Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 449

A prof on looking into ID literature for the first time…

When Robert Shedinger, a religion prof at Luther College in Iowa, looked into the ID controversy, he was surprised to discover that “this literature was far more scientifically substantive than the usual caricature, and this drove me to immerse myself in the scientific literature of evolutionary biology to see if it was as convincing as usually portrayed.”

Um, yes. And the longer such critiques can be evaded rather than addressed, the more substantive they will be.

Here’s the gen on his new book, The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms: Darwinian Biology’s Grand Narrative of Triumph and the Subversion of Religion:

Is Darwinian evolution really the most successful scientific theory ever proposed—or even the best idea anyone has ever had, as Daniel Dennett once put it? The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms provides a comprehensive critical reading of the literature of evolutionary biology from Darwin to Dobzhansky to Dawkins, revealing this popular account of evolution to be a grand narrative of Darwinian triumph that greatly overstates the empirical validity of modern evolutionary theory. The mechanisms driving the evolutionary process truly remain a mystery more than one hundred fifty years after Origin of Species, a fact that can free religion scholars to think in more creative ways about the positive contributions religious reflection might make to our understanding of life’s origin and diversity. The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms calls for an embrace of mystery, understood not as an abdication of the scientific quest for truth but as a courageous and humble acknowledgment of the limits of human reason and an openness to a fundamentally religious orientation toward life.

Here’s a Q and A Shedinger has offered, outlining his thoughts:

What is the grand narrative of Darwinian triumph?
This refers to how Darwin’s theory of natural selection has been passed from one generation of scientists to another as the most successful scientific theory of all time despite serious questions about its empirical foundation. This narrative acts to ensure the scientific status of biology as a purely materialist discipline, but actually undermines a serious attempt to grapple with the origin and diversity of life.How does this grand narrative subvert religion?
By claiming that the diversity of life can be fully explained in purely material terms–as the result of natural selection acting on the inherent variability of organisms–this narrative renders religious ideas about a creator God or gods or some creative intelligence at work in the world of no explanatory value. Religious scholars and thinkers are thus reduced to accommodating their religious reflections to this scientific truth in ways that evacuates religious ideas of their meaning. What aspects of modern evolutionary theory remain a mystery?
There are currently no good scientific explanations for how life emerged from inanimate matter or how mind emerges from the material brain. Likewise for the origin of the genetic code and the grammaticality of DNA. How and why did multi-cellular organisms evolve since single-celled bacteria dominate the planet and seem far better adapted to the conditions of life? How did the various animal body plans come into existence so suddenly in the Cambrian period 520 million years ago with no new body plans having evolved since? Why do so few fossil species show any evolutionary development over their life histories? This is just a sample of the many mysteries.How do you feel about movements like creationism and intelligent design?
As a trained biblical scholar I cannot read the book of Genesis literally or historically. The 4.5 billion year age of the Earth is well established scientifically, and the fossil record as well as the biogeographical distribution of species around the world is strong support for an evolutionary process. So I cannot accept strict creationist ideas. I am, however, open to the intelligent design idea that life’s history cannot be explained without recourse to some type of intelligent agent. I do not identify this agent with the biblical God as some intelligent design advocates do, but I am sympathetic to the criticisms of Darwinism coming from the intelligent design movement and the principle that life cannot be explained apart from intelligence. What motivated you to delve so deeply into the history and development of evolutionary theory?
I took over the teaching of a science and religion class from a retiring colleague some years ago and began reading intelligent design literature so I could accurately represent it in class. To my shock I found that this literature was far more scientifically substantive than the usual caricature, and this drove me to immerse myself in the scientific literature of evolutionary biology to see if it was as convincing as usually portrayed. It was through this process that I began to see the contours of a grand narrative of Darwinian triumph emerging from the literature.Why do you feel it is valid to read scientific literature from the perspective of a scholar trained in the humanities?
Because science is just as much a human undertaking as any other academic discipline, and the production of knowledge is always bound up with the exercise of power. Humanities scholars–and religion scholars in particular– who are trained to be sensitive to these power dynamics have much to contribute to an understanding of how and why certain scientific ideas develop and become dominant in a culture. Do you think the mystery of life on Earth will ever be fully understood scientifically?
It is impossible to say. But I think the obstacles to a fully scientific understanding are profound. And in many ways I hope the answer here is no. I find grappling with mystery much more exhilarating than knowing all the answers.
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Richard Weikart on yet another Darwinian rewrite of Darwin and the facts

