My copy of No Free Lunch arrived a few days ago, and there are a couple of posts I want to make about it, but the first thing that struck me, reading the preface, and not for the first time, is how little Dembski (and other Intelligent Design proponents) seem to know about either Intelligence or Design.
As it happens, I have a relevant background in both. I’m a cognitive scientist, and I came into cognitive science from a background in educational psychology, so I’ve always been interested in intelligence – how it works, how it is measured, what factors affect it, etc. And, somewhat unusually for a cognitive scientist, I also have a training in design – I trained as an architect, a design training that is specifically focussed on “problem solving”, but I also applied that training to other “design” modalities, including composing music, and writing children’s books that attempted to explain something, both to commission, and therefore with a “design brief”.
And in both areas, what is abundantly clear, is that learning is critical.
When a child is struggling, cognitively, we say she is “learning disabled”, or is a “slow learner”. When we design a building, or a piece of music, or a piece of writing, we embark on an iterative process in which our output feeds back as input into the process of critical appraisal and re-appraisal that informs sometimes radical, more often incremental, changes to our current creation.
In other words, “intelligent design” is a process in which feedback from the environment, including our own output, iteratively serves as input into the design process. Both intelligence in general, and design in particular, are learning processes.
But to read Dembski’s preface, you would not know it:
How a designer gets from thought to thing is, at least in broad strokes, straightforward: (1) A designer conceives a purpose. (2) To accomplish that purpose, the designer forms a plan. (3) To execute the plan, the designer specifies building materials and assembly instructions. (4) Finally the designer or some surrogate applies the assembly instructions to the building materials. What emerges is a designed object, and the designer is successful to the degree that the object fulfills the designer’s purpose.
Well, not exactly, IMO, and the part that Dembski misses (or, at best, glosses over) is precisely the part that most resembles evolution: the iterative feedback from the environment that results in the incremental adjustment of the prototype so that it ever more closely fulfils some function. Not only that, but that function is not by any means always the original one. For a building, typically it is, at least for its first occupants. But buildings that survive the longest and are best maintained are those that are readily incrementally adapted for other functions. And anyone who has ever made a pot, or carved a block of wood or marble, knows that what emerges is the result of a kind of dialogue between the sculptor and the material, and the result may be something very different to what the designer had in mind when she started. Click on my sister’s blog in the blog roll if you don’t believe me 🙂
In fact, I’d go so far to say that the one thing that separates “intentional” design” from, I dunno, “iterative” or “tactile” design is that humans are capable of simulating the results of their iterative design before execution, so that we don’t have to build first, then dismantle. But even then, we actually make models, often very crude models, out of crude materials, in the early processes of a design (well, this is true of architecture any way) – three dimensional back-of-the-envelope sketches, made of corrugated cardboard, bits of mesh, gauze, sponge, silver paper, prototypes we can nudge and fix and re-order and reassemble, according to how well the thing seems to work.
Intelligent design is very like evolutionary processes, in other words. So it’s not surprising that the products of both should show a family resemblance. Oddly, I agree with Dembski that he has put is finger on a kind of pattern that is distinctive, when he talks about “specified complexity”. I just don’t think it has much to do with intention, and everything to do with iterative adjustments in response to environmental feedback.
Biology has all the hallmarks of a learning process, in other words. Evolutionary processes are learning processes, as is human intelligence. Those would seem to be reasonable candidate authors of a pattern that exhibited “specified complexity”. An omniscient and omnipotent creator, not so much.
Again natural selection is just a result and whatever is “good enough” is that result. So NS cannot skew the result as it is the result.
Then there is cooperation which puts a damper on NS- and then there is also behavioural changes that put a damper on genetic changes.
“To validate your stochastic model, please demonstrate that it behaves in a deterministic fashion”
Or perhaps we could rephrase it on more familiar lines:
“Were you there?”
