Detecting design or intent in nature

[bennyboy]

Can emergent self-order occur without intellect? Yes. But that is not the same question as "Can flocking occur without intellect".

You must have a strong mind. Don't those goalposts get heavy?

I predict that you are going to play the question-begging game: you will only allow organization which involves sentient beings to be called flocking, and then you will spend 20 pages proving that everything that does what you've called flocking must be sentient. Then you'll use an equivocation to use that "proof" as evidence for every organized system, whether it is flocking or something entirely different, also being a product of sentience.

Is it your position that all emergent self-order can happen without intellect? If so I would encourage you to examine this position.

Absolutely. If it is self-ordered, then how could it have emerged from its own intellect? That would be. . . oh wait, nevermind.

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Iron particles arranging themselves around a magnet is not flocking. The iron particles gather around the magnet because of the electromagnetic force. Birds flock because they follow a set of rules:.

Iron particles are not going to move off into another direction if rust inducing water particles show up the way birds do if a predator shows up. A better example of "flocking without brains" would be swarms of jellyfish but this too isn't flocking.

Why are you telling me this? Did I say that iron filings around a magnet are flocking? No. I used iron filings as an example of things which show a high level of organization, without the involvement of intellect. Unless, that is, you want to insist that the Hand of God is guiding those filings into position.

Here's your process: someone gives an example filling your criteria, and then you make up a no rule to show why that example doesn't belong. Then someone else gives an example filling your new criteria, and whoops! guess what? There's another new definition of things to make that new example inapplicable.

And after all this song and dance, you still haven't provided any evidence that anything in the universe not created on Earth demonstrates design or intent. . . or intellect.

[Heywood]

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.

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It gets to the point where it hurts, doesn’t it?

The fail of team atheists in this thread rivals the fail of fundamentalist.

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http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23...MUrq8pFAm8

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.

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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.

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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.

[StuW]

A ) what YOU describe them as is irrelevant as the people who did the experiments and wrote the paper are the ones who get to name the results.
B ) what you are describing isn't flocking but murmuration which is a behaviour exhibited by a flock.

[bennyboy]

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.

Red herring much? You've managed to go from you trying to prove there is design in nature to making everyone else fuck around with the semantics of what really is or really isn't evolution, and to participate in your BOP shell game.

How about this. . . you demonstrate that there is design or intent in nature. Wouldn't that be a fun activity?

[helyott]

What is asserted without proof can be denied without proof.

We don 't have to prove that your affirmation that intelligence is necessary to have life is wrong because you haven't proved that your affirmation is right.

[Chas]

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)

No, no one who understands evolution would say that. Not one.

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.

No wonder your examples suck, you really don't understand evolution. It is hilarious that you think I don't.

If you want an example that is at all meaningful, it requires heritability and imperfect replication of replicators.

[Heywood]

A ) what YOU describe them as is irrelevant as the people who did the experiments and wrote the paper are the ones who get to name the results.
B ) what you are describing isn't flocking but murmuration which is a behaviour exhibited by a flock.

I didn't know the phenomena I was referring to was called a murmuration. Thanks for the vocabulary lesson! Anyways here is a video of that phenomena. It is an example of emergent self order that requires intellect. It is emergent self order because there isn't a centralized intellect or boss directing the movement or the creation of the patterns. Nevertheless what you see is the result of thousands of intellects all following some simple rules.





I don't believe my claim that there are some emergent self organizing phenomena that require intellect is unreasonable. The intellect fits in either as a direct component or to set it up. The example of you gave in your article is an example of a phenomenon that needed an intellect to set it up.

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No, no one who understands evolution would say that. Not one.

No true scotsmans would have failed in this thread as hard as you have failed Chas. You can't go one post without committing a blunder.

[The Grand Nudger]

-Says the man who's committed the very same blunders for 78 pages worth of posts. Here's to 500 yall.

[Heywood]

This is not how evolution works, and this one of many reasons your automobile example fails.

If you need example of automobile evolution that looks more closely like biological evolution, take a look at this:

[The Grand Nudger]

-Would have gotten you my nomination for funniest member, had you dropped that little nugget on us a few weeks earlier.