Re: News: Is there anybody out there?
- From: feedbackdroid <feedbackdroid@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:54:53 -0400 (EDT)
On Apr 29, 10:35 am, Guy A Hoelzer <hoel...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
in article fv51cm$u9...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, feedbackdroid at
feedbackdr...@xxxxxxxxx wrote on 4/28/08 10:26 AM:
[SNIP]
Tim Tyler, who inhabited this forum a
couple of years ago, is now over on comp.ai.philosophy pushing,
amongst other things, the "inevitiability of human life" and
intelligence, and using Simon Conway Morris as his "authority" ... to
wit: "Anyhow, Conway-Morris is the cannonical antidote to those who
think chance rules in evolution: ", etc...
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.ai.philosophy/browse_frm/thread/c...
f28bbf
[starting about msg #32]
He's also pushing the idea that evolution is deterministic, based
upon ...
============
New Findings Confirm Darwin's Theory: Evolution Not Random
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080118134531.htm
Evolution Is Deterministic, Not Random, Biologists Conclude From
Multi-species Study
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071119123929.htm
=============
What's the opinion of this stuff, including Conway Morris, in the
science/evolution community? Sounds pretty much left field.
I find Tim to be a smart and level-headed fellow. I wouldn't easily dismiss
him as being in "left field".
Actually, I was referring to Conway Morris and the papers cited here.
We'll dismiss TT's comment about "cannonical antidote to those who
think chance rules in evolution". Canonical-ized, already - wow.
Some if Morris' work strikes me as on the
bleeding edge of scientific thinking, which is where you often find a mix of
bad and brilliant ideas. It will take some time for the scientific
community to sort them out. Regarding the recent article in science daily,
I personally think the authors (and Tim) made a mistake by describing their
findings as "deterministic". I think there is a very important observation
in their work that we can appreciate better without the baggage of
implications the word "deterministic" brings with it. This study does
illustrate, in my opinion, important physical constraints on developmental
and evolutionary outcomes that have been discussed for many years by
complexity theorists. Brian Goodwin, for example, has been emphasizing this
point for many years.
Several of the AI forums I monitor have recurring arguments about many
shaded meanings of determinism. I think TT's usage was fairly obvious.
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