Richard Weikart, who has provided much scholarship in the links between Darwinism, eugenics, and scientific racism, offers a review of Darwinian philosopher Michael Ruse’s new book, The problem of war: Darwinism, Christianity, and their battle to understand human conflict at Metascience:

One of the biggest problems with Ruse’s analysis is that he simply ignores or misinterprets many contrary lines of evidence. He does not cite some of the most important secondary literature on the topic, such as Mike Hawkins’s Social Darwin-ism in European and American Thought, 1860–1945. Hawkins argues, contra Ruse, that “it is important not to lose sight of the fact that Social Darwinist rationalisations of warfare did exist and were highly influential” (Hawkins 1997, 207). Ruse also never cites H. W. Koch’s essay, “Social Darwinism as a Factor in the ‘New Imperi-alism’” (Koch 1972), nor Nancy Stepan, “‘Nature’s Pruning Hook’: War, Race and Evolution, 1914–1918” (Stepan 1987). There are more omissions, but you get the point. These scholarly works are directly on topic and present evidence that runs contrary to his position, yet he seems blithely unaware of them.

Richard Weikart, “Science and religion at war about war” at Metascience

Although he only uses the term “misrepresents” once, Wekart makes clear that Ruse misrepresents the participants in the discussions and in some cases makes claims that are contradicted by the facts:

Oddly, even Charles Darwin is misconstrued. In an early section of his book, Ruse properly explains that Darwin saw war as a progressive force in the past, but expressed hope that it would be unnecessary in the future. However, later in the book, Ruse stumbles. He states, “The Descent, for all that it did reflect the concerns of a middle-class, Victorian gentleman, was no clarion call to racial superiority. Darwin was explicit that when the races met and (as so often was the case) the non-Europeans suffered, it came not from intellectual or social superiority but because non-Europeans caught the strangers’ diseases, fell sick, and died” (148). This is balderdash.

In chapter 5 of Descent, where Darwin discusses human intellectual and moral faculties, he stated, “At the present day civilized nations are everywhere supplanting barbarous nations, excepting where the climate opposes a deadly barrier; and they succeed mainly, though not exclusively, through their arts, which are the products of the intellect” (Darwin 1981, 1:160).

Richard Weikart, “Science and religion at war about war” at Metascience

Ruse can get away with simply misrepresenting Darwin on the subject of race. Being a Darwinist means, among other things, never having to answer critics. Critics can be dismissed, in all senses of the word. It’s true that nothing is learned but, under the circumstances, nothing need be learned.

Darwinism is the default setting for pop science culture. It will always be preferred to evidence. One must wait until that culture self-destructs.

See also: Ideologies That Devalue Human Life – With Historian Richard Weikart

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Yes! Oparin’s coacervates… again!

Everything old is new again, as they say in the fashion world:

The “warm little pond” idea was a mere suggestion when Darwin wrote to Joseph Hooker in 1871, a year before his death, but it was too vague to be taken seriously. Over 50 years later, in 1924, Alexander Oparin developed the idea with a little more rigor. He did so with the help of J.B.S. Haldane, speculating on how building blocks of life could be contained inside temporary droplets of organic goo. Wikipedia says, “For decades the theory of Oparin and Haldane was the leading approach to the origin of life question,” adding, “However, the lack of any mechanism by which coacervates can reproduce leaves them far short of being living systems.”

Also lacking was any mechanism for the transition from chance droplets to the elaborate lipid membranes in modern cells, with their active transport machines and sensory cilia. Considering that membranes are formed and regulated under the direction of nuclear codes, their likeness to chance droplets seems as strained as comparing cells to soap bubbles.

