Just for fun, I’ve been doing a bit of poking around lately in evolutionary algorithms. It’s really fascinating to experiment, and see what pops out – the results can be really surprising.
There is one fascinating example for which, alas, I’ve lost the reference, but here’s the summary. Several groups have been looking at using evolutionary algorithm techniques for hardware design. (A good example of this is [Alexander Nicholson’s work](http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/nicholson00evolution.html) .) A year or so ago, I saw a talk given by a group which was doing some experiments with EA for hardware design. One of the most interesting outcomes of their work was that for one of the solutions that their system generated, they were *completely* unable to comprehend how it worked. There was just no logical way for it to work. It included two *disconnected* sets of components – one of which wasn’t wired in *at all*. When they tried getting rid of the disconnected set, the circuit stopped working. It turned out that the evolutionary process had discovered and exploited a previously unknown bug/behavior in the FPGA they were using. You can read about this work [here](http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/adrianth/ices96/paper.html); thanks to commenters for helping me find the link!
Anyway, the point here isn’t to talk in detail about evolutionary algorithms; that’s a fascinating topic for another time. My goal for this evening is to show you yet another example of how creationists like to distort math in order to make bad arguments. The specific target this time around is an article by Eric Anderson called [“Bits, Bytes and Biology: What Evolutionary Algorithms (Don’t) Teach Us About Biology”](http://www.iscid.org/pcid/2005/4/2/anderson_bits_bytes_biology.php). This article looks at some of the work on evolutionary algorithms that came out of [the Avida project](http://dllab.caltech.edu/avida/) , and tries to make an argument for why the demonstration of how Avida created “irreducibly complex” results are invalid.
Let’s take a look at the abstract to see how Mr. Anderson describes his paper:
>Far from constituting a devastating critique of irreducible complexity, the
>evolutionary algorithm, Avida, is a flawed effort that bears little relevance
>to the biological world. In their haste to affirm the Darwinian creation story,
>the Avida authors seem oblivious to, or conveniently ignore, the fact that they
>have incorporated as premises the very conclusions they are trying to reach.
>Such efforts are at best misleading, at worst deceptive. Ironically, the main
>piece of data obtained by the Avida researchers that is not based on circular
>evolutionary assumptions, upon closer inspection supports, rather than refutes,
>Behe’s notion of irreducible complexity.
Pretty nice beginning, neh?
So the authors Avida are *at best* oblivious to the properties of the work they’re doing; at worst, they’re liars. And their work is based on on circular assumptions, which *support* Behe’s notion of irreducible complexity. He’s making an incredibly strong accusation against the Avida team: that either they’re stupid and don’t understand their own work; or they’re liars.
Before getting to the meat of his argument, Mr. Anderson throws in rather a lot of sneers and insults. Now, you might say that given what I write on this blog, I’m hardly one to criticize another writer for sneering. But there’s a rather important difference between a blog and a supposed scientific journal; what’s appropriate or acceptable is specific to the medium. In an informal setting like a blog, where I’m writing not just to inform, but also to entertain, I’m often an obnoxious asshole when I’m writing about the people who try to misuse math and science. But in a scientific journal? Different styles for different circumstances: I would *never* stoop to insulting another author in a real scientific paper. Scientific papers are a major professional forum, and decorum and respect for your fellow scientists are the rule. What’s more, I don’t know of any *real* scientific journal that would publish a paper that was written in such an unprofessional and insulting style; but this was published in the DI house journal, which represents itself as a serious scientific journal.
To make matters worse, most of the circularity that he’s complaining about is nonexistent. To use Mr. Anderson’s only rhetoric: he either doesn’t understand how science works, or he is deliberately misrepresenting the Avida work.
A typical example of Mr. Anderson’s tone is the following quote:
>The authors begin by declaring their allegiance to Darwinian evolution in the
>following terms: “Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, including its
>intertwined hypotheses of descent with modification and adaptation by natural
>selection, is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientific achievements of
>all time.” While such sentiments might cause the careful observer to question
>the authors’ impartiality in evaluating the merits of Darwin’s theory, such
>statements no doubt help to move papers through the review process at Nature.
