Does Evolution Have An Objective?

But those choices would be an illusion...

The outcome already existed beforehand.

I guess we understand different things by the phrase "completely deterministic"... It makes it an illusion! You're not really really making any choice at all.In Message 17 you wrote: Predictive ability doesn't really matter. If the outcome of the action of your nervous system is pre-determined by the condtions leading up to it, then you're not really making any choices, even if there's an illusion set-up that makes it look and feel like you are.

Have you seen the experiment with the green dot that changes red as it flys across the screen and the people seeing the red dot before it even gets there and before its even red... or somethign like that?I can't seem to google it up because I can't remember enough about it.You know what I'm talking about?

You are not really making the choice if its pre-determnined, its just an illusion that you're actually making a choice. If its "completely determined", then you the programmer will decide what choice the computer makes, not the computer itself.

That's not "completely deterministic". I call shenanigans.

That's only partially deterministic. That's not completely deterministic. That's not completely deterministic.

Well, he's just saying it is without explaining why, and you're just saying its blindingly obvious without saying why.If the decision are not determined in the programming of how it chooses, then its not completely deterministic.If it is completely deterministic, then its going to make the same move for each input and therefore its isn't really making the decision itself.

The programming is the determination of how it chooses its moves, the input is the move that the opponent made. Indeed. Then its not actually making a decision.

Evolution does not have an objective any more than gravity has an objective. Shit just happens. Regarding a direction, I'd say that evolution sort of does have a direction... I guess I'd call that direction "outwards". It seems to me that every niche that life can fill, it does. Its always, inadvertantly, trying to expand as far and wide as it can. Its pretty sweet that an aspect of the universe is recognizing itself as an aspect of the universe... We're the only thing I'm aware of that can do that. But not just humans, right? Other animals too, no? Not the universe, itself as a whole, no. But if you want to call our consciousness a part of the universe, then yes. As they say:

quote:

---

We are the universe experiencing itself subjectively.

---

If the universe is completely deterministic, then there's definately nothing special about our consciousnesses and ability to make choices that can in turn affect the universe and "change the path", so to speak, because none of that is really actually happening its just that it seems like it is to us. I, as in me, am not just the some of my parts. There's something else there.The universe is not completely deterministic, and we are special entities.

An immortal species could still evolve via pressure from sexual selection. It does, but too, the devil made us throw your ass in jail I suppose there could be an evolutionary advantage to having itches that aren't really there *shrugs* Some things aren't deterministic, like Brownian Motion or radioactive decay. So if we really are making choices then that makes us special (imo).

If the outcome is independent of our "choice", then we're not really choosing and we don't have free will, but if the outcome does depend on our choice then we do.This isn't a very complicated concept.

---

Oh, I get it:

It makes the outcome independent of our "choice". If you rewind and replay, will the particles follow the same paths?

Your "choice" cannot change the outcome. From Message 72:

quote:

---

We did really make that choice, determinism just means that we would make the same choice every time we reran the universe.

---

Quit playin'...Don't you realize that you are using the word "choice", and possibly even the word "determinism", differently than everyone who is arguing with you in this thread? How do you know?

No shit! I get it, but that's not what people are talking about here when they are using the word "choice", and that the above is what is the illusion of choice. No, its free will. Its up to us what the outcome is, that's what poeple mean by "choice". Its not random, but you can't predict the choice from the condition. That's what makes it an actual choice instead of an illusion. Brownian Motion is a stoichastic process and that means that they will *not* behave in exactly the same way from identical starting condition.