The Reasonableness of Atheism and Black Swans

As an ID proponent and creationist, the irony is that at the time in my life where I have the greatest level of faith in ID and creation, it is also the time in my life at some level I wish it were not true. I have concluded if the Christian God is the Intelligent Designer then he also makes the world a miserable place by design, that He has cursed this world because of Adam’s sin. See Malicious Intelligent Design.

Jesus prophesied of the intelligently designed outcome of humanity: “wars and rumors of wars..famines…pestilence…earthquakes.” If there is nuclear and biological weapons proliferation, overpopulation, destruction of natural resources in the next 500 years or less, things could get ugly. If such awful things are Intelligently Designed for the trajectory of planet Earth, on some level, I think it would almost be merciful if the atheists are right….

The reason I feel so much kinship with the atheists and agnostics at TSZ and elsewhere is that I share and value the skeptical mindset. Gullibility is not a virtue, skepticism is. A personal friend of Richard Dawkins was my professor and mentor who lifted me out of despair when I was about to flunk out of school. Another professor, James Trefil, who has spent some time fighting ID has been a mentor and friend. All to say, atheists and people of little religious affiliation (like Trefil) have been kind and highly positive influences on my life, and I thank God for them! Thus, though I disagree with atheists and agnostics, I find the wholesale demonization of their character highly repugnant — it’s like trash talking of my mentors, friends and family.

I have often found more wonder and solace in my science classes than I have on many Sunday mornings being screamed at by not-so-nice preachers. So despite my many disagreements with the regulars here, because I’ve enjoyed the academic climate in the sciences, I feel somewhat at home at TSZ….

Now, on to the main point of this essay! Like IDist Mike Gene, I find the atheist/agnostic viewpoint reasonable for the simple reason that most people don’t see miracles or God appearing in their every day lives if not their entire lives. It is as simple as that.

Naturalism would seem to me, given most everyone’s personal sample of events in the universe, to be a most reasonable position. The line of reasoning would be, “I don’t see miracles, I don’t see God, by way of extrapolation, I don’t think miracles and God exists. People who claim God exists must be mistaken or deluded or something else.”

The logic of such a viewpoint seems almost unassailable, and I nearly left the Christian faith 15 years ago when such simple logic was not really dealt with by my pastors and fellow parishioners. I had to re-examine such issues on my own, and the one way I found to frame the ID/Creation/Evolution issue is by arguing for the reasonableness of Black Swan events.

I will use the notion of Black Swans very loosely. The notion is stated here, and is identified with a financeer and academic by the name of Nasim Taleb. I have Taleb’s books on investing entitled Dynamic Hedging which is considered a classic monograph in mathematical finance. His math is almost impenetrable! He is something of a Super Quant. Any way:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.

The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:

1.The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology.
2.The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities).
3.The psychological biases that blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event’s massive role in historical affairs.

Unlike the earlier and broader “black swan problem” in philosophy (i.e. the problem of induction), Taleb’s “black swan theory” refers only to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences.[1] More technically, in the scientific monograph Silent Risk , Taleb mathematically defines the black swan problem as “stemming from the use of degenerate metaprobability”.[2]
….
The phrase “black swan” derives from a Latin expression; its oldest known occurrence is the poet Juvenal’s characterization of something being “rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno” (“a rare bird in the lands and very much like a black swan”; 6.165).[3] When the phrase was coined, the black swan was presumed not to exist. The importance of the metaphor lies in its analogy to the fragility of any system of thought. A set of conclusions is potentially undone once any of its fundamental postulates is disproved. In this case, the observation of a single black swan would be the undoing of the logic of any system of thought, as well as any reasoning that followed from that underlying logic.

Juvenal’s phrase was a common expression in 16th century London as a statement of impossibility. The London expression derives from the Old World presumption that all swans must be white because all historical records of swans reported that they had white feathers.[4] In that context, a black swan was impossible or at least nonexistent. After Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered black swans in Western Australia in 1697,[5] the term metamorphosed to connote that a perceived impossibility might later be disproven. Taleb notes that in the 19th century John Stuart Mill used the black swan logical fallacy as a new term to identify falsification.[6]

The very first question I looked at when I was having bouts of agnosticism was the question of origin of life. Now looking back, the real question being asked is “was OOL a long sequence of typical events or a black swan sequence of events.” Beyond OOL, one could go on to the question of biological evolution. If we assume Common Descent or Universal Common Ancestry (UCA), would evolution, as a matter of principle, proceed by typical or black swan events or a mix of such events (the stock market follows patterns of typical events punctuated by black swan events).

