Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

I honestly would need to dig deeper into the interpretations allowing for retrocausation to say more, but it does seem to me consistency is a human desire - the very concept of "natural laws" points to that as well.

Not directly related (AFAIK) to retrocausation is an idea that the physicist Lee Smolin proposed, that the "Present" is a bubble in some sense rather than a singular point on a (supposed) temporal 4th dimensional axis. (I don't think Time is, in any way, akin to the other 3 axes of space)

Without reference to the classic space-time retro-causation ideas you Chris and nbtruthman seem to be discussing here. I think your idea that time as we experience it, not being in any way related to our experience of space is... distasteful :-(

You can dump the three axis of space and one of time.... and instead think about yourself as existing as the center point inside a large sphere... turn to any vector, and you will see a different part of the two dimensional inner surface of the sphere where two dimensions of information are stored (which is the everyday world you experience)... but our experience of time is intimately linked to that perception, because there is a perception of distance between you and the inner walls of the sphere, and that perception of distance is intimately bound together with the perception of time. The time taken to travel that distance, which is just a fact of life for us, and is sort of a way of processing information into spacetime and into the everyday concept of stuff near, and far away. You can think about your 4 dimensions that way just the same I'm sure, instead of thinking about cubes with 3 dimensions of space + 1 dimensional time.

Without reference to the classic space-time retro-causation ideas you Chris and nbtruthman seem to be discussing here. I think your idea that time as we experience it, not being in any way related to our experience of space is... distasteful :-(

You can dump the three axis of space and one of time.... and instead think about yourself as existing as the center point inside a large sphere... turn to any vector, and you will see a different part of the two dimensional inner surface of the sphere where two dimensions of information are stored (which is the everyday world you experience)... but our experience of time is intimately linked to that perception, because there is a perception of distance between you and the inner walls of the sphere, and that perception of distance is intimately bound together with the perception of time. The time taken to travel that distance, which is just a fact of life for us, and is sort of a way of processing information into spacetime and into the everyday concept of stuff near, and far away. You can think about your 4 dimensions that way just the same I'm sure, instead of thinking about cubes with 3 dimensions of space + 1 dimensional time.

Yeah I was a bit remiss to say time is not like space in any way.

But it seems to me space is defined by time to a certain extent. As Eric Weiss put it, if you could teleport to different places and teleport things to you instantly the idea of space would be altered.

I even suspect we might be in agreement that space is defined by time, not vice versa...or do you think even that is inaccurate, that space and time have a co-dependence if not via Einstein's works then even by attempts at defining either?

Do you mean what forces the universe to remain consistent? If so, I think consistency is supposed to be a fundamental property of the universe, rather than something enforced by a particular mechanism.

With reference to time travel, it's known as the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle, and it has its own Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_se..._principle

I don't see why it would be. You seem to be devoted to the idea of "information" and fit everything to that, and I still don't understand what it is that you think is different about it.

Linda

Informational activity operating in an informational environment is measured differently than physical activity in a physical environment.

Chemical analysis is a fabulous tool in understanding biological systems.

Analysis of communication, regulatory functions and intentional mental output are tools in understanding biological systems.

In practice, this methodology leads me to see the research into the chemical precursor to life as secondary; to research into how the first biological codes developed.

Yeah I was a bit remiss to say time is not like space in any way.

But it seems to me space is defined by time to a certain extent. As Eric Weiss put it, if you could teleport to different places and teleport things to you instantly the idea of space would be altered.

I even suspect we might be in agreement that space is defined by time, not vice versa...or do you think even that is inaccurate, that space and time have a co-dependence if not via Einstein's works then even by attempts at defining either?

Yes I think those are inaccurate. It's not possible to separate space and time, there is only spacetime, which appears to be the result of processing something else which underlies spacetime... which I would call information. I'm very specific, spacetime is a result, like the result of a calculation, it is neither the information before it was calculated, nor I think a look at the processing of the calculation.

If you had a mass of mixed up information, and wanted to get some sort of perspective on it, in an attempt to put it into some order, then I think viewing it from different one dimensional perspectives so that you can add it up is damn useful. I mean, time as one dimension isn't a line... the idea of one dimension is better thought about as beads on an abacus rail, you can't get one bead past another. One bead is sandwiched between two other beads, you can compress them together by adding them together, but you can't jump one bead over another.

When we do take a peek at the processing of the calculation, I think we see quantum physics. The randomness of which isn't really random. It's just too much information for us to deal with. But it really appears to be nothing more than us peeking at the processing in action, the processing which actually produces the result of spacetime.

I think we can see the underlying information which is being calculated, and/or how it is calculated and/or how it is stored is not one thing... but at least two things. You can see hints of it in Relativity, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, you can see it in Spin (particles that have to be rotated twice to return to the same initial state), and in all types of symmetries etc.

