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Author Topic:   Evolution is random! Stop saying it isn't!
Doddy
Member (Idle past 5909 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 1 of 99 (414949)
08-07-2007 4:51 AM


((OOC: we're running out of creationists, so I'm going to role-play. Plus, this way I can get you to do my work for me, by providing me with source material for the EvoWiki. What follows does not necessarily reflect my true opinion.))
It is often said in this forum that evolution isn't random, usually in reply to someone who mentions that "something complex can't have appeared by chance". But, evolution certainly is random, by any sensible definition of chance or randomness.
Chance and randomness can have many meanings. It can mean something that isn't preceding with an aim, purpose or reason. Clearly, evolution doesn't aim for anything like mice or men, and many an evolutionist has pointed this out. But this definition is too broad, as even a comet's orbit doesn't occur for any aim or purpose, but its a perfect ellipse, certainly not random.
Randomness can, in statistics, refer to a probability where things have an equal chance of occurring. Clearly, this definition is not what is meant by random chance by any creationist, although I will concede that evolution isn't random in this case, but this definition rules out also the process of rolling two dice (because 7 is the most likely result) and even tossing a slightly bent coin (it won't have a strict 50-50 chance arrangement).
Chance and randomness both refer to something that isn't predictable. Design is predictable, once you know what the design is to be (and if the designer has the capacity to make it), you can easily predict the outcome. Chance and randomness refer to an event that you can't predict - you can't know what will happen at that event, although you can show that there is some bias or something overall when you look at the probability distribution.
Gambling with cards, poker for example, is a game of chance (not pure chance, but random nonetheless). That is, there is no way (at least not without cheating) for one to say what card you will draw. If there were, casinos would have gone broke. However, we can give a certain probability to each card. Say you have already pulled out two aces, you know it will be more likely the next card won't be an ace.
It is clear that mutations are random. They occur due to certain phenomena, such as x-rays or mutagens, but one can't say whether a mutation will occur in any specific locus. You may be able to say that a locus is more likely to occur, but you can't actually predict it, just as with the cards.
Selection merely introduces a bias into the system. Take the example of poker as before. We already had two aces, and say we draw a queen of hearts, a six of clubs and a jack of spades. Now, we introduce the selection. But before I select, do you know what I will select? Nope. You can have a good guess, assuming I know how to play the game, but you can't know. Likewise, evolutionists can guess what will occur when a population is exposed to selection pressures, but they can't predict it - something different will happen each time.
Then, the product will be biased randomness. It will be biased towards something - something that increases fitness in that environment. But it's still random. You can't predict the course of evolution. Steven Jay Gould likened it to a drunken walk, albeit somewhat constrained by some walls. A drunken walk, unless constrained to one outcome, will still be random.
So, one must either conclude that random chance can create the ordered complexity of life today, or conclude that direct design is the only process that can create life.
((out of character again: Or, you could have a go at the definitions of randomness that I used, in comparison to what creationists usually mean when they say evolution was random. Also, I expect I contradicted myself somewhere in that rant - I'm an evolutionist trying to argue for creationism, so I may have let some logic in where it shouldn't be)).

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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5909 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 7 of 99 (415033)
08-07-2007 8:14 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by bdfoster
08-07-2007 3:27 PM


bdfoster writes:
The random selection would not be biased toward survival. It would not be biased in any way.
But, is it random which card you draw from a deck, if you already have removed two aces? Not by that definition of randomness where every chance is equal. That definition is strictly mathematical, and as such doesn't have much application outside of theoretical situations.
In fact, by that definition, nothing in evolution is random. Mutations are more likely to occur in certain areas that others, and mutations are biased towards degradation.
That is why that definition of randomness, which is a strict statistical definition, isn't what is meant by creationists when they say evolution is random (although to be honest, they never do clarify that).