If natural selection is the mechanism of much of evolution, does the evolution of the major forms (like prokaryote vs. eukaryote, unicellular vs. multicellular, etc.) proceed by typical or black swan events?

[As a side note, when there is a Black Swan stock market crash, it isn’t a POOF, but a sequence of small steps adding up to an atypical set of events. Black Swan doesn’t necessarily imply POOF, but it can still be viewed as a highly exceptional phenomenon.]

Without getting into the naturalism vs. supernaturalism debate, one could at least make statements whether OOL, eukaryotic evolution (eukaryogenesis), multicellular evolution, evolution of Taxonomically Restricted Features (TRFs), Taxonomically Restricted Genes (TRGs), proceeded via many many typical events happening in sequence or a few (if not one) Black Swan event.

I personally believe, outside of the naturalism supernaturalism debate, that as a matter of principle, OOL, eukaryogenesis, emergence of multicellularity (especially animal multicellularity), must have transpired via Black Swan events. Why? The proverbial Chicken and Egg paradox which has been reframed in various incarnations and supplemented with notions such as Irreducible Complexity or Integrated Complexity or whatever. Behe is not alone in his notions of this sort of complexity, Andreas Wagner and Joe Thornton use similar language even though they thing such complexity is bridgeable by typical rather than Black Swan events.

When I do a sequence lookup at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center of Biotechnology Information (NCBI), it is very easy to see the hierarchical patterns that would, at first glance, confirm UCA! For example look at this diagram of Bone Morphogenetic Proteins (BMP) to see the hierarchical patterns:

BMP

From such studies, one could even construct Molecular Clock Hypotheses and state hypothesized rates of molecular evolution.

The problem however is that even if some organisms share so many genes, and even if these genes can be hierarchically laid out, there are genes that are restricted only to certain groups. We might refer to them as Taxonomically Restricted Genes (TRG). I much prefer the term TRG over “orphan gene” especially since some orphan genes seem to emerge without the necessity of Black Swan events and orphan genes are not well defined and orphan genes are only a subset of TRGs. I also coin the notion of Taxonomically Restricted Feature (TRF) since I believe many heritable features of biology are not solely genetic but have heritable cytoplasmic bases (like Post Translation modifications of proteins).

TRGs and TRFs sort of just poof onto the biological scene. How would we calibrate the molecular clock for such features? It goes “from zero to sixty” in a poof.

Finally, on the question of directly observed evolution, it seems to me, that evolution in the present is mostly of the reductive and exterminating variety. Rather than Dawkins Blind Watchmaker, I see a Blind Watch Destroyer. Rather than natural selection acting in cumulative modes, I natural selection acting in reductive and exterminating modes in the present day, in the lab and field.

For those reasons, even outside the naturalism vs. supernaturalism debate, I would think a reasonable inference is that many of the most important features of biology did not emerge via large collections of small typical events but rather via some Black Swan process in the past, not by any mechanisms we see in the present. It is not an argument from incredulity so much as a proof by contradiction.

If one accepts the reasonableness of Black Swan events as the cause of the major features of biology, it becomes possible to accept that these were miracles, and if Miracles there must be a Miracle Maker (aka God). But questions of God are outside science. However, I think the inference to Black Swan events for biology may well be science.

In sum, I think atheism is a reasonable position. I also think the viewpoint that biological emergence via Black Swan events is also a highly reasonable hypothesis even though we don’t see such Black Swans in every day life. The absence of such Black Swans is not necessarily evidence against Black Swans, especially if the Black Swan will bring coherence to the trajectory of biological evolution in the present day. That is to say, it seems to me things are evolving toward simplicity and death in the present day, ergo some other mechanism than what we see with our very own eyes was the cause of OOL and bridging of major gaps in the taxonomic groupings.

Of course such a Black Swan interpretation of biology may have theological implications, but formally speaking, I think inferring Black Swan hypotheses for biology is fair game in the realm of science to the extent it brings coherence to real-time observations in the present day.

775 thoughts on “The Reasonableness of Atheism and Black Swans

  1. Richardthughes: We looked at evolution, and were so impressed we made genetic algorithms. These algorithms work incredibly well, and can take information from their environment and generate new information within themselves.

