Intended mutations

A gibbon has a ball and socket joint. It's wrist is a perfect swivelling tool. The moth's proboscus is a perfectly compatible extendable straw for sucking pollen from deep inside flowers. What these facts highlight to me, and many more in nature, according to the equilibrium of advantages and disadvantages, is that evolution must have some foresight if the morphology is to be brilliant like this. So allow me to have the musing that an intended mutation is a good explanation for an excellent tool, rather than a random one. for time and time again, I am amazed by the perfection of the trait.ofcourse, traits are also mundane and imperfect. Yet it strikes me that if NS is to act upon a favourable trait, that trait might be in the form of a rudimentary morphology, such as a useless wing.Don't mistake my argument as an argument against evolution. The evolution happened, that's not the issue, the issue is that it seems there is a "choice" for species, in that what they specialize in, comes to be matched with the endowment of extraordinarily brilliantly designed tools.Without nature having foresight, I think a designer is surely plausible, as he would have foresight in the direction the species is going in, and how it would affect the equilibrium of life.Example; a bat might choose to grow it's fingers into supports for wings --> but the eagle picks off the bats. Advantage/disadvantage. etc ->. A four-legged tree hopper is essentially a ground dweller so it has the disadvantage of not leaping as far as the monkeys, advantage/disadvantage.It seems that simply saying that the equilirium of life is coincidental, is insufficient.If I am wrong, then can you atleast see how I come to see design? Is it an illusion I see because I trying to figure it out logically rather than learning the actual science?This is perhaps an opportunity for a knowledgeable scientist to explain why a designer is not necessary because of parsimony.

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

I can see exactly how you come to see design - you're not seeing any of the mistakes.The fossil record is a record of extinction. Over 99% of the species that have ever lived are extinct by now. Completely gone.The gibbon wrist may be flexible, but it isn't capable of free rotation around its axis, just like the way all other wrists are limited. The moth's mouthparts may be perfectly shaped for sucking flowers but that comes at a cost, too.It's really easy to look at the cream of the crop - the organisms who won the evolution lottery and have some pretty sweet adaptations - and think that it must have taken a design for it all to have come together like that. But when you really take a close look at the biological world, you see a lot more junkyard than 747. The gibbon might have a really flexible wrist, but you and I have to make do with retinas that face our photosensitive cells backwards into our skulls instead of forwards into the oncoming light. You've got it backwards. It's the randomly-bestowed trait that determines what choices the organism is allowed to make. Eagles don't eat bats. They eat fish.

Crash says you aren't looking at the 99% of species that are extinct. It is far, far, far more extreme than that.Those are the successful species that actually produced a gene pool of some size (be it 10 or 20 individuals). What you need to look at are the percentage of individuals who lived. They weren't aborted in the first few days of development because of a flaw, They weren't still born, they didn't die because of being a bit weak in the first weeks or months. They did out run the predator and they did finally manage to reproduce. I suggest that this % is way, way lower than 1.It is all those trillions and trillions of attempts to get it right but failed that, when winnowed through selection produce such a seemingly "perfect" result.Of course, the results are not perfect at all. They are exactly the results you get when you "design" by trail and error on a massive scale. If you are willing to expend resources on a collosal number of failures you can have some really "original" and surprising results. You also get a huge amount of variety. You also get very complex gludges. That very complexity belies an design by anyone who knew what they were doing.

it's also a record of life, and what did live atleast for a time, succesfully. If that was the intention, then there is no problem. Don't forget, this is all my hypothetics, but if it works right? becasue there's a lot of things we can assume about a designer, and he what he would observe as a success.But what is the intention anyway if there is a designer in the details? Are you not assuming they are meant to be completely succesful?For what a species is, of itself, in it's time, is brought about by the tuner of chance.I think that logically, 99% would be extinct by now anyway, succesful or not, because they evolve. I'm not sure about what that figure actually means, and if we can conclude much from it. This is my problem, species adapt to environments as best they can, and NS must act on the mutation. I know that. But what I'm saying is that IMHO, the fossil record shows a multitude of other designs. Does it actually show any unsuccesful design if each species is a designated, carefully placed component in a system? What matters is that the organism worked in it's time. Just like your car. Some cars are made to be succesful for 100,000 miles. Others are made to last the length of a race.Creativity seems to be part of the whole thing.A randomly bestowed trait that just happens to be a working component, in any regard. Within any present system, everything that comes to pass, works. Like right now. If there is a designer with foresight, surely we have to account for the variables that that brings, aswell as just the science. That is, if the result is less than 1%, why is that? Is that not the intelligence? at work, or could be deemed to be anyhow?Thinking in terms of strict-evolutionary success will make it look decidedly atheist, will it not? IMHo, we have to stick with reality. The end result would be intended if there is a tuner of chance.This message has been edited by mike the wiz, 05-05-2006 04:25 PM

Perhaps I was being tautologous by saying that everything is intended, whatever we find.Perhaps I should make the difference by saying that everything we do find, "works", and that this evidence, IMHo, all this evidence, seems to be better explained as intended rather than random.If it was random, we surely would find many MANY unworking, shoddy designs.But let's be honest, reality indicates otherwise.