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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5909 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 9 of 99 (415060)
08-08-2007 12:29 AM
Reply to: Message 8 by AnswersInGenitals
08-07-2007 9:19 PM


AnswersInGenitals writes:
the mutation process is still random (in Darwinian evolution) - it does not occur with a pre-planned outcome or teleological 'intent'
Does natural selection occur with intent, or with a pre-planned outcome? It can't, as it is a purely a natural process, just like the diffusion of gas molecules. So then, doesn't it also pass a random by those criteria?
AnswersInGenitals writes:
Note that the fact that various hands and card draws are not equally probable is not relevant to the discussion or to any functional definition of random, chance, or statistical process.
How can the fact that various hands and card draws are not equally probable be irrelevant, but the fact that various phenotypes/genotypes are not equally probable to reproduce is relevant?

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This message is a reply to:
 Message 8 by AnswersInGenitals, posted 08-07-2007 9:19 PM AnswersInGenitals has replied

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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5909 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 12 of 99 (415223)
08-08-2007 8:44 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by AnswersInGenitals
08-08-2007 1:37 PM


Re: Processes well modeled as random.
AnswersInGenitals writes:
Your 'criterion' is that anything that is natural is random.
No, it's yours. I told you what my criterion was in the opening post -an event that can't be predicted. You're the one who, in message 8, said "the mutation process is still random (in Darwinian evolution) - it does not occur with a pre-planned outcome or teleological 'intent'". Thus, you have implied that randomness includes anything that isn't occuring with a pre-planned outcome or intent. There are natural processes that don't have a pre-planned outcome or intent, such as the orbit of planets - they weren't planned and they weren't intended, as stated by modern physics anyway.
AnswersInGenitals writes:
Also note that a great many processes that we think of and treat as random are really deterministic.
Of course. And yet, nobody on Earth has the power to predict the outcome, because we can't measure all those variables and do the needed calculations, at least with any great accuracy, in such a short period of time.
AnswersInGenitals writes:
In particular, even when considered as fundamentally deterministic processes, they do not act to produce some pre-planned outcome.
Does evolution act to produce a pre-planned outcome?

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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5909 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 32 of 99 (415450)
08-10-2007 6:35 AM
Reply to: Message 29 by Bodhitharta
08-10-2007 4:05 AM


Re: random selection and a model of evolution
Natural selection is just a description of the observation that some organisms have more offspring than others. Thus, it amplifies those sort of organisms, which are usually those that cope the best with their environment. There is no design in that system, according to evolutionary biologists, just a straight-forward observation.
However, even a filter is random (by the definition I outlined in my original post). Take for example passing a solution through a piece of filter paper, which is a one-step filter (compared to the constant filtering of natural selection). While you can say that it is more likely for a small particle to pass through than a larger one, you can't actually predict whether a particle will pass through or not.
Thus, one must conclude that if evolution through natural selection is the explanation for life on earth, then random processes can create complex systems.

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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5909 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 36 of 99 (415463)
08-10-2007 8:28 AM
Reply to: Message 34 by Wounded King
08-10-2007 7:10 AM


Re: random selection and a model of evolution
Wounded King writes:
What is it about the 'instructions of DNA' that is very predictable?
I think Bodhi is talking about the genetic code, where once you know the reading frame, you can predict the sequence of the polypeptide produced after transcription and translation.

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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5909 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 37 of 99 (415464)
08-10-2007 8:29 AM
Reply to: Message 35 by Percy
08-10-2007 7:23 AM


Re: random selection and a model of evolution
Percy writes:
Natural selection is not random. Organisms are selected for by the environment. Cold environments will select against hairless cats and for polar bears, and warm environments will select for hairless cats and against polar bears.
By what definition of randomness?

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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5909 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 41 of 99 (415478)
08-10-2007 10:44 AM
Reply to: Message 39 by Percy
08-10-2007 9:45 AM


Re: random selection and a model of evolution
Ah, I think I get it. Which organisms survive to pass on their genes is actually predictable, at least in the extreme forms of mutations and variations. Is that right?
What about weaker selection pressures? How are they non-random?

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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5909 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 44 of 99 (415574)
08-10-2007 10:37 PM
Reply to: Message 42 by Percy
08-10-2007 12:00 PM


Evolution = pseudo-random?
Percy writes:
But notice that as you reduce the selection pressure by placing the polar bears in habitats that more and more closely match their natural habitat that while the mortality rate is less the selection pressure is still non-random.
Ok, I can see that.
Therefore, what sort of definition for randomness should I be using? I'm trying to use the definition that matches the most closely what creationists usually mean when they imply that "evolution is random" or that "life just happened". But I'm having a hard time, because definitions appear to be prohibited in creation science.
It appears to me that evolution is non-random in the same way that rolling two dice is non-random - the results cluster around 7 (central limit theorem), but the actual result isn't predictable by humans, although it is entirely controlled by deterministic properties.
Would it be safe to say evolution is pseudo-random? As in, it would be predictable if you had access to all the variables.

