[MEGoody]

Fill a page with suppositions and fantasies and call it 'science'.

[RightWhale]

Complexity is entirely natural; it's the simple, canonical forms that get our attention, that we call beautiful. Wolfram says the entire universe might be generated from 5 lines of code. From this point of view, it might be so. We like complexity in literature, which we create, and simplicity in our mathematical forms, which we believe somehow describe nature. Take natural complexity as a given, it's hard to avoid, even for theorists such as Dirac. Find simplicity in the program, complexity in the result--the other way around would be absurd.

[merak]

An interdisciplinary team of scientists at Michigan State University and the California Institute of Technology, with the help of powerful computers, has used a kind of artificial life, or ALife, to create a road map detailing the evolution of complex organisms, an old problem in biology.

Steve and George (Spielberg and Lucas) can make pretty much any sort of thing happen in computer simulations these days. Are you going to call this the Hollywood version of evolution?

[cookcounty]

Were these point mutations? Did they occur (as "normal" in nature), in groups? Was there lethality involved in any of them? ...some of them? ....most of them? How did they mimic interdependent systems? What happened when a necessary substructure was eliminated? ...damaged?

Hopefully all these questions are answered in the longer report....otherwise these people should be fired for incompetence.

[cookcounty]

""Evolutionary design,"

can you spell "O-x-y-m-o-r-o-n?"

Intentional accident....pre-determined happenstance..... Chance purpose...... Random plan......intelligible gobbledygook.

[Old Professer]

The digital bugs evolve at lightening[sic] speed,

You would at least think they would proofread it before publishing it.

I am yet to be enlightened, let alone shocked.

[djf]

I guess nobody on the thread wants to talk about Thermus Aquaticus and polymerase chain reaction...

[AndrewC]

"Evolutionary design," says Pennock, "can often solve problems better than we can using our own intelligence."

Absurd! Even leaving out the often does not make the statement much more believable.

[Raymond Hendrix]

The Blind Atheist

[Tribune7]

"These simulations will help direct research on living systems and will provide understanding of the origins of biocomplexity."

A profession of faith. :-)

[Celtjew Libertarian]

I'm waiting for the day -- and I don't think it's too far away -- that one of these cellular automatas or other simulations of life get complex enough to ask, "What created me?"

We were created in God's image. We replicate the creative aspect of God by creating our own universes of life.

[chickenlips]

Why do I think of "climate models" when I read this? You know, those models that supposedly can predict weather patterns decades from now but not tomorrow's.

What utter nonsense. They should do something constructive with their computer skills, like create a video game...ahh, maybe they did?

[HalfFull]

btt

[slimer]

An interdisciplinary team of scientists at Michigan State University and the California Institute of Technology, with the help of powerful computers,...

This is intelligent design.

[Jhoffa_]

It's a computer program.. that should tell you something.

It should tell you it's behavior is only as accurate as the code that was compiled for it.

[MEGoody]

"Artificial life experiments"

The fact that scientists were involved and setting up the scenario in which to conduct the experiment kind of puts a dent in the idea that this provides any support for 'unguided' evolution.

[BSunday]

"Here's this computer program WE made up that seems to suggest that we are right....hmmm....yeah, right.

[DaGman]

This should relegate the nonsense of intelligent design to the dust bin of junk science.

[Z.Hobbs]

"Avida, is an artificial petri dish in which organisms not only reproduce, but also perform mathematical calculations to obtain rewards. Their reward is more computer time that they can use for making copies of themselves."

Artificial life in an artificially created environment with artificial intelligence endowed by its creator. Evolutionary?