inverted retina

That's neo-Darwinian dogma. It actually makes little sense.

What if there is deeper structure than random mutations and selection? The equivalent of a backroom design and simulation laboratory that develops next-generation systems? There are several ways that could happen, none of the magical, but all of them an enormous - and mandatory - leg-up in the probabilities for survival.

Not to entirely discount the magical, either.

The idea that DNA was designed to thrive need not assume that God did it. We might be a science project of some long-gone non-carbon life form. The idea is NOT improbable. When we start to seriously understand DNA, there may be some surprises in there.

The drive is all the other critters who want to more good enough than we are, and want to eat us.

You make "neo-Darwinian" sound like an insult, when it is usually just used to mean "current modern scientific understanding of evolution".

If you find any evidence of such structures, let us know. If you can prove it scientifically, such a discovery would be worthy of a Nobel prize (scientists like nothing better than to have a good theory proven wrong by a better theory).

To be a scientific theory, you need four things:

1. The theory must make sense, sound reasonable, and it should fit with existing theories (unless it replaces them). It should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.

1. The theory should explain observations and evidence better than existing theories.

2. It should make predictions that can be verified.

1. It should be falsifiable - i.e., there should be events that if observed, would clearly demonstrate that the theory is incorrect.

Evolution based on natural selection (of genes and traits that lead to a greater chance of viable offspring who can pass them on again) fits these requirements well - it is a good scientific theory. It is quite complex in its whole when applied to life on Earth - gone are the days when natural selection could be summed up as "survival of the fittest", and the days when there was a "tree of life" (it is now a "web of life"). But the basics are straightforward.

Your suggestion of adding some sort of guidance, target, backroom design, etc., can barely manage requirement 1 above - and certainly not

You can believe in magic here if you want. All I am saying is that it is not scientific.

That is science fiction, not science - and just as much a religious belief as any other creator myth.

Of course, it is possible that evidence supporting such ideas will be found - and then it would start to be science, not science fiction. But until something concrete is found that does not fit existing scientific views, the only difference between "aliens designed us" and "god designed us" is that there is better hope that supporting evidence could be found.

Note also that you are mixing up evolution and biogenesis. Evolution is a clear and well-understood theory that can be used for more than just the natural evolution of life on earth - fruit-fly experiments or the evolution of dog races are biological examples, and the same principles have been used in computer software for genetic algorithms.

Biogenesis is about understanding how life started in the first place. Once the first successful cells got going, evolution can explain the rest. "Someone or something" designed the first cell is a non-scientific theory of biogensis, and there are many scientific ideas. There is currently no single viable scientific theory of biogensis, however - just a number of bits and pieces.

Nope. That's just one of several factors driving towards "good enough". If a sabre-toothed lion is chasing you and your neighbour, "good enough" is running faster than the neighbour - not running faster than the lion, or running faster than the previous generation. And for the lion, "good enough" is running faster than slow prey until you have enough to eat - not running faster than all potential prey.

"Good enough" is good enough. Anything more would be a waste of resources. (Of course, the luck of mutations means that sometimes you get a jump to "much better" - but "good enough" is the common rule.)

I meant the theories that were popular in the 1930's

and, to a large extent, persist.

Given that nobody has a good working understanding of how DNA works (where are the cures for AIDS, cancer, fat thighs, aging?) there remain great surprises to be discovered. As an electronic circuit designer, I probably won't discover them.

OK.

Something better than random mutation and selection is obviously needed.

In the case of biological systems, it should explain what already exists, although experiments aren't out of the question.

I don't think so. The real issue is one Darwin struggled with: what is the actual source of variation? Given a really good design mechanism, test and deployment are pretty straightforward.

Not regigion, just a belief that evolution *really* works... works better than most people will allow themselves to think about.

Nor is it scientific to have an unsolved problem, and to respond to reasonable speculation of mechanisms with accusations of witchcraft.

All science was once science fiction.

Sometimes Wikipedia makes things clearer, other times it fails. The only thing I can get out of this is that you don't seem to agree that natural evolution has been "guided" by just natural selection and luck.

Modern science has a pretty good idea about how DNA works. Newer subtle issues are still being discovered, but the DNA itself is reasonably well understood. What all our genes do - that's a different matter entirely. And I don't know why you think an imagined failure to understand DNA should be the reason AIDS, cancer, etc., are not cured.

No, it is not. It fits the evidence quite happily. Let me know if you can think of any counter-examples.

There are examples of evolution clearly in action - drug-resistant bacteria are such a case, and have been predicted.

There are lots of predictions made for evolution, such as rates of changes in genes, predicted "missing link" species whose fossils were later found, and so on. Most famous, perhaps, is Darwin's prediction of a moth that had co-evolved with an orchid with a particularly long and thin flower.

