Criticisms of Dembski's <i>No Free Lunch</i> go unnoticed . . . again and again

I'm not entirely following all of the NFLT argument for ID because it screams "red herring" on the face of it, and it is uninteresting to work to learn something just to confirm that yes, it is as bogus as it appears ...

... but it seems the root fallacy is like that of a supply officer for a military unit who determines the average size of the troops in the unit, and then obtains uniforms for them all in that one size.

I think it's the other way around. It's like a supply officer saying that it is impossible to order uniforms for a unit because the sizes of troops are random.

Of course, one can go out and measure a specific unit and order the uniforms that fit them.

Reed A. Cartwright said: Of course, one can go out and measure a specific unit and order the uniforms that fit them.

Well in my army, everyone get hand tailored uniforms because the military-sartorial complex is too powerful in Washington. Gotta spend the tax dollars somewhere.

Reed A. Cartwright said: Well in my army, everyone get hand tailored uniforms because the military-sartorial complex is too powerful in Washington. Gotta spend the tax dollars somewhere.

So what has Dembski said in reply to these criticisms?

He says: "I don't have to match your pathetic level of detail."

I think the whole point of that article on UD was to make that ONE quotemine of Wolpert.

Uncommon Descent used to be amusing because of the unstable nature of Dembski and DaveScot (maybe I'm crazy, but I always wondered if the latter was Berlinski - but of course, extreme arrogance, foul temper, and claims of mathematical genius are a common trait cluster).

Now it's just a rubber room for a tiny cult of not-very-bright deniers. I doubt if there's much of a recruitment rate.

Possibly relevant - there has been some evidence of increased acceptance of evolution in polls since 2005.

I've often complained about polls that bias the question with implications that accepting evolution contradicts religion. This latest Gallup poll simply used a "yes, no, don't know" structure. The response of science supporters has been, understandably, to complain about the mere 39% "yes" rate, but look at the rest. Only 25% outright deny evolution. I personally see it as a sign of honesty that 36% admit they "don't know". Also, when broken down by education, the "yes" to "don't know" ratio increases, which suggests honest answers. I'd certainly like to see more "yes", but a 39:25 "yes/no" ratio is probably an improvement over past levels. http://www.gallup.com/poll/114544/darwin-birthday-believe-evolution.aspx

Also, FASEB did a poll, the raw results of which I can't find, in 2008. They claim a 61% rate of acceptance of evolution among Americans. That poll was apparently structured in the biasing "did God create humans of did they evolve" format, but nevertheless, "only evolution" and "evolution guide by God" apparently combined to 61%. I need to find the raw questions and how the sampling was done, but that seems like an improvement over similar polls of the past. Caveat - FASEB is a "pro-science" source, of course.

Obviously, we can't be sure whether any of this is related to ID. But one possible tentative conclusion is that the whole ID scheme backfired. Bringing evolution into the media again and provoking scientists to make strong rebuttals mildly to moderately increased public understanding and acceptance of evolution. As I said, this is just a tentative, hypothetical idea, but it's intuitively credible.

In particular, it fits with my personal experience from the early heydays of ID - when I tried to actually explain ID and counter it with an explanation of evolution to actual neutral people from non-science backgrounds, they saw the logical flaws in ID much more quickly than I expected (which is evidence of how dishonest and/or conflicted creationist trolls are).

harold said: Uncommon Descent used to be amusing because of the unstable nature of Dembski and DaveScot (maybe I'm crazy, but I always wondered if the latter was Berlinski - but of course, extreme arrogance, foul temper, and claims of mathematical genius are a common trait cluster).

Interestingly, Kolmogrov [sic] complexity is uncomputable [sic] in the general case due to the halting problem. This means that in general no algorithm can generate orderliness more often than is statistically expected to show up by chance. Hence, if some entity is capable of generating orderliness more often than statistically predicted, it must be capabable [sic], at least to some extent, of solving the halting problem.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/Qjp5enRppdSW.nr6IdCgLASLhOc-#9be9d said: Eric Holloway once said this:

Interestingly, Kolmogrov [sic] complexity is uncomputable [sic] in the general case due to the halting problem.

In effect, a single mutation has the same effect as mutating every site in the genome simultaneously. (I apologize for shouting, but the point is not being noticed over at UD).

rni.boh said: IIRC, DaveScot got this point, and commented somewhere that he had told Dembski that this pushes ID back to cosmological ID.

RodW said: So what has Dembski said in reply to these criticisms?

The only reason I can think of for playing this game is to protect scriptural literalism, but I’m unsure if that’s the only motive.

It’s like gibberish for weasels.

Of course, Dave is a UD outcast too, nowadays.

The only reason I can think of for playing this game is to protect scriptural literalism, but I’m unsure if that’s the only motive

harold said: Yes, of course that is the only direct motive.

So the No Free Lunch Theorem does not model real biology, not even in a simple model of evolution searching for genotypes of higher fitness on a fitness surface.

Mike Elzinga said:

So the No Free Lunch Theorem does not model real biology, not even in a simple model of evolution searching for genotypes of higher fitness on a fitness surface.

I would suggest that it doesn’t even model the formation of Jell-O or rock salt.

In addition to Dr. Felsenstein's smoothness argument, it seems to me........
The peaks in biology are not independent of the organisms' presence on them, but exhibit non-linear self-feedback. One way to get off being "trapped on a fitness peak" is to have lots of nearly identical offspring. Should they compete heavily with each other in the same niche, propagate disease, etc., average fitness will go down. Their (or some eventual even higher populated generation's) offspring can then wander around the fitness landscape again after the peak has been "leveled".

mrg said:

harold said: Yes, of course that is the only direct motive.

I have this suspicion that there are other motives lurking in there. There are creationists who are not fundies; they are rare, of course, and since it is hard to understand why anyone who wasn't a fundy would want to be a creationist, they have to be far crazier than anyone could imagine.

harold said: Technically the point is not that they themselves are fundamentalist, but that they seek to make others fundamentalist, so that unpopular authoritarian policies can be pushed through on "Biblical" grounds.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/Qjp5enRppdSW.nr6IdCgLASLhOc-#9be9d said: In addition to Dr. Felsenstein's smoothness argument, it seems to me........ The peaks in biology are not independent of the organisms' presence on them, but exhibit non-linear self-feedback. One way to get off being "trapped on a fitness peak" is to have lots of nearly identical offspring. Should they compete heavily with each other in the same niche, propagate disease, etc., average fitness will go down. Their (or some eventual even higher populated generation's) offspring can then wander around the fitness landscape again after the peak has been "leveled".

mrg -

I do assign them more "logic", in the sense of being consciously or unconsciously able to pursue their authoritarian goals, than some others do.

