… with Mung. In a recent comment Mung asserted that
If Darwinists had to put up their hard earned money they would soon go broke and Darwinism would be long dead. I have a standing $10,000 challenge here at TSZ that no one has ever taken me up on.
Now, I don’t have $10,000 to bet on anything, but it is worth exploring what bet Mung was making. Perhaps a bet of a lower amount could be negotiated, so it is worth trying to figure out what the issue was.
Mung’s original challenge will be found here. It was in a thread in which I had proposed a bet of $100 that a Weasel program would do much better than random sampling. When people there started talking about whether enough money could be found to take Mung up on the bet, they assumed that it was a simple raising of the stake for my bet. But Mung said here:
You want to wager over something that was never in dispute?
Why not offer a meaningful wager?
So apparently Mung was offering a bet on something else.
I think I have a little insight on what was the “meaningful wager”, or at least on what issue. It would lead us to a rather extraordinary bet. Let me explain below the fold …
Mung accepted that Weasel programs reach their goal far faster than random sampling. However Mung also said (here) that
Weasel programs perform better than blind search because they are guided. I didn’t think the performance was in dispute, nor why the performance was better.
and elsewhere characterized Weasels as succeeding because of “intelligence” as opposed to ignorance.
So let’s imagine what might happen if we took Mung up on the $10,000 bet. We would bet that the Weasel would succeed, because of cumulative selection. Mung would bet that (because of “intelligence” or being “guided”) the Weasel would succeed. The stake would be held by a house of some sort, which would not take a commission.
The Weasel would be run. It would succeed. So the house would declare that we had all won. The stake would be given to the bettors, in proportion to their bets. But alas, no one actually bet against the Weasel. So the winnings would be zero. Everyone, Mung and the rest of us, would get their stake back, and that’s all.
To bet against Mung, we have to come up with some event that distinguishes cumulative selection from “intelligence” (or being “guided”). That seems to be the issue on which Mung was offering a $10,000 bet, and declaring (here) us all to be “pretender[s]” because we would not put up or shut up.
So there it is. We’re all betting on the same side, and no one will win or lose a penny. Unless Mung can come up with some test that distinguished “intelligence” or being “guided” from cumulative selection.
Now I am possibly misunderstanding what the bet actually would be. I hope that Mung will straighten us out on that, so that we can understand what test is proposed, and place our bets.
phoodoo,
Since it is identical to the first, you can take it that it is also as incisive as the first. You seem to be playing some dumb game where you insist I have constantly changed my definition. No evidence has been offered that I have done so. Mung has offered a statement by someone else as evidence. I offer, as counter-evidence, the standard definition given in textbooks on evolutionary biology published long before my first comment on the subject.
newton,
Right, so why are you saying I am calling the less fit more fit. I am calling the fit, fit, right?
I think maybe we also need to expunge the word ‘height’ from our books, while we’re at it. If we’re going to say the tallest are bigger than the rest …
By your definition, of course they do! Using your definition, how would you know when the fittest don’t survive best?
I don’t think you even understand your own definition.
No, because most people are not stupid enough to say, “The tallest are almost always the tallest.”
phoodoo,
It should be easy to work out yourself that this must be the case, probabilistically.
Consider the large census population that goes into the ‘mean’. It’s a distribution. It will include individuals who – for example – were struck by lightning before reproducing. They may have possessed a genotype of high mean fitness, but they still did not ‘most certainly’ survive, nor reproduce.
phoodoo,
Nor do people say ‘the fittest are those that survive’, except in a sound-bite that echoes around your mind to drown out all else.
No, no Alan, this is why your bullshit attempt to always spin the conversation back to a genotype is a fraud. EVERY organism, unless it is an exact clone, has a different genotype.
So a genotype can’t have a fitness, if every one is new.
Besides, who said anything about possessing SOME fit characteristics? That’s not part of the question, that is not part of your definition (are you going to try to change your defintion again??). Characteristics don’t have offspring, Allan, individuals do.