Ok. Seriously now. Anyone out there think that the theory of evolution *isn’t* a stunning scientific achievement? To call the theory that is the foundation of the entire science of modern biology “one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time” is, I think, entirely appropriate. Even if, for some reason, you believe that evolution is not responsible for life on earth: the simple fact remains that the *theory* is quite clearly one of the most revolutionary and influential theories in the history of science.
Another example:
>In creating Avida, the researchers set up a system of functional
>operators which serve as fitness characteristics. By executing certain
>functional operators, “organisms” are rewarded with additional energy, which
>allows them – under traditional Neo-Darwinian doctrine – to
>reproduce faster, which, notwithstanding contrary evidence, is for the
>Neo-Darwinist the great and ultimate goal of all creatures biological.
Note the sneering tone, and the assertion – without citation – of what “New-Darwinian doctrine” says; and the assertion – again without citation or support – of contrary evidence. I find this particularly galling given that merely two paragraphs before, he sneeringly suggested that praising the theory of evolution should call the authors’ impartiality (and, by implication, *honesty*) into question – followed by his own far more egregious demonstration of extreme bias.
Anyway, we’re finally heading into the part where he claims that he’s going to show how the Avida team screwed up. Since the goal here isn’t really to examine what the Avida team did, but to *discredit* what they did, he leads in by throwing a few more insults at them:
>The authors make liberal use of biological terminology in describing their
>computer program, referring to the set of virtual CPU stacks and registers as
>”organisms,” the instruction sets as “genomes,” the resultant organisms as
>”phenotypes,” and the various sets of reward parameters as different selective
>”environments.” While such terminology may be justified due to the authors’
>goal of analogizing to biological systems, one cannot help but wonder if the
>Avida results might seem somewhat less applicable to biology without all the
>biological terminology.
You see, if you’re doing work in a field which is based on simulating biological evolution, then it’s completely inappropriate to use biological terms for the elements that you’re simulating. That’s misleading and dishonest. And if those terms have been adopted *as the standard terminology of the field*, well then, everyone working in that field must be dishonest. Because it’s clearly *not* the case that people are naming things after what they’re simulating; those egghead scientists are just trying to use biological terminology *to confuse you*.
Now, here’s where it gets *really* interesting. He says that he’s going to examine the “key assumptions” built into Avida. But that’s not *really* what he’s going to do. What you’ll see as I go through his paper is that he repeatedly tries to make it look like Avida is using circular reasoning. In fact, what they’re doing is *describing an experiment*.
How do you do an experiment in real science? You start by developing a hypothesis. Using your hypothesis, you make a prediction. Then you perform the test, and see if the results match the prediction. If they *do*, then the experiment confirms the hypothesis (note, *confirms* not *proves*); if they don’t, then the experiment disproves the hypothesis.
What the Avida team did was develop a hypothesis that an evolutionary system, working *within* the constraints of Behe’s model of evolution could produce an irreducibly complex system. They proceed to describe their model, and the predictions it makes. Then they show their results, which confirm their hypothesis. Mr. Anderson tries to argue that because they stated their hypothesis up front, and then the test confirmed it, that they were cheating and being circular. He’s pretending that the *hypothesis* is actually a set of assumptions; and that therefore, the experiment confirming the hypothesis is invalid.
>(1) There is a cumulative pathway to complexity.
>
>Avida was programmed so that a slight, successive cumulative pathway to the
>ultimate complex function existed. In other words, the researchers assumed that
>the ultimate complex feature was not irreducibly complex, and wrote their
>program in such a way as to guarantee that it would not be irreducibly complex,
>before they even ran the very first simulation. Thus, it is deeply troubling to
>find the authors suggesting that Avida demonstrates that complex systems are
>not irreducibly complex.