“Not Oparin’s Coacervates Again!” at Evolution News and Science Today

But, we are told, the theory has been resurrected in a paper in PNAS, featuring “microdroplets” which are more stable when diluted (paywall):

The word “could” appears 34 times in the paper, “suggests” and similar words 20 times, “possible” and similar words 13 times, “likely” 11 times, “may have” 8 times, and “perhaps” 3 times. The paper includes 12 movies of spherical drops bouncing around and occasionally merging. OK, so? You can observe that in the kitchen sink with soap bubbles in a dish.

“Not Oparin’s Coacervates Again!” at Evolution News and Science Today

In origin of life studies, that’s par for the course. It won’t change because it can’t.

Our physics color commentator, Rob Sheldon, offers some thoughts:

it would seem to me that rather pure concentrations of alpha-hydroxy acid was used to make the gel. The drying was needed to polymerize it, and then the “droplets” formed little cell-sized globs of protoplasm in which presumably other important lifelike reactions could occur.

None of these steps is remotely likely. Not one. The density of any complex hydrocarbon is parts per million in a random soup, which just is not going to polymerize with itself, but with every other contaminant of equal or greater concentration. So the mere fact that purified laboratory chemicals are involved in this reaction is a non-starter for OOL. Always.

Ignoring all the problems of the formation of unstable molecules, the destruction of unstable molecules, or the reason why carbonaceous chondrites have these molecules in the first place (life), and just assuming we have these chemicals in the concentrations actually observed, we still don’t have a chance at OOL. Remember Fred Hoyle’s challenge–put your favorite bacteria cultures in a blender, destroy every cell. Now you have all the right chemicals in the right proportions. How long will you have to wait until life spontaneously appears? If the wait is longer than 10 minutes, than the vastly more diluted ocean cannot spontaneously create life in the 4 billion years of the Earth’s existence. It’s just math.

Nor is this scenario remotely original–just about everyone uses the wet/dry cycle to get polymerization to go. The resulting gel or goo is the old 1800 “protoplasm” theory about OOL. We’ve so run out of ideas we’re now revisiting scenarios that are 2 centuries old.

And finally, there’s something superstitious about putting form before function; demanding that the gel form cell-shaped droplets before it can become alive. It’s the same idea that gingerbread cookie dough shaped like a man has a better chance at becoming alive than when shaped like a cookie. Yet this is the level of discussion in OOL. Pathetic really.

Rob Sheldon is author of Genesis: The Long Ascent

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See also: The Science Fictions series at your fingertips – origin of life What we do and don’t know about the origin of life.

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Sabine Hossenfelder dusts off “superdeterminism”

Always stirring the pot (and always worth the listen), Hossenfelder, author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, writes,

I find superdeterminism interesting because the most obvious class of hidden variables are the degrees of freedom of the detector. And the detector isn’t statistically independent of itself, so any such theory necessarily violates statistical independence. It is also, in a trivial sense, non-linear just because if the detector depends on a superposition of prepared states that’s not the same as superposing two measurements. Since any solution of the measurement problem requires a non-linear time evolution, that seems a good opportunity to make progress.

Now, a lot of people discard superdeterminism simply because they prefer to believe in free will, which is where I think the biggest resistance to superdeterminism comes from. Bad enough that belief isn’t a scientific reason, but worse that this is misunderstanding just what is going on. It’s not like superdeterminism somehow prevents an experimentalist from turning a knob. Rather, it’s that the detectors’ states aren’t independent of the system one tries to measure. There just isn’t any state the experimentalist could twiddle their knob to which would prevent a correlation.

Where do these correlations ultimately come from? Well, they come from where everything ultimately comes from, that is from the initial state of the universe. And that’s where most people walk off

Sabine Hossenfelder, “The Forgotten Solution: Superdeterminism” at BackRe(Action)

This is for the physics nerds among us. But for now, for the rest of us, from the Information Philosopher:

Superdeterminism would deny the important “free choice” of the experimenter (originally suggested by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg) and later explored by John Conway and Simon Kochen. Conway and Kochen claim that the experimenters’ free choice requires that atoms must have free will, something they call their Free Will Theorem.

Following John Bell, Nicholas Gisin and Antoine Suarez argue that something might be coming from “outside space and time” to correlate results in their own experimental tests of Bell’s Theorem.

In his 1996 book, Time’s Arrow and Archimedes’ Point, Huw Price proposes an Archimedean point “outside space and time” as a solution to the problem of nonlocality in the Bell experiments in the form of an “advanced action.”

