simple
chemistry and to some sort of "survival of the fittest"
naturalistic mechanism is equivalent to believing that a
tornado blowing through a junkyard has a chance of creating a
Pontiac Firebird...
*THIS* is *THE* major logic problem that I've always had
trouble with simply "accepting" the evolutionary model as a
matter of fact. Just because some Pope-like figure(s)
dogmatically say that IT HAPPENED, doesn't mean I'm supposed
to believe him and check-out my brain at the door of the
University.
I repeat...
*HOW* can reproductive organs (both the hardware and their
associated software) be *both* a product of evolution AND a
necessary pre-condition?
...and if someone states that self-replication is *SIMPLE*
then why is it so difficult for us to duplicate such a
"simple" thing in controlled laboratory-type environments?
Sincerely,
- Bill <Awaiting flames from the believers...>
--
\\\|///
\\ ~ ~ //
(/ @ @ /)
--------------oOOo-(_)-oOOo---------------------------
William B. Zimmerly (Bill) -
Systems Research & Development Manager / Webmaster
General American Life Insurance Company, Inc.
Amateur Radio Call: KA0YKO
Email Address: bi...@inlink.com
Home Page Address: www.inlink.com/~billz
~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._
Eric Minch
In article <320267...@inlink.com> Bill Zimmerly <bi...@inlink.com>
writes:
> The complexity is mind-boggling and to attribute this
> "organization", as you correctly pointed out, to simple
> chemistry and to some sort of "survival of the fittest"
> naturalistic mechanism is equivalent to believing that a
> tornado blowing through a junkyard has a chance of creating a
> Pontiac Firebird...
>
daunting, but denying the possibility of spontaneous self-organization was
far from what I had in mind. Lets sharpen up your analogy a little here:
instead of a Pontiac Firebird, think of a wheelbarrow. Instead of a
junkyard, think of the whole world as a repository of spare parts. And
instead of a single tornado, think of a global storm that lasts a billion
years. The odds go up a bit then, eh?
> *THIS* is *THE* major logic problem that I've always had
> trouble with simply "accepting" the evolutionary model as a
> matter of fact. Just because some Pope-like figure(s)
> dogmatically say that IT HAPPENED, doesn't mean I'm supposed
> to believe him and check-out my brain at the door of the
> University.
>
No, it certainly doesn't. This question can't really benefit from dogmatic
pronouncements, whether secular or ecclesiastical. I happen to believe in
the possibility of spontaneous origin of life and its subsequent evolution
because I find the creationist alternative even more ludicrously
improbable. And the latter hypothesis doesn't really leave you anywhere
fruitful to go intellectually, does it? All you can say to it is "Oh" or
"So what?", while the former hypothesis at least allows you to ask "How?"
and "When?" and any number of other interesting questions.
> *HOW* can reproductive organs (both the hardware and their
> associated software) be *both* a product of evolution AND a
> necessary pre-condition?
>
See? An interesting question! Let's see what's at the root of this
apparent paradox. It appears to involve two confusions, one simple and one
complex. The simple confusion is that whatever mediated self-replication
in the early stages of life couldn't have been an organ, since the idea of
multicellular tissues as part of a single-celled organism (and a rather
primitive cell at that) is contradictory.
The complex confusion is one which the work of Stan Salthe and Stu
Kauffman (among others) tried to clear up, but instead the mess seems to
persist. If instead of distinguishing between selection, fitness,
self-organization, development, and a host of other related notions, we
regard them all as aspects of a property we might as well call STABILITY,
then the problem disappears. Some arrangements or configurations or
organizations are more stable than others, larger arrangements are made
out of smaller arrangements, and the more stable the smaller arrangements
are the easier it is to make larger arrangements. We end up with a
hierarchy in which the largest objects depend for their stability either
on the stability of their components, or on some mechanism which allows
them to repair or replace unstable components.
So that's solved, let's dust off our hands and ask some more questions.
(But not all of them are just terminological).
Arthur Chandler
Eric Minch (mi...@lotka.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
: No, it certainly doesn't. This question can't really benefit from dogmatic
: the possibility of spontaneous origin of life and its subsequent evolution
: because I find the creationist alternative even more ludicrously
: improbable. And the latter hypothesis doesn't really leave you anywhere
: fruitful to go intellectually, does it? All you can say to it is "Oh" or
: "So what?", while the former hypothesis at least allows you to ask "How?"
: and "When?" and any number of other interesting questions.
Eric's well-phrased reply encourages me to raise a couple of issues here.
1) Whether or not life is based on divine creation or spontaneous
evolution, I just don't know. It does seem to me, however, that both
could consider the question, "How does this work?" -- just as we do in
human affairs, if we are trying to understand a Bach fugue or the decline
and fall of the Roman Empire -- two instances in which guiding agents
exerted at least some control.
But it DOES seem to me that artificial life is necessarily creationist.
That is, human beings have provided the raw material, the environment,
and the algorithms for these forms to exist in. To simulate evolutionary
spontaneity -- which presumably had no Guiding Hand -- seems impossible.
Even random number generators, after all, have to be taught how to
generate random numbers.
: The complex confusion is one which the work of Stan Salthe and Stu
: Kauffman (among others) tried to clear up, but instead the mess seems to
: persist. If instead of distinguishing between selection, fitness,
: self-organization, development, and a host of other related notions, we
: regard them all as aspects of a property we might as well call STABILITY,
: then the problem disappears. Some arrangements or configurations or
: organizations are more stable than others, larger arrangements are made
: out of smaller arrangements, and the more stable the smaller arrangements
: are the easier it is to make larger arrangements. We end up with a
: hierarchy in which the largest objects depend for their stability either
: on the stability of their components, or on some mechanism which allows
: them to repair or replace unstable components.
2) I just can't see how we can posit a primary property called STABILITY
when the Big Picture is apparently governed by the Second Law of
Thermodynamics. Doesn't that grim fact mean that, in the long
evolutionary haul, we can't win, we can't even draw, and we can't leave
the game? To put it another way, isn't stability inherently unstable?
