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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jun 25, 2018 - 07:44pm PT
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What I think is that both of you really don't get how more complicated things can be built from fundamental building blocks along with some processes and rules. It's super-easy for me since I have been designing software that does just this for a very long time.
I designed an AI engine that is the basis of our degree audit system, which my company now sells to colleges and universities all over the USA and Canada. So, I think I know a thing or two about software as well.
It makes my point. "Software" depends upon microcode in the processor. Nothing "runs" without it. That microcode is outside of all the "software" (information, mind, etc.) at the macro level. So, "software" is indeed built up from smaller parts, but all of it depends on the microcode and the processor to ALREADY exist in order to function.
You guys have a chicken/egg problem. The first functioning cell ALREADY was "interpreting" microcode. But the genetic code is the "software," not the "microcode," and the cell is not the "processor."
What is the difference between a beaker full of amino acids, enzymes, and some DNA vs. a living cell? BOTH "contexts" have all the "parts" to which you refer. Assemble the stuff in the beaker any way you wish, and you won't get the enzymes to start doing what you wish.
Furthermore, all of the "parts" you refer to are not "information" in the needed sense. Like I said, all you have is "data" (by your term). And even IF that data was "running" in a beaker, which it is not, and even if the cell contains "data" that is "running," there is still a QUALITATIVE difference between that and genuine information.
Empiricists BELIEVE (and it really is a matter of faith that has NEVER been demonstrated) that "given enough time and naturalistic self-organization, genuine information emerges." But we have exactly zero evidence to believe that that has ever happened.
Human intention is one of those things, btw. Evolution does not only produce a variety of properties, it produces a variety of behaviors.
Nope. Empiricists just wave their hands, and then the magic happens. There is NO other account but wishful thinking and VERY bad analogies.
Somehow you've got to explain how "data" becomes "information," and you do NOT get to smuggle in information-laden contexts in which to do it. So, computer analogies are right out the window.
You're between a rock and a hard place:
Rock -- The "data" in a cell is nothing but "data," not "information," so entirely deterministic, naturalistic processes make things work there. The problem is, this does not account for how in an intentionless universe, the threshold to intention CAN occur. And it's just hand-waving or question-begging to say, "There it is."
Hard Place -- The "information" in a cell is genuine information, which implies intentionality. But a salt-crystal has no intentionality. The background noise of the universe has no intentionality. No "states of affairs" in the universe have intentionality. So what IS this special intentionality that operates in a cell? You can't say, "Life," because that's precisely what needs an explanation. You can't say, "Information," because that IS the intentionality that life revolves around.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 25, 2018 - 08:15pm PT
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"Information" can be construed in a very narrow, mathematical sense, but that is not actually helpful to this discussion for two reasons.
First, that sense of "information" is more like the "data" that was referenced above. But that does not distinguish between "states of affairs" and "information" in the robust sense needed for life and mind.
Second, even if you could account for life in that narrow sense of "information" (which I don't believe is possible), you are still, then, faced with the vast, qualitative divide between "information" in that sense and "information" in the sense of "meaning something to somebody."
it is the "very narrow, mathematical sense" in which it is applied to biology. It is an abstraction which has utility in that it provides a means of quantifying and predicting.
The genetic code is information in this narrow sense, not that there is a meaning contained in the "information" being conveyed. Treated as such, a number of remarkable insights result.
Interestingly, you could ask where does Shannon's assertion stop?
"It appears then that a sufficiently complex stochastic process will give a satisfactory representation of a discrete source."
he is referring to his simple construction of rule based but random language creation. "Sufficiently complex" doesn't sound like a great stretch.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 25, 2018 - 08:20pm PT
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Almost forgot about this. Sorry. If you found a closed form let me know. Otherwise, a simple BASIC program of ten lines of elementary code gives:
thanks for the reply! I learned a lot about the elliptic functions, the answer is "easy":
phi = arcsin(sn(s;m))
taking m=e^2 where e is the ellipticity, and s is properly normalized so that for the arc length s, |s|<= 1
then it is a matter of finding a way of calculating sn, which can be found in Abramowitz & Stegun among other references.
