Posted on 09/03/2002 11:50:02 AM PDT by VadeRetro
Exclusive from New Scientist
A self-organising electronic circuit has stunned engineers by turning itself into a radio receiver.
What should have been an oscillator became a radio
This accidental reinvention of the radio followed an experiment to see if an automated design process, that uses an evolutionary computer program, could be used to "breed" an electronic circuit called an oscillator. An oscillator produces a repetitive electronic signal, usually in the form of a sine wave.
Paul Layzell and Jon Bird at the University of Sussex in Brighton applied the program to a simple arrangement of transistors and found that an oscillating output did indeed evolve.
But when they looked more closely they found that, despite producing an oscillating signal, the circuit itself was not actually an oscillator. Instead, it was behaving more like a radio receiver, picking up a signal from a nearby computer and delivering it as an output.
In essence, the evolving circuit had cheated, relaying oscillations generated elsewhere, rather than generating its own.
Gene mixing
Layzell and Bird were using the software to control the connections between 10 transistors plugged into a circuit board that was fitted with programmable switches. The switches made it possible to connect the transistors differently.
Treating each switch as analogous to a gene allowed new circuits to evolve. Those that oscillated best were allowed to survive to a next generation. These "fittest" candidates were then mated by mixing their genes together, or mutated by making random changes to them.
After several thousand generations you end up with a clear winner, says Layzell. But precisely why the winner was a radio still mystifies them.
To pick up a radio signal you need other elements such as an antenna. After exhaustive testing they found that a long track in the circuit board had functioned as the antenna. But how the circuit "figured out" that this would work is not known.
"There's probably one sudden key mutation that enabled radio frequencies to be picked up," says Bird.
Duncan Graham-Rowe
Wrong, the Christians are laughing at the silliness of evolutionists arguing that this proves their theory. It shows both their ignorance and their desperation in not finding anything to support their stupid theory.
Such a clear and succinct analysis indicates your sobriquet is an apt descriptor, at least for the first name. How the redneck fits in ....?
When one of my circuit designs produced "motor boating" my instructor did not praise my "discovery" as a novel solution to the problem at hand. It was back to the drawing board.
To deny random evolution as the cause of Creation is a Christian's duty, but to deny evolution happens as a process in nature is misguided. If it wasn't, Draft horses and Shetland Ponies would have been here at the time of Adam and Eve, they weren't and we know when and by who they were developed. They are a creation of man using God's OS.
He would if you were a group of randomly fired switches. If your single design task was to output a certain signal, and you did with an amp, then you past. The researchers need to control their test better, but the result is interesting.
Wrong. Dogs and horses are an example of intelligent selection. It is the result of selecting traits already present in a species and reinforcing them by breeding specimens with the desired traits. In spite of all the breeding of dogs and horses, they are still all of one species. Breeding is proof of the adaptability of species without any need for any genetic change.
You're being self righteous, assuming, and rude. Grow up and think.
Dogs and horses are an example of intelligent selection. It is the result of selecting traits already present in a species and reinforcing them by breeding specimens with the desired traits. In spite of all the breeding of dogs and horses, they are still all of one species. Breeding is proof of the adaptability of species without any need for any genetic change.
Which is all GA does, it take the best traits an initial set of solutions, scores them, combines) the best solutions, and throws out the lower 50%. Random variation is only used to avoid closing in on a local optimization. This process will converge on a global optimization. It is just a brute force method of finding a max/min of multiple interdependent equations. The only religious significance about it is that it uses a process we've observed in God's creation.
Be careful though, heredity and breeding cause some genetic variation. That is, your genes are a combination of your ancestors. Genetic Algorithm and Evolutionary Computation could be called Hereditary Computation just as easily.
Don't get so hung up on words like Evolution until you understand the meaning being assigned. Knee-jerk Christians are a weak spot in the Church. More people rebel from Christians than they do from Christ.
Wrong again. No kind of selection, by man or by any other means creates new genes. It just rearranges the alleles of a species among the members. If anything, selection, either natural or directed by man destroys genetic diversity it does not create it. That is why thoroughbreds of any species are less viable, have fewer progeny and weaker ones in many cases than the 'mutts' of the species.
I don't think anyone on this thread, or any information form the article even eluded to the creation of "new Genes". Don't need them.
Can't speak for you, but I am not. Evolution requires an increase in genetic information for it to be true. You cannot get from a bacteria to a man by deleting genetic information which is what happens with selection - either natural or by man.
I don't think anyone on this thread, or any information form the article even eluded to the creation of "new Genes". Don't need them.
See above, of course you need new genes for evolution to be true and I do not care how evolutionists dance around that point. It is a sign of the despair for proof of evolutionists that they attempt to claim that processes which destroy genetic information are proof of evolution.
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