Until we can see a convincing -- preferably mathematical -- theory that
assesses the temporary advances of evolutionary selection with the (I take
it) guaranteed long-haul dissolution of life forms in every phase --
billions of years to nanoseconds, and every stage in between -- then
evolutionary theory looks to a historian like a continuation of the
19th-century belief in *Progress.*
[* = glow of affirmation within the believer.]
Or am I missing something(s) crucial?
Thanks for discussing these issues!
Eric Minch
In article <4u1839$4...@crl9.crl.com> art...@crl.com (Arthur Chandler)
writes:
> But it DOES seem to me that artificial life is necessarily
creationist.
> That is, human beings have provided the raw material, the environment,
> and the algorithms for these forms to exist in. To simulate evolutionary
> spontaneity -- which presumably had no Guiding Hand -- seems impossible.
>
I have to disagree. If I write a good simulation of physics or chemistry I
don't specify every event explicitly, just the classes of events and their
properties. A wind-tunnel simulation doesn't explicitly specify vortex
trains, yet they occur within the simulation, given the appropriate
interpretive framework. You may object that simulated wind won't blow your
house down, but it's not important that simulated phenomena interact with
our world at all. For ALife, it's only important that the ALife organisms
have the same relation to their surroundings as we do to our surroundings.
> Even random number generators, after all, have to be taught how to
> generate random numbers.
>
I hope you jest.
> 2) I just can't see how we can posit a primary property called STABILITY
> when the Big Picture is apparently governed by the Second Law of
> Thermodynamics. Doesn't that grim fact mean that, in the long
> evolutionary haul, we can't win, we can't even draw, and we can't leave
> the game? To put it another way, isn't stability inherently unstable?
>
I would say anything stable wrt one timespan is unstable wrt to some much
longer timespan, and anything unstable wrt one timespan is stable wrt some
much shorter timespan. It's definitely a relative term, and from the
practical perspective of an organism with a lifespan of minutes to years
the long-term instability of atoms or of the universe is unimportant. A
system which can develop and reproduce before it falls apart is good
enough.
Arthur Chandler
Hmm.. some overarching disagreements seem to loom here. But, in the
spirit of friendly echange:
Eric Minch (mi...@lotka.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
: This is what I believe Peter Cariani and George Kampis to be arguing, and
: I have to disagree. If I write a good simulation of physics or chemistry I
: don't specify every event explicitly, just the classes of events and their
: properties. A wind-tunnel simulation doesn't explicitly specify vortex
: trains, yet they occur within the simulation, given the appropriate
: interpretive framework. You may object that simulated wind won't blow your
: house down, but it's not important that simulated phenomena interact with
: our world at all. For ALife, it's only important that the ALife organisms
: have the same relation to their surroundings as we do to our surroundings.
A few months ago, the topic of Emergent Behavior was discussed in this
group. The major objection -- or maybe the word "concern" is strong
enough -- is that the term seems to be little more than an elegant was of
confessing ignorance of consequences. To speak of the "beautiful and
unexpected patterns that emerge from a fractal equation" may be a nice
tribute; but it hardly argues that the patterns in iteration #60 were not
inherent in the beginning equations.
So if you specific the conditions and ground of operation in a life
simulation are you are surprised, doesn't the surprise say more about the
lack of predictive quality of your theory that the nature of the events
themselves?
: > Even random number generators, after all, have to be taught how to
: > generate random numbers.
: >
: I hope you jest.
Show me a computer that turns itself on and, without instructions,
generates random numbers, and I'll laugh right along with you. :<)
: I would say anything stable wrt one timespan is unstable wrt to some much
: longer timespan, and anything unstable wrt one timespan is stable wrt some
: much shorter timespan. It's definitely a relative term, and from the
: practical perspective of an organism with a lifespan of minutes to years
: the long-term instability of atoms or of the universe is unimportant. A
: system which can develop and reproduce before it falls apart is good
: enough.
I thought that entropy applied to all local systems, and not only to
the cosmos. Violin strings go out of tune, the finest athlete loses her
precision, grows old, and dies, etc. Norbert Wiener once described the
venue of life as "local enclaves whose direction seems opposed to that of
the universe at large and in which there is a limited and temporary
tendency for organization to increase."
If the 2nd Law is right (and if I have got its implications right),
then it seems that any biological, historical, or AI theory that leaves out
entrophy espouses an almost touching belief in Progress -- a kind of
asymptotic approach to better and better things.
Well, enough of that. Thanks for the stimulating counterexamples, Eric.
: Eric Minch
Shai Ophir
> Arthur Chandler <art...@crl.com> wrote in article
> <4stqba$i...@crl12.crl.com>...
> > Has anyone attempted to model death in a fashion analogous to the
> > creation of systems to study artificial life?
> > Would the process involve hardware disintegration, or could the
> > process be modelled entirely in software?
> >
So far in ALife systems, the process of life *creation* is simply
simulated by a binary step of creating new entities, and the death is
simulated by a binary step of elimination of entities.
The "life" itself is what happens between the creation and death, and
therefore death is not analogue to "life".
But in fact, one can see life as an ongoing process towards death,
therefore ALife can be also considered Adeath...
Shai Ophir
Bill Zimmerly
Arthur Chandler wrote:
> Eric Minch (mi...@lotka.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
> : No, it certainly doesn't. This question can't really benefit from dogmatic
> : pronouncements, whether secular or ecclesiastical. I happen to believe in
> : the possibility of spontaneous origin of life and its subsequent evolution
> : because I find the creationist alternative even more ludicrously
> : improbable.
What's so "ludicrously improbable" about an engineer creating
what he wants to create?
Why not forget the religious dogma from *BOTH* sides of the
origins argument and accept the perfectly reasonable
explanation that DESIGN reflects the SKILL and CAPABILITIES
of it's designer.
I appreciate, for example, the skill and ability of Da'Vinci
in creating the Mona Lisa as well as the skill and ability of
the creator of a crude arrowhead...*WITHOUT* having seen or
met either of them.
Likewise so, I appreciate the skill and ability that
permeates the design of microscopic machines that can
replicate themselves...an ability, it is noteworthy to point
out, that mankind is FAR from being able to duplicate.
