(March 14, 2014 at 2:14 pm)Heywood Wrote: First, I would like to ask you if you can demonstrate cumulative selection without utilizing a target? Has this ever been done?
OK - do you think the person that came up with the wheel had a Ferrari in mind as an end-point - or even a midpoint?
Do you think the Wright brothers considered the 747 as they made their flight?
When the Germans made the V1 and V2 rockets were they thinking of the moon or Mars as possible destinations?
How many do you want?
Quote:Second, Do you agree that for any selection criterion, there will exist some set of targets which evolution will home in on?
Evolution doesn't have selection critieria nor targets. Natural Selection is the process whereby creatures adapt to their environment. When the environment changes dramatically some creatures will adapt, others will fail to adapt and go extinct. This is what happened to your first example - the Thylacine.
Quote:Third, specifying the precise phenotype is just a lazy way of programming a selection criterion. Suppose the target sentence was "I am". He could write a selection criterion that homed in on this sentence just as well as it homed in on his precisely stated phenotype. For example, His program could favor 4 character sentences(I'm including the space character). His program could favor more vowels than consonants. His program could favor the characters "I", " ", "a", "m". His program could favor sentences where vowels proceed consonants. His program could favor sentences in which the vowels are in reverse alphabetical order....so on and so forth. Instead he wrote a selection criterion that favored one specific sentence because it was easier.
You are anthropomorphizing the process to a huge degree. There is no favouring in nature other than the biological limits that creatures cannot surpass. No creature, whatever its need for speed, will evolve a jet engine (although you could argue that is what the Octopus has done).
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