Posted on 03/05/2002 12:52:58 PM PST by Southack
There is a recurring claim among a certain group which goes along the lines of "software programs can self-form on their own if you leave enough computers on long enough" or "DNA will self-form given enough time" or even that a million monkeys typing randomly on a million keyboards for a million years will eventually produce the collected works of Shakespeare.
This mathematical proof goes a short distance toward showing in math what Nobel Prize winner Illya Prigogine first said in 1987 (see Order Out of Chaos), that the maximum possible "order" self-forming randomly in any system is the most improbable.
This particular math proof deals with the organized data in only the very first sentence of Hamlet self-forming. After one examines this proof, it should be readily apparent that even more complex forms of order, such as a short story, computer program, or DNA for a fox, are vastly more improbable.
So without further adue, here's the math:
Let me give you another example, with a slight twist. Imagine a world where there are two species - humans and apple trees. And the humans survive by eating apples. I know, I know - but simplifying helps.
So, we know when we look at an apple tree that most of the apples are up pretty high, higher than most of us can reach. But we have this element of random mutation every so often, and that works in our favor.
So, some random day, a human is born with a random mutation that makes him a foot taller than everyone else. Now, this is an adaptive trait - this person will be able to reach apples that nobody else can reach, so he'll be able to eat much better than most people can eat - he'll be healthier, he'll probably live longer, and he can pass this trait on to his offspring. His children will be taller than everyone else too.
So now we need to introduce a selective pressure, and in this case we'll choose the selective pressure that drives all evolution - competition. Imagine that there's a limited number of apples out there, and people have to compete to get what apples there are. Now, our tall fellow has a huge advantage - he can reach all the apples everyone else can reach, and a whole bunch more besides. So he gets apples that others can't, and he gets some of the ones they can - he gets a disproportional share of the scarce apples, because he has an advantage. So he eats better, he's healthier, and he lives longer than the others do, and leaves more tall offspring than the short folks do.
And his tall offspring have the same advantage over the short offspring that he did. So they get a disproportional share of the apples, and leave more offspring than the short folks. And you keep this up over time, and eventually, there's no short people left - they're all dead, because they couldn't compete for apples as well as the tall people.
Now, at no point did anyone or anything "decide" to become taller - tall people just came about as a random mutation, but that random mutation proved to be an advantage. But you will always have few tall people who refuse to see that. After a million years some tall person will turn to another tall person and say "Mein Gott - look at us! We're huge - look at how tall we are! We're the perfect height to get all the apples on the tree. This can't be an accident - someone must have planned it that way."
sorry. let me try and rephrase what people have been trying to say, and lets try to extract from the analogies, rather than get caught in them. in your example, whatever method got you to breathe a little bit better, you would keep trying in that direction. but its not a good example. lets give some reason why, and that will help you understand.
in your example, its a simple case - breathe or not. in natural selection it seems simple (survive or not) but really is more complex, as there are things many things that affect survival: some hurt it, some help, some don't do anyhthing.
also in your case, i dont know what there is to "try". under natural evolution, the idea is mutations occur - if they hurt your chances for survival, they go away, if they help, they get propagated. if they do nothing, they still stick around.
so in your question: what if the final product is not known? the answer is simple, there is no "final" product. there is no "right" answer to evolution. the only target is survival. there is no "trying" being done by anyone -- mutations are random. the paragraphs above explain how somethings survive/fit better.
the addition of a fitness function to the monkey problem is an "intelligent intervention" but so is putting a bunch of monkeys in front of typewriters! the attempt to add the fitness function is an attempt to catch an essential component of evolution. things which hurt the goal (survival in evolution, spelling a sentence in the monkey example), are dropped, things which help reach the goal are kept.
What a silly comment! The monkey scenario is a case in statistical probability alone, dreamed up by the evos in an attempt to demonstrate that given enough time, order can randomly develop out of disorder. Period! And the monkey/typwriter was dreamed up by the evos! Don't blame me! You see the evos say; "well...given enough time..." They constantly have had to lengthen the alleged time because science keeps showing that they haven't factored in enough time for their fanciful notions to occur in light of the statistical probabilities...What is it now...like 15 billion years?...in a few more years, they'll claim 30 billion. The typing monkleys proves another point at which the evos are mistaken. You are essentially doing the same thing, though instead of adding years, you now want to add preferred qualifiers. Sorry, you can't make up the rules as you go, to suit your posture. "Fitness" has NOTHING to do with the typing monkyes!