So what if Joe Blow calls this engineer "God"? Just because
of a *fanatic* desire to say that "there is no God", we do
science a great disservice by dismissing observational
evidence and logic because of this fanaticism.
A machine with the ability to reproduce is *NOT* simple. And
it could not have come about through a process that *DEPENDS*
on the ability to reproduce. This is illogical.
I find it interesting that the word "organized" has the same
root word as "organic" in it.
- Bill
Robert Wilderspin
In article: <320E4B...@inlink.com> Bill Zimmerly <bi...@inlink.com> writes:
>
[snip]
> So what if Joe Blow calls this engineer "God"? Just because
> of a *fanatic* desire to say that "there is no God", we do
> science a great disservice by dismissing observational
> evidence and logic because of this fanaticism.
Exactly what observational evidence and logic are you talking about
here? Evidence of a God would be news to a few people, myself
included, and there's certainly no logic in there being one. There isn't
any logic in there not being one either, but with the lack of contrary
evidence it's safe to assume for the moment.
> A machine with the ability to reproduce is *NOT* simple. And
> it could not have come about through a process that *DEPENDS*
> on the ability to reproduce. This is illogical.
Not at all. If the "primordial soup" had billions of *very* simple life-
forms floating around in it, which is a fair enough assumption given
the timescale involved, then I'd also say that it's an even bet that one
of them would get mutated somehow into being able to split into two.
Solar radiation, natural radiaton, chemical process, whatever, it's not
unfeasible. Remember that at the lowest level reproduction is just
splitting into two, which can't be all that hard.
> I find it interesting that the word "organized" has the same
> root word as "organic" in it.
And religion has "to tie up" as it's root. So what?
--
Robert Wilderspin
Eric Minch
> what he wants to create?
>
dogmatic pronouncements, and that *I* find creationism even more
ludicrously improbable than spontaneous self-organization. This is not
dogmatic, it's clearly a personal opinion.
> Why not forget the religious dogma from *BOTH* sides of the
> origins argument and accept the perfectly reasonable
> explanation that DESIGN reflects the SKILL and CAPABILITIES
> of it's designer.
>
In this case, the designer is supposed to have created a system and then
tinkered with it for three days (Genesis I:11-13) before creating life
(grass and fruit trees). The fourth day the plants get stars and moon and
oh yes how about some sunshine (Genesis I:14-19). The animals were spread
out over the next three days for some reason: first fish, birds, and
whales (??), then cattle and "beasts of the earth", and then little ol' us
(Genesis I:20-31).
It all sounds pretty haphazard to me, speaking as an engineer. Now if I
were an omniscient and omnipotent designer whose job was to create life, I
would configure the initial conditions just so, and then sit back until
the little critters appeared by themselves. That would be good design.
Instead, the story goes, this engineer was fiddling and tweaking during
the entire development process, despite reputedly having infinite skill
and capabilities.
> Likewise so, I appreciate the skill and ability that
> permeates the design of microscopic machines that can
> replicate themselves...an ability, it is noteworthy to point
> out, that mankind is FAR from being able to duplicate.
>
Your implicit assumption is that organisms are machines. Show me a machine
with an indefinitely malleable state set, and I'll show you a perversion
of the concept of machine. (And yes, I know Webster's Ninth Collegiate
says "2a: a living organism or one of its functional systems", and yes I
think this is a perversion, for which we may have Descartes to blame.)
> I find it interesting that the word "organized" has the same
> root word as "organic" in it.
>
Why? They both come from a semantic cluster that includes "work" and
"tool", but doesn't it make more sense to believe that all mechanisms
derive from life than that all life is mechanism?
--
Bill Zimmerly
Robert Wilderspin wrote:
>
> In article: <320E4B...@inlink.com> Bill Zimmerly <bi...@inlink.com> writes:
>>
>> So what if Joe Blow calls this engineer "God"? Just
>> because
>> of a *fanatic* desire to say that "there is no God", we do
>> science a great disservice by dismissing observational
>> evidence and logic because of this fanaticism.
>
> Exactly what observational evidence and logic are
> you talking about here?
Good question...
My answer *begins* with the *OBSERVATION* that *all* living
things originate from living things.
Do you dispute this? Is there anything illogical about
inductively reasoning that this has always been the case?
> Evidence of a God would be news to a few people, myself
> included, and there's certainly no logic in there being
> one.
There certainly is *observational* evidence that complex
machinery reflects the creative power and ability of the
designer of said machinery.
Do you dispute this? Is there anything illogical about
inductively reasoning that this has always been the case?
> There isn't any logic in there not being one either,
> but with the lack of contrary evidence it's safe to
> assume for the moment.
In the short time that I've lived here, and the even shorter
time that I've been a member of the creative guild of
engineers, I've *NEVER* seen the "spontaneous generation" of
any form complex machinery.
All that I've ever *seen* (*OBSERVATION* again) is minds
applying the active properties of their experience and
education designing such complex machinery and *work* being
carried out to produce those machines from the given raw
materials available and necessary for each and every part to
do its function.
Do you dispute this? Is there anything illogical about
inductively reasoning that this has always been the case?
>> A machine with the ability to reproduce is *NOT* simple.
>> And it could not have come about through a process that
>> *DEPENDS* on the ability to reproduce. This is illogical.
>
> Not at all. If the "primordial soup" had billions of
> *very* simple life-
If??? *IF*!!!?????????????
I thought we were dealing with science...you know, the kind
of thing that requires *observation*, *measurability*,
*reproducability* in order to establish an assertion as
*FACT*.
I also have *GRAVE* reservations with the assertion that life
is *very* simple...
...for the *simplest* forms of life that we observe in the
HERE AND NOW are far from being simple! Anyone who studies
the mechanisms of cellular reproduction knows this.
If it's so simple then I would challenge those who assert
this to *MAKE* such a simple thing. Let's see now...a tiny,
microscopic machine that can self-replicate *BOTH* its own
hardware *AND* software!!
If this isn't a foolish assertion, what is???
> ...forms floating around in it, which is a fair
> enough assumption given the timescale involved, then I'd
> also say that it's an even bet that one
> of them would get mutated somehow into being able to split
> into two.