>
>What is more astonishing, is that the authors are aware of their circular
>reasoning, but blithely dismiss it.9 In the final discussion section, they
>state, “Some readers might suggest that we ‘stacked the deck’ by studying the
>evolution of a complex feature that could be build on simpler functions that
>were also useful. However, that is precisely what evolutionary theory
>requires…” Say what?? In other words, we have adopted as our premise the very
>conclusion we are trying to reach. In a particularly Darwinian display of
>twisted logic, the researchers seem oblivious to the fact that this circular
>reasoning invalidates their entire conclusion, and cheerfully waive it aside as
>an inconsequential technicality. At best such an approach manifests
>questionable judgment, at worst, self-deception.
This is remarkably sleazy in a subtle sort of way.
Avida is using a very solid mathematical model of evolution. What they’ve done for this experiment is constrained that model to match *Behe’s* assumptions in his arguments for IC. What Anderson just did is criticize *exactly* those properties of the Avida model of evolution *that make it match Behe’s assumptions*.
First – he asserts that it’s *Avida* that assumes that there is a “cumulative pathway to complexity”. That’s *Behe’s* assumption. Avida is supposedly demonstrating the problem with Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity: the IR concept is based fundamentally on the idea that the *only* possible evolutionary path is *constructive* – that is, cumulatively adding things to get to a result. So if the Avida team *hadn’t* made the assumption that they had to build their systems via a cumulative pathway, they would have been criticized for *not* adopting the constraints of Behe’s theory.
Second – the cumulative pathway isn’t an *assumption*; it’s a *restriction*. Adding a restriction like that to a system like this only *reduces* the potential results. Systems that produce evolutionary algorithms try to provide *as many* mutation regimes as they can manage. They don’t just *add* to programs; they cut things, rearrange things, shift things, copy things, break things, split things, reverse things… Limiting the system to a constructive approach is a major *restriction* that only *reduces* the set of possible results. This is *not* building a favorable assumption into the system: this is (appropriately) *constraining* the system to match the assumptions of the theory that they are trying to disprove.
Third, he criticizes them for the assumption that a complex feature could be built on simpler useful features. Well gosh, don’t creationists (including Behe) constantly argue that you *can’t* have any precursors to a system that don’t provide evolutionary advantage? Isn’t Behe’s argument that the reason that IC systems are a problem is because the system can’t evolve if the precursors aren’t valuable? So if Avida showed that you could evolve an IC system from *useless* components – that is, components that *didn’t* have any function – wouldn’t Mr. Anderson criticize Avida for using precursors that didn’t have any value?
In other words – this comes down to an accusation that the very things that make Avida an appropriate mathematical for discussing Behe’s theory *on Behe’s terms* is giving *Avida* a dishonest, unfair advantage.
His next point:
> (2) Relatively few changes are required to get from the initial organism to the
>complex feature.
>
>This is more a question of fact than a logical problem, but it does strain
>credulity. Are we expected to believe that the distance, say, between Miller’s
>type III secretory system10 and the bacterial flagellum is slight, or that the
>formation of the mammalian eye is only as complex as the author’s EQU
>instruction?11 In fairness, the authors make no direct statement to this
>effect, but they do throughout their paper refer to “complex” features, which
>most people in the current evolution debate understand to mean
>”really complex” – along the lines of the mammalian eye or the bacterial
>flagellum complex. Indeed, no-one is interested in whether an EQU function can
>evolve, but rather whether complex biological features can. By claiming to show
>that complex features can evolve in a Darwinian fashion, the authors are at
>least implying, if not explicitly stating, that their results might be
>applicable to truly complex biological systems, like the bacterial flagellum or
>the mammalian eye. Yet in my estimation the authors’ EQU instruction looks
>more like a minor adaptation than a significant evolutionary change.
This is remarkably silly. What it comes down to is moving the goalposts, mixed with a very fancy phrasing of the argument from incredulity, combined with moving the goalposts. It’s just disguised as a critique of Avida. Avida *does* produce results that are *irreducibly complex* by Behe’s definition, under the constraints imposed *by Behe’s definition*.
