Life as Evolving Software... (Chaitin) (Humans)

by dhw, Monday, December 26, 2011, 08:14 (4715 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: I'm not saying that my mind concerning evolution is "made-up," what I'm saying is that the thinking I've heard from you and others has failed to come up with a strong and material case. However, those challenges I posed above would actually resolve the question in my mind, to your favor. (Insomuch as that there is something other than a generation 1 to generation 2 mechanism to evolution.)

I find this discussion a bit confusing. I thought David was attacking gradualism, without which Darwin said his theory would fail. I can’t find any proposal in David’s posts that there’s anything other than a generation 1 to generation 2 mechanism. His divine pre-planning theory does not mean that each new species had to be created from scratch! But perhaps David would clarify this vital point himself.

MATT: Yet even mechanisms such as epigenetics don't appear (to me) to correspond to the kind of "fits and starts" you see in the fossil record. I agree, that the record progresses as you discuss above--with bursts of "innovation" if you will. However where I diverge is that there isn't any evidence-based validity for asserting that these changes happened in a manner inconsistent with current thought. Changes propagated by epigenetics would not appear distinctly different in a fossil record than anything else. It's something to consider, but there isn't a strong case here to displace mainstream thought on this issue. Until someone discovers a genetic mechanism that could warrant (geologically rapid) changes and can demonstrate it ex situ, there simply isn't a case beyond conjecture.

You keep talking of current or mainstream thought, as if there were a consensus on the issues of innovation and “fits and starts”. But nobody knows the answer, and there is no theory that provides “a case beyond conjecture”. Epigenetics MIGHT (conjecture) show that the fits and starts correspond to changes in the environment, and then apparent gaps in the fossil record would not be gaps at all if these changes resulted in innovations. This seems to me more logical than random mutations (see “The Intelligent Cell”, following on from Lynn Margulis’s brilliant insight that symbiotic combinations are as significant to evolution as competition between organisms.)

MATT: To me, the mechanics of DNA and heredity is the only known method for transmitting genetic information from organism A to C. To me, coupled with geological evidence, it explains everything we have seen. The explosions are unexplained. The solution will be an extension of current thought... not a replacement, I doubt even a paradigm shift.

Since the explosions are unexplained, all theories are conjecture. The fact that the explosions happened suggests there are flaws in Darwin’s “gradualism”, and that’s why it’s well worth considering epigenetics as a possible mechanism – i.e drastic and rapid changes in the environment producing drastic and rapid changes in the flora and fauna. In my view, the undermining of gradualism and of the role of random mutations would be a major change to Darwin’s theory and a paradigm shift, but not a replacement. Current thought cannot offer more than conjecture, so the solution is likely to be one of the current conjectures.