Reg_Prescott wrote:If Berlinski is wrong about certain matters -- and I haven't the faintest doubt that he is (who isn't?) -- I, for one, would like to know about it.
Let's just try to keep ourselves on the straight and narrow lest we end up with a red face and an "Oops-a-daisy!" after the auto da fe is through.
If it is any consolation, Berlinski was not the original advocate of the idea about mutated programs. He had merely quoted Schutzenberger on the topic. Schutzenberger died in 1996, so his original quote likely referred to computers and their programs in the late 1980s.
Computer science has changed since that time, and computers are generally significantly faster now. Berlinski backpedelled on the topic of Genetic Algorithms to small degree, but then raised it again in 2008 - 2010 time frame. The eyebrow raising part here is that he admitted that he had written genetic algorithms himself. His new discussion was not about whether the simulations showed speciation (they show speciation in a wild way), instead he raised I think a more interesting question regarding the process -- particularly the issue of complexity.
It is true that the GAs take enormous amounts of tweaking and design to get going. They are stochastic processes and so are very frustrating to use (they are not magic). Berlinski mentions this in passing, seemingly as someone who has actually written one.
Berlinski's new observation is that we have not reached a scientific theory that can account for the vast complexity seen in biological organisms on earth. Certainly not a theory that is as demonstrable as a theory describing planets orbiting the sun. Charles Darwin lacked the ultra-modern language we now use to describe dynamical systems, but he expressed the problem in his own way. He wrote about what he called , "Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication"
Darwin formulated his theory from observation of traits expressed in multi-cellular life forms who were, in some sense , "fully formed" in their complexity. Origin was published prior to the discovery of microscopic single-called bacteria. Even far earlier than the discovery of viruses in 1892. Thus Darwin's conception was concerned with the variation found in extant animal species. Today however, we have this additional theory of common descent, and we suppose from that theory (+ the Cambrian fossil record) that simple organisms preceded more complex forms in geological time.
We can ask whether the Darwinian process of natural selection is a sufficient account of the vast complexity seen in multicellular animals. It may be the case that the transition from single-celled bacteria to multicellular life requires a scientific theory that is distinct from Natural Selection.
It may also be the case that the complexity of organic life forms on earth is not a problem requiring a solution to begin with.
Your thoughts?