Eugene questions Dawkins

"Meaningful" can be replaced with "marketable" and "product superiority" can be equated with "survival of the fittest."
 
Eugene Shubert said:
Suppose that Charles Darwin had studied a grand library of all the books and journals currently in print. Indisputably, great similarities, adaptations, spin-offs and plagiarisms would have been easy to recognize. I believe that Darwin would have rationalized the history of the grand library by imagining its highly ordered present-day existence to have come about by random and incremental variations.
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Nonsense. The two processes are nothing alike. Books are not iterated by introducing random and incremental variations in each iteration; indeed, no such mechanism exists either today or in Darwin's day. Further, there is no natural process by which books are selected by reproductive fitness.

And the basis of your claim is that Darwin did NOT have grand libraries to study; that the 1830's had no such institutions that he could use as a basis, and he thus could not consider such a thought experiment. That is ludicrous.
 
Eugene Shubert said:
What use is a paralyzed brain or uncontrollable neurons? How did consciousness evolve?
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It did not. It is an emergent property of a complex neural network.

The complex neural network we call the brain is molded by evolution to be sufficiently complex, adaptive and functional to ensure survival of the organism. In some animals (annelids) that means simple tropisms. In some animals (birds) it means complex behaviors, including management of flight surfaces, complex mating rituals and long range navigation. In humans it means the ability to express very complex skills - language, ability to accept formal education, engineering skills, childrearing, writing.

In none of those is consciousness necessary. However, it is has emerged as a consequence of the growing complexity of nervous systems.
 
Eugene Shubert said:
I'm merely asserting that any pretension as empty as the opening post should be classified as a type of religion, not science, and that my thesis is a valid debate topic.
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Well to have a debate we need to clearly identify what it is we are to debate.
Perhaps present the case for whatever it is that you wish to support a little more specific.
I tried to reduce your propostion buut thought perhaps you should could rather than us guess maybe.
Iam not sure as to your exact point.
Alex
 
I suppose one could study what knowledge survives.
There are books and there are books. I guess over time if you tracked a culture over centuries it probably show different vooks being removed for what ever reason.
But if you suggest Darwin somehow did a slack job for whatever reason I doubt you can provide a convincing arguement.
Would you be capable of presenting such a body of work to present to us whatever proposition you think is reality.
Alex
 
Eugene Shubert said:
I believe that Darwin would have rationalized the history of the grand library by imagining its highly ordered present-day existence to have come about by random and incremental variations.
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No he wouldn't

Eugene Shubert said:
According to Neo-Darwinism, the following empirically unverified procedure is a valid method for building a library and acquiring knowledge:
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No it's not

Eugene Shubert said:
"Begin with a meaningful phrase, retype it with a few mistakes, make it longer by adding letters, and rearrange subsequences in the string of letters; then examine the result to see if the new phrase is meaningful. Repeat this process until the library is complete." — Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, Wistar Institute Press, 1967, p. 110.
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OK
Now explain to me where two books screw each other
One gets pregnant
And after gestation a baby booklet is born (sorry I don't know the gestation period of books. It wasn't taught when I did my Nursing Midwifery course)

I'm guessing from here

Baby book is checked by the Matron Miss Encyclopaedia and given to the proud parents who bill and coo about baby book's fonts and which parent has the closest matching font

exchemist said:
This stupid non-analogy would thus appear to be the work of a halfwit, or of someone seeking to bolster the beliefs of halfwits. Probably the latter, I should think.
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:oops: Sorry you are insulting poor halfwits

Eugene Shubert said:
Sure there is.
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No there is not

Eugene Shubert said:
Just declare that unpopular books that are filled with unrecognizable gibberish get taken off the shelves and removed from circulation.
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Arrrrh if only we could remove humans who sprout unrecognizable gibberish

Eugene Shubert said:
How is the analogy faulty?
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As Wolfgang Pauli put it (paraphrase) It's not only faulty it's not even wrong

Eugene Shubert said:
"Meaningful" can be replaced with "marketable" and "product superiority" can be equated with "survival of the fittest."
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No they can't

billvon said:
. That is ludicrous.
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Yes it is

Eugene Shubert said:
That was just my way of saying how terribly illiterate Charles Darwin was in real science.
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Charles Darwin was intelligent

