JonF
Posts: 634
Joined: Feb. 2005
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| Quote (IanBrown_101 @ June 26 2007,17:24) | Ok, anyone explain what this is all about? (The "letter" thing, I mean is it real, or just an excersise in futility?)
Weird Walt Brown Letter thing. |
What's your question? The meaning of the exercise of starting with a meaningful phrase, making random modifications, and (if the new phrase is meaningful), replacing the original with the new phrase?
It's meaningless. We know quite a lot about the space in which biological evolution operates, and it's not at all analogous to the space of all variations of phrases, meaningful and not meaningful. For example, many mutations of genes have no effect on whatever the genes code for (since many amino acid substitutions make no differentc), but almost all random mutations of a phrase will have an effect on its meaningfulness.
In addtion it's an argument by analogy fallacy. Analogies are for clarifiying, not for making arguments.
The "Elephant in the Room"thing, which he got from The Biologist, is also meaningless. If it's true, I can understand the lack of attribution to the real name; but without such attribution it's just a fairy tale.
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