Sorry, you don’t get to change your answer from “I don’t think we can tell” to “I think it will tend to skew the results” without an explanation of why you changed your mind. IMO, all you are doing now is backtracking and trying to provide cover for your ideological position.
Again, this is exactly what I’m talking about; when faced with the logical bankruptcy of their claims, Darwinists change what they are saying. When IDists argue that random chance cannot explain the construction of the biological features we see, Darwinists claim that evolution isn’t a random chance process because it has a sorting metric in NS.
When challenged to define the this NS sorting metric, they usually refer to some kind of “progeny production & survival” value. When challenged to demonstrate why that metric should be expected to produce the category of biological features in question, they have no answer other than that it is “possible”. Well, it’s also “possible” for random chance to produce the features in question, but “it’s possible” is not an explanation.
IOW, the whole “NS is not a random process” rebuttal has been revealed as nothing more than a diversionary tactic. What difference does it make if NS is not a random process if the non-random metric it provides in its sorting activities doesn’t skew evolutionary results towards the category of features in question?
If you can’t even say that natural selection tends to favor the generation of such features, and somehow quantitatively demonstrate it, then adding NS to the mix is nothing more than an empty diversion. If you claim that because our world is the way it is is the evidence that NS favors such a world, you’ve made a circular argument.
Your answers have logically revealed NS as adding **nothing** to the explanation of the construction of the kind of biological world we see today.
Perhaps you can apply your devastating analytic powers to the shape of a tree. Consider a live oak. Can you predict from the acorn where it will branch and what the final shape will be?
If you can’t, does that imply that a conscious designer is making the decisions?
Then “optimized” is nothing but a meaningless tautology used as a diversion – what happens to continue to exist is just slapped with the post-hoc “optimized” label. You might as well call it “survival of the most lucky”.
More to the point, lawfulness of process does not result in the ability to predict detailed outcomes of branching processes.
I’m not asking for predictive specifics; I’m asking for categorical predictions. I can tell you generally what an oak tree will look like, and generally where the acorn will fall. Stochastic effects can be categorically (not specifically) predicted in light of causal factors that skew results.
If NS is “directing” stochastic evolutionary effects according to a sorting metric – which is the very rebuttal used against assertions that evolution is a random process in terms of building the category of biological features in question – then one must show that this non-random process skews results in favor of the effects (feature generation) in question or it is nothing more than another random process in terms of generating the category of features in question.
Because a process is not random in terms of progeny success doesn’t mean it isn’t random in terms of any other category of evolutionary results.
Life existed for several billion years as single celled microbes. There is nothing in the process that guarantees that multi-cellularity will arise. Any more than gravity guarantees that earth-moon like systems will arise.
You have missed the part of biology and chemistry dealing with emergence. You cannot predict in detail the properties of complex molecules. Nor can you predict in detail what features of an organism will insure the survival of a population.
Nor does it mean that it is random. It may be non-random but unpredictable.
Also, you keep referring to NS as a “metric”. It’s a process, not a metric. NS doesn’t measure anything.
I’m afraid WJM joins a long list of evolution critics who cannot accurately state their opponent’s positions.
I know that ID proponents say the same thing about evilutionists, but it’s not symmetrical. ID does not propose a theory of design. It has no theory of how a designer would acquire the knowledge with which to build 500+ bit strings from scratch. It has nothing to say about the designer’s abilities or limitations, nothing to say about the times or places or methods of implementation.
In short, ID consists of incredulity regarding the ability of incremental change to produce multi-part structures. That’s it. That’s the whole ID critique. It’s nothing more than looking at a system like the earth-moon system, and saying the odds of such a system forming without supernatural intervention are impossibly large.
Saying that gravity “accounts for” the earth-moon system does not imply that such systems can be predicted. This is such a basic conceptual point that until it is understood there is no point in discussing analogous points in biology.
And again WJM shines in selective answering of questions. I’ve asked you before, and I’ll ask you again: what *categories* do you speak of? What is the *categorical* difference between the two evolutionary scenarios you presented that you think a designer must be invoked to explain the one, but not the other?
