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Author
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Topic: Jefferson Airplane and Point Source Mutation
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Jim Skipper
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Member # 1510
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posted 30. March 2005 19:42
You conclude on the second link that
quote:
it is not that difficult to extrapolate a mechanism regarding the concept of a Supreme Observer.
and then don't really. You do a supreme handwave:
quote:
Through Q. M. Molecular geometry and Interaction, Energy is directed.
Look basically, from everything you have posted your version of design is this:
There is an Intelligent Designer, aka Supreme Observer that somehoe interacts with the Universe at a Quantum Level that makes things exist.
- You have nothing to say about the nature of the Supreme Designer.
- You have nothing to say about the physical mechanism by which the Design is impemented (and you insist it is not metaphyscial).
- You have, at best, a very subjective means of detecting design.
The end result is that you have nothing useful to say that is not being said by creationists and theistic evolutionists. You say there is a Supreme Observer that causes things to come into existence somehow. So do they.
Nothing that you have said helps in anyway understand the Universe, the origin of life.
Let me give you a multiple choice question, I am not asking for you to prove your answer; I just want your best guess.
The new species that appeared during the Cambrian Explosion...
A. were created from non-living matter by a supernatural entity.
B. were created from non-living matter by a natural entity.
B. evolved from pre-existing organisms by through alteration of their genes by natural means.
C. were created from pre-existing organisms by a supernatural entity through manipulation of their genes.
D. were created from pre-existing organisms by a natrual entity through manipulation of their genes.
E. were delivered to Earth by an extra-terrestrial ark.
F. Other. Please Explain.
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Jerry D. Bauer
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posted 30. March 2005 20:47
Science is hand-waving? Why is it not hand-waving when molecular design engineers do basically the same thing?
1) I have nothing to say about the nature of the Supreme Observer because I do not know anything about that nature. I don't KNOW who/what the designer was. How could I define its nature? What was the nature of the designer of the shirt you are wearing right now? Did it have more of the nature of an axe-murderer, Mother Teresa or Elvis Presley? Do you see how irrelevant and down-right silly that query is?
One need not know a thing about the designer of your shirt to conclude it was designed and works very well as a shirt. To confuse 'design' with 'designer' is logically equivalent to a teacher assigning a student to write a paper on chainsaw maintenance and the student becomes so confused she ends up with a paper on the bio of the designer of a chainsaw. This is two separate subjects.
2) I DO have MUCH to say about the physical mechanism of design implementation. You just keep ignoring those links to where I directly address that subject and come right back with another version of "You have nothing to say about the physical mechanism by which the Design is impemented." El wrongo. I have tons to say about it. The problem is, I cannot get you to actually go to those posts and show them wrong by actually addressing them line for line. Hmmm.... ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
3) I have DIRECTLY given you at least four very objective methods in which to detect design. You have ignored all four. Not much I can do about that, is there? Is it comparison studies you feel are not a part of science, or is it the math you feel is subjective?
******Let me give you a multiple choice question, I am not asking for you to prove your answer; I just want your best guess.******
Fine. I feel I have been honest and most forward in addressing your concerns and I will take your proposed pop quiz. The only thing I ask from you is that after I do this, you go back and answer the questions I have posed to you utilizing the same good-faith. Fair enough?
A) There exists no evidence to answer this question. I do not know if the organisms that arose during the Cambrian Explosion were created from living matter or from zero-point energy containing quantum fluctuations. I wasn't there, but neither scenario is incredulous. Nor do I know if the designer was supernatural or natural. You keep asking me this and simply will not accept my most honest response that I have no idea who/what the designer was. Besides, this is irrelevant. See above.
B) This is basically the same question reworded. Again, I was not there.
C) There is no evidence in the fossil record showing that the organisms formed during the Cambrian Era evolved from pre-existing organisms through alteration of their genes by natural means. The fossil record shows that these organisms did not exist before the Cambrian Explosion.
D) There exists no evidence to answer this question. I don't even know what a supernatural entity is as you haven't defined this term.
E. There exists no evidence to answer this question. If they were delivered to Earth by an extra-terrestrial ark, then that event left no evidence I am aware of. Therefore, I don't muse on that.