There isnt' enough and never has been enough time for the events that the evos propose to have come into being without intellegent intervention!
Now, you see that your coveted typing-monkey-myth has been debunked, you feel the need to change the variables. Typical evo!
You talk high and mighty about "fitness", so as long as you bring it up, please explain how half-transition mutations are "fitter" to survive, than their non-mutant brethren! Truth is, they aren't. And they don't, of their own accord set off to correct their mutations to be more fit. The probability of a mutation being beneficial is so tiny as to be laughable...the for that mutation to reproduce, it would need to find another mutaied individual to breed with and then have another beneficial mutaion and then each mutation has to find another of it's kind. It's all a bunch of so much nonsense!
...on second thought...don't tell me. I've never cred for fairy tales.
LIke I posted a few days ago...
Ask evos why we don't see macro-evolution today and the response is; "because it takes a loooooong time".
Ask them why we don't find the plethora of transition fossils and they say; "because it happened quickly".
Welcome to universe-worshiping doublespeak
"Look a lot different" is an insufficient description of macro evolution. Macro evolution requires that the basic characteristics of an organism are altered (over time) such that the organism is no longer properly classified with its original form - jumping at least grom genus to genus, all the way back to jumping from one kingdom to another.
Your emphasis on the descendency is correct in that it represents the time factor, but the French vsersus Portugese example is fallacious - Both French and Portugese are still languages (and are both "romance languages" with similar construction). There is no empirical evidence (much less proof) of an organism making the leap from one genus to another throughout the original organism's entire descendency.
perish the thought!
LOL...holding my ribs here..
Well, first, according to the experiment, as set up, the monkeys all fail the fitness test in the first four days, because the calculations have not included the necessary sleep, eating, bowel movements that are necessary to survival. So, when those things are factored in, we can even further expontentially diminish the possibilities, by a factor of 5.
Second, you "fitness" criteria is nonesense, because we are talking about monkeys. In no way was the experement dealing with a monkey's ability to survive. His survival has nothing to do with the experiment at all. Nowhere does it say that he doesn't get any bananas if he doesn't type correctly, or that he has to hold his poop until he gets it right. There is no reward/punishment included in this experiment, so you are very much mistaken in alluding to "fitness".
I assume you mean that you postulate that they could "both be traced back to the same thing". Given that Darwin based his theory on empirical data of micro evolution (where organisms adapt to their environments without fundamentally altering their core characteristics), then there must be empirical evidence of the inter-genus leap required by macro evolution.
But, as the missing link is still missing, it is not possible to do such a traceback. A theory must live or die based on its founding evidence, and macro evolution cannot support itself without extrapolation of data that cannot be verified in accordance with its foundation.
Assuming I grant that to be true, mere absence of evidence is not itself evidence of absence. I can't help but think of the Soviet cosmonauts who, upon returning to earth, announced that there was no God - after all, if there were a God, they would have seen Him ;)
But . . .
Look at the structure of the human brain, just one human brain of roughly 3 pounds and the color and consistency of cream cheese. Mostly fat, not the fat-free cream cheese.
It has some large number of neurons, an alphabet of 1 member, but each neuron is connected to 10,000 other neurons. There is an infinite quality to the brain, even though it has only one letter in its alphabet.
How many blues songs are there from the musical alphabet of 12 notes? Note bending is allowed here and there according to the rules. 10 million?
How many books have been written in English, not counting plagiarized versions, or even allowing plagarized works and xeroxed copies? One billion from an alphabet of 26 letters?
The point is that our physical bodies, while complex, might not be extraordinarily complex. Even allowing for the cream cheese brain.
the point is to allude at how the experiment fails to model evolution. my attempt to add "fitness" to it is to more closely model natural evolution. capiche?
try...please try to stay on topic here.
But yes, as long as you've asked, I believe that I was created just as I am, by an intelegent Being Who loves me (so much that He was willing to die that I might live forever with Him), knows everything about me (yet He still loves me!), cares for and about me and has a plan for my life. By your own logic, you sadly don't have any such hope.