This is essentially your prescription above.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 25, 2018 - 08:42pm PT
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"Actually, there are countless reasons why evolution is NOT consistent with the fossil record, not the least of which is that the fossil record is "chunked" from the "lowest" strata to the "highest."
"Countless" is the sort of hyperbole that you offer to hide behind. Perhaps count to two, give 2 specific predictions and show how the fossil record is inconsistent with them. You cannot.
What you do NOT see in the fossil record is what evolution predicts: A slow, systematic morphological change from single-celled organisms through multi-celled organisms on to small, simple creatures, on to more complex creatures, etc., to the present.
I am not sure that your representation of the theory is correct. Perhaps you could point to some recent reference that states that as a prediction.
Instead, you see amazing complexity from the start. You see "chunking" from the beginning. You see long periods of no change followed by spurts of change so rapid that entire books have been written and theories composed trying to explain away the problem that this fact illuminates.
you have not offered a rigorous definition of "complex" or "complexity" as it pertains to biology and evolution (or anything else for that matter).
It is an amazing oversimplification to say that the fossil record is anything even approaching a neat, clean verification of evolutionary theory. The fossil record is HIGHLY and entirely interpreted "evidence," and people tend to see exactly what they are looking for there. But that is NOT science. That IS exactly what astrology is.
It doesn't make sense to require that the fossil record "verifies" evolution, and I didn't say that, I said that evolution is consistent with the fossil record, which it is.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Jun 25, 2018 - 08:45pm PT
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Evolution is growth...
1 Corinthians 13:11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset/
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Jim Clipper
climber
from: forests to tree farms
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Jun 25, 2018 - 08:56pm PT
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Is Darwin still taught as an alternative in Kansas? I'm hoping their economic experiment has progressed, um evolved, advanced?. well something like that.
Maybe for I-b-gob.... if you want to see where Christ walked, possibly skip Jerusalem, and maybe go where the poor Arabs and Jews live. Their culture changes more slowly.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jun 25, 2018 - 09:04pm PT
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Interestingly, you could ask where does Shannon's assertion stop?
"It appears then that a sufficiently complex stochastic process will give a satisfactory representation of a discrete source."
he is referring to his simple construction of rule based but random language creation. "Sufficiently complex" doesn't sound like a great stretch.
Yet again, the "language" or error correction code amounts to an agreed-upon look-up table. You say "random" but the way a message is composed is anything but random. So, yet again, empiricists build in the very thing that needs explaining: "the message" PRESUMES a context in which the "the message" can be divided into "information" and "data" (in Shannon's case, the error correction code).
There is "payload" and "vehicle." It's easy to distinguish between them when you are already in possession of the algorithm that put them together in the first place. But that's what's lacking in all empirical accounts of the "data" in DNA. What is the "algorithm" by which mindless, unintentional enzymes "process" the "data"?
Sure, "sufficiently complex" doesn't sound like a stretch when you're doing all evaluations from the privileged position of already enjoying meaning and intention. But you've got to build that up from NO actual information, just from "states of affairs." Thus far, every "account" uses contexts that already have what you're trying to explain.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 25, 2018 - 09:08pm PT
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What is the difference between a beaker full of amino acids, enzymes, and some DNA vs. a living cell? BOTH "contexts" have all the "parts" to which you refer. Assemble the stuff in the beaker any way you wish, and you won't get the enzymes to start doing what you wish.
What's to prevent me from assembling them as in a living cell?
Don't we already re-assemble yeast DNA to start doing what we wish?
What, approximately, is the number of different "parts" you refer to? How many combinations and permutations are there, and have you checked them all for signs of life?