Can we stay in science, Jim? You keep wanting to branch our discussion away from science into theology and metaphysics containing ethereal supernatural entities and whatnot (ghosts, fairies, Santa Clause, leprechauns...what?). And why? As I've explicitly stated to you previously, ID has no metaphysics to offer you. Perhaps you would be more comfortable on Dwayne Gish's site?? ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Edited to say I misread that and you were wanting me to pick one of the above. The answer to that challenge is I cannot because I do not know who/what the designer was.
[ 30. March 2005, 21:17: Message edited by: Jerry D. Bauer ]
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Jim Skipper
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posted 30. March 2005 21:43
Where do YOU, Jerry D. Bauer, THINK that the new species that appeared in Cambrian Explosion came from?
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Jerry D. Bauer
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posted 30. March 2005 22:00
******Where do YOU, Jerry D. Bauer, THINK that the new species that appeared in Cambrian Explosion came from?*******
I don't THINK I know where they came from. To THINK in this manner without having proper evidence to base those thoughts on leaves the realm of science and enters the realm of faith. To THINK I know where these came from is to believe I know where these came from without evidence to support that belief. Let's look up the word:
FAITH: "Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence."
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Faith
You simply refuse to debate science with me, Jim, and attempt to go into religion with every post. Could it be that you are coming to understand that
ID stands tall in science and that other stuff kind of, well...don't?
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Jerry D. Bauer
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posted 01. April 2005 19:12
Well, upon examination of this thread with my magic calorimeter, I must conclude it is coming to equilibrium.
Jim, I hope you will stay away from those pages that do not understand the hard science of ID and IF you will; and IF you will keep an open mind, I think you must conclude that it is the IDists who have the science on their side just as I did a few years back, shaking my head all the while.
Mediocre poetry cannot magically morph itself into more complex, beautiful verse one word or one letter at a time--over time. The laws of science say that this notion is quite silly. Neither can genes, as genes are 'loose' (unstabilized) information just as is the spoken word.
The first law of thermodynamics states that it is scientifically impossible for matter/energy to 'poof' itself from a void as some surmise happened to drive the big bang. ANY logical thinking person can only conclude that this event was designed as can there exist any scenario in which matter/energy and the laws of physics could pre-exist themselves in order to act as their own cause of existence?
The second law of thermodynamics (yes, this is Nelson's Law) states that with any spontaneous event or reaction (spontaneous is a term of science meaning that no energy is inputted into the system as would be in the case of intelligent design) disorganization (rising entropy) of that system will tend to occur.
Florida Community College at Jacksonville states it in a manner I like: "All spontaneous events act to increase total entropy."
http://mooni.fccj.org/~ethall/thermo/thermo.htm
The greats of science, Carnot, Clausius, Lord Kelvin, Boltzmann, Gibbs, Erwin Shrodinger, Claude Shannon and Ilya Prigogine, at least two Nobel Winners among them, viewed nature (yes, this includes organisms, genes and genomes) as decaying from organization to disorganization over time:
This equilibrium seeking, pessimistic view of the progression of natural systems was contrasted with the introduction of the paradigm proposed by Charles Darwin of massively increasing complexity and organization of biological systems over time in a process called macroevolution:
Do what? LOL....Does anyone see a slight problem here?
Finally, the actual implementation of design ain't no thang. I feel I've shown that molecular design hypothesis posits that chemical design occurs via: chemical elements -----> quantum mechanics -----> macroscopic properties.
Sitting about 25 feet from where I normally sit in my overstuffed blue recliner watching my big screen with a lap top feverishly typing out all kinds of wicked ID stuff, is another computer. Hooked to that computer is a video microscope causing this picture to be displayed on the monitor:
What you are looking at is primitive cells I constructed in a test tube made of phospholipids (phosphocholine to be precise) just as are many of the cell walls in your own body.
Why cannot I take this further by now introducing organelles into this mass similar to this:
How far can mortal me take this? I don't know but if I can design primitive cells, pray tell why an entity (deity, astronaut, my really smart uncle Nolen) could not do the same thing using technology much more advanced? Any problem of design implementation becomes moot. ID walks tall.
Thanks for the great conversation, guys!
