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Author Topic:   My Book On Evolution
driewerf
Junior Member
Posts: 29
Joined: 08-14-2010


Message 46 of 69 (887173)
07-19-2021 2:21 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by mike the wiz
03-21-2020 11:01 AM


Another issue with this essay is that Mike the Wiz very often portrays the process of evolution as an intelligent, deliberate agent. Note how often he uses the phrase that "evolution invents" of "designs" beings;
quote:
A correct prediction for evolution would be to find things in the middle of evolution in the record of death (the fossils), because evolution claims the fossil record is a history of evolution which should be a history of how wings and legs were invented by evolution.
quote:
The fact is that we would also expect to find evolution in the middle of designing in the LIVING record
quote:
So where am I going with this? Basically I don't think the evidence and arguments put forward for macro evolution are equivalent in any way to the size of it's claim that it invented every species that ever lived.
So then evolution's claim is that it invented everything on earth, can it not even show us the invention of one small novel anatomy, even in part?
quote:
So then evolution's claim is that it invented everything on earth, can it not even show us the invention of one small novel anatomy, even in part?
This coming from someone who has spend years debating on line, and complains that his interlocutors don’t listen and twist creationists’ words. Yet
quote:
Online, I have known many evolutionists, even some of them for years yet they still don't know some of the basic answers creationists have to the "problems" they put forward.
(this comes from: EvC Forum: There are easy creationist answers to problems evolutionists pose)
This is also coming from someone who complains that "evolutionists and atheists" only twist his words.
quote:
You are just saying things about creationists that are only true from your own TWISTED and highly limited thinking.
Yet after all those years, Mike the Wiz still doesn’t know that the process of evolution has no direction, and works along the pressure exercised by the environment (predators, pathogens, parasites etc are part of the environment.) Mike the Wiz hasn’t yet understood that the natural sciences are not teleological. Some messages have it really difficult to sink in.
Or does he know, and is he simply too manipulative, too much a used car sales man to represent his interlocutor's viewpoint correctly? Again, one can only speculate.
Edited by driewerf, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by mike the wiz, posted 03-21-2020 11:01 AM mike the wiz has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 47 by Parasomnium, posted 07-20-2021 3:22 PM driewerf has replied
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Parasomnium
Member
Posts: 2228
Joined: 07-15-2003


Message 47 of 69 (887174)
07-20-2021 3:22 PM
Reply to: Message 46 by driewerf
07-19-2021 2:21 PM


Personally, I don't have a problem with the notion of the process of evolution "inventing" things. I look upon it as a kind of shorthand for saying that through the process of evolution certain structures arise which seem like inventions that solve certain problems encountered by living things in their struggle for existence. It's a bit like Richard Dawkins' use of the word 'selfish' in conjunction with the concept of genes.
Of course I can't be entirely sure about Mike's intended meaning when he uses these constructs, but he could be forgiven for it, because it makes it easier to discuss the substance of the argument without having to deal too much with its form. Mike is a stickler for formal logic, but unfortunately he gets it wrong very often, so these turns of phrase could also be viewed as a stylistic improvement on an otherwise muddled thought process.

"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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 46 by driewerf, posted 07-19-2021 2:21 PM driewerf has replied

Replies to this message:
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Tangle
Member
Posts: 9580
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 6.6


(2)
Message 48 of 69 (887175)
07-21-2021 3:08 AM
Reply to: Message 47 by Parasomnium
07-20-2021 3:22 PM


Para:
Mike is a stickler for formal logic, but unfortunately he gets it wrong very often, so these turns of phrase could also be viewed as a stylistic improvement on an otherwise muddled thought process.
Mike has learned the names of every logical fallacy but then goes on to make them. He's immensely proud of himself, imagining that he's some form of genius. He's quite a puzzle.
In cognitive terms he's a functional stupid; like there’s a circuit broken somewhere that makes it impossible to apply his thinking properly. He's a working example of cognitive dissonance and motivated thinking.

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona

"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android

"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.


