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Author Topic:   July 2007 - Posts of the Month
jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 2 of 19 (408858)
07-05-2007 11:10 AM


Percy's Sex life.
Percy's example of taking a test in Swahili is one of the best examples I have ever come across to explain evolution.
Message 67
Look at it this way. Say you took a multiple choice test written in Swahili and received a score between 0 and 100. The score doesn't say which questions were right or wrong, it's just a total score. Assuming you don't understand Swahili and that there are five answers to choose from for each question, your score will probably be around 20%.
But you're allowed to take the test again! And again and again and again! And you're given the results of each test. And when you get a higher score you'll use that test result as a model to try variations upon to get your grade even higher.
What's most amazing about this is you're increasing your grade on a test in Swahili without understanding a word of Swahili. And as you try variations around tests with good scores, you really have no idea which variation is going to prove to be the one that increases your grade. And when you finally raise your score to 100, while you'll know that all your answers are correct, you still won't have any idea what the questions or answers were.
Nature works the same way. It doesn't have any understanding of what's needed, it doesn't have any idea what the effect of any change might be, it just goes about trial-and-erroring its way through solutions, keeping those that work better than prior solutions, just as you did with the tests.
Really wish I had rit it.

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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