Eugene Shubert said:
Suppose that Charles Darwin had studied a grand library of all the books and journals currently in print.
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It would not matter as his intelligence enabled him to create his own real science from his observations

And if you are using not studying in a great library to demonstrate how terribly illiterate Charles Darwin was in real science I would put you in the "has never even seen a book or ever understood Science" group

:)
 
Now I am starting to worry about all the books that have gone extinct and we will never know about them.
I think we could research the records and see which books Dawin took out of the library, references as to what he may have read and books of the time an ones that he didnt read.
It could be done but the fact is evolution rules if you have a better model beat Dawin but I dont like your chances.
Alex
 
Eugene Shubert said:
Suppose that Charles Darwin had studied a grand library of all the books and journals currently in print. Indisputably, great similarities, adaptations, spin-offs and plagiarisms would have been easy to recognize. I believe that Darwin would have rationalized the history of the grand library by imagining its highly ordered present-day existence to have come about by random and incremental variations. According to Neo-Darwinism, the following empirically unverified procedure is a valid method for building a library and acquiring knowledge:

"Begin with a meaningful phrase, retype it with a few mistakes, make it longer by adding letters, and rearrange subsequences in the string of letters; then examine the result to see if the new phrase is meaningful. Repeat this process until the library is complete." — Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, Wistar Institute Press, 1967, p. 110.
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A library could, in principle, be developed this way.

Notice, though, that there's a selection mechanism missing from the above description. It's impled right there in the "examine the result to see if the new phrase is meaningful" part, but not specified. Who or what is doing the examining? What does "meaningful" mean in this context? Meaningful to whom? Meaningful for what?

This model also assumes that new books are only produced by copying old ones, with occasional mistakes. Nothing wrong with that, although we know that's not how it works in real-world libraries.

To summarise: there's nothing inherently absurd about this idea, but there are a lot of important pieces missing from the description of this so-called evolving library.

The description given is, of course, completely inadequate for explaining how our real, current, libraries came to be the way they are.
 
Eugene Shubert said:
What use is a paralyzed brain or uncontrollable neurons? How did consciousness evolve? Imagine a time when no animal attained the threshold of consciousness. If a prototype consciousness worked well enough to confer a small advantage for an animal to get food or to escape a predator, then it doesn't matter how unthinking and poorly conscious the first consciousness was. However slight an improvement can be, it can make the difference between life and death. Natural selection will then favour slightly better, prototype consciousness. When these inefficient consciousnesses have become the norm, then a slight further increase in consciousness and brain functionality will make the difference between life and death. And so on, until some species of animals have a highly evolved consciousness. See Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, pp. 89-90.
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Which parts of this are you, and which parts are direct quotes from Dawkins? Please clarify.
 
Eugene Shubert said:
What use are paralyzed legs or uncontrollable stubs? How did legs get their start? Many animals don’t have legs. But if prototype legs worked well enough to confer a small advantage for an animal to get closer to food or to escape a predator, then it doesn't matter how small and un-leglike the first legs were. However slight an improvement can be, it can make the difference between life and death. Natural selection will then favour slightly better, prototype legs. When these inefficient legs have become the norm, then a slight further increase in leg functionality will make the difference between life and death. And so on, until we have proper legs. See Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, pp. 89-90.
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Which parts of this are you, and which parts are direct quotes from Dawkins? Please clarify.
 
Eugene Shubert said:
I believe that Darwin would have rationalized the history of the grand library by imagining its highly ordered present-day existence to have come about by random and incremental variations.
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Why would you believe Darwin did not know how books were shelved or printed?
Eugene Shubert said:
That was just my way of saying how terribly illiterate Charles Darwin was in real science.
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He wasn't. And "literacy in science" seems almost useless, as a concept - what would it mean?
Eugene Shubert said:
"Meaningful" can be replaced with "marketable" and "product superiority" can be equated with "survival of the fittest."
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Not if you want to apply Darwinian evolutionary theory.

Library evolution is not Darwinian. So?
 
iceaura said:
All creationists are "God did it" creationists - they just have different names for God.
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Quantum is the new god :)

Wonder whoes bright idea it was to pick up the new buzz word and try to run with "we have something scientists cannot explain. Well we can link it to ID"

:)
 
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