Darwin struggled with the source of variation because he didn't know about DNA, or genetic mutations. We now understand the most important mechanisms quite well, and it is no long a issue to struggle with.

That makes no sense. People either understand that natural evolution works, with solid scientific theory behind it (even if they don't understand the theory itself), or they think life was created, formed, guided, or otherwise engineered by some outside influence (usually a god, sometimes aliens).

says, "of course science doesn't have /all/ the answers, otherwise we'd stop doing it). Nor have I seen any reasonable speculation of other mechanisms involved, nor have I seen or made any accusations of witchcraft (though you said yourself that you wouldn't rule out "magic").

Bollocks.

And even if it were not, it does not follow that since "all science was once science fiction", "all science fiction will eventually become science".

man retina is built upside-down, with nerves and blood supply on top, and p hoto sensors below, against the back of the eyeball. "

he engineering done here. Cost. Vision, at the level we have it, is conside red a miracle by those who understand it. Of course the rabble just takes i t for granted. But those who know just how hard it is to do something like that do respect the engineering.

ut it was right for SOME reason. I share the desire to understand that reas on. I suspect it has something to do with physiology and not engineering in the paradigm we are used to.

, no plan, and no targets. (Actually, I have met some engineers that work like that...)

doing fruit-fly experiments. But natural evolution has no designer, plans or targets - merely feedback based on the chances of passing your gen es on to future generations.

It doesn't make much sense to John Larkin, who doesn't know much. People wh o know a bit more about the subject find that this description does fit the facts we know rather better than any other available.

e equivalent of a backroom design and simulation laboratory that develops n ext-generation systems? There are several ways that could happen, none of t he magical, but all of them an enormous - and mandatory - leg-up in the pro babilities for survival.

The ones John Larkin has come up with so far all depend on magic. Evolution hasn't yet worked out how to put error-detecting and correcting bits into the genetic code. John Larkin can imagine a simulate and test procedure run ning on the same hardware, but only because he knows very little about the hardware involved.

Obviously not - since it is the only way that John Larkin's daft ideas coul d work.

evolution (or should I say "/guided/ evolution", as many religious people s eem to think evolution is a think of the past which stopped when the pinnac le, humans, evolved).

We might be a science project of some long-gone non-carbon life form. The idea is NOT improbable. When we start to seriously understand DNA, there may be som e surprises in there.

We do seriously understand DNA, and nobody has found any surprises yet.

od reasons" for the way a biological system is the way it is - it survives because it is good enough, and better (or luckier) than close alternatives.

"Astounding" refers to the state of mind of the person understanding the re sults, not to the results themselves.

ove on that.

we are, and want to eat us.

But most random mutations make the system worse, and turn the creatures tha t got stuck with them into food for creatures who'd retained the original d esign.

Evolution is piece-wise continuous, so there's no easy way to get to a rad ically different solution. Bats got into flying a lot later than birds, and from a very different ancestry. See also whales, porpoises, seals and fish .

er, no plan, and no targets. (Actually, I have met some engineers that wor k like that...)

used to mean "current modern scientific understanding of evolution".

You clearly didn't read the Wikipedia article. Most people understand "neo- Darwinism" to mean natural selection plus Mendelian genetics, which is stil l our current understanding of what is going on. The phrase was coined back in 1895, but it was attached to a theory which still seems to be valid.

prove it scientifically, such a discovery would be worthy of a Nobel prize (scientists like nothing better than to have a good theory proven wrong by a better theory).

e are the cures for AIDS, cancer, fat thighs, aging?) there remain great s urprises to be discovered. As an electronic circuit designer, I probably wo n't discover them.

We've got an excellent understanding of how DNA works - in the same sense t hat we've got an excellent understanding of how transistors work. It hasn't yet translated into cures for AIDS, cancer, fat thighs and aging because t he structures that the DNA codes for are remarkably complicated.

elops next-generation systems? There are several ways that could happen, no ne of the magical, but all of them an enormous - and mandatory - leg-up in the probabilities for survival.

ing theories.

Why?

although experiments aren't out of the question.

greater chance of viable offspring who can pass them on again) fits these requirements well - it is a good scientific theory. It is quite complex in its whole when applied to life on Earth - gone are the days when natural selection could be summed up as "survival of the fittest", and the days when there was a "tree of life" (it is now a "web of life"). But the basics are straightforward.

e actual source of variation? Given a really good design mechanism, test an d deployment are pretty straightforward.

John Larkin "doesn't think so" which dignifies his mental processes with th e title "thought". The actual source of the variation that Darwin was looki ng for, but never found - in his life-time - is random mutations, which is to say errors in the DNA copying process. Primate evolution seems to be mor e driven "jumping genes"

design, etc., can barely manage requirement 1 above - and certainly not 2,

than most people will allow themselves to think about.

