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Yes. Evolution.

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ant

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Re: Yes. Evolution.

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johnson1010 wrote:
Ant:
do homo sapiens have purposeful intent?
Yes.

Humans have invented purpose and intent, or attributed the same for a wide variety of things.

Fair enough.

And what particular evidence has convinced you purposeful intent did not exist until humans "invented" it?
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Re: Yes. Evolution.

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I don't want to imply that only humans have invented purpose and intent. Lets say instead that intelligence has invented purpose and intent. You were asking about humans, so that's what i talked about, but you are right.

Many organisms which are able to plan would perform some task with a purpose in mind. This is not at all limited to humans, nor would we have been the first to invent any purpose.

as to what convinces me that intelligence is required to enact a purpose, well it's definitional, really. Which is to say, my understanding of the word. You need an intelligence to assign a purpose to something.

As i've said before, you and I might say the "purpose" of a table leg is to hold up the table top and that might have some validity, because it is an object which was fashioned into a specific shape by an intelligence exactly for that purpose.

But what would it mean to say that the purpose of a rock was to hold down a peice of paper? If you've got a rock sitting on your desk as a paper weight, then you have assigned a purpose to it. But the fact that it's heavy is not due to your intention to use it as a paper weight. The mass of the rock is just a property it has.

So like that, having iron in our blood is not because it serves a purpose, but because it has benefitial properties which have been exploited. Iron doesn't exist for that purpose.
In the absence of God, I found Man.
-Guillermo Del Torro

Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?

Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?

Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
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Re: Yes. Evolution.

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I don't want to imply that only humans have invented purpose and intent. Lets say instead that intelligence has invented purpose and intent. You were asking about humans, so that's what i talked about, but you are right.

Many organisms which are able to plan would perform some task with a purpose in mind. This is not at all limited to humans, nor would we have been the first to invent any purpose.
So I've underlined some key words I'd like you to expand on a bit.

Define intelligence.

If many organisms as you say are/were able to perform tasks with a "purpose" in mind before the rise of Hominidae intelligence, then purpose existed long before ours arose, correct?

Fungus is an organism. Do fungi have "purpose"? Are they "intelligent" in a sense because they perform certain, however limited, tasks, or would you characterized their tasks as blind "intelligence"?

Here's kind of a fun question:
If evolution by natural selection is the rule of thumb throughout the cosmos, might a species billions of years more evolved than us consider our purpose directionless?
If is highly probable that life evolved elsewhere and that it is perhaps billions of years or senior, right?
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Re: Yes. Evolution.

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You need an intelligence to assign a purpose to something.
Doesn't it follow that Your purpose needed an Intelligence to assign it to you?

We have a closet theist here, people!!


:mbounce:
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Re: Yes. Evolution.

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Doesn't it follow that Your purpose needed an Intelligence to assign it to you?
His purpose was assigned by himself. In light of goals, we have purpose. If we have a goal that requires using a tool, we declare that tool to have a purpose.

Other animals have purpose as well, because they have goals(even if they can't articulate them). The origin of these goals can be traced to game theory. The if/then algorithmic behaviors that have evolved over eons. Most organisms have an overriding "purpose" to procreate and flourish, as dictated by natural selection. Any organism lacking that goal would have a lesser chance of surviving. There are a host of lesser goals as well, which may sometimes be of higher importance than procreation(it's algorithmic). Eating, running in fear, drinking, flying north for the winter, nesting, etc.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: Yes. Evolution.

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I would think intelligence is the property of an organism to find solutions to obstacles.

Contrast a fly, which you can see zooming around the room like a roomba robot, in a search pattern dictated by genetics to find higher concentrations of molecules which might indicate food, with a squirel which has observed a bird feeder full of nuts and finds a path to the bird feeder through a circuitous route.

I've seen videos where people have slowly placed obstacle after obstacle in front of some squirel until they get them to run a very long and convoluted obstacle course to reach the nuts.

The squirel tries to shimmy straight up the pole, but can't get around the squirel blocking plate. No hand holds, can't stretch to reach edge. So the squirel then seeks out an alternate path to reach that goal. It climbs a nearby tree, jumps from branch to branch until it's above the feeder, and drops onto it.

This is the kind of problem solving that i would characterize as, well, lets say a symptom of intelligence.

Whereas a fly is just kind of banging into the window repeatedly moving toward the light.

I think everything that lives has some inteligence, but there is a sliding scale involved. Flies have a problem, which is that they will die without food, so they seek out more resources. That is a problem solving move, but they are limited. The squirel is doing the same task, but has more intellectual tools to employ.

I have no doubt there are species of organisms on different planets which have more powerful intelects than ours. If they grew up in just the right goldilocks zone, or managed inter-planetary, or inter-stellar space flight, they might reach billions of years. But then, it's difficult to imagine that you could call the current species "the same" species as that which first achieved... personhood, for lack of a better term. Instead it would be a lineage, since we are talking about billions of years, and who knows how many generations.

Interbane is right in my assesment of where my purpose comes from. I have decided what my purpose will be, by deciding what my goals are. So then the things i do serve a purpose, which is to achieve some goal.