Also, are we allowed any water and electrolytes and other probably important parts?
edit:
Whoops. I see I am a little behind the train.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jun 25, 2018 - 09:47pm PT
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ML said "I’d be careful about using that word “requires,” though. It might make one think that there is an intentional activity in the "sweeping."
"One cannot try not to try. Seeing and learning [sic] That can take years and years. There is a subtlety that is hidden in layers. It’s like controlling fear when climbing. “Controlling” doesn’t really happen, imo. One learns tricks / heuristics that seem to work and favors them. "
"Ditto for controlling attachments and aversions. One just doesn’t give those up. From my view, one sees through them. At first they are substantial, with just a little bit of transparency or translucence to them. Later, the objects can become ghostings. You see them, but they are not really there."
Thanks Mike you say it well.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Jun 25, 2018 - 09:49pm PT
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The fossil record was the best thing we had to work with for a long time. Even Darwin didn't know about Mendel's pea plant experiments. Meanwhile, expecting the fossil record to be a complete and detailed account of the evolution of life on earth is seriously flawed for the fact that most of life including speciation, occurs in the warm areas of the world. Anyone who has lived in the tropics knows this as they battle all manner of invading plants, animals, and insects.
These same regions are humid and not at all conducive to the long time preservation of fossils, especially the oldest ones. A person could even say that it's a miracle we have any fossils at all, especially of humans who have been around for such a short period of time. That the warm regions of the world have undergone tremendous change is obvious also, if you've ever looked at dinosaur fossils in desert northwestern Colorado or seen sea shells at 20,000 + feet in the Himalayas. To accuse fossils of providing an incomplete record is kind of foolish under the circumstances.
The best evidence we have for evolution are the genomes of all the living things on our planet, whether plant, animal, insect, or worms living next to a hot water vent in the ocean. They all share the same ACGT code in various arrangements. Not one of them has ever been found with another life basis. To me that unity of all earthly life is a source of wonderment and awe and also the best proof so far of evolution from a single source.
One phenomenon not mentioned yet in this discussion is the one I brought up a while back - that of punctuated equilibria. There is plenty of evidence that the earth has been bombarded with huge hunks of matter floating through space and that these collisions have had a catastrophic effect on most existing life, disrupting all of that era's equilibria. The survivors tend to be animals that can burrow under the earth and have stored food or live in the depths of the ocean well supplied with food that doesn't need much light to exist. Each mass extinction is followed by a proliferation of new species.
Finally, there is the possibility that the simplest life forms also came as hitch hikers on space debris and that the life on earth is based on simple chemicals that already evolved elsewhere. If one wants to believe in a special creation, that would seem to offer the best possibility, and certainly doesn't involve earth or man at the center of things as previously thought.
Fossils are important to the study of evolution, but they're only a small part of the picture.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 25, 2018 - 10:15pm PT
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Jan: . . . the best proof so far of evolution *from a single source.*
OMG, you know what Werner’s gonna say here, don’t you?
^^^^^
Er, Jan, didn’t lightning have a special part in many of the theories? It’s how inanimate becomes animate (I thought). Jump start.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 25, 2018 - 10:17pm PT
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eeyonkee, I can’t read your mind. What does your writing mean?
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jun 25, 2018 - 10:17pm PT
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This is essentially your prescription above
Interesting. I didn't look into elliptic functions, which seem a little advanced and specific. My result came from elementary calculus. For example. take x(t)=1-√ t and y(t)= sin(t ∏ /2). Then, given an arc length of s = .5 , r ≈ .259
Fun. Thanks for bringing this up!
Sorry for the interruption, Evolutionists.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 25, 2018 - 10:42pm PT
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I didn't look into elliptic functions, which seem a little advanced and specific.
I missed that too, but eventually figured out that those beautiful functions and all that has been built up around them could be used for the banal task of calculating the mundane properties of ellipses... who would have thunk!