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Laszlo
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posted 08. April 2005 15:47
I’m in full agreement with Mr. Bauer regarding the necessity for intelligence to convert bad poetry (“doggerel”) to great poetry. That is why I propose that the full use of human intelligence be allowed in the attempt. In other words, I’m interested in knowing if the task can be performed under the most favorable circumstances possible. If so, then we can make it harder upon successive trials in order to more closely approximate the evolutionary scenario until at last we come to a trial which does function purely randomly. (See my post above, 29 Jan. 2005)
I do not understand what is meant by “IOW” and would appreciate elucidation.
Mr. Skipper writes, “Life has no goal other than survival…” Surely this statement must be understood as purely metaphysical. It cannot be proven by any scientific means because the statement is teleological. As we all understand, teleology falls outside the boundaries of scientific inquiry. One may very well claim that life has a purpose or purposes other than survival. These claims, too, fall outside the realm of scientific inquiry. Yet they may be true.
Mr. Skipper then writes, “When looking at the bacterial flagellum, we are trying, foresnically [sic], to determine what path evolution took to arrive at it.” But this is question begging. When we look at a piano, say, must we try to determine what natural processes took place within an Alaskan forest to produce it? No. Rather we look upon the piano and understand intuitively that no conceivable natural processes could have produced it. Further, we understand that a process of intelligent design might very well have produced it.
The paramount purpose of scientific inquiry is to understand things as they are. There is no point to spinning out an intricate system of cosmology if we have no observations precise enough to be explained by it. The geocentric system of Ptolemy was based upon some rather careful visual observations by ancient astronomers. When Tycho Brahe erected his wonderful observatory in Denmark with its brobdingnagian quadrants, armillary spheres, and sextants, he procured a series of observations refined enough not only to reveal serious difficulties with Ptolemy’s system but also to provide Kepler with the necessary data for his heliocentric system. Knowing the accurate positions of planets made it possible for Kepler to eventually discern that the near circular planetary orbits were actually elliptical. The dethroning of Aristotle’s perfect circular orbits was a far deeper insight than that of heliocentrism and it was based on Brahe’s meticulous observation.
Now, let us recall that both Brahe and Kepler never questioned that the cosmos was designed. They assumed it was. Yet, despite this metaphysical assumption, they produced good science. Their faith in intelligent design did not impede nor distort their inquiries into the natural world. Brahe recorded things as they are. Kepler was able to see things as they are as soon as the scales of Aristotle’s theory fell from his eyes.
It is a secondary goal of science to track things backwards to their origins. Though the early steps in this back tracking process are fairly straightforward, as the progression recedes into deeper remoteness, metaphysical assumptions necessarily intrude upon the effort. Nor can such be avoided. It is the duty of a scientist not to avoid that which cannot be avoided; but rather to understand exactly when and where his theories leave the realm of science and enter that of metaphysics.
Nor is it proper to say that all metaphysical systems are equal. They are not and intellect provides a means of discerning ones which are superior in explanatory value and in coherence with the observed world. Even during the time of Aristotle, it was clear that the geocentric cosmology was superior to the metaphysical system which claimed that the earth rode on the back of a giant elephant which in turn rode upon a cosmic turtle.
So the duty of the biologist is first to provide us with a richly detailed account of things as they are. This task may well occupy a full career. Secondarily, he may trace lineages backwards but he must be vigilant to avoid seeing his metaphysical assumptions as facts. He must not see circles where there are ellipses.
Thus, the assumption that the biosphere was intelligently designed, need not cloud the mind of an observer any more than the assumption of evolution does. Both assumptions are metaphysical. But which of these assumptions better explains the existence of the many irreducibly complex artifacts of which living things are constructed? That is the crucial metaphysical question.
I will respond to Mr. Skipper’s last post at a later date.
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Jerry D. Bauer
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posted 08. April 2005 18:50
Very good post that causes one to think. IOW = In other words.....
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Laszlo
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posted 12. April 2005 14:39
Mr. Skipper,
You write (27 March 2005):
Your experiment does have an interesting aspect. Suppose I took your song and inserted hundreds or thousands of random letters that serve no purpose - that can be ignored and reveal the meaning of the song, or can be removed completely.
But this is not what I proposed. Inserting random letters into a poem would at worst destroy the meaning of the poem or at best turn it into a word puzzle (“Find the poem hidden in these random letters.”)
It may well be that DNA looks like that. Although, it is also quite possible that so-called “junk” DNA may actually serve some purpose. We may not know what that purpose is at present; but it seems premature to call it “junk.”
My proposal demands transforming a meaningful, but inferior poem, into a meaningful and superior poem.