Of life which was successful enough, at one time, to have a large enough population to beat the odds against fossilization. I don't see how you can say that. Plenty of organisms "come to pass" that don't work, at all.

Have you ever seen genetic algorithms and evolutionary processes being used in design?The design converged on is usually a very good one and is often better than human designers can devise. Evolutionary processes with cumulative selection can produce a frightening array of designs with no intention needed.This kind of program designed a radio, it has designed optimum ariel shapes and many other things. Somebody designed a self-replcating computer program that was 80 bytes long and had several copies of it compete over many generations for the resource of cycle-time. The replication was not perfect. Overnight, this system had developed several kinds of program. There were programs that were only 25 bytes long, and some programs were parasitic and were much smaller (they used other programs to replicate etc). I did it myself, you can too, read about it here. There is nobody directing this evolution.In short, evolution designs things better than we can. Its only when the design is simple that we can approach its skill. The impression of design is not an illusion. Life is designed, life is a massively complicated thing and it demands a damned impressive explanation. The stunning thing is that evolution, the effects of cumulative selection on a non-perfect replicator have been shown to be very powerful desiging things. And no pre-ordained direction needs to shown. Our simulations often have quite a small number of selective factors, but reality has many many more.As a result there are many solutions for a problem, but some of them don't happen. Antelopes have a problem - they get eaten by lions. One solution to this problem is running away, the solution the antelopes have converged towards. They are very good at it too, and lions are good at catching antelopes.Another solution is to fly away (and it would be a hell of a lot better than running away), but its unlikely that there is any pathway that a antelopes can go down at this time to grow wings. They would need to be able to do without sacrificing their short term survival.So your idea has a possible test: if we can find a population which has evolved through a significant less-fit-than-the-generations-before phase with the seeming 'intention' of evolving down another 'path' which will eventually (many generations down the line) be better at surviving than the original population), then we have some evidence of intended mutations (with forethought).I could go on further, but I think I've waffled long enough. We need to find a mutation that spreads into (or 'invades') a population, despite the fact that that mutation causes the population to be less fit than the generations before it.This message has been edited by Modulous, Fri, 05-May-2006 10:45 PM

Mike,Here are two examples of "amazing" perfection, for your amusement.Example 1.
Richard Dawkins once performed an experiment with an audience of a few hundred people, flipping a coin. He asked the audience to stand up, and devided them into two groups. To one group he assigned "heads", to the other "tails". Then he flipped the coin. He asked the group who lost to sit down. Then he repeated it with the people who were still standing. Again half of them lost of course. He kept repeating the coin flips until, after ten coin flips or so, he was left with one person, the ultimate winner. He said: "Isn't it amazing? This person has just won ten coin flips in a row. What's the chance of that?" Then he went on: "Of course it isn't amazing at all. Someone had to win it. It just happens to be this person. Now, it would have been amazing if I had known in advance it would be him."Example 2.
I've written a genetic algorithm once that could find short routes between cities. (The problem of the Travelling Salesman). The programme worked according to the principles of evolution (random mutation and natural selection) and started with a population of random routes for a given configuration of cities. Most of these random routes were not very efficient (i.e. not short). The routes "competed" against each other in shortness, and only the top 10 percent were allowed to have "offspring" to make up the next generation. The programme also randomly mutated the offspring, and the competition started anew. After several generations, the routes became amazingly efficient.Now, you should know that with only, say, ten cities, the number of possible routes that pass through each city is 3,628,800 (the faculty of 10). The faculty of a number is a function that increases to an enormously large number very quickly. The faculty of 15 equals 1.3 x 10¹², the faculty of 20 equals 2.4 x 10¹⁸. I tried my programme with thirty cities, which means 2.7 x 10³² possible routes. To find one of the top 1 percent shortest routes among them by simply comparing them all would take longer than the universe exists, even when performed on the fastest computer in existence. My genetic algorithm found it in a couple of minutes.Now, here comes the truly amazing part. If I arranged the cities in a circle, the programme came back with the perfection of the trait under selection (shortness of the route): a circle. For one thing, the circle was proof of principle, i.e. that my programme worked. For another, it was an amazing, because perfect solution to the problem.This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 05-May-2006 11:34 PM

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

And that is the point of my post. A very, very large number of "designs" (individual organisms) are so shoddy they don't live to be born. Another large number never reproduce. There ARE a HUGE number of unworking, shoddy designs.If you look at living things you have already filtered out a large number of attempts. They HAVE to be "designs" that are not-to-awful-bad or they are dead. Reality indicates exactly the case that you think should exist if the designs are produced (intially) randomly and then picked if they are "good enough for now". A hugely wasteful process that allows for very, very precise tuning of the few "successful" designs.