2. The history that’s happened is always more probable than any speculative alternative. But if you substitute “an earth-like planet with prokaryotes” for “Earth”, then it’s a more interesting question. The phrase “nothing too distant from the the UCA” is vague, but makes scenario (1) unlikely on any planet with varied and everchanging environments. Prokaryotes are distant from each other. But getting the big complex stuff could depend on the likelihood of factors like the key endosybiotic event that led to eukaryotes (or something similar) happening, plus conditions (like not being bombarded too often by big things) being favourable. My guess is that, if there are other 4 billion year life planets, most would be somewhere between your two suggestions.
I’ll also guess that behind these questions probably lies a tendency to make the “Texas sharpshooter” fallacy, because I’ve never come across an I.D. advocate who doesn’t have that tendency.
Sorry, you don’t get to pretend that Liz changed her answer at all by convenient snipping of her answers out of everything else she said in the same post, and then use your quote-mine to pretend that she is backtracking. She is not. She clearly said earlier that she thought a world with similar biological organisms as we currently see would be more likely, and why she thought that. Go back and read it.
None of us have “changed” what we are saying, but we do “clarify” what we are saying since the ID side seems to not “understand” what we are saying.
1) From looking at “information” only, we can’t tell if life was designed by a conscious “intelligent designer with a goal” or if the existence of life does NOT require a “designer”.
Now keep point (1) in mind.
2) NS appears to have skewed the results “towards the kind of biological world we see”.
Now recall point (1) and see whether the preceding statement in any way changes whether point (1) is true or not.
We still would not be able to tell, by looking at “information” only, whether life was “designed” or not.
Ah, here is WJM telling us what he likes and dislikes about a particular use of terminology (which is, btw, revealing a profound unfamiliarity with scientific terminology), and using the opportunity to characterize his opponents in negative terms, so he can continue to avoid answering the question.
Elizabeth asked WJM:
“The question is: can you tell, from looking at the result, whether it was designed with a goal in mind, or is the outcome of a continuous process of optimisation to the current environment?”
Let’s take the evil, offending word out: *can you tell, from looking at the result, whether it was designed with a goal in mind, or is the outcome of a continuous process of pattern reproduction with modification in the current and past environments?*
Yes, “survival of the luckiest”. Some use that term: http://physics.bu.edu/posters/2012_Spring/03_Nelson.pdf
“Gene Surfing and the Survival of the Luckiest
It is widely appreciated that population waves have played a crucial role in the evolutionary history of many species. In parallel with Fokker-Planck descriptions of stochastic processes in physics, population geneticists have developed methods for understanding mutations, genetic drift and selective advantage in such situations. Provided number fluctuations at the frontier are taken into account, neutral genetic markers can be used to infer information about growth, ancestral population size and colonization pathwas. Mutations optimally positioned at the front of a growing population wave can increase their abundance via a “surfing” phenomenon. Experimental and theoretical studies of this effect will be presented, including recent work on bacteria and mutualistic strains of yeast.
David Nelson
Harvard University
February 14, 2012″
Now may I ask why you find the idea of “survival of the luckiest” worthy of your mockery or opprobrium ?
What’s wrong with being lucky ?
I’ll take a guess that it offends your sensibility that everything on Earth must be subject to divine justice, and there’s no justice in letting a lucky man prosper merely by luck. No, it must be deserved, or at least, must be by the grace of god, not merely by something as trivial as secular “luck”.
Sorry about your luck, William. The world is as it is, not as you wish it to be.
And we should note, as do casinos, not all outcomes are equiprobable. Stochastic process can still favour certain traits.
No; you simply cannot do this. ID/creationism can’t even account for the existence of solids and liquids let alone explain any of their properties.
And since you refuse to learn any science, you have no idea what science knows and can account for.
So why do you continue to argue over trivia?
because his worldview lets him do that and not have to explain himself, per his previous admissions.
