GaryGaulin
Posts: 5385
Joined: Oct. 2012
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| Quote (N.Wells @ April 24 2014,10:09) | | I'd like to re-iterate my view of that algorithm. It's usable for modelling artificial selection. It would also be okay for a model of natural selection that was designed to allow users to tweak natural selection pressures or set minimum fitness levels before being allowed to reproduce, just to let the users see how populations respond to different levels of selection. |
The ID Causation model indicates that "artificial selection" and "natural selection" are an unnecessary false dichotomy:
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From Theory of Intelligent Design:
As in Social Learning Theory, there is reciprocal causation where the person (or living thing), the behavior, and the environment can have an influence on each other (A influences B and B influences A). |
There is no algorithm variable that allows users to "tweak natural selection pressures". That would require purposely interfering with what programmatically develops in the model, or purposely leaving something out such as continental drift.
| Quote (N.Wells @ April 24 2014,10:09) | | However, it's not particularly good for modelling real-world evolutionary progressions, because the real world keeps changing both the context in which evolution is occurring and the levels of performance in meeting life's challenges that permit success in reproduction: new predators, competitors, and/or potential prey species move in, other predators / competitors / prey species go extinct or move away; the climate keeps changing; sea levels rise or fall, frequencies of natural hazards change; continents split apart, and so on and so forth. Therefore, in the real world there is no such thing as a "desired level of fitness". Possibly even worse, there is no such thing as a target in evolution. Every individual has the de facto goal of reproducing and successfully raising offspring (more technically, ensuring and even enhancing the propagation of their genes over succeeding generations). |
That's why I program using an algorithm that does not have these inherent ambiguities.
| Quote (N.Wells @ April 24 2014,10:09) | | However, there is no set target, such as "we have to develop long necks" or "big brains" or "become a whale". |
That also becomes another unnecessary false dichotomy. Humans have long been on target to develop big brains. The question becomes: What set that target and not another target?
| Quote (N.Wells @ April 24 2014,10:09) | | There is simply the de facto goal of whatever works well enough, for the moment, because any genome that fails to reproduce itself disappears. |
And what has for millions of years worked for humanity is the set target towards increasing multicellular brainpower. It's also more than just making brains bigger, we required improved brain circuit designs. I expect that this set target is still set.
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The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.
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