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Friday 14 November 2014

Materialists go aspirational on A.I yet again.

Yes, "We've Been Wrong About Robots Before," and We Still Are

File under "Really?"

From the Annals of Science: Chimp Cultures Are Less Complex than Human Cultures


Monday 10 November 2014

It's so hard to find good help these days.

Uncooperative Fruit Flies Refuse to Speciate in Laboratory Experiments

Sunday 9 November 2014

Counting on chance and necessity

BIO-Complexity Paper: Why Chaitin's Mathematical "Proof" of Darwinian Evolution Fails

There are many reasons why Chaitin's model does not accurately reflect how Darwinian evolution works, if it does work, in the real world of biology (some of which are summarized nicely over at Theory, Evolution, and Games Group). Not the least of such problems is the fact that the simulation basically grants itself infinite probabilistic resources (actually, computing resources, but that's analogous to probabilistic resources in biology).
As Ewert, Dembski, and Marks explain:
Because metabiology programs have unbounded length and can run for an unbounded amount of time, the unboundedness essentially undermines the creativity required to solve the large-number problem. With unbounded resources and unbounded time, one can do most anything.
In the real world, probabilistic resources are limited. Time is finite, and populations have finite sizes, and this imposes limits on what traits can evolve especially (as Stephen Meyer shows in Darwin's Doubt) when traits require multiple mutations before providing some advantage. Metabiology uses a population of one single "digital organism," which then "evolves" over time, but it grants itself essentially infinite computing resources to do this. With such a generous endowment, sure, anything can eventually evolve. But we don't live in an unlimited world, which is precisely why Darwinian evolution faces major theoretical problems. They thus write:
Although elegant in conception, metabiology departs from reality because it pays no attention to resource limitations. Metabiology's math obscures the huge amounts of time required for the evolutionary process. The programs can run for any arbitrarily large number of steps. Additionally, programs can be of any length with no penalty imposed for longer programs.
Ewert, Dembski, and Marks explain that Chaitin's program uses a halting oracle as a source of "active information." A halting oracle is a hypothetical meta-program that can tell you if a given program will ever stop running. As they explain, such an oracle could be useful in disproving certain mathematical conjectures, such as Goldbach's conjecture, "which hypothesizes that all even numbers greater than two can be written as the sum of two primes." They discuss how a halting oracle could determine if the conjecture was false:
Suppose a program X can be written to test each even number sequentially to see if it were the sum of two primes. If a counterexample is found, the program stops and declares "I have a counterexample!" Otherwise, the next even number is tested. If Goldbach's conjecture is true, the program will run forever. If a halting oracle existed, we could feed it X. If the halting oracle says "this program halts," Goldbach's conjecture is disproved. A counterexample exists. If the halting oracle says, "This program never halts," then Goldbach's conjecture is proven! There exists no counterexample.
The difficulty for Chaitin is he admits that for metabiology, "[The halting oracle] is where all the creativity is really coming from in our program," but also admits that such an oracle is "mathematical fantasy." Ewert, Dembski, and Marks thus aptly observe, "A computer tool proven not to exist is admittedly at the outset an obvious major strike against a theory purporting to demonstrate reality."
Now at this point, one might reasonably ask, "If a halting oracle is a hypothetical fantasy, how can Chaitin claim to use one in metabiology?" The answer is that Chaitin isn't actually creating a computer program. He's seeking a mathematical proof of the Darwinian model, where he's allowed to indulge thought experiments that invoke hypothetical entities. All he needs to be able to do is to prove what might happen if he theoretically had a halting oracle. But it doesn't help that one could never exist.
That problem aside, they explain that the "halting oracle" used by Chaitin's program has three different options of how to find a search target: "
  • Exhaustive Search (poor)
  • Random Evolution (good)
  • Intelligent Design (better)
Metabiology uses "random evolution" but not in a manner that is biologically realistic. The program is capable of systematically simulating all possible programs, which in effect allows it to totally rewrite itself instantly -- something that simply doesn't happen in biology -- and thereby grants unrealistic access to the equivalent of unlimited resources in an organism's developmental process. This unrealistically guarantees the program could never get stuck on a local fitness peak because it can keep trying out entirely new "genetic codes" indefinitely until a better one is found.
Which, again, is nothing like how the real world of biology, where an organism is forced to rely on the genome it receives, which at best will have just a few small mutational differences from its parents. Darwinian evolution in real biology requires a grueling ascent of mount improbable, but Chaitin's program can fly wherever it wants at any time. To put it another way, metabiology cheats by giving a digital organism unrealistic access to any program at any time which will lead to a higher fitness state. As Ewert, Dembski, and Marks explain:
As any computer programmer will tell you, landscapes of computer program fitness are the opposite of smooth. We would therefore not expect Darwinian evolution to fare well. Chaitin notes this when he writes [3], "The fitness landscape has to be very special for Darwinian evolution to work." The environment for evolution to occur, therefore, has to be carefully designed. Indeed, in the paradigm of conservation of information, smooth landscapes can be source of significant active information [14]. Metabiology's construction of smooth landscapes is accomplished by running all viable programs, a computationally expensive approach that is only possible because there are no resource limitations.
Chaitin also presents a different model that uses what he calls "intelligent design" to find a search target. This obviously doesn't help show what unguided evolutionary processes can accomplish. The author of the blog "Theory, Evolution and Games Group" critiques Chaitin's model, writing that metabiology uses "a teleological model -- a biologist's nightmare." Ewert, Dembski, and Marks explain:
Like AVIDA and ev, metabiology makes use of external information sources to assist in the search. Like the simple Hamming oracle, the halting oracle can be mined for information with various degrees of sophistication. Evolution thus requires external sources of knowledge to work. The degree to which this knowledge is used can be assessed using the idea of active information.
They conclude: "In order for evolution to occur in these models, external knowledge must be imposed on the process to guide it. Metabiology thus appears to be another example where its designer makes an evolutionary model work. ... Consistent with the laws of conservation of information, natural selection can only work using the guidance of active information, which can be provided only by a designer." Properly understood, in other words, these programs demonstrate that evolution requires intelligent design.

