Evolution and Purpose

I really think he’s just waxing romantic about the heart. But I agree there is a need to explain how such intricate and tailored biology developed.

Jacques Monod wrote Chance and Necessity in the sixties (published in 1970), I’m willing to bet there’s been research done since then, if not by then, which goes a long way toward answering this question.

Hold on, it looks like Monod adopted a new concept of purpose, teleonomic, to contrast with teleological. Flannel you should read this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleonomic

James S Saint:
Earlier it was stated that evolution is NOT purely random chance. That was a true statement. As a result of that condition, evolution does in fact lead toward a “foreseeable” goal or direction (whether foreseen or not). There are specifics that guide the trend into the species and somewhat control the eventual long term consequences. Many of those specifics have absolutely nothing to do with the organism itself, but rather the environment that it happen to be in when it gained its otherwise advantage-trait.

K: I hate to break it to you, but no. evolution doesn’t lead toward any goal, “foreseeable or not” it simply doesn’t work that way.
it is about the random mixing of DNA and that random mixing may or may not be able to allow one to survive the environment.
anteaters cannot make their snouts any longer to eat ants which allows their survival, but the anteaters who are born with longer
snouts have an advantage over their brethren who have small snouts. anteaters who have longer snout who bred with
other anteaters with longer snouts will in time (and here comes the key word) possibly have have a better chance of survival in
their environment depending on changes in their environment. there is no certainty in any of this. just probability and chance.

JAMES: This is relevant in the discussion because a great deal of religious thought is all about that environmental influence. The notion that evolution is MERELY an issue of statistics is just flat out incorrect.:"

K: as evolution is mating and the creation of the next generation via the mixing of DNA which is about chance and probability,
evolution really is sex and statistics. religious thought has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution, two separate matters
alltogether.

Kropotkin

fuse quoting Nick Lane: But the heart could hardly have evolved ‘for’ anything else; if it didn’t evolve to pump blood, then it is truly a miracle that it happened to become so fine a pump. Monod’s point was that biology is full of purpose and apparent trajectories, and it is perverse to pretend they don’t exist; rather, we must explain them.:

Fuse: I really think he’s just waxing romantic about the heart. But I agree there is a need to explain how such intricate and tailored biology developed.

K: Now we hit the third aspect of evolution which is time. Life has been around for TWO billion years and quite possibly more, so we return
to evolution. Have you ever been in a really old house or church that had doors that were really small, that is because people were smaller
a thousand or two thousand years ago. The average American is 5"7 or 5’8 feet tall, the average roman was 5’2 or 5’3 feet tall. (simply
pull out roman people who were buried and measure their bones, we have lots of them.) This is evolution at work over time. You are different
then your parents and that difference is evolution.

Nick Lane: The question we must answer is this: how does the operation of blind chance, a random mechanism without foresight, bring about the exquisitely refined and purposeful biological machines that we see all around us?

K; given two billion years to refine itself is time enough to create everything around us. Every single generation since the beginning has
somehow change and that is millions upon millions of generations that has changed. our blood, our hearts, our brains weren’t created
in the last twenty minutes. They are the product of millions of generations of change from the beginning of time. the less successful
changes didn’t survive and are collecting dust in museums. Cro Magnon and neanderthals are two examples of hominids that didn’t survive
due to chance and probability. We are relatively efficient beings and that efficiency comes from millions of years of change, not being
created, as religions demand. I have no friggen idea who Nick lane is, but he sounds like a creationist, and they are by definition, confused.

Kropotkin

That’s perfect for this thread! Thanks for that link, I’ll try to remember that word.

Well, okay guys. From what you have said, I now have the impression that either A) neither of you actually understand evolution beyond the very most simple-minded standpoint or B) what they are calling evolution today is seriously different and less than what it has meant for many years.

So educate me here.

  1. Are you saying that the process called “evolution” is no more than merely the mutation process? If not, what else does it include?
  2. Are you proposing that the process of evolution has nothing whatsoever to do with advancement of a species in any way, such that it is just as likely to retard due to evolution as advance?

How does one calculate the % of an advantage?

Neutral traits should be able to catch on. What would the math be on those?

My math has long since dried up, it’s been too many years, but I have to say I am a little skeptical about this also. Not because the math is wrong, I wouldn’t venture to get into that. It’s just calculating how advantageous something is seems beyond our capabilities. I can see guessing, but given the amount of factors.

But maybe I misunderstood what is meant by the ‘+X% advantage’.

Ohhhh…
… you stole my punchline.
:laughing:

You don’t have to be able to calculate the advantage any specific trait gives, you just have to accept the premise that a trait could give you a % advantage. If you can accept that, then you can calculate, given a certain % advantage, the trait’s likelihood of fixating in a population on a given instance is only 2 times that percentage.

I can’t give you the derivation of that, but I gave you the source already.

If you don’t understand that natural selection is a purposeless process (hence the word NATURAL, meaning it doesn’t need any guidance, it happens naturally on it’s own) and that evolution has no goal, then you don’t understand evolution. You are a christian after all, so it’s to be expected. I wouldn’t expect a christian to get it.