The point of the work is to present a mathematical model that demonstrates how an additive evolutionary process can produce a system that conforms to *Behe’s* definition of irreducibly complexity. The point isn’t to run a system that evolves a mammalian eye. It’s to show that the argument that it’s impossible to evolve IC systems is false.
But he can’t actually criticize the Avida model – because it’s really Behe’s model. So he needs to wiggle around and try to criticize without going into depth – because the moment he goes into depth criticizing Avida’s model, it’ll become obvious that he’s actually criticizing *Behe’s* model. The problem is, Behe’s model is thoroughly bogus. It’s an unreasonably and unrealistically constrained model.
Moving on…
> (3) There are regular and closely spaced fitness plateaus in proceeding from one
>function to the next.
>
>This assumption is based on a rather simplistic view of the fitness
>landscape. For Darwin, the fitness landscape was essentially level,
>with “slight successive variations” leading slowly, almost
>imperceptibly, to new organisms over a flat plain. More recent research
>suggests that the fitness landscape is more like an expansive valley,
>interspersed with occasional plateaus that constitute functional organisms. The
>distance between these plateaus is rarely insignificant and depends on a number
>of factors, not the least of which is the fact that many biological systems in
>an organism are closely interconnected and highly interdependent.
This isn’t really a criticism of Avida at all; this is just a standard, bogus anti-evolution argument: one of the classics in fact. The idea is that if you view evolution as a search over a fitness landscape, the shape of that landscape is very important. If most of the landscape is hostile, and the areas representing a stable and successful ecosystem (the “fitness plateaus”) are far apart, and separated by a very rough landscape, then the small steps taken by evolution can’t move between the plateaus. Essentially, the idea is that the “fitness plateaus” are a kind of trap: once you’re in one, it’s almost impossible to get out.
Mr. Anderson is asserting that the fitness landscape is very rough, consisting of a relatively small number of widely scattered fitness plateaus separated by untraversably rough terrain. His beef with Avida is that Avida doesn’t accept his model of the fitness landscape. And in fact, the idea of a fitness landscape with “plateaus” like this is *very* bad math. As I and various commenters mentioned in other posts, if you want to model evolution as search over a fitness landscape, then that fitness landscape is *not* like a three dimensional landscape. It’s a landscape with a *huge* number of variables, meaning a huge number of dimensions in the landscape. All of those variables are varying in different ways. In a landscape like that, the idea of widely scattered plateaus with no easy way out is *very* unlikely. The kind of plateaus that he’s demanding are locations in the landscape where *all* variables are at a local minimum *at the same place*.
As systems like Avida and Breve can easily demonstrate, if you’ve got even four or five variables, you very rarely find points that a minima in *all* dimensions; and if there’s any dimension in which a “plateau” is not a minimum, then there’s an easy path out.
*If* the fitness landscape has plateaus like Anderson asserts, then evolution would have a problem. But if wants to argue that, he needs to actually show that the evolutionary fitness landscape looks like that. He doesn’t do that – he just blindly *asserts* that “more recent research” shows that the landscape looks like that. He doesn’t actually *cite* any of that research, or say anything about why the landscape should be that way. He just says that it’s that way, and expects us to accept that *his* assertion about the fitness landscape is more correct that Avida’s.
> (4) Intermediate steps provide a functional advantage.
>
>The Avida researchers initially approach the intermediate functions as though
>there were a beneficial continuum from one function to the next, although it is
>far from clear that this would be the case in the real world. A large part of
>evolutionary critics’ argument from irreducible complexity is that there is
>unlikely to be a functional advantage for intermediate steps. What good is a
>cornea without a lens? What good are a cornea and a lens without the retina?
>And what good are all of these without an exceedingly complex and
>interconnected nervous system to carry the information to the brain? This is in
>fact one of the key areas in question in the debate over irreducible >complexity, but the Avida authors simply assume it away.