The term “natural selection” is usually used to refer to a process – the process by which the sampling in one generation is biased in favour of what promotes reproductive success in the current environment. It is neither “the result” nor “the cause”. It is, simply a process – a process that result in biased – skewed – sampling. Saying it cannot do this is either to misunderstand the process referred to by the term, or to misuse the term.
Some – many – behavioural changes are genetic. But yes, behaviour can damp the effects of NS, as can epigenetic effects. Which is just as well. If NS is too deterministic the population more likely to get stuck in local maxima. A bit of slack between genotype and phenotype makes the population more robust to change.
I found I could avoid getting stuck simply by killing off the individual with the highest fitness score 25 percent of the time. Just a blind asteroid hit.
I already responded to your second sentence.
Regarding your first sentence:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1213422/?tool=pmcentrez
That’s just one example of population genetics being applied to populations in the wild.
Natural selection is the result of three processes.
Also I can change my behaviour without changing my genome…
WJM:
In my opinion (replacing ‘earth’ with ‘an unlimited supply of earth-like planets’), 1 is by far the more likely. The reason for that opinion (which I have given before, so forgive the repeat) is deep within the biology of complexity, and crucially driven by at least two particular contingent events (but probably many, many more): endosymbiosis and sex. I suspect the universe may be teeming with (prokaryotic) Life, but with only a tiny handful of organisms with whom we might communicate.
The first contingency is endosymbiosis. For two billion years, prokaryotes bumped into each other without – apparently – any lasting result that involved the internalisation of energy generation. Prokaryotes generate energy at their outer membranes, which places a constraint on the way they can make a living. By internalising a collection of these, there is a (colloquial) quantum leap in the amount of surface area that can be dedicated to energy generation. Instead of diffusion, the outer cell can locate nutrient and ‘feed’ its mitochondria with it, gaining that valuable commodity ATP in return. But in order to stabilise such an arrangement, a great many changes are favoured – NS ‘optimises’ the arrangement. The features generated in the course of this tuning are many and varied, and if we landed on a planet where this had happened, we might be marginally more impressed than the many Prokaryote Worlds on which we could have landed.
The second key invention is sex, and it could not have happened without the first. Without the internal energy generators, and the cytoskeletal transport that evolved to pass nutrients to and from them, sex ccould not have arisen. But once you have sex, you have a restraint that allows multicellularity to develop. The key to stable multicellularity is in ‘encouraging’ cells to forego their own reproduction in favour of that of their identical cousins in the germ line – the lineage of cells that leads to gametes. You can only do this with a haploid ‘bottleneck’. If every cell retains its reproductive potential, you get mayhem (and we get a glimpse of that in cancer). So NS acts to favour stabilisation of these more complex arrangements. Once you restrain somatic reproduction, you can create tissues, with obvious benefits for the organism. And sex itself causes further complexification. If you can amplify the germ line, you can produce billions of gametes, and to do this you have to get bigger, and NS also favours some kind of ‘delivery system’. The bigger you get, the more you can specialise towards a dimorphic optimum of small, mobile gametes ‘seeking’ large, well-nourished ones – genders. That can be further refined by internal retention of the embryo stage, and post-partum care and nutrition …
And that, in potted form, is why there is this impressive diversity at our scale of experience, on this planet. It’s all about sex. And I haven’t even touched on diploidy, recombination and reproductive isolation: further massively important consequences.
Our history is dominated by unlikely contingency. Does this mean ID? Not obviously, no.
Please provide the citation that says we have observed a mutation reach fization in a wild population.
And thanks for the paper- population genetiics appears to support baraminology.
Nice story, maybe some day you will have some evidence to support it. Endosymbiosis for the origin of organelles cannot be tested.
Prokaryotes “evolving” into something other than prokaryotes cannot be tested.
NS does not optimize- NS is a result of whatever is “good enough”.