(This is addressing everyone, as I haven't time for individual lengthy posts.) But I'm not sure it would be necessary. For every transtional path shows a pathway from one form to another one via slow success. If we picked each species from the homo genus for example, and shown a pathway, we could "see" the trajectory, despite that trajectory being blind precedingly.Even if you're thinking that my mistake is to assume there is a final product, and that is an intention, infact, the trajectory itself is "clear" to see. That's IMHo, enough to convince me of foresight.You see, if a species has no choice of mutation, then let's say we have some common ancestor of a bat that exists. It now gets a mutation NS chooses, that would benefit it in the future by means of wings and that's what we know will happen from this point in time (but you wouldn't know then). That mutation, nature has selected, because it helps them in some other form at the time? And I guess the next mutation must help them in some other way other than being a wing, untill you have the full wing? SO THIS has to be coincidence ASWELL as the workability of morphological components?That would mean that everything that was "evolving" but was presently useless pertaining to the final tool, was implemented, was "kept" and just happened to be useful UNTILL the final tool's completion.Are we saying that it just so happened that every trajectory we see, was succesful? Think about it. Each line leads to a correct function.I understand your program, and is your point that designer/s implemented the random processes? or is your point that these designed random processes prove a completely random process?YET a designer has to set it all up. Did your findings show a trajectory aswell? If they show a transitional trajectory, I'd probably consider myself to possibly be wrong about the "intended" mutation, apart from the fact that no human can actually know if a designer is intending a certain pathway.(To others too; I apreciate the examples of random success. I'm not sure the example equate with a morphological system. IOW, even if you get a mutation, any mutation, it still has to be some kind of functioning device. I disbelieve that ANY functioning device would mutate randomly. So it's not that random chance doesn't work, it's that chance needs to work on something. IMHO, there is nothing "random" about the majority of mutations. That is, you could slothfully suggest bad mutations, but the fact that all these billions of species have came about, doesn't show the randomness of a mutation, it shows that all of these mutations were workable, the whole lot of them.Compared to what? Where's the losing team in nature, in comparison with Dawkins' experiment which ASSUMES we firtly have coins to toss.If this analogy reflects reality, I would expect he'd be tossing coins that would have to come randomly to him.You see, this is the point you guys miss; that in every experiment, the ludicrous nature of "chance" creating all of life, is disregarded in reality by the fact that it is removed by the fact that someone has intended an experiment and sets it up.Now if a computer program, created by itself, and a computer created by itself, and EVERYTHING, on it's own, came to pass, that would be remarkabe. It would also be the logical EQUIVALENT to random natural evolution with no designer. So show me that instance and I will believe it happened on it's own. Bye for now.
.This message has been edited by mike the wiz, 05-06-2006 08:50 AM

That's faulty logic, Mike.The unsuccessful "lines" are very short. They are so short that they leave little trace and we normally cannot see them.If your last sentence were "Each line that we see leads to a correct function" then your logic would be in better shape. I would also prefer to see scare quotes around the word "correct", to make it clear that there need not be any preset standard of correctness that it must meet.

