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Author Topic:   An ID hypothesis: Front-loaded Evolution
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 63 of 216 (653409)
02-20-2012 8:32 PM
Reply to: Message 61 by New Cat's Eye
02-20-2012 3:15 PM


Presto!
CS writes:
Arguing that the sub-optimal codes once did exist early in life’s history, but vanished once the optimal codes came on the scene (i.e., that they were outcompeted), looks awfully ad hoc.
Wait, why? Isn't that exactly what is expected to have happened?
With one magical pass, a successful prediction by the ToE that predates the front-loading hypothesis becomes a lame, ad hoc response to the front-loading hypothesis.
Give that CS fella a cigar.
Edited by Omnivorous, : too many cigars

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 61 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-20-2012 3:15 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 66 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-21-2012 11:10 AM Omnivorous has replied
 Message 86 by Percy, posted 02-22-2012 11:43 AM Omnivorous has replied

  
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


(3)
Message 69 of 216 (653473)
02-21-2012 3:13 PM
Reply to: Message 66 by New Cat's Eye
02-21-2012 11:10 AM


Re: Presto!
CS writes:
Oh, and if you're getting me a cigar, please take all the tobacco out of it and replace it with weed. Thanks.
The old man tottered into his basement cave. His favorite cat, the gray one with the strong Abyssinian cast who spoke only in chirps and trills, looked up quizzically from the terrarium lid, warmed by the tri-spectrum LED lights below.
He glanced inside the glass enclosure approvingly, admiring both the latest pillar-like specimens there and the slow-growing, ground-hugging clusters. He made a mental note to water the morning glory seedlings and Mexican mint cuttings in the window boxes upstairs.
The cat watched him closely. From a small drawer in the battered desk he produced a compressed ball of catnip and sent it rolling across the room. The cat crowed, her pitch almost ultrasonic, nearly inaudible, and raced after it. She always moves like a killer, he thought--more a fellow hunter than a pet.
He sat, opened a browser window , peered at the list of replies and clicked the first. His eyebrows rose. He frowned.
"Young man," he typed, "I've been in this game for almost 50 years."
"None of my cigars contain tobacco."
The very idea.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 66 by New Cat's Eye, posted 02-21-2012 11:10 AM New Cat's Eye has seen this message but not replied

  
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


(2)
Message 90 of 216 (653587)
02-22-2012 8:43 PM
Reply to: Message 86 by Percy
02-22-2012 11:43 AM


Re: Presto!
Percy writes:
Didn't CS misunderstand this as a complement?
It was a sincere compliment. I think the general excitement at engaging an intelligent, articulate IDist has allowed a fair amount of circularity and hand-waving to go unremarked. I was pleased to see CS challenge something I had raised an eyebrow at but was too lazy to engage.
And didn't you misunderstand CS as endorsing Genomicus's characterization of ad hoc?
No, I understood CS to be saying, as you did, that "optimal replacing sub-optimal is precisely what we would expect of a process of successive selection over generations, meaning that it isn't ad hoc at all." I took Genomicus' dismissal of that as an attempt to poison the well with a bit of hand-waving.
Apologies if the misunderstandings are all mine...
None needed, Percy. You think and write with uncommon clarity. My default position is that if you are unsure of my meaning, I didn't state it clearly.
Sometimes, perhaps, I should turn the sardonic dial down.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 86 by Percy, posted 02-22-2012 11:43 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 157 of 216 (653803)
02-24-2012 10:34 AM
Reply to: Message 156 by Panda
02-24-2012 10:03 AM


Re: A summary
Panda writes:
Maybe 'agnostic' is the wrong word for me to have used.
I think I should have said 'non-specific'.
Geno's intelligent designer has not shown any aspects that would require it to be a god.
(Sure - the designers would need to be more advanced than us, but that does not make them gods.)
As an aside: I have never seen an argument that crosses the 'intelligent designer' -> 'god' divide.
It always falls at the "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" hurdle.
If it was proved/accepted that life on Earth was intentionally seeded/designed/front-loaded, that would still not be an argument for a deity.
Any claim that "design=god" is an argumentum ad ignorantiam.
But I have yet to see Geno make that leap or even hint that he wants to.
All that works as long as he only addresses design as a possible and proximal cause of life on earth.
But if he aspires to an argument for the necessity of designed life, it is difficult to see how he, or any other IDist, will arrive anywhere other than at a supernatural designer.
We can agree to put phenomenological brackets--local and possible--around his argument, but I don't see why we should let him kick our cans down the road.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 156 by Panda, posted 02-24-2012 10:03 AM Panda has seen this message but not replied

  
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