IC challenge: Evolve a bicycle into a motorcycle!

you have a bicycle (a mountain bike preferably. it's heavier and can put up with more. it's the horse of the bikes. complete with chain, gears, and hand brakes)you want a motorcycle (an engine powered bicyclid with engine and associated parts and big thick body as sheilding from internal combustion and handbrakes)easy enough. now this will be guided whereas evolution is not...bicycle evolves randomly an assistor. i don't know if such a thing exists, but pretend it does. it makes the chain go faster than the pedal would ordinarily push it.next step. the bicycle advances the assistor to a pedal powered engine. they're on all kinds of toys. natural precedence. they exist.alright now. one to step three. the oops. a strain of the extra powered pedaled bicycle randomly grows extra sheathing in response to added wind. but it acts as a motion block and the bikes can't go anywhere. they all die.another strain of bikes grows sheathing in response to the wind and is successful. this gives a bike with a slightly thicker body which is more aerodynamic.so up to this point bikes feed on the energy produced by a rider's feet on the pedals. so one day a group of bikes are driving through an oil lake and decide that this is a much better fuel source so they buck their riders and come up with a crude combustion to run the engine instead of the pedals.refine the engine, refine the body build to better withstand the strain of the engine and the wind and you have a motorcycle. with the original handbrakes.

I'm afraid your scenario is the "hopeful monster" idea of some decades ago. This is mutations in big jumps which IS pretty much ruled out by the probability arguments.This doesn't fly (or peddle) at all I'm afriad.

yeah yeah. i was being silly. live a little eh?

Live a little?Nah, I am a boring, old pedant*. You'll just have to live with that.ABE
* this has nothing to do with children!ABE 2(unless you consider women half my age children )This message has been edited by NosyNed, 10-19-2005 01:37 PM

And that is the difference between {natural systems adapting to changing environments and incorporating mutations in the process} and what we should see if {ID} were in any evidence.

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Ned et al, don't want to deal with the exceedingly high improbability of NS as described by Fisher unfortunatly. They try to reinterpret and circumvent it every way they can to no avail I'm afraid. As do most neo-darwinists, they believe it could have happened that way based on faith, since the use of GAs as well as Dawkins' (hopeful monster) Weasel Similations' have been debunked, and not much is left to explain the improbablity. Certainly not fossils. So neo-darwinists just have to believe. Faith my brother, faith will save them!(humour is good for the soul)cheers all!

well, no. i was demonstrating that your analogy has a second flaw, actually. you're comparing apples and oranges, yourself. but this is where the apples and "oranges" issue is huge. because you're doing the equivalent of comparing apples and digital alarm clocks shaped like oranges. like the cockney saying goes, clockwork oranges are queer indeed. i'm suggesting we stick to fruit. afterall, apples and oranges do have some things in common: they're both fruit, the both grow on tress, both are good for you, and both are bright, warm colors.i was also demonstrating a third flaw in your analogy. you neither picked a method that accurately reproduces the evolutionary process, nor did you choose an output that could be made precisely similar easily -- as i pointed out. i can't even intelligently paint the same painting leonardo did.the point that i was trying to demonstrate is that if we remove these two obvious flaws, we can make apples look like oranges and vice versa. but, preferable, we should be comparing red apples and green apples, right?i bet if we take a similar process and check against preference instead of michaelangelo, we'd still a get a painting. i suggest they'd look like the abstract paintings of say, rothko (which were intelligently painted).but if you don't like that analogy, that's fine. the essential problem is that we're picking things that are essentially id and evolution. there's the apples and oranges of it. intelligent design, often looks like an evolutionary process (see, well, the history of motorcycles) but there is still the ability of the designer to create something truly new -- in evolution (ie: the animal kingdom) everything has a parent. new species do not poof into existance.we're not comparing apples and oranges, we're comparing mousetraps and venus flytraps. one's designed, one's evolved, and it's pretty clear what the differences are to most everyone, i think. although, if you really wanted to me evolve a mousetrap, i can do that too.

