Can Natural Selection Produce Intelligent Design?

Doesn't that presuppose that we would have to know exactly how to build human-like intelligence? It could well be that that is the only way to achieve it, but my bets are on a much simpler route: we provide the initial rough conditions for a development process and let "nature" take its course.I am thinking of two specific cases: genetic algorithms and neural networks. The first involves an evolutionary process, the second a learning process. But in both cases we would not know in advance the exact configuration of the end product, so we could not rightly be called the intelligent designers of it. At most we could take the credit for intelligently setting up the initial conditions, although we would only be mimicking things we've already seen in nature.The crux is that the end product might easily surpass our expectations. As I've already described in another thread, an experiment with a genetic algorithm that was supposed to evolve oscillators, produced a radio that picked up an ambient oscillating signal and simply passed it on. That's a very "creative" solution to the problem, and, most importantly, it never entered the minds of the experimenters that it could be done that way. So it wasn't, to use your words, "obviously the product of an intelligent designer", effectively proving that there are other ways.

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

Well, once more, your post is very hard to follow. There are probably lots of connections to all kinds of interesting fields that you have intimate knowledge of, but you routinely assume that we all do, witness your casual sprinkling of references without any further explanation. That, combined with your idiosyncratic style of writing, makes it very hard for me to understand what you are actually saying.Do you realise we never talk about the content of your posts, but only ever about their form? It makes me wonder how you do your shopping at the greengrocer's. If you do manage to come home with the stuff you asked for in the shop, then please imagine I'm the shopkeeper and talk to me the way you talk to them. Is that too much to ask? It's almost as if plain English is a foreign language to you, as it is to me. But at least I'm making an effort. Why don't you?

Having you raise your voice is not my intention.I have to go now. I'll get back to you later.

Brad,When I wrote my last message to you, I didn't have much time. So I'll give it another go. I am not sure whether you were being sarcastic here, or sincere. If sarcastic, I must have provoked it with the tone of my message #53 ("Is that too much to ask?","Why don't you [make an effort]?"). I assure you, that was not the way I meant it.I did not mean to dishearten you. I think you have much to offer to this forum, and I was only trying to get you to communicate. There is a middle road between a simple chat and an exchange of post-doc level essays. Most of the discussions on this forum take that middle road. But a prerequisite for a meaningful discussion is a common language. And your language, Brad, is definitely not common. So, unless you want to continue in soliloqui, it is imperative that you adopt a style of writing that the rest of us here can relate to.Take care, indeed.