Certainly it is. But I see no reason to assume that few of these other hypothetical histories would be. I should think unlikely contingencies would be the norm, not the exception.
And that means neither 1) nor 2) is very likely. Most likely is 3), that the earth would be populated by something extremely different from what we have now, and different from just prokaryotes as well. What this might be, is limited only by the operation of physics and chemistry within the limits of your many earths, in terms of temperatures, raw materials, etc.
Allan:
Flint:
Well, we’re likely to be debating just how many angels we can get dancing on our particular pinheads :0) … but one of my assumptions is that there are very few molecules capable of the self-replication that seems a minimal requirement for anything more complex. I could be wrong, but I think those planets that have anything at all will have RNA, or something very like it, near the base of the chain of begetting. This is a chemical process of elaboration, and it hits limits if all that is happening is replication of a linked ‘team’ of replicating genes, encased in hard shells with occasional leakage. I think this version of Life is relatively easy to attain. And long-term survival is not remotely compromised if this is as far as Life gets – things don’t have to transgress boundaries, as witness the 4-billion-year-and-counting persistence of prokaryotes. Where life gets interesting (to us) is where those teams start to interact with other teams – instead of grabbing resources as little more than ‘natural PCR’, mergers and acquisitions elevate the process a notch or two.
So I do see sex as ‘the’ key to complexity, and would place a small wager on a close correlation of multicellular complexity and sex (proper sex, not that bacterial nonsense!). It arose not at all in 2 billion years of pure ‘selfish replication’, and would not have arisen but for the precursor merger of endosymbiosis (and, in all likelihood, the prior generation of protein catalysis). We don’t know how many ‘earth-replicates’ would have resulted in endosymbiois/sex, of course, and it is clearly not forbidden, but it does require a rather unlikely set of circumstances to arise. Perhaps they arise routinely in 4 billion-year replicative histories, but I think not, and no alternative causes suggest themselves. Endosymbiosis and sex founded vast dynasties, but they were something of an aberration. We notice ’em because they are hard to miss, but the planet remains ‘mostly prokaryotic’. The first species attempting either could as easily have been squashed like a bug, and we could still be waiting for the next.
I admit there will be many things going on on other worlds I cannot imagine, but I think many of the central constraints, and the means by which they are breached, are likely to be universal. I would certainly be interested to know what proportion of ‘earths’ move beyond simple systems of linked replication – but while we’re in the realm of speculation, the apparent rarity of that on this earth persuades me that it would be a very small fraction (my sample size is not huge, of course!).
NS does optimise, Joe. Optimising is what NS is – a bias, over time, in favour of what works best (“optima” is the Latin for “best”).
If you disagree, explain why, but please don’t just keep repeating it, ignoring all explanations to the contrary.
Allan,
I agree with the angels and the pinheads. I have no idea how much I have no idea about, but your view seems unduly constrained by a particular history. And as such, it doesn’t make any effort to define whaty “alive” might mean in general terms. Do you suppose something meeting some definition of life might be possible in crystals or clays or other such suggestions? Or do you think that the chemical bonding attributes of carbon are unavoidable? Maybe self-replication does not necessarily need to be molecular, perhaps there might be complex catalytic systems.
I don’t know. I’m simply going by the gut feeling that if only we could start looking (easily and conveniently) around the universe, we’d be continually astonished at what we found. A sample of one gives us a wonderful example of something that works, of course. But contingencies are odd ducks. Our biology may be one possible bridge hand.
Your question doesn’t even make sense. First of all, who’s “we”? Second, what is a “fization”? Third, what exactly do you mean by “observed”? Do you mean that no one has put a radio collar on a mutation and tracked it to the point of fixation? Do you mean that no one has taken up residence inside an organism and personally watched a mutation reach fixation? What exactly do you mean?
And are you saying that no mutations ever reach fixation in any wild population?
Nice try but the reference I provided is all it takes to prove that your claim “Unfortunately no one has taken population genetics and applied it to populations in the wild.” is 100% wrong.