There it is again...eons of *TIME* to the rescue...
Frog ----> (time==instantaneous) --------> Prince
...is a child's fairy tale, BUT...
Frog ----> (time==billions of years) ----> Prince
...is asserted as a "fair enough assumption" by you,
and "SCIENCE" by others with a little more religious zeal.
> Solar radiation, natural radiaton, chemical process,
> whatever, it's not unfeasible.
Oh yes it is unfeasible. I don't care how many tornados fly
through junkyards, *NO* 747s will ever be created by that no
matter how much time you give it.
I would also challenge anyone who knows anything about
statistics to "run-the-numbers" and prove that monkeys typing
randomly on typewriters for billions of years that eventually
one of them will produce an exact copy of even one of William
Shakespeares's novels.
(Try it...assume monkeys the size of angstroms, filling a
sphere 20 billion light years in radius, each typing at a
rate of 1,000,000 keystrokes a second, for a period of 20
billion years...and see if there is a reasonable chance of
creating EVEN ONE Shakespearean paragraph of 500 characters
of 28 letters, spaces, and periods.
This would be statistically about as reasonable as *JUST ONE*
biologically useful protein being manufactured by random
chance and eons of time, when we *observe* that ALL such
proteins are made up of exacting sequences of left-handed
amino acids which are ALL IN THE PRESENT OBSERVABLE TIME
BEING MADE by little microscopic machines with software; DNA,
tRNA, mRNA and hardware; ribosomes, water, iorganic ions
(Na+, K+, Mg2+, Ca2+, Fe2+, Cl-, PO4-4+, etc.), carbohydrates
and precursors, amino acids and precursors, nucleotides and
precursors, lipids and precursors, other small molecules
(heme, quinones, breakdown products of food molecules, etc.),
working in concert to make said protein!)
> Remember that at the lowest level reproduction is just
> splitting into two, which can't be all that hard.
Oh brother!!!!! (The engineer in me wonders, "Should I laugh
or cry?")
So are you now asserting that a rock that breaks in half
because another rock fell on it qualifies as a reproducing
life form????????
>> I find it interesting that the word "organized"
>> has the same root word as "organic" in it.
>
> And religion has "to tie up" as it's root. So what?
Let's review now...I've emphasized *observing* how things are
in the present, which is all that we can honestly be expected
to do, and take that knowledge and apply inductive reasoning
to it to try and make sense of the past...
...whereas *you* play games with imagination, definitions,
and an unshakable *FAITH* in the "Spontaneous Generation" of
"*very* simple" life forms that none of us, incidently, has
ever observed and...
...imply that *I'm* religious?!?!!?!?!? Sheesh!
> --
> Robert Wilderspin
- Bill
Bill Zimmerly
>> what he wants to create?
>>
> Read the post. To repeat, I said that the question doesn't benefit from
> dogmatic pronouncements, and that *I* find creationism even more
> ludicrously improbable than spontaneous self-organization. This is not
> dogmatic, it's clearly a personal opinion.
>
So *you* find the belief that complex design requiring a
skilled designer up to the task to be "ludicrously
improbable" in spite of the *observable* fact that it occurs
IN THE HERE AND NOW so often that it is
indisputable...but..."spontaneous self-organization" to be
more reasonable for machines that are far more complex!
You're certainly entitled to such an opinion, and I'm
certainly entitled to defend my "personal opinion" as well.
>> Why not forget the religious dogma from *BOTH* sides of the
>> origins argument and accept the perfectly reasonable
>> explanation that DESIGN reflects the SKILL and CAPABILITIES
>> of it's designer.
>>
> In this case, the designer is supposed to have created a system and then
> tinkered with it for three days (Genesis I:11-13) before creating life
> (grass and fruit trees). The fourth day the plants get stars and moon and
> oh yes how about some sunshine (Genesis I:14-19). The animals were spread
> out over the next three days for some reason: first fish, birds, and
> whales (??), then cattle and "beasts of the earth", and then little ol' us
> (Genesis I:20-31).
You're putting words in my mouth, I asserted NONE OF THESE
THINGS to be science!!!
> It all sounds pretty haphazard to me, speaking as an engineer. Now if I
> were an omniscient and omnipotent designer whose job was to create life, I
> would configure the initial conditions just so, and then sit back until
> the little critters appeared by themselves. That would be good design.
> Instead, the story goes, this engineer was fiddling and tweaking during
> the entire development process, despite reputedly having infinite skill
> and capabilities.
Again, aren't you deviating from the facts and logic that I'm
bringing to the table and putting words in my mouth...I
repeat, I ASSERTED NONE OF THESE THINGS TO BE SCIENCE!!!
To be a creationist, which I am, does not require me to
assert that Bible stories are SCIENCE, which I do not do!!
>> Likewise so, I appreciate the skill and ability that
>> permeates the design of microscopic machines that can
>> replicate themselves...an ability, it is noteworthy to point
>> out, that mankind is FAR from being able to duplicate.
>>
> Your implicit assumption is that organisms are machines. Show me a machine
> with an indefinitely malleable state set, and I'll show you a perversion
> of the concept of machine. (And yes, I know Webster's Ninth Collegiate
> says "2a: a living organism or one of its functional systems", and yes I
> think this is a perversion, for which we may have Descartes to blame.)
Hmmm...this may be your opinion as well, but *I* speak
english and Webster's is the final authority on the
definitions that I use.
From childhood on, I was taught that my body is a machine,
with individual parts organized in a grand scheme with each
part of that being there for a purpose. I make no mistake nor
"perversion", as you call it, in asserting that this machine
reflects a glorious design that humbles anything that you or
I have ever engineered.
I just find it FAR MORE REASONABLE to believe, supported by
the evidences and logic of my life's experiences that this
machine reflects a great and capable mind's abilities.
You however, begin a'priori with a staunch faith that such a
machine reflects no such intelligence, which I find to be
totally absurd and "perverse".
>> I find it interesting that the word "organized" has the same
>> root word as "organic" in it.
>>
> Why? They both come from a semantic cluster that includes "work" and
> "tool", but doesn't it make more sense to believe that all mechanisms
> derive from life than that all life is mechanism?