This message is a reply to:
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AnswersInGenitals
Member (Idle past 405 days)
Posts: 673
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 49 of 69 (887176)
07-21-2021 2:12 PM
Reply to: Message 46 by driewerf
07-19-2021 2:21 PM


Invention is Darwinian!
I think your criticism of MtW’s use of the term “invention” has things backward. Invention, referring to the the human process of creating new and novel stuff is frequently, and probably always, a Darwinian evolutionary process. Before retirement, I worked for 30 years as a systems and design engineer for the satellite devision of a major aerospace company. That job entailed the following procedure: customer would present us with a detailed set of requirements (the environment). We would gather a team of experts in the various relevant fields with knowledge of current and previous designs for similar systems that proved to work (the heredity - which we referred to as legacy systems).
We would them ‘brainstorm’ the new requirements, literally throwing in any ideas that we could come up with for various component, subsystem, and system designs (random variation). We would then perform trade analysis on these ideas to winnow down the ideas to a few that would meet the requirements and considerations for cost, lead times, and practicality (survival of the fittest and extinction of the not so fit). We would cycle this process several times to a final design concept (evolution). Yes, a team member would occasionally have a ‘lightbulb’ moment of creative brilliance, but I would argue that that is really just the move process taking place in their subconscious. I strongly believe that when we have a much deeper understanding of the subconscious that this will be seen to be how it works. Support for this belief is that many of these lightbulb inventions were quickly seen to be poor concepts and occasionally were ridiculous.
I believe most design engineers, if being honest, would agree with this assessment. So Mike the Whizz is looking at this issue of the origin of biological structures and species through a convex mirror, and the answers might be much closer that he realizes.

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Parasomnium
Member
Posts: 2228
Joined: 07-15-2003


(1)
Message 50 of 69 (887177)
07-21-2021 3:01 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by mike the wiz
03-21-2020 11:01 AM


An arm, a fin, and something in-between
Mike writes:
[...] there is nothing in between arm and leg. Nothing inbetween arm and wing, arm and fin, fin and leg. Every organism, if it has legs, has viable, "complete design" of viable legs, arms, wings etc...
Let's compare an otter, a seal and a dolphin. They all have a similar bauplan, namely a mammalian skeleton with four limbs with five digits each.
In the otter, the forelimbs are still functional as arms with grasping hands. On land the otter moves more or less like a typical four-legged mammal, but in water it assumes a more torpedo-like form and proves to be an excellent swimmer, although it hardly uses its arms for this purpose.
The seal also has forelimbs with outwardly recognisable digits, although they are mostly concealed inside what is beginning to look more like a fin than an arm. But a seal can still scratch itself with its nails. On land it moves in what seems to be a rather clumsy way, but in water a seal is even more agile than an otter. Its forelimbs are better suited for swimming than for walking, having taken on a more fin-like form.
The dolphin, although completely helpless on land, is arguably the best swimmer of the three and its forelimbs are almost identical to those of a shark. Their only purpose seems to be for swimming. Still, if you look at the skeleton of a dolphin, you can see five digits, analogs of those of the otter and the seal. But they are completely enclosed inside the dolphin's fin-like forelimb, and it has no use for them whatsoever, it seems.
Even though the aquatic nature of these three animals has evolved independently, here we have an example of an arm, a fin, and something in-between. And yes, all are viable and "complete", from the viewpoint of the animals themselves.
Edited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.

"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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by mike the wiz, posted 03-21-2020 11:01 AM mike the wiz has not replied

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 6076
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 7.2


(2)
Message 51 of 69 (887183)
07-21-2021 8:07 PM
Reply to: Message 46 by driewerf
07-19-2021 2:21 PM


