What is evidence?

[Arkilogue]

Sensory junkie thinks sensory is the bar, no surprise.  I see we've already added a caveat....seems to be a massive one, given the frequency with which environmental constraints present "severe interruption".   Sensory this and thats are the direction, so long as nothing bad happens to them?  Everything is the direction, so long as nothing bad happens to it.  This is a rule or path that leads nowhere in specific, and everywhere in general.  It's also, again... demonstrably, untrue. Evolution does not have a direction, and no trait is exclusively advantageous.

The only reason you can be fooled, for example..is your "complexity".  An epidemic of credulity could off you, which I doubt would effect an ameoba.

What, then, informs you of the specific direction of evolutionary development, and that this specific direction is the "complexity" which you have defined?

It (DNA) has every possible direction allowed for it to gain information and master it's environment, until reproductive possibility is eclipsed by environmental destabilization. DNA expression can even go "backwards" if it can re-adapt. I evolution in terms of the physical molecule of DNA in action through time.

The human animal informs me of a preferred direction in DNA development. We have great power to manipulate our environment and we do it towards the preservation of our species over time. The same thrust of Life can be found in the greater complexity/gain of civilization over time. The same can be experienced personal as the maturation of consciousness from child to adult.

[The Grand Nudger]

Sensory junkie thinks sensory is the bar, no surprise.  I see we've already added a caveat....seems to be a massive one, given the frequency with which environmental constraints present "severe interruption".   Sensory this and thats are the direction, so long as nothing bad happens to them?  Everything is the direction, so long as nothing bad happens to it.  This is a rule or path that leads nowhere in specific, and everywhere in general.  It's also, again... demonstrably, untrue. Evolution does not have a direction, and no trait is exclusively advantageous.

The only reason you can be fooled, for example..is your "complexity".  An epidemic of credulity could off you, which I doubt would effect an ameoba.

What, then, informs you of the specific direction of evolutionary development, and that this specific direction is the "complexity" which you have defined?

It (DNA) has every possible direction allowed for it to gain information and master it's environment, until reproductive possibility is eclipsed by environmental destabilization. DNA expression can even go "backwards" if it can re-adapt. I evolution in terms of the physical molecule of DNA in action through time.

This appears to be a long refutation of your original claim.  If "complexity" as you;ve defined it is the direction, except evolution can go the opposite direction..in what sense is "complexity" the direction of evolution, again?  

The human animal informs me of a preferred direction in DNA development. We have great power to manipulate our environment and we do it towards the preservation of our species over time. The same thrust of Life can be found in the greater complexity/gain of civilization over time. The same can be experienced personal as the maturation of consciousness from child to adult.

I bet the dinosaurs thought they were hot shit too, for whatever they saw in themselves and defined as their "complexity".  Or, at least, they would have, if they werent so damned inhumanly dumb. I;m not really sure that the biological complexity of an orgaqnism (however it;s defined) has much to say about the relative successes and failures of groups of the same organisms. The civilizations that succeed don't do so because they, or their inhabitants, are "more complex" than other human beings or civilizations..but at least you're tripling down on the crazy while simultaneously arguing against it.

[robvalue]

Yeah, this isn't looking like an objective way of measuring anything. You could say we are in fact the stupidest creation evolution has yet come up with, as we're systematically tearing down the rest of its results and have been on the verge of destroying ourselves for some time.

[Arkilogue]

It (DNA) has every possible direction allowed for it to gain information and master it's environment, until reproductive possibility is eclipsed by environmental destabilization. DNA expression can even go "backwards" if it can re-adapt. I evolution in terms of the physical molecule of DNA in action through time.

This appears to be a long refutation of your original claim.  If "complexity" as you;ve defined it is the direction, except evolution can go the opposite direction..in what sense is "complexity" the direction of evolution, again?  

The human animal informs me of a preferred direction in DNA development. We have great power to manipulate our environment and we do it towards the preservation of our species over time. The same thrust of Life can be found in the greater complexity/gain of civilization over time. The same can be experienced personal as the maturation of consciousness from child to adult.

I bet the dinosaurs thought they were hot shit too, for whatever they saw in themselves and defined as their "complexity".  Or, at least, they would have, if they werent so damned inhumanly dumb.  I;m not really sure that the biological complexity of an orgaqnism (however it;s defined) has much to say about the relative successes and failures of groups of the same organisms.  

The civilizations that succeed don't do so because they, or their inhabitants, are "more complex" than other human beings or civilizations..but at least you're tripling down on the crazy while simultaneously arguing against it.

I mean as in the case of the peppered moth when environmental pressure forced it to change "back" to it's original color.

Stupid dinosaurs? I blame the higher atmospheric pressure and abundance of food.

I should find or make a better word...complexity in the form of over-accumulation tends to stall out any system, living or not.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, you don't just need better words, you need words that describe something that isn't counterfactual, lol. There's already a perfectly serviceable word for the counter-factual.

Bullshit.

[robvalue]

How's that falsifiability coming?

To do any hard science and draw meaningful conclusions, you need some sort of metric and criteria. Otherwise you're just looking at things and saying, "That looks a bit like this..."

[Arkilogue]

Well, you don't just need better words, you need words that describe something that isn't counterfactual, lol.  There's already a perfectly serviceable word for the counter-factual.

Bullshit.

You could have just pointed me here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_...complexity

Here's an interesting number and quality of views.

http://ask.metafilter.com/15365/Is-there...-organisms

[The Grand Nudger]

Or you could have googled it yourself before you chose to lay down some of those inferences of yours? So, the question that really interests me remains. How, how did you get it wrong? Similarly,seeing as it was wrong, what are the chances do you think, that you're drawing that inference to civilizations as well, was right? How did -that- happen....what made you think it was applicable?

Bonus......how long did you look at that link and try to imagine ways to continue to argue for the accuracy of your position...before you linked it and gave up?

[Thumpalumpacus]

I kinda agree with Arky ... sometimes absence of evidence is evidence of absence. I wonder what other questions to which I might apply this principle?

That aphorism should definitely be qualified by saying that for something which is weakly observable, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If it's the sort of thing that doesn't leave much evidence, like the fossilization of Precambrian organisms, then failing to find an abundance of evidence is not evidence of absence. 

Which I guess is another way of saying that there's no shortcut for busting out Bayes' Theorem and crunching the numbers.

Well, I'm actually twisting Sagan's words, and you're getting them right. But I'm also being sarcastic, and pointed, knowing that his OP is not really about getting killed while cutting trees.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Nothing can be evidence of God until it is defined in a falsifiable way.

That's like saying that the value of pi cannot be determined except by empirical observation. Again, nice try.