It’s a quicky:
1. In Conway’s life: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life
2. There is the Glider-Producing Switch Engine http://conwaylife.com/wiki/Glider-producing_switch_engine
3. It is coded by 123 “On Cells” but requires a space of 67×60 in a specific configuration.
4. That’s 4,020 bits, > UPB.
5. It contains well matched parts : 4bli,3blo,2bee,1boat,1loaf,1ship,1glider http://wwwhomes.uni-bielefeld.de/achim/moving.html
6. It occurs naturally out of randomly configured dust : http://wwwhomes.uni-bielefeld.de/achim/moving.html
7. It can evolve from a much smaller entity (“time bomb” – 17 active cells): http://conwaylife.appspot.com/pattern/timebomb
Thoughts?
Not just any people Phoodoo.
Top men.
Really.
As opposed to Ken — Noah’s children fucked each other and it was okay — Ham.
That’s really the choice, phoodoo. Science or people who are so stupid they think the flood story makes sense.
OMagain,
My pet theory is that skeptics will believe anything if they are told by other skeptics that is what they should believe.
Well you have a lot of raw data right here on this website. Read through some of the threads where we had arguments among ourselves, and take a look at the outcomes.
There’s no ‘examination of evidence’ phase in Phoodoo’s theories.
No, your pet theory as to the origin of life.
Mine is that an old man in the sky did not do it. What’s yours? That one did?
No, living is metabolism and replication. Atomic layers in crystals replicate, computer viruses replicate. But they are not alive.
So any time my computer makes a copy of a file, that file is alive? That’s silly.
But even single celled-organisms are enormously complex and functional, they’re not “nonsense”.
There has to be an already functional organism in the simulation, otherwise we’re not simulating evolution, we’re simulating the origin of life. I’m sure you understand thsi.
What is the analogy between nonsense and a living organism, like a bacterium for example?
Why does one “nonsense” becoming good (at what?) that “the other nonsense” stops replicating?
I get a feeling you’re not trying very hard to work out how a simulation of evolution could actually work.
That’s the origin of life you’re talking about, how did inanimate matter become a live. That’s not the theory of evolution.
I’m talking about how organisms change over time, invent new chemistries, invent new body plans, how they speciate and diversify. How mutation changes their properties and how natural selection affects populations of them over generations.
How would we simulate this without the outcomes of the simulation being designed?
This is still a question about the origin of life, not about a simulation of evolution.
I’ve already told you I’d be happy to answer those questions, but they’d be a digression in this thread. You’re the one who said simulations produce design, because programmers design the program. So I’m just trying to work out how we could get around that, while actually maintaining a simulation that is somewhat accurate of the evolutionary process.
So we still have to have a simulation of a living organism as a starting point. This is then the thing we want to see if can evolve anything useful, if it mutates and undergoes natural selection. So how do we mutate it, and in particular how do we implement natural selection without “designing” a selection criterion?
OMagain,
But I didn’t even ask for a theory of how the first life began, rather how do you reconcile the fact that if life can start spontaneously from nothing, and that if life can evolve upwardly from a single cell, or from simple bacteria,. why, when bacteria is everywhere, does it not continue to happen?
Or perhaps a more apt question would be, why don’t evolutionists think? Why do they just accept something they are told, without even a hint of looking at it critically? Is it because you believe some “top men” are on the case?
What do you think? If you do think. This was addressed by Darwin some years ago. His answer still stands for the most part. Why not do some reading and get back to us?
Those are perfectly fine questions that have answers to them, you just need to read the right literature. Why are there still bacteria? But supposing we didn’t know, would that mean evolution was false? No. Classic argument from ignorance.
In any case, if you’re genuinely interested you should read Nick Lane’s books Life Ascending: The ten great inventions of evolution, and/or Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the meaning of life, they’ve got several chapters devoted to explaining why the symbiosis events leading to the origin of mitochondria and the cell nucleus(which is ultimately what allowed the rise to multicellularity) only happened once. There are also chapters on the evolution of apoptosis and sex.
A very short answer is that multicellularity itself has evolved multiple times, but only in eukaryotes, only eukaryotes have the requisite potential complexity to evolve multicellularity, because they have mitochondria and a cell nucleus. Bacteria don’t have these so they simply cannot evolve multicellularity.
I’ve never just “accepted something I was told”, which is why I left religion. I became convinced of evolution later in life exactly because I asked a lot of questions and found there was actual answers to them.