Mike's Main Problem
mike's main problem is that same as that of virtually every other creationist: he has no idea what he is talking about.
More specifically, he has never learned what evolution is nor how it is supposed to work. Instead, everything he thinks he knows he has gotten from creationist sources, sources who themselves didn't know what they were talking about. His ideas about evolution are all based on misunderstanding and misconceptions, many of which are extreme in their bizarreness.
So when we try to discuss evolution with a creationist, nothing we say makes any sense since it has nothing to do with, or even conflicts directly, with what he "knows". And of course anything he says makes no sense to us because we do not share his bizarrely false assumptions. Sure, we may both use some of the same words, like "evolution", but those words have entirely different meanings.
So it turns out that mike isn't even talking about actual evolution, but rather some trump-up bogeyman for scaring Christians and for deceiving the public into opposing science education. As I understand it, this is an example of "not even right" in which his entire position isn't so much wrong as that it doesn't get anything right -- he's just talking on and on about something that doesn't have anything at all to do with the stated subject, evolution.
I would also note that in the OP of that topic, Message 1, mike is completely turned about over the entire "issue", as if his magnetic poles had flipped:
mike the whizz writes:
Online, I have known many evolutionists, even some of them for years yet they still don't know some of the basic answers creationists have to the, "problems" they put forward. It indicates floccinaucinihilipilification. (Hope I spelled that right)
I am not so much talking about complicated or difficult matters but rather SIMPLE matters, where there are actually very simple, straight forward solutions to the "problems" evolutionists pose.
He got the roles completely reversed. He's trying to make it sound like "evolutionists" (whatever that's supposed to be; no such critter exists anymore outside of YEC-speak) are attacking creationism so creationists have to defend themselves. In reality, for over a century it has been the creationists attacking science education. After they lost the ability to just cite their religious beliefs as a legal reason (Epperson v. Arkansas (1966), followed by a long string of courtroom defeats extending into the first half of the 1970's), they were forced to hide their religious purpose and to rely on their many blatantly false "purely scientific" claims.
So what mike wants to treat as attacks on Creation are instead responses to his attacks on science and science education. Now maybe I'm beinga wide-eyed optimist, but shouldn't the best response to being shown that your claims are pure shite be to stop using those bad claims?
 
 
Over in the topic, There are easy creationist answers to problems evolutionists pose, I posted the video for a recent presentation by Dr. Eugenie Scott entitled: "What people get wrong – and sometimes right – about evolution". I embedded that YouTube video in Message 111 after having written and posted my review of it (Message 110) from my notes and memory (immediately after having posted that review, I Google'd the title which finally brought me to the video).
 
What mike needs to do is to study actual evolution and other associated sciences. Or at the very least research into his own claims and the criticisms thereof. One fundamentalist Christian I met online, Carl, had learned to reject YEC from the very beginning. Someone in his Bible study group brought in the original "Big Daddy?" Chick Pub (not the later Kent Hovind remake that some state legislature bills would later be based on) and Carl spent the week looking up all the sources "cited" in that pamphlet. In every single case, the source didn't really say what the pamphlet claimed it did. At the next Bible study meeting he presented his results and nobody there had any desire at all to support the YEC position in that pamphlet.
But of course mike will refuse to learn anything. A few decades ago when I requested that an online creationist please, please, please, please study evolution and learn something about it, he absolutely and vehemently refused because "that would require me to believe in evolution!" To a fundamentalist, "education" is the same thing as "indoctrination" which compels you to believe in what you are being taught. In cases of "equal time" "balanced treatment" inclusion of creationism would have the creationist lessons end inevitably instructing the students to make a life-long decision right then and there between "atheistic evolution" and their "Un-named Creator" ("nudge-nudge-wink-wink, know what I mean?"). However, among normals education means requiring that you understand the subject matter but without compelling belief. Hence, as recently described in testimony by CJCS Gen. Mark Milley, the USAF gave us instruction in Marxism, Communism, and the Soviet government (this was in 1982 during the Cold War) with absolutely no expectation of turning us into Commies, but rather to follow the best-known teaching of Sun Tzu ("The Art of War") that we must know our enemy -- actually the other side of that is also knowing yourself, though it appears that more will be lost by not knowing yourself.
Creationists like mike the whizz know neither their enemy (ie, "evolution") nor themselves, therefore as per Sun Tzu, they "are certain in every battle to be in peril."