Your present the following example:
Here is an example, how do you get hurt from cane?
Path 1 | Path2
CANE | CANE
CARE | CANT
CURE | CART
CURT | HART
HURT | HURT
I’m quite familiar with the word game above as it has appeared in the magazines I’ve been reading since I was a child. (Remember “My Weekly Reader” or “Hi Lights for Children?”) However, the process of word transformation is trivial and not relevant to the task at hand.
Here is the problem with your letter-only challenge and its comparison to DNA. There are too many letters and not enough words. Although we use AGCT to represent the bases, those letters actually stand for words (Adenine (A); Cytosine (C), Guanine (G), and Thymine (T)). Those words stand for complex molecules that interact with each other in specific ways defined by their chemistry.
I do not believe your analogy is correct. The grammar of genetics takes the bases as letters because they are the smallest unit of meaning. Any smaller molecule or molecular unit (say, a hydroxyl group) does not bear meaning. A hydroxyl group added to or subtracted from Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine, or Thymine would probably destroy its function. It would be equivalent to taking the letter “A” and erasing one of its legs which would make it meaningless as a letter.
When these genetic letters are linked together they form words and sentences that make up the instructions for manufacturing proteins. However, in my analogy, we are not presently capable of discerning the words and sentences, although we know they are there.
Therefore, for your word game to model DNA and evolution, it must be allowed to follow the rules of the English language. It must be allowed to use full words, just as DNA uses complete molecules, and not individual atoms, and the words must be allowed to "react" together according to the rules defined for the language.
I already allowed for this modification to my original proposal in my post dated 19 March 2005.
One of the weakness in the ID foundation is its critique of randomness in evolution. In biochemistry, random does not really mean random. Atomic particles interact under well-defined rules and those rules scale up to determine how molecules interact with each other, but the degree of interaction is fairly broad and sometimes unpredictable (and therefore seems random to us).
The molecules of DNA exhibit no preferential linking affinities. Indeed, were they to do so, they would severely constrain the amount of information they could carry. Random really does mean random.
Therefore, I will take your challenge and turn you last post into poetry.
I did not see you follow through with your acceptance of my challenge. I would truly like to see what you come up with.
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Laszlo
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posted 13. April 2005 12:58
Laszlo's Last Post
13 April 2005
Having just read the last two pages of posts (which I did not previously notice.) I see that Mr. Skipper is exercised by what he deems the failure of ID proponents to explain how the Designing Intelligence actually implements his program of design within the biosphere. He demands that ID proponents produce a detailed, physical explanation of the process. His argument appears to be based on the premise that lacking an explanation of means, the ID camp is unmasked as a band of hand waving religionists, unworthy of regard in scientific circles.
Mr. Bauer presents a cogent response, but unfortunately falls prey to the central fallacy of Mr. Skipper’s argument: that the ID proponent is obliged to provide an explanation of means.
Mr. Skipper points with pride to the “detailed” explanations offered by evolutionary theory—random mutation coupled with natural selection—and demands that Mr. Bauer produce an equivalent for intelligent design.
But there is an asymmetry between the two theories. Evolution does in fact claim to offer a detailed account of its means. Therefore, it must produce such an account. Yet the evidence presented as explaining the process is not only insufficiently detailed but, upon close examination, so logically and mathematically flawed as to call its adequacy into question.
Intelligent Design, on the other hand, does not purport to explain how anything was created. Therefore, it need not present a detailed account of that process. Moreover, I propose that even in everyday life, the process of creation is a “black” process that is not amenable to detailed explanation.
Let me elaborate. We humans are creators. We create tools, legal systems, governments, architecture, art, and numberless devices. Yet, when we create anything, even something as simple as a page of writing, we cannot explain exactly why it came out as it did. Oh certainly we may say, “I am influenced by the writings of Darwin, I admire the style of Hemmingway. Therefore, I write as I do.” There are even certain critics who can write hundreds of pages explaining how Picasso was influenced by Delacroix and chronicle the many stages of artistic development he went through in the course of his career.