To use your own words, "doesn't it make more sense" to
believe that all life is derived from other life of a similar
kind?
Now, because NONE of us is qualified to say with the force of
*science* what was the origin of the first living
thing(s)...because the strict requirements of science won't
allow for such pronouncements...then we must logically
conclude either one of two possibilities...
Life begat life begat life, etc. etc. ad infinitum...
...OR...
Life, because of it's observable complexity and our knowledge
of what constitutes the minimal definition of life,
(self-replication, for after all, it HAD TO HAVE CHILDREN),
coupled with the observable, measurable and repeatable fact
that machines of such complexity don't "just happen", but are
always observed as the products of intelligent design and
skill.
..."makes sense too"...in *my* "personal opinion". (...But I
will not, indeed I cannot, call it "science".)
> --
>
> Eric Minch
> Stanford Genetics Department
>
> http://lotka.stanford.edu/~minch/
- Bill
Jim Barr
In article <3213FC...@inlink.com>, Bill Zimmerly <bi...@inlink.com>
writes
must at this point recommend that you read Daniel C Dennets book,
'Darwins dangerous idea', it gives some very good arguaments in an easy
to digest manner.
I do not expect it to change some of your 'strong' beliefs, just make
you think on a wider scale.
Eric Minch
In article <3213FC...@inlink.com> Bill Zimmerly <bi...@inlink.com>
writes:
> Eric Minch wrote:
>> [snip snip Genesis I].
>
> You're putting words in my mouth, I asserted NONE OF THESE
> THINGS to be science!!!
>
>
> Again, aren't you deviating from the facts and logic that I'm
> bringing to the table and putting words in my mouth...I
> repeat, I ASSERTED NONE OF THESE THINGS TO BE SCIENCE!!!
> To be a creationist, which I am, does not require me to
> assert that Bible stories are SCIENCE, which I do not do!!
>
to this discussion, and that you want to base your conclusions on science.
Now, keeping in mind that parsimony (or Occam's Razor) is one of the
principles of scientific explanation, why is it necessary to introduce the
hypothesis of a creator in order to explain the origin of life? Once the
Universe itself came into existence, whether by Big Bang or Big Guy in the
Sky, the whole thing could run itself without outside intervention (in
theology BTW this is called deism). Are you saying that
1: we needed one creator for the Universe and another one for life, or
2: the Universe came into existence spontaneously but a creator created
life, or
3: the same creator created both the Universe and then later on life?
The first two possibilities are absurd, and the last implies ignorance of
the product requirements and a generally inelegant and shoddy design
process.
>> [snip snip organisms aren't machines despite what Webster's may say]
>
> Hmmm...this may be your opinion as well, but *I* speak
> english and Webster's is the final authority on the
> definitions that I use.
>
Wait, I thought we agreed to eschew appeals to religious or secular
authority; to think for ourselves instead of blindly accepting
pronouncements. Besides, Webster's dictionary is a descriptive compendium,
not a prescriptive one, and includes many commonly occurring misusages in
its definitions.
> From childhood on, I was taught that my body is a machine,
> with individual parts organized in a grand scheme with each
> part of that being there for a purpose.
>
Wait, I thought we agreed to eschew appeals to authority, to think things
through instead of blindly accepting what we're told....oh well.
I'll tell you what, you go on thinking you're a machine whose ancestors
were created by an engineer, and I'll continue working on the assumption
that things are a good deal more complex than that.
Santiago Arteaga
>Robert Wilderspin wrote:
>My answer *begins* with the *OBSERVATION* that *all* living
>things originate from living things.
>
>Do you dispute this? Is there anything illogical about
>inductively reasoning that this has always been the case?
Yes, this reasoning is wrong. The conclusion may be true or
not, but the reasoning itself is wrong. Let me illustrate it with a
silly example. In order to build a factory, you "need" manufactured
products which are produced in other factories. Therefore, there have
always been factories, and the first factory had to be created by God.
The error is obvious; you don't really "need" other
manufactured products to build a factory; you could start with stones
and wood to produce axes... The fact that nowadays nobody would build
a factory this way is because the circumstances have changed: nowadays
we do have factories. Have you ever seen somebody building a factory
with stones? And yet you'll agree it happened.
With life, it could be the same; now we do see that every
living being comes from another living being, but that doesn't
necessarily mean that it has always been this way, because the
circumstances have changed a lot since the times when (suposedly)
there were no living beings. In particular, if life sprouted today
somewhere, it wouldn't have a chance to survive the much more evolved
predators that there exist today on Earth. So, in principle, the fact
that we don't see life appearing all over the place doesn't mean
anything.
>In the short time that I've lived here, and the even shorter
>time that I've been a member of the creative guild of
>engineers, I've *NEVER* seen the "spontaneous generation" of
>any form complex machinery.
Right. And yet, think about the road system or the internet.
These things sort of appeared spontaneously; nobody designed them in a
definitive, unchangeable way, and then built them to never be changed.
Think of an ecosystem regulating itself. Or a star. Or a chemical
reaction like the formation of ozone. There are a lot of things out
there which can appear spontaneously and regulate themselves. Just
because this hasn't happened with machinery doesn't mean it didn't
happen with life. Reasoning by analogy is not going to convince
anybody.
>All that I've ever *seen* (*OBSERVATION* again)
Excuse me, but you are not God; you have not seen it all.
All these generalizations you are making are just generalizations.
You can not prove them, and we can not provide a counterexample;
and yet, you do insist they are true, and we keep disputing them.
You should realize at some time that this logic you are using isn't
that final, as I have realized that my logic in favor of evolution
isn't that final. You have as much chance of changing my mind as I
have of changing yours, namely, no chance at all. Could now this
discussion be moved to talk.origins, where it belongs?
Santi
Robert Wilderspin
> > dogmatic pronouncements, and that *I* find creationism even more
> > ludicrously improbable than spontaneous self-organization. This is not
> > dogmatic, it's clearly a personal opinion.