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 6076
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 7.2


(1)
Message 52 of 69 (887188)
07-22-2021 6:38 AM
Reply to: Message 47 by Parasomnium
07-20-2021 3:22 PM


Personally, I don't have a problem with the notion of the process of evolution "inventing" things. I look upon it as a kind of shorthand for saying that through the process of evolution certain structures arise which seem like inventions that solve certain problems encountered by living things in their struggle for existence. It's a bit like Richard Dawkins' use of the word 'selfish' in conjunction with the concept of genes.
Yes, the use of such metaphors and analogies can be very useful in describing what's happening. But the down-side is when idiots such as most creationists take them too seriously.
I am a retired software engineer who started my career as a USAF Electronic Computer System Repairman (305x4). In my training as a technician we made much use of metaphors and analogies which should never be taken literally:
  1. Series capacitors block DC levels but pass AC signals. So our instructor would draw a series capacitor (a break in the circuit with two walls) and show that a DC level just runs into that wall and cannot go any further, whereas an AC signal can just jump over those walls. A handy way to remember that concept, but still not how it actually works.
  2. The "bit bucket". Registers contain bits. Shift registers serve many purposes, including multiplication and division (every time you shift left you multiply by two and every time you shift right right you divide by two, just like in decimal if you're missing all your fingers (reference to math teacher Tom Lehrer)). So when you shift bits out of a shift register, where do they go? Throughout my training, we would refer to those bits as falling out of the end of the register into the "bit bucket". We would even joke about needing to have a special mop to clean up a "bit bucket overflow."
    BTW, there's no such thing as a "bit bucket". But towards the end of tech school when we covered paper tape punch and reader, we saw that the chad from the paper tape punch would be collected in a plastic receptacle. Our instructor announced triumphantly that that was the "bit bucket" that they had been talking about throughout our seven-month tech school.
  3. Inverter bearings and the need to keep them properly lubricated. In digital logic, an inverter (AKA a "NOT gate") changes a "1" logic level to a "0" and a "0" to a "1". Our instructors would show electrons represented by the letter "e" entering into an inverter and getting flipped over into an upside-down "e'" (which any language major ... I was the only one in the class ... would immediately recognize as a schwa, an unaccented vowel which sounds differently in different languages). The joke was that an inverter contained a platform that would flip the incoming electron over upside down. Kind of like the Navy standard joke of sending an ensign (AKA "en-swine") out on an urgent mission to fetch a bucket of steam. Of course such a platform would have bearings which would need proper lubrication and you can see the rest of the story.
  4. Different colors of electrons. A CRT ("cathode ray tube", what TVs used to use). Color TVs used the additive colors of red, green, and blue (RGB) to create all the possible colors. The actual technology involved a matrix of phosphorus dots that would glow with those colors combining into all the various shades, much like the pixels of modern day do. The old TV tech involved three different electron guns firing off electron streams for that particular color.
    Tech school would initially talk about there being red, green, and blue electrons being fired off by those electron guns. Not how it actually worked.
In addition to all that (most of which was lost on software types since it was all "just a matter of hardware"), software types had their own misleading metaphors/analogies. This particular OS knows that I'm talking to it, so it's deliberately being difficult. Add to that all kinds of anthropomorphizing of the computer. We would complain about the computer doing such things all the time while realizing that that was not what was actually happening. Just like all those things I had learned in tech school.
Bringing it back down to earth, we speak freely about the sun rising and setting and going across the sky, all of which are rooted firmly in geocentricism, even though we are ourselves very firmly heliocentrist. Sunrise and sunset are just very convenient to talk about even though they are completely wrong.
Such conversational conventions are normally no problem, but only when we actually know what we are talking about. Creationists do not know that!
Therein lies much of the problem.

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 6076
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 7.2


Message 53 of 69 (887190)
07-22-2021 7:24 AM
Reply to: Message 49 by AnswersInGenitals
07-21-2021 2:12 PM


Re: Invention is Darwinian!
I had similar experiences in my 35+ career as a software engineer.
To begin with, there was that EE/ME conceit of "its simply a matter of software" in which any problems in the hardware could simply be tweaked within the software. Though I had heard that mentioned a couple times and never hard pressed in any situation.
A major part of my problems for most of my career was that so much software had been developed evolutionarily. Time after time my job would be to take an existing piece of code and make it do something some very much the same yet slightly (and significantly) different, the classic evolutionary model of modifying something that already exists in order to have it do something different. That is very descriptive of what evolution routinely does.
Part of that approach is ever-escalating complexity. Evolutionary approaches generate complexity -- whenever creationists point to complexity, that is actually proof of evolution.
There is an example of designing an amplifier using evolutionary processes and a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA -- we used them a lot in our own designs). You would program them to create large combinatorial logic circuits. In the experiment, an evolutionary algorithm was used to create that FPGA program. The end result was a highly complex (actually an IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX) design. Which made full use of the electrical properties of all the components of the FPGA (which no human could have ever possibly known). And any change to that final design would have broken it completely.
Conclusion: Whenever you see extreme complexity in nature, even "irreducible complexity", it must be the product of evolution. Because nothing else could possibly produce such extreme complexity.