But please take a look at my simulation questions, I think it’s important we get to the bottom of how one would simulate the evolutionary process without the results of the simulation being designed.
Actually you did, if you trace back the thread. We were talking about OOL.
But I can’t be bothered to provide the evidence as frankly you are not worth the effort.
Yes, indeed. Why are evolutionists publishing new work every day and leaving the IDists in the dust?
Rumraket,
A computer that does nothing but repeat rubbish inaccurately. I already answered. That is what the claim for evolution is, and that is all you have to do to make a simulation. Just repeat rubbish, and wait for it to do something creative.
Every other simulation has answers programmed into the parameters. Conway’s game of life is just another one of these silly games which fool evolutionists who need fooling.
If that’s true, why bother to run the simulation to find the answer? Why not use use it directly?
Citation please.
If that’s true then point out where the answers are here: http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/07/target_target_w_1.html
You won’t be able to as none of your ‘peers’ has been able to since 2006.
OMagain,
Oh my goodness you are simple. A program which requires that points on a grid are connected. Not only is this already giving you an answer, but the author himself gives his answer:
“I defined the “fitness” of the organism as simply as the net length of all activated segments, or 100,000 if any fixed node is unconnected.”
Gee, you mean there is a solution?? Find the shortest distance between points??
Why oh why oh why can’t evolutionists think? Make a program that can answer this and you have found something!
What is the analogy to rubbish in life? Take a bacterium, it replicates. Is it rubbish? No.
Then your answer doesn’t make sense.
So in this simulation, what constitutes the actual organism. The rubbish itself? No, that can’t be it. Organisms aren’t just rubbish. In so far they are alive and reproducing, they are functional. So the simulation, if it’s supposed to simulation evolution, must start with something functional and then mutate it.
But there’s more to evolution than just mutation. There is natural selection also. And genetic drift.
What constitutes natural selection in your simulation? You say we wait until the rubbish does something creative. That’s very loose language, what is “creative” and who decides? In real life the “thing that decides” would be the environment the organism lives in, but where is the analogy to the environment in your simulation?
I think we have shown this view to be false. One can program simulations without “putting in answers”. One simply has to program an environment that simulates various physical conditions to some degree and let mutation and environmental selection do the rest. Nobody has “programmed into” the parameters what the “answers” will be. That’s the point of random mutations.
They are reproducing, that is it! That is the only thing functional about an organism. I have already allowed you this function, they replicate, badly. You don’t get any more than this, because this is all that evolution says.
Heck nothing in evolution says things even have to live, there is no goal of living, its accidental. Not living could just as easily be the solution in evolution, accept that never seems to be much of a solution. What about a mutation where all things die? Did that ever happen?
And you most certainly have not shown any program that doesn’t have answers. Why does the Steiner solution need to connect points? Why are there points? Why do they need to connect? Why do they need to be short? You have just given about five perquisites for what optimal living is, and then claim these aren’t answers. BS.
Then demonstrate where the answers are in the code. Then explain why the same code can be run against arbitrary sets of points – if the answers are “in the code” that should not be possible.
Why do soap bubbles connect nails on a board when dipped in a soap solution?
Ah, the ‘act like a 5 year old’ argument technique.
Optimal living? What are you talking about?
Anyway, noted that you are unable to support your claim that the answers are in the code.
You should talk to JoeG @ UD. You sound very much like him anyway.
http://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/items/se/38864.html
Where are the “answers” in the Bee brain? Programmed in advance?
phoodoo,
No phoodoo, it didn’t. Want to know how I came to this robust conclusion?
Okay, so we have to program in a thing that replicates. It needs to have parts that work together so it can make copies of itself.
So where is natural selection in this simulation? What is causing some solutions to be better than others?
They don’t have to meet our definition of alive, but they nevertheless are alive and we are not aware of things that replicate and evolve that aren’t alive.
If you could continue replicating while being dead, sure.
No. It’s obvious why. If you evolve a mutation where all things die, then you’re dead and can’t replicate.
Who says it does? What relevance does this have to a simulation of evolution as it happens?
I have not brought up the Steiner problem so I don’t know why you do. But it’s easy for me to see what these things are analogous to. In this analogy the points are the environment the organism must adapt to, the connections between the points are “the ability to reproduce” in the environment, and the shortness of the connections is how well they do this. It’s a very simple simulation, but it has what it needs to be a simulation of evolution.
I have? I haven’t brought up the steiner problem. I’m speaking in totally general terms about totally basic and undeniable facts:
There is an actual environment in the real world.
