Continued random confusion

... also seems to mangle Dawkins' Weasel example, which seems a common affliction amongst creationists.

Am I being a nitpicker if I say
"Nobody knows nothing about no one at noone"?
Must be my aural fixation.

Sorry PvM I mean no off fence and I hope none is taken.

As someone who's done a lot of work with population-based optimisation algorithms seeing people show such ignorance about the basic ideas severely pisses me off. (Dembski's talk of the No Free Lunch theorems and optimisation makes my blood positively boil)

The main mistaken assumption seems to be that they believe knowing the objective function and knowing the optimal solution are one and the same. Only in trivial toy cases, such as Dawkins purely illustrative Weasel example, is this the case.

Someone should hand one of these people a Rubik's Cube, tell them to get all the colours on each face the same, and then call them a moron if they can't instantly do it. Hey, look, I defined the target, why can't you do it?! In the majority cases, of course, there is no actual target at all, just a desire to minimise or maximise some value (number of offspring, anyone?), so any argument based on targets falls utterly apart.

Genetic algorithms and related population-based algorithms are used every day to solve complex and mathematically intractable problems. From the impression these guys give you'd think that the entire field of optimisation is just some scam made to prop up evolutionary biology.

In the case of Steiner networks, it was remarkable that some people just couldn't grasp that the value being optimized -- the sum of the path lengths -- was only a property of, and thus a very different thing from, the network -- a set of points, and that the built-in "knowledge" that a smaller sum was preferable to a larger sum was in no way built-in knowledge about the solution.

Agreed, Popper.

Although the Steiner problem is pretty simple (at a definition level), I'd say the simplest example to use to defeat this sort of thinking is probably the Travelling Salesman Problem: trivial problem definition, trivial calculation of solution quality, bastard hard problem :)

If you mangle the Weasle, then you can't can't understand genetic algorithims and evolutionary programming.

Is there anything redeeming to Intelligent Design?

... it occupies people who would otherwise be defending Time Cube?

... okay, I guess that's an ambiguous benefit, really. Sorry. Got nothing.

But 'mangling the weasel' has a lovely resonance. I think I'll be using it, generally, for all such confusions to come.

In the physics community there has been over 30 years of research on the kinds of persistent misconceptions students bring with them to physics courses. Even after addressing the roots of these misconceptions and seemingly correcting them, they often return in other contexts.

The misconceptions the ID/Creationists have about things related to information, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics seem to me to be among the most persistent I have seen. It raises some questions. What are the roots of these misconceptions? Are they misconceptions about fundamental physical processes and cause and effect? Are they misconceptions about what is being selected? Are they misconceptions about targeted and non-targeted outcomes? Are they misconceptions about probabilities? Is it a deliberate exploitation of the misconceptions many people have about randomness and order?

I have often suspected that there is something about their prior beliefs that almost guarantees the ID/Creationists will have the kinds of persistent misconceptions they routinely exhibit. It is too painful for them to acknowledge that the physical world may behave in ways that are inconsistent with their beliefs. Therefore there must be something wrong with the science. They fix this in their own minds by adopting misconceptions that allow their prior beliefs.

Unfortunately for them, they cannot use these misconceptions to produce any viable research results because they will always be asking the wrong questions and getting nonsense answers that remain consistent with their beliefs. That in turn reinforces their confidence in the truth of their beliefs and entrenches the scientific misconceptions they already have. They then accuse us of doing what they have been doing. The "Wedge Document" gives a pretty good outline of how they mean to fix the secular world.

I suspect it will be almost impossible to address their misconceptions in any significant way because it is such a deeply emotional issue for them involving Pascal's wager. Going to hell for eternity is not an option for them.

"Seems that noone has informed Logan Gage"

Who's this noone fellow, and how does he know Logan?

Pim van Meurs asks: Is there anything redeeming to Intelligent Design?

Yes. Without ID PvM would never have come up with the term "mangle the Weasle," (or rather, "mangle Dawkins' Weasel," which actually sounds more perverse).

Also, ID exposes interesting and subtle questions about "what is intelligence?" and "what is design?" even if ID proponents can't see past their own assumptions about intelligence and design. It does so in a way that makes me notice the similarity between the way genetic algorithms work and the way neural nets work.

The misconceptions the ID/Creationists have about things related to information, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics seem to me to be among the most persistent I have seen. It raises some questions. What are the roots of these misconceptions? Are they misconceptions about fundamental physical processes and cause and effect? Are they misconceptions about what is being selected? Are they misconceptions about targeted and non-targeted outcomes? Are they misconceptions about probabilities? Is it a deliberate exploitation of the misconceptions many people have about randomness and order?