>
> So *you* find the belief that complex design requiring a
> skilled designer up to the task to be "ludicrously
> improbable" in spite of the *observable* fact that it occurs
> IN THE HERE AND NOW so often that it is
> indisputable...but..."spontaneous self-organization" to be
> more reasonable for machines that are far more complex!
So you're saying that the things we design are complex, even when
compared to what we see in nature? I'd say that we see very little
complex design in the here and now, on that scale. Or are you talking
about nature itself?
> You're certainly entitled to such an opinion, and I'm
> certainly entitled to defend my "personal opinion" as well.
Such is the glory of usenet. Remember, kids, that you shouldn't believe
all that you read or all that you think you know.
> To be a creationist, which I am, does not require me to
> assert that Bible stories are SCIENCE, which I do not do!!
So what scientific basis *do* you have for creationism, apart from saying that
evolution isn't plausible? There might be a third option, or a fourth, but you'd
still have to prove it to me. Evolutionary theory has the best explanation, in my
opinion, and I haven't heard a decent creationism explanation yet. I'd love to
be proved wrong.
> Hmmm...this may be your opinion as well, but *I* speak
> english and Webster's is the final authority on the
> definitions that I use.
I speak English, and the Oxford English Dictionary is my final authority. That
doesn't mean that I always follow what they say though. I'll say what *I* think
a word means until someone gets anal enough for me to look it up. :^)
> From childhood on, I was taught that my body is a machine,
> with individual parts organized in a grand scheme with each
> part of that being there for a purpose. I make no mistake nor
> "perversion", as you call it, in asserting that this machine
> reflects a glorious design that humbles anything that you or
> I have ever engineered.
So you've found a use for your appendix then? Funny that, because rabbits,
who are said to be cousins of ours on the evolutionary tree (being mammals),
have. What a grand design indeed. If we are in His image, then so are a hell
of a lot of other animals.
> I just find it FAR MORE REASONABLE to believe, supported by
> the evidences and logic of my life's experiences that this
> machine reflects a great and capable mind's abilities.
What life experiences can you possibly have of creationism? Just because
we can't create machines that replicate doesn't mean that some great
thingy did, or that we will never be able to.
> To use your own words, "doesn't it make more sense" to
> believe that all life is derived from other life of a similar
> kind?
Yes! Evolution is exactly that - *gradual* steps. The crunch comes
when you're at that border between life and non-life.
> Now, because NONE of us is qualified to say with the force of
> *science* what was the origin of the first living
> thing(s)...because the strict requirements of science won't
> allow for such pronouncements...
Er, we *have* said, with scientific backing, how life evolved on this
planet. It's not set-in-granite proof, but it's a damn sight closer than
what you're suggesting.
> then we must logically
> conclude either one of two possibilities...
>
> Life begat life begat life, etc. etc. ad infinitum...
Sort of. Carry on.
> ...OR...
>
> Life, because of it's observable complexity and our knowledge
> of what constitutes the minimal definition of life,
> (self-replication, for after all, it HAD TO HAVE CHILDREN),
> coupled with the observable, measurable and repeatable fact
> that machines of such complexity don't "just happen", but are
> always observed as the products of intelligent design and
> skill.
>
> ..."makes sense too"...in *my* "personal opinion". (...But I
> will not, indeed I cannot, call it "science".)
1. We have no knowledge of what constitutes the minimal defintion
of life. Everyone has their own different opinion on this, so you can't
use that as any scientific yardstick.
2. Complexity is a sliding scale, and we're always sliding upwards with
new machines.
3. Not all living things have children. As a species that's a bummer, but
it's no problem for that specific beast.
4. Just because those complex machines don't "just happen" doesn't mean
that we think they never will. Most reasonable scientists can foresee a computer
that builds a better version of itself, a la Hitchhiker's Guide, as it's not that far
removed from the current state of events.
5. That's a very hard sentence to understand, Bill.
6. I'm sorry for following up to these, but there isn't that much traffic here anyway,
so what the hell. :-) It's keeping me amused, at the very least.
--
Robert Wilderspin
Robert Wilderspin
Warning... Long article follows... It might be boring...
In article: <3213F3...@inlink.com> Bill Zimmerly <bi...@inlink.com> writes:
> Robert Wilderspin wrote:
> > Exactly what observational evidence and logic are
> > you talking about here?
>
> My answer *begins* with the *OBSERVATION* that *all* living
> things originate from living things.
>
> Do you dispute this? Is there anything illogical about
> inductively reasoning that this has always been the case?
Yes. At some point there is a cut-off between your definition of living
and non-living. Everyone's opinion varies on where that point is. It all
depends on how closely you look at those things on the borderline between
the two as to whether you think that *all* living things come from living things
also. I believe that the borderline is fuzzy enough to allow evolution from non-
living to living, but YMMV, obviously.
> > Evidence of a God would be news to a few people, myself
> > included, and there's certainly no logic in there being
> > one.
>
> There certainly is *observational* evidence that complex
> machinery reflects the creative power and ability of the
> designer of said machinery.
>
> Do you dispute this? Is there anything illogical about
> inductively reasoning that this has always been the case?
I don't dispute this, but I will add that I think that evolution is the master
designer, not some hyped-up figment of some people's imagination.
We can *prove* that evolution happens, experiments have been done,
but no-one's proved that this God exists at all. From a scientific viewpoint,
I'd be more inclined to believe in UFOs.
> In the short time that I've lived here, and the even shorter
> time that I've been a member of the creative guild of
> engineers, I've *NEVER* seen the "spontaneous generation" of
> any form complex machinery.
And you've been in this CGE for what, forty years? Hardly on the
evolutionary timescale, is it? I've never won a lottery jackpot, and the
odds of that are only 15 million to one here, but it doesn't mean that
lotteries don't exist or that people never win them.
> All that I've ever *seen* (*OBSERVATION* again) is minds
> applying the active properties of their experience and
> education designing such complex machinery and *work* being
> carried out to produce those machines from the given raw
> materials available and necessary for each and every part to
> do its function.
Evolution can evaluate that experience and education and cause
improvements in the design and production as well. Engineers aren't
the be-all and end-all of design. Evolution works on such a timescale that
bad designs get weeded out and the stronger ones survive, rather than
trying to get it right first time.