Rather than a “superdeterministic” common cause coming from “outside space and time” (as proposed by Bell, Gisin, Suarez, and others), Price argues that there might be a cause coming backwards in time from some interaction in the future.

Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff have also promoted this idea of “backward causation,” sending information backward in time in the EPR experiments. More.

Dizzying. But we shall see.

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See also: Sabine Hossenfelder: Don’t Expect Too Much From New Proposals To Detect Dark Matter

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A site that compares humans and great apes

in considerable detail:

ABOUT CARTA

The Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny* (CARTA) is a virtual organization formed in order to promote transdisciplinary research into human origins, drawing on methods from a number of traditional disciplines spanning the social, biomedical, biological, computational and engineering, physical and chemical sciences, and the humanities. CARTA began as a collaboration between faculty at UC San Diego and at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, along with interested scientists at other institutions. In January 2008, CARTA became a UC San Diego recognized Organized Research Unit (ORU).

See what you think.

See also: Apes and humans: How did science get so detached from reality?

We’re not “one” with chimpanzees. The wall has not “been breached.” So far as anyone can tell, it is not even breachable. Nobody thinks chimpanzees are the same as humans except a few researchers who may have spent too long in the bush.

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BBC swings and misses: “Why is there something instead of nothing?”, pt. 2 ( –> Being, Logic and First Principles, 24b)

The exploration in-the-wild on Heidegger’s pivotal question is turning out to be quite fruitful. Here, we see BBC swing and miss, leading to dancing stumps.

Dancing stumps:

Video, with one of the greats at bat:

First, context, we are discussing here popularised forms of the idea that “nothing” has been defined by physicists to denote in effect a sub-universe that gives rise to quantum fluctuations and thus expanding sub-universes. Let’s clip from the parent thread LFP 24:

[KF, LFP 24, 41:] Let us continue our “in-the-wild” exploration, here a Robert Adler BBC article (as representing what we might find in high-prestige media):

[BBC:] >>Why is there something rather than nothing?
By Robert Adler
6 November 2014

People have wrestled with the mystery of why the universe exists for thousands of years. Pretty much every ancient culture came up with its own creation story – most of them leaving the matter in the hands of the gods – and philosophers have written reams on the subject. But science has had little to say about this ultimate question.

However, in recent years a few physicists and cosmologists have started to tackle it. They point out that we now have an understanding of the history of the universe, and of the physical laws that describe how it works. That information, they say, should give us a clue about how and why the cosmos exists.

Their admittedly controversial answer is that the entire universe, from the fireball of the Big Bang to the star-studded cosmos we now inhabit, popped into existence from nothing at all. It had to happen, they say, because “nothing” is inherently unstable.

This idea may sound bizarre, or just another fanciful creation story. But the physicists argue that it follows naturally from science’s two most powerful and successful theories: quantum mechanics and general relativity . . . .
Quantum mechanics tells us that there is no such thing as empty space. Even the most perfect vacuum is actually filled by a roiling cloud of particles and antiparticles, which flare into existence and almost instantaneously fade back into nothingness.

These so-called virtual particles don’t last long enough to be observed directly, but we know they exist by their effects . . . . [W]hen quantum theory is applied to space [–> note, we are now dealing with cosmology informed by extensions of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity over the past century] at the smallest possible scale, space itself becomes unstable. Rather than remaining perfectly smooth and continuous, space and time destabilize, churning and frothing into a foam of space-time bubbles.

In other words, little bubbles of space and time can form spontaneously. “If space and time are quantized, they can fluctuate,” says Lawrence Krauss at Arizona State University in Tempe. “So you can create virtual space-times just as you can create virtual particles.”

What’s more, if it’s possible for these bubbles to form, you can guarantee that they will. “In quantum physics, if something is not forbidden, it necessarily happens with some non-zero probability,” says Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts . . . . So it’s not just particles and antiparticles that can snap in and out of nothingness: bubbles of space-time can do the same. Still, it seems like a big leap from an infinitesimal space-time bubble to a massive universe that hosts 100 billion galaxies. Surely, even if a bubble formed, it would be doomed to disappear again in the blink of an eye?