But whether we explain our own or someone else’s creative process, we know we are kidding ourselves. We know that lacunae of unfathomable ignorance pepper our explanations like the gaps in a Sierpinski triangle. As Eugene Freeman explains in his delightful book, Engineering and the Mind's Eye,
Design engineers have recourse to analytical calculations to assist them in making decisions, but the number of decisions that are based on intuition, a sense of fitness, and personal preference made in the course of working out a particular design is probably equal to the number of artists' decisions that engineers call arbitrary, whimsical, and undisciplined.— p. 23
In other words, we know that we don’t know.
Now if we ask what goes on in the mind of a disembodied creative spirit who is utterly unlike us, what answer can we give? How does this intelligence create? What was the order of steps taken in designing the bacterial flagellum or the blue whale? Did novelty appear suddenly out of thin air or did it appear in a sequence of reproductive steps? Who can know?
What we can know is what presently exists: the world of living things and the world of the remnants of dead things, the fossil record. To the degree that we exercise ingenuity in understanding those worlds, we will learn much. Nor will that task be impeded by assuming that a creator actually created things which so obviously appear to have been created.
Let the evolutionist explain the details of a natural process which has no need of a creator. But, please, let this explanation be genuinely detailed as are the explanations provided by the other natural sciences. Give us something like the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics and fill it with graphs depicting average rates of beneficial mutation for various species through the geological eras. Show us a complete sequence of species from flightless to flying with an explanation of how each functioned. List genomes related to each species. Chart which currently living species are ripe for evolution, exactly where in the genome beneficial mutation may occur, and how that mutation will be expressed in the phenotype. Give us numbers. Give us data. Give us measurements such as are common to the other sciences.
It is the evolutionary camp which has too long engaged in hand waving and credulously accepted such as explanation.
I am now going to bow out of this thread that I began. I find the arguments grow repetitive and no longer engage my curiosity. I enjoyed these discussions and wish Mr. Bauer, Mr. Skipper et alii the very best.
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Jim Skipper
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posted 18. October 2005 23:22
quote:
We humans are creators. We create tools, legal systems, governments, architecture, art, and numberless devices. Yet, when we create anything, even something as simple as a page of writing, we cannot explain exactly why it came out as it did.
I am not and have never asked why. I ask, how? When we create, we can describe, often with incredible precision, how we create.
For example, currently electrochemical impulses in my brain are passing between neurons and ultimate send signals along my spinal column to various muscle groups, resulting in my fingers pressing down on various keys of my keyboard. A switch translate that keystroke into an electric signal that passes through a wire into my computers CPU. The CPU processes those electronic signals through millions of microscopic switches, engaging in complex mathematics. Some of the results of those calculations cause my monitor to emit an electric pulse the exits molecules on the screen to emit light at certain frequencies, which pass through the lenses of my eyes and strike my optic nerves, which are excited in specific ways and the information passed as electrochemical signals back into my brain. Some of the information passes (or will pass shortly) through a wire through an Interconnected Network of servers and become a posting on ISCID.
That is how I "created" this post.
One of our esteemed colleagues suggestes that the Designer is actually a Supreme Observer, and "observes" at the quantum level to invoke specific effects. There are two flaws with this, at least as presented.
We know that when, in a physics experiment we observe something at the quantum level, we change it. There is nothing mystical about this. It is just that the tools with which we can observe such things are quite crude and requires a brute force physical interaction to make the observation. In fact, ALL observations are a result of some kind of physical interaction. Therefore if a Supreme Observer can create effects at the quantum level, it must do so by some physical means. There must be some physical interaction between the observer and the observed. That has yet to be explained.
Second, we make observation in order to learn things about that which we are observing. The physical change is a side-effect of the observation. We change the quantum state of the observed object and to the degree that we can quantify how our method of observation affected the object, we can calculate its state prior to the observation. However, we cannot produce a specific effect, because we lack prior knowledge of the quantum state.
A Supreme Observer, in order to "observe" something into existence, must have prior knowledge of the quantum state. This requires some means of ascertaining that knowledge - perhaps by a very precise interaction that affects the quantum state the information from which is used to generate a second interaction which produces the desired effect. A very complex system indeed.
So when I ask HOW the Intelligent Designer, I am simply asking for the physical process, just as we can easily explain our physical processes of creation. A useful scientific theory should be able to explain this.
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Zachriel
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posted 24. October 2005 21:06
Laszlo: "I am sorry that no one has attempted my challenge of converting doggerel to great poetry one improving letter at a time."
