Observations about Evolution

Loudmouth writes:The interesting thing is that the framstick designs are suboptimal when compared to man made designs in some instances.

With this laissez-faire philosophy, Thompson has evolved a circuit that distinguishes between two tones, two electric signals that, if fed into a stereo speaker, would produce two notes. One has a frequency of 1 kilohertz, the other 10 kilohertz.

After 5,000 generations and two weeks of computer time, the computer was distinguishing between the two tones.Strangely, Thompson has been unable to pin down how the chip was accomplishing the task. When he checked to see how many of the 100 cells evolution had recruited for the task, he found no more than 32 in use. The voltage on the other 68 could be held constant without affecting the chip's performance. A chip designed by a human, says Thompson, would have required 10 to 100 times as many logic elements--or at least access to a clock--to perform the same task. This is why Thompson describes the chip's configuration as "flabbergastingly efficient."

Loudmouth writes:So maybe we should attribute the poorly designed elements within the cell to intelligent design and the more refined designs to evolutionary mechanisms.

Loudmouth writes:I can see it now, Behe stating that the non-irreducibly complex systems prove intelligent design since genetic algorithms create such effecient and interlocking designs.