It's also true that the human mind is a complex thing.

If a used car salesman is trying to sell someone a car, a very concrete interpretation would be that the salesman is an idiot who sincerely believes everything he says about a lousy car. A slightly more sophisticated interpretation is that he's a conscious dastardly schemer who is secretly chuckling, and that's sometimes true. But perhaps more often, even while being driven by his desire to sell the car, he begins to believe
his own lines. Nevertheless, he wouldn't be issuing them if it weren't for his desire to sell the car.

What authoritarians with sexual, gender, and ethnic obsessions are trying to sell is more complex and abstract, but it's kind of the same.

Anybody who thinks lunch is free hasn't been to a fast food place lately. :p

Who is Eric Holloway?

Joe Felsenstein said: The Orr-Wolpert Defense is basically irrelevant to that point -- we have to look at that simple model and see whether natural selection can work there. And in fact, once we look, we see that NS does work as the NFLT imposes an unreal condition on the way genotypes affect phenotypes. In cases with smoother fitness surfaces NS works fine.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/Qjp5enRppdSW.nr6IdCgLASLhOc-#9be9d said: Who is Eric Holloway?

mrg said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/Qjp5enRppdSW.nr6IdCgLASLhOc-#9be9d said: Who is Eric Holloway?

AITSE -- clearly NCSE turned inside out.

Indeed, throughout there is a marked elision of the formal details of the biological processes under consideration. Perhaps the most glaring example of this is that neo-Darwinian evolution of ecosystems does not involve a set of genomes all searching the same, fixed fitness function, the situation considered by the NFL theorems. Rather it is a co-evolutionary process. Roughly speaking, as each genome changes from one generation to the next, it modifies the surfaces that the other genomes are searching. And recent results indicate that NFL results do not hold in co-evolution.

Do the arguments of this paper contradict the evidence of remarkable adaptive mechanisms in biota? The question is meaningful only if one regards evolutionary adaptation as function optimization. Unfortunately, that model has not been validated. It is well known that biota are components of complex, dynamical ecosystems. Adaptive forces can change rapidly and nonlinearly, due in part to the fact that evolutionary adaptation is itself ecological change. In terms of function optimization, evaluation of points changes the fitness function. The Conservation Lemma [from which the necessary and sufficient condition for NFL follows] clearly does not apply to such a process.

Had some problems posting, and lost track of a revision: "But divergence of one biological type from another does not depend on either type being fitter than the other in any sense."

Tom English said: ... People are at a loss for a non-teleological verb to describe what life does as it evolves. Lately I've thought that life spreads. That seems particularly appropriate when one considers that bacteria comprise most of the Earth's biomass. Bacteria spread like a big infection into the damnedest places, without trying at all to do so. They've gotten into geyser pools, and they've gotten onto spent nuclear fuel rods. The spread of life is not optimization of fitness. Tom English

Tom English said: Joe Felsenstein, Tweak: Wolpert and Macready are physicists.

Tom English: [snip Wolpert and Macready quote] This is similar to what I wrote in "Evaluation of Evolutionary and Genetic Optimizers: No Free Lunch" (1996):

Do the arguments of this paper contradict the evidence of remarkable adaptive mechanisms in biota? The question is meaningful only if one regards evolutionary adaptation as function optimization. ... [snip description of complexities of evolution] The Conservation Lemma [from which the necessary and sufficient condition for NFL follows] clearly does not apply to such a process.

... Tom English

A very interesting thread with ideas expressed that are in harmony with my way of thinking.

But with respect to Dembski I think we have to acknowledge that he has painted himself into a corner out of which the cost of backing out is preemptive.

Joe Felsenstein said: So it's still true that no one over there has answered -- or raised --the criticisms mentioned here.

Tom English said: Nowadays I say without reservation that to regard biological evolution as fitness optimization is to let teleology slip through the back door. Optimization models are useful in certain limited contexts. But divergence of one biological type from another does not depend on either type being fitter than the other in any sense. We know that mere geographic isolation, for instance, can do the trick.

Joe Felsenstein said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/Qjp5enRppdSW.nr6IdCgLASLhOc-#9be9d said: In addition to Dr. Felsenstein's smoothness argument, it seems to me........ The peaks in biology are not independent of the organisms' presence on them, but exhibit non-linear self-feedback. One way to get off being "trapped on a fitness peak" is to have lots of nearly identical offspring. Should they compete heavily with each other in the same niche, propagate disease, etc., average fitness will go down. Their (or some eventual even higher populated generation's) offspring can then wander around the fitness landscape again after the peak has been "leveled".

I think absolute fitness will go down, the question is whether relative fitness of different genotypes changes. This isn't obvious -- depends on how you have the ecology set up. The NFL argument applies to constant relative fitnesses. To refute it within that model you need to stay within that model and stick to that case.

Is it still a barrier, though if the peak remains for a timescale thats larger than the timescale necessary to reach the peak?

Rolf said: But with respect to Dembski I think we have to acknowledge that he has painted himself into a corner out of which the cost of backing out is preemptive.

Joe Felsenstein said: I see Holloway is a computer science masters student now in the Air Force, went to college at Biola University (surprise!). He worked on evolutionary algorithms for his MSc. ... computer scientists won't know as much about that as mathematical and computational biologists, particularly population geneticists.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/Qjp5enRppdSW.nr6IdCgLASLhOc-#9be9d said: Who is Eric Holloway?

harold said: However, if he is being paid by the US taxpayer to perform national security duties in the Air Force, and is spending any part of that time posting divisive, ignorant science denial on the internet, he should be disciplined.

harold said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/Qjp5enRppdSW.nr6IdCgLASLhOc-#9be9d said: Who is Eric Holloway?

This is unbelievably infuriating. 1) More evidence that the taxpayers of the United States are being forced to support an Air Force that compromises its national security mission with religion-pushing.

3) If he is posting creationist rants on Air Force time, that is a true outrage. Hopefully he's doing it all on his own time. However, I am skeptical of that.

Joe Felsenstein said: Let's concentrate on one undeniable fact -- he has his head up his ass. He has a right to have it there but it must be painful.

Joe Felsenstein -

Yes, I very strongly support his right to hold and express his own views on his own time.

I was recently granted (by the PT powers-that-be) the power to manage comments here. Some seem to need approval by me (perhaps from people who are not logged in). I'm just learning the system.

If you posted a comment and it has not been approved, please be patient -- I just figured out that I need to do that. Now I need to rush off for several hours on other business. Please be patient, this is not censorship, it is merely incompetence.