Not so much a belief as a delusion.

s not scientific.

nable speculation of mechanisms with accusations of witchcraft.

No one is accusing you of witchcraft, but your ideas of what constitutes a "reasonable speculation" would have to include witchcraft and astrology.

evolution (or should I say "/guided/ evolution", as many religious people seem to think evolution is a think of the past which stopped when the pinna cle, humans, evolved).

it. We might be a science project of some long-gone non-carbon life form. T he idea is NOT improbable. When we start to seriously understand DNA, there may be some surprises in there.

belief as any other creator myth.

Wrong. Science fiction is a fairly recent invention, and scientific specula tions weren't published as in popular novels - and still aren't. Scientific speculations have been popularised in science-fiction novels.

popularised the idea that methane clathrates hold enough methane - a green house gas - to fuel catastrophic global warming. This may have been the eng ine of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal maximum, some 55.8 million years ago th ough the heat to fuel the break-up of the clathrates then doesn't seem to h ave come from any kind of nuclear weapon

John Barnes was sufficiently well-informed to pick up on the idea early, bu t he certainly didn't orginate it.

Eat us - yes, I read a paleontologist paper about a dig showing a sabre tooth tiger cave. Inside were a pile of human skulls, with a characteristic two puncture holes from the tiger.

It could have happened. Of the six different sabre-toothed tiger-like predators there were a couple around at the same time as humans.

It is a little improbable that the skulls would have had a double puncture mark - the target area would have been the neck rather than the skull.

These days, only sick tigers are silly enough to prey on humans, and they don't survive long if they make a habit of it. I doubt if sabre=toothed tigers did any better - we're still here, and they aren't.

This is slightly at a tangent, but sabre-toothed tigers are a good example of how natural evolution drives towards "more likely to have viable offspring to pass on genes to the next generation" rather than a simplistic "survival of the fittest". The fossil record shows sabre-toothed tigers getting longer and heavier tusks, and reaching a point where the would have great difficulty running without tripping over them, and be unable to use them effectively as weapons if they managed to catch something. The likely theory is that the females preferred males with longer tusks - so longer tusks meant more chance of passing on genes, even if they did hindered survival.

I don't recall making that last claim.

You define yourself by the things you refuse to imagine.

I was reading a physics site yesterday, and a particle physicist pointed out that, what with dark energy, dark matter, expansion, neutrino mass, all that stuff, physicists get smug over understanding

once science fiction", "all science fiction will eventually become science".

It was definitely implied.

More by the imagined stuff that he finds implausible.

But - understanding that much - they understand a whole lot more than you do. And one definition of an expert is "someone who understands the limits of their knowledge".

That is because they work. There are computer programs today that have been evolved by survival of the fittest methodology.

There is a pretty good understanding of how DNA works at the molecular level and an increasing library of DNA sequences for whole organisms.

There always is in any field of scientific study. But you need to be able to understand the difference between fact and fiction.

So far so good.

Yes. It is called sexual reproduction and takes characteristics of two parents and combines them to produce novel variable offspring.

Asexual reproduction is by comparison much more limited in the extent to which it can adapt to a changing environment (but also more efficient in a static one). Aphids use both strategies.

HINT: 1000 incremental 0.1% improvements adds up to more than 100%

It should eventually also allow you to target known molecular markers and genetic testing for diseases and vulnerabilities. Though there is a lot of work still to be done and it could be a double edged sword making some people uninsurable given their near certainty of an expensive demise.

Initially just random mutations but once you have sexual reproduction and swapping of genetic fragments from one cell to another then survival of the fittest is a necessary and sufficient driver.

I once did a simulation of this based on a SciAm mathetmatic games article. The CA genome was extremely simple basically a 16bit code to say the 2bit probabilities to eat food, reproduce, fight, stay still. turn left, turn right, go straight, go backwards

You could alter the environment and watch them evolve fairly rapidly over perhaps 50-100 generations to adapt to the new conditions.

Virtual fruit fly is a descendent of this antique work.

Why do you always see the need to invoke magyck?

We know that neo-Darwinism works pretty well on its own. Plenty of hard engineering problems have already been solved by that methodology!

You do tend to be very irrational at times.

That is completely untrue. It might be true to say that Scifi has influenced the shapes of our modern technological gadgets though.

I suspect 2001 a Space Oddessy has influenced the shape of tablet computers and Star Trek the shape of everything from Kodaks DC120 digital camera to mobile phones. USB sticks and Bluetooth have already overtaken the capacities that original Star Trek could have imagined.

At the time I never expected to ever see a flat TV although I did see a prototype of Clive Sinclairs almost flat tube based TV in the 1970's.

You can be first to try out the teleportation transporter.

Regards, Martin Brown

The claim was implicit in your statement - otherwise the statement was pointless.