> >> A machine with the ability to reproduce is *NOT* simple.
> >> And it could not have come about through a process that
> >> *DEPENDS* on the ability to reproduce. This is illogical.
> >
> > Not at all. If the "primordial soup" had billions of
> > *very* simple life-
>
> If??? *IF*!!!?????????????
>
> I thought we were dealing with science...you know, the kind
> of thing that requires *observation*, *measurability*,
> *reproducability* in order to establish an assertion as
> *FACT*.
It's less fanciful than your observable, measurable and reproducable
theory of some great creator starting it all off. Like I said, there have been
experiments done that evolve species into different forms (fruit flies, I think).
Simple, but that's all it takes. Also, a group tried to recreate the
conditions around on Earth all those billions of years ago, in a lab, and
managed to get something out of it. I can't remember whether it was up to
amino acid levels, but it was a step closer. Anyone have a reference for
an experiment like that? Probably in one of the ALife proceedings books.
> I also have *GRAVE* reservations with the assertion that life
> is *very* simple...
>
> ...for the *simplest* forms of life that we observe in the
> HERE AND NOW are far from being simple! Anyone who studies
> the mechanisms of cellular reproduction knows this.
Okay, I'm far from an expert, I'm just saying what I see and hear...
Again, it depends on where you define life. Since there is such a fuzzy
line between the two states I'd say that it's not such a great mental leap
to imagine evolution between finite steps between the two.
Have you ever read "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins? I'd
appreciate your views on it, if you have (but perhaps by email, unless this
actually is on-topic :-)
> If it's so simple then I would challenge those who assert
> this to *MAKE* such a simple thing. Let's see now...a tiny,
> microscopic machine that can self-replicate *BOTH* its own
> hardware *AND* software!!
Hmm. Not microscopic, but it's possible with a larger machine. Give us a
few hundred/thousand years and it'll get as small as you want it. Once the
hardware has been copied (by cameras, sensors, manipulators, etc) it's a
small hassle copying the software over.
> If this isn't a foolish assertion, what is???
At worst, it's only equally as foolish as your assertion. At least I can back
mine up with some degree of proof.
> There it is again...eons of *TIME* to the rescue...
>
> Frog ----> (time==instantaneous) --------> Prince
>
> ...is a child's fairy tale, BUT...
I agree...
> Frog ----> (time==billions of years) ----> Prince
>
> ...is asserted as a "fair enough assumption" by you,
> and "SCIENCE" by others with a little more religious zeal.
How many stages would there be between Frog and Prince? Can you imagine
a frog being born with slightly longer legs than the others, which would be of
benefit to that frog? I can, and that's all there is to evolution. Break it down into
a thousand billion stages if you want, but there is going to be a way to get from one
place to another, and all it takes is time.
If you can imagine the *smallest* difference from one stage to another, then you
can see loads of those differences combining to perform what we call evolution.
Fossil record? Ah, He must've put that there as well, just to confuse us. The
sooner we all agree that the Bible is a pile of crock the better, so that we can get
on with more important things in life. It *might* be true, but I've only people's say-so
to back it up, and they've only got other people's say-so, which is too flimsy for me.
Sorry for the religion rant again. I know it's not productive to knock it, but it does
wind me up sometimes. Ignore it if you want to - we're not going to change each
other's opinions about something that big.
> > Solar radiation, natural radiaton, chemical process,
> > whatever, it's not unfeasible.
>
> Oh yes it is unfeasible. I don't care how many tornados fly
> through junkyards, *NO* 747s will ever be created by that no
> matter how much time you give it.
How about a junkyard with a 747 that's only missing a wheel, or a nut on a wheel?
More plausible, yes? So what about *that* incomplete 747 with a window missing?
And then *that* 747 with a panel missing? You can see my point here. From every
conceivable state there is one that's very close, but still closer to the final goal, and
a succession of these will take it to the end-point (a whole 747, chimpanzee,
amoeba). It takes a lot of junkyards, a lot of tornadoes, and a lot of time, but it gets
there.
> I would also challenge anyone who knows anything about
> statistics to "run-the-numbers" and prove that monkeys typing
> randomly on typewriters for billions of years that eventually
> one of them will produce an exact copy of even one of William
> Shakespeares's novels.
If "How close is that piece to one of Shakespeare's" is the fitness function
then monkeys won't do so badly. Remember that it's not purely random, not
at all. If you only keep the monkeys that get close and breed from them, so
that each successive generation is building from the work of the previous one,
then it doesn't take as long at all.
In Richard Dawkin's book he explains it well. A sentence with 28 characters will take
27^28 goes to write purely by luck (and that's 26 letters with a space). Given the
"building by mutation" property, which is the heart of evolutionary theory, it took him
between 40 and 70 "goes" to get it exactly right. Look it up - I can't explain it properly
here. However, it basically says that you won't get a 747 from scratch, but it'll get
there piece by piece.
> (Try it...assume monkeys the size of angstroms, filling a
> sphere 20 billion light years in radius, each typing at a
> rate of 1,000,000 keystrokes a second, for a period of 20
> billion years...and see if there is a reasonable chance of
> creating EVEN ONE Shakespearean paragraph of 500 characters
> of 28 letters, spaces, and periods.
Mutation from previous generations, *not* pure random chance. You haven't
read about this, have you. It makes a huge difference. It's like saying, "Here you
go monkey, this is sort of like a Shakespearean paragraph. Make it better." If it
does then you pass it on to the next monkey and say the same thing. If not, then you
try again with a different monkey. You'll get there in the end, and a lot quicker than
telling a million monkeys to "just do it".
> This would be statistically about as reasonable as *JUST ONE*
> biologically useful protein being manufactured by random
> chance and eons of time, when we *observe* that ALL such
> proteins are made up of exacting sequences of left-handed
> amino acids which are ALL IN THE PRESENT OBSERVABLE TIME
> BEING MADE by little microscopic machines with software; DNA,
> tRNA, mRNA and hardware; ribosomes, water, iorganic ions
> (Na+, K+, Mg2+, Ca2+, Fe2+, Cl-, PO4-4+, etc.), carbohydrates
> and precursors, amino acids and precursors, nucleotides and
> precursors, lipids and precursors, other small molecules
> (heme, quinones, breakdown products of food molecules, etc.),
> working in concert to make said protein!)