Joe Felsenstein said: If you posted a comment and it has not been approved, please be patient -- I just figured out that I need to do that. Now I need to rush off for several hours on other business.

Tom English said: Nowadays I say without reservation that to regard biological evolution as fitness optimization is to let teleology slip through the back door.

mrg said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/Qjp5enRppdSW.nr6IdCgLASLhOc-#9be9d said: Who is Eric Holloway?

AITSE -- clearly NCSE turned inside out.

Richard B. Hoppe said: I note that Caroline Crocker is President of that outfit.

The origin of the universe, the origin of life, the origin of kinds of living things, and the origin of humans cannot be explained adequately apart from reference to that intelligent exercise of power. A proper understanding of science does not require that all phenomena in nature must be explained solely by reference to physical events, laws and chance. Therefore, creation models which seek to harmonize science and the Bible should maintain at least the following: (a) God providentially directs His creation, (b) He specially intervened in at least the above-mentioned points in the creation process, and (c) God specially created Adam and Eve (Adam’s body from non-living material, and his spiritual nature immediately from God). Inadequate origin models hold that (a) God never directly intervened in creating nature and/or (b) humans share a common physical ancestry with earlier life forms.

eric said:

Tom English said: Nowadays I say without reservation that to regard biological evolution as fitness optimization is to let teleology slip through the back door.

I somewhat disagree. There's no teleology implied in saying proximate causes (like the environment and other animals) do the optimization. That's like saying gravity does the pulling. Now, I would agree that both 'the environment does...' and 'gravity does...' may give some people a linguistic sense of intelligent agency, design, or ultimate cause. So there may be a linguistic back door, even if there isn't a substantive one. But if 'gravity does the pulling' doesn't make you believe in god (and I find it hard to think anyone would take that sentence teleologically), then 'the environment does the selecting' shouldn't either. I also agree with you that optimization is not all that's going on. But local optimization over generations is part of it.

Joe Felsenstein said: Please be patient, this is not censorship, it is merely incompetence.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/Qjp5enRppdSW.nr6IdCgLASLhOc-#9be9d said: The Biola Doctrinal Statement, accepted by all Holloway's professors: ... [snip Biola science denial]

Joe Felsenstein said: This indicates either obliviousness or chutzpah.

mrg said: Any comments that I had that didn't get posted, delete them please. I was wondering why the system seemed so inconsistent on accepting and rejecting my postings.

eric said:

Tom English said: Nowadays I say without reservation that to regard biological evolution as fitness optimization is to let teleology slip through the back door.

I somewhat disagree. There's no teleology implied in saying proximate causes (like the environment and other animals) do the optimization. That's like saying gravity does the pulling. Now, I would agree that both 'the environment does...' and 'gravity does...' may give some people a linguistic sense of intelligent agency, design, or ultimate cause. So there may be a linguistic back door, even if there isn't a substantive one. But if 'gravity does the pulling' doesn't make you believe in god (and I find it hard to think anyone would take that sentence teleologically), then 'the environment does the selecting' shouldn't either. I also agree with you that optimization is not all that's going on. But local optimization over generations is part of it.

Reed A. Cartwright said: Your comments were getting flag because you accidentally used a word that matched a troll's handle.

Mike Elzinga said:

Tom English said: ... People are at a loss for a non-teleological verb to describe what life does as it evolves. Lately I've thought that life spreads. That seems particularly appropriate when one considers that bacteria comprise most of the Earth's biomass. Bacteria spread like a big infection into the damnedest places, without trying at all to do so. They've gotten into geyser pools, and they've gotten onto spent nuclear fuel rods. The spread of life is not optimization of fitness. Tom English

A better description might be taken from physics by saying that life percolates.

what is notable about Holloway is not his creationism (boring!) He nevertheless seemingly doesn't "get" the oft-repeated criticism... He is in the unusual position of calling for computer scientists to validate his view, while at the same time he does not acknowledge the main opposing view... This indicates either obliviousness or chutzpah.

Tom English said:

Mike Elzinga said:

Tom English said: ... People are at a loss for a non-teleological verb to describe what life does as it evolves. Lately I've thought that life spreads. That seems particularly appropriate when one considers that bacteria comprise most of the Earth's biomass. Bacteria spread like a big infection into the damnedest places, without trying at all to do so. They've gotten into geyser pools, and they've gotten onto spent nuclear fuel rods. The spread of life is not optimization of fitness. Tom English

A better description might be taken from physics by saying that life percolates.

That's very interesting. I'm a thermo wimp, but I'll take a shot at some papers I found Googling.

mrg said: I get a little exasperated at the idea that creationists are incredibly devious. Devious in a low cunning way, certainly, but it's driven more by perversity than cleverness.

There's a 3rd category besides creationist debaters.
EH's a serious creationist -- choosing to specialize in evolutionary algorithms. He's not a person in the pew who accepts cre-ism like they accept sand in the Sahara -- without fervor, interest, nor understanding of why/how/etc.
Serious creationism is more than a series of bullet points on a doctrinal statement -- it's contempt for much of the science community, history, etc as delusional/incompetent/ideological/etc.
Thus EH gets "bored to frustration" reading things he rejects. Why try to grok the workings of mediocrities/ideologues?

What is your explanation for behavior you point tout?

https://me.yahoo.com/a/Qjp5enRppdSW.nr6IdCgLASLhOc-#9be9d said: What is your explanation for behavior you point tout?

Joe Felsenstein said: I hope you meant the former (the debaters) when you described "creationists".

Joe Felsenstein said:

What is your explanation for behavior you point tout?

Who points what?

https://me.yahoo.com/a/Qjp5enRppdSW.nr6IdCgLASLhOc-#9be9d said: Obviously you, pointing out EH's "obliviousness or chutzpah". His behavior of "calling for" while then "refusing to acknowledge". Would your explanation be purely his character, completely unrelated to his serious creationism and years of fundamentalist education? Or was that a typo comment re " t out"?

Re: who pointing tout what

I give up on that part of the thread. I am less interested in Holloway's motivation and past influences than I am in how he reconciles his training in evolutionary algorithms and his call for serious comment by computer scientists with his ability to ignore the most serious criticism that has been made (and by about 7 people over the years) of the use of the No Free Lunch argument against evolutionary theory. The NFL argument is, after all, arguing that natural selection cannot improve fitness effectively in a simple evolutionary algorithm, and he's supposed to know about such things.

Joe Felsenstein said: I give up on that part of the thread.