Provide a selection method for determining "great poetry" and the process of random mutation, recombination and selection will generate such poetry as long as it can be arrived at step-wise. However, as such a filter does not exist, we will create doggerel ex nihilo.
Laszlo: "I am willing to make the test easier just so we can see whether the notion of conversion by steps would work. Instead of substituting one letter at a time, substitute a whole word. The criterion that the word substitution must improve the poem remains as before."
Simple recombination is all that is required. That allows, among other things, the splicing together of words, as well as the insertion of words, or parts of words. A randomized version would have to try all possible variations, but that is not the current challenge.
Laszlo: "This version of the test bears much less relevance to the evolutionary program because it is the equivalent of substituting an entire gene (many letters in the DNA code) in one step. The odds of a random change in many letters being beneficial to an organism are so low that this approach to mutation is not seriously proposed by mainstream evolutionists. (And of course intelligently directed gene substitution is not allowed.)"
That is not correct. Recombination is a standard part of the evolutionary paradigm, and specific recombinations, gene duplications, gene rotations, as well as point mutations, delete mutations, have been directly observed to create new combinations of traits. We will use just point mutations and simple concatenation.
Starting with a single letter word, "O".
O
a, I
or, ore, one, wore, word, whore
words, wordy, ward, war, tar, wars, ware, tare, are
ere, err, era, ore, ode, of, off, or, our, your, you
ire, irk, irks, lire, lyre, fire, lice, lick, like, life
lock, block, click, clock, slick, stick, stack
for, fore, form, forms, foreword
ow, row, brow, prow, prom, from
...
The complete derivation and poem can be found here:
http://www.zachriel.com/mutagenation/Beware.asp
Zachriel
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(edited spelling of Laszlo's name)
[ 24. October 2005, 21:40: Message edited by: Zachriel ]
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Zachriel
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posted 24. October 2005 21:18
There is a fanciful description of the evolutionary process, "Sea of Beneficence"
http://www.zachriel.com/mutagenation/Sea.asp
If you just refuse to accept doggerel, then Hamlet's soliloquy can be derived in a similar fashion — and in remarkably few generations from just the single letter word, "O".
-----
O
O, I, a
or, to, no, bi
be, to, or, not
to be, or not
to be, to be or not
to be or not to be
------
The poetic derivation of "Beware a War of Words" shows that such a bit of doggerel can be arrived at step-wise. Now, then the question becomes of the number of random mutations required to find all the various steps. There is a numerical treatment of this problem that can be found in "A Pond of Doggerel".
http://www.zachriel.com/mutagenation/Contents.asp
Further, let us investigate the simple problem of evolving individual words, but now with random mutation and recombination. Try Word Mutagenation, which uses random mutation and very simple selection for length and is more than capable of evolving 10-letter words in just moments, and even longer words given some time. It's ruthless. Any non-word is immediately eliminated from the population as still-born.
http://www.zachriel.com/mutagenation/
Finally, as Laszlo has not provided a precise definition of "great poetry", I have decided to consider any snippet of Shakespeare to be better than any other jumble of letters and words. And yet, even then, random mutation and selection are more than adequate to evolve long phrases of Elizabethan English in Phrasenator.
http://www.zachriel.com/Phrasenation/
Zachriel
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added link, generational version of Hamlet
[ 24. October 2005, 22:22: Message edited by: Zachriel ]
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Laszlo
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posted 28. October 2005 17:30
I thank Messers. Skipper and Zachriel for their comments on this thread, which I had long assumed was forsaken.
I will respond first to Mr. Zachriel. He proposes that he has answered my challenge. My challenge, as originally stated, was:
There are many people who enjoy word puzzles. Perhaps some of them who read these comments will wish to essay transforming Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees” (“I think that I shall never see/ A poem as lovely as a tree.”) into a Shakespearean sonnet by altering one letter at a time, each letter to lead to a superior poem. Alternately, the task can be alteration of “Trees” into a superior original poem by the same means. Success at either task would be deeply impressive.
I later modified this as follows:
I am willing to make the test easier just so we can see whether the notion of conversion by steps would work. Instead of substituting one letter at a time, substitute a whole word. The criterion that the word substitution must improve the poem remains as before.
Mr. Zachriel’s responses follow:
Starting with a single letter word, "O".