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jun 25, 2018 - 10:50pm PT
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"Countless" is the sort of hyperbole that you offer to hide behind. Perhaps count to two, give 2 specific predictions and show how the fossil record is inconsistent with them. You cannot.
If there's anything I do NOT do on these threads, it's "hide."
So, due to the fact that it's already going to be a WoT, here's just two.
First....
The neo-Darwinian paradigm is distinguished from alternatives, such as Lamarckism in part on the principle that "nature does not make leaps." The whole theory of punctuated equilibrium attempted to conform the fossil record with that principle.
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/side_0_0/punctuated_01
Perhaps Berkeley scientists are not credible in helping Gould/Eldredge provide a "lay" view of what the theory attempted to accomplish, and perhaps they are not credible in referring back to the neo-Darwinian principle of "slow," gradual change. But if they are not credible on these points, there are plenty of others saying the same thing.
So, gradualism is what neo-Darwinism predicts in the fossil record. However, what motivated the theory of punctuated equilibrium in the first place is how pervasively we see "gaps" and fits and starts in the fossil record (even if we're granting that what we're seeing there is ANY sort of "evolutionary" process at all).
What is most interesting about the theory of punctuated equilibrium is that it is a theory telling us, literally: "The fossil record is not cooperating with predictions. So, we have a 'refined account' that predicts the very LACK of evidence for gradualism we actually see in the fossil record. When you DON'T see what neo-Darwinism predicts, the LACK of evidence is 'properly' interpreted to be actually 'evidence' in support of the theory."
Second....
Neo-Darwinism predicts that we'll see many transitional forms. Sure, the fossil record is not "complete" because it is damaged. But we should see lots and lots of clear-cut evolutionary transitions. We don't. Of course, again, evolutionists could appeal to ignorance and say that the fossil record is so "incomplete" that the LACK of transitional forms should be interpreted as evidence in favor of neo-Darwinism.
The most "compelling" examples of evolutionary transitions in fossils are supposedly: Whale evolution, horse evolution and cichlid evolution. But the same point holds for all of them as I'll make for just whale evolution.
Regarding supposed "evidence" of whale evolution, I can best explain what goes wrong with it here: https://www.artofreasoning.com/?p=616.
The entire set of "transitional fossils" fed to the public and published in countless textbooks is wild speculation and flat-out inventions on the part of the paleontologists, which many of them themselves admit.
The discoverer of Rodhocetus, Dr. Philip Gingerich, now admits, "I speculated that it might have had a fluke. I now doubt that Rodhocetus would have had a fluked tail." Regarding the fictional front flippers, Gingerich also said: "Since then we have found the forelimbs, the hands, and the front arms of Rodhocetus, and we understand that it doesn’t have the kind of arms that can spread out like flippers on a whale."
In point of FACT, every one of the supposed textbook "transitional fossils" fed to the public were largely "created" from fossil scraps and "inserted" into a time-fabric that is either demonstrably false or speculative.
For example, the "locomotion parts" of the fossil Ambulocetus (crucial, because this creature was supposed to be the transition between legged locomotion and swimming locomotion) were actually discovered FIVE METERS above "the rest" of the skeleton (as if five meters of strata don't matter!). There is no reason to put these bones together if strata indicate anything about time. Putting them together was flat-out wishful thinking.
Here's the whale evolution page from UC Berkeley: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evograms_03. It's reiterating the "party line" regarding whale evolution. But notice the second sentence on the page: "In fact, none of the individual animals on the evogram is the direct ancestor of any other, as far as we know. That’s why each of them gets its own branch on the family tree."
In other words, "There is NO evidence of whale evolution in the fossil record." Yet, whale evolution is touted as a shining example of how the fossil record shows evolution in action.