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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5909 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 47 of 99 (415606)
08-11-2007 1:32 AM
Reply to: Message 46 by Percy
08-10-2007 11:20 PM


Re: Evolution = pseudo-random?
I see. Thanks for that great explanation.
I have only one thing left that I need to know.
What do creationists usually mean when they make the quip that 'evolution is random' or 'amounts to blind chance'?
I don't want to be setting up a strawman.

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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5909 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 51 of 99 (415812)
08-12-2007 8:48 AM
Reply to: Message 49 by epo5
08-12-2007 1:05 AM


Re: The Fallacy of Evolution
Addressing the only relevant piece of information in this rant against 'mutationism':
epo5 (I assume) writes:
One, random mutation. This type of mutation comes about in a random fashion, without any preconceived design or plan on the genetic level.
I take this to imply that something is random because it happens without any design or plan. (Although I maybe be reading to much into this).
Now, seeing as evolutionary biologists generally stress that evolution doesn't occur with a plan in mind, I guess creationists are right when they say that evolution is random in this way. But they are then not right, because they are equivocating, when they say that random processes can't produce order and complexity.

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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5909 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 60 of 99 (415957)
08-13-2007 4:09 AM
Reply to: Message 59 by epo5
08-13-2007 1:13 AM


Re: Got it.
If I can recommend something, it would be to make a much more focussed thread. That message includes a full argument, whereas I think a detailed discussion of each individual point would be more appropriate. Do you want to address whether evolution could feasibly be a hoax, whether mutations can be beneficial, whether what occurs in the lab is reflective of natural situations, whether art could have evolved etc.
Lastly, as I mentioned in my reply to that thread, you've really only shown that 'mutationism' (mutations alone) can't account for life on earth. Remember that evolution includes selective forces in addition to mutations, so to claim that evolution is dead because of what mutations do is dishonest, as it's only looking at half the picture.
Edited by Doddy, : clarified last point

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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5909 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 86 of 99 (416090)
08-13-2007 7:13 PM
Reply to: Message 65 by bdfoster
08-13-2007 12:25 PM


Re: Got it.
bdfoster writes:
As for natural selection being random, I suppose we could play word games and come up with a definition for random that would include natural selection. But I prefer to stick with the standard english definition where biased and random are near antonyms. There is a real world difference between a truly random selection of a population, and a selection naturally biased toward fittness. That difference is the driving force behind evolution.
The problem is that it is easy to equivocate the definitions. Creationists can fairly easily convince people that evolution is random, by using the definition of random where there is no purpose to anything, and then claim that random processes can't produce order, by using the definition of random where all outcomes are equally probable.
I'm going to write an essay on this for the EvoWiki, and that's why I've got you all to respond to my initial pseudo-creationist rant.

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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5909 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 88 of 99 (416242)
08-14-2007 9:40 PM
Reply to: Message 23 by Wounded King
08-09-2007 8:46 PM


Re: random selection and a model of evolution
Wounded King writes:
the initial distribution and effect of the mutations is random
Just playing devil's advocate again. I know the answer, just asking...
How can the effects of mutations be random (using the definition where the probability of each event occurring is equal), if mutations are much, much more likely to be detrimental than they are to be beneficial? That doesn't sound like equal probabilities to me.

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This message is a reply to:
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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5909 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 90 of 99 (416344)
08-15-2007 9:20 AM
Reply to: Message 89 by Wounded King
08-15-2007 6:18 AM


Re: random selection and a model of evolution
Hmm, then that brings up the problem of evolution being random again. Under a weak selection pressure, survival with respect to fitness is described by a probability distribution. It is more likely for a 'fit' organism to reproduce than a comparatively 'unfit' one, and therefore can be deemed random (yet biased).

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