O
a, I
or, ore, one, wore, word, whore
words, wordy, ward, war, tar, wars, ware, tare, are
ere, err, era, ore, ode, of, off, or, our, your, you
ire, irk, irks, lire, lyre, fire, lice, lick, like, life
lock, block, click, clock, slick, stick, stack
for, fore, form, forms, foreword
ow, row, brow, prow, prom, from
and
O
O, I, a
or, to, no, bi
be, to, or, not
to be, or not
to be, to be or not
to be or not to be
I admit to puzzlement. Were my requirements so unclear? In neither case does he begin with a poem. “O” is hardly the same as Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees,” nor does it qualify as doggerel. It is just a letter. The challenge was to start with a preexisting poem and transform it into another, better poem by substituting either single letters (the tough challenge) or single words (the easier challenge).
What Mr. Zachriel provides is just another example of a word game popular in elementary school curricula. He provides solutions to a trivial challenge that is not relevant to the issue at hand. (I had already made this point in a previous response to Mr. Skipper regarding conversion of the word “CANE” to “HURT.”)
The issue at hand is whether or not a piece of complex information may be transformed into more complex information via small unit substitutions while maintaining not only meaning but superior meaning with each substitution.
As I mentioned before, this is the state of things in the world of living things. We find complex individuals, whether bacteria or dinosaurs, which must be converted to more successful individuals by the gain of information. The process of conversion must proceed in such a manner that each step is superior to the last. Each step must procure improved survivability (the Darwinian definition of superior.)
My poetry challenge is merely a literary analogue to a process that evolution supposedly has carried out through the history of life on Earth. My reason for proposing the challenge is simply to discover whether such a process has any hope of functioning in the general realm of information. It is far simpler than the evolutionary process within the biosphere because it allows (demands actually) an intelligence to carry out the conversion from one poem to another.
If my literary challenge can be met according to rules set out above, then we may have some hope for the evolutionary program as a means of transforming species. If my challenge cannot be met, then we must view with increased skepticism the proposal that random substitutions could carry out a process that fails under the guidance of purposeful intelligence.
Now to Mr. Skipper’s comment about my claim that we humans cannot fully explain either how or why we create anything. He claims to have answered me in the following passage:
For example, currently electrochemical impulses in my brain are passing between neurons and ultimate send signals along my spinal column to various muscle groups, resulting in my fingers pressing down on various keys of my keyboard. A switch translate that keystroke into an electric signal that passes through a wire into my computers CPU. The CPU processes those electronic signals through millions of microscopic switches, engaging in complex mathematics. Some of the results of those calculations cause my monitor to emit an electric pulse the exits molecules on the screen to emit light at certain frequencies, which pass through the lenses of my eyes and strike my optic nerves, which are excited in specific ways and the information passed as electrochemical signals back into my brain. Some of the information passes (or will pass shortly) through a wire through an Interconnected Network of servers and become a posting on ISCID.
Unfortunately this long paragraph contains only one statement of any interest:
electrochemical impulses in my brain are passing between neurons
This is the crux of the issue. Exactly what are those impulses doing? How are they creating the new poem, computer, or marriage? What resources in memory and intuition is the mind drawing upon? Can anyone fully explain how he makes his own creative choices?
If we ask a world class sprinter how he manages to win his races, we do not expect him to say, “First I plant the sole of my foot upon the track. Then using proprioceptors in the muscles of the leg, I attain balance and begin the process of contracting my gastrocnemious followed by a tensing of the quadriceps and a slight relaxation of the biceps femoris which allows the leg to rise above track level with an accelerative force…” Such a response would be odd indeed and would baffle any sportswriter.
What we expect to hear (because it gets to the real issue of the athlete’s superiority) is some discussion of training methods, dietary supplements, coaching philosophy, and psychological preparation. These are issues of the mind and its application to the physical world and they are complex. It is not at all infrequent to find athletes who experience pronounced improvements in performance due to a change of attitude. If we delve into what is meant by “change of attitude” we find ourselves wandering in a thicket of implied rewards, implied threats, reconsiderations of previously known “truths,” mental tricks, reflections upon the past, fresh appreciation for old advice and other such difficult-to-quantify mental constructs. Perhaps the athlete can explain some of this; but he can never fully explain it all in detail because it is opaque even to him.
Thus the act of creation among us humans is extremely difficult to fathom and will always remain dark even for those creative actions which are relatively simple.