Organisms exist in this environment and organisms can already reproduce.
If they aren’t well-adapted to this environment, they could very well go extinct.
Organisms mutate over time.
The environment influences how well the mutants do.
So to simulate evolution we need to recapture all these concrete empirical facts in the simulated world. So my question is, how would one simulate this without smuggling in answers? How would we simulate the environment? How would se simulate reproducing organisms that mutate?
How would we simulate the influence of the environment on the mutants, without putting in “answers” as you call them?
The Steiner problem, and the travelling salesman problem, are not models of biology or chemistry. they are explorations of the probability argument.
It is ID that has tried to reduce biology and chemistry to probability. For evidence, take a look at the current argument at UD over thermodynamics and probability.
Dembski seems to have formalized and popularized the probability argument.
If you make a mathematical argument about how likely it is to find a solution in a vast search space, then your argument is vulnerable to mathematical simulations.
These demonstrations have nothing to do with biochemistry. They are about the math being touted by IDists.
petrushka,
Similar math is used by people working in theoretical population genetics. I will take umbrage if it is dismissed as insufficiently chemical.
The problem with Dembski’s argument is not that it is confined to mathematical models with no chemistry. It is whether or not it works in those models to show that there is a barrier to natural selection making adaptations. (It doesn’t work).
I think we are miscommunicating. When I say the travelling salesman and Steiner problems are not chemistry, I simply mean that they do not model chemistry. They do not model protein folding, and they do not model regulation.
I think your second paragraph is equivalent to what I intended to say. Dembski’s math fails as math. The probability argument fails within the realm of math.
Bee’s can do it. Apparently you cannot. So a bee is more capable then you.
When we say Dembski fails at math I think it’s more of the probability of all evolutionary winning hands is hard to conceptualize / calculate, not that his ‘math’ is in fact bad.
IDists can generally do the sums correctly.
By failing at math, I mean his argument — which is an abstract mathematical argument — fails to support his assertion incremental walks through functional space are impossible. Or that such walks can accumulate function or fitness.
Dembski does not appeal to biochemistry. He does not — as does Behe — attempt to say that a required mutation X prevents the transition A –> X –> B because X is detrimental or fatal.
Dembski’s argument is about abstract walks through abstract functional space. so it is fair to use spaces like the travelling salesman problem or the Steiner problem to test his assertion.
When an attempt at mathematical modeling of evolution fails, it’s usually not that the math involved is wrong. It’s usually that the assumptions made were inappropriate, or that the quantities calculated do not have the biological meaning that they seem to.
And such is the case with Dembski’s arguments.
Going full BA77, I found this:
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/videos/boltzmanns-dog-and-darwins-finch-statistical-thermodynamics-self-replication-and-evolution
When an attempt at mathematical modeling of evolution fails, it’s usually not that the math involved is wrong. It’s usually that the assumptions made were inappropriate, or that the quantities calculated do not have the biological meaning that they seem to.
Joe Felsenstein,
What bunch of crap.
How about when an attempt at evolution modeling succeeds, its usually because the assumptions made were inappropriate, or that the quantities calculated don’t have the biological meaning you say they do.
How much of a one sided, cheerleading spin doctor does one need to be to say such a bullshit statement Joe? That is EXACTLY what people who are skeptical of this simplistic models are telling you all the time. But you of course display ZERO skepticism when your models say what you think they should say, and when they don’t, you conveniently just say, oh well, actually the model doesn’t really represent biology they way we thought it does.
This is the entire problem with the unscientific, totally fabricated logic of your silly algorithms. I laugh every time you try to make some claim for a stupid computer game making patterns, and then say it means something to biology. What a typical “skeptic” when it suits you phony you are.
phoodoo,
And I love you, too. Keep trash-talking. It’s soooo sexxxyyyy ….
Joe Felsenstein,
How is what you wrote not trash talking Joe?
Because you couch in it your subtle speak of , “Well our logic is always right you see, and their logic is always wrong, that’s the difference” that makes what you write dignified?
And what makes it worse Joe, is that this is supposed to be your profession. When some antagonist like Omagain writes his preachy little sermons, its to be expected, but you claim to be a scientific mind on the subject.
And your scientific take on the subject is always the same biased nonsense. You don’t seek the truth. You aren’t curious. You don’t look for the problems in our understanding, you just preach- “Trust us, our point of view is the right one.”