Again, I am in awe of phoodoo’s inability to get this. Religion is where reason and braincells go to die.
phoodoo,
‘Genotype’, in this context, is a subdivision of an entire genome. Carriers of an allele; a trait.
No. Let me implacably restate that my definition has not changed. It has now fallen foul of your understanding of the term ‘genotype’. That, or those textbook writers missed something vital that you have spotted.
Individuals with characteristics do, and those characteristics are passed on. Don’t see your problem. One more wriggle, phoodoo, and you’ll be freeee!
Almost there, those which have the best fit to the environment tend to survive, change the environment what fits changes. You changed the definition of the environment of Weasel. What formerly did not fit now fits. What formerly fit does not fit.
No Alan, subdivisions of genomes don’t have offspring. Sorry, I know how badly you want to escape assigning fitness to individuals, because it helps to confuse and not show the circular stupidity of your position.
But no, I can’t let you off that easy. Only individuals have offspring, not characteristics. No one is talking about the fitness of a characteristic (although I know how hard you are trying to make it about that).
phoodoo,
You appear desperately to want to make it only about individuals. Not sure why – especially in the context of the discussion, which is about Weasel, where genotype, phenotype and individual are much more clearly co-extensive.
No. People are talking about the mean fitness of individuals with that characteristic. This is first year stuff, laddie.
Characteristics define the individual.
Allan Miller,
When I asked the question, about a group of 500 dogs, I asked how to measure which dogs were fit, and which were less fit. I never asked, how to measure which characteristics were fit.
And of course why would anyone ask that, if the definition of fitness is
? Asking what characteristics accrue the most offspring to carriers of a genotype or trait is a nonsense question Allan.
phoodoo,
What? You are wondering why I would think you would ask the question about dogs if you accepted a definition that you don’t accept? Well, beats me either way.
And yet this is exactly the question asked, modelled and measured by scientists. So maybe your beef is with them. I’ll tell them you called; they’ll get back to you shortly.
No Alan, that is YET AGAIN another example of your terrible understanding of simple sentences. I never asked you to hypothesize WHY I asked the question of how to measure the fitness of the dogs in a population of 500, I asked HOW TO MEASURE THE FITNESS OF THE DOGS IN A POPULATION OF 500!
So yes, we are talking about individuals, which only makes sense if we are talking about reproductive success, since characteristics don’t have reproductive success, organisms do!
So Allan, maybe you can give some examples of when a more fit individual has fewer viable offspring, than a less fit organism does?
Not dog carriers though.
That’s mostly because people misunderstand what Weasel is modeling.
And at the end you’re left with a brain-dead atheist.
Yet I can find evolutionist authors defending the tautological definition.
However, it was not offered as evidence of you changing your definition. That would just be silly.
phoodoo,
I think you need to read your own work. The only phrase denoting, in my understanding, a question, was ‘why would I ask that if …’. The rest, you were describing what you had done in a previous post, not, as far as I could tell, asking me to actually address that prior post.
To repeat, organisms have characteristics, which they may pass on. Accumulated, one may establish the mean fitness of a class – organisms with a given genotype. ‘Individuals’ are not passed on, and nor are their offspring numbers.
When it gets struck by lightning young. That was pretty easy.
Perhaps you should read up:
Fitness (biology)
*** Genotype
For some reason, anything and everything said by an evolutionist – The Enemy – is to be doubted to the nth degree. But, I am merely reporting and following standard usage.
Mung,
Well, a tautology is not exactly wrong, is it? 2+2 = 4.
Pretty much anything can be expressed tautologously. Some would have it that evolution can only be expressed tautologously. They Are Wrong.
Now why didn’t I think of that. So you would still have selection, right? Would you still have cumulative selection?
If any person like that actually existed, yes, they would be wrong.
Mung,
Yes. It would take more than one step (I reckon) from a random start to a maximally distant population. There would also be many candidates of equal fitness – there are more ways to have a maximal than a minimal Hamming distance
Mung,
Mung, meet phoodoo.