Now if we turn to a supreme creator who is disembodied, how that creator might accomplish anything is beyond my comprehension. Nor do I think it useful even to speculate on this topic. However, once a created object appears, it is then possible to examine that object (whether animate or inanimate) and understand how it is put together and how it functions. And this examination and understanding is what I see as the task of science. Speculations about origins, purpose, and meaning involve other realms such as philosophy, theology, and metaphysics.
As famed philosopher of science, Karl Popper, makes clear, science can never be completely separated from metaphysics. There will always be certain assumptions about our physical world which cannot be scientifically supported but which are essential to any scientific undertaking. But the fewer such assumptions, the better.
If I propose that the biosphere is the result of creation performed by a supreme being, I am under no compulsion to provide details of those creative acts. The opaqueness of these creative acts is the metaphysical ground of my approach.
The evolutionist, on the other hand, claims that there is no mystery to the biosphere but on the contrary it is the result of normal physical processes proceeding incrementally over long periods of time. He claims that the processes are transparent. This is his metaphysical stance. Therefore, he is under the compulsion of providing details of that process. The requirement is asymmetric.
So back to my original challenge: please, Mr. Zachriel, meet it as stated. Convert “Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet and so are you,” to a real poem one letter or one word at a time, each substitution resulting in improvement.
Recall that this thread began when I discovered how a one letter change in a poem (the lyrics of the song, “Coming Back to Me” by Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane) resulted in a deepening of meaning which distinctly made the poem better. I was rather amazed at this because it struck me that it must be a rare instance of a good “mutation.” I can think of no other case where a single letter change improves an already accomplished poem.
However, as I pointed out in an earlier post, the mutation actually went the other direction from good to worse. Rickie Lee Jones later version diminished Balin’s poetic conceit. Thus, unfortunately for the evolutionist, my literary example showed how a mutation can degrade complex information rather than improve it. Nonetheless, I think it possible that a one letter change might on occasion improve a poem and I would be delighted to have real examples of such improvement.
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Zachriel
Member
Member # 1793
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posted 05. November 2005 08:47
Laszlo: "I admit to puzzlement. Were my requirements so unclear? In neither case does he begin with a poem. 'O' is hardly the same as Joyce Kilmer’s 'Trees,' nor does it qualify as doggerel. It is just a letter."
Actually, 'O' is a word. It is a complete thought. And it can represent a simple poem, arguably better than the original 'Trees' from which is is derived.
Laszlo: "I am sorry that no one has attempted my challenge of converting doggerel to great poetry one improving letter at a time."
This more than meets your challenge.
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O
O, I, a
or, to, no, bi
be, to, or, not
to be, or not
to be, to be or not
to be or not to be
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Zachriel
Member
Member # 1793
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posted 05. November 2005 08:58
Laszlo: "The issue at hand is whether or not a piece of complex information may be transformed into more complex information via small unit substitutions while maintaining not only meaning but superior meaning with each substitution."
Define meaning in a rigorous sense. I find 'Trees' to be virtually devoid of poetic meaning.
Laszlo: "As I mentioned before, this is the state of things in the world of living things. We find complex individuals, whether bacteria or dinosaurs, which must be converted to more successful individuals by the gain of information."
This is false. Improved survivability can be gained by reducing a genome, or by increasing it. You are confused as to how biological evolution proceeds.
Laszlo: "The process of conversion must proceed in such a manner that each step is superior to the last."
The word "superior" is value-laden. Biology doesn't care about your personal notions of "superior". Biological evolution proceeds by "differential reproductive success".
Laszlo: "Each step must procure improved survivability (the Darwinian definition of superior.)"
Which are more successful? Humans or bacteria? In terms of biomass, bacteria far outweigh insects which far outweigh humans and their cattle.
Laszlo: "My poetry challenge is merely a literary analogue to a process that evolution supposedly has carried out through the history of life on Earth. My reason for proposing the challenge is simply to discover whether such a process has any hope of functioning in the general realm of information."
Common Descent implies that life evolved from more primitive ancestors. As such, the derivation of 'Beware a War of Words' more than meets that challenge. As far as the ability of random mutation to meet the challenge, Word Mutagenation is capable of generating multi-syllabic words in a very short period of time. Once provided a valid set of rules for determining what constitutes "poetry", a similar program could also evolve poems of reasonable length.
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