    Even your Mungs and Joe Gs have effectively retreated to OOL, claiming that that is an insurmountable hurdle to ‘bootstrap’.

    So did we model something that actually doesn’t work and yet amazingly our model does, or might you be wrong?

    1. GA’s are not models of evolution, nor are they simulations of evolution.

    2. How did you measure how much information was smuggled in by your GA?

    3. I did not retreat to OOL, I asked you to start a thread on GA’s so we could take an in-depth look at what makes them tick. I’m still waiting for your universal (generic) GA that finds a working solution for any problem thrown it’s way.

  2. petrushka: I guess what I find most fascinating about IDists and creationists is the fact that they openly mock the work of tens of thousands of actual scientists

    I’m willing to content myself with openly mocking the atheists and anti-IDists here at TSZ who through mocking and scoffing avoid any actual intellectual work.

    No doubt that’s exactly what Elizabeth had in mind when she started this site and why you, petrushka, were attracted to it.

  3. stcordova,

    Hi Sal
    Thanks for the explanation and mathematical model you provided. It will take me a few days to go through it but in the mean time I looked at the response that Dr Moran gave to your argument on genetic loading.

    “Imagine that there are 130 new mutations per generation. Since only 10% of our genome is functional DNA, this means that only 13 of these mutations occur in DNA that has a biological function. We know that in a typical coding region about 25% of all mutations are seriously detrimental so if all the functional region of the genome were coding region that would mean 3.25 detrimental mutations per generation.1 However, less than 2% of our genome encodes protein. The remaining functional regions are much less constrained so they can tolerate more mutations. It’s likely that there are fewer than 2 detrimental mutations per generation and this is an acceptable genetic load.

    All of this information is readily available in textbooks and scientific papers. It’s basic evolutionary theory and facts about the human genome.

    Cordova is correct to raise the point about genetic load but he is quite wrong in his calculation.”

    The last line of Dr Moran’s argument is interesting. He is admitting that the genome will degrade with time which is exactly your hypothesis. What he is saying is that the degradation is slower due to non coding DNA being more likely neutral. If it is slowly degrading then information is consistently being lost but at a slower rate. Does this support your black swan thesis?

  4. Hmmm. I get 2.6, but we’re diploid, so that could be 1.3 effectively detrimental.

    Sal wants something to bolster YEC, and that strikes me as insane. When you have some mathy sounding theory that predicts doom, and the doom doesn’t happen, too bad for the theory. It’s wrong, or something else is compensating.

    Cockroaches. They are not dying out from genetic entropy. Nor crocodiles. They look pretty fit to me.

  5. dazz said;

    Bullshit. The Euthyphro dilemma is meant to challenge the argument of morality,

    After the argument has been made, it challenges the idea that a morality emanating by god makes any sense. Unfortunately, it does so by setting up a false dichotomy between 2 different theistic premises: (1) a god that makes what is moral by commanding it, and (2) a god that is subject to a good greater than itself.

    and it succeeds when it forces you to add a premise that is equivalent to the conclusion you were trying to get to.

    You ‘re not making any sense here. One of the theological premises the dilemma offers as a solution is a god that makes morality by command, which is also a premise that would satisfy the moral argument. You’re getting two different arguments mixed up. The moral argument doesn’t begin with any theological premise (not even mine); it’s an argument from morality to the existence of god.

    The question at that point is, what kind of god?

    It is at that point that the dilemma challenges the result of that argument by trying to claim that even if there is a god, there is problem, and offers a false dichotomy of theological premises. There’s nothing wrong with offering a different theological premise which solves the dilemma – that’s what the dilemma is asking for in the first place – a theological premise that solves it. Whoever came up with it just didn’t think of the premise that solves it.

    <blockquote.It forces you to self-destruct by making your argument circular.

    There’s nothing circular about it. The moral argument is made without my premise. Then, when the Euthyphro dilemma asks for a theological premise that solves it, I provide one. It’s really as simple as that.

  6. Cockroaches. They are not dying out from genetic entropy. Nor crocodiles. They look pretty fit to me.

    Well, sure, but it’s only been 6,000 years. Give it another thousand or so and the wheels (and legs) will start coming off.

  7. colewd: The last line of Dr Moran’s argument is interesting.He is admitting that the genome will degrade with time which is exactly your hypothesis.What he is saying is that the degradation is slower due to non coding DNA being more likely neutral.If it is slowly degrading then information is consistently being lost but at a slower rate.Does this support your black swan thesis?