The same sort of analysis can be done for horses, and cichlids. Even worse for horse and cichlids, they face the classic problem of all morphologically-similar fossils: Morphology does NOT indicate or even suggest reproductive isolation. In the case of cichlids, the layers of inference and speculation are staggering, and none of it even starts to establish the reproductive isolation that is what's needed to establish speciation. Otherwise, ALL you've got is (at best) adaptation. But nobody is debating that adaptation occurs WITHIN species. What evolution needs to demonstrate is that adaptation can produce speciation events that are defined by reproductive isolation.
I am not sure that your representation of the theory is correct. Perhaps you could point to some recent reference that states that as a prediction.
How recent is "recent"? I mean, are you suggesting that the failures of neo-Darwinism are causing its theorists to move the target? How about a whole spectrum?
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Neo-Darwinism
"Though agreement is not universal on the parameters of the modern synthesis, many descriptions hold as basic (1) the primacy of natural selection as the creative agent of evolutionary change; (2) gradualism (accumulation of small genetic changes); and (3) the extrapolation of microevolutionary processes (changes within species) to macroevolutionary trends (changes about the species level, such as the origin of new designs and broad patterns in history)."
The article goes on to say that gradualism is a principle of neo-Darwinism that has come under critique by "modern evolutionists" in the form of punctuated equilibrium. Laughably, though, punctuated equilibrium is an attempt to prop up the principle of gradualism in the face of the lack of evidence for it in the fossil record.
Of course, who can believe an encyclopedia? So, let's move on.
How about Darwin himself? "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case."
So, has the neo-DARWINIAN synthesis now abandoned Darwin himself? If so, that would be BIG news, so perhaps you can point us to the big news articles that have informed the public of this radical transformation in evolutionary theory.
How about a scholarly paper that explicitly cites gradualism as a core principle in genome evolution? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2651812/
"The beneficial changes that are fixed by natural selection are 'infinitesimally' small, so that evolution proceeds via the gradual accumulation of these tiny modifications." The paper takes this to be consistent with the demands of neo-Darwinism.
So, gradualism is what neo-Darwinism takes to be a core and abiding principle. It's actually a good thing for the theory, because trying to explain how adaptation leads to genuine reproductive isolation is daunting enough by tiny, individually-useful steps. Nature taking large leaps at present doesn't even have a hopeful theory of explanation. Thus, gradualism as I've discussed it is more central than a "prediction" of neo-Darwinism; its a principle of the theory.
We do not see gradualism in the fossil record.
you have not offered a rigorous definition of "complex" or "complexity" as it pertains to biology and evolution (or anything else for that matter).
Oh, but I have, and I've been doing it all along in terms of genuine information. The simplest DNA molecule contains much more "data" or "information" than a salt crystal. Multiply just the number of such cells in a multi-cellular organism, and you've at least multiplied the "complexity" of that organism.
How "rigorous" are you looking for? Do you deny that the fossil record goes from "simple," single-celled organisms pre-Cambrian to "complex" bivalve mollusks, trilobites, brachiopods, sponges, etc.? Of just these listed types of organisms, half reproduce sexually, which is a much more complex form of reproduction than "budding," as in sponges. So, in a "geological instant" the fossil record goes from almost nothing to sexually-reproducing, complex (by any account of complexity) creatures. NO "transitional forms" exist, which is why this "leap" is usually called the "Cambrian Explosion."
Again, neo-Darwinism does not predict the Cambrian Explosion. It predicts gradualism and countless transitional forms in the fossil record.
It doesn't make sense to require that the fossil record "verifies" evolution, and I didn't say that, I said that evolution is consistent with the fossil record, which it is.
Well, actually, it isn't. As I've only scratched the surface of, the subject of how sweepingly the fossil record is NOT what neo-Darwinism predicts cannot be cast in even multiple WoTs! I'd LOVE to get into the supposed "hominid evolution" joke. It's much, much worse than whale evolution, with jumbled messes of fossils like "Ardi" being fed to the public as "transitional fossils."