Evolution has meant this for a long, long, long time. If you think evolution has the explicit purpose of ‘advancing’ a species, then you’re understanding is below the most simple-minded standpoint. But, again, you are a christian…

  1. Evolution is a theory that can be explained perfectly only with words and concepts, and in fact applying mathematics to the theory will give you a less accurate theory and idea, a case where mathematics takes you farther away from the precision and understanding of the theory not closer.

  2. There are really no explanations, nothing that must be explained or known or figured out within the process of evolution: it is just a long chain of casual actions and reactions, each step a totally random fluke, that leads to some temporary useful “functionality” (for the item) within a very random, quirky, temporary environment that will surely change, and change again and forever.

  3. A good way to understand it : take a walk outside, find the first 3 pebbles on the street, measure the distance between them and write down the numbers. Now explain why those are the numbers. Explain the exact sequence of events from present time minus a billion years that lead up to those 3 pebbles being exactly there. Now that is the same random, intractable sequence of events that lead to a human and his mind, or a dog or a fish (or a mountain shape, or a cloud shape) etc.

Hope that clears it up somewhat.

On another forum, somebody said something that made me realize a big mistake people make when thinking and talking about evolution:

Here’s a great article on how off it is to talk about evolution as a process with the purpose of ‘advancing’ the species:
lesswrong.com/lw/l5/evolving_to_extinction/

I find it interesting that atheists think I am a Christian. Christians think I am Judist. Jews think I Nazi. Muslims… well… I suspect “think” doesn’t apply.

OKay, so now you have convinced me.

Evolutionists ran into some serious problems with their theory that they couldn’t explain (or seriously didn’t want to reveal). So to save face they (as they often do in Science) redefined the words. Now the word “evolution” has no meaning other than to refer to a changing. But it is critically important to realize that there is absolutely, absolutely no reason for the changing whatsoever. It is purely 100% random. It is purely accidental. No one is to blame. Sometimes bad things just happen to species. Honestly, no one is to blame. No one. Don’t think that anyone had anything at all to do with why the species died out. There was NO REASON AT ALL. Such things just happen. No one is to blame. Don’t look for anyone to blame. No one is to blame. It is just a NATURAL accident. Go back to sleep and everything will be fine in the morning.

The fuck are you ranting about? Who the hell is talking about blaming anybody? That last post just showed how truly, truly off the mark you are. You’re on your own trip brother.

But, as I said to Amorphos, this thread is more for people who understand evolution more deeply. I’m not excluding you to hurt your feelings, it’s just a quality-control thing.

MATTER TALKS TO ITSELF…

But even if you knew all of the exact steps, the exact sequence of action - reactions, of configurations Matter underwent in 1 billion years to lead to that exact organism, the Man, the Man Brain, the Human Mind, and even if you knew all of the always partial repetitive patterns (the Bit Set, the Repetitive Bit Set, the frequency modulation of another frequency modulation of another frequency and so on for many levels and many levels deep that create the resemblance of “laws of Physics”) that matter transited through, traversed through, the partial laws of Physics and Chemistry (since there are many little, partial, local laws and effects and applications of the laws of physics that are being executed as Matter traverses all of its intermediate configurations until it reaches “Man”, the “Man Brain”), all of that knowledge and detail, the knowledge of all essentially would be worthless anyways since it would be just one example of one path Evolution went through to obtain an end result.

It would be just one fluke example amongst a virtually never ending set of examples and possibilities that evolution could execute, all by chance, by purely blind chance (just 10 molecules for 100 configurations can combine in more than 10^100 possibilites, etc.).

But you could reply, that by knowing even a small sequence of events, a small slice of evolution could make it repeatable in the laboratory, we could repeat some of the tricks of evolution, we could put matter in a configuration and feed it actions to make it react and evolve into a first cell, or partially so, or any other subfunction or subset of an organism, etc. But I doubt this is possible since the three body problem can’t be solved, the initial conditions, even if slightly different can make the evolution diverge largely from what we expect or could lead to nothing, just like the 50 years ongoing experiments with the attempt of creating something more than simple amino acids have lead to nowhere no matter how hard they try.

I repeat, this is no longer within the realm of science, there are no repetitive patterns discernible, it can’t be repeated, or every possible repetition will lead to a different outcome, etc.

Also, if you look at all of the finely tuned “purposes” and mechanisms of the Human Body, or any other animal, from the molecules, to their intricate folding process to the signals and processing going on in all of the billions of cells, the nerves, the brains, etc. and then the end result of all of this “purpose” and complex machine is simply animals that don’t do anything at all all day long, that have a very simple behavior, eat and hunt and reproduce and that is the end, such a simple program made up of only a few instructions, then you see how totally without purpose evolution and its results are: and Man being an Excess Capacity Item with a Brain that tortures itself, forcing it to have more purpose than simply nothing at all, which is its real purpose, has to desperately invent ever new purposes, ever new repeatable patterns, rules and games and interactions just to keep on living and not get “bored to death”: the most useless and without purpose of animals is Man who thinks he has and even needs a purpose, incredible, how totally void man is of any meaning and purpose and how complex the mechanisms underlying his living are. Nothing shouts out more clearly than this that “Evolution, Nature, Life Are Absolutely Void of any Meaning, Value and Purpose, are Irrelevant to the Utmost Extent”.