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just to be clear for the others here, convergent evolution is when similar environments produce similar evolutionary results.what we're talking about is some set of features being completely absent in a creature, but present in another one, and then the next generation of the first species acquiring that set of structures as a whole, closely reproducing the second species.that's basically what irreducible complexity predicts: that whole systems will pop into existance.

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i should post some pictures. after the introducion of the engine to bicycles (think hybridaztion) the changes the motorcycle went through are remarkably evolutionary.the first motorcycles were powered bicycles, first single and then double cylinder, then v-2's. frame shape, tank size and shape. wheel adaptation, etc, all changed rather gradually, as trends. the engine's history is rather similar. although the first gasoline engine was in the first motorcycle, many similar engines functioning off other fuels predated it.

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yeah. i summarized a great deal. but whatever.

quote:

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we're not comparing apples and oranges, we're comparing mousetraps and venus flytraps. one's designed, one's evolved, and it's pretty clear what the differences are to most everyone, i think. although, if you really wanted to me evolve a mousetrap, i can do that too.

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I agree with the fact that we should be comparing mousetraps and venus flytraps, which is why I made the point that Jacinto's analogy was flawed, as well as Behe's.

you mean "...should NOT be comparing..." right?

yes, yes,should not

I have been away for awhile and was interested in the status of things. Doesn’t look as if much has changed - ignorance and superstition are still going strong. ID is all the rage now, so I thought I would address this issueI believe a fundamental problem with the ID debate, is the distinction between the process of design and what “drives” the process. We humans are used to observing another human, a designer, engage in the process of designing something, especially something rather complicated like a watch or a bicycle. Since we note that the human body is a system, we naturally assume that a “designer” must be involved and as the human system is complex, we assume that the designer must be intelligent.What those who propose ID totally overlook is an alternate: the well known “design process”, Trial and Error (T&E). This design process is used extensively by human designers, especially in such fields as pharmaceuticals, although a more rational approach is beginning to appear in this field. The essence of the T&E design process is to put something together and see if it works. If it does, the design is finished, if it doesn’t, something else is tried until success is achieved.A couple words about evolution. Evolution is a process, unfortunately a slow moving process and thus difficult to detect. Charles Darwin’s claim to fame is merely that he was the first person to accumulate enough data/evidence to detect the process. It must be emphasized that if Darwin had not detected the process of evolution, someone else would have.Regarding the design process “driving” evolution, it is simply T&E. Genetic mutation provides the Trials and natural selection eliminates the weaker Errors. The fact that over 95% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct is proof of the effectiveness of the T&E design process. Also, the vast amount of time over which the T&E design process has operated has allowed all of the extant species to evolve - there is no need for an intelligent designer.Furthermore, it must be noted that the T&E process is sub-optimum. Once a successful design has been achieved, the design effort ceases. The problem with this is that a better design might be achieved if more effort was spent. This aspect of the T&E design governing evolution is apparent in things like the human glottis which provides a valve between the respiratory system and the digestive system. Many people have died due to suffocation because of this sub-optimum design.RegardsSoplar

Excellent post. It ties in with an idea I proposed in this thread.I have one comment though. It depends on what you think this effectiveness is about.A lot of those extinct species were very successful designs in their day. They've been tried and not been found "errors" for long periods of time. Only when circumstances changed, did they become unfit and were discarded.Since circumstances will always keep changing, the fraction of extinct species will keep rising. If you wait long enough, practically all species that have ever existed will have become extinct. On the face of it, it would then seem as though this process of trial and error is incapable of producing anything worthwhile.So, if you mean effectiveness in terms of weeding out errors, then the 95% indeed proves effectiveness, but it's a moot point in view of the future trend of this number.But of you mean effectiveness in terms of innovation, then your 95% sort of proves the opposite.This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 27-Oct-2005 10:35 AM

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