Did the Avida authors *assume* that intermediate steps provide a functional advantage? No. They *hypothesized* that they could evolve an IC system where all of the intermediate steps provided a functional advantage. And they were able to show that you *can* evolve an IC system in which every intermediate step provides a functional advantage.
Note well: if they had done an experiment where steps in the evolutionary pathway *didn’t* provide functional advantages, people like Mr. Anderson would be criticizing them, because they would argue that evolution via mutation and natural selection requires that intermediate steps have functional advantages. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
> (5) Each functional advantage is promptly rewarded.
Same as the last one: if you dared to show a system where functionally advantageous intermediates *weren’t* rewarded, then Mr. Anderson would be saying that the experiment was invalid because evolution requires the immediate reward.
In fact, just a little bit later in the paper, Mr. Anderson makes *exactly* this argument:
>However, what this piece of data in fact demonstrates, is that even if there is
>a guaranteed step-by-step pathway to complex function, unless each step, or at
>least the vast majority of the steps, along the way are handsomely rewarded in
>a fashion that drives the organisms toward the ultimate goal, the complex
>feature cannot be expected to arise in the population. In other words, in
>addition to a guaranteed step-by-step pathway, it is necessary to have a
>regular reward system at regular intervals that anticipates the final goal.
>This foresight is not something that Darwinian evolution can provide even in
>principle.
See, if you make your experiment require that every step produce an advantage which is rewarded, then you’re cheating. But if you *don’t* make your experimnet require that every step produce an advantage, then you’re cheating.
Circularity indeed.
For a sneering, obnoxiuos blogger you’re a pretty good teacher. 🙂 As someone that is math-challenged, I think I actually understood your critique pretty well (and I liked the sneering too).
You wrote:
Even if, for some reason, you believe that evolution is not responsible for life on earth
Nobody understands what is responsible for life (on earth or elsewhere). Evolution explains life forms. Life itself is not yet understood.
The incomprehensible circuit can be found on talk.origins:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/genalg/genalg.html
“A field-programmable gate array, or FPGA for short, is a special type of circuit board with an array of logic cells, each of which can act as any type of logic gate, connected by flexible interlinks which can connect cells. Both of these functions are controlled by software, so merely by loading a special program into the board, it can be altered on the fly to perform the functions of any one of a vast variety of hardware devices.
Dr. Adrian Thompson has exploited this device, in conjunction with the principles of evolution, to produce a prototype voice-recognition circuit that can distinguish between and respond to spoken commands using only 37 logic gates – a task that would have been considered impossible for any human engineer. He generated random bit strings of 0s and 1s and used them as configurations for the FPGA, selecting the fittest individuals from each generation, reproducing and randomly mutating them, swapping sections of their code and passing them on to another round of selection. His goal was to evolve a device that could at first discriminate between tones of different frequencies (1 and 10 kilohertz), then distinguish between the spoken words “go” and “stop”.
This aim was achieved within 3000 generations, but the success was even greater than had been anticipated. The evolved system uses far fewer cells than anything a human engineer could have designed, and it does not even need the most critical component of human-built systems – a clock. How does it work? Thompson has no idea, though he has traced the input signal through a complex arrangement of feedback loops within the evolved circuit. In fact, out of the 37 logic gates the final product uses, five of them are not even connected to the rest of the circuit in any way – yet if their power supply is removed, the circuit stops working. It seems that evolution has exploited some subtle electromagnetic effect of these cells to come up with its solution, yet the exact workings of the complex and intricate evolved structure remain a mystery (Davidson 1997).”
I work for Sun, but I don’t recall seeing that paper, sorry. I do remember reading a paper about a EA that produced an algorithm that nobody understood and that outperformed hand-crafted ones, but it wasn’t about hardware design.