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PaulK
Member
Posts: 17918
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 6.7


Message 54 of 69 (887191)
07-22-2021 8:26 AM
Reply to: Message 53 by dwise1
07-22-2021 7:24 AM


Re: Invention is Darwinian!
quote:
Part of that approach is ever-escalating complexity. Evolutionary approaches generate complexity -- whenever creationists point to complexity, that is actually proof of evolution.
Very true. We have to make a conscious effort to avoid creating complexity. Good design keeps software simple and clean. We design software to allow additions - but we always hit added features that don’t work with that framework. Refactoring - rewriting parts of a software component to simplify it - is recognised as good practice.
In life we see the expected outcome of an iterated process adding features without that conscious effort, without foresight to make adding features easier, without refactoring even when it would be an obvious step. That is not what good software designers do. And for creationists that iterated process must be - in large part at least - God’s design process. It doesn’t make God look like a good designer.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 53 by dwise1, posted 07-22-2021 7:24 AM dwise1 has replied

Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 6076
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 7.2


Message 55 of 69 (887192)
07-22-2021 8:47 AM
Reply to: Message 54 by PaulK
07-22-2021 8:26 AM


Re: Invention is Darwinian!
For us professional engineers that was always our worst nightmare.
For a while I had a conceit of "software archaeology". A way to wend your way back to the original code., especially through the comments.
For actual intelligent designers (AKA engineers), all the claims of "intelligent design" advocates are pure nonsense.

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 Message 56 by PaulK, posted 07-22-2021 9:00 AM dwise1 has replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17918
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 6.7


Message 56 of 69 (887193)
07-22-2021 9:00 AM
Reply to: Message 55 by dwise1
07-22-2021 8:47 AM


Re: Invention is Darwinian!
Version control systems make software archaeology possible - at least for those with access to the repositories. And yes I have tracked some bugs back a long way.

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 Message 55 by dwise1, posted 07-22-2021 8:47 AM dwise1 has replied

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 6076
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 7.2


Message 57 of 69 (887194)
07-22-2021 2:55 PM
Reply to: Message 56 by PaulK
07-22-2021 9:00 AM


Re: Invention is Darwinian!
It wasn't until my last job (for about 23 years) that I even encountered a version control system (Visual SourceSafe, I think it was -- in our code reviews, another relatively new concept for me, we would use it to show what had changed). Before then when I was the sole programmer and disk formatter (like being the sole cook and bottle washer) I would back up every software version on a set of floppies and use the DOS file compare utility (fcomp? I don't even remember its name). My next giant leap was learning about BeyondCompare which I still use -- I had to break my Win10S' secure-apps mode to continue to use it along with my favorite text editor, NoteTab Pro.
In my practice of software archaeology, I would look at somebody's routine and notice how it was virtually identical to another routine and realize that it was yet another case of copy-and-modify. Which is how evolution largely works, right? Start with an already existing structure and modify it slightly to serve a new purpose. Something that we would do all the time in software development.

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 6076
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 7.2


Message 58 of 69 (887195)
07-22-2021 3:48 PM
Reply to: Message 54 by PaulK
07-22-2021 8:26 AM