Maybe someone can lend me a hand here, since I've never understood the fitness landscape. Let's say a species has 1000 characteristics that contribute to its success. Let's say that some mutation alters one of these in such a way as to make the possessor of this mutation less competitive for the old lifestyle, but more competitive for a slightly different lifestyle. Evolution being opportunistic, I should think this is more the rule than the exception. So do we say its fitness peak moved, or do we say that there's an upward path to a different peak? If the organisms currently occupying this different niche aren't as competitive as the new "invasive" species, then could this be a downward path? Or what WOULD its slope be considered?

With so many characteristics to modify, I would envision paths of all different slopes heading in all directions all the time, even with a stable environment. Is this accurate? How does NFL handle this situation?

I am less interested in Holloway’s motivation and past influences than I am in how he reconciles his training in evolutionary algorithms and his call for serious comment by computer scientists with his ability to ignore the most serious criticism that has been made (and by about 7 people over the years) of the use of the No Free Lunch argument against evolutionary theory.

harold said: Well, you're not going to be able to understand any of that without understanding his background and biases.

mrg said:

harold said: Well, you're not going to be able to understand any of that without understanding his background and biases.

Sadly that can be kind of a quagmire. I suppose creationists are easier than conspiracy theorists, since I can at least perceive the motivations of creationists -- I have given up trying to figure out the kind of people who make up conspiracy theories on every possible pretext.

Flint said: Oddly perhaps, it's never seemed that much of a problem to me. What we have is a tension set up between evidence on the one hand, and committed preference on the other.

Flint said: With so many characteristics to modify, I would envision paths of all different slopes heading in all directions all the time, even with a stable environment. Is this accurate? How does NFL handle this situation?

How did that NFL theorem get that name, anyway?

harold said:

I am less interested in Holloway’s motivation and past influences than I am in how he reconciles his training in evolutionary algorithms and his call for serious comment by computer scientists with his ability to ignore the most serious criticism that has been made (and by about 7 people over the years) of the use of the No Free Lunch argument against evolutionary theory.

Well, you're not going to be able to understand any of that without understanding his background and biases. ... [lots snipped] There's no point in approaching him as a guy who simply made an honest logical error, because it's exquisitely unlikely that he fits that description. ... On the positive side, the relatively more public scientific critique of ID/creationism of the last decade and a half (provoked by the aggression of ID/creationism) seems to be working. The number of relatively neutral people who mistake ID/creationism for "one side of a valid controversy" seems to be reducing. ...

Flint said: Maybe someone can lend me a hand here, since I've never understood the fitness landscape. Let's say a species has 1000 characteristics that contribute to its success. Let's say that some mutation alters one of these in such a way as to make the possessor of this mutation less competitive for the old lifestyle, but more competitive for a slightly different lifestyle. Evolution being opportunistic, I should think this is more the rule than the exception. So do we say its fitness peak moved, or do we say that there's an upward path to a different peak? If the organisms currently occupying this different niche aren't as competitive as the new "invasive" species, then could this be a downward path? Or what WOULD its slope be considered? With so many characteristics to modify, I would envision paths of all different slopes heading in all directions all the time, even with a stable environment. Is this accurate? How does NFL handle this situation?

Henry J said: How did that NFL theorem get that name, anyway?

mrg said:

Flint said: Oddly perhaps, it's never seemed that much of a problem to me. What we have is a tension set up between evidence on the one hand, and committed preference on the other.

One conspiracy I can understand. Making them up continually on all pretexts I do not. I have seen conspiracy theorists online talking among themselves online on making up conspiracy theories, like they were plots of sci-fi novels. If you tell me you understand this, I won't believe you.

Flint said: And for this, you'd need an abnormal psychologist.

Joe Felsenstein said:

RodW said: So what has Dembski said in reply to these criticisms?

Over the years, basically nothing, even when he wrote The Design Revolution which had as its subtitle "Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design". But he didn't answer that criticism. But he very quietly, implicitly, acknowledges it by bringing forth his (and Robert Marks's) Search For A Search argument: if fitness surfaces are smooth (so that natural selection will work) this is supposedly because they are "front-loaded" to allow this. My own reaction (see here) is that the weakness of interactions at a distance in physics is sufficient to make fitness surfaces smooth. For example a gene affecting my eye pigment typically does not interact strongly with one that affects the length of my big toe, and that is not evidence that some Designer has been tinkering around.

RodW said: I have to say I dont think any of these models reflect reality. There may be fitness peaks and adaptive mutations but these are a rare sideline to evolution. The real fitness landscape is mostly flat with lots of pot-holes and populations tend to spread over the entire landscape avoiding the pot-holes of course. And genotypes dont move over a landscape. They create and mold and deform it under them with each mutation.

Rumraket said:

RodW said: I have to say I dont think any of these models reflect reality. There may be fitness peaks and adaptive mutations but these are a rare sideline to evolution. The real fitness landscape is mostly flat with lots of pot-holes and populations tend to spread over the entire landscape avoiding the pot-holes of course. And genotypes dont move over a landscape. They create and mold and deform it under them with each mutation.

That's my impression too. People like D. Axe has tried to claim that evolution is impossible because functional sequence space is akin to a static, flat, unfathomably vast desert of nonfuncitonality with isolated islands of function. If I remember correctly, the claim was something like one in 1x10^77 sequences will have function. The rest are dead ends. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2010.1/BIO-C.2010.1

It seems to me that what that shows is that its very unlikely that any particular pile of random matter will spontaneously form life.

Henry J said:

It seems to me that what that shows is that its very unlikely that any particular pile of random matter will spontaneously form life.

No surprise there, but now multiply that probability by the number of different piles of matter in the universe. (Not any one planet in the universe, but all of them.)

Mike Elzinga said:

Henry J said:

It seems to me that what that shows is that its very unlikely that any particular pile of random matter will spontaneously form life.

No surprise there, but now multiply that probability by the number of different piles of matter in the universe. (Not any one planet in the universe, but all of them.)

:-) Bingo! And on those planets where it didn’t happen, there is no one to ask why it didn’t happen there.

RodW said: It seems to me that what that shows is that its very unlikely that any particular pile of random matter will spontaneously form life.

RodW said:Any serious consideration starts at T=0 with a living thing that is already perfectly adapted ( since it is alive and not dead) and considers how the population will explore genetic space. We know that populations have a tremendous amount of genetic diversity so they DO in fact explore genetic space.

RodW said:Right now I’m sympathetic to the notion of ‘constructive neutral evoluion’ which holds that much of the complexity we see is due to a neutral ratcheting up in complexity that cant be avoided and has no immediate benefit or harm.

RodW said:I think its conceptually appealing though I admit there isnt much evidence for it now and over at the ID blog Behe has a more or less reasonable critique of it.

