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<small><font size="+1"><small><font face="Arial">Title sounds too
abbreviating and attention catching, I don't think it's what the
authors' </font></small></font></small><small><font size="+1"><small><font
face="Arial">precisely </font></small></font></small><small><font
size="+1"><small><font face="Arial">meant by the study. May I share </font></small></font></small><small><font
size="+1"><small><font face="Arial">some random thoughts about
probability and perspectives. Mathematicians welcome to bring more
vigor to these loose inquisitions ...</font></small></font></small><br>
<small><font size="+1"><small><font face="Arial"><br>
How many processes govern evolution? What is developmental evolution
with respect to evolution as a whole (for a non-biologist)? The study
was conducted over a "small" sample of a small number of spices where
the stochastic laws of large numbers do not apply (expectation is most
accurate towards infinity). It was also limited to a limited number of
those spices' body members. If evolution is deterministic at some
level, we should be able to confirm for sure some features of some
future generation of some living organism. Actually, is there anything
no matter how simple 'really' deterministic? And if we could determine
the infinite th moment (or all moments) of any random variable, not to
mention a convoluted natural process, don't we just </font></small></font></small><small><font
size="+1"><small><font face="Arial">get </font></small></font></small><small><font
size="+1"><small><font face="Arial">its full distribution, which
doesn't make it deterministic?<br>
<br>
Could an analogy be drown to continuous and discrete quantities, and
which approximate which? One can count discrete apples but can never
'exactly' measure a mile or a micron, though both are discrete whole
units. Isn't a digital computer made of analog devices using
thresholds to resolve discreteness out of continuity, with a
'seemingly' digital clock that exponentially rises and falls and
'fluctuates' around its ensemble average level and frequency? How many
agree that
analog computers are more accurate than
digital ones? Simply put, what exactly is the time anywhere anytime?<br>
<br>
Cheers<br>
ka<br>
<br>
</font></small></font></small><br>
Damien Broderick wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:7.0.1.0.2.20071126120013.02306e08@satx.rr.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">At 11:21 AM 11/26/2007 -0500, Dan wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I think the better way of putting it is it's blind -- regardless of
whether the processes underlying it are stochastic or deterministic or a
little of both. This means simply that it isn't forward-looking.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
As Robert Picone noted, the original article wasn't talking about
*evolution* (whatever that means), but made a drastically more
limited claim, namely:
<The actual study made no such claims, they said that developmental
evolution in the nematode vulva occurred primarily through
deterministic mechanisms.
<Basically, it was a claim that when ways to form a single, already
defined structure are evolving, only two of forty factors were
random, while the others were at least somewhat convergent.>
But suppose the question is regarded more generally. How do we *know*
evolutionary change does not sometimes contain a forward-looking
component, a kind of foresight or preemptive adaptation? The answer
seems obvious: firstly, because the altered future to which any
critter would have to be pre-adapted is unknown and unknowable; and
even if it were in principle calculable by an intelligence, the genes
don't have direct knowledge of the world, nor any means to calculate
probabilities, nor any means to modify themselves except via random
shufflings.
But is all of this true? And how do we know it is? Has anyone put it
to the test? Might it explain certain aspects of life without doing
violence to what's already known? The proposition seems so outrageous
that I'd bet very few scientists in the last half century have ever
tried to model the question.
Suppose some of the spare clock cycles of any complex brain were used
to model (i.e. imagine counterfactually) the benefits of certain
phenotypic changes in worlds somewhat different from here&now.
Absurd, of course, but if that were possible (say, if the Penrose
hypothesis is right, and brains are quantum computers), and if some
kinds of bio-feedback allowed microchanges at the cellular and
genomic levels that conduced to favoured phenotypes, might we see a
kind of Lamarckian aspect to evolution?
Suppose further that some kinds of psi are real, that a sheaf of most
probably futures and their weightings can be glimpsed in advance, and
that a kind of anomalous perturbation or psychokinesis at the
microlevel can deform genomes to create phenotypes better fitted to
such imminent environments... Absurd, of course, everyone knows that,
but still--suppose it were the case...
What sort of experiments have been done that would reveal such a
feature of evolution?
Cutting off the foreskins of umpteen Jewish generations is NOT a
test, disproving any such effect by the lack of babies born without
foreskins. There's no life-and-death crisis connected with being born
with a foreskin; indeed, it's possible that in a culture where
circumcision is mandatory and numinous, being born without a foreskin
would make a boy freakish and disadvantaged.
But one might make several preparations of a known bacterial or
murine population into which, at random or by preordained choice,
certain poisons or currently-undigestible-nutrients will be
introduced in two or three generations' time. Might there be an
anticipatory genomic shift? This sort of "precognitive" advance
adaptation would distinguish the eventual genome distribution from
that of control groups. (I'm no experimentalist; this might not be
the best way to test the idea.)
Is there any cultural difference between human or other complex
mammal groups that might display such an effect unambiguously? The
question, to say it yet again, is absurd, of course--but it's
entertaining to think about how one might *test* such unthinkable
ideas, rather than simply dismissing them ex cathedra.
Damien Broderick
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</pre>
</blockquote>
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