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Richard Dawkins speaking on 'The God Delusion'
EricL:
--- Quote from: Numsgil ---I think the primary missing function is sexual reproduction.... ...I think if we implement a working sex system, we'll start to see some improved stability in our bots over time.
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You may vary well be correct, but not all multi-celled biological organisms reproduce sexually (though most do) so it is not at all clear to me at least that sexual recombination is the 'primary missing function' in enabling multibot evolution or even stable complex single bot organisms. My own opinion is more along the lines that few sims have been run for long enough with an evironment that would favor singlebot cooperation for complex multibots to evolve. In fact, we may not have rich enough environmental capabilites in the program to even create a sim that truly favors multibots. I also think that the reasons why complex behaviour seems to degenerate have their roots in the (too) high rate of mutation and the missing mutation locality functionality I describe above not to mention the fact that hand-coded bots are not well engineered to survive mutations and thus quickly fall off their peak in the fitness landscape, giving the impression of complexity instability. We have yet to really see any *evolved* complex beahviour, so it is perhaps premature to talk about the stability of such.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to see sexual reproduction emerge. It's not clear to me we should build it into the system. As has been discussed in other threads, there are in fact arguements not to do so, not the least of which is that it would subsume aspects of recombination from chromosome structure to recombination granulatiry into the simulator, not in the bot DNA. I'm not necessarily opposed to this, as it may be one of those things we need to bootstrap.
--- Quote from: Numsgil ---I also disagree on the idea that evolution will continously find incremental improvements. From my experience it tends to be an asymptotic approach to a stable point. This stable point might be less fit than where it's coming from. The population dynamics tend to be alot less clear cut than "better" and "worse". However, if the organism is actually reacting to changing stimuli, this won't hold true anymore. Then the stable point will be moving, and the organism will constantly be changing. In this situation, though, "better" and "worse" are impossible to define, since the rules of the game are changing as the game is being played. If the organisms changes move the stable point of another species, you might be able to create a constantly changing feedback arms race between the two.
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I am not claiming that evolution continiously finds incremental improvements since the term 'improvement' implies some sort of external frame of reference which does not exist. I am claiming however, that evolution does favor incremental improvements in fitness realtive to an environment. That environement may be a 200 degree hot spring where being simple and tough is the definition of fitness - I am not at all claiming that macro multi-celled organisms are always fitter or favored. Quite the opposite in fact. Multibots will not emerge until selection favors their emergence.
I fully agree that in a changing environment, selection is always chasing a moving target and that in relatively static envionments, long periods of 'stasis' do occur, but selection favors the prepared genome when conditions do change. The worse mistake a genome can make is not to mutate.
--- Quote from: Numsgil ---I would say equally horrendous attrocities have been perpetrated in the name of science as religion. Remember the Holocaust and eugenics? The robber barons defending their positions of power as "Social Darwinism". Surely these aren't somehow less attrocious than clerical hypocracy and inquisition.
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There is strong evidence that Hitler was a praticing Catholic and the Holocaust was at least partially religiously motivated, but arguing where fault lies in historical attrocities is not very useful IMHO. Let us agree that whackos use whatever means they can to build and hold power. Religion is a powerful means but not the only one.
--- Quote from: Numsgil ---Ultimately people are going to be unethical and willfully ignorant wether they're religous or not. I've seen plenty of close minded bigots who also happened to be atheist. They toted science as the penultimate Truth, yet it didn't make them nice people. People are people.
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No argument here.
--- Quote from: Numsgil ---Religion and science are orthogonal. Religion allows us to understand and accept our position in life, our relationship with the rest of the universe, and our relationship with the rest of humanity. Religioin is ultimately a symptom of the greatest gift man has: sentience. Science seeks to understand the nature of reality, the rules by which we all play. Science tells us nothing about the reality of human existance, and religion tells us nothing about the workings of the universe. It's only when people think they do that there's problems.
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Here I strongly disagree. If your religion includes faith in supernatural things for which there is no evidence (and often for which there is evidence against) if it encourages you to accept easy answers of explantion along the lines of "because god wanted it that way" rather than seek out the actual causes, then it is entirely at odds with science.
--- Quote from: Numsgil ---Traditionally, science and religion have been inseperable intertwined. The witchdoctors of our tribal past were as much doctors as priests. It's only been in the last 500 years that the pace of science has exceeded the ability of the staunchier religions to adapt, and this has fueled the majority of problems between the two ever since.
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Agreed. Religion provided answers to omportant questions. Where do we come from? Why do things happen the way they do? 500 years ago it made sense to accept supernatural answers to those questioins. There were no alternatives. It does not however, make sense today. There are better answers to those questions and all the other questions religion purported to answer, scientific answers meaning there is verifable evidence to support them. If you are educated, beleiving in supernatural explanations for the natural world is inexcusable today. Note that I did not say being religious is inexcusable. My beef is with the supernatural part. If your religion accepts the big bang, the age of the earth, evolution via natural selection, discounts supernatural explanations for happenings be they today or 2000 years ago and mostly provides you a social network and personal framework for interpeting the world, then more power to you. I might not call it religion anymore though....
Numsgil:
I have a very narrow definition of religion, which I think everyone in general would be better off defining it as such. Religion to me is specifically about coming to terms with ourselves and our place in our community. The creation myths, the rules, the rituals, the belief systems, are all very pointless from outside this frame of reference. Any of these religous adornments that do not create personal growth or bind us to the community are superflous.
I suppose in the end I'm pretty much a Humanist. Religions have value because they provide a sevice for the people in them.
Numsgil:
Now that I think of it, most of the interesting adaptations I've seen, in fact maybe all of the adaptations I've seen, were directly caused by a predator/prey relationship.
For instance, veggies learning to wiggle randomly to throw off my enitor comesum. Bots learning to be cannis. etc.
Maybe the idea incremental development needs to include a caveat about interacting, mutually evolving populations. A single species in a fairly static environment seems extremely limited.
Jez:
That's an interesting point Nums, predator prey relationships causing the more positive mutations.
Also the addition of shapes to an enviroment soemtimes leading to the circular behaviour that has been seen.
Perhaps it would be safe for me to say that in an enviroment that provides no challenge to a bot the negative mutations aren't 'punished' in the same way and that natural selection is therefore more likely to take a back seat.
Perhaps many of the DB sims are too friendly to the bots to actually promote serious evolutionary pressure!
**
I agree with Eric on pretty much everything he has said about religion and he has said it much better than I might have.
I have nothing against belief per se, it is the religous structure and its imposition on others that I have problems with, in the same way that I am vehemently against anyone using the scientific label to commit attrocities such as forced eugenics.
EricL:
I discoverred quite by accident that as of today (December 27th, 2006) Dawkin's 'The God Delusion' is the #4 best seller on Amazon (#1 is a diet book, #2 is on dog training and #3 is Barack Obama's political manefesto). I found it surprising and I must say, somewhat encouraging to see a non-fiction book dealing primarily with evolution so high on the list right after Christmas (although no doubt it's title gave many buyers reasons for purchase that probably had little to do with scientific interest).
There are an amazing 305 (305!) reviews at Amazon, predictably bunched into polarized groups either heaping praise or scornful attack. Most are positive. There is also a lively discussion forum. Browsing the posts is nothing if not entertaining, most are predictable as you would expect though a few such as the one following are eye opening.
Reviewer: T SANTOSO (Surabaya, Jatim Indonesia) - See all my reviews
I live in a country where you have to have religion. You somehow can't choose not to have a religion. We only have major religions, and sects are not allowed. I belive that this book will not be alowed to be published here.
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