Joe Felsenstein said:

Mike Elzinga said:

Henry J said:

It seems to me that what that shows is that its very unlikely that any particular pile of random matter will spontaneously form life.

No surprise there, but now multiply that probability by the number of different piles of matter in the universe. (Not any one planet in the universe, but all of them.)

:-) Bingo! And on those planets where it didn’t happen, there is no one to ask why it didn’t happen there.

Not so fast. I think all the scenarios suggested for the origin of life do not just relay on random piles of matter (though creationists like to present it that way). They rely on chemicals that, when present together, mutually encourage each other's presence and persistence. That is much less than biological replication, but it is partway there.

Joe Felsenstein said: I think that, as much as we need to appreciate the complexity and subtleties of evolving living systems, simple models in which fitness is optimized are worth analyzing. Here Dembski's NFL argument is argued to show that fitness cannot be effectively increased even in such a simple model. That would be a major surprise. In fact, as the many critics I quoted (from Richard Wein on) pointed out, what was wrong with Dembski's argument was that it used the NFLT which required us to average the behavior of the optimization algorithm over all possible ways a bunch of fitnesses could be assigned to genotypes. But almost all of these make very jaggy fitness surfaces, nearly "white noise" surfaces. But real biology makes much smoother fitness surfaces. To my mind, that, and not the broader issue of whether fitness optimization is close to what living systems do, is the real objection to Dembski's argument. Your argument is an argument from the complexities of real organisms, but what I hear it doing is implicitly conceding that within a simple fitness optimization case Dembski's argument would be convincing. But no, his argument isn't convincing even there, as it relies on fitness surfaces that are unlike real biology. So it can be rejected without even getting to the complexities.

Though not denying Darwinian evolution or even limiting its role in the history of life, the Law of Conservation of Information shows that Darwinian evolution is inherently teleological. Moreover, it shows that this teleology can be measured in precise information-theoretic terms.

Searches that operate by Darwinian selection, for instance, often significantly outperform blind search. But when they do, it is because they exploit information supplied by a fitness function — information that is unavailable to blind search. Searches that have a greater probability of success than blind search do not just magically materialize. They form by some [intelligent] process.

The argument countering the notion that where there’s a successful program,

Intuitively, the NFL theorem illustrates that if knowledge of [problem] f... is not incorporated into [algorithm] a, then there are no formal assurances that a will be effective. Rather, in this case effective optimization relies on a fortuitous matching between f and a.

Dembski and Marks continue to set up the same straw-man argument every time. It is an egregious misrepresentation of what programs like genetic algorithms and Monte Carlo programs, for example, do.

When a computer program incorporates within its algorithms the very processes found in nature, the outputs produce what nature produces. What can possibly be so difficult in that for Dembski and Marks to understand?

They continue to take potshots at Dawkins’s Weasel program without recognizing that a simple shift in perspective turns the program into one in which atoms are settling into a configuration of potential wells by radiating energy. That’s what nature does. The results are things like crystals and living organisms.

There is no “answer smuggled in.” It’s a simulation of nature as we best can understand it, approximate it, and are able to cast it in the form of a set of algorithms that can run on a computer.

Way back in my ultrasonic imaging days I developed algorithms that synthesized the way a lens or focusing aperture guided rays to a focal point. I derived these from minimizing the time of travel from a point in one media to another point in another media. In effect, the computer became a lens that took all the captured waveform data from a scan with a single transducer and sharpened the image of what was inside the object being scanned. I even wrote programs that "injected" data into these focusing programs and measured their point-spread-functions under various conditions.

I didn’t put in the answer; I turned the computer into a lens. I instructed the computer to do what nature does when focusing.

Genetic algorithms and Dawkins’s little Weasel program are nature simulators; and insofar as they faithfully reproduce what falls out in nature, they confirm our understandings of nature.

eric said:

Tom English said: Nowadays I say without reservation that to regard biological evolution as fitness optimization is to let teleology slip through the back door.

I somewhat disagree. There's no teleology implied in saying proximate causes (like the environment and other animals) do the optimization. That's like saying gravity does the pulling. Now, I would agree that both 'the environment does...' and 'gravity does...' may give some people a linguistic sense of intelligent agency, design, or ultimate cause. So there may be a linguistic back door, even if there isn't a substantive one. But if 'gravity does the pulling' doesn't make you believe in god (and I find it hard to think anyone would take that sentence teleologically), then 'the environment does the selecting' shouldn't either. I also agree with you that optimization is not all that's going on. But local optimization over generations is part of it.

Mike Elzinga said: They continue to take potshots at Dawkins’s Weasel program without recognizing that a simple shift in perspective turns the program into one in which atoms are settling into a configuration of potential wells by radiating energy. That’s what nature does. The results are things like crystals and living organisms.

Henry J said: How did that NFL theorem get that name, anyway?

Henry J said:

The argument countering the notion that where there’s a successful program,

But, successful from what point of view? That of some of the creatures inside that "program"?

Scientists work to explain the wonders of nature, not "unexplain" them by accepting that they are miracles due to purposeful intervention of something invisible. The history of science is full of cases in which the seemingly unexplainable was explained. As a practical matter, scientists can never give up trying to show that the wondrous is not miraculous.

Tom English said: How, then, could extremes in performance be common? Problems that are theoretically typical are also physically infeasible ... so there is reason to suspect that atypical search results occur much more often in reality than in theory. Dembski and Marks make high performance into a miracle requiring a supernatural cause, but they actually do not know that it is rare for a fixed algorithm operating with bias on real-world problems.

yahoomess mentioned: The Biola Doctrinal Statement...

Mike Elzinga,

IDC is forensics. The objective of Dembski and Marks has been to show that simulation models that have long been on the creationists' shit list would not have "solved the search problem" unless the programmer had exploited information. The very craziest thing they do, IMO, is to regard fitness values as "information." In all evolutionary models, fitness is associated with the propensity to reproduce, so generating more offspring from more-fit individuals than from less-fit individuals is hardly "exploitation of information that is not available to blind search."

So-called search algorithms are sampling algorithms. If a sampling algorithm decides how to extend the sample on the basis of properties of the current sample, then it is biased, not informed. That's obvious, once said, but it seems not to appear in the optimization literature. I should publish, but my ADHD - Primarily Inattentive brain has been having a harder and harder time with writing. It seems that all I can turn out is little chunks. Posting here has been fun, but I'm generally very frustrated.

Tom English said:

Henry J said: How did that NFL theorem get that name, anyway?