Thursday 6 November 2014

To him was given a large sword.

Revelation6:4NIV"Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make people kill each other. To him was given a large sword."



Saturday 1 November 2014

Why are Darwinists hiding from their own ideas?



Busting another Darwinist Myth: Have ID Proponents Invented Terms like "Microevolution" and "Macroevolution"?



In 2005 I busted the Darwinist myth that ID-proponents have invented terms like "Darwinist" or "Darwinism" by noting that, well, Darwinists themselves have long-used such terms to describe themselves and their viewpoints. Jonathan Wells also recentlybusted this same myth, and Anika Smith recently busted the myththat evolution is not "random." In 2006, I also busted the myth that skeptics of neo-Darwinism don't exist outside the United States.
When engaging in debates, every once in a while I hear the claim that Darwin-critics also invented terms like "microevolution" or "macroevolution." For example, Jonathan Wells reports, "In 2005, Darwinist Gary Hurd claimed that the distinction between microevolution and macroevolution was just a creationist fabrication. ... Hurd wrote to the Kansas State Board of Education: "...'macro' and 'micro' evolution ... have no meaning outside of creationist polemics." (Jonathan Wells, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, pgs. 55-56). This is also a Darwinian urban legend, for such terms have been used regularly in the scientific literature. Indeed, textbooks commonly teach this terminology, including two of the textbooks I used in college when learning about evolutionary biology.
The glossary of my college introductory biology text, Campbell's Biology (4th Ed.) states: "macroevolution: Evolutionary change on a grand scale, encompassing the origin of novel designs, evolutionary trends, adaptive radiation, and mass extinction." Futuyma's Evolutionary Biology, a text I used for an upper-division evolutionary biology course, states, "In Chapters 2h3 through 25, we will analyze the principles of MACROEVOLUTION, that is, the origin and diversification of higher taxa." (pg. 447, emphasis in original). Similarly, these textbooks respectively define "microevolution" as "a change in the gene pool of a population over a succession of generations" and "slight, short-term evolutionary changes within species." Clearly Darwin-skeptics did not invent these terms.
Other scientific texts use the terms. In his 1989 McGraw Hill textbook, Macroevolutionary Dynamics, Niles Eldredge admits that "[m]ost families, orders, classes, and phyla appear rather suddenly in the fossil record, often without anatomically intermediate forms smoothly interlinking evolutionarily derived descendant taxa with their presumed ancestors." (pg. 22) Similarly, Steven M. Stanley titles one of his books, Macroevolution: Pattern and Process (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998 version), where he notes that, "[t]he known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphological transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid." (pg. 39)
The scientific journal literature also uses the terms "macroevolution" or "microevolution." In 1980, Roger Lewin reported in Science on a major meeting at the University of Chicago that sought to reconcile biologists' understandings of evolution with the findings of paleontology. Lewin reported, "The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No." (Roger Lewin, "Evolutionary Theory Under Fire," Science, Vol. 210:883-887, Nov. 1980.)
Two years earlier, Robert E. Ricklefs had written in an article in Science entitled "Paleontologists confronting macroevolution," contending:
The punctuated equilibrium model has been widely accepted, not because it has a compelling theoretical basis but because it appears to resolve a dilemma. ... apart from its intrinsic circularity (one could argue that speciation can occur only when phyletic change is rapid, not vice versa), the model is more ad hoc explanation than theory, and it rests on shaky ground.
(Science, Vol. 199:58-60, Jan. 6, 1978.)
Finally, in 2000 Douglas Erwin wrote a paper the journal Evolution and Development entitled "Macroevolution is more than repeated rounds of microevolution" where he explained the historical controversy over whether microevolutionary processes can explain macroevolutionary change:
Arguments over macroevolution versus microevolution have waxed and waned through most of the twentieth century. Initially, paleontologists and other evolutionary biologists advanced a variety of non-Darwinian evolutionary processes as explanations for patterns found in the fossil record, emphasizing macroevolution as a source of morphologic novelty. Later, paleontologists, from Simpson to Gould, Stanley, and others, accepted the primacy of natural selection but argued that rapid speciation produced a discontinuity between micro- and macroevolution. This second phase emphasizes the sorting of innovations between species. Other discontinuities appear in the persistence of trends (differential success of species within clades), including species sorting, in the differential success between clades and in the origination and establishment of evolutionary novelties. These discontinuities impose a hierarchical structure to evolution and discredit any smooth extrapolation from allelic substitution to large-scale evolutionary patterns. Recent developments in comparative developmental biology suggest a need to reconsider the possibility that some macroevolutionary discontinuities may be associated with the origination of evolutionary innovation. The attractiveness of macroevolution reflects the exhaustive documentation of large-scale patterns which reveal a richness to evolution unexplained by microevolution. If the goal of evolutionary biology is to understand the history of life, rather than simply document experimental analysis of evolution, studies from paleontology, phylogenetics, developmental biology, and other fields demand the deeper view provided by macroevolution.
(Douglas Erwin, "Macroevolution is more than repeated rounds of microevolution,"Evolution and Development, Vol. 2(2):78-84, 2000.)
So the next time a Darwinist tells you that scientists don't use terms like "microevolution" or "macroevolution," remind them why this claim is a long-debunked myth!