I find pointless arguing over the survival of he fittest with anyone …
Why argue over this if no one can explain, not to mention prove, the arrival of the fittest…which is fundamental for even considering the fitness for survival in evolution and so on, if the first one is unaccounted for?
Can anyone computer-simulate the evolution of prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells?
I would encourage Dawkins and others to do that first rather than computer-simulate the evolution of organisms that have already arrived and speculate about how they can or cannot change later on…
BTW: The word weasel is synonymous with the word deceiver, which seems appropriate for both missions as that’s exactly what would have to be done for weasel or the like program in order to simulate the evolution of prokaryotes to eukaryotes…
Weasel would have to be programmed to deceive in the firs place; that a large part of software or computer code exists and is there that in fact is actually missing…just as in the evolution of prokaryotes to eukaryotes “…as many eukaryotic genes …seem to have come from nowhere…”
I’m willing to put on line all my money if it can be experimentally proven that endosymbiosis have actually happened…
There is only one path to being keiths.
J-Mac,
I don’t see why you can’t model behaviour without an account of origins. We don’t need to know where the atmosphere came from to model weather, for instance, or the history of the motor car to model traffic.
Experience.
Much of the debate over Weasel has been over this very point.
1. Build such a model.
2. Find a way to quantify and measure “the power of cumulative selection.”
3. Make a wager on which model will have the greater “power of cumulative selection.”
4. Compare “the power of cumulative selection” for the model with a target (Weasel) and the model without a target.
5. Pay up
If I change the target phrase to “Jesus saves, praise the Lord”, will it hit the target in a single miraculous step?
This was done in the math fun thread, where you failed miserably
How would you do it exactly if genes needed for that model are nowhere to be found? By using bias instead?
I sense a lot of anger-induced sarcasm in keiths comments…not that I “know” him… It’s worrisome…
Allan Miller,
Will still don’t have a gene generating simulation program after 30 years of Weasel. The observation that sequences break down without forceful guidance like Weasel provides.
Huh? LoL. I’m trying my best not to get dragged into the whole fitness debate again.
Yes, but given how much like “real biology” Weasel is, it’s obviously using the definition from the biology ones, not the one used in the computing ones.
Right Allan?
Just like in “real biology”!
Mung,
Nah. Here’s a simple model without a target sequence: Genotypes with a sum-of-digits (hex equivalent of ASCII character) nearer to 322 are fitter than those further away. Of course, that is still a ‘target’ of sorts, though it will have many candidates. So modify it such than greater sums are simply fitter than lesser. It will ‘find’ high-values, of course, but does that make it a target?
What the hell is a “gene generating simulation”?
Sorry but this is just demonstrably incorrect. Avida.
Avida. Your experience is a delusion.
Mung,
Right Mung. Given that Dawkins is a biologist, and is modelling biology (not the whole of it, no, don’t be ridiculous; the ‘target’ is a big fat red herring).
It’s a difficult thing, living in a world where you’re always right. So sometimes I try to cut the poor guy some slack.
colewd,
The guidance that Weasel provides is termed ‘selection’. It continues to operate, and prevent genes from breaking down.
Why are you changing the subject? We were talking the fitness criteria. Oh. wait.
Richard’s algorithm in the math fun thread had an infinite search space and an infinite maximum fitness. So there was no way of hitting a “target” sequence if Mung wanted to change his definition of target to whatever sequence that hits the known max value.
Allan Miller,
Are you claiming that there is a weasel program in our cells 🙂
colewd,
No. Our cells are part of a ‘Weasel program’ (without a target). The dangers of metaphor.
I hear you…I know few people like that including my mother in law…
They often suffer in isolation and silence …and blogs become the only way of expressing their feelings…heartbreaking… 🙁
Right. My first thought when I saw Weasel generate the phrase METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL was that it didn’t look anything like a complex eye.