By extrapolating your prespectives, at best, you're just a random mutation which arose from some pond scum, whose relatives resembled anything from slugs, to rats, to apes...created by nothing, for nothing, and with and for no purpose in life at all, and life has no meaning as you spin through space with no destination...and in the end...the worms. What a terrible notion...that life is so meaningless and that you arose out of nothing, for no purpose with the only thing to look forward are the worms. In this belief system is the claim that there is no moral law except the law of survival of the fittest, breeding moral relativism, for if there is a universal moral law, there must be a Law Giver, whom you deny.(But even I don't believe that of you)
Nothing personal, but...you asked.
I wish you His very best.
I've gotta grab some vittles.
ergo the monkeys have nothing to do with natural evolution.
So, do you agree that feedback is an essential difference between the problems in question? And that no intelligence is needed for feedback to occur? I think it's important to establish this before discussing how much feedback that near-DNA had.
The typing monkeys was a math extrapolation alone!
YOU have missed the point! The typing monkeys was an attempt dreamed up BY THE EVOLUTIONSITS to explain that given enough time, that order could result through radom circumstances. That is all it ever attempted to proclaim! If it were an evolutionary parallel, then we would have to ask who created the typewriters, or the paper, or the alphabet, or the language, or the standard of punctuation, or correct spelling, all of which would point to INTELLEGENT DESIGN in the beginning. If the EVOLUTIONISTS used it as a parallel to evolution, they fail with the intial set-up as they would have to admit CREATION!
YOU ALONE are the one who has just recently decided that "fitness" is a factor, when it NEVER HAS BEEN a factor for as long as EVOLUTIONSITS have been pushing their typing monkey myth.
YOU feel compelled to alter the scenario ONLY because the statistical probability proves the nonsense that order does NOT result from radom circumstances! The math is and always has been against you.
good night
I see you missed my point. The existence of quantum computing is evidence that processes are not necessarily limited by the kind of exponential statistics described in the "Tiny Mathematical Proof Against Evolution" article which started this thread.
That "proof" was based on a probability calculation in which typing Shakespeare through pure random chance is so unlikely as to be a number which far exceeds the size and age of our universe. Which of course is true. Just as it is true that cracking a code with a sufficiently long key may be so unlikely as to be a number which far exceeds the size and age of our universe.
That is not necessarily true for the superposition of all possible universes (which is one way of interpreting quantum mechanics). If there is an infinity or near-infinity of universes (as some interpretations of quantum mechanics suggest) then the size and age of our single universe is no longer the probabilistic limitation.
This is not an issue that is limited to computer designs, and so the question of whether there are "natural" quantum computations that occur is not relevant. (I am not a physicist, and I do not know whether there are examples of "natural" quantum computations. Nor does the lack of knowledge in such a young field indicate the non-existence of "natural" quantum computations.)
The issue here is that the author of the article is positing a "proof" of his thesis. So by definition the burden of proof is on him. Among other things, his "proof" depends on the attempted calculation of probabilities that exceed anything that could be obtained within the size and age of our universe. But his "proof" fails to take into account quantum mechanics, in exactly the same fashion as similar "proofs" for the security of encryption systems fail to take into account quantum mechanics.
Therefore, as a "proof", it fails. That was my point.
So for you, "macroevolution" means evolution of new genuses & above? I ask because the standard definition is evolution of new species & above.
So you're saying that chimps & gorillas are the same "kind"? What about chimps & monkeys? What about chimps & humans? What about chimps & lemurs?
Generally, what's the magic biological barrier that allows the evolution of new species, yet prevents the eventual evolution of new genii?
Why is that the inevitable conclusion? Isn't it possible that God works through evolution? Surely God could set evolution in motion, couldn't he? He makes the rules, and the universe abides by them...
The two beliefs are not mutually exclusive - just because I don't believe that God is intimately involved in every single detail of my life, or the workings of the world, doesn't mean I don't believe in God at all, does it?
PMFJI, but since you think evolution => hopelessness, will you admit that a certain, um, self-serving emotional agenda colors your whole approach to this discussion?
Your post intrigued me enough to go and see what I could find out about the parable of the million monkeys. Actually, it was not created as support for evolution, although, as in this article we have before us, it has been used fairly often to try to refute evolution. You can see some early examples of it here.
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