Sleight of hand.

Flying Fish in the Darwin Magic Show

Monday 27 October 2014

Some more on the skills gap.



The skilled trades:A viable choice.



The divine law and blood VII:Right and smart.

Evidence in favor of bloodless surgery mounts



BY KEVIN JESS     OCT 28, 2009
Physicians around the world are now successfully treating patients with bloodless surgery. Evidence shows that many benefits are being realized by using alternatA recent study conducted at the Maritime Heart Center in Halifax, Nova Scotia showed that blood transfusions for stable cardiac-surgery patients increased their risk of death, renal failure, and sepsis or infection.














The results were released at the 
Canadian Cardiovascular Congress show, and was presented by Robert Riddell, a medical student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The study looked at 3842 consecutive patients, who were all undergoing different types of cardiac surgery.
According to theheart.org,the patients were sorted into four groups: the first received no blood product transfusions; the second received blood products during their surgery; the third group received blood products within the first 48 hours; and the fourth received blood products 48 hours or later after surgery.
After making adjustments for age, sex and other factors the study concluded that blood transfusions dramatically increased morbidity and mortality rates compared with those who received bloodless surgery.
The study also suggests that the later the blood transfusion the worse off the patient is.
There are realistic alternatives to blood transfusions today.
According to AllSands, since the tragedy of AIDS people have become all too aware that our blood supply can never be completely safe and that in a recent poll 89 per cent of Canadians would rather have an alternative to donated blood.
Most people associate the refusal of blood transfusions to the stand taken by Jehovah's Witnesses who look upon the procedure as against Bible teachings.
However, according to AllSands, that stand has led to bloodless medicine and surgery reaching "an advanced level of development and is the preferred treatment of many informed people."
The avoidance of blood during surgery means that post-operative infections and complications are avoided, and blood types would not have to be matched, erasing any complications from matching errors.
Bloodless surgeries typically cost 25 per cent less than those that use donated blood with extra savings from a 50 per cent increase in recovery times, translating into shorter hospital stays.
In the event of a large blood loss, in most cases the volume of blood can be maintained by alternative fluids such as Ringer’s lactate solution, dextran, hydroxyethel starch and others that will prevent hypovolemic shock.
Drugs are now being used before surgery to stimulate the production of red blood cells, blood platelets and various white blood cells to increase the volume of blood as well as other medications to reduce blood loss.
Surgeons are now able to manage bleeding better by the use of biological hemostats. New glues and sealants can block puncture wounds or cover larger areas of exposed bleeding tissue.
Patients can now have blood that is lost in surgery or trauma to be salvaged by the use of machines that cleanse the blood and return it to the patient without storing it.
According to the Encyclopedia of Surgery, new instruments and surgical techniques now allow surgeons to perform procedures with minimal blood loss.
All of the above procedures have been performed successfully on thousands of patients worldwide, who seek safer medical care, whether it be for religious reasons or not.
By the end of 2002, 30 per cent of all requests for bloodless surgeries came from people who were not Jehovah's Witnesses.