Seriously, it's pretty hard to imagine how the fossil record could be WORSE for neo-Darwinism. The very fact that Gould/Eldredge were motivated to prop up the lack of evidence by "predicting a lack of evidence" shows the extent to which neo-Darwinism has been put to its last trumps.
But, in the interests of charity, let's agree that the fossil record is "consistent" with neo-Darwinism. Do you really grasp/accept what a LOW bar that really is?
First, "consistent with" does NOT get you "actual evidence of speciation in the sense of reproductive isolation." It means ONLY that it's not a flat-out falsification; but that's NOT "positive evidence of" anything.
Second, "consistent with" is exactly what a creationist could say. You know that not all creationists are of the young-Earth, six-literal-day variety.
Third, the above two points make the pressing third one: the fossil record AT BEST fails to explicate! But that leads to a serious problem for the neo-Darwinian paradigm.
1) Biologists do not see evidence of speciation in the sense of reproductive isolation. Their "answer" is: "Even in our longest experiments with the fastest reproducing organisms, the time frames are woefully short, and we DO see really significant morphological changes! Extrapolate those out over long periods, and you get the fossil record. So, genuine reproductive isolation is surely evidenced by the fossil record."
2) Paleontologists KNOW that the fossil record is a broken, wildly-interpreted, speculative MESS. But THEY get fed "ring species" and other "evidences" that biologists are seeing "evolution in action all around us." So they presume that it is legitimate to presume speciation in their interpretations of the fossil record. After all, if you already know what the "fact" is, you see it in all your interpretations.
Somehow, according to empiricists/naturalists, non-life suddenly became life. That "starter organism" reproduced and ultimately produced a "bush of life." What denotes the "bushiness" just is reproductive isolation, which we see everywhere we look. "Speciation events" in the only sense that matters must be examples of a "new twig in the bush" being formed. So, THAT sense of speciation events is what evolutionary theory needs to demonstrate is even POSSIBLE from piles of adaptation.
But what we actually observe is NOT that. We see repeatedly that morphologically-close organisms (such as horses and donkeys) cannot reproduce. Yet the entire cat family, with its VAST array of morphologically different "species" can successfully interbreed. We see, then, that morphology provides NO evidence of reproductive isolation. This fact, in turn, guts the primary inference applied to the fossil record!
I say again, there is at present zero evidence that adaptation writ large CAN accomplish reproductive isolation. Indeed, everywhere we look, and in all of our experiments, we see that adaptation takes place within a quite narrow range. But the "principle" that adaptation results in speciation (reproductive isolation) is the core of evolutionary theory.
In these threads, creationists get bagged on as "stupid" and "ignorantly stupid," and lines get thrown around like, "Faith means believing in something without evidence."
I'll immediately admit that such indictments apply to many/most Christians and other religious believers. But they also apply to evolutionists. Evolutionists believe in a core principle that has never been demonstrated and to which there is a pile of counter-evidence.
Come up with something better than neo-Darwinism, and you'll have my attention! But neo-Darwinism has proved useful strictly within the realm of adaptation. It has been a dismal failure in the realm of reproductive isolation, which is what motivated it to be invented in the first place.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 25, 2018 - 11:10pm PT
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Yet again, the "language" or error correction code amounts to an agreed-upon look-up table. You say "random" but the way a message is composed is anything but random. So, yet again, empiricists build in the very thing that needs explaining: "the message" PRESUMES a context in which the "the message" can be divided into "information" and "data" (in Shannon's case, the error correction code).
I think you've misunderstood what Shannon was doing, and he explicitly states he is not addressing "meaning" just "information." You can insist on your language, but Shannon tells you that isn't what he's considering when he talks about "information."
Perhaps that point is too subtle for you.