    I’m not sure this is what Moran is saying. He’s calculating the number of detrimental mutations per generation. He is NOT calculating the number of beneficial mutations, and he is NOT calculating the rate at which detrimental mutations are selected out or not passed on.

    As others have pointed out, we don’t see genomes degrading, which I would interpret as a NET increase in detriment. Moran doesn’t see net degradation either. He says quite explicitly that his calculated number of detrimental mutations per generation is an acceptable load. Net degradation would be Unacceptable.

  8. Mung: I’m willing to content myself with openly mocking the atheists and anti-IDists here at TSZ who through mocking and scoffing avoid any actual intellectual work.

    No doubt that’s exactly what Elizabeth had in mind when she started this site and why you, petrushka, were attracted to it.

    I’ll gladly go along with this. I too feel comfortable convincing myself that all who disagree with me, no matter how educated or experienced or knowledgeable they may be, simply can’t be doing any actual intellectual work. If they were, they’d all agree with me.

  9. petrushka: The bad reading claim is independent of the rightness or wrongness of Coyne’s argument.

    You have incorrectly summarized Coyne as agreeing with you. As for lab observations, try reading Coyne.

    I’m sure your claim to be the biological child of your legal parents is also imaginary, since you were not witness to your own conception.

    Yes to all of that, petrushka. Thanks!

    Motivated misunderstanding fits right in with your Excilience and Contextomy thread. Could hardly ask for a better example than Sal’s comment. Umm, better in the sense of “it don’t get much worse” 🙂

  10. I’m somewhat confused about what’s being argued by IDists.

    On one hand, it seems that evolution (and GAs) don’t work. They run down. They only eliminate. They can’t build or invent.

    On the other hand, GAs (and evolution) work because they are designed and the fitness landscapes are designed.

    In fact, there is a strong element of the Design movement that goes further, by asserting that the very fabric of existence is the way it is to insure the evolution of humans.

  11. Mung: I’m still waiting for your universal (generic) GA that finds a working solution for any problem thrown it’s way

    Sure, and you’re waiting for evolution to produce flying whales with laser throwing eyes too or something? Because evolution is totally about solving “any” problem thrown at it right? And it must always succeed because gawd’s at the reins!

    Mungy always entertaining, LMFAO

  12. colewd,

    The last line of Dr Moran’s argument is interesting. He is admitting that the genome will degrade with time which is exactly your hypothesis. What he is saying is that the degradation is slower due to non coding DNA being more likely neutral. If it is slowly degrading then information is consistently being lost but at a slower rate.

    No, he’s not saying that. He’s saying that the mutational load is of a level that allows a sufficient balance – in principle – between new mutation arrival/spread and the removal of the detrimental portion of the same through recombination and selection.

    That’s the issue with Sal’s beloved irradiated fruit flies as well – effectively, the researchers there are elevating the mutational load but doing nothing to simulate the longer-term selective effects experienced in real populations. Hit them with a hammer, observe the bruise, and assume that all populations are being hit with hammers and bruising.

    Interestingly, one kind of organism that does suffer genetic degradation is an asexual clone of a sexual species. This is due in part to lack of an integrational mechanism (recombination and segregation), and in part due to gene conversion during homologous repair, which tends over time to reduce the heterozygosity between the diploid pair. This tends to expose deleterious recessives.

    But we aren’t asexual clones, so phew!

  13. William J. Murray: It’s really as simple as that.

    Take your time Willy, take your time. Someday, maybe someday you’ll manage to put all the pieces together. Hang in there buddy

  14. Allan Miller: He’s saying that the mutational load is of a level that allows a sufficient balance – in principle – between new mutation arrival/spread and the removal of the detrimental portion of the same through recombination and selection

    Is it correct to say that amount of detrimental mutations are then not fixed, and Sal is mistaking mutation rate with fixation (of deleterious mutations) rate here?

  15. dazz,

    Is it correct to say that amount of detrimental mutations are then not fixed, and Sal is mistaking mutation rate with fixation (of deleterious mutations) rate here?

    Yep, the new mutations per individual are certainly not fixed, and they’ve a long way to go to get there. Although we are obviously fixing historic ones at some rate.

    There is a circumstance where mutation rate equals fixation rate, such that mutations arising at 2 per individual in the past were now fixing – but this mainly applies to neutral mutations in a steady state random-mating population, where that state has been steady for long enough to achieve a balance. The mutations we are taking of aren’t neutral, and the population is not (currently) in steady state or random mating. Mutations arising when we were a population of 10,000 or so will be struggling like hell to fix now, even neutral ones. It would be different if we plunged back to 10,000 again.

