RE: Detecting design or intent in nature
January 26, 2015 at 5:28 am
(This post was last modified: January 26, 2015 at 5:59 am by Heywood.)
(January 25, 2015 at 5:15 pm)rasetsu Wrote:(January 25, 2015 at 4:35 pm)Heywood Wrote: Can emergent self-order occur without intellect? Yes. But that is not the same question as "Can flocking occur without intellect".
Is it your position that all emergent self-order can happen without intellect? If so I would encourage you to examine this position.
Emergent self order means there isn't a single intellect "calling the shots". It doesn't means the things being ordered don't have intellects or that those intellects play no role. Have you ever watched people cross the streets in a city like New York? Two massive crowds on a collision course each other which suddenly and elegantly form "conga lines" and the crowds pass right through each other. No one intellect is coordinating the efficient movement of the two crowds so the behavior can be described as emergent self order. However the intellect of each pedestrian is also playing a role.
You really need to brush up on emergent self order if you think all instances of emergent self order do not require intellects. Birds could not fly in unison without brains.
(January 25, 2015 at 5:51 pm)Stimbo Wrote: It gets to the point where it hurts, doesn’t it?
The fail of team atheists in this thread rivals the fail of fundamentalist.
(January 25, 2015 at 1:49 pm)StuW Wrote: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23...MUrq8pFAm8
Quote: Birds of a feather flock together and now so do brainless, inanimate blobs. Made of microscopic particles, the artificial swarms could shed light on the mysterious mechanisms behind the natural swarming seen in fish and birds. They might also lead to materials with novel properties like self-healing.
Also, if you take a bucket or container full of water and scatter things such as dust or petals on the surface they tend to clump together like a swarm or flock.
The things describe in the article, I would call them designed machines. Also clumping or aggregating isn't flocking. Animals which flock all point themselves in basically the same direction and move and turn in unison.
(January 25, 2015 at 6:35 pm)Chas Wrote:(January 25, 2015 at 4:24 pm)Heywood Wrote: This is just plain wrong. How the population is replicated is inconsequential. Instead of mothers pushing out babies, they could be made in a factory and the stork could be delivering them. All that matters is the future babies be near copies of past babies and any changes which lower fitness are selected against. For instance, Only babies which survive to the age of reproduction will be copied.
You simply fail to understand how evolution works.
Copied by what? What is propagating change?
You have now utterly failed Evolution 101. You get an F.
It doesn't matter what is doing to the copying. It doesn't matter if a baby is made in a womb or a factory. All that matter is replication, heritability(some evolutionist would say this doesn't matter) change, and selection.
But seriously Chas, your never too old to go back to school. You really need too because you really do not understand evolution.