Re: Invention is Darwinian!
Very true. We have to make a conscious effort to avoid creating complexity. Good design keeps software simple and clean. We design software to allow additions - but we always hit added features that don’t work with that framework. Refactoring - rewriting parts of a software component to simplify it - is recognized as good practice.
Yes! And the "intelligent design" that advocates point to in nature is actually evidence of very bad "stupid design". If we were to have engineered life, then we would have done things very differently.
Instead of making everything so incredibly complex, we would have taken a more modular approach where any biological system could be instantaneously replaced with a drop-in pin-compatible module.
For example, we had a Plymouth mini-van, an American car, with a Japanese engine (Mitsubishi). Nature could never ever do anything like that! Instead, nature would have had to have retained an American engine and modified it, not simply replace it completely.
Interval wipers. Very simple to do electronically, but traditionally they were driven off of the engine's vacuum line (as were those fancy concealed headlights) and so resulted in very complex and expensive devices. Stuck with evolution, we'd still be using vacuum lines for those things, but, no, they've all been replaced by electronics. Just as any half-way competent intelligent designer (AKA engineer) would have done.
Hire yourself an engineer for a project. If his first design is a Rube Goldberg monstrosity (an overly complex device for performing the most trivial task, often including a cat being frightened by something as to extend its claws thus popping the balloon it's on which was holding up something else ... ), then how long would you keep that engineer on the job?
In an OLLI class lecture, we studied how growth factors worked and how mutations in them can lead to cancerous tumors that don't know how to stop growing. They form long chains in the cell with each link having its own turn-on and a turn-off codes. Extremely Rube Goldberg so it's no surprise that they break so often.
Evolution creates a very wide assortment of Rube Goldberg monstrosities and extremely few parsimonious and clean designs.
It doesn’t make God look like a good designer.
When you write a program, the most difficult part is the front-end, the user interface. I have actually written a few programs for my own use quick-and-dirty in which to change a parameter I had to edit that part of the program and recompile. More properly, one should write a program that would accept a user's inputted parameters or, far better, come up with its own appropriate parameters itself so that it can run properly all on its own. Kind of like life and Nature.
Basically, the choice I am proposing is between a program that runs all on its own versus a program that requires the programmer to constantly poke his pudgy fingers inside it (a power supply tech manual actually told us explicitly to not try to "fix" a slightly deviant reading, just so that we wouldn't break anything in that process). The first one is evidence of a Master Programmer while the second is evidence of a sub-standard Schlockmeister.
Which program would be evidence of a truly great Supreme Creator? For some reason, creationists keep choosing the Schlockmeister with the pudgy fingers.

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PaulK
Member
Posts: 17918
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 6.7


Message 59 of 69 (887196)
07-22-2021 3:55 PM
Reply to: Message 57 by dwise1
07-22-2021 2:55 PM


Re: Invention is Darwinian!
My usual analogy would be the development of an application or suite. Features are added or modified to meet the customers demands (sometimes assumed, sometimes literal demands). As I said before, we try to anticipate the changes that might be wanted, but we often fail.
Because the changes build on the existing codebase the solutions are often not what you would have chosen given a clean-room design. They have to work within the existing framework. But on the other hand a full rewrite or replacement would be a lengthy and expensive project (and big software projects have a habit of getting out of control).
Cloning and hacking a routine from one project to another would be analogous to horizontal transfer. Cloning and hacking within an application would be like gene duplication. It’s not considered to be good practice - it’s quick and easy but unfortunately error-prone.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 57 by dwise1, posted 07-22-2021 2:55 PM dwise1 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 61 by dwise1, posted 07-22-2021 4:58 PM PaulK has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 6076
Joined: 05-02-2006
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Message 60 of 69 (887197)
07-22-2021 4:29 PM
Reply to: Message 54 by PaulK
07-22-2021 8:26 AM


Re: Invention is Darwinian!
We have to make a conscious effort to avoid creating complexity.
One of my tasks was to rewrite our product code that ran on one platform so that it would run on two separate communicating platforms (basically, two independent modules in the same box). That was a huge headache!
Having "grown up" in structured programming, the ideas were already there. Modularize everything, segregate data structures to keep them from being intertwined. But they already were intertwined, though not as bad as classic "spaghetti code". It wasn't easy, but I did it and that formed the basis for our product lines from that point forward.
 
The point here is that nothing in nature and in life is modular. It's all intertwined. It's all characterized by a total lack of parsimony. My go-to description for life is the same as my description for sex: it's very messy. Worst design methodology ever!
So their idea of a creator god is a total incompetent? Certainly does nothing to support their side.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 54 by PaulK, posted 07-22-2021 8:26 AM PaulK has not replied

  
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