    But this is all for neutral ones anyway. There is a considerable bias against the fixation of even mildly deleterious mutations. It must happen at some frequency, but any compensating mutation will therefore be fitter – fixation is not the end of the story.

  16. Allan Miller,

    Thanks for that. There’s never been a time when the human population has been larger and less isolated, so it’s my understanding that amplifies the power of purifying selection of deleterious mutations. So if anything, the trend is the opposite to what Sal claims is going on. The growing population has other obvious problems, but that’s an entirely different issue

  17. dazz,

    Thanks for that. There’s never been a time when the human population has been larger and less isolated, so it’s my understanding that amplifies the power of purifying selection of deleterious mutations.

    It certainly would if we were random mating, but the larger a population gets, the less that assumption holds – especially one as geographically dispersed as us. But yes, either way it’s hard for any given deleterious mutation to ‘degrade the species’ in humans. There might be some scope for a set of local subpopulations each degraded by different alleles, but it does not take much gene flow to counter that. The danger zone is when you are a completely isolated, and small, population.

    Sal is trying to generate a broader evolutionary principle here – that regardless of population size or its trend, there is a tendency to ‘degradation’. There certainly is in very small populations, which are at risk of extinction anyway. The long term is rescued by the fact that not all populations are dangerously small.

    So if anything, the trend is the opposite to what Sal claims is going on. The growing population has other obvious problems, but that’s an entirely different issue

    Yep.

  18. petrushka:
    I’m somewhat confused about what’s being argued by IDists.

    On one hand, it seems that evolution (and GAs) don’t work. They run down. They only eliminate. They can’t build or invent.

    On the other hand, GAs (and evolution) work because they are designed and the fitness landscapes are designed.

    In fact, there is a strong element of the Design movement that goes further, by asserting that the very fabric of existence is the way it is to insure the evolution of humans.

    It would help if you don’t look at it as arguments by IDists, but as arguments from individuals. Putting people in boxes does nothing but bias the way you approach their argument. The people you are arguing with are not all one big homologous mass.

  19. Both arguments are worthless, but it amuses me that Sal seems to use both at the same time.

  20. Rich:

    That’s a GA?

    I implemented a GA just to show off to Dave Thomas, and Thomas was commenting on it. I no longer have the code.

    The reason Thomas was able to figure it out is I showed him 5 different ways to compute the same result, named the functions Gauss, with the last function a GA.

    It was a lot more cleaver than Weasel, that’s why he called it remarkable. But let’s hear it from Dave Thomas himself at Pandas Thumb:
    http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/08/calling_ids_blu_1.html

    Cordova’s algorithm is exactly like Dawkins’ “Weasel”, with the major difference being that, while Dawkins was searching for the specific target “METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL,” Cordova is searching for the specific sequence of numbers 251, 252, 253, … 750. When these are summed and doubled, the result is the sum of the numbers from 1 to 1000: 500,500.

    Another oddity was that Cordova’s code wouldn’t even compile – it took me a couple of hours to reverse engineer it and figure out what in tarnation he was doing. As an exercise in Smoke and Mirrors, Cordova’s algorithm is remarkable. But, unlike my program, it is definitely looking for one, and only one, Answer.

    My code didn’t compilie on his computer but it did on mine.

    The website and code are gone, and now that GA is extinct. It will now require intelligent design to bring it back to life. 🙂

    If you really want, I can demonstrate an act of intelligent design by trying to bring it back to life.

  21. In fact Dave Thomas did a good job describing how my GA worked:

    PROOF

    Cordova’s program loops from 1 through half the desired end-number; if the sum of the first N integers is desired, and N=1000 (as in Cordova’s listing), then he loops from 1, 2, 3, up to 500 (=N/2).

    For each of the 500 numbers, Cordova stores a number that represents a “Midpoint Distance” (I’ll call this MidPoint[i] for short, where i is any number in the sequence 1, 2, 3, … N/2.)