Actually, it is possible for the bubble to survive. But for that we need another trick: cosmic inflation . . . . a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, the quantum-sized bubble of space expanded stupendously fast. In an incredibly brief moment, it went from being smaller than the nucleus of an atom to the size of a grain of sand. When the expansion finally slowed, the force field that had powered it was transformed into the matter and energy that fill the universe today. Guth calls inflation “the ultimate free lunch”.>>

[KF:] This is of course an expanded form of Dr Dawkins’ assertions in the OP above, where he made such heavy weather over the difference between something and a genuine no-thing. Thus, it falls victim to precisely the same inadvertent bait-switch fallacy that we already saw. In effect, it proposes a quasi-physical, speculative sub-universe that provides a space-time, energy-rich context for inflationary bubbles to form and toss up sub-cosmi such as ours, allegedly. With, of course, the sub-verse lurking as the implicitly claimed, brute fact necessary being world-root.

Never mind, heat death, traversal of the transfinite past in finite stage steps, the overwhelmingly more likely event of a deluded Boltzmann brain or even a comm coll term assignment to run a world simulation (and play at being god) etc as issues. And of course, don’t ponder the significance of fine tuning of our cosmos fitting it for C-chem aqueous medium life or how we get beyond dynamic-stochastic computation on substrates to genuine rational freedom and moral government of our intellectual life through inescapable duties to truth, to right reason, to prudence, to sound conscience, to neighbourliness, to justice, etc.

In short, in this “tell it to grandma” form, we are right back at the challenge: which candidate to be the necessary being world-root is the best explanation. Philosophy done while wearing a lab coat is still philosophy, and a relativity- and quantum- influenced space-time domain prone to instabilities and formation of inflation-prone bubbles — despite erroneous, misleading labels — is not a genuine no-thing.

So, absent an infinite reservoir of energy, absent a credible means to traverse a transfinite causally successive past in finite-duration stages (“years” for convenience), absent a good explanation for a fine-tuned world at so deeply isolated an operating point as the observed cosmos is, and absent a good explanation for mind under moral government, we should not be overly disturbed by such philosophising while wearing a lab coat and filling chalkboards with quantum and relativity calculations.

This inadvertently underscores the significance of the issue and opens up where it points. (It also brings out how ID-linked questions are routinely handled in the subtext without the courtesy of a serious mention or allusion. Yes, design theory issues are also highly important, but are deemed beyond the pale of “respectable” discussion, save to denigrate and dismiss. Welcome to the brave new world of C21 media.)

Earlier in the discussion, an occasional objector had suggested:

28 Pater Kimbridge July 24, 2019 at 9:59 am

“Why is there something rather than nothing?”
That’s the dumbest question humans have asked.
It presupposes that “nothing” is the default state, and that “something” requires explanation.

“Nothing” is actually the harder state to achieve. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and try to achieve it.

To this, I responded [KF, 30:] >>actually, the point is that given a going concern world with rational, responsible, morally governed creatures in it, there is a very plausible assumption, the weak form PSR:

[PSR, weak (investigatory) form:] Of any particular thing A that is

[. . . or (ii) is possible, or even (iii) is impossible],

we may ask, why it is

[. . . or (ii’) why it is possible, or (iii’) why it is impossible],

and we may expect — or at least hope — to find a reasonable answer.

That’s one jaw of our pincers.

The second, being the logic of being that fits well with it (cf. OP [–> all of that stuff about possible worlds then impossible vs possible beings, with some of the latter contingent and some necessary] ).

We can then get a solid grip on things.

Here, the subject of inquiry is one that Heidegger saw as big and insightful — and note this is the title and lead of the OP:

To philosophize is to ask “Why are there essents
rather than nothing?” Really to ask this question signifies: a daring
attempt to fathom this unfathomable question by disclosing what it
summons us to ask, to push our questioning to the very end. Where
such an attempt occurs there is philosophy. [ M. Heidegger, An
Introduction to Metaphysics, Yale University Press, New Haven and London
(1959), pp. 7-8.]

Whose report do you think we should believe, yours or one of the greats, Heidegger?