Now about this entry, I don’t think you are being completely fair. I haven’t read “Darwin’s Black Box” (although it is staring at me from the bookshelf. Hard to motivate myself to read something I know in advance I’ll disagree with when there is so much else to read.), so maybe I don’t understand the model Behe specifies, but it seems to me that Avida researcher’s haven’t really simulated the evolution of an IC feature. By definition, an IC feature is one that cannot be evolved. At best they have shown that some features that may appear to be IC are not really IC.
The question is really whether or not there are any actual IC features in the real world. The mistake that most ID proponents make is to ascribe their own failure to imagine the path of evolution of a particular feature as “proof” of that feature being irreducible.
Do computer scientists even write scientific papers? I had the idea in my head that you announced your results by logging onto an IRC channel and bragging about it to other computer scientists. 🙂
Brian:
The definition of an IC system is “A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning”.
Behe *argues* that if something is IC, then it can’t have evolved. He claims that because something is IC, that means that it can’t have developed via an additive evolutionary process.
The Avida folks *did* show that you can produce something IC, using Behe’s definition, and Behe’s assumptions. If you take the end result of the Avida simulation and look at it, you’ll see it’s made up of several pieces. Remove any of them, and the whole thing stops working. It’s minimal in the sense that you can’t take away *anything* without the system failing to function. And yet, they built it through an additive process in which every intermediate step had value. That’s pretty much proof that Behe is wrong: you *can* evolve IC systems using additive processes in which all intermediate steps have value.
Abot IC features, there is a simple example that shows how evolution makes the leaps necessary to reach features that SEEM to be IC.
Take a fitness function on the realm of bitstrings that values 11 and 00 one point.
It values 1111 and 0000 another point
It values 11111111 and 00000000 another point and so on.
So 1010110011111111 is valued 6+2+1=9 points.
The optimal creature is a binary string composed of all ones or all zeroes. In this optimal creature you would say that this possesses an IC feature as the value of a creature like that is lowered considerably if you just change one bit.
For evolution to take the step from 00…0011…11 to 00…..00 or 11…..11 it needs to pass alot of inferior creatures BUT with the power of crossover the last step can be taken and indeed are if you run the test.
You can make the problem harder by changing the order of the bits, in a predefined manner, just before you calculate the score but even this is overcome if you allow genes to change position in the genome, which happens in nature.
Brian Utterbach wrote
That’s not Behe’s original definition of IC in Darwin’s Black Box. Behe’s operational definition of an irreducibly complex system is one in which if a component is knocked out, the system ceases to perform its function. By that operational definition, the opcode programs — critters — that evolved in the Lenski, et al., study that Anderson criticizes were in fact IC. Lenski, et al., performed the knockout analysis of their evolved opcode programs and sure enough, they’re irreducibly complex in Behe’s sense. See the supplementary info for their paper here.
Behe concludes that because an IC system loses its function when parts are knocked out, it could not have evolved by some incremental route, and must have been assembled all in one go. That, of course, requires that he ignore all the mechanisms by which such complex systems can evolve incrementally by indirect routes, cooption, scaffolding, and redundancy reduction among them. None of those terms appear in the index of Darwin’s Black Box. It also conflates disassembly with assembly: what happens when one takes a system apart piece by piece may or may not tell one anything about the process by which it was assembled.
I’ll add one more note: the original study ran control conditions in which one or two of the “intermediates” were not rewarded, and showed that in the absence of any given single intermediate and all possible pairs of intermediates, the most complex IC program still evolved in some runs. No single intermediate or pair of the intermediates was a necessary step — evolution found incremental routes in the high-dimensioned fitness space in spite of some steps being selectively neutral. In fact, as analysis of the complete lineage of evolution showed, some steps were even mildly deleterious. Evolution of populations is not a ‘pure’ hill-climbing process.
Regarding plateaus, it’s worth thinking about how these simplifying models (simplified in particular by supposing a fixed rather than constantly changing search space) actually make the problem harder in some ways. In the real world organisms don’t stall for long on a plateau because the plateau doesn’t necessarily remain a plateau for long — the search space itself jostles a static form into change or extinction eventually.