Wolpert and Macready were at the Santa Fe Institute, affiliated with a number of economists. I think it was Milton Friedman who said that there's no free lunch in microeconomic systems. Gains in one part of such a system must be precisely balanced by losses in others. Analogously, an optimizer's superiority in performance on a subset of functions must be precisely balanced by inferiority in performance on the complementary subset, relative to the performance of an arbitrary enumeration of solutions.

Tom English said: IDC is forensics. The objective of Dembski and Marks has been to show that simulation models that have long been on the creationists' shit list would not have "solved the search problem" unless the programmer had exploited information. The very craziest thing they do, IMO, is to regard fitness values as "information." In all evolutionary models, fitness is associated with the propensity to reproduce, so generating more offspring from more-fit individuals than from less-fit individuals is hardly "exploitation of information that is not available to blind search."

So-called search algorithms are sampling algorithms. If a sampling algorithm decides how to extend the sample on the basis of properties of the current sample, then it is biased, not informed. That's obvious, once said, but it seems not to appear in the optimization literature.

Henry J said: In other words, the NFL says that if one species gets a better success rate, some other(s) lose out or get a reduced success rate? Given that the rate of extinctions is presumed to correlate fairly well with the number of speciations, I don't see an issue there. Henry

Joe Felsenstein said:

Tom English said: How, then, could extremes in performance be common? Problems that are theoretically typical are also physically infeasible ... so there is reason to suspect that atypical search results occur much more often in reality than in theory. Dembski and Marks make high performance into a miracle requiring a supernatural cause, but they actually do not know that it is rare for a fixed algorithm operating with bias on real-world problems.

Which is the essence of the problem with Dembski's use of the NFLT. If we randomly assign fitnesses to genotypes we typically get a fitness surface that is impossibly rough, on which natural selection in evolution would achieve little. But real fitness surfaces are not like that -- it is typically not true that mutating a single base is just as bad as mutating every base in the genome. If fitnesses were randomly assigned to genotypes, then the two types of mutation would be equivalent. They are not, at all. Dembski and Marks have not acknowledged this, but they have retreated to asserting that when fitness surfaces are smooth enough for natural selection to work, that they must have been actively selected from among all possible fitness surfaces by Someone. They have not shown that ordinary physics -- the weakness of interaction of physically- and temporally-separated phenomena, could not be the source of the smoothness. Links to the criticisms of their use of the NFL (by many people) will be found in the Original Post above. May take on the Dembski/Marks "Search For A Search" argument will be found here and here.

Tom English said: The very craziest thing they do, IMO, is to regard fitness values as "information." In all evolutionary models, fitness is associated with the propensity to reproduce, so generating more offspring from more-fit individuals than from less-fit individuals is hardly "exploitation of information that is not available to blind search."

Henry J said: In other words, the NFL says that if one species gets a better success rate, some other(s) lose out or get a reduced success rate?

Mike Elzinga said: From the history I know - going all the way back to Henry Morris and Duane Gish and possibly back to A.E. Wilder-Smith – their early, and forced, misconceptions about thermodynamics and evolution set the stage for something that had to intrude to “overcome entropy” and make complex living systems possible. That overriding “force” became “information” which was a “blueprint” written by a deity. It was this mischaracterization that, in Morris’s very own words, pitted the “science of thermodynamics against the myth of evolution” and started all this crap about “information.”

Henry J said:

Tom English said:

Henry J said: How did that NFL theorem get that name, anyway?

Wolpert and Macready were at the Santa Fe Institute, affiliated with a number of economists. I think it was Milton Friedman who said that there's no free lunch in microeconomic systems. Gains in one part of such a system must be precisely balanced by losses in others. Analogously, an optimizer's superiority in performance on a subset of functions must be precisely balanced by inferiority in performance on the complementary subset, relative to the performance of an arbitrary enumeration of solutions.

In other words, the NFL says that if one species gets a better success rate, some other(s) lose out or get a reduced success rate? Given that the rate of extinctions is presumed to correlate fairly well with the number of speciations, I don't see an issue there. Henry

the sample size required to obtain a solution with fitness in the top 0.001% of the codomain with probability .9999 is a modest 921 thousand.

Joe Felsenstein said:

Mike Elzinga said: From the history I know - going all the way back to Henry Morris and Duane Gish and possibly back to A.E. Wilder-Smith – their early, and forced, misconceptions about thermodynamics and evolution set the stage for something that had to intrude to “overcome entropy” and make complex living systems possible. That overriding “force” became “information” which was a “blueprint” written by a deity. It was this mischaracterization that, in Morris’s very own words, pitted the “science of thermodynamics against the myth of evolution” and started all this crap about “information.”

A perspicacious historical analysis.

Tom English said: The NFL theorem is mathematical. See "No free lunch theorem" in Wikipedia. What it has to do with biological evolution is at issue here. Having published six papers regarding NFL, I would love for it to apply. But I don't believe that it does.

Henry J said: In other words, the NFL says that if one species gets a better success rate, some other(s) lose out or get a reduced success rate? Given that the rate of extinctions is presumed to correlate fairly well with the number of speciations, I don't see an issue there. Henry

My first NFL argument (during a student's thesis defense, in 1994) was that optimizing a function drawn uniformly at random is equivalent to optimizing the output of a uniform random number generator. That is, you don't have to construct the entire fitness function in advance of the optimization run by associating each individual with a random fitness value. You can generate the random fitness values on the fly. Clearly there is no strategy for optimizing the output of a uniform random number generator.

Mike Elzinga said: I’ll take a crack at this without any math. Imagine yourself in a very, very large room and it’s completely dark. You can’t see anything, you can’t hear anything; and all you have is some sense of “slope” of the floor on which you are standing (in other words, you do feel gravitational force; but we are going to take this away in a moment). You want to find the highest point in the room; but you don’t even know if there is a highest point. What strategy do you use? If you have a sense of slope (i.e., steepness), you could adopt a strategy that says something like, “continue in the direction of most difficult climb.” But does that guarantee that you are climbing the largest peak in the room? How do you strike out looking for another peak for comparison; and how do you make the comparison?

Would it not be more correct to say that, the theorem states that you can program a really smart algorithm to search a specific landscape for peaks or valleys very well(the search will be "optimized"). With specific rules for how the search behaves when it finds slopes(go left: measure hight, go right: measure hight, etc. etc.).

And if you change the landscape, your algorithm may do even better(and is this "highly optimized"). The ruleset is very effective at finding peaks.

But on most landscapes, it will do worse. The ruleset is less effective because the shape of the landscape doesn't match the "system" of your algorithm very well. It may be "confusing" to the system, and it may spend a lot of time wandering around in areas that look like noise from the outside(if you could see the whole landscape from the top).