Why should I respect someone who has so little use for knowledge. Aren’t you embarrassed that your scientific endeavors clearly are so at odds with intellectual honesty? You could care less if evolution is accurate or not, as long as you can convince people to believe it is.
Silly creationists projecting.
Joe has done a phenomenal amount of research:
http://evolution.gs.washington.edu/felsenstein.cv.html
What have you done? Listened to the pastor?
And I will take this one step further. The reason I have so little respect for the people who post here, is because none of you display any indication that you are seeking truth or knowledge. No matter what new evidence in biology is turned up (like epigenetics, junk dna, the complex layers of switches guiding development, the complexity of the cell, natural genetic engineering, the muti-functions of genes) instead of thinking, well, that does change the picture, maybe evolution isn’t so clear cut like we thought-what all of you do instead is just hand wave. You don’t want to know. Don’t want to be challenged to accept anything other than what you need to believe.
I have never seen ANYONE here concede that some new information is hard to reconcile or explain, even when you know inside it is. Instead you just argue, the study is probably wrong, well, we will find the answers later.
Its like Allan Millers famous line, “The study is wrong. Even if it is right, it doesn’t affect the theory. Prove it. Actually, we have already known about this for years.”
Oh Phoodoo you are sooooo right! We’ve been fools. I just keep rereading “Origin” again and again. What we need is some sort of Modern Synthesis and perhaps an account of genetics and associated mechanisms. Can you and pastor Bob get on that? We just want to dogmatically cling to an ancient text, unable to update our views even when new evidence comes along.
It’ll be Phoodoo and the ID guys who drive us forwards! they’re the ones in the labs! They’re the ones doing the research!
Quiz for Phoodoo:
How old is the earth?
When did the first life appear?
What was it like?
How do you know these things?
Richardthughes,
Precisely, he does research, and all of his research is tainted with his ridiculous notion beforehand, that well, if the numbers refute us, its because the logic doesn’t apply to reality, if the numbers show what we want them to, then the logic must be good.
He couldn’t be more unscientific.
This is why so much of science is bad (and why MOST published research is false). Their confirmation bias is too overwhelming.
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
How many hours have you put in researching, Phoodoo? What does your research look like? How come the vast majority of scientists agree with Joe?
Oh, Phoodoo, you’re so knowledgeable, you’re so subtle, you’re so powerful. It gives me chills just to think of your masculinity! Please, keep up this trash-talking forever!! I can’t get enough of it!
Richardthughes,
Must of the research that is of much use these days is being done by the Chinese and the Indians, because they don’t have the silly preconceived notions that Western school has brainwashed into people. They actually think.
Phoodoo, do you have a blog? You could be a big hit. Talk radio, also.
If most research is false, how do you know the research presented in that article isn’t false? It obviously fits nicely with your appeal-to-bias fallacy as an explanation for why evolutionary science still exists. But that’s just classic confirmation bias. So what skepticism have YOU engaged in with respect to that research? Simply trusting it would be a clear case of confirmation bias.
So you’re obviously a superior skeptic right? So you went and independently verified the results this guy got right?
phoodoo,
“A computer that does nothing but repeat rubbish inaccurately. I already answered. That is what the claim for evolution is…”
No, that is not the claim for what evolution is, and after all of the times that the processes/events of evolution have been explained to you there’s no good excuse for you to keep on misrepresenting evolutionary theory. You’re deliberately dishonest.
All those people have to do is write a paper detailing what the problem is and ideally providing a better alternative. Then they publish. And the authors of the original can respond in like form, and you go around like that for a while.
Or you could whine about vague problems with something unspecific knowing that the moment you get specific you’ll be out of your depth.
It’s up to you. And I still feel sorry for you wasting your life like this, not even wrong.
It should not trouble you to give an example of such research and explain why it could only have been done by the Chinese then?
Unless of course you are in error regarding that claim. But I won’t expect you to retract it if so, it’s not the way of you or your ilk is it?
“I have never seen ANYONE here concede that some new information is hard to reconcile or explain, even when you know inside it is.”
That’s because evolution is actually true and life evolved. It is easy to concieve of things that would be hard to explain, the fact that there is a total absense of such things merely confirms that evolution as we understand it is largely correct.
So no, I don’t “know inside” of such a thing. Life evolved, get over it.
Oh, turns out any idiots can make assertions such as these:
I have never seen ANYONE here or on UD or elsewhere concede that some new information is easily accounted for by evolution, even when they know inside it is.
Please demonstrate this with a concrete example from his research.