Personally I have dumped the idea of three dimensions of space + time. It makes much more sense to me to think about spacetime as composed of the collisions of (perhaps) two dimensional information storage, which when understood from within spacetime, these information collisions might be thought about as existing in three dimensions + time.

Something like that anyway...

Is the apologist you mention, Stephen Myers, the intelligent design guy?

 I meant PZ Myers.

Yeah, sure.  The Discovery folks and Stephen Meyer are similar on the other side.  I would be following the books and authors recommended by the Third Way of Evolution.

http://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/pe...no-anolles

Informational activity operating in an informational environment is measured differently than physical activity in a physical environment.

Chemical analysis is a fabulous tool in understanding biological systems.

Analysis of communication, regulatory functions and intentional mental output are tools in understanding biological systems.

In practice, this methodology leads me to see the research into the chemical precursor to life as secondary; to research into how the first biological codes developed.

Personally, rather than confining oneself to one perspective, I prefer the way evolutionary biologists seem to be working on it, which includes chemical analysis in conjunction with how the biological codes may have developed (e.g. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl...ne.0072225).

You've never really clarified why you consider chemical analysis vs. information two different and competing perspectives, rather than the way scientists in the field seem to use them (as one of many tools used to understand the larger picture).

Linda

The Paul Davies paper where he suggests post-selection being incorporated into natural selection is entitled, “Directionality Principles from Cancer to Cosmology.”

Can't seem to find a free link, if anyone else has some luck or can provide some bullet points would be much appreciated.

thanks!

Sci

An interesting new paper, Why We Do Not Evolve Software? Analysis of Evolutionary Algorithms, by Roman V Yampolskiy, at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177...4318815906 .
                     
Excerpts:

"It is interesting to do a thought experiment and try to imagine what testable predictions Charles Darwin would have made, had he made his discovery today, with full knowledge of modern bioinformatics and of computer science. His predictions may have included the following: (1) simulations of evolution will produce statistically similar results at least with respect to complexity of artifacts produced and (2) if running evolutionary algorithms (EAs) for as long as possible continued to produce nontrivial outputs, scientists would run them forever. 

Likewise, he would be able to make some predictions, which would be able to falsify his theory, such as (1) representative simulations of evolution will not produce similar results to those observed in nature, (2) researchers will not be able to evolve software or other complex or novel artifacts, and (3) there will not be any projects running EAs long term because their outputs would quickly stop improving and stabilize.
..............................
Our analysis of relevant literature shows that no one has succeeded at evolving nontrivial software from scratch.....The reason we do not evolve software is that the space of working programs is very large and discrete. Although hill-climbing heuristic–based evolutionary computations are excellent at solving many optimization problems, they fail in the domains of noncontinuous fitness. This is also the reason we do not evolve complex life or novel engineering designs.

With respect to our 2 predictions, we can conclude that (1) simulations of evolution do not produce comparably complex artifacts and (2) running EAs longer leads to progressively diminishing results. With respect to the 3 falsifiability conditions, we observe that all 3 are true as of this writing.
..............................
We are not evolving complex artifacts, we are not running EAs for as long as possible, we are not evolving software, and the public is unaware of most complex products of evolutionary computation. On close examination, all “human-competitive” results turn out to be just optimizations, never fully autonomous programming leading to novel software being engineered."

Yampolskiy concludes that the bottom line is, Darwin’s mechanism as simulated by genetic evolutionary algorithms just doesn’t do what Darwin would have expected. He lays down a challenge to the evolutionary algorithms community to address this.

He lists several possible reasons for this failure, including that we might have failed to implement Darwinian evolution correctly. Unlikely. Another: maybe there are insufficient computational resources to simulate evolution. Maybe.

Yet another possibility is the problem of complexity, which I think is close to the core of it:

"...genetic algorithms do not scale well with complexity. That is, where the number of elements which are exposed to mutation is large there is often an exponential increase in search space size. This makes it extremely difficult to use the technique on problems such as designing an engine, a house or plane. In order to make such problems tractable to evolutionary search, they must be broken down into the simplest representation possible. Hence we typically see evolutionary algorithms encoding designs for fan blades instead of engines, building shapes instead of detailed construction plans, and airfoils instead of whole aircraft designs. The second problem of complexity is the issue of how to protect parts that have evolved to represent good solutions from further destructive mutation, particularly when their fitness assessment requires them to combine well with other parts."

He grudgingly lists the final possibility for this failure: that Darwin might have been wrong, as far as nontrivial complex biological systems are concerned.

Would be interesting to see him discuss this with Idealist Donald Hoffman whose major body of work re: Interface Theory of Perception rests on computer simulations and later with an associate a mathematical proof arguing fitness necessitates a reduction in true perception.

I figure since Hoffman is an Idealist he might be willing to examine the argument and respond.