And if you calculate how effective your algorithm is at finding peaks, averaged over all possible landscapes, it is performing no better than randomly guessing coordinates would do.

Rumraket said: Would it not be more correct to say that, ... [details snipped, see above for them] But on most landscapes, it will do worse. The ruleset is less effective because the shape of the landscape doesn't match the "system" of your algorithm very well. It may be "confusing" to the system, and it may spend a lot of time wandering around in areas that look like noise from the outside(if you could see the whole landscape from the top). And if you calculate how effective your algorithm is at finding peaks, averaged over all possible landscapes, it is performing no better than randomly guessing coordinates would do.

Good! Progress. I’m always on the lookout for good non-mathematical analogies and metaphors that explain concepts and misconceptions.

If we look at the criticism that ID/creationists most often level at Dawkins’s Weasel program, for example, I think it would be that there is a target string. It is the presence of that target string that they say is putting the “answer” into the algorithm; and I think this “criticism” extends to genetic algorithms as well.

Now the misconception that I am seeing here is that they are conflating two similar sounding concepts. They note that scientists say that evolution is not targeted toward any particular phenotype, and so they criticize scientists for putting a target in a concept-illustrating program like Weasel.

But, to say that evolution is not targeted simply means – from the knowledge we have of nature – that there are literally billions upon billions of “targets” (hills or potential wells, if you like) that organisms are exploring; and this results in literally billions of phenotypes that survive at least for a period of time near many of those hills (wells).

Having a target in Weasel is simply and example of one such target out of myriads of targets in the real world; and the purpose of Weasel is to demonstrate how selection can help a local organism to converge on a target (phenotype). It is one “organism” climbing a nearby hill by acquiring fitness. In an analogous physics example, it is particles falling into a nearby configuration of wells by shedding energy.

So the Weasel program concentrates on a single hill (well); it does not “see” a broader landscape. It shows only how hills can be climbed or how wells become populated if there is something in the vicinity that “senses” the hill (well); and it shows that random variations can produce offspring that are closer to the peak (bottom) and selection keeps sorting out the ones that are closest.

The untargeted nature of evolution is captured in the fact that there is an entire landscape of hills (wells) which are being climbed (populated) by an entire array of creatures exploring that landscape. Any one of these creatures could end up on a number of nearby hills (wells) depending on how contingencies play out. There is a very low probability that any given creature will leap a great distance across that landscape.

Thus, as to memory, it is not likely that any given creature will have “memory” of other “distant” parts of the landscape. It is more likely to have “memory” about where it was, and is, in relation to a nearby hill (well); and it works its way toward a peak based on how fit it currently is.

My general impressions of the ID crowd come primarily from the misconceptions they have about the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, and evolution that they picked up from Henry Morris. As a result, they need to have an overriding “force” called “information” that “overcomes the second law of thermodynamics” in order to build complex systems of molecules and creatures.

Those misconceptions have led to their almost complete addiction to uniform random sampling of essentially infinite sample spaces in order to construct things that have a specified structure and behavior. Their misconceptions lead them to “prove” that this process cannot lead to evolution and complexity without the “input of information.”

But nature doesn’t work that way; so ID “proofs” are simply demonstrating that ID concepts of nature do not represent how nature actually behaves.

So when Dembski, et. al. claim that their concepts don’t simulate nature, the proper response should be to advise them to step back and learn how nature actually does things; and then put those processes in their programs.

(Oh; and don’t forget to initialize the variables in your programs.)

Mike Elzinga said: If we look at the criticism that ID/creationists most often level at Dawkins’s Weasel program, for example, I think it would be that there is a target string. It is the presence of that target string that they say is putting the “answer” into the algorithm; and I think this “criticism” extends to genetic algorithms as well.

Joe Felsenstein said:

Mike Elzinga said: If we look at the criticism that ID/creationists most often level at Dawkins’s Weasel program, for example, I think it would be that there is a target string. It is the presence of that target string that they say is putting the “answer” into the algorithm; and I think this “criticism” extends to genetic algorithms as well.

I don't particularly want to get into the Weasel issue here (as people repeat the same arguments endlessly) but the Weasel program was intended only as a simple teaching example to show that an evolutionary algorithm can find better fitnesses in a far faster way than purely random search. It was not, was never, intended as a comprehensive realistic model of evolution.

Kevin B said: The bit that seems to get missed with the Weasel program is that there is, in fact, two programs; the "single-stage selection" one that Dawkins only discussed (because it would run for a time that is large relative to the age of the Universe), and the "cumulative selection" one that will complete in the course of a lunchtime, even in interpretive BASIC on an early 1980s Apple microcomputer. It is the comparison of the two programs that is the point that is (perhaps deliberately) glossed over by the Creationist critics. Dawkins abstracted out one element of the theoretical basis of evolution and devised an experiment to investigate it. This is how science is done, and anyone who does not understand how the Weasel program is merely a small part, rather than the whole, has no right to call themselves a scientist.

Let's take a step back here and look at what is really going on.

1) There is abundant evidence for biological evolution, from multiple fields of inquiry, all of which converges on the same conclusion. This evidence includes numerous incomplete but valid computer science and mathematical models of evolution or aspects of evolution.

2) Dembski starts with the pre-conceived goal of "proving evolution to be false".

3) Yet he does not familiarize himself with the relevant evidence, let alone address it. Immediately, his work is suspect on this grounds alone. We may compare him to someone seeking theoretical proof, for example, that Jared Lee Loughner did not did not engage is a shooting spree at an appearance by Representative Gabrielle Giffords. Even if he comes up with something plausible, how does he explain away the strong evidence in favor of that which he declares "theoretically impossible"?

4) We are spared the dilemma, fortunately, of a conflict between convincing evidence for the occurrence of evolution, and a compelling theoretical argument that the evidence cannot exist. Dembski does not provide a theoretical argument. In the case under discussion here, he misrepresents the NFL theorem as being a model which "theoretically disproves" biological evolution. However, the reaction of computer scientists, mathematicians, and biologists, including the many scholars cross-trained in two or all three of those fields, is pretty much unanimous. All neutral observers simply agree that Dembski has misapplied and misrepresented NFL theorem.