On exploring, first we see that nothing is no-thing, non-being. Were
there ever utter nothing, we would have no reality whatsoever, so we can
now contemplate an alternative to what we experience. That is already a
very powerful result of pure reflection on being.

But then also we see, non-being can have no causal capabilities.

So, if there were ever utter non-being, such would always be the
case. That is, that a world is, implies that something has always been
there, which we can term a root of reality.

Another very powerful result.

Further to this, that root taken as a whole is credibly an
independent or necessary being. NB’s, being present as part of the
framework for any possible or actual world, and being independent of
external enabling causal factors, A simple case is the number 2.

Another very powerful result, we see that there is a root for any
possible or actual world with causal capacity to account for it.

Going on, our world has in it morally governed, rational (not merely
computational) creatures, us. That further constrains the root of
reality. We are credibly requiring an inherently good and utterly wise
NB as root of reality, to account for moral government as that is where
the IS-OUGHT gap can be bridged (hence, BTW, the sort of resistance
above). Such starts with government of our rationality through duties
to truth, right reason, prudence, justice etc. Indeed, these govern our
exchanges in this thread.

So, another powerful result, one that shifts the balance decisively
against those who would suggest that moral government is delusional,
and/or that it does not trace to a being that fills the required bill.

Not bad for a stupid or dumb question.>>

Looks like the philosophical dumb oxen are still filling the world with their bellowing. END

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Apes and humans: How did science get so detached from reality?

From the Smithsonian: We and the chimpanzees “are one”:

Geneticists have come up with a variety of ways of calculating the percentages, which give different impressions about how similar chimpanzees and humans are. The 1.2% chimp-human distinction, for example, involves a measurement of only substitutions in the base building blocks of those genes that chimpanzees and humans share. A comparison of the entire genome, however, indicates that segments of DNA have also been deleted, duplicated over and over, or inserted from one part of the genome into another. When these differences are counted, there is an additional 4 to 5% distinction between the human and chimpanzee genomes.

No matter how the calculation is done, the big point still holds: humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos are more closely related to one another than either is to gorillas or any other primate. From the perspective of this powerful test of biological kinship, humans are not only related to the great apes – we are one. The DNA evidence leaves us with one of the greatest surprises in biology: the wall between human, on the one hand, and ape or animal, on the other, has been breached. The human evolutionary tree is embedded within the great apes.

“What does it mean to be humans” at Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

Except, we’re not “one”. The wall has not “been breached.” So far as anyone can tell, it is not even breachable.

Nobody thinks chimpanzees are the same as humans except a few researchers who may have spent too long in the bush.

“Spent too long in the bush”? As a child, I (O’Leary for News) spent some years in a northern wilderness, where we had occasion to use the expression “bushed.” It meant that a person had gone mad living alone in the wilderness.

One manifestation of this madness is believing that a nearby animal is like a human being. The mood is captured in a British Isles poem in which a lighthouse repairman comes to think that way about a seal.

Similarly, Canadian author Farley Mowat (1921–2014) recounts in Never Cry Wolf that, after spending a great deal of time among wolves, he began to think of them as people. In both these stories, friends noticed the odd behaviour and got the guy out of there. As I recall, bushed people in the far northern community in which I lived were generally sent south by bushplane to see a psychiatrist before something really crazy happened.

None of this silliness about “we are one” has anything to do with protecting chimpanzees or ensuring their humane treatment. That’s done by enforcing legal protection, backed up by education on humane principles, not by airing counterfactual theories.

If only the time and energy wasted on claiming that chimps are just like humans had been spent on rescuing chimps from awful conditions in labs and from the crackpots who try to make them into people and render them unfit for chimp life). The two have tended to coincide, all too often.

But meanwhile, what becomes of sciences that solemnly assert absurdities like “the wall… has been breached ,” commanding the assent of all? Certainly not credibility.

See also: Why can’t we make apes behave like people? A history of doomed recent efforts.

em>Further reading, courtesy Michael Egnor: Apes can be generous Are they just like humans then?

Can animals reason? My challenge to Jeffrey Shallit

and

University fires philosophy prof, hires chimpanzee to teach, research: A light-hearted look at what would happen if we really thought that unreason is better than reason

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Bob Marks on what happens when people try to write creative computer programs

From an interview with World Radio:

It’s actually the computer programmer, which is supplying that creativity.

