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Member (Idle past 1732 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Doesn't Natural Selection lead to Specified Complexity? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
In the broad sense that is pretty much correct, assuming that beneficial mutations that build complexity occur. Natural selection does act as a filter, which can be seen as specification.
Using Dembski's special (and misleading) definition, that is not true, since all sources other than design must be ruled out before a thing may be called specified complexity. As a result I see quite a lot of equivocation over the definitions - ID supporters need to use the broad sense whenever they want to claim that specified complexity is found in nature, and Dembski's sense whenever they want to claim that it supports ID.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
Dembski does TRY to be rigorous with his "complexity" measure (which is really an improbability measure) and I think that he does a bit better than you give him credit for (doubtless due to lack of explanation in the article). However, it does still have subjective elements.
The real problem is that actually following Dembski's method is impractical in many cases - including all the biological features Dembski would like to use his method on, to support his creationist beliefs. I also don''t like the idea that natural selection should be seen as entirely deterministic. It is the outcome of a statistical process, and while some aspects of evolution may be nearly as inevitable as a casino making a profit many details of the outcome are not.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
quote: Unless you define "the environment" as a complete and fully detailed description of every event that occurs in the relevant time period, you would be wrong. A beneficial mutation will give an overall advantage, but it is perfectly possible to encounter situations where the advantage does not come into play or is inadequate or even where the mutation is a disadvantage. A beneficial mutation is quite vulnerable in the early stages when it is present in only a few individuals and could easily be lost. Equally drift can cause even weakly deleterious mutations to spread, overcoming natural selection. As you would expect with a statistical outcome the effect is strongest when the population is small, and chance can cause proportionally greater variations in the outcome.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
quote: The problem is that by doing so you essentially make natural selection unimportant. All you have is a deterministic system working out it's course and you make no useful distinction between selective events and events which just happen to preserve or eliminate a particular allele.
quote: And this is why other approaches are preferred. We should not count an event as natural selection unless genetic variations actually in the population affect the outcome, and unless the event affects enough individuals to have a significant affect on fitness. ANd since we can't predict everything exactly why not use statistical modeling - which works well - rather than throwing up our hands and giving up ?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
quote: Of course, you are missing the point I am making, which is that your view relies on ignoring the distinction between selection and drift. The events that correspond to drift may be deterministic in an absolute sense, but they still aren't natural selection. (Or they may not be - to the best of my knowledge determinism is still unproven).
quote: And since you have to assume complete determinism to get to that conclusion, it is utterly trivial and tells us nothing about natural selection. In a deterministic universe, everything is deterministic - we need not know anything about natural selection to reach your conclusion. Meanwhile, models where natural selection is the outcome of a statistical process are both more practical and more informative.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9
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quote: IF you are using "complexity" in the ordinary sense of the word, then natural selection does not directly contribute to complexity. It may (and probably does) work to allow complexity to build up, but the complexity has to come from the processes that produce variation, not the process which whittles it down. If you use Dembski's sense then natural selection has to be included in the probability calculations, so it can't affect the "complexity" at all - in fact it makes things that seem more "complex" than they really are. Just one way in which Dembski's "complexity" differs from the usual sense.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
quote: Except that it is not an input, so you can't fix it. It happens and affects the outputs so it isn't irrelevant. So where does it fit into your view ?
quote: Assuming that the gene was in the population, and you could rig the environment to give the particular allele you wanted a strong selective advantage then you could do that. But being able to rig things is not enough, especially if you need special conditions to do it.In a more hostile environment, even that might not be enough.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
quote: There's a bit more than that. It's something that seems intended even after you consider all the other possible explanations. And by "consider" I mean calculating the probability that the explanation would give that outcome, and find out that it is mind-bogglingly improbable.
quote: That would depend on the outcome of the probability calculations. Using Dembski's method you are supposed to eliminate natural selection as a possible explanation by showing that it is way too unlikely to produce the observed pattern.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
quote: But ignoring the facts that drift is also a product of the environment (as you have defined it) and also that the genetic distribution is part of the input to both natural selection and drift. This is an iterated process and the results feed back to influence events.
quote: In which case the result is not guaranteed. If the mutation does not occur, it cannot be selected.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
I think you mean that drift is not a function of the environment as it is usually defined. Unfortunately, that is not the case when using your definition.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
Because you define the environment as everything that happens. Thus any event which affects reproductive success is a part of the environment as you define it. Even if it is a freak accident -which would be excluded under the more usual understanding.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
What you mean to ask is "how does the fact that the events that produce drift are part of the environment mean that the environment is a factor in causing drift". Which pretty much answers itself.
quote: Then, it seems the problem is in your view of what a process must be. Perhaps dropping the arbitrary demand of determinism would be better than adopting non-standard definitions that bring more problems.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
quote: Have you forgotten that you defined the environment to include ALL events occurring in the relevant time period? You're asking in what sense events are events, another of those self-answering questions.
quote: How does a stochastic process fail to be a process? Your question doesn't make any sense to me.
quote: Of course not - not that that question has any relevance to my post at all.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
quote: Trying to change the subject? The point was that the environment as you define it causes drift. And it does so when the course of events favours one allele over another without regard to the effects of that allele.
quote: If this is your assumption of universal determinism again it is trivial and only acts to undermine your point. If it is intended to make a more serious point then it is in need of clarification and support.
quote: I think you mean the PROCESSES because you are including drift and selection in there. Both contribute to the outcome.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
quote:You were definitely trying to change the subject, which was how events that cause drift are part of the environment as you defined it. Why you chose to dispute that, when you stated that ALL events are part of the environment, I suppose I'll never know. And since I explained how events in the environment can cause drift I suggest that you deal with the point rather than digging yourself even deeper by making more false assertions.
quote: Obviously you don"t understand drift, which is all about how the new alleles created by mutation rise and decline in frequency, apart from selection.
quote:Because given that view, there is nothing special about being deterministic. Everything is. Even freak accidents. quote: Nevertheless, it is, and it is in there, lumped together with selection.
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