5) Eric Holloway engages in odd behavior. I think any reasonable observer would agree that the following are true of Eric Holloway - a) He starts with a rigid predisposition to "disprove" biological evolution. b) He ignores all relevant evidence. c) In fact he actively hides from relevant evidence. d) He issues the patently false claim that Dembski's interpretation of NFL has not been adequately refuted - yet he does so from a venue where he can control feedback, and when feedback to the contrary comes in, he refuses to acknowledge it.

harold said: Let's take a step back here and look at what is really going on. ... 5) Eric Holloway engages in odd behavior. I think any reasonable observer would agree that the following are true of Eric Holloway - a) He starts with a rigid predisposition to "disprove" biological evolution.

Eric Holloway: So, I spent some time reading the critics, and this bore [sic] my frustration. I could not find one author who treated Dembski’s work fairly! If someone could fairly refute Dembski’s work I’d be all over it, but I haven’t found anyone! Instead it’s all passive aggressive ad homineum [sic] and brow beating, with ample burning of strawmen, very tiring to read.

harold: b) He ignores all relevant evidence. c) In fact he actively hides from relevant evidence. d) He issues the patently false claim that Dembski's interpretation of NFL has not been adequately refuted - yet he does so from a venue where he can control feedback,

harold: and when feedback to the contrary comes in, he refuses to acknowledge it.

Elizabeth Liddle: The NFL theorems would only apply to evolution if we also considered solutions to the problems of survival that are unconnected with each other. Evolutionary algorithms are far better than blind search algorithms at finding connected solutions, and connected solutions is exactly what they find.

Joe Felsenstein said: No one actually raised the main criticism over in UD (except for this brief allusion by Liddle) and if Holloway is unable to find Panda's Thumb he could claim innocence. Sort of.

Mike Elzinga said: But I can’t do it for very long over there at UD; it makes me nauseous. In fact, if any of them could find Panda’s Thumb, or any other textbook that explains scientific concepts, it is highly unlikely they could derive any benefit from it. Their wiring is just too screwed up; it has to be torn out and entirely replaced.

harold said: Let's take a step back here and look at what is really going on.

Joe Felsenstein said: Threats of violence, eh? ;-)

Oh here we go. Eric Holloway has posted a long rant essay on the Broader Implications of ID.

It seems it validates everything in a laundry-list of political and social opinions of his. First, it proves that Keynesian economic theory is wrong ...

Joe Felsenstein said: Oh here we go. Eric Holloway has posted a long rant essay on the Broader Implications of ID.

Joe Felsenstein said: Oh here we go. Eric Holloway has posted a long rant essay on the Broader Implications of ID.

mrg said: I just glanced at it and the pomposity of it blasted me right off the page. You could float an airship on that class of rhetoric. It's another proof of the principle that, while creationists can say things that sound like they make sense, the longer any one of them talks the more obvious it becomes he's riding the crazy train.

You folks are missing the profound implications of ID. It makes lots of other scientific activities unnecessary.

Economists: Do you want to know whether Keynesian theory is correct? Don't study economics, just read William Dembski!

Physicists: Do you want to know how string theory fits into the rest of physics and gibes with physical reality? Stop messing around with those equations, read Denyse O'Leary instead!

Astronomers: Do you want to know whether intelligent life exists elsewhere and has any prospect of communicating with us? Turn off those telescopes and fire up the browser: Uncommon Descent knows the answer!

and of course

Biologists: Do you want to know about the history of life and the mechanisms that led to it? Stop the sequencing machine, and head to the nearest fundamentalist church where all will be revealed.

Joe Felsenstein said: You folks are missing the profound implications of ID. It makes lots of other scientific activities unnecessary.

Eric Holloway has finally responded to the Original Post in a new post at UD.

He cites David Wolpert as saying that the NFL applies to a simple model of evolution. He sees me as saying it does not apply to that model because "the relevant fitness landscape for evolution is not under the domain of the NFL."

Let me be even clearer. In a simple model of uphill search on a fitness surface NFLT applies. But what does it prove? It proves that this uphill search is on average ineffective, on average when averaged over all possible ways you could associate the fitnesses with the genotypes.

A typical one of these random associations of fitnesses with genotypes is a completely "jaggy" fitness surface. On it, a single base change at a single site carries you to a genotype that has a totally different fitness (randomly-drawn from all possible fitnesses). Now if you instead change all bases in the genome, simultaneously, you also get a randomly drawn fitness. So the two kinds of change should have the same average effect on fitness.

Holloway tries to argue that biology shows that fitness effects of mutations are indeed disastrous. Well, they aren't perfect but they sure aren't that disastrous!

So the fitness surfaces we actually have are not at all typical of the ones that contribute the overwhelmingly to the NFLT average. They are much better for natural selection, but that is swamped out in the NFLT average by all the jaggy ("white noise") fitness surfaces.

This being the case, Dembski's use of the NFLT does not have the effect of showing that natural selection cannot achieve substantial adaptation.

Holloway has a response for that. See the following comment.

In this case Dembski would be indeed wrong about the applicability of the NFL. However, given the high specificity of such a landscape, this would mean that evolution itself is intelligently designed to an extraordinary degree.

Finally, perhaps Dr. Felsenstein is right after all and evolution does happen to possess the extremely rare and valuable fitness landscape whereby algorithmic search is significantly effective to be worthwhile. In this case Dembski would be indeed wrong about the applicability of the NFL. However, given the high specificity of such a landscape, this would mean that evolution itself is intelligently designed to an extraordinary degree.

Joe Felsenstein said: It was named by its authors, Wolpert and Macready. They showed that when you averaged over all the ways the values of the objective function could be assigned to points in the space, on average no search strategy would outperform simple random search. So there was No Free Lunch, in the sense that to do well, you had to have something extra that makes the surface smooth. In the case of evolution it is just physics, that makes similar genotypes have similar fitnesses quite often. They were generalizing about general search spaces and general strategies, and were not trying to cast doubt on evolution. Wolpert was quite angry when he found Dembski using his theorem for that.

mrg said: Ah. Is this effectively like saying that, given an infinite variety of types of data, no data compression method works any better than any other? Which is true but irrelevant, since given specific types of data some compression methods work very well and some work poorly. Use the wrong compression method on certain types of inappropriate data and you can in principle get data EXPANSION. ...

Joe Felsenstein said: Yes, there is a good analogy there to the NFLT. The issue is that real genotypes do not live on a fitness surface that is pure white noise, just as images we want to compress are not pure white noise either.

mrg said: Well, they CAN be but they are notoriously hard to compress! Thanks JF. I didn't want to wade through figuring out the NFLT because it looked like such a handwaving red herring as far as evosci is concerned and I have lots of other things to learn. But by that analogy I can see that, yes, evolution wouldn't work if it was rooted in a completely unpredictable chaotic universe. It isn't, of course, being based on and constrained by a range of phenomena from the rules of chemical bonding to selection pressures.