    Initially, his Midpoint Distances are generated randomly, with values anywhere from -2N to +2N (e.g. -2000 to +2000). Then, he loops through each of the N/2 numbers once per generation, and repeats the process over many generations. For a given generation, and a given looping number from that generation (such as i=37, with value MidPoint[37]), Cordova calculates a “pseudo-euclidean distance”:

    double pseudo_euclidian_distance( double x1, double x2, double y)
    {
    return (x1-y) * (x1-y) + (x2-y)*(x2-y);
    }

    Here’s how he uses this distance. At each step in the loop (from 1 to N/2), the “distance” to the current MidPoint value is examined, and a “mutated” MidPoint distance is also derived, always within a few units (plus or minus 2.5) of the original “distance”. If the Mutated “distance” is shorter, that distance then replaces the current value, MidPoint[i]. Otherwise, the current value is retained. So, something is definitely being minimized, but what?

    Aside: if you think this exposition is getting too wordy, please do try to figure out Cordova’s Code for yourself. I’ll wager you’ll be back here before you know it!

    If the pseudo-Euclidean distance is called D, then Cordova is trying to minimize D = (x1-y)^2 + (x2-y)^2. To see where this will lead, one can take the derivative of D with respect to y, and set it to zero to find the extremum (which is indeed a minimum, but I’ll leave that detail to the reader):

    D’ = 2 (x1-y)(-1) + 2(x2-y)(-1) === 0, => (x1-y) + (x2-y) === 0, => y = (x1 + x2)/2.

    Whatever x1 and x2 are, Cordova’s function will be minimized when the value of y (which turns out to be a MidPoint value) equals the average of x1 and x2.

    Delving deeper into Sal’s Nightmare, one finds that, if you are on the ith number in the loop (say, i = 37), what gets sent down as x1 and x2 are just the index i itself, and that same index + N/2. Thus, for i=37, it turns out that x1 = 37, and x2 = 537. Not coincidentally, the average of 37 and 537 is 287, or simply 37 + 250.

    And that’s almost all there is to it. Even if the value for the 37th midpoint was far off at the beginning (say, -1634), as the generations proceed, any mutations that serve to bring the midpoint closer to the intended value (=287) are accepted, and those that don’t are rejected.

    Formally substituting i for x1, and i+N/2 for x2, we see that midpoints are drawn inexorably to the value
    y = (x1 + x2)/2 = (i + i + N/2)/2 = (2i + N/2)/2 = i + N/4.

    If N is 1000, N/4 is 250. The first midpoint (for loop index i=1) is drawn to 251 (=1 + 250), while the 37th midpoint is drawn to 287 (=37 + 250), and the final index’s midpoint is drawn to 750 (=500 + 250).

    All that remains is to evaluate the final “estimate,” which is just the sum of the 500 (or N/2) midpoints, doubled.

    Here follows the proof that this sum is just a roundabout way of calculating the sum of the first N integers, which the brilliant Gauss found useful as a child to escape some boring math drills: instead of adding the numbers up, Gauss realized the sum of the first N numbers was just (N*(N+1)/2).

  22. Seriously, why is it clever to hide what you are doing in a bushel of bullshit spaghetti code?

    Cleverness is communicating, which means finding ways to describe things in a easily understandable way.

    Obfuscation is a leading indicator of vacuity.

  23. Seriously, why is it clever to hide what you are doing in a bushel of bullshit spaghetti code?

    We call such thing Rube Goldberg machines.

    But since Dave Thomas himself said what I intelligently desiged was just like Dawkins’ Weasel, it shows that Dawkins’ Weasel is intelligently designed, and hence the form of selection displayed in each of the programs, the form of the fitness functions, is intelligently designed.

    Now the benefit of this exercise is you all have access to the intelligently designer of the natural selection in the Cordova’s remarkable GA.

    You can actually ask the intelligent designer himself questions about how natural selection worked in the GA. The designer, if he chooses (and if he still remembers how the darn thing worked) is happy to elaborate on the exquisite genius that put together this Rube Goldberg machine through a process of “slight successive variations” which resulted in the cumulative selection of components that when cumulatively summed up results in the final result.

    Now, in this case, one can’t say that natural selection wasn’t designed, because you are now talking to the intelligent designer of Cordova’s remarkable GA himself. Bwahaha!

  24. Another example of an IDist getting all pumped up by the supposed support of an opponent, that simply is not there… even if the opponent was calling his work a remarkable exercise of smoke and mirrors Sal feels like tapping himself in the back. Weird

    I don’t see what is there to be proud about, but I guess when one’s arguments are destroyed time and again, anything goes. #graspingatstraws

  25. Mung,

    GA’s are not models of evolution, nor are they simulations of evolution.