You're making a simple probability error. Here's an example that makes the error clear.Consider the probability of you having a son, and your son having a son, and his son having a son, and so forth, forward for a thousand generations. What is the probability of that. Seems pretty small, right? And it is.You don't have to take my word for it, and we don't have to write probability equations to see that this is true. We know that there's a pretty good probability that you will have a son, and there's a pretty good probability that your son (if you ever have one) will have a son, but the probability of both happening is less than the probability of one happening.Now add to this another generation. What are the odds that you will have a son, your son will have a son, and his son will have a son. The odds are even less.Carry it forward another generation. What are the odds that you will have a son, your son will have a son, and his son will have a son, and his son will in turn have a son. The odds are becoming even less.After a thousand generations of this the odds are tiny, minuscule in fact. We don't have to do calculations to know that this is pretty unlikely.Now, instead of looking forward, let's look backward. What are the odds that your father had a son. Since you are here, we know that the odds are 100%. What are the odds that your father's father had a son. They must also be 100%, since he must have existed or you wouldn't be here. What are the odds that your father's father's father had a son. Also 100%. Whether you go back a 1000 generations or 10,000 generations or a million generations, the answer is always the same: the odds are 100%.And the same is true for every other man on this Earth. Why, it just boggles the mind that such an apparently unlikely thing could have happened for each and every of the billions of men on this planet.But it shouldn't be surprising if you understand probability. Extremely unlikely outcomes happen each and every second all over the universe, but they only seem unlikely when looking backward. When it seems surprising it's because you're forgetting that you're specifying a specific outcome (you and all the rest of the billions of actual men on the planet being here with all their specific genealogies) versus an unspecified outcome (not anyone specific, just billions of men with unspecified genealogies).I like the father/son analogy for explaining this probability misconception, but there are simpler ones. Let's say you pick a jellybean out of a jar with a billion jellybeans in it. What are the odds that you would have picked that particular jellybean? A billion to one, of course. There you are sitting with a jelly bean in your hand that had a billion to one odds of being there, yet there it sits.Now throw the jelly bean back in the jar and mix it up. What are the odds that you'll pick that exact jellybean again? They're still a billion to one. You'll likely never find that jellybean again in your lifetime.The difference is because in the second case you specified a specific outcome. When you don't care which jellybean you get, then while the odds of any particular jelly bean being chosen are one in a billion, the odds of one of them being chosen are 100%. The odds of successfully being able to pick a jellybean out of a jar full of jellybeans are 100%.But once you decide you want a particular jellybean your odds change. If you want to pick a specific jellybean out of a jar with a billion jellybeans, your chances of success are one in a billion.So your trajectories scenario only appears unlikely because you want the specific trajectories that actually happened. When you don't specify which trajectories you want, then like the unlikely chosen jellybean, trajectories are inevitable and will happen.--Percy

Yet the trajectory will be seen in the first, second and third stages of a trasition, in say, a wing.I understand what you're saying. But it's not just about probability anyway. That is why I mentioned having something to pick from in the first place.Pretend jelly beans are for eating. What if the intention was for them to be eaten? Isn't it remarkable that we have something to eat in the first place? What knew that we just happened to need them for eating? THAT is my essential point.Even if we now say that it was just remarkable chance, which I'm sure you are probably right about (as I am merely asserting hypothetical thoughts and am not as knowledgeable, therefore IMHo, my opinion isn't educated and is therefore worth less). Even if you're right, I still think it's remarkable that any jelly beans are there to be picked. Even bad tasting ones.Perhaps the 'science' of it is too hard for me to understand. I know what you mean by probability though, it's like the lottery, the chances of winning are small, except if you win. A hindsight prophet is worthless. yes, I get that!BUT, what are the chances of getting a mutation which works, then, it is chosen by NS, despite not being a wing, then another helpful mutation happens and that is also chosen despite not being helpful to a final wing, etc, etc, etc. I see the "transitions" as too smooth, like they are leading somewhere, but at the time that somewhere is not known.I suppose I assume that finality is intended because it's the DIRECTION that it was seemingly pointing towards. These fabulous tools and systems and morphologies, are slightly more impressive than a son, begetting a son etc. because we know what we're getting. But the odds of reproducing AND happening upon brilliant tools, is IMHO, an extra factor to say the least.Well, anyway, I am confident everyone who posts to me knows more than I about the science-part. So what the hell, if I'm wrong I'm wrong.This message has been edited by mike the wiz, 05-06-2006 09:57 AM

This is, of course, off topic here but I don't think it should be ignored.You are, in a way, moving the goalposts now. We are talking about mutations and biological evolution. The discussion is about what is wrong with your consideration of the probability of the life forms we see.However, you are now backing up to, in an analogy with computers, to the origin of the universe. We don't know if the laws which govern the universe had any other possible outcomes nor do we know if we are simple one of many different sets of laws. If some people want to believe that a god set this universe up (built the computer and wrote the software) and let it run to see what would come out (or even knew what would given the initial conditions) there is nothing to disprove that right now. However, that doesn't say anything about the nature of biological evolution.It may be that the originator knew that, eventually, intelligent life would arise in this universe and in that way it is "intended" and all the mutations and selection are just the process used to get to some intelligent life. Fine,if you want to believe that.However, there is no hint whatsoever that any tinkering has gone on since the intial formation of the universe. The method used doesn't need any tinkering either. It can produce some very interesting outcomes left to run on it's own. Just as computer programs left to themselves produce very interesting and sometimes surprising outcomes.The IDists are not putting forward the idea of an 'unintended' universe so they are trying to go further than the science suggests is correct.