Nope. But I refuse to /define/ the universe by things that I (or others) merely imagine. When an issue has a good, clear, well tested scientific theory behind it, I don't feel the need to imagine extra hobgoblins working behind the scenes.

Having said that, I think it is fine that people look for possible hobgoblins - science is based on observation, so it is vital that scientists observe, and look under every stone. But until new evidence is found that contradicts existing theories, those existing theories stand. Show me the remotest hint of evidence that natural evolution has been guided, or the remotest hint for how your ideas here explain something that the well-established theories do not, and I will be happy to listen. Until then, these ideas are merely /your/ imagination, not science.

There is lots about the universe that we are still figuring out - and probably there will be future refinements in our current theories of the universe (relativity and quantum mechanics). But physicists can certainly be smug about understanding the 5% of the universe that is directly relevant to us. And they can be smug about their progress in understanding more, and the indirect benefits that search has had in technological progress.

And note that in the areas you mention there are no good scientific theories - just several competing theories in progress. So there is plenty of room for imagination there.

You need a refresher course in formal logic.

I don't recall defining any universes.

When an issue has a good, clear, well tested

Sounds like I have an imagination, and you don't. That's fine with me: I make my living taking business away from people who are without imagination.

Note that you are posting to a "design" newsgroup, not a "copy the textbook" newsgroup.

did it. We might be a science project of some long-gone non-carbon life for m. The idea is NOT improbable. When we start to seriously understand DNA, t here may be some surprises in there.

belief as any other creator myth.

as once science fiction", "all science fiction will eventually become scie nce".

ointless.

Actually, he doesn't. This is a natural language forum, and the natural lan guage rules about implication are a lot less rigorous than those required b y formal logic.

) merely imagine.

You didn't understand that you were defining a universe in which your imagi nation had some connection to reality. It's a weakness you've exhibited her e before.

t, I don't feel the need to imagine extra hobgoblins working behind the scenes.

hobgoblins - science is based on observation, so it is vital that scientists observe, and look under every stone. But until new evidence is found that contradicts existing theories, those existing theories stand. Show me the remotest hint of evidence that natural evolution has been guided, or the remotest hint for how your ideas here explain something that the well-established theories do not, and I will be happy to listen. Until then, these ideas are merely /your/ imagination, not science.

make my living taking business away from people who are without imagination .

In circuit design you get to test your imagination by building circuits. He re you are venting the untested products of your imagination, and asking us to take them seriously, which is a rather different business, and one in w hich your products don't even have a niche market.

ok" newsgroup.

Since you don't seem to have read enough textbooks, you would think that. O f course, there doesn't seem to be a good textbook on transformer design, w hich may explain why you are weak there.

Haven't heard much about that oscillator lately? Was that an imaginary project by any chance?

Jamie

He hasn't done anything useful in a couple of decades, and likely not in his entire life. Imagine what it must be like to be around a droning lame-insult creep like that.

He'll never finish that oscillator, and if he did, it wouldn't matter.

: I make my living taking business away from people who are without imagina tion.

. Here you are venting the untested products of your imagination, and askin g us to take them seriously, which is a rather different business, and one in which your products don't even have a niche market.

roject by any chance?

The bits to build it are in a couple of boxes spread around our flat. The s pace to spread them out and wire them together isn't available. We just mad e a bid to rent the flat next door (which has just come on the market - the previous tenant had been there for twenty years, which is typical of the b uilding).

If we get it, the oscillator may become a bit more actual.

The bulk of the work on the oscillator was done with LTSpice, which is a wo rk of the imagination, though a tolerably realistic one. One transformer di d get wound and shipped off to London for testing, which was real enough, a nd the current version reflects the problems that those tests showed up.

Imagination has it's place, but I'm not publishing anything that hasn't bee n put together and worked in real life.

e: I make my living taking business away from people who are without imagin ation.

s. Here you are venting the untested products of your imagination, and aski ng us to take them seriously, which is a rather different business, and one in which your products don't even have a niche market.

project by any chance?

his entire life. Imagine what it must be like to be around a droning lame-i nsult creep like that.

Your wife must know.

I may not get around to finishing that oscillator. I've got a quite a few p rojects that never actually made it - including the electron beam tester, w hich did work, but was more of less ready to go into manufacture at about t he same time that the market for electron beam testers got diminished by th e increasing power of semiconductor simulation.

I'm sure you've got a few too, but with one project per fortnight they will be easier to forget.

If the oscillator does make it, it's still most unlikely to matter. The mar ket for that kind of tightly specified high-stability oscillator is tiny - mostly national physical laboratories, and people doing similar tricky meas urements with AC bridges - and they are unlikely to buy one from me, even i f I could put together something that would suit their particular bizarre a pplication.