    As Lizzie has pointed out, they are examples of evolution.

  26. stcordova,

    […] one can’t say that natural selection wasn’t designed […]

    One can – you stole the basic idea from nature! Bwaha and, indeed, ha!

  27. stcordova: Now, in this case, one can’t say that natural selection wasn’t designed, because you are now talking to the intelligent designer of Cordova’s remarkable GA himself. Bwahaha!

    Sure, you designed a fitness function that you knew in advanced what result (design) would be produced, just like the weasel program. So what?
    Can you code a GA with a fitness function that is not defined in the terms of any particular solution(s)? I’m sure you can. What if I ask you what the “designs” produced by the algo will look like? The answer is that you have no clue, and that’s how evolution works: you can design a fitness function that models nature and the results of the algo will not be designed, but unpredictable, irrepeatable and to some extent, random and chaotic

  28. stcordova

    But since Dave Thomas himself said what I intelligently desiged was just like Dawkins’ Weasel, it shows that Dawkins’ Weasel is intelligently designed, and hence the form of selection displayed in each of the programs, the form of the fitness functions,is intelligently designed.

    The NOAA has programs which model the formation and movement of hurricanes. The program was intelligently designed, that means all the processes in a hurricane and hurricane themselves were intelligently designed.

    That’s what passes for logic in IDiotland.

  29. dazz:

    I don’t see what is there to be proud about, but I guess when one’s arguments are destroyedtime and again, anything goes. #graspingatstraws

    Some IDers need to continually talk about themselves and tell everyone how clever they are. Seems to be a severe ego problem.

  30. dazz: Sure, you designed a fitness function that you knew in advanced what result (design) would be produced, just like the weasel program. So what?
    Can you code a GA with a fitness function that is not defined in the terms of any particular solution(s)? I’m sure you can. What if I ask you what the “designs” produced by the algo will look like? The answer is that you have no clue, and that’s how evolution works: you can design a fitness function that models nature and the results of the algo will not be designed, but unpredictable, irrepeatable and to some extent, random and chaotic

    I sent Sal a link to a GA that doesn’t have any fixed solution. I haven’t received any response.

  31. Allan Miller:

    One can – you stole the basic idea from nature! Bwaha and, indeed, ha!

    That would be valid if that’s what we actually see in nature. What Darwin did is model one way that human minds solve problems by tinkering with slight successive modifications to the starting design, and then he labeled the process “Natural Selection” because that’s the way he thought nature worked.

    But the problem is that mental designs, even when they wouldn’t work in principle, don’t have real natural selection to make them go extinct before the designer can re-work his design! The transitionals in a designer’s mind are always viable as long as the intelligent designer is thinking of them.

    That is most certainly not the case in nature where the transitionals have to be viable as a matter of principle lest Dennett’s algorithm crash and gives the MS Windows blue screen of death and extinction.

    With mental and computaitonal GAs the transitionals are always viable (if we built a phylogeny of all the intermediates, they would be alive), whereas in real physical systems versus conceptual systems, viability of the transitional is a real issue (i.e. transitional between prokayote and eukaryote).

    What Darwin called “Natural Selection” is really not, it is false advertising, it is “Conceptual Seleciton” that he erroneously labeled as “Natural Selection.”

    The lab and field evidence I cited in support of the ANNIHILATOR viewpoint bares out Dawkins and Darwin’s erroneous conception of how undirected nature actually works. ANNIHILATOR describes what is more in line with natural.

  32. You seem to have some inside knowledge, in pathetic detail, about the transition from prokaryote to eukaryote. Otherwise you would just be spewing bullshit regarding the impossibility.

  33. stcordova: That would be valid if that’s what we actually see in nature.What Darwin did is model one way that human minds solve problems by tinkering with slight successive modifications to the starting design, and then he labeled the process “Natural Selection” because that’s the way he thought nature worked.

    What an amazingly stupid thing to claim. Darwin didn’t invent Natural Selection, he merely observed and described it. After 150+ years of additional positive evidence it’s arguably one of the best understood processes in all of science.

    What sort of ego must an IDiot have to think everyone in science for the last 150 years has been either incompetent or dishonest?

  34. stcordova,

    Darwin noted that differential success would increase the frequency of certain variants in the population and dilute others. That’s what any GA does with its fitness function. That’s all you are doing, if your process is worthy of the name.