The same way that squirel which is doing all kinds of crazy obstacles is doing those random obstacles with a purpose in mind, to reach the feeder.
In the absence of God, I found Man.
-Guillermo Del Torro

Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?

Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?

Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
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Re: Yes. Evolution.

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Ant:
might a species billions of years more evolved than us consider our purpose directionless?
Well consider an analog. What do you feel about the activities of your pets? They go about their lives, performing various activities, and tasks you might give them, like sitting, or rolling over. And then they spend a lot of time on their own filling their day with their own goals. Burying bones, marking their territory, exploring the neighborhood.

What do you think of their goals? Purposeless? Well, not necessarily. They have purposes, but it isn't really anything that you would do. Because you don't need to. Or because you have "better" things to do with your time.

But the better things you have to do with your time wouldn't be of much use to your pets either. How could your dog benefit from attending the budget meeting at work?

So maybe super-advanced aliens would look at us and think it's cute that Stephen Hawking can do black hole calculations in his head. But i think they might say "well, that's the best they can do, and they are working really hard, and good for them!" The way you might feel about your dog if he successfully hides his bone from a neighbor dog.

But does it matter if an advanced alien doesn't appreciate what we do with out time? What makes our activities valuable is whether or not WE value them. They don't have to have cosmic significance. They just need to have personal significance to matter.
In the absence of God, I found Man.
-Guillermo Del Torro

Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?

Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?

Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
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Re: Yes. Evolution.

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There is some good evolution education going on over here a couple pages in as well:

http://www.booktalk.org/turek-vs-hitche ... 16055.html
In the absence of God, I found Man.
-Guillermo Del Torro

Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?

Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?

Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
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Re: Yes. Evolution.

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The creative power of randomness.

Even after explaining this, I realize it's a bit too difficult to grasp. In another thread, someone said: "That random mutations(chance) could drive this is unlikely.There is neither foresight or memory."

The genetic code serves as the memory, of course. But foresight isn't required. And randomness does drive the process. But randomness is not alone.

The evolutionary algorithm in the theory of evolution is an algorithm that's found elsewhere. Scientists use it to design new circuits and new products, for example. It's also at play in information theory, heavily used in computer programming. This book would be interesting: http://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Algo ... B005LQBV4C

To understand how randomness drives the process, I'll lay out a game I once thought up if I were to become a science teacher(I would still like to be). The game would mimic evolution by starting with a species pool of 20 lizards. The lizards would be handmade wooden replicas. It would last most of the school year, as a pet project. The lizards would all start with a single solid color, each one different, and would be in a copse of trees within sight of the student body. The challenge is to pick the first lizard you see, acting as a predator. Pick the easiest one you're able to identify. If there are 20 or more students, then the last lizard to be picked is the parent for the next generation. If there are 20 or less, then the unpicked lizards are the parent population.

I'd guess the students would quickly pick the red/orange/purple/blue lizards, but miss the green and brown lizards - or at least pick them last.

The 'picking of lizards' is the non-random selection process that mimics the environment. Predators are a part of the environment, after all. Once the parent lizards are brought back to class, we produce offspring with similar colors. Perhaps add some detail, but not too much since it must be similar(nearly solid color). If old enough, the students could do this by painting themselves. Or there are computer programs that generate small random changes - you could print the generated paper and glue it onto the wooden lizards.

I'd expect the first generation offspring to be mainly greens and browns with a bit of texture. After the second generation, the ones with more camoflauged patterns(therefore better hidden) would be selected. The mutation parameter would be that you could only use colors 'nearby' on the color wheel. Perhaps some would have a little blue, and some would have a little yellow. That parameter aside, it should be randomized as much as possible. By the fourth and fifth generations, mixtures of browns and greens in different hues would dominate.

After 10 or so attempts, we compare the original population set with the 10th generation set.

Even though this would teach how randomly generated offspring drive the creative process of an evolutionary algorithm, I think creationists would get the wrong idea. "But it's kids doing the picking... therefore the lizards are designed." I think the small, random computer-generated changes might be better in that aspect, so it's not confusing. The randomness is simply that - randomness, whether by random human choice or random algorithmic generation.

What appears to lead to creativity is the selection process. If giraffe's appear to be so well suited to reaching high places that it must be purposeful, think again. The environment as a selection parameter is all that's needed. Shortnecks die or are unhealthy(they can't reach the plentiful food source up high), and longnecks are left. Rinse and repeat until necks are very long.



If you follow the link above to the book on evolutionary algorithms, you'll see the power of algorithms in creating new things. A blind mathematical set of steps is all that's needed to create anything and everything under the sun. No intelligence needed. Once the mechanism of this algorithm clicks in your head, and you understand it, the elegance speaks to it's truth. It makes sense on such a basic level. I hope teachers around the globe are able to lead students to that 'aha' moment regarding evolutionary algorithms.

EDIT - my experiment was a bit confusing. I clarified a few things.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: Yes. Evolution.

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we have to be careful, as pattern seekers and be wary of our own desire to believe.

Not everything we recognize as a pattern was put there by some intelligence to pass us a message.

http://io9.com/the-entire-alphabet-phot ... 1465806707
In the absence of God, I found Man.
-Guillermo Del Torro

Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?

Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?

Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
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