Sure, "sufficiently complex" doesn't sound like a stretch when you're doing all evaluations from the privileged position of already enjoying meaning and intention. But you've got to build that up from NO actual information, just from "states of affairs." Thus far, every "account" uses contexts that already have what you're trying to explain.
you missed an important part of the description, "sufficiently complex stochastic process" , and for Shannon, Kolmogorov complexity is a rigorous definition of complexity.
you could peek here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_process
In this instance, the "information" generated by Shannon's process produces English language sentences which could be interpreted as "meaningful" though that was not his specific aim, which was to produce "information"
"It appears then that a sufficiently complex stochastic process will give a satisfactory representation of a discrete source."
the "discrete source" being a source of "information" with "meaning."
If you have a proof that Shannon's conjecture is incorrect I'd be happy to see it.
and this is not bad either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 25, 2018 - 11:17pm PT
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what is it you refer to when you say "Neo-Darwinism"?
it is a term that has changed meaning (and could represent many things).
I believe the "modern synthesis" is what is generally considered the current theory.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 25, 2018 - 11:36pm PT
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shocking to see you write this:
'In other words, "There is NO evidence of whale evolution in the fossil record." Yet, whale evolution is touted as a shining example of how the fossil record shows evolution in action.'
given your views on the impossibility of verification.
The fossil record is what it is.
The question at hand is very simple, does anything in the fossil record falsify evolution?
The answer is no, and that is not a trivial answer. The fossil record is what we have of the history of life on the planet, it's diversity in space and time and the relationships of members of the record in space and time. The record is incomplete, it is undergoing revision as more work is performed, and it presents challenges to the details of the theory.
However, evolution is a theory that can explain this record of life.
The theory is certainly incomplete, but not in the sense that it is completely false. After all, the identity of genetic material (another of Darwin's predictions) is relatively recent, and the understanding of cell function still not complete.
As Jan pointed out, evolution does not solely concern the fossil record, but is used to understand, explain and predict many other aspects of life, it is the organizing principle of biology.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jun 26, 2018 - 01:10am PT
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I think you've misunderstood what Shannon was doing, and he explicitly states he is not addressing "meaning" just "information." You can insist on your language, but Shannon tells you that isn't what he's considering when he talks about "information."
Perhaps that point is too subtle for you.
LOL... yeah, you just can't argue with me without personal digs.
Okay....
What's apparently too subtle for you is that "meaning" is built in, it's presumed, even as Shannon denies that a randomized code has meaning. The second you are providing a look-up-table as context for making the "payload" stay error-free, you ARE building in "meaning" in the form of an algorithm and look-up-table.
There's nothing in-principle different from how encryption algorithms employ random strings in the context of a meaningful, intentional process to preserve information while hiding it. And it really doesn't matter if your starting "data" is meaningful or not. ALL Shannon (or encryption algorithms) are doing is ensuring maximally safe "data" retention/transmission (encryption adds to that the hiding part of safety). Both take "data" and add something to it according to a deterministic algorithm. In that sense, both ADD meaning, whether the original string was meaningful or not. And the only way that the "data" can ultimately be recovered safely following transmission is if the SAME algorithmic process, using the SAME meaningful "key" is employed.
ALL of the "thought experiments" or information-processing that revolve around computer systems suffer from this same problem. They ALL build in a meaningful context, even as they insist that their approach has nothing to do with "meaning" or "intention." Dawkins is flagrantly guilty of this, and your interpretation of Shannon also is.
I don't care how much Dawkins, you, or Shannon deny that there is "meaning" in the process. There necessarily is, or the process would necessarily lose "data." The "data" must be wrapped in "meaning" in order for there to BE an algorithm in the first place.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jun 26, 2018 - 01:12am PT
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I believe the "modern synthesis" is what is generally considered the current theory.
That phrase is just another term for neo-Darwinism.
If you deny this, then PLEASE produce the big news where the "Darwinism" part got dropped or significantly changed. The public certainly needs to know that the "Darwinism" part no longer applies to the "modern synthesis." Show me where gradualism got dropped.
You're attempting to make a distinction without a difference.
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