Also, it is mostly an artistic choice, an aesthetical choice, what “looks right”, what looks like it “makes sense” to say that a certain mechanism created the heart, or the heart must be explained and such. And why does that even need an explanation ? Why is simply saying “there is no explanation” not enough ?

And why is even a long chain of complex mechanisms, even if discovered and even if correct so much more valuable than saying “No Reason At All” ?

And, if you condense all of evolution (see it in fast motion, all in a microsecond ?) , if you look at the ball of matter that the earth is, and see it self manipulate, talk to itself for a billion years and generate Man and Minds and oppose this to a “One Shot Act of Creation”, what is really the difference ? They are both the same, the path that lead to any configuration of matter is irrelevant, could be any at all, could even be a one shot assignment from nowhere and nothing, or it could be a path with 10^1000 intermediate configurations of matter that lead up to the “Result”.

The debate between creationists and evolutionists is only about where to put the miracle, if in a One Shot Act of Creation, or a 10^1000 Step Act of Creation, etc.

Matter slowly starts to interact and talk to itself, and starts to create repetitive patterns, a bit set, a set of information that repeats and interacts with other chunks of matter, and so on, and the bit set becomes larger and larger and then sometimes gets destroyed and the process goes on and on until a stable bit set is reached and memorized and copied to other chunks of matter and so on.

The way Matter can self organize itself through casual chance and actions and reactions is mind boggling and a miracle in and of itself, much more so than an Act of Creation, an Act of Creation is actually the logical, simplest and most turstworthy explanation compared to trying to figure out how matter can self interact and create internal repetitive patterns.

And can you imagine how many other possibilities matter may have, maybe inside Star Plasmas, having many trillions of levels of bit sets, all creating a form of life and consciousness, and other forms of life and Minds and consciousness that don’t even depend of any underlying material substrate, or any substrate at all, or any relationship imaginable at all!

The more you ponder it, the more you see how we will never know nothing at all, the possibilities are truly without end…

And how will evolution evolve when man starts to change his Man Brain ? Starts to manipulate how his brain works and how it decodes the world, other actions and reactions, and processes and so on.

The problem is, FJ, some people are understanding it only too well.

You and PK have repeatedly expressed that it represents mere random changing, nothing else. And if we were all born just yesterday, that would be fine, except we still might wonder why it was ever bothered to be named. I mean seriously, what was wrong with the word “changing” or “mutating”? Of course those words DO imply a cause, whereas it is made clear time and time and time again, that “evolution” HAS NO CAUSE, “It is purely random”.

Throughout what passes for science these days when anyone, such as a doctor proclaims that there is no cause, “it just happens”, or in physics, particles spring up out of the “nothingness” with no cause, purely random, it is made very clear that either someone is hiding their ignorance or hiding the cause. Since when has Science ever allowed ANYTHING to have no cause?

So either evolution is merely someone’s faith based religion, or it has a cause. Nothing with a cause is “random”. And that leaves out everything… including evolution.

“If he had one, he would take it out and play with it.”

Well… until he discovered how to not take it out, but play with it anyway.

But THERE IS NO CAUSE.
IT IS A RANDOM OCCURRENCE.

Also,Jesus, the SON (or SUN ?) OF MAN, THE KING OF THE JEWS, you may want to study all of these blogs very deeply and meditate upon their contents for many years…

instantsingularity1.blogspot.it

and

instantsingularity3.blogspot.it

THE APETARD, THE APETURD, THE APE, THE EIGHT MEN… TOBOR TALKS…

From:

kunstler.com/blog/2012/07/salute … omeys.html

"As a kid, I used to make red and black ants fight. The reds seemed to have more vitality and always won when of comparable size. Some of blacks were huge though - as a compensation. They could hold their own with the reds or even kill them when really big. "

Jesus ph*kng Khrist, and I thought I was crazy ! So are Homes and Buildings that are painted brown or Black inferior to White buildings ? Are black Cars inferior to white Cars ? Wow, you are really off it, absurd…

THE APE THING, THE APETURD, THE TURD APE, THE TURD, THE ROBOT MAN, THE TOBOR…

Ah, good ol’ James, misreading things again. Nobody said it has no cause, just no purpose, no goal. You’re getting quite mixed up inside your own head, causing you to put words into peoples’ mouths again.

There is a causal reason why species tend to become better adapted to their environments over time. That causal reason can be explained completely without reference to purposes or goals. That explanation is commonly known as ‘evolution’. It tends to result in what one might be tempted to call ‘the advancement of a species’, but that doesn’t mean it’s goal was the advancement of a species. A goal and a result are not synonymous. Your posts, for example, result in the readers realizing that you really don’t know what you’re talking about, but that surely wasn’t your goal. It’s thus important to distinguish between a goal and a result. Evolution has no goal, but it has results.

But you read into it what you like brother. We who get evolution don’t really care about all these farts coming from your keyboard.