So that’s where any creativity comes from—any smarter program. Somehow I don’t believe that it will happen.

I also know that people who looked at writing smarter programs using genetic algorithms and evolutionary programming have abandoned their search in large because they’ve tried a bunch of different things and nothing seems to work. They can’t get smarter programs that way.

But I also know people that are very excited about trying other ways. I don’t think they’re going to work, though.

“Can we write creative computer programs?” at Mind Matters News

It seems that the programmer would have to make the computer smarter than he is, which means smarter than itself. That’s a challenge.

Computer engineer Robert J. Marks is one of the authors of Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics. He will also be addressing these topics at the COSM technology summit, October 23–25, 2019, in Bellevue, Washington.

See also: Some of Marks’s takes on recent AI news items:

Random thoughts on recent AI headlines: Google gives away “free” cookies… Also, why AI can’t predict the stock market or deal with windblown plastic bags

Random thoughts on recent AI headlines (March 18, 2019): There is usually a story under those layers of hype but not always the one you thought

and

Top Ten AI hypes of 2018: More help, less hype, please!

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Do top Chinese technocrats believe in “the soul” or “love”?

Both big tech entrepreneurs Kai-Fu Lee and Jack Ma seem to believe in souls or something but they do not believe that souls can be trusted with freedom, the way governments can:

Kai-Fu Lee’s thought-provoking comments on the soul echo the sentiments of Jack Ma, co-founder and head of Alibaba, China’s equivalent of Amazon. He is a self-made billionaire and, by many accounts, the richest man in China. When the soul comes up again, it is in the context of LQ, the Love Quotient (as in EQ, emotional quotient, or IQ, intelligence quotient):

That said:

Ma also said in 2017 that China benefits from the stability of a one-party system. He seems comfortable with China’s big data police (“it can help pinpoint terrorist activity”) but he wishes his government would stick to governing, by which he seems to mean, not stifling innovation. And then there was the data-sharing scandal: “‘There’s no way to refuse’: China’s Alibaba under fire over use of customer data.”

Denyse O’Leary, “Chinese technocracy surges ahead with AI surveillance” at Mind Matters News

Well, as they say, love is a many-splendored thing. And once again, we may get a chance to test whether the soul exists.

On the soul: On the soul: The real reason why only human beings speak. Language is a tool for abstract thinking—a necessary tool for abstraction—and humans are the only animals who think abstractly (Michael Egnor)

On displacement by technology: Jay Richards: Creative freedom, not robots, is the future of work. In an information economy, there will be a place where the human person is at the very center

A chilling snippet on mass surveillance in China. China is helping other countries restrict their citizens’ internet, while shunning the U.S.

and

China’s AI package for Africa includes mass surveillance technology Africa sees development aid; China sees an expanding African database

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Winston Ewert explains why the mind is not a computer

Winston Ewert is one of the authors of Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics. Here he explains why he thinks that, once we understand clearly what a computer is, we will see why consciousness is not a form of computation:

In the world of computer science, there is a standard definition of a computer: anything that can be simulated on a Turing machine. But what is a Turing Machine?

It is an abstract machine. It is not a device that physically exists or even could physically exist. We imagine its existence in a purely mathematical realm. The machine operates on simple rules. Nevertheless, if the machine is appropriately configured, it can compute anything that any computer can, regardless of the computer’s sophistication.

So, by the standard definitions of computer science, a computer is something that can be simulated on this abstract mathematical device. But an abstract mathematical device cannot experience qualia or consciousness. If they could, we would expect mathematical formulas like the quadratic formula or the area of a sphere to experience consciousness. But that seems absurd, so we must conclude that a computer cannot exhibit consciousness. Put another way, consciousness is not a form of computation.

Winston Ewert, “Is the human mind a computer?” at Mind Matters News

Also by Winston Ewert: Remember the Luddites! The Luddites became famous for breaking machinery during the Industrial Revolution. Were they entirely wrong? It’s not as simple as some think.

and

Will the Free Market Help or Hurt Us in an AI-Empowered World? We may need new institutions, such as insurance against job obsolescence

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