While such terminology may be justified due to the authors’ goal of analogizing to biological systems, one cannot help but wonder if the Avida results might seem somewhat less applicable to biology without all the biological terminology.
This passage ticks me off. ID enthusiasts constantly engage in the use of engineering terminology – “molecular machines”, “the flagellum is just like an electric motor” etc – as rhetorical lubrication for the design argument.
I’m surprised he didn’t haul out the old argument of, “Evolutionary computing proves ID because all of the computer programs were written by humans.”
jayinbmore:
Yeah, it bugged me too, which is why I included it in the quoted text that I mocked… Something about a creationist criticizing someone else for using *allegedly* deceptive terminology really rubbed me wrong. Especially since the terminology that he’s criticizing happens to be highly descriptive, not deceptive.
Ambitwistor:
I was actually expecting that argument, and was surprised that he never really pulled it out. He *did* throw in a bit at the end about how the avida experiments actually *support* Behe’s IC nonsense; that whole riff is a variant on the theme.
This particular argument is a red flag. Either Anderson is so ignorant of actual evolutionary theory that he has no business making any commentary on it, or he is utterly dishonest. This kind of thing is depressingly common among anti-evolutionists – I can think of very few who can (or will) accurately describe what current evolutionary theory says even at a basic level.
Mark:
You might want to contact Dr. Thompson directly:
http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/adrianth/ade.html
I tried following the Davidson reference in the talk.origins article, but it referred to an article in the New Scientist. Thompson lists that article, but says “He does not agree with everything.”
Anyway, I keep finding conflicting reports about what that circuit was supposed to do and how it did it. It does not seem to have been described in a journal, so things seem to be getting a bit ULish.
Oops:
I did not see that you have found the paper. As you can see the talk.origins summary is incorrect.
I was particularly struck by the carefully crafted dishonesty of this question. If you simply *reverse the question* – ask what good is a retina without the cornea and lens – it’s immediately obvious that the answer is “quite a bit better than nothing”. Even with no ability to resolve an image whatsoever you can still tell day from night; during the day you can also tell up from down (if you live underwater you can’t rely on gravity for this as your density is about the same as the surrounding water) and whether or not something is casting a shadow on you.
Only by deliberately arranging the question so you are asking for the equivalent of fingernails appearing before fingers can you make it look like eyes must appear all-at-once. Of course, to do this you must rely on your audience’s ignorance of lensless eyes.
Yes, the eye has got to be the stupidest ID/creationist argument at all, because it is quite easy to appreciate how even a very primitive eye would be a very big advantage “in the country of the blind.” You’d think that they’d know better than to invoke an argument that Darwin was able to dispose of with the primitive biological knowledge of his time. But it seems that for many ID/creationists, everything they know about biology, they learned from Darwin.
Quoting from the talk.origins blurb from KeithB:
In fact, out of the 37 logic gates the final product uses, five of them are not even connected to the rest of the circuit in any way – yet if their power supply is removed, the circuit stops working. It seems that evolution has exploited some subtle electromagnetic effect of these cells to come up with its solution
Delightful serendipity here. I was struck by the thought that I would probably have used an FPGA simulator for this experiment, thereby precluding the discovery of this unexpected hardware interaction. (I’m assuming the simulator would model only the logic, not physical details.)
Any thoughts on why Dr. Thompson used actual hardware FPGAs?
KeithB:
I did not see that you have found the paper. As you can see the talk.origins summary is incorrect.
What is the error?
Thanks.
Nullifidian,
If you look in the edited post, there’s a link to detailed information about the work, including the specific FPGAs used, circuit diagrams of the resulting layout, and specific information about what units could *not* be removed without breaking the functionality of the circuit.
Not really an error, but it is easy to get the impression that the 37 gate circuit performed voice recognition of “go” and “stop.” In fact it discriminated between a 1000 Hz and 10000 Hz signal. This is still impressive, but I know *I* was under the wrong impression. 8^)
Also, I think he used real hardware because that is his goal, to get self-programming hardware. However, since it only took a few seconds to program the array, it was probably just as fast to use the hardware.
