Would any of you drive a car made by Darwin's ideas?

[Rampant.A.I.]

Odds are he'll be back to rephrase the OP until all objections are buried, then claim flawless victory.

[Chas]

Every one of your respsonses (wether you realize it or not) included intellegence having been added to the "evolutionary development" of each item. However, the Darwinian scheme has no such provision.

Nonsense. In my example, I introduced a method of selection. Nothing more. In the examples given by Esquilax, the 'mutations' are random, only the selection-pressures are predetermined (as they are in the real world).

Intelligence is not required.

Except neither your example nor Esquilax's references are neo-Darwinian. They are evolutionary in some sense, but the selection criteria were created by intelligence. And that is what the OP was referring to.

---

Every one of your respsonses (wether you realize it or not) included intellegence having been added to the "evolutionary development" of each item. However, the Darwinian scheme has no such provision.

What is this "intelligence" stuff that you mention? Other than ascribing your own human motives, how do you show that there is intention in anything? Perhaps your car's absolute purpose is to keep your vegetables cold and it is simply failing miserably at its divinely inspired destiny.

WTAF? The intention is not in the car - it's in the process. The process is human-designed, goal-oriented. Neither of which is Darwinian.

---

Natural selection and engineering are not at all the same kind of process.

Using methods that are patterned in some way on an evolutionary model does not make them neo-Darwinian. The evolutionary engineering algorithms are like biological evolution, but they are not the same.

I develop software. Very little software today is written from scratch. We adapt, modify, reuse, and re-purpose chunks of code. This is similar in some ways to what evolution does - but it is not the same. And the major difference is that this evolution is guided by human goals, purpose, intelligence and creativity. Biological evolution is not.

To be neo-Darwinian, we would randomly modify and combine code and keep what does something useful. But we would never know what to expect and could not have any idea when we would get software that did what we needed or wanted. For that, the process must be guided - and that is as non-Darwinian as you can get.

[Really?]

I work in engineering. Most design is coping what works and making incremental changes to deal with site/particular/unique concerns for the design. Because I paid attention in all my science classes and not just the ones I thought would be important later I can see that this parallels natural selection. Nature keeps doing what works with minor variations. However sometimes design changes radically because of new developments. These eureka moments are often totally accidental. However they can rapidly change what is considered a good or bad design. This seems to parallel punctuated equilibrium (although I will admit that the analogy includes shades of lamarkianism and Punctuated equilibrium is more than 20th century lamakianism).

Honestly I doubt that the op has an ABET accredit engineering degree and 6 sigma is just the early 21st centuries replacement for the Peter principle fad.

[Mudhammam]

I work in engineering. Most design is coping what works and making incremental changes to deal with site/particular/unique concerns for the design. Because I paid attention in all my science classes and not just the ones I thought would be important later I can see that this parallels natural selection. Nature keeps doing what works with minor variations. However sometimes design changes radically because of new developments. These eureka moments are often totally accidental. However they can rapidly change what is considered a good or bad design. This seems to parallel punctuated equilibrium (although I will admit that the analogy includes shades of lamarkianism and Punctuated equilibrium is more than 20th century lamakianism).

Honestly I doubt that the op has an ABET accredit engineering degree and 6 sigma is just the early 21st centuries replacement for the Peter principle fad.

I wonder if the OP believes a sperm and an egg can naturally "evolve" into a thinking (well, for most of us anyway) human being or if there is some magical engineer whose hand is at work inside a woman's body.

[Alex K]

I wonder if the OP believes a sperm and an egg can naturally "evolve" into a thinking (well, for most of us anyway) human being or if there is some magical engineer whose hand is at work inside a woman's body.

Pulling a Haldane, are you? "You did it yourself in nine months!"

p.s. I just read that Wikipedia article on 6sigma, and I find everything about it specious, starting from the name, the sect-like organizational scheme where you have champions promoting it in a company and whatnot. Belch? What is this, the 12 step program to better quality control crossed with tupperware and scientology?

[Cato]

Recently, one of the engineers said that a suggestion from the 6Sigma people was to take one of the bearings we are dealing with- walk it around the yard and put it back in the machine.
To test "Randomness". We all laughed at such idiocy.
Then, I thought- where would such a stupid idea come from?
Where else?

Another Christian that is pig dick ignorant of his own book. I recommend reading Josha where you'll find your blood thirsty intellectual forefathers chopping off foreskin, walking around the walls of Jericho seven times, and blowing horns as part of a siege strategy.

Walking around the walls of Jericho and walking the bearing around the yard to see what happens.....curios.

---

I wonder if the OP believes a sperm and an egg can naturally "evolve" into a thinking (well, for most of us anyway) human being or if there is some magical engineer whose hand is at work inside a woman's body.

Pulling a Haldane, are you? "You did it yourself in nine months!"

p.s. I just read that Wikipedia article on 6sigma, and I find everything about it specious, starting from the name, the sect-like organizational scheme where you have champions promoting it in a company and whatnot. Belch? What is this, the 12 step program to better quality control crossed with tupperware and scientology?

I have six sigma certification. Properly used, six sigma is effective as a tool to help place boundaries on and quantify improvement ideas, but I have seen the tool misused and abused. One way is to try and employ six sigma as the basis of a quality system; chaos ensues and quality suffers. Many people don't have sufficient statistical analysis skills to properly use six sigma; this results in a bunch of flashy presentations with eroneous statistical results that sound impressive, but are ultimately shown to be flawed and misleading once someone that understands statistics starts poking at the analysis. The sad part is that some of the worst offenders are the Blackbelts that are supposed to be the experts here.

Another mistake is that people try to use six sigma as a stand alone RCA tool. It can be used as part of a proper RCA, but can't stand alone. I could go on like this, but my point is that six sigma has its merits; however, people don't understand its limitations and often employ it to the detriment of quality.