Well, isn't that a fancy list of, erm, something. I see that you mentioned random
chance again. Tut tut - that's not what evolution is about, so don't confuse people.
Either you know a lot about it, or you're good at looking things up, but that list means
absolutely nothing. In the end, it's all just a jumble of molecules with long names.
> > Remember that at the lowest level reproduction is just
> > splitting into two, which can't be all that hard.
>
> Oh brother!!!!! (The engineer in me wonders, "Should I laugh
> or cry?")
>
> So are you now asserting that a rock that breaks in half
> because another rock fell on it qualifies as a reproducing
> life form????????
If: A) you count rocks as forms of life, and B) those rocks contrived to make other
rocks fall upon them, then possibly. I have no real idea about this, but don't amoeba
just split into two when they've had enough food, or the right surrounding chemicals,
or something similar? Doesn't sound so special to me. (Again, I know nothing about
this, but it can't be that spectacular).
> Let's review now...I've emphasized *observing* how things are
> in the present, which is all that we can honestly be expected
> to do, and take that knowledge and apply inductive reasoning
> to it to try and make sense of the past...
All you've said is "Goodness me, I can't see how that happened. There must be
a God who created it all for us." That is *not* inductive reasoning.
> ...whereas *you* play games with imagination, definitions,
> and an unshakable *FAITH* in the "Spontaneous Generation" of
> "*very* simple" life forms that none of us, incidently, has
> ever observed and...
>
> ...imply that *I'm* religious?!?!!?!?!? Sheesh!
I've made a less firmer definition of "living" than you have. My imagination
has been limited from one generation to the next, whereas you are implying
some creator-being magicking us all into existence 4000 years ago, or
whatever, with no evidence, proof or even reasonable logic.
I've never mentioned spontaneous generation. Indeed, that's what you've been
suggesting. What I say is that it happened very, very gradually, over such a time
that none of us could've observed it fully.
You know how humans breed dogs to be different? Why can't you just extrapolate
that over billions of years, as opposed to the few hundreds that we've done it, and
see that something *entirely* *different* will come out at the end?
For crying out loud, read The Blind Watchmaker, and if you can prove any of it
wrong then I'd love to hear about it. I'm not clever enough to think of these things
myself, but he's got the most plausible explanation of it that I've heard so far.
--
Robert Wilderspin
Jim Barr
In article <4v3f26$6...@courant.cs.umd.edu>, Santiago Arteaga
<art...@cs.umd.edu> writes
>
>>Robert Wilderspin wrote:
>
>>My answer *begins* with the *OBSERVATION* that *all* living
>>things originate from living things.
>>
>>Do you dispute this? Is there anything illogical about
>>inductively reasoning that this has always been the case?
>
>not, but the reasoning itself is wrong. Let me illustrate it with a
>silly example. In order to build a factory, you "need" manufactured
>products which are produced in other factories. Therefore, there have
>always been factories, and the first factory had to be created by God.
> The error is obvious; you don't really "need" other
>manufactured products to build a factory; you could start with stones
>and wood to produce axes... The fact that nowadays nobody would build
>a factory this way is because the circumstances have changed: nowadays
>we do have factories. Have you ever seen somebody building a factory
>with stones? And yet you'll agree it happened.
> With life, it could be the same; now we do see that every
>living being comes from another living being, but that doesn't
>necessarily mean that it has always been this way, because the
>circumstances have changed a lot since the times when (suposedly)
>there were no living beings. In particular, if life sprouted today
>somewhere, it wouldn't have a chance to survive the much more evolved
>predators that there exist today on Earth. So, in principle, the fact
>that we don't see life appearing all over the place doesn't mean
>anything.
>
>
>
>>time that I've been a member of the creative guild of
>>engineers, I've *NEVER* seen the "spontaneous generation" of
>>any form complex machinery.
>
>These things sort of appeared spontaneously; nobody designed them in a
>definitive, unchangeable way, and then built them to never be changed.
>Think of an ecosystem regulating itself. Or a star. Or a chemical
>reaction like the formation of ozone. There are a lot of things out
>there which can appear spontaneously and regulate themselves. Just
>because this hasn't happened with machinery doesn't mean it didn't
>happen with life. Reasoning by analogy is not going to convince
>anybody.
>
>
>
>
>All these generalizations you are making are just generalizations.
>You can not prove them, and we can not provide a counterexample;
>and yet, you do insist they are true, and we keep disputing them.
>You should realize at some time that this logic you are using isn't
>that final, as I have realized that my logic in favor of evolution
>isn't that final. You have as much chance of changing my mind as I
>have of changing yours, namely, no chance at all. Could now this
>discussion be moved to talk.origins, where it belongs?
>
> Santi
Can I just point out that according to my NG records ( which may be
wrong!), You appear to be replying to the comments of Robert Wilderspin
and my records suggest that the comments were actually from Bill
Zimmerly.
If I am wrong I apologise but in any event PLEASE try to make sure that
replies are correctly addressed so people following the flow can actualy
associate ideas with people not just the group.
Thanks, Jim
Arthur Chandler
Robert Wilderspin (R...@robwilde.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: I don't dispute this, but I will add that I think that evolution is the master
: designer, not some hyped-up figment of some people's imagination.
[snip]
: Evolution can evaluate that experience and education and cause
: improvements in the design and production as well. Engineers aren't
: the be-all and end-all of design. Evolution works on such a timescale that
: bad designs get weeded out and the stronger ones survive, rather than
: trying to get it right first time.
Though we've wandered afield from "artificial death," there is a very
interesting issue here which might impact thinking about artificial
life. This is the notion of "Evolution" as a first cause, or even as a
conscious entity.
In literary criticism, there is an old term called "the pathetic
fallacy." It was first used by the Victorian writer/critic John Ruskin,
and denotes of writers at that time to credit nature with human
characteristics. "The cruel, crawling foam" is the textbook example