Eric Anderson is no scientist, at least if I have the right creationist CV ( http://www.evolutiondebate.info/Personal%20Position.htm ). This might explain his unusual many sleazy comments that reminds me of the similarly selftaught Dave Scott. It migh also explain why it took at least a year to publish the short piece, it could have been much worse.
Some complementary mistakes and sleaziness of his might be worth noting. He demands “accurate models, particularly of complex systems” instead of models that suffice to the test. He mentions “Neo-Darwinism” as if the synthesis is the current state of evolution. He compares with “Soviet-era publication process”.
But mostly he frequently projects creationist positions onto evolution: “evolutionary faith”, the type III secretory system (TTSS) “the poster child of evolutionary proponents”. It is of course the constant mentioning of the bacterial flagellum that gives rise to mentioning the secretory system since they are evolutionary related.
Creationists are indeed behind their times. When Anderson says that it is interesting to see if the bacterial flagellum can evolve, he doesn’t know that IDiots choosed early on to ignore the evolutionary evidence, or that it is overwhelming now. ( http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/09/flagellum_evolu.html )
First, he ignores that secretory systems (SS’s) and flagellums has common ancestors. ( http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/09/the_politically_10.html ) Second, he discuss the wrong SS with the wrong flagellum. Third, an elongated SS kinetic system has earlier degrees of freedom on motility than rotation-based. Fourth, the TTSS related part is only a fourth of the proteins in the eubacterial flagellum. Of 42 canonical proteins, 20 is needed for motility, and only 2 of these have no known homologs.
It is stupid to use eyes and flagellums as examples of unevolvable systems. Though the core systems (receptor cells and protein kinetic systems) are the same, it is estimated that independent evolution from such cores have happened 40-60 times for eyes, and SS/flagellum type motility systems also a number of times ( http://www.health.adelaide.edu.au/Pharm/Musgrave/essays/flagella.htm ).
Another stupidity is the creos repeated use of the circularity argument in a number of guises. First the usual “evolution is tautological” mistake. Second the modelling mistake, complaining that models are circular if definitions are used both for describing objects properties and model use. (“Hookes law is circular since it describes linear-elastic materials, and linear-elastic materials are those described by Hookes law.” The mistake is of course that definitions describe the observations that lift the properties and use into the model. Umm, analogous to push forwards?) And now the third variant, complaining that models are restricted to describe the tested situation.
“war is peace”
“freedom is slavery”
Creationism is science.
This idea of lots of plateaus is strange.
You have a function f:R^n to R. What has to happen to have a plateau?
First the grad f must be zero at the point in question (say p).
Second, the sectional curvatures of the graph of f must all be positive. That is to say n choose 2 different numbers must all be at least 0. This doesn’t seem very likely.
(You could also think of it in terms of the Hessian being
+semi-definite)
It seems like the IDers are making some rather strong claims about this function f without any justification
this is really an excellent layer-by-layer decimation of an awful piece junk. your de-debunking should be required reading in logic and criticism classes. [and hope it gets collected in a book somewhere…]
elspi:
Or, in simpler terms, you must find a point where the first derivative in all dimensions is 0 (indicating that it’s slowed to a stop, and is either at the top of a hill or the bottom of a valley), and the second derivative in all dimensions is negative (locking it into being the top of a hill).
If the point doesn’t fulfill both of those in *every* dimension, then it has an escape route to avoid being trapped. And considering the number of dimensions in an evolutionary search space that faithfully models real life, that’s quite unlikely.
It’s interesting that this argument is going on at all. A model for “irreducible complexity” using only Darwinian selection was suggested in 1918 by H. J. Muller (Nobel Prize, 1946) and refined by 1939. Thus, the gradual evolution of irreducible complexity is not only possible, but expected. Behe’s contentions are naught but nonsense, as the Avida experiments have aptly shown.