    You’re not telling me you came up with a differential sorting/modification algorithm all by yourself are you? That you, not Holland, invented GAs?

    Even if you don’t recognise what you are doing as implementing the natural process, that is exactly what GAs do. If you write a GA (in imitation of other GAs) you are implementing a process that is at root a direct lift from the natural processes of variation and selection in populations.

    As many have remarked, it is amazing that GAs work, when some would have it that there is no such thing as the processes they purportedly adapt from nature. The luckiest of lucky guesses.

  35. Seriously, Sal. Everything that happens is impossibly unlikely. If you know that endosymbiosis cannot happen without a miracle, by all means, enlighten us. Otherwise you are jus one more god of the gapper.

    How has god of the gaps played out historically?

  36. stcordova

    The lab and field evidence I cited in support of the ANNIHILATOR viewpoint bares out Dawkins and Darwin’s erroneous conception of how undirected nature actually works.ANNIHILATOR describes what is more in line with natural.

    Sal, please show us how your ANNIHILATOR model explains the incipient speciation seen in ring species. NS explains the empirical observations quite well. What can your model offer?

  37. stcordova: The transitionals in a designer’s mind are always viable as long as the intelligent designer is thinking of them.

    stcordova: That is most certainly not the case in nature where the transitionals have to be viable as a matter of principle lest Dennett’s algorithm crash and gives the MS Windows blue screen of death and extinction.

    Of course, in nature we see a lot of failure, extinction, malformities… but some survive and pass their genes. So according to your own model of design, evidence says there’s no such thing as a designer. Just because to get from species A to B must involve viable transitionals doesn’t mean that ALL of the transitions must be viable. Some are dead ends. You don’t really have a point here

    stcordova: With mental and computaitonal GAs the transitionals are always viable

    False to fact. The ones that are not viable are discarded, just like in nature (NS) and GA’s can get stuck at local maxima with no viable transition while nature is much more dynamic and the fitness function being variable helps exploring the landscape

    stcordova: whereas in real physical systems versus conceptual systems, viability of the transitional is a real issue (i.e. transitional between prokayote and eukaryote).

    More unsupported black swan crap

    stcordova: The lab and field evidence I cited in support of the ANNIHILATOR viewpoint bares out Dawkins and Darwin’s erroneous conception of how undirected nature actually works. ANNIHILATOR describes what is more in line with natural.

    Allan already addressed that. You have nothing there except pure delusion

  38. dazz: More unsupported black swan crap

    I’m still waiting for Sal to explain what the fossil remains of the pro/eu transitional would look like.

    They’ve gone missing.

  39. Patrick:
    stcordova,
    I don’t think that’s why.

    Sal is a real amateur when it comes to undecipherable code.

    http://www.ioccc.org/years.html

    #define p struct c
    #define q struct b
    #define h a->a
    #define i a->b
    #define e i->c
    #define o a=(*b->a)(b->b,b->c)
    #define s return a;}q*
    #define n (d,b)p*b;{q*a;p*c;
    #define z(t)(t*)malloc(sizeof(t))
    q{int a;p{q*(*a)();int b;p*c;}*b;};q*u n a=z(q);h=d;i=z(p);i->a=u;i->b=d+1;s
    v n c=b;do o,b=i;while(!(h%d));i=c;i->a=v;i->b=d;e=b;s
    w n o;c=i;i=b;i->a=w;e=z(p);e->a=v;e->b=h;e->c=c;s
    t n for(;;)o,main(-h),b=i;}main(b){p*a;if(b>0)a=z(p),h=w,a->c=z(p),a->c->a=u,
    a->c->b=2,t(0,a);putchar(b?main(b/2),-b%2+’0′:10);}

  40. Is it correct to say that amount of detrimental mutations are then not fixed, and Sal is mistaking mutation rate with fixation (of deleterious mutations) rate here?

    Mutation rate of neutrals is equal to fixation rate of neutrals. There are the nearly neutrals that are defined by having S-coefficeint = | 1/4 Ne | where Ne is effective population.

    IIRC, the fixation rate of the slightly deleterious but nearly neutral that are right at the edge (negative 1/4 Ne) is about half-mu, where mu is the mutation rate of these class of neutrals, the fixation of slightly beneficial but nearly neutral that are also at the edge (1/4 Ne) is about 2 mu.

    The formula and derivation for fixation of neutrals equals mutation of neutrals is here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixation_%28population_genetics%29

    mutation rate = mu
    fixation rate = mu

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