— Mike Elzinga

the weasel shouldn't even exist. It's only there because, amazingly, people are too stupid to understand the not incredibly difficult concept of cumulative selection. and THEN, those people it was designed for can't even learn it's simple message; instead, they think weasel's supposed to be a (or the) proof of evolution.

In addition to failing to comprehend the concept of randomness, Gage now seems to confuse random mutation with the Darwinian process'. Has no one informed him that the Darwinian process consists of two components? In fact, mutations were not even known in Darwin's days, thus Darwin speaks of variation and selection.

— PvM

Creationists who have been active in propagandizing any appreciable amount of time understand full well that evolution involves variation and selection. Their attempt to equate evolution with "random mutation" is deliberate. Their dishonesty is deliberate. While I don't think they are particularly bright, they enjoy "proving" how stupid the bright guys on the other side are by getting them to buy into their "dumb guy" routine. Particularly when it means that you will keep trying to explain to them the same principle over and over to them until you give up exhausted. If they use the same tired quotes and send you off on a wild goose chase time and again to prove that a given evolutionary biologist didn't mean what they twisted their words to say, do you think that is out of shear innocent stupidity? No one keeps posting the same erroneous arguments time and time again, spaced only a few days apart, after having been corrected each time - unless the "error" is deliberate. Particularly when no amount of pointing out just how wrong they are on something so simple ever gets them to change. On something as basic as this, it is not a lack of understanding, but a perversion of the will. However, in their minds, the fact that they can get some of us to buy into their dumb-guy routine no matter how dumb they play it proves that they are the one's who are actually brighter. Of course, this sort of approach means that they will never understand much more than how to play simple mind games with those who are brighter than they are, but for them I suppose, such are the limits of their ambitions. In the meantime, those who buy into their act are spinning their wheels for the amusement of such self-styled fools.

Yes. Without ID PvM would never have come up with the term "mangle the Weasle," (or rather, "mangle Dawkins' Weasel," which actually sounds more perverse).

If you mangle the Weasle, then you can't can't understand genetic algorithims and evolutionary programming.

'mangle the weasel' could be something like 'jump the shark'?

as in

"How about Behe's latest argument on flagella?"
"Nah, it's rubbish, he really mangled the weasel on that one"

Or, "Check out Sal's latest article, its a cracking piece of weasel mangling"

Is it me, or am I missing something? I'm not a biologist, and I'm not even particularly eddicated, but the weasel mangling applet seems to miss out on some important steps that were detailed by Dawkins.

As I understood it, the weasel thing only works if you make a random change, then duplicate that random change as 'offspring' randomly mutate all of the offspring, then take the most 'successful' one and rinse and repeat.

This applet seems to be a 'straw applet' that couldn't possibly work.

Or, is there something about natural selection and genetic algorithms that I've failed to grasp?

Thanks all.

Cordova's grappling with Dave Thomas's genetic algorithm was one of the funniest things I've seen here. The only way he could avoid lying was to pretend to be so stupid that he didn't know the difference between a simulation and the software running it.

Of course, he could have genuinely been that stupid, but I don't want to insult him.

paul h ...not exactly

the weasel thingy only works if the mutations are "beneficial" ..anything that is in the correct position and is the correct letter is retained and passed on to offspring

this is genetic variation and natural selection

in real organisms this probably wouldnt be so black and white

Here's an article just in from PhysOrg.com. What Professor Shepherd proposes should prove to be very enlightening. He used his algorithm on the book, Emma, by Jane Austen, and was able to break up 80% of the text---minus punctuation marks and inputted just as a string of letters---into words and sentences without any knowledge of grammar. Just think of what analogies can be drawn if they end up breaking up 80% of DNA into grammatical wholes!

For goodness sake, Dawkins himself was fully aware of the limitations in his example. Why do people keep repeating the mistake of claiming he made a mistake?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=pzgEZa0r4qE

He was just using it to illustrate the difference between complete randomness and cumulative selection, it's not a model of evolution and Dawkins fully knew this.

Will people now please stop making this mistake?

Thanks.

It should be kept in mind that to a Creationist (including those of the ID persuasion) the term "Darwinism" does not have a specific technical scientific definition. At least it doesn't just have that. What it really means is, "that part of evolutionary theory that runs afoul of my religion". Really, it often isn't even limited to evolutionary theory ... virtually any finding in science that runs afoul of their religion (as they understand it anyway, and who doesn't of course understand it the way God really intends) will also be derided as 'Darwinism'. And anyone who accepts such findings is obviously a 'Darwinist'. It all has very little to do with selection and whatnot.

It should be kept in mind that to a Creationist (including those of the ID persuasion) the term "Darwinism" does not have a specific technical scientific definition. At least it doesn't just have that. What it really means is, "that part of evolutionary theory that runs afoul of my religion

Re "Will people now please stop making this mistake?"

Very unlikely, given that many of them already knew it was a mistake when they made it.

Henry