Flint:
My definition of ‘alive’ would be any surviving instance of a replicator – a replicating system that was generated by copying a prior instance of such a system. Typical definitions tend to look at things like homeostasis, consumption, metabolism, excretion etc, and we can certainly imagine living things that do that without having been replicated, but as a practical matter, they don’t. The complexities of maintenance are tuned by iterated replication, and since they cannot ensure indefinite survival, replication must happen sooner or later – the message outlasts the medium.
I don’t think you can get replication without carbon centre-stage. It has that fourfold valency that makes it so versatile – bond it to four different atoms and you get a solid, to three you get a plane, to two you get a line. This gives a great set of ‘construction modules’ that allow the building of a replicator. Flat carbon sheets, threeway-bonded to other carbon atoms, oxygen or nitrogen, form the letters of the DNA code, and they are somewhat unique in their ability both to stack and to base-pair with similar units projecting from an antiparallel strand of the same construction. I don’t think you could get an equivalent arrangement with any other element, including the other elements with fourfold valency (eg silicon). And I don’t think there are many arrangements even of carbon that could give the kind of replicative ability that we appear to need before you can get a Darwinian process in train. And not forgetting the need for energy, which we supply by charging one of those stacking units, ATP. Crystal-based life seems just too simple, and doomed to locking in an energy ‘well’ without cyclic input of energy, to offer much of an alternative to carbon’s versatility.
I’m inclined to think that something like a triphosphatised nucleotide base lies at the heart of most living worlds. This may simply be lack of imagination on my part!
I agree that other worlds will be fascinating places – but my own gut feeling is that we will find Life doing many of the things that we do – cyclically generating energy at membranes, stacking these energised units in linked replicators, unitised into coherent and persistent ‘organisms’ (mostly simple), with competition for resources between teams of such linked replicators dominating their evolution.
It’s not a theory of ID. It’s just another gaps argument. I can’t think of how it happened, therefore goddidit. I’m kind of surprised that anyone thinks it’s necessary to respond.
Please provide the citation that demonstres natural selection optimizes.
As Mayr said- and I will go with Mayr over you- whatever is good enough and good enough is not optimal.
We are the people of this world and we have never observed a mutation become fixed in a wild population- never.
As for population genetics and populations in the wild- what do you think that paper demonstrated?
The Origin of Theoretical Population Genetics (University of Chicago Press, 1971), reissued in 2001 by William Provine:
Thanks for the honesty Will.
So archaeology is a gap argument- we can’t figure out how mother nature built Stonehenge so we enlist designers- is that what you are saying?
I just showed you a demonstration that natural selection optimises.
“Better” will tend to be selected, in any generation, over what is “good enough”. As can be seen in my demonstration, in which the best in early generations was not nearly “good enough” in later generations.
The vast majority of the people of this world have never heard the phrase “mutation become fixed in a wild population” and couldn’t care less, and you’re avoiding my questions.
For the purpose of my point I don’t care what the paper demonstrated, except that it proves that your claim is 100% wrong.
Which is weird considering all the time that we, the people of this world, spend observing wild populations and their mutations. Why my grandpappy was telling me just the other day, he said, “In all my long days observing wild populations, I ain’t a’ never seen no fixation of a mutation. Not never, dagnabit!”. To which I replied, “Grandpa, stop yer cussin’! Consarnit!”
Pre-filed under “Guano”.
What demonstration? Your program is not a demonstration of natural selection.
“Better” can change with every passing breath. What is “better” for one generation isn’t necessarily “better” in the next. Environments change. You either have to change or move. Meaning you can move to where good enough for one local is better in another. Even a trait that is deterimental in one location can be better in another.
You apparently think that optimize/optimal/optimum always means perfect. Even ‘perfect’ is never actually perfect.
It’s funny that you nitpick words other people use but don’t have a clue how to use words yourself, and it’s hilarious that you constantly demand citations and references, which just shows that you have an authority fixation. You’re more focused on who said something than on what they said, although you conveniently go back and forth between who said it and what they actually said as long as you think that you can manipulate the discussion in your favor. Your avoidance of relevant questions also demonstrates that you are unwilling to discuss things openly and honestly. Obviously you don’t have any confidence in your position.
Your Stonehenge obsession is noted. Stonehenge isn’t biological, it doesn’t reproduce, it hasn’t been around for millions or billions of years, and it was designed and built by humans. It is irrelevant to biological evolution.
You apparently think whatever you say, no matter how ridiculous, is correct.
Nice false accusation.
Nope, just a fixation on people supporting what they say. Ya see the way to the design infererence is THROUGH materialism.
And more false accusations.
You don’t know what a relevant question is and you are the last poerson to say something about my honesty.
Obvioulsy I am more confident in my position than you are in yours.
Umm the whole problem is your position cannot explain reproduction- it cannot explain biology.
Joe G
You are getting desperate! If direct observation of an event, rather than observing reality and determining its consequences, was a valid objection to the existence of a phenomenon, ID would certainly not have a leg to stand on. Which it doesn’t, of course, because you have neither direct observation nor any means to analyse the definitive fingerprints of your favoured mechanism, except in cases that we don’t need the ‘theory’ for, because WE did it.
If you stochastically sample with replacement, with or without bias (NS), you will get fixation, unless something intervenes to stop it. In finite populations, stochastic sampling is inevitable, and the survivors the only available source of replacement. So what stops fixation?
Insistence and repetition is not an explanation. Nobody has explained anything – what “what works best” means, or what “optimising” means – in non-normative, non-vague rigorous terms, not a collection of just-so stories. What is the rigorous meaning of those terms when it comes to NS?
Apparently, what neo-darwinists mean when they say that NS selects for “what works best”, is “whatever feature or set of features happened to have survived”. Which, once again, is an invalid tautology.
Unless one can show in a rigorous way that NS categorically biases evolutionary outcomes in favor of the kind of biological diversity that actually exists, they haven’t added anything to the explanation of such diversity. All they have done is make it easy for some to believe in NS as an explanation by offering post-hoc, tautological just-so stories filled with vague, normative concepts such as “fittest”, “optimising”, “works best”, “in order to stabilise”.
I appreciate Alan Miller’s honest answer to my question. At least he didn’t try to duck and weave and give cover to ideology when he said:
I think any honest person not serving some ideology would have to agree; that 2 billion years could have as easily, or more easily, been 4 or 10.
That depends on whether or not OOL is as much (or more) of an aberration than endosymbiosis and sex. But, OOL is granted for argument’s sake in my discussion here.
As I said before, NS doesn’t add to the explanation of the diversity of life if that diversity cannot even be predicted as a categorical bias from the first replicating organisms. We first have the apparent fluke of OOL; then NS supposedly takes over. Then we have the flukes (or aberrations, as you say) of endosymbiosis and sex.
For all we know, any normative concept we apply post-hoc such as “optimisation”, “fitness”, or “what works best” means, in actual, physical, rigorous NS terms, to keep everything at the prokaryotic level. It is only because non-prokaryotic other things exist that we imagine – again, normatively – that such diversity somehow must have been “more fit” than what is obviously the most fit organism on the planet in any real terms. Darwinists fill in the blank with “just-so” stories about evolutionary “fitness” and “optimization” as if they are rigorous, positive terms, but what the really are are just post-hoc rationalizations that “makes sense” to them in terms of why wings and hooves and zebra stripes might have come to exist.
Do humans “work better” than bacteria? Are they more fecund, or more hardy? Can they survive in more environments? Do they use energy more efficiently? Are they easier to reproduce? Are they less prone to catastrophic failure?
If NS doesn’t categorically predict a world full of the kind of life forms that exist, then